“I’m still in high school.”
“That doesn’t stop a lot of kids from drinking. You’re a good kid. I shouldn’t call you a kid. You’re not a kid anymore.” He was smoking his cigarette and the light of the fire made him look younger. We had been such strangers to each other, a father and a boy who had lived in different countries in the same house. He had been an unsolvable mystery. And though there were some mysteries about him that I would never solve, there was something intimate between us now. And he felt like home.
* * *
There were billions of stars in the sky. Billions. A part of me wished that Dante was here so I could hold him underneath these stars. Maybe he and I would come here someday. We were lying in our sleeping bags, silent, in awe of the stars.
“I brought your mother up here when I came back from ’Nam. Your mother and I think that’s the night you were conceived.”
“Really?” I loved the thought of that. “Is that really true?”
“It’s a very good possibility. Maybe it isn’t. But your mother and I would like to believe that. Because of those stars up there.”
There was a long silence, but I knew my father felt like talking—and I felt like listening. “Your mother is the only woman I ever loved. I saw her on the first day of school at the university. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. She was walking and talking with a friend, and she seemed so incredibly alive. I followed her to class. It was a literature class. I went to the liberal arts office and got myself registered for the class.
“I sat in the back. It was a good place to watch. She was so smart. I think the professor called on her because she always had something interesting to say and it helped the discussion. The professor was a discussion kind of guy. I sometimes saw her on campus and followed her from far behind so she wouldn’t notice.
“I went to a Christmas party with a friend at the end of the semester. And she was there. Some guy, good-looking, was hitting on her. I just watched how she handled herself. She wasn’t interested. But she seemed so comfortable and unbothered. Someone handed me a beer, and I went into the backyard to have a cigarette. There were plenty of people in the backyard, and it may have been December, but it wasn’t all that cold outside. I just stood there and watched. And there was your mother standing next to me. ‘So,’ she said, ‘are you ever going to talk to me, or do you just like stalking me?’
“I was so damned embarrassed. I just didn’t know what to say. So that’s what I said: ‘I never know what to say.’
“ ‘Let me help you out. I’m Liliana.’ She stuck out her hand.
“I shook her hand and said, ‘I’m Jaime.’
“She just looked at me. And she smiled. ‘One of these days you’re going to work up the courage to kiss me.’ Then she walked away. I felt like an idiot. And I just stood there—and it dawned on me that I should have followed her. But when I searched for her, she’d already left. I was asking around to see if anybody knew some girl named Liliana. Some people knew her—but they didn’t have her phone number. And then this girl walks up to me and hands me a folded piece of paper. ‘This is her phone number. And if you don’t call her, I’m going to find you and I’m going to kick your ass.’ That girl turned out to be your mother’s best friend, Carmela Ortiz.”
“The nurse at my school.”
“Yup. Pain in the ass. But she’s grown on me over the years. Anyway, I finally called your mother. And on New Year’s Eve, we went out on a date. And I kissed her that night. And I knew that I was going to marry her, and never kiss another woman again. Not that I’d kissed that many.
“I’ve always been a watcher. Always watching. If your mother and Carmela hadn’t given me a shove, I might have never married her. And it wasn’t just that I was a watcher. I thought your mother was way out of my league.
“You know, in ’Nam, they called me Trucha. It’s the word for ‘trout,’ but it’s slang for someone who’s always watching, always alert. I’ll never forget this Jewish kid. He was almost twenty. He got shot and he was bleeding real bad, and I took a towel I carried and pressed it against him to help stop the bleeding and I radioed for a medic, and they were coming—but I knew this kid wasn’t going to make it. So I just held him, and he was cold and shaking and he said, “Tell my mom and dad. Tell them I’ll see them next year in Jerusalem.” And he was gone, that faraway stare the dead have after life leaves them. I closed his eyelids. He was a good man. He was a good soldier. When I got back, I delivered that message in person. Because he deserved that. Because his parents deserved that. I’ll never forget the gratitude—and pain—written on his parents’ faces.
“Don’t ever let anybody tell you that war is something beautiful or heroic. When people say war is hell, war is hell. Cowards start wars, and the brave fight them.”
My father fell into a silence.
I was happy to know how my parents fell in love. I was happy to know that my mother had found a way to move a quiet man who was standing still into action. I was happy that my father could talk about the war—though he only said very little about what had happened there. I understood that the war had left him with a pain that had found a home in his heart, the kind of pain that no one could heal and that would never go away.
Thirty
AS WE REACHED THE EL Paso city limits, I asked my father, “If you could give me just one piece of advice that would help me live my life, Dad, what would it be?”
“Why is it that sons ask their fathers such ambitious questions?” He glanced at me as I drove. “Let me think about that one.”
* * *
My mother arrived from Tucson about an hour after we’d gotten back home. She looked at me. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Yes,” I said. “I wasn’t looking for my brother. I was looking for a piece of me that was missing. I found it.” I loved that smile of hers. “And you know what else? I found out that your husband can be a talker. But he doesn’t know how to make small talk.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“Mom,” I said, “I have never been this happy.”
* * *
The phone rang. I was hoping it was Dante. I heard his voice. “We got back early this morning. Dad drove all night. I just woke up from a nap.”
“My dad and I drove in a couple of hours ago.”
“And are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll tell you all about it.”
There was a kind of joy in the silence that followed. Yeah, joy.
* * *
My parents took my friends and me out for pizza—Dante and Gina and Susie and Cassandra. We were having a good time. Gina and Susie noticed I was wearing their Christmas gift.
“What’s that chain around your neck?” Gina asked.
“Jesus.”
“Jesus?”
“Yeah,” I said. I took out the chain and showed it to her. “These girls I know gave it to me for Christmas. I guess they figured I need Jesus to protect me.”