Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (22 page)

I felt light and breezy and happy. It was strange and wonderful and everything seemed far away and yet kind of close. Dante and I kept looking at each other as we sat on the tailgate of my truck. We started laughing and couldn’t stop.

Then the breeze became a wind. And the thunder and lightning was close and closer and it started to rain. We ran inside the truck. We couldn’t stop laughing, didn’t want to stop laughing. “It’s crazy,” I said. “It feels so crazy.”

“Crazy,” he said. “Crazy, crazy, crazy.”

“God, crazy.”

I wanted us to laugh forever. We listened to the downpour. God, it was really raining. Like that night.

“Let’s go out there,” Dante said. “Let’s go out in the rain.” I watched him as he took off all his clothes: his shirt, his shorts, his boxers. Everything except his tennis shoes. Which was really funny. “Well,” he said. He had his hand on the handle of the door. “Ready?”

“Wait,” I said. I stripped off my T-shirt and all my clothes. Except my tennis shoes.

We looked at each other and laughed. “Ready?” I said.

“Ready,” he said.

We ran out into the rain. God, the drops of rain were so cold. “Shit!” I yelled.

“Shit!” Dante yelled.

“We’re fucking crazy.”

“Yeah, yeah!” Dante laughed. We ran around the truck, naked and laughing, the rain beating against our bodies. Around and around the truck, we ran. Until we were both tired and breathless.

We sat inside the truck, laughing, trying to catch our breaths. And then the rain stopped. That was the way it was in the desert. The rain poured down, then stopped. Just like that. I opened the door to the truck and stepped out into the damp and windy night air.

I stretched my arms out toward the sky. And closed my eyes.

Dante was standing next to me. I could feel his breath.

I don’t know what I would have done if he had touched me.

But he didn’t.

“I’m starving,” he said.

“Me too.”

We got dressed and drove back into town.

“What should we eat?” I said.

“Menudo,” he said.

“You like menudo.”

“Yeah.”

“I think that makes you a real Mexican.”

“Do real Mexicans like to kiss boys?”

“I don’t think liking boys is an American invention.”

“You could be right.”

“Yeah, I could be.” I shot him a look. He hated when I was right. “How about Chico’s Tacos?”

“They don’t have menudo.”

“Okay, how about the Good Luck Café on Alameda?”

“My dad loves that place.”

“Mine too.”

“They’re bowling,” I said.

“They’re bowling.” We were laughing so hard I had to pull over.

When we finally got to the Good Luck Café, we were so hungry that we both had a plate of enchiladas and two bowls of menudo.

“Are my eyes red?”

“No,” I said.

“Good. I guess we can go home.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I can’t believe we did that.”

“Me neither.”

“But it was fun,” he said.

“God,” I said. “It was fantastic.”

DAD WOKE ME EARLY. “WE’RE GOING TO TUCSON,”
he said.

I sat up in bed. I stared at him.

“There’s coffee.”

Legs followed him out the door.

I wondered if he was mad at me, wondered why we had to go to Tucson. I felt a little groggy, like I’d been woken in a middle of a dream. I slipped on a pair of jeans and headed for the kitchen. Dad handed me a cup of coffee. “You’re the only kid I know who drinks coffee.”

I tried to go with the small talk, tried to pretend I hadn’t had that imaginary conversation with him. Not that he knew what I’d said.
But I knew
. And I knew I’d meant to say those things, even if I hadn’t. “Someday, Dad, kids all over the world will be drinking coffee.”

“I need a cigarette,” he said.

Legs and I followed him into the backyard.

I watched him light his cigarette. “How was bowling?”

He smiled crookedly. “It was kind of fun. I’m a crappy bowler. Luckily, so is Sam.”

“You should get out more,” I said.

“You too,” he said. He took a drag off his cigarette. “Your mom called late last night. Your aunt had a very serious stroke. She’s not going to make it.”

I remembered living with her one summer. I was a small boy and she was a kind woman. She’d never married. Not that it mattered. She knew about boys and knew how to laugh and knew how to make a boy feel as though he was the center of the universe. She’d lived a life separate from the rest of family for reasons no one had ever bothered to explain to me. I never cared about that.

“Ari? Are you listening?”

I nodded.

“You go away sometimes.”

“No, not really. I was just thinking. I spent a summer with her when I was little.”

“Yes, you did. You didn’t want to come back home.”

“I didn’t? I don’t remember.”

“You fell in love with her.” He smiled.

“Maybe I did. I can’t remember not loving her. And that’s weird.”

“Why is that weird?”

“I don’t feel that way about my other uncles and aunts.”

He nodded. “The world would be lucky to have more like her. She and your mother wrote to each other every week. A letter a week for years and years and years. Did you know that?”

“No. That’s a lot of letters.”

“She saved them all.”

I took a sip of my coffee.

“Can you make arrangements at work, Ari?”

I could imagine him in the military. Taking charge. His voice calm and undisturbed.

“Yeah. It’s only a job flipping burgers. What can they do, fire me?” Legs barked at me. She was used to her morning run. I looked at my dad. “What are we going to do about Legs?”

“Dante,” he said.

His mother answered the phone. “Hi,” I said. “It’s Ari.”

“I know,” she said. “You’re up early.”

“Yeah.” I said. “Is Dante up?”

“Are you kidding, Ari? He gets up a half hour before he has to be in to work. He won’t get up a minute earlier.”

We both laughed.

“Well,” I said, “I sort of need a favor.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Well, my aunt had a stroke. My mom was visiting her. My dad and I are leaving as soon as we can. But, then, there’s Legs, and I thought maybe—” She didn’t let me finish my sentence.

“Of course we’ll take her. She’s great company. She fell asleep on my lap last night.”

“But you work and Dante works.”

“It will be fine, Ari. Sam’s home all day. He’s finishing his book.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t thank me, Ari.” She sounded so much happier and lighter than the woman I’d first met. Maybe it was because she was going to have a baby. Maybe that was it. Not that she still didn’t get after Dante.

I hung the phone up, packed a few things. The phone rang. It was Dante. “Sorry about your aunt. But, hey, I get Legs!” He could be such a boy. Maybe he would always be a boy. Like his dad. “Yeah, you get Legs. She likes to run in the morning. Early.”

“How early?”

“We get up at five forty-five.”

“Five forty-five! Are you crazy? What about sleep?”

That guy could always make me laugh. “Thanks for doing this,” I said.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Did your dad give you hell for coming in so late?”

“No. He was asleep.”

“My mom wanted to know what we were up to.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her we didn’t get to watch any stars because of the storm. I said it was raining like hell and we just got stuck in the storm. And we just sat in the truck and talked. And when the rain stopped, we got hungry so we went out for menudo.

“She looked at me funny. She said: ‘Why don’t I believe you?’ And I said: ‘Because you have a very suspicious nature.’ And then she dropped the whole thing.”

“Your mom has hyper instincts,” I said.

“Yeah, well, she can’t prove a thing.”

“I bet she knows.”

“How would she know?”

“I don’t know. But I bet she knows.”

“You’re making me paranoid.”

“Good.”

We both cracked up laughing.

We dropped off Legs at Dante’s house later that morning. My dad gave Mr. Quintana a key to our house. Dante got stuck with watering my mom’s plants. “And don’t steal my truck,” I said.

“I’m Mexican,” he said. “I know all about hotwiring.” That really made me laugh. “Look,” I said. “Eating menudo and hotwiring a truck are two totally different forms of art.”

We smirked at each other.

Mrs. Quintana shot us a look.

We drank a cup of coffee with Dante’s mom and dad. Dante gave Legs a tour around the house. “I’m betting Dante’s going to encourage Legs to chew up all his shoes.” We all laughed except my dad. He didn’t know about Dante’s war against shoes. We laughed even harder when Legs and Dante walked back into the kitchen. Legs was carrying one of Dante’s shoes in her mouth. “Look what she found, Mom.”

MY FATHER AND I DIDN’T TALK ALL THAT MUCH ON THE
drive to Tucson. “Your mother’s sad,” he said. I knew he was thinking back.

“You want me to drive?”

“No,” he said. But then he changed his mind. “Yes.” He got off at the next exit and we got some gas and coffee. He handed me the keys. His car handled a lot easier than my truck. I smiled. “I’ve never driven anything besides my truck.”

“If you can handle that truck, you can handle anything.”

“I’m sorry about last night,” I said. “It’s just that sometimes I have things running around inside me, these feelings. I don’t always know what to do with them. That probably doesn’t make any sense.”

“It sounds normal, Ari.”

“I don’t think I’m so normal.”

“Feeling things is normal.”

“Except I’m angry. And I don’t really know where all that anger comes from.”

“Maybe if we talked more.”

“Well, which one of us is good with words, Dad?”

“You’re good with words, Ari. You’re just not good with words when you’re around me.”

I didn’t say anything. But then I said, “Dad, I’m not good with words.”

“You talk to your mother all the time.”

“Yeah, but that’s because it’s a requirement.”

He laughed. “I’m glad she makes us talk.”

“We’d die in our own silence if she wasn’t around.”

“Well, we’re talking now, aren’t we?”

I glanced over and saw him smiling. “Yeah, we’re talking.”

He rolled down the window. “Your mother doesn’t let me smoke in the car. Do you mind?”

“No, I don’t mind.”

That smell—cigarette—it always made me think of him. He smoked his cigarette. I drove. I didn’t mind the silence and the desert and the cloudless sky.

What did words matter to a desert?

My mind drifted. I thought of Legs and Dante. I wondered what Dante saw when he looked at me. I wondered why I didn’t look at the sketches he gave me. Not ever. I thought of Gina and Susie and wondered why I never called them. They bugged me, but that was their way of being nice to me. I knew they liked me. And I liked them back. Why couldn’t a guy be friends with girls? What was so wrong with that? I thought about my brother and wondered if he’d been close to my aunt. I wondered why such a nice lady had divorced her family. I wondered why I’d spent a summer with her when I was only four.

“What are you thinking?” I heard my father’s voice. He hardly ever asked that question.

“I was thinking about Aunt Ophelia.”

“What were you thinking?”

“Why did you send me to spend the summer with her?”

He didn’t answer. He rolled down the window and the heat of the desert came pouring into the air-conditioned car. I knew he was going to smoke another cigarette.

“Tell me,” I said.

“It was just around the time of your brother’s trial,” he said.

That was the first time he’d ever said anything to me about my brother. I didn’t say anything. I wanted him to keep talking.

“Your mother and I were having a very difficult time. We all were. Your sisters too. We didn’t want you to—” He stopped. “I think you know what I’m trying to say.” He had a very serious look on his face. More serious than usual. “Your brother loved you, Ari. He did. And he didn’t want you to be around. He didn’t want you to think of him that way.”

“So you sent me away.”

“Yeah. We did.”

“It didn’t solve a damn thing, Dad. I think of him all the time.”

“I’m sorry, Ari. I just—I’m really sorry.”

“Why can’t we just—”

“Ari, it’s more complicated than you think.”

“In what way?”

“Your mother had a breakdown.” I could hear him smoking his cigarette.

“What?”

“You were at your Aunt Ophelia’s for more than a summer. You were there for nine months.”

“Mom? I can’t—it’s just—Mom? Mom really had—” I wanted to ask my dad for a cigarette.

“She’s so strong, your mother. But, I don’t know, life isn’t logical, Ari. It was like your brother had died. And your mother became a different person. I hardly recognized her. When they sentenced him, she just fell apart. She was inconsolable. You have no idea how much she loved your brother. And I didn’t know what to do. And sometimes, even now, I look at her and I want to ask, ‘Is it over? Is it?’ When she came back to me, Ari, she seemed so fragile. And as the weeks and months went by, she became her old self again. She got strong again and—”

I listened to my dad cry. I pulled the car over to the side of the road. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know, Dad.”

He nodded. He got out of the car. He stood out in the heat. I knew he was trying to organize himself. Like a messy room that needed to be cleaned up. I left him alone for a while. But then, I decided I wanted to be with him. I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us.

“Dad, sometimes I hated you and mom for pretending he was dead.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Ari. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

BY THE TIME WE REACHED TUCSON, MY AUNT OPHELIA
was dead.

There was standing-room-only at her funeral mass. It was obvious that she had been deeply loved. By everyone except her family. We were the only ones there. My mom, my sisters, me, and my dad.