A Naked Singularity: A Novel (52 page)

“Casi, stop scaring my son,” Marcela said, entering with glorious food.

“I don’t even want to know what you’re telling him now. Go play
gordito
,” she said and
gordito
did.

“Me scare him? You should be telling him to stop scaring me. What kind of parental supervision is this?”

“I’m serious. You think he doesn’t understand the things you say, but days later he’s quoting you and asking me some bizarre question.”

“Yeah Casi, play nice,” Alana laughed slightly.

“He started it,” I said. The food was on the table: round clay-colored bowls, yellow rice with strips of red pepper and dots of green peas, salted
tostones
of green plantains and various overdone forms of meat. “Oh man this looks good, I haven’t eaten in like two days.”

—¡Ugh!—gasped my mom.—¿
Como asi
? You have to eat
hijo
. That’s not good
papi
.

“Harumph.”

—¿
Por qué
you didn’t eat Casi?

“Because, mom, I got nobody to take care of me. I’m all alone. What am I supposed to eat? Pizza? I can’t get good food like this over there, so what’s the point in eating?”

“Oh please, don’t make me laugh,” said Marcela.

“Something wrong with your kitchen? Because you can come by and use mine anytime,” said Alana.

“You see mom? No love.”

—I’m serious
hijo
. You have to take better care of yourself. That’s why you look so different.

“I look the same.”

“Something happened, he won’t say what,” added the ever helpful Alana.

“What happened Casi?” said Marcela as my mom looked on all interest.

“Nothing happened, nothing at all. Did I miss something, who listens to Alana? Are we going to eat or just yammer? What about Mary and Timmy?” I said trying to change the subject.

“They ate already,” said Marcela.

—
Ay
, I’m worry.

“Mom, what are you talking about? What’s there to worry about? I eat like a pig. The only thing is I was on trial this week, that’s why I wasn’t eating or sleeping or anything.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” said Alana. “What happened?”

“I was on trial.”

“I mean what was the result?”

—No, I’m worry about Armando—came the reprieve.

“Yeah, what’s going to happen with that Casi?” said Marcela.

“Don’t worry about that either mami. I’m already on it. I called over there. He’s not going to be coming through for a little while yet. I’ll head over there in a bit and make sure everything works out fine.”

“Why was he arrested?” said Marcela.

“He told mom it was for selling hot dogs without a license, right ma?” I said.

—Aha.

“Total bullshit,” I said, “no big deal.”

“Can they do that Casi?” said Marcela with a look on her face.

“Yes, they can, but it’s not a big deal. I’ll take care of it.”

“Yeah ma, don’t worry,” said Alana. “This is Casi’s bread and butter. This is why we plucked him out of that orphanage and plopped him into that fancy law school.”

—
Ay sí
, plees Casi.
Que pena con
those in Colombia. They send him here and we were supposed to take care of him.
Ahora
look where he is.

“He’ll be fine, he’s a big boy. He’ll be chugging aguardiente tonight.”

—
Miren tan buena esta remolacha
.

“Ill . . . beets?”

“No way.”

“Nobody wants
remolacha
ma.”

“I don’t understand why they would arrest some kid selling hot dogs out of a van,” said Marcela. “He was so happy with his hot dog van too.”

“He’s probably going to want to hightail it right back to Colombia after this kind of hospitality,” said Alana.

“Doubt it,” I said.

“I think he’ll still want to stay,” said Marcela. “At least I hope so.”

“What do you mean you hope so?” said Alana and Marcela did a thing with her lips that Alana saw but ignored. “I mean I don’t get it,” she continued. “Over there, Armando was a computer programmer. Yet he’s willing to come over here to sell hot dogs out of a hot dog shaped van. And for what? What’s his reward? He’s doing this in a country where they arrest him for doing it. They basically arrested him for working. I guess he’s only supposed to come here to take pictures of the Statue of Liberty and buy his share of miniature souvenirs. These guys come here for what exactly? To line up outside in the freezing cold waiting for somebody to come by in a pickup and give them work for the day so they can do the shit nobody else would do, for money nobody else would take, and in appreciation get used as scapegoats by fat rednecks who keep their trailer’s fridge full of Meister Bräu?”

“Easy now.”

—
Ah sí, asi es
sometime.

“
Pero
why ma? Why do they still do it? Can’t we explain to them that it’s not worth it?”

—They do it because dey think ees worth et.

“Well they’re wrong.”

—Alana
allá
there are no jobs. And
aunque
you have a job is no mean you’re going to get paid.
La hermana de
Armando works for the university en Cali and they haven’t paid her in two mons.

No one spoke and in the silence I tried to remember which one was Armando’s sister. Hearing nothing my mom seemingly felt an elaborative tug.

—
Y
the job
que
Armando had anyway it finished when they killed his boss walking into the office one morning.
Pero
even if he still had that job it doesn’t matter because he know he could do better here.
Yo no digo que
our family is starving over there. ¡
Tampoco
!
Pero
even the people who are doing okay over there know it would be better here and they want to do better.
No todos, porque
some can assept et,
pero
otros can’t assept et. Being held down by somesing you no control like jour country where jour born. At the same time,
mientras otros
can do whatever they want because of the lucky of where they born. ¿Because of
lineas en un mapa
like your father would say? Juss luck? (She kept talking here but I was thinking how much I disliked maps while others can’t finish entering whatever turnstile-enclosed entertainment before they’re running to the illustrated vertical square that tells them they’re standing on a red dot.) Right now maybe ees harder for Armando than over there.
Pero
, he’s just
un
kid. One day he marry, have keeds
y
those keeds will be born here. They will speak
el inglés
perfectly and they will know what to do. He does it for them. So
allá
I wore suits and here I cleaned hotel rooms but today look at my three kids. If we don’t leave, Casi
por ejemplo
, would be like Armando right now. Instead Marcela has a house and keeds, Alana es
un
artist
con
her first show,
y
Casi is an avocado.

We shut up and ate. She looked kind of sad as if saying things you’d only thought was somehow wrong. We all looked at each other but no one had the heart to tell her how unimpressive these things seemed to us from the inside looking out or that the correct translation for
abogado
was attorney. No one made any move towards the
remolacha
either which might have helped matters.

Who would break the silence?

“You guys feel that?” said Alana. “Do you feel it hanging in the air? It’s the four of us. The exact four who would have sat at this very table ten years ago. Don’t you get it?”

“Get what?” I said. “We get together quite often.”

“More often than any other family I know,” added Marcela.

“I know but I’m not talking about the four of us being together, I’m talking about the four us being together
exclusively
. When was the last time you can recall that?”

“I’m sure it was very recently,” said Marcela.

“Not so fast. Think about it. You’ve been married nine years.”

“Seven.”

“Timmy’s four.”

“Five.”

“Buela and Buelo moved in six years ago.”

“Three years ago.”

“Exactly, see what I’m saying? Look at this table, it’s the four of us. We’re even sitting where we used to sit.”

“What’s your point?” I said.

“That don’t you feel the electricity of this moment? Here we are, it’s like a reunion. This used to be us. There was no one else. I would come home from school and head right to my room to sulk and paint and just try to feel interesting. Then one by one each of you would appear. Marcela would start dinner and ma would show up to finish. Then remember the rule? If you were going to eat it had to be at this table with the Fantastic Four. A good rule I think Ma. There are things the four of us have lived and shared that others could never understand and that will always be the case even though we’re so much different now and so little the same. And that thing, that feeling, is in this room right now and I like it. The four. Us four.”

“We were five.”

“Yeah we were, I know, but then we were four and we’ve been four almost as long as we were five and that’s fine because what are you going to do?”

. . .

“I’ve been thinking a lot about who the real me is. Who the real any of us is.”

“Goood,” said Marcela in a way that I was sure betrayed more of her enthusiasm than she intended.

“You see I know I act differently when I’m in this house. I feel like a kid again and so I find myself falling involuntarily into my old role. Basically I act different than I do when I’m with my Pratt pals for example and that got me thinking that maybe you guys don’t know the real me. Maybe you just know the way I act when I’m cast in my familial role. Don’t say you’ve seen me with my friends either because I’ll just respond that what you’re seeing then isn’t the real me either but just the person I am when I’m with friends but being watched by family. Then again maybe the opposite is true and everyone out there doesn’t know the real me, the one that only comes out when I’m in this foursome. The problem is that I now spend a great deal more time out there than I do in here. I’m happy right here right now, and maybe that’s because I don’t have to act as much or if I do the performance doesn’t have to be as good, as expertly mannered you know?”

“ . . .”

“ . . .”

“ . . .”

“The real problem is I’m greedy. I want complete, utter, unceasing bliss. But I don’t want to fall into it either. If happiness were money I wouldn’t want to win the lottery. I want to accomplish it,
urn
it as John Houseman would say. I want it to be an achievement because I want to be in control of my life. I don’t want things to happen
to
me, I want them to happen
because
of me. Power I want. I want to feel the way I do when I stretch a new canvas and I want to feel that way all the time. The blank canvas fills me with the power of imminent creation. I’m its god and it always bends to my will and when I’m done I know, inside, that it’s markedly better than what almost all of my similarly-engaged others can achieve. That’s happiness.”

“Good,” said Marcela again but this time sounding the perfect pitch.

“You know how I came to know all this? I’m currently undergoing self-psychoanalysis, which is all the rage. Actually, I invented it myself because I’m certainly not going to pay some idiot my hard-borrowed money to be my rented friend and tell me it’s not my fault. Anyway, the result of sitting on my couch and listening to my crap is this conclusion. To the extent that I have good qualities, they are the product of fortunate genetics and brilliant rearing, thank you cute Mom (responsorial smile). On the other hand, any undesirable qualities or circumstances that I face are solely the function of my own individual and self-generated neglect, sloth, insecurity, avarice, pettiness, selfishness, insincerity, jealousy and other embarrassing causes too numerous to mention. Isn’t that great? This realization is the key to my newfound happiness because of the amazing power it invests in me and remember that power is happiness. What’s misery on the other hand? Well, lack of freedom and its resulting absence of power.”

“Like in jail,” said Marcela. “Where Armando is right now.”

—
Ay
, don’t remine me. Casi if we have to pay bail, we can collect from everyone to get the money. Or if we have to pay
un abogado
.

“I don’t think that’s going to be necessary mom. Like I said, not a big deal.”

“Okay
hijo
. I juss hope they don’t take
el
hot dog car. He bought eh all the way from Texas.”

“Don’t worry they won’t.” I ate. “Texas? What do you mean Texas?

—
Sí
, Texas.

“When was he in Texas?”

—Thas where he came in.

“What are you talking about? He flew into LaGuardia, I picked him up myself.”

—He flew to LaGuardia from Texas.

“What the hell was he doing in Texas? Wait are you telling me he came in illegally?”

—
Sí
, he’s here illegally.

“I know
that
, but you’re saying he didn’t originally fly in on a tourist visa?”

—No, he came in through Mexico.

—
¿Entiendes bien lo que te estoy preguntando verdad?

—
Sí, claro
.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

—¡
Casi por Dios
!

“I have to go like right now.”

—
Pero
finish your food.

“Can’t, have to get to Armando right away.”

You suppose anyone mighty is on their way, like, to save the day and shit?

I got there just in time. Just in time to realize there was absolutely nothing I could do but watch. I watched as a court officer announced to the court that an INS detainer had been filed against my cousin Armando meaning he wouldn’t be going anywhere. He wouldn’t be drinking aguardiente that night as I had smugly predicted. The case itself wasn’t the problem anymore as it was dismissed in deference to Armando’s greater legal thicket. And it wasn’t until then, when the officer made his announcement and their prey, my cousin, was escorted into the back, that I realized how small Armando was. He turned and smiled at me just before disappearing into the doorway and he seemed to be shrinking by the second. By contrast everyone else in that room seemed large and still growing. Even the women were giant and their words came fully equipped with echo and resonance in that corny suburban excuse for a courtroom. It was an inside joke the whole thing and from my seat on the outside looking in I felt nothing but contempt for those hideous people who in reality were just doing their jobs and so had no real responsibility; and I hate people who just do their job when their job consists of trapping my cousin.