Oscar Casares (9 page)
J
esse lives in a small apartment three miles from the house where he used to live with his wife and son. Even now, a year after moving out, he still wonders how he went from being just another guy in the neighborhood to being married with a kid—getting up in the middle of the night, changing stinky diapers, wiping stinky butts, figuring out baby car seats, paying doctor's bills, watching cartoon videos, teaching the boy how to ride a bike, teaching him how not to fall on his face—to being separated, which is a nice way of saying “almost divorced,” all before he turned twenty-four. Jesse and Corina's reasons for not being together are more complicated than there being another woman or another guy, or their love having faded. The problems have to do with their kid. The boy turned out like his mother, so it's no mystery to Jesse why he likes her more. Little Jesse has her features, same light brown hair, same dark eyes, same light skin that sometimes makes people think they're Anglo. He's also smart like his mother. He was reading before he started kindergarten. You can't drag him out of the library. That's all he does, read books, so at least he's good at it. They have a park down the street, but you'll never see him there. He has no interest in playing outside or watching Jesse show him his famous around-the-back reverse layup. Jesse tried to get him to make friends with the other boys in the neighborhood, except he was always too shy. Then a couple of them picked on him, called him names, and he came home crying. Jesse's wife wouldn't let Jesse walk over and say anything to the little punks. And she especially didn't want Jesse pushing him to go outside anymore. She'd rather Little Jesse keep his nose glued to the inside of a book. She wants him to get good grades and go to college someday. There's that, and the fact the kid was born with a physical disability. To Jesse, what he has is one leg shorter than the other. The difference is only an inch or so, but he used to limp enough to remind Jesse of one those indios begging for spare change on the bridge from Matamoros. That was before the boy started wearing a special shoe on his left foot. The shoe looks any other shoe until you get up close and see the giant sole that makes you think it has to be a defect from the factory. Nobody would want his boy or girl born this way, but Jesse tells himself it's not the end of the world. He's known lots of people who had something wrong with them and they didn't sit around the house all day, reading. He remembers there used to be a blind mechanic who lived in the neighborhood when he was growing up. Corina always listens to Jesse's stories, but afterward he never feels that she's made the connection between Little Jesse's disability and the “disability” in the story. Anyway, this mechanic's name was Pano, and according to Jesse, the man was blind enough to have a dog lead him around if he wanted to. His eyes moved back and forth and all around like a pair of marbles on the dashboard of a car. People said he'd gone blind at forty-six because he kept drinking his cervecitas and never took care of his diabetes. He received disability checks for a year or two, until he couldn't stand being inside the house and opened his own garage. People weren't rushing out to have a blind man fix their cars. But with time, word spread that he charged half as much as most garages and guaranteed his work. Pano had customers waiting for him to open up every morning. He did it all by the sound of the engine. Sure, he had some young guys working for him, doing the heavy work, sometimes describing what the engine and hoses looked like, but in the end, it was Pano who could find what was wrong with your car better than a garage full of mechanics with good eyes. Some people claimed that he was a better mechanic since he'd gone blind. So, no, Jesse doesn't feel sorry for his boy. He won't let himself. Little Jesse can see, hear, speak. He's smart. He's a good-looking boy. And, really, if his mother ever let him, he'd grow up normal like every other kid.
It's Sunday and Jesse drives to the house. Yesterday he called and told Corina that he wanted to barbecue. Usually he waits for some special occasion to cook out, but this time it's only that he's tired of being in the apartment alone. Corina and Little Jesse aren't back from church when he parks in front of the house. He still has a key, but he feels weird being inside when Corina isn't there. After a few minutes of sitting in the car, he walks around to the back and sets the coals in the barbecue pit, starts the fire. He sits on the back steps and watches the flames flicker over the top of the pit. The yard looks nice, maybe nicer than when he lived there. The last rain has helped. The grass is growing along the back gate, and the lime tree he planted four years ago finally has fruit. He still takes care of things around the house as if he lived there. He could pay the old man who cleans yards to come by, but it's still his house, still his family.
Corina and Little Jesse pull into the driveway a few minutes later. She hugs Jesse, but it's a hug you give an in-law or second cousin you don't see so often. Little Jesse gives his father a hug and then a high five the way he always does. Corina carries out a tray of sausages and marinated fajitas. She lingers around the pit while Jesse places the meat on the grill. Jesse can feel her watching him. He waits, knowing she has something to tell him. He covers the grill and watches the smoke escape through the vent.
It isn't until they're serving themselves the food that she brings up the idea of sending Little Jesse to another school. This, Jesse thinks, has to be the easiest decision they ever made. They live only a block away from an elementary school and Little Jesse is going into the second grade. What's there to talk about? Pack his lunch box and send him out the door. But now Corina has it in her head that Little Jesse needs to be going to the Catholic school across town.
“The books aren't any different over there, Corina. Schools are schools. Teachers are teachers.”
“No, they're not. It's a better school, and you know it.” “No, I don't know what you're talking about. All I know is, we don't have money to be sending him there and especially not if he has a school right here.” “Gloria said she would help us pay.” “So this is your sister's idea?” “She offered.”
“All so he can go to class with a bunch of rich kids from her neighborhood?” “She's not rich.” “She's richer than we are.” “It's a better school. That's the only reason.” “And how's he supposed to get there every day? In a taxi?” “I'll take him on the way to work in the morning, and you can pick him up after school.”
“I don't get off work until late in the afternoon, Corina.” “He can wait at Gloria's house until you come for him.” “And what if I don't want to? What if I say no?” “Then I guess we have to do it without you.”
Jesse knows the fight is officially over. It isn't the first time he's heard these words. Do it my way, or I'll do it myself. They hardly agreed on anything when he was living with her, sleeping in the same bed; how's it going to get any better with him living somewhere else?
Two months later, Jesse drives by Gloria's house and honks the horn. Gloria opens the front door and Little Jesse walks out, lugging his huge backpack. He climbs into the front seat of Jesse's small truck as though he's catching a ride with a passing 18-wheeler. Jesse plays with the stereo while Little Jesse straps himself in with the seat belt. “So, how was your first day?” Jesse asks. “Okay,” Little Jesse answers. Jesse doesn't ask any more, but for what they're paying and the trouble of driving him back and forth, he thinks his first day should've been better than “okay.”
Little Jesse is wearing a school uniform. His shirt is white with short sleeves and a button-down collar. It looks as though Corina used extra starch to make the shirt so stiff. Jesse tries to think of the last time she ironed anything for him, but he can only remember the time that she left a burn mark on his Polo shirt. Little Jesse's pants are gray with pleats and cuffs. His socks are as black as his shoes, which look as though they were polished at one of the stands across the river. They're buffed up enough that it's hard to tell what exactly is different about the left shoe. Jesse's waiting at a stoplight when he notices his own khakis are beginning to fade. His white shirt is missing a middle button, which his tie covers up. He realizes he should've worn something nicer.
He's an assistant manager now. They get all kinds of people walking in from the mall. The owner of Frontera Electronics is a businessman from Monterrey. He notices these kinds of things. Jesse knows that if he ever plans to be manager, it isn't going to happen with him missing a button on his shirt.
He drives Little Jesse back to the house. It's Monday and Corina will be at Dr. Rosas's office until five. She works as an assistant dental hygienist and takes classes at the college on the side. If she isn't rushing somewhere, she's studying or falling asleep from studying. Before he moved out, Jesse felt as if he were living in a school library because she kept saying “shush” anytime he listened to his music or talked on the phone. When he got tired of being shushed, he'd go hang out in the yard, where could make all the noise he wanted.
Little Jesse sits at the kitchen table and does his homework. Jesse serves them each a grape jelly sandwich with a glass of milk. Then he turns on the TV and watches a game show. A housewife from Minnesota has won a trip to Hawaii. She's jumping up and down, kissing her husband while the host asks if she's planning to take anyone on the trip. The audience laughs along with the wife and her husband.
“Mommy doesn't like the TV to be on when I do my homework.”
“Why not?” Jesse says.
“She says I'll get distracted.”
“What's she do then, when you're doing homework?”
“Read her books or make food for dinner. Or help me study.”
“I don't have anything to read and I'm not that good a cook.”
“Do you want to study with me?”
“Maybe you should wait for your mom.”
Little Jesse shrugs in a way that says he has homework to do either way. He writes something in a blue notebook. Jesse clicks off the TV and leans back on the sofa. Little Jesse is reading out loud to himself. Jesse can hear the neighborhood boys shouting and playing football in the street. He falls asleep remembering one afternoon when he scored five touchdowns, two of them sprinting alongside the edge of the curb. He wakes up a few minutes later when Corina comes home and it's time for him to leave.
Jesse likes to stay in the truck when he goes by for Little Jesse. He waves hello to Gloria and leaves it at that. Weeks pass by this way. He doesn't have anything against Corina's family, but he knows they don't feel the same way about him since he moved out. It's not as if they really liked him to begin with. Corina met Jesse the summer she turned nineteen and was about to start college. She wanted to finish in three years and go to dental school in San Antonio. Jesse was eighteen years old, but he told her he was nineteen so she wouldn't think he was too young. Corina believed him until the day she saw his driver's license, but by that time they were going around. Jesse wasn't sure what he wanted to do. It was either join the air force or move to California and hang out with his older brother who sold vitamins and said he could set Jesse up. He thought he might go to college after the service. He wanted to leave his options open. Then Corina told him she was pregnant. But what really surprised him was that she wasn't sure she wanted to go through with it—the baby, or the marrying part. She said she loved him, but she just didn't know what to do. Her mind was full of all kinds of doubts. Where would they live? How would they survive? Did he want to marry her only because she was pregnant and he felt he had to? Maybe she was scared, maybe it was her family telling her it was the biggest mistake she'd ever make.
“Okay,” Jesse told her. “If you don't want to have the baby, then don't. I'll take you to the clinic and pay for it.”
“You will?”
“Yeah, but if you really love me, then you have to promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“That right afterwards, you and me get married anyway.”
His words were enough to convince her to marry him. The wedding took place during her fifth month, right before she started to show too much.
Jesse doesn't blame her family for feeling the way they do about him. He wouldn't like a guy like himself, either, especially now. Corina's family is made up of people who get married and stay married. Two of her brothers are lawyers and live in San Antonio with their families. Another brother is a dentist who lives and works with his wife in Houston. Corina and her sister are the only ones who stayed in Brownsville. Gloria married an older man who's a Customs supervisor at the bridge. They can't have kids, which is why they have the extra money to help out with Little Jesse's school. Their house backs up to a resaca and they have these ducks walking around the yard almost every day. Gloria feeds them and has a name for each one. The ducks are the one thing Little Jesse will go outside for. He throws a piece of bread at them and then rushes back to the patio as fast as he can, waving his arms in the air and screaming as if the birds were chasing after him. He waits a few seconds and does the whole thing over again.
Jesse is at home watching TV when the phone rings. It's Corina. She says Little Jesse made straight A's on his first report card and she thinks Jesse should do something special to celebrate. Jesse says okay—“Yeah, no problem”—but when he hangs up he has no idea what “something special” might be. He and Little Jesse haven't done anything special since he moved out. The rest of the night it's on his mind. The next morning at work, he still hasn't stopped thinking about what to do. They have a dozen TV sets on the floor and he turns them all to a kids' channel. Usually he can't stand the cartoons and the junior detective shows, but he's watching the commercials to see if he can come up with any ideas. The only thing he sees that they could do is the kiddie pizza place they went to once for Little Jesse's birthday. Jesse swore he'd never spend another afternoon there: big stuffed animals walking around trying to shake your hand, birthday boys and girls running everywhere, screaming, their parents letting them go wild. He clicks one of the TV sets and they have a show about polar bears. For a second, he thinks about going to the zoo, but he remembers the last time they went Little Jesse wore himself out before they reached the petting zoo, and then he had to carry him on his back the rest of the afternoon because the kid didn't want to get in a stroller.
