I was staring blankly at the Christmas tree, and I had gone downstairs to find Tito, the bear my sisters had given me when I was an infant and that I’d slept with until I was six.
I kept staring at him, and then I just held that bear and I didn’t feel stupid. Tito seemed to give me comfort even though his soft fur was worn and not so soft anymore.
I heard the doorbell ring. I opened the door and saw Mrs. Ortega and Cassandra standing on our front porch. Mrs. Ortega was carrying a large pot, and I knew it was menudo by the smell. “Take this, will you, Ari? It’s a little heavy for me.” I took the pot of menudo as Cassandra handed her mother the big bag of bolillos she was carrying and held the door open. They followed me into the kitchen. “Mom, Mrs. Ortega brought some menudo.” My mom shook her head, and her eyes rained tears again. The two women embraced.
“Ay, Liliana, como me puede. Era tan lindo, tu esposo.”
Cassandra hugged my mother, and softly she said, “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Mendoza. He was a good man.”
She knew how to behave like a woman, and she seemed perfectly at ease in what I would have found to be an awkward situation. Cassandra grabbed my hand and we went into the living room. “Dante and Susie and Gina are coming over. We wanted to spend New Year’s Eve with you.”
“I’m really not up for company. I’m sorry, that was rude. I’m just tired—hell, Cassandra, I’m just sad. I’ve never been this sad and I don’t know what to do and I just want to fucking hide somewhere and not come out until it stops hurting.”
“Ari, not a day goes by that I don’t think of my brother. It will be a long time before it stops hurting. But you’re not a possum. You can’t play dead.”
At that moment, I didn’t feel as if I had any tears left in me. I just sat there wishing I were a chair or a couch or a cement floor—anything inanimate—anything that didn’t feel.
“We’re you’re friends. We don’t need to be entertained. And we’re not here to cheer you up, either. We’re just here to let you know we love you. So let us love you, Ari. It’s a beautiful thing to let the people you love see your pain.”
“It isn’t pretty.”
“You don’t listen. I said it was beautiful.”
“I have a choice?”
“Actually, you do.”
Just then the doorbell rang—not that they waited for me to answer the door. The three of them just walked in. When I saw them, I wasn’t mad. I thought I would be—but I wasn’t. As Dante would have put it, they were such lovely people. I just stood there and started crying. Apparently, I did have some tears left in me. And each one of them just hugged me and they didn’t say stupid things like Don’t cry or Be a man and they didn’t utter clichés like He’s in a better place. They just held me. They just held me and respected my grief.
* * *
We sat around the Christmas tree, and we mostly were lying on the floor. I used Dante’s stomach for a pillow. We heard the women’s voices in the other room and sometimes their conversations grew serious and sometimes we heard laughter. Cassandra saw Tito lying on the couch. “Who is this?”
“That’s Tito,” I said. “He was my bear when I was a baby, and I slept with him until I was six.”
“Who would have ever guessed?”
“Are you gonna make fun of me? I mean, everybody had a Tito or someone like him.”
“I think it’s totally sweet. But me, I never liked stuffed animals.”
“Me neither,” Dante said.
“You didn’t?” I was really surprised. “Wow. So much for Mr. Sensitive.”
“What did you hug, Dante? A dictionary?” Susie was wearing that smug smile of hers.
Everybody laughed. Even Dante.
“I had a doll,” Gina said, “but, you know, I wasn’t all that attached to her. One day when I was mad, I decapitated her.”
I needed that. A good laugh.
“I had a rag doll named Lizzie. I tried to teach her to call me Susie. She never learned. I used to pull her hair out. I got mad at her one day and made her sleep under the bed.”
“Seriously? Of all the people sitting in this room, I’m the un-nicest, and I’m the one who’s sentimental about a stuffed bear?”
“Excuse me,” Cassandra said, “but I’m the un-nicest person here. Don’t try to move in on my turf.”
“You’re plenty nice.”
“Well, yeah, we all know that. But I have a reputation to live up to—and we can’t let the word get out.”
Dante held Tito by the shoulders. “Sorry, dude, but I’m Ari’s Tito now.”
“And I’m your Tito,” Susie said.
“Me too,” Gina said.
“And me,” Cassandra said. “We’re all your Tito. And we’re going to see you through this, Ari. We promise.”
And right then I knew that they would all be my friends forever. I knew they would always be in my life. I knew that I would always love them. Until the day I died.
* * *
We were all gathered in the kitchen at midnight, eating menudo. Even Dante was eating menudo. “Someday you’re going to be a real Mexican.”
“But will I ever be a real American? That’s the question. It used to be my last name that was an impediment. But now I think it’s the fact that I’m gay that’s the real impediment to being a fully enfranchised American citizen. See, a gay man is not a real man, and if I’m not a real man, then I can’t really be an American. I think there are people all over this nation who are invoking Scotty’s name.”
“Scotty?”
“Yeah, Scotty from Star Trek. They’re begging for Scotty to beam me up, beam me up and leave me off on the planet Klingon.”
“They’ll have to beam me up with you.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. You’ll come in handy if we have to fight off one of the Klingons.”
Dante looked at his watch—then his eyes met Susie’s.
“Tonight I’m Dick Clark, and it’s time for the New Year’s countdown… ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, HAPPY NEW YEAR!”
Susie found a radio and “Auld Lang Syne” was playing. I hugged my mother first, and whispered, “I know I’m not much of a stand-in for Dad.”
“I don’t need a stand-in,” she whispered. “I have what I need to get me through—and that means you.” She kissed me on the cheek and combed my hair with her fingers. “Happy New Year, Ari.”
Not even her grief could rob her of that smile.
Dante kissed me. We didn’t say anything to each other. We just looked into each other’s eyes with a kind of wonder.
My sisters hugged me, kissed me, both of them telling me how glad they were that I looked like our father.
There may not have been a lot of happiness in the kitchen that night. But there was a lot of love.
And maybe that was even better.
Thirty-Five
NEW YEAR’S DAY 1989. SUNDAY.
I went to Mass with my mom and my sisters and their husbands and my nephews and nieces.