“You and Sam—?you’re a pair.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Part of me wanted to sit in the quiet of my own thoughts, and another part wanted to talk to my dad. Then I heard myself asking, “What would happen if prayers disappeared from the world?”
“That’s an easy one,” he said. “The world would disappear too.”
“You mean that?”
“I guess I do.”
“You have proof?”
“Don’t get smart. No, I don’t have proof. I don’t need proof.”
“Mima prays for us. Does that mean that our world will disappear—?when Mima dies?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Because she leaves us behind. And she leaves others behind too—?others who pray.”
“You?”
“I’m one of them. Yes.”
“What do you pray for?”
“More kindness in the world. And then I pray for you.”
If Dad hadn’t been driving, I would have hugged him. And then I thought: How can this man love me so much? I felt like such an asshole. How could I even think or wonder about the man whose genes I had? What did genetic makeup mean anyway, compared with the man who raised and loved me? I was such an asshole.
And prayer? How could you pray to a God you wanted to hit?
My Dad
DAD WASN’T VERY talkative on the drive home. But sometimes silences are comfortable and sometimes they aren’t. Finally I said, “It was different today, at Mima’s.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess that’s the way it’s going to be for a while. I hope—” He didn’t finish his sentence.
“You hope what?”
“I hope we can all handle this.”
“We all did fine when Popo died.”
“I guess we did. But Popo was Popo and Mima is Mima—?and it’s not the same.”
I knew what he meant. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Families can be messy. People get angry when they’re afraid.”
“Especially Uncle Tony.”
“Yeah, your Uncle Tony, he’s—”
“I get it, Dad. I do.”
My dad nodded. “We’re all doing the best we can.”
“I know,” I said, “but me and you, we aren’t messy. And we’re a family, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are, Salvie. As families go, you and I and Maggie are about as un-messy as it gets. But we’re not a self-contained unit. We belong to something bigger than just ourselves, right? You know, when I was young, I tried my damnedest to divorce my family.”
“Why?”
“It was too hard, too messy, too complicated. I sort of lived in a self-imposed exile for a good many years. I went away to college, lived my own life, chased my dreams, tried to face some demons. I guess I thought I could do all those things on my own. I thought that because I was gay, my family, well, they’d hate me or they wouldn’t understand me or they’d send me away. So I just sent myself away. It was easier for me to pretend that I didn’t belong to a family. I tried to pretend I didn’t belong to anyone.”
“What changed, Dad?”
“I changed. That’s what changed. Me. I didn’t want to live without my family. I didn’t. And then there was you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Your mom was living here. She needed help. I came back.”
“You really loved my mom, didn’t you?”
“Best friend I ever had. You brought me back to my family. I want you to know that.”
“Me?”
“Yup.” He stopped talking. He pulled over to the side of the road. “Here, you take the wheel.”
Me? I had brought him back to his family? Wow. I’d have to think about that. It made me happy that he could tell me about things he felt. And that he needed me to drive—?that he needed me to do something for him. That made me happy too.
As I drove down I-10, I wondered if my father was going to continue the conversation he started. He sometimes started telling me something about himself and left off right in the middle of it.
“I need a cigarette,” he said.
“No smoking in cars,” I said.
“I didn’t bring them anyway.”
“Good.”
“Good,” he said. “You love your uncles and aunts, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do. I like that they don’t pretend to be anything. They’re just themselves. I like that.”
My dad nodded. “Me too. But the thing is that we don’t do normal in this family. We’re not a pretty photograph on Facebook. We misbehave and cuss and drink too much beer and say all the wrong things. We don’t try to be the portrait of the American family. We’re just who we are. And we don’t do perfect. But you know something? It was wrong of me not to trust them. Mima has a saying: Solo te haces menos. You know what that means?”
“I know Spanish, Dad.”
“Yeah, but do you know what that means?”
“I think it means that it’s not other people who make you feel like you’re alone. You do it to yourself.”
“Smart boy. I lived apart from my family because I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust that they loved me enough. Shame on me. I’ll never get those years back.” He looked over at me. “Don’t ever underestimate the people who love you.”
I nodded.
“I know you sometimes think that people are like books. But our lives don’t have neat logical plots, and we don’t always say beautiful, intelligent things like the characters in a novel. That’s not the way life is. And we’re not like letters—”
“You mean like the one Mom left me.”
“I wasn’t referring to that, but now that you mention it—?look, we can’t fit what we feel and think—?we can’t put what we are and stuff it into an envelope and say This is me. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I guess I just have some regrets. I’m sorry to report that regrets are part of living.”
“But does it have to be that way?”
“Yes, I think it does have to be that way. Because we’re always going to make mistakes.” He took a breath. He was trying to explain something to me—?and maybe even to himself. “Let’s put it this way: Show me a man without regrets and I’ll show you a man without a conscience.”
I nodded. “Well, Dad,” I said, “at least you have a conscience.”
He started laughing.
And then I started laughing.
Whistling in the dark.
WFTD = Nurture? Nature?
WHEN WE GOT home, my dad headed straight for his studio. Work was better than cigarettes. I knew he would begin a new painting. He’d take out one of his already stretched canvases and start. And then he’d be able to sleep. He’d told me once that art was not something he did. “It’s something I am.”
Since I didn’t have art in me or hadn’t found anything that resembled what my dad had, I headed for my room.
I texted Sam: U home?
Sam: Where else?
Me: Skool tomorrow Sam: Yup broke up with Eddie Me: ?
Sam: Guys suk. No wonder ur dad doesn’t date Me: Lol
Sam: Seriously
Me: Can’t blow all guys off the planet Sam: Y not? Lol
Me: Can u live without me?
Sam: Conceited shit Me: Lol. going to sleep Sam: Sweet dreams Me: Ditto
I plugged my phone into the charger and set the alarm for 6:30.