Marcelo in the Real World (31 page)

“I never knew it like I do now.”

“Do you have any? Ugly parts, I mean,” she asks, looking at me intently.

I feel what must be shame at the fact that I have to think very hard before I find an answer. “Is not seeing any ugly parts in myself an ugly part? Is not wanting to forgive someone’s ugly parts an ugly part in oneself?”

“Yeah. I didn’t understand a word you said, but yeah.”

She laughs her laugh that sounds like a cough again and I rock back and forth on the bench, the way I do when I finally understand something that was obscured.

“What will you do after the surgery?” I ask.

“The same as now. I missed a year of high school while I was being crazy. I need to catch up.”

“Do you want to go to college?”

“Man, that’s so far ahead. I gotta make sure I stay clean, finish high school, help the sisters. Besides, I never was that smart to begin with, and the drugs sure didn’t help.”

We hear Jerry García’s voice through the screen door and we both stand at the same time. “It was good to meet you,” I say. I turn to face her and stretch out my hand, but she doesn’t take it.

“Would it be okay if I gave you a kiss?” she asks.

Without thinking about it, I lower my head the way I do for Aurora, and she kisses me on the forehead.

“It’s half a kiss,” she says, “but it’s all I got.”

A
urora picks me up at the train station. She doesn’t ask why I’m coming home earlier than usual. She knows that I’ve been fired. She thinks my silence is sadness at the fact that I will not be going to Paterson. But I wouldn’t call what I feel sadness. It is more like resolve.

When we get home and she turns off the car, she asks me if I want to talk about it.

“Not right now,” I say.

“I would like to hear about what happened from you.”

“Arturo is right. It is better for me to go to Oak Ridge High.” I can feel her eyes scanning me. “It is all right,” I say. “Maybe I can work with the ponies on the weekends.”

“You’re not upset?”

“No.”

“We can talk to your father.”

“Oak Ridge High will be better. I will not like it as much as Paterson, but it will be better.”

“Why the change?”

“Aurora was right when she told me that working at the law firm would help me be strong. Remember? Gentle and strong, like Aurora. Oak Ridge will help me as well.”

“Help you for what?”

“Aurora already knows. That has not changed.”

Aurora wants to ask me more questions, I can tell, but I open the car door and hug Namu, who is waiting for me to greet him. This is a sign to her that I want to be alone. Aurora touches the top of my head and goes in the house. Then Namu and I go for a walk and when we get home, there is a note from Aurora under the tree house.

Dinner is on top of the stove. Whenever you want to talk, I’m here.

Love you,
Mom

From the window of the tree house, I can see her moving about in the kitchen, perhaps making my lunch for my last day of work. I look at her and there is a wrenching, as if my heart were a sponge full of love being squeezed. Tomorrow she will get up in the morning and put on that silly uniform with the green smiley faces and she will go to comfort as best she can her dying children.

Why the change?
I thought about her question as Namu and I walked on the horse trails behind our house and I think about it now as I sit at my desk. For all the pain I saw at Paterson, it is nothing compared to the pain that people inflict upon each other in the real world. All I can think of now is that it is not right for me to be unaware of that pain, including the pain that I inflict on others. Only how is it possible to live without being either numb to it or overwhelmed by it?

I see the light in the kitchen go off and I picture Aurora making her way up the stairs. I think that maybe I will move back to my room in the house. I never thought of Aurora as being lonely, but why wouldn’t she be? What is it like to have a son who is perfectly content living on his own, without any need or desire to communicate; a daughter who is away; a husband who works all the time? What will happen if Wendell sends a copy of Jasmine’s letter to Aurora? I don’t know. We will all have to figure it out together.

Faithful. Faith-full. Full-of-faith. If the letter comes, will it help Arturo and Aurora remain faithful to each other if I am full of faith? My father. Are your ugly parts any uglier than mine?

There is so much to be done. Plans. Preparations. Oak Ridge High will be hard. As good as Paterson was, I know we lagged behind students in public schools in certain subjects. Public school students study in order to pass standardized tests. We studied what needed to be learned. I will need to learn the way they learn and this means working twice as hard as a regular student. It will mean contact with kids with whom I don’t have much in common. But it can be done. I will do it. Going to Oak Ridge High will help me.

Help you for what?
Aurora asked. I missed an opportunity to tell her that it would help me to be like her. That the way she is strong and gentle on behalf of children will be my way as well. The road seems so long. Another year of high school, then college, then a degree in nursing and then work—doing what I can to lessen the hurt in the world. But where? There has to be a place where I belong.

I think of Vermont. The stars there seemed closer to the earth. I go to my desk and click on my laptop. There is some research I need to do.

T
he first thing I see when I enter Robert Steely’s office is an envelope with my name on it. I recognize the handwriting. It is Arturo’s. I sit down and hold it in my hands. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to open it. I want to get through the day with the same resolve I had yesterday. I put the envelope down. Then I pick it up and open it with a letter opener I find in the top drawer of the desk. I read:

Marcelo,

I feel it is necessary to respond to the note you gave me yesterday. First of all, don’t misunderstand this letter. I still think that giving the Vidromek memo to Jerry García was ill-advised. I’m treating Jasmine’s note as a separate matter.

There are certain boundaries that need to be maintained between an employer and an employee, between an older man and a young woman, between a man and a woman who is under the influence of alcohol, between a married man and another woman. A year ago at the Christmas party I crossed all those boundaries. I wish I could tell you that I recognized this error as soon
as it occurred, but the fact of the matter is that I always considered the events of that evening a minor transgression. It was only yesterday, when I read Jasmine’s note the way you would read it, that I recognized the extent of my lack of judgment.

I hope you understand the nature and the reason for this letter.

Your Father

I am still holding the letter in my hands when I hear Jasmine say, “I heard you got fired.”

She is standing in the doorway of the office, her arms crossed.

I fold Arturo’s letter. “I got fired,” I repeat.

“Were you going to tell me or were you going to leave without saying anything? If I hadn’t gone to get your father to sign a check, I wouldn’t have known. Why didn’t you say anything to me? And where have you been hiding? Ever since we got back from the camping trip I’ve hardly seen you.” It never occurred to me that she would be upset, but she is.

“What did my father say to you?”

“He told me what you did. And that’s another thing. Why didn’t you share with me what you were going to do?”

“Maybe you would have told my father.”

“Is that what you think? Are you forgetting who gave you the memo?”

I don’t know why I said that. I am confused as to how to speak to Jasmine.

“So you are off to Oak Ridge High?”

“I have three weeks. I will use the time to prepare for next year.”

“You gonna be okay?”

I shrug my shoulders. This means,
I’ll survive.
Then I ask, “Is Arturo upset?”

She raises her eyebrows as if to say,
You have no idea.
“They’re all scrambling around trying to figure out how to rescue the Vidromek litigation from disaster. It’s good to see Holmesy walk around like he has stomach cramps and there’s no bathroom in sight. I think your dad is enjoying the fact that his son is responsible for Holmesy’s misery.”

“Maybe the law firm will close and everyone will lose their jobs.”

“No, they’ll figure something out. It suddenly dawned on them that the best strategy is to have Vidromek spend the extra money to make safer windshields.”

“I have the CDs you lent me,” I say. I can hear a strand of coldness in my voice.

I see her cocking her head trying to figure out if something is wrong. So I say it. “I know about you and my father…at the Christmas party. Wendell found your note in my father’s files. He gave it to me. Wendell said it was the gift of truth.”

“Oh God,” she says. She pulls out a chair and falls into it. “The gift of truth.” She places both her hands on the side of the chair as if she could fall off at any second. In the brief second that I glimpse her face, I see the color drain from it. I know immediately that my words have hurt her.

“Is there something in particular you want to know about that?” Her tone is reserved, subdued. The warmth she first brought into the room has been pulled back.

Last night I decided not to speak of this, never to say anything to her. I decided it was not for me to judge her. How did it happen that my resolution buckled? What else simmers down there unnoticed?

“My father…” I start to say but have no idea how to finish the sentence.

“Is a man,” Jasmine says. “He hired me, we worked together. I had a crush. He could tell, I guess. Men like your father can tell. Then there was the Christmas party. I had been in Boston only a couple of months. I had a few drinks. Your father came by and told me he had a small present for me. That it was in his office. I knew I shouldn’t go. He said things that flattered me, that made me feel less lonely. We kissed. The next day I wrote him that note. Sounds like I’m trying to make excuses. I don’t mean to. I know I don’t owe you an explanation, but that’s what happened.”

“You kissed.”

“When I realized what was happening, what was about to happen, I ran out.”

“You kissed? You ran out? He used force to kiss you?”

“Not really. Is it force when half of you says no and half of you says yes? I could have stopped it. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

“But you were my age.”

“I was eighteen. I was old enough to consent.”

“It was wrong of him.”

“It was wrong, period. He knows it. I know it. The subject has never been brought up again. He came to me after he got the note and asked me to stay. I agreed but on condition that the matter be forgotten, as if it never happened, and our dealings with each
other would always be professional. He agreed. He has kept his promise. Enough said.”

“I hurt you just now,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t know why, but you did. No so much that you mentioned it, but that you know. Still, the truth is best. ‘The gift of truth,’ as Wendell says.” But she doesn’t sound as if she truly believes that.

“Do you love him?” It is what I most want to know, I realize, the real reason I blurted out what I blurted out.

“No. Of course I don’t. What I did was insane. Temporary insanity. I had a childish crush. The thing about crushes is that afterward you see how silly they were.”

“My mother never found out,” I say.

“I doubt very much he would tell her. I would have seen it on her face when I picked you up.” She covers her face briefly with her two hands. “If I could redo that Christmas party to the point where your father and I are having a conversation by the bar and he asked me to go to his office, I would say ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’” She stands up. “Well, I think I’m going to go back to my little mailroom and try to finish out this day.”

“Is Belinda a better worker than Marcelo?” I ask.

“Yes,” she answers quickly. “Faster, anyway.”

“That is good. In the real world, fast is better.”

“In the real world,” she says.

There is a pause and I think:
I don’t want to say good-bye.
She pauses as well. Is it that she doesn’t want to say good-bye either? Is she waiting for me to speak first? As she turns to leave, I say, “I saw Ixtel yesterday. Jerry García took me.”

She hesitates a moment before speaking. “How was she?”

“The reconstructive surgery has been scheduled. After that is the cosmetic surgery so she can look like a movie star, she says.”

“She’s a beautiful girl.”

She waits for me to speak. I talk fast, afraid that she will walk away. “She lives with the Sisters of Mercy permanently. We talked about how she had found a place where she belongs. It reminded me of the time you told me how your house in Vermont was the place where
you
belonged.”

“May I?” She points at the chair.

“Yes.” She doesn’t know how happy it makes me to see her sit down.

“I was just thinking about the time you asked me how we can live with so much suffering. Remember?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“I thought a lot about it. I don’t have an answer. But your question reminded me about composing a piece of music. I start off with a feeling and this feeling leads me to find notes and a tempo that match the feeling, and then I expand and respond to the initial notes. After a long, long time and much work I end up with something that I can’t take any further. The thing is, when I reach that point, I feel terribly frustrated because the end product never fully reflects the feeling that I started out with and is for sure never as beautiful as I wanted it to be. At the end I have to accept that this is all I can do. I’m no Keith Jarrett and never will be. I’m Jasmine. So I let the piece go, hoping that the music will make someone feel what I felt.” She laughs a short, nervous laugh, and then before I can say anything, she says, “You must be wondering what all this has to do with Ixtel?”