I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them (9 page)

Armando isn't interested enough to ask why his parents are in the market for life insurance—or what life insurance even is—and his parents don't volunteer the information, but he is interested in this lengthy kiss, and he stares at the strangeness of his parents pressed together for so long. Not sure why he wants to cry or how he knows to stay silent, he watches as his mother tries to look away and his father pulls her back and kisses her again, but she's crying too much now and the kiss has moved from pressed lips to pressed faces, chin to forehead. When his father says, “Go somewhere else, son,” Armando walks to his room, where, after thinking about his parents and his forays with Marie, he questions why no one has ever taught him the right way to touch someone you love.

Eventually one pair of insurance men circles back with frequency. The older one, with gray hair, always messes with his paisley tie, and his crumpled suit struggles to cover his bulging midsection. He and his younger partner come back time and again, and after one particular visit Armando guesses they will never return, because his mother hugs them and kisses them on their cheeks and his father shakes their hands and hugs them and calls them “my brothers.”

That night Armando's parents take the family to the Cliff House in Manitou Springs, where the family drinks Martinelli's sparkling cider from champagne glasses. His mother sings “Saturday in the Park” on the way home.

One January morning Armando's mother undergoes a kidney-pancreas transplant in a Denver hospital. Two nights later—just he and Marie are home—Armando paws through his neighbor's trash and swipes a five-foot-long, thick cardboard tube used to ship fly-fishing rods. He gathers up a few racquetballs and tennis balls, a screwdriver, and a red gasoline can from the garage. From his father's gun safe he grabs a can of black powder, a fuse, and two M-80s. On their way to the snow-dusted back yard, he asks Marie to get a set of tongs and oven mitts from the kitchen.

He positions the tube at a 45-degree angle over the back fence, aiming toward the lights of downtown Colorado Springs. With the screwdriver he punctures the tube near the base and threads the fuse through. He places the M-80s in the can of black powder and the can of powder in the tube, insuring that one of the fuse's tips rests deep in the small, dark kernels. The pungent smell surrounds him. Once the contraption is stable, oven-mitted Marie dips two racquetballs and four tennis balls into the gasoline with the tongs, then drops them down the tube.

Armando pulls a lighter from his pocket and walks over to Marie, still mitted, and she backs away.

“Holy shit,” she says. “This is a great idea.”

“God, forgive us,” he says. “Get the car ready. If it's big, we'll take off.” He smells his hands.

“I want to see it.”

“Okay.”

“Wash your hands first,” Marie says. “We should wash our hands.”

“Good.”

His still-damp hands hold the lighter and the fuse. A helicopter flies overhead, so he waits. Then another.

“Fort Carson,” he says. “Invasion.”

“Red Dawn?”

“Go, Army. Start up the tanks.”

Armando flicks the lighter and a miniature flame jumps to life. He lights the fuse and backs away.

“Cover your ears,” Marie says, hands on her ears.

“No.”

“Cover them.”

He can still hear the helicopters in the distance, the spinning rotor blades compressing the air tight. He watches his cardboard cannon, all potential, all rush, blood racing in his ears, floating, and a fire illuminates the tube from within, a split-second reverie of light and heat before the orange-tinged explosion rocks the night.

Armando's mother returns home three weeks later with someone else's organs tied inside her body. Her face bloats from anti-rejection drugs, and she sprouts light blond whiskers on her chin and a few strands hug her cheeks. If the new hair humiliates her, she never says so, and once in a while she still manages a toothy smile. Still, he wonders why she refuses to shave, but he lacks the nerve to ask.

His community service for the back-yard cannon explosion doesn't start for another month. His father told him two things when the judgment was handed down: never confess and never do the same thing twice. They pay someone to fix the fence.

Armando doesn't recognize the life draining from his mother until she grows scared of leaving the house, then of walking, then of standing. Her singing stops, and now, lying on their green living room couch, drinking 7Up and chewing saltine crackers, she will not speak unless spoken to, and even then she offers only one-word answers.

Armando, his father, and his sister try to play games with his mother or read to her every now and then, but mostly she lies there with a glassy stare. Still, at the end of the nightly story, or when he wins at Sorry or Uno, she says “Yes” or “Good” and strains a smile. But the Torres home grows sullen with the February snow, and he finds reasons not to return home until late at night. He kisses his mother on his way to bed and she stares up at him, still somehow knowing him, and although he hates himself for thinking it, he crawls under the sheets wondering if the person confined to the couch is still his mother or if she is something else now. On the worst days, when she barely moves or eats, he battles himself, wondering if he should pray for a swift, pain-free death, but then the anger overtakes him and he forces images of resurrection—his mother standing, walking, singing again.

One night his family plays the game Taboo. The score isn't important to them. Armando's mother mainly stays silent anyway. This time Armando draws the word
tower.
The taboo words eliminate most of the clues he would use, so he starts out with “It's tall, straight, and long,” and before he says another word his mother shouts “Penis!” Armando, his father, and his sister freeze for an instant, dumbfounded, and then his mother laughs, and laughs again, and her giggles swell into full-throttle, full-belly roars. The implausible sound fills the room, and she sits up and doubles over, grabbing at her belly.

“Penis,” she says, and her eyes water and she laughs and hoots and snorts uncontrollably, and Armando's sister and he laugh, and his father wipes at his eyes, and his mother keeps saying “Penis” and busting up and grabbing at her stomach, and she can't stop herself and they don't want her to stop, and she roars then says, “It hurts. It hurts,” and she grabs her body, and all of them know she's in pain, but she keeps laughing.

“It hurts,” she says, and her cheeks are wet with tears, and she presses her hands to her midsection.

“Stop,” she says. “Stop it.” But she can't stop, and she laugh-speaks “Help,” but it takes them a while to understand, so his mother says, “Help me,” and his father rises and goes to her. He places his hands on her stomach and asks, “Here?”

“Yes,” she says, her laughter swiftly shifting to groans. “Press.” Armando's father presses his hands and they sink into her scarred belly. His mother brings her hands to her face and wipes at her cheeks.

“Harder,” she says, so his father presses further in, and she moans and clenches her hands. When his mother calms down, his father helps her recline on the couch, easing her head down onto her favorite red pillow. With their bedtime near, Armando and his sister pick up the word cards and put the game away. His mother's laughter still wafts in the room. They kiss their mother's forehead and say good night. They walk down the short hallway together.

“Mom's okay,” his sister says. “She's getting better.”

“Yes,” he says.

“What was the secret word?” she asks.

“Tower,” he says.

“Tower,” she repeats, then pauses. “But you said ‘long.' That doesn't make sense. A tower isn't long. You should have said, ‘
blank
of power.' She would've gotten it.” She shakes her head and turns and walks away.

One morning, after another week of his mother's slow sink into the couch, soundless, his father comes into his room while Armando readies for school.

“She wants you to play,” he says. “It's no big deal. Relax. But please. She's asking for you.”

“Dad.”

“Just do it. It's okay. I know what you're going to say. Please.”

Armando brings his fingers to his lips and his insides evaporate. He visualizes his blind instructor, his words: “No. Again. No. Again. Are you trying? Have you practiced?” His trombone has been untouched for weeks, and he hasn't progressed past basic scales and simple kids' songs.

He grabs his trombone and walks downstairs to the couch with his head hanging. His father and sister have pulled up chairs. His mother is covered with blankets, and they've propped up her head. She stares off into the distance above, somewhere in the air below the vaulted ceiling.

“Mom,” he says.

“Chicago,” his mother whispers.

He shakes his head at his father.

“Play anything,” his father says. “It's okay.”

“Anyone. Know. What. Time. It. Really,” she says.

“Mom, I can't.”

His sister nods at him. His father holds his palms out.

“Play. Anything.”

He brings the instrument to his trembling lips, smells the slide oil, breathes in, and exhales hard into the mouthpiece. A metallic belch echoes in the room. He lowers the instrument.

“Dad,” he says.

“Chicago,” his mother whispers.

“Play. Just play, son.” His father walks over to him and lifts the trombone up. “You can do it.”

“Chicago.”

Armando feels the humiliation, the impossibility, and the mouthpiece on his lips. He doesn't know the song. He inhales through his nose. His father mouths “Anything.” Armando closes his eyes and thinks he may be able to get out “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and he opens his eyes. His father mouths, “Anything, son, anything.” Armando closes his eyes and blows.

Two in the afternoon, and Armando and Marie leave school early, drive up to the Air Force Academy, and watch cadets fall from the sky. Adjacent to the overlook, a pedestaled T-38 jet points skyward. Facing east, traffic zips by on I-25, and high above is a slow-circling airplane. Wave after wave of tiny dots escape the plane in five-second increments before blooming blue parachutes. On the other side of the lookout, a group of tourists take photos, their bus hulking behind them.

Marie has her notebook out and is drawing landscapes, mainly high-desert-cacti scenes. She leaves a four-inch-by-four-inch square at the bottom right of each page for poetry. Armando has his hands in his pockets. He watches the level airfield and watches each cadet's impact—a couple graceful, upright landings, but for most a weirdly managed feet-to-hip crash. Somehow they gather their chutes and walk away uninjured.

Although he lives just twenty minutes from this place, it's only his third time on the base, the other two to watch the Thunderbirds perform at the academy graduation, but when Marie saw him with his head buried in the crook of his arm during fifth period, she tapped his back and said, “Let's go.” She didn't plan to bring him here, but driving north they noticed the parachute-spotted sky and pulled off the interstate.

Marie finishes a drawing and leans over to show it to Armando.

“What's the first word that comes to your mind?” she asks.

“Water.”

“Too many cacti?”

“I like cactus.”

“Have you ever seen the big ones?”

“Sure.”

“The big ones are almost extinct. Phoenix and Tucson and places like that cut them down. There's some at White Tanks by my grandma's house.”

Armando stares at Marie and nods.

“You always stare at my birthmark,” she says.

“Not always.”

“Always.”

“I like it.”

“You don't like it. You say that so I won't feel bad.”

“Am I allowed to like it?”

“I don't know. There's no way to get rid of it. Anything I do will make it worse.”

Armando looks back at the crash-landing cadets. A pressure grows near the back of his head and he squeezes the base of his neck.

The plane has circled back high above. New dots fall and bloom.

“My mom's growing a beard,” he says. “You don't want to come over.”

“No.”

“I don't blame you.”

“I'll come over. I will.”

“Listen to me. You don't have to.”

“If you want me to.”

“No. You shouldn't.”

“I'll come. Please. Just tell me.”

Armando kicks at the sidewalk and his shoe squeaks.

“She doesn't care that she's growing a beard.” He wipes at his cheek. “I want her to care about that. Shouldn't that bother her?”

“I don't know.”

“How is she supposed to get better? We have to feed her.”

“I'm sorry.”

“All we do is sit her up. She opens her mouth. That's it. We don't even move her to the bed.”

“Maybe she wants to be there. It's comfortable for her. She can see you.”

“But she should stand up. How is she going to get better when she never stands? She has legs. We can help her get stronger.”

Marie clutches the notebook to her chest. Armando kicks the ground.

“You're helping,” she says.

“All we do is feed her.”

“I don't know.”

“No one knows. That's the problem. Why can't she stand with our help?”

“Maybe she doesn't want to.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don't know.”

“You think that?”

“Armando.”

“She wants to stand, Marie. We'll help her. My dad on one side, me on the other. Lift up. It's that easy.”

In the near distance a blue plane lands and idles on the runway while a new group of jumpers loads up. Through the air, the low hum of the plane's propellers. Behind the airfield buildings, northbound interstate traffic has slowed to a crawl.