When Dad Came Back (2 page)

Gabe picked up the baseball bat lying in the weeds and brought it to his shoulder. He played softball at Holmes Playground, in a league for those kids who didn't possess the muscle and grit to make the Babe Ruth League. At first, Gabe had considered his teammates scrubs, second-raters, losers even, but he admonished himself for such thoughts. He was conscious that most of his teammates couldn't afford uniforms and spiked cleats, or bats and gloves, or fancy water bottles filled with Gatorade—or even the insurance required to join the Babe Ruth League teams. And their families were unwilling to drive their sons across town. Gas was too expensive, time too precious.

Gabe swung the bat and imagined a softball sailing over the second baseman's head—no, farther, over the center fielder. When a pie tin began to rattle, Gabe was brought back from his dream world of singles and doubles. He let the bat slide from his shoulder. He expected to see his father, scrawny as a scarecrow, standing among the tomatoes.

However, the music of the pie tins came from a bird swinging on the string. As the bird departed, the pie tins produced a tinny clang.

I wish I could do that, Gabe thought. Fly away …

Gabe's mother threatened to file a restraining order at City Hall. “I'll do it tomorrow.” Her eyes were leveled on the television, which was off. Why watch a soap opera when you can create your own melodrama? Gabe thought. She had a miserable, faraway expression. Her eyes lifted to the clock on the wall. It was four thirty.

“Are you playing today?” his mother asked.

“We have practice at six thirty,” Gabe answered.

“Do you want anything to eat?”

Gabe could tell that his mother was making no effort to get out of the recliner. Frying a hamburger would only add to the misery of an already hot day.

“Nah, Mom,” he answered. “I'm good.”

But Gabe devoured a bag of barbecue pork rinds in his bedroom, then fell asleep with a small fan set at the end of his bed, and woke up with a sticky neck, the front of his T-shirt dark with a bib of sweat. By the shadows on the bedroom wall, he guessed that it was near six o'clock. He sat on the bed's edge, head down and groggy.

“Let's go,” he told his body, and forced himself to stand up. He washed his face in the bathroom, drank two glasses of water, and went out the kitchen door. He got his bike from the garage.

Twenty minutes later, he arrived at the playground. He leaned his bike against the dugout, secured it with a lock, grabbed his mitt from the handlebars, and hustled to the infield—he was late. At first, he was grateful, since most of his teammates were bent over, panting. Coach Rodriguez had made them run wind sprints.

“Sorry, Coach,” Gabe apologized. He popped his fist into the pocket of his glove, a sign that he was ready to play. “Where do you want me?”

“Where do I want you?” answered Coach Rodriguez, an ex-Marine with a canned ham for a neck. “I want you over there.” He lifted a muscled arm to point to the baseball diamond on the other side of the playground. Even though it was late in the day, heat vapors rippled off the lawn. “You're late, Mendoza, and you know what that means.” He turned and yelled, “Pablo, get over here. You were late, too.” Coach instructed both boys to run to the other diamond across the field and back—to run, not jog or walk.

Pablo, a friend from school, was the real athlete. Pablo could blast home runs, leap to snag line drives, and slide into base with his eyes wide open, his fists curled with excitement. He was skillful and fearless. Whenever a ball hit him in the batter's box, he would mutter a made-up prayer to the saint of hit baseball players.

As the two ran side by side, Gabe was envious of Pablo, who was not only good at sports but also a standout in school, a one-time spelling bee champ. Pablo had brainpower between his ears. Pablo once informed him, in private, so as not to embarrass Gabe, that an
ignoramus
meant not an extinct dinosaur but a stupid person.

Besides smarts—Gabe swallowed this bitter truth like aspirin—girls liked Pablo. They liked him a lot. Between his shortened breaths, Gabe asked, “How's Veronica?”

“Veronica Rodriguez?” Pablo asked.

How many Veronicas does he know? Gabe had to wonder.

“Yeah, Veronica Rodriguez,” he answered.

“She changed her number,” Pablo said, without sadness. “Her dad made her, or something.”

Dang, Gabe thought. If a girl had broken up with me, I would be shattered.

As they jogged, Gabe rummaged through his memory, realizing that he had never had a real girlfriend, unless he could count Rebecca Garcia. In fifth grade, she had once filled her mouth with water from the drinking fountain and splashed it onto his shoes. The rumor then—she had given him a chocolate heart for Valentine's Day—was that she liked him. But in fifth grade, he was far more interested in soccer than in a girl who could spit a mouthful of water eight feet.

As he and Pablo reached the baseball diamond, which was reserved for adult games at night, Gabe heard a voice calling, “Son.” He scanned the empty bleachers. His eyes finally fell on his dad standing in the dugout, which was littered with cups and candy wrappers. His dad's fingers gripped the chain-link fence in desperation.

“Gabe, it's me,” his dad called. He rattled the fence. His wrists, Gabe noticed with embarrassment, were ringed with dark grime.

Gabe grimaced. To escape the pathetic sight, he turned and began to jog back without Pablo. But Pablo sprinted and caught up with him. They ran in unison, even as Gabe picked up speed, trying to pull away. He should have known he couldn't outrun Pablo. Finally, when they slowed to a walk as they reached second base, Pablo remarked, “That guy was messed up.”

Gabe stopped and bent over, panting. He touched second base with a toe—momentarily safe from his dad.

“It seemed like he knows you,” Pablo said, after his breathing slowed.

Gabe stood up, wiped his sweaty face with the hem of his T-shirt, and answered, “Yeah, I know him. He's my dad.” The truth was embarrassing.

“Oh,” Pablo replied, and looked down at his shoes.

Gabe was roused by a deep emotion that almost made him cry. During infield practice, Pablo, crouching with his glove lowered to the dusty field, let the ball—an easy dribbler that a three-year-old could have picked up—bounce off his shoe. Pablo, a bad actor, looked around frantically, as if he couldn't locate the ball in time to hurl it to first. But Gabe knew better. Pablo did it for
him.
He did it because Gabe had such an embarrassment for a father.

Gabe would remember Pablo's gesture for a long time.

At home, he showered, watched television, and went to sleep to the squeaking of the swamp cooler. In the middle of the night, the sound of pie tins clanging woke him. He peered out the window, his eyes adjusting to the darkness, and followed a movement across the lawn. By then, his mother had turned off the swamp cooler. The night was quiet, with crickets chirping in the yard. From Tulare Street, a bad muffler popped like gunfire.

It might be him, Gabe thought. He got out of bed. His heart thumped as he tiptoed through the kitchen and opened the back door. His own cat, Gordo, spooked him by rubbing against his ankle. He shoved the cat inside and slowly descended the steps in his bare feet, amazed that the cement landing was still hot from the day.

In the dark, Gabe called in a husky voice, “Who's there?”

The neighbor's dog offered a single bark in response. The crickets momentarily quit their racket, and a breeze sighed through the apricot tree.

Gabe made out the baseball bat propped against the garage. He called again, “Who's there?” He grabbed the bat. His chest heaved in anticipation of swinging at an onrushing body.

The neighbor's porch light cut across part of their lawn, but its orange glow didn't reach the far end of the yard, where there was a pile of lumber, a broken-down lawn mower, the skeleton of his old bike, and a stack of four chrome rims—Gabe had rolled them home after finding them in the alley, certain that he could sell them in a yard sale. Two years later, they were pitted with rust.

He advanced cautiously into the darkened area of the lawn, baseball bat cocked. He waited until his eyes adjusted to the night. He couldn't make out the figure that he had seen from his bedroom window. While he stood listening for sounds, a chill sent goose bumps up his arms. Was this fear or a cold shiver from the dewy lawn? He gazed up at the sky and the stars spread over the heavens.

Why did my dad come back? Gabe asked privately.
Why? Why?

A strong breeze rattled the pie tins. The neighbor's dog whined, and the crickets, those little insects in armor, once again began to chirp. Then there was a sound of footsteps in the alley. Gabe, heart charged with terror, hurried to look: three homeys were scaling the neighbor's fence. Had they been in his yard and found nothing but tomatoes, his cat Gordo sleeping on the picnic table, and a pile of debris?

The Mendozas lived in a small house near downtown, in a neighborhood of dilapidated houses and Section 8 apartments. Radios and loud televisions screamed from these apartments, and arguments that regularly grew into outright fights. At dark, people looking for trouble—or who were already in trouble—ghosted the streets in search of the livelihood called thievery. It was not unusual to hear gunshots at night, or grunts from body blows in the alley, or neighbors yelling obscenities from porches: “Hey, get away from my car, sucka!” How many times had he awakened to the thumping sounds of a helicopter, the whirling blades shaking the trees?

Gabe returned to his bedroom, fell asleep, and had a nightmare in which he was wading neck-deep in water. The next morning he investigated the garden for clues and found two smashed tomatoes and evidence of shoe prints.

It had to be his dad.

His dad hadn't always been a deadbeat. One summer, when Gabe was six years old, they had gone to Bass Lake, where mosquitoes, thick as campfire smoke, orbited his head and feasted on his blood. But they'd still had fun fishing and skipping rocks. Another summer, they vacationed at Aunt Daisy's home in San Jose. The grown-ups got the extra bedroom and the kids—he and his cousins—slept in a tent in the backyard.

“It's like camping,” his dad had said as he carried two blankets into the tent and handed the kids Gatorade bottles refilled with water. For a snack, he gave them each a candy bar. Gabe and his cousins ate the candy right away, leaving the wrappers near their chocolate-covered hands as they drifted to sleep. When they woke before daylight, they discovered ants scurrying down the length of their arms. They had gone to bed sticky and woke up screaming.

It was his hero dad who doused their arms with the garden hose and softly patted away the ants, which were shriveled like commas.

Life was good, then. His dad worked at Office Depot. He had advanced quickly from stock clerk to assistant manager. Because of his hard work, his dad was named Regional Manager of the Month. He got his photo up on the wall for that month and a weekend getaway at a resort in Half Moon Bay.

It had been fun at that resort, even though it was a freezing December and they couldn't stroll on the beach very long. But Gabe had collected shells, rocks, and sticks, plus seaweed that he stuffed into a plastic trash bag and took home to show friends. For Gabe, the best experience was the Jacuzzi in their suite—he'd thought they were staying in a
sweet,
but later he learned the word meant a large, fancy room.

A Jacuzzi in their suite. The memory was real. How he had giggled and squirmed when his dad picked him up and placed him in the center of the giant tub, jets churning the water. Gabe's mother was out shopping, so their escapade in the Jacuzzi had been a father-and-son secret. How they had laughed when his dad poured a bottle of shampoo into the bubbling tide, which then began to overflow the sides of the tub.

But even then, Gabe recalled, there had been beer bottles set on the edge of that huge tub, and through the bathroom fog, he could see the bottles lined up like soldiers on the floor. Later, they floated like buoys in the water.

Gabe's mother announced that she was going to skip work—at least a couple of hours—in order to file a restraining order. Gabe decided to join her.

At City Hall, on the fifth floor, there was a long line of strollers and mothers gossiping with other mothers. Some of the babies were sirens that wouldn't turn off, even when you plugged their mouths with pacifiers.

“Ay, Dios mío
,” his mother complained under her breath. “It'll be tomorrow by the time I get to the front. Look at all these people.”

Gabe was also surprised. Were all these women seeking restraining orders against lousy husbands, exes, or boyfriends? Gabe's blood boiled at the thought of men who hurt women. He promised himself that he would be a good man when he grew up.

“I'll wait here,” his mother said. She instructed him to see how far the line went around the corner.

Gabe wove his way around the corner, muttering, “Excuse me, excuse me.” He counted sixteen women. Most were mothers with babies in strollers or in their arms, and one was an older woman with a walker—the tennis balls attached to its feet were dirty and chewed up from the clawing about on sidewalks.

Gabe recognized Linda Ramirez, a girl from school. When she turned, he could see she was biting a fingernail. He forced himself to look away. He didn't want to embarrass her, or himself.

When he returned, his mother was rummaging through her purse. She brought out a handful of papers: old bills, receipts, coupons, used Kleenex, and gum wrappers.

“Mom, the line's really long,” he told her. In truth, he didn't want his mother to file a restraining order against his dad. Sure, he was a deadbeat, but what had he done except parade his sadness in front of his son? He wanted to talk to his dad first. If the man proved to still be a scoundrel, Gabe would wake up early and be first in line at City Hall.

“This is ridiculous!” she bawled. “I can't wait. I have to get to work!”