THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME. THAT’S WHAT the
doctor said. Just recovering normally from a severe flu. An afternoon wasted. Except I’d seen rage appear on my mother’s face for an instant. That was something I would have to think about.
Just when she was becoming less of a mystery, she became more of one. I finally got to leave the house.
I met Dante at the swimming pool, but I got winded easily. Mostly, I watched Dante swim.
It looked like it was going to rain. They always came this time of year, the rains. I heard the distant thunder. As we were walking toward Dante’s house, it began to rain. And then it began to pour.
I looked at Dante. “I won’t run if you don’t.” “I won’t run.”
So we walked in the rain. I wanted to walk faster, but instead I slowed down. I looked at Dante. “Can you take it?”
He smiled.
Slowly, we made our way to his house. In the rain. Soaked.
Dante’s father made us change into dry clothing when we got to his house, and gave us a lecture. “I already know that Dante doesn’t have an ounce of common sense. But, Ari, I thought you were a little more responsible.”
Dante couldn’t help but interrupt. “Fat chance, Dad.” “He just got over a flu, Dante.”
“I’m okay now,” I said. “I like the rain.” I looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry.”
He put his hand on my chin and lifted it up. He looked at me. “Summer boys,” he said.
I liked the way he looked at me. I thought he was the kindest man in the world. Maybe everybody was kind. Maybe even my father. But Mr. Quintana was brave. He didn’t care if the whole world knew he was kind. Dante was just like him.
I asked Dante if his father ever got mad.
“He doesn’t get mad very often. Hardly at all. But when he does get mad, I try to stay out of his way.”
“What does he get mad at?’
“I threw out all his papers once.” “You did that?”
“He wasn’t paying any attention to me.” “How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“So you made him mad on purpose.” “Something like that.”
Out of nowhere I started coughing. We gave each other a panicked look. “Hot tea,” Dante said.
I nodded. Good idea.
We sat, drinking our tea and watching the rain fall on his front porch. The sky was almost black and then it started hailing. It was so beautiful and scary, I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.
I was staring at the hail when Dante tapped me on the shoulder. “We need to have a conversation.”
“A conversation?” “A talk.”
“We talk every day.”
“Yeah, but. I mean a talk.” “About what?”
“About, you know, what we’re like. Our parents. Stuff like that.” “Did anybody ever tell you that you weren’t normal?”
“Is that something I should aspire to?”
“You’re not. You’re not normal.” I shook my head. “Where did you come from?”
“My parents had sex one night.”
I could almost imagine his parents having sex—which was a little weird. “How do you know it was night?”
“Good point.”
We busted out laughing.
“Okay,” he said. “This is serious.” “Is this like a game?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll play.”
“What’s your favorite color?” “Blue.”
“Red. Favorite car?” “Don’t like cars.”
“Me neither. Favorite song?” “Don’t have one. Yours?”
“‘The Long and Winding Road.’” “‘The Long and Winding Road’?” “The Beatles, Ari.”
“Don’t know it.” “Great song, Ari.”
“Boring game, Dante. Are we interviewing each other?” “Something like that.”
“What position am I applying for?” “Best friend.”
“I thought I already had the job.”
“Don’t be so sure, you arrogant son of a bitch.” He reached over and punched me. Not hard. But not soft either.
That made me laugh. “Nice mouth.”
“Sometimes don’t you just want to stand up and yell out all the cuss words you’ve learned?”
“Every day.”
“Every day? You’re worse than me.” He looked at the hail. “It’s like pissed off snow,” he said.
That made me laugh.
Dante shook his head. “We’re too nice, you know that?” “What do you mean?”
“Our parents turned us into nice boys. I hate that.” “I don’t think I’m so nice.”
“Are you in a gang?” “No.”
“Do you do drugs?” “No.”
“Do you drink?” “I’d like to.”
“Me too. But that wasn’t the question.”
“No, I don’t drink.” “Do you have sex?” “Sex?”
“Sex, Ari.”
“No, never had sex, Dante. But I’d like to.” “Me too. See what I mean? We’re nice.”
“Nice,” I said. “Shit.” “Shit,” he said.
And then we busted out laughing.
All afternoon, Dante shot questions at me. I answered them. When it stopped hailing and raining, the hot day had suddenly turned cool. The whole world seemed to be quiet and calm and I wanted to be the world and feel like that.
Dante got up from the step of the porch and stood on the sidewalk. He held up his arms toward the heavens. “It’s all so damned beautiful,” he said. He turned around. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Our tennis shoes,” I said.
“Dad put them in the dryer. Who cares?” “Yeah, who cares?”
I knew I had done that before, walked barefoot on a wet sidewalk, knew I had felt the breeze against my face. But it didn’t feel like I’d ever done that. It felt like this was happening for the first time.
Dante was saying something but I wasn’t really listening. I was staring at the sky, the dark clouds, listening to the distant thunder.
I looked at Dante, the breeze alive in his long, dark hair. “We’re leaving for a year,” he said.
I was suddenly sad. No, not exactly sad. It felt like someone had punched me. “Leaving?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? I mean, when?”
“My dad’s going to be a visiting professor for a year at the University of Chicago. I think they’re interested in hiring him.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Yeah,” he said.
I’d been happy, and then, just like that, I was sad. I couldn’t stand it, how sad I was. I didn’t look at him. I just looked up at the sky. “That’s really great. So when are you leaving?”
“At the end of August.”
Six weeks. I smiled. “That’s great.” “You keep saying ‘that’s great.’”
“Well, it is.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Aren’t you sad, that I’m leaving?” “Why would I be sad?”
He smiled and then, I don’t know, there was this look on his face and it was so hard to tell what he was thinking or feeling, which was strange because Dante’s face was a book that the whole world could read.
“Look,” he said. He pointed at a bird in the middle of the street that was trying to fly. I could tell that one of his wings was broken.
“He’s going to die,” I whispered. “We can save it.”
Dante walked into the middle of the street and tried to pick up the bird. I watched him as he picked up the frightened bird. That’s the last thing I remember before the car swerved around the corner. Dante! Dante! I knew the screams were coming from inside me. Dante!
I remember thinking that it was all a dream. All of it. It was just another bad dream. I kept thinking that the world was ending. I thought about the sparrows falling from the sky.
Dante!
The End of Summer
Do you remember the summer of the rain . . .
You must let everything fall that wants to fall.
—Karen Fiser
I REMEMBER THE CAR SWERVING AROUND THE CORNER and
Dante standing in the middle of the street holding a bird with a broken wing. I remember the slippery streets after the hail storm. I remember screaming his name. Dante!
I woke up in a hospital room. Both of my legs were in a cast.
So was my left arm. Everything seemed really far away and my whole body hurt and I kept thinking what happened? I had a dull headache. What happened? What happened? Even my fingers hurt. I swear they did. I felt like a soccer ball after a game. Shit. I must have groaned or something, because all of a sudden my mom and dad were standing right beside my bed. My mom was crying.
“Don’t cry,” I said. My throat was really dry and I didn’t sound like me. I sounded like someone else.
She bit her lip and reached over and combed my hair with her fingers. I just looked at her. “Just don’t cry, okay?”
“I was afraid you’d never wake up.” She just sobbed into my father’s shoulder.
Part of me was beginning to register everything. Another part of me just wanted to be somewhere else. Maybe none of this was really happening. But it was happening. It was. It didn’t seem real. Except that I was in some serious pain. And that was real. It was the most real thing I had ever known.
“It hurts,” I said.
That’s when my mom just shut off her tears and became herself again. I was glad. I hated to see her weak and crying and falling apart. I wondered if that’s the way she felt when my brother was taken away to prison. She pushed a button on my IV—then put it in my hand. “If you’re in a lot of pain, you can push this every fifteen minutes.”
“What is it?” “Morphine.”
“At long last I get to do drugs.”
She ignored my joke. “I’ll get the nurse.” My mom, she was always moving into action. I liked that about her.
I looked around the room and wondered why I’d woken up. I kept thinking that if I could only get back to sleep, then it wouldn’t hurt anymore. I preferred my bad dreams to the pain.
I looked at my dad. “It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s okay.” I didn’t really believe what I was saying.
My father was wearing a serious smile. “Ari, Ari,” he said. “You’re the bravest boy in the world.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m the guy who’s afraid of his own dreams, Dad. Remember?” I loved his smile. Why couldn’t he just smile all the time?
I wanted to ask him what happened. But I was afraid. I don’t know. . . . My throat was dry and I just couldn’t talk, and then it all came back to me and the image of Dante holding a wounded bird flashed in my head. I couldn’t catch my breath and I was afraid, and I thought that maybe Dante was dead, and then there was all this panic living inside of me. I could feel this awful thing going on in my heart. “Dante?” I heard his name in my mouth.
The nurse was standing next to me. She had a nice voice. “I’m going to check your blood pressure,” she said. I just lay there and let her do what she wanted. I didn’t care. She smiled. “How’s your pain?”
“My pain is fine,” I whispered.
She laughed. “You gave us a good scare, young man.” “I like scaring people,” I whispered.
My mother shook her head.
“I like the morphine,” I said. I closed my eyes. “Dante?” “He’s fine,” my mother said.
I opened my eyes.
I heard my father’s voice. “He’s scared. He’s really scared.” “But he’s okay?”
“Yes. He’s okay. He’s been waiting for you to wake up.” My mother and father looked at each other. I heard my mother’s voice. “He’s here.”
He was alive. Dante. I felt myself breathe. “What happened to the bird he was holding?”
My father reached over and squeezed my hand. “Crazy boys,” he whispered. “Crazy, crazy boys.” I watched him as he left the room.
My mother just kept staring at me.
“Where did Dad go?”
“He went to get Dante. He hasn’t left. He’s been here for the last thirty- six hours—waiting for you to—”
“Thirty-six hours?” “You had surgery.” “Surgery?”
“They had to repair your bones.” “Okay.”
“You’ll have scars.” “Okay.”
“You were awake for a little while after the surgery.” “I don’t remember.”
“You were in pain. They gave you something. Then you were out again.” “I don’t remember.”
“The doctor said you probably wouldn’t.” “Did I say anything?”
“You just moaned. You asked for Dante. He wouldn’t leave. He’s a very stubborn young man.”
That made me smile. “Yeah, well, he wins all our arguments. Just like the ones I have with you.”
“I love you,” she whispered. “Do you know how much I love you?”
It was nice the way she said that. She hadn’t said that to me in a long time.
“Love you more.” When I was a boy, I used to say that to her.
I thought she was going to cry again. But she didn’t. Well, there were tears, but no real crying. She handed me a glass of water and I drank a little bit from a straw. “Your legs,” she said. “The car ran over your legs.”
“It wasn’t the driver’s fault,” I said.
She nodded. “You had a very, very fine surgeon. All the breaks are below the knees. God—” She stopped. “They thought you might lose your legs—” She stopped and wiped the tears from her face. “I’m never going to let you out of the house, ever again.”
“Fascist,” I whispered.
She kissed me. “You sweet, beautiful kid.” “I’m not that sweet, Mom.”
“Don’t argue with me.” “Okay,” I said. “I’m sweet.”
She started crying again.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s okay.” Dante and my dad walked into the room.
We looked at each other and smiled. He had some stitches above his left eye and the left side of his face was all scraped up. He had two black eyes and he was wearing a cast on his right arm. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said.
“We sort of match,” he said. “I got you beat,” I whispered.
“Finally, you get to win an argument.”
“Yeah, finally,” I said. “You look like shit.”
He was standing right next to me. “So do you.”
We just looked at each other. “You sound tired,” he said. “Yeah.”
“I’m glad you woke up.”
“Yeah, I woke up. But it hurts less when I sleep.” “You saved my life, Ari.”
“Dante’s hero. Just what I always wanted to be.”
“Don’t do that, Ari. Don’t make fun. You almost got yourself killed.” “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
He started crying. Dante and his tears. Dante and his tears. “You pushed me. You pushed me and you saved my life.”
“Looks like I pushed you and beat the crap out of your face.” “I’ve got character now,” he said.
“It was that damned bird,” I said. “We can blame it all on the bird. The whole thing.”
“I’m done with birds.” “No you’re not.”
He started crying again.
“Knock it off,” I said. “My mom’s been crying, and now you’re crying— and even Dad looks like he wants to cry. Rules. I have rules. No crying.”
“Okay,” he said, “No more crying. Boys don’t cry.”
“Boys don’t cry,” I said. “Tears make me really tired.”
Dante laughed. And then he got really serious. “You took a dive like you were in a swimming pool.”
“We don’t have to talk about this.”
He just kept talking. “You dove at me, like, I don’t know, like some kind of football player diving at the guy with the ball, and you pushed me out of the way. It all happened so fast and yet, you just, I don’t know, you just knew what to do. Only you could have gotten yourself killed.” I watched the tears falling from his face. “And all because I’m an idiot, standing in the middle of the road trying to save a stupid bird.”
“You’re breaking the no-crying rule again,” I said. “And birds aren’t stupid.”
“I almost got you killed.”
“You didn’t do anything. You were just being you.” “No more birds for me.”
“I like birds,” I said.
“I’ve given them up. You saved my life.” “I told you. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
That made everybody laugh. God, I was tired. And it hurt so much and I remember Dante squeezing my hand and saying over and over, “I’m sorry I’m sorry Ari Ari Ari forgive me forgive me.”
I guess the aftereffects of the surgery and the morphine made me feel a little high.
I remember humming. “La Bamba.” I know that Dante and my mom and dad were still in the room, but I couldn’t stay awake.
I remember Dante squeezing my hand. And I remember thinking,
Forgive you? For what, Dante? What is there to forgive?
I don’t know why, but there was rain in my dreams. Dante and I were barefoot. The rain wouldn’t stop. And I was afraid.
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL. A few days.
Four days. Maybe five. Six. Hell, I don’t know. It felt like forever.
They ran tests. That’s what they do in hospitals. They were checking to make sure I had no other internal injuries. Especially brain injuries. I had a neurologist come in and see me. I didn’t like him. He had dark hair and really deep green eyes that didn’t like looking at people. He didn’t seem to care. Either that or he cared too much. But the thing was, he wasn’t very good with people. He didn’t talk to me very much. He took a lot of notes.
I learned that nurses liked to make small talk and were in love with taking your vitals. That’s what they did. They gave you a pill to help you sleep, then they woke you up all night. Shit. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to sleep and wake to see that my casts were gone. That’s what I told one of the nurses. “Can’t you just put me to sleep and wake me up when they take my casts off?”
“Silly boy,” the nurse said. Yeah. Silly boy.
I remember this one thing: My room was full of flowers. Flowers from all my mom’s church-lady friends. Flowers from Dante’s mother and father. Flowers from my sisters. Flowers from the neighbors. Flowers from my mother’s garden. Flowers. Shit. I never had an opinion about flowers until then. I decided I didn’t like them.
I sort of liked my surgeon. He was all about sports injuries. He was kind of young and I could tell he was a jock, you know this big gringo with big hands and long fingers and I wondered about that. He had the hands of a pianist. I remember thinking that. But I didn’t know shit about pianists’ hands or surgeons’ hands and I remember dreaming them. His hands. In my dream, he healed Dante’s bird and set it free into the summer sky. It was a nice dream. I didn’t have those very often.
Dr. Charles. That was his name. He knew what he was doing. A good guy. Yeah, that’s what I thought. He answered all my questions. And I had lots of them.
“Do I have pins in my legs?” “Yes.”
“Permanently?” “Yes.”
“And you won’t have to go in again?” “Hope not.”
“Big talker, huh, Doc?”
He laughed. “You’re a tough guy, huh?” “I don’t think I’m so tough.”
“Well, I think you are tough. I think you’re tough as hell.” “Yeah?”
“I’ve been around.” “Really?”
“Yes. Really, Aristotle. Can I tell you something?” “Call me Ari.”
“Ari.” He smiled. “I’m surprised at how well you held up during the operation. And I’m surprised how well you’re doing right now. It’s amazing really.”
“It’s luck and genes,” I said. “The genes I got from my mom and dad.
And my luck, well, I don’t where that came from. God, maybe.” “You a religious guy?”
“Not really. That would be my mom.”
“Yeah, well, moms and God generally get along pretty well.”
“Guess so,” I said. “When am I going to stop feeling like crap?” “In no time.”
“No time? Am I going to be hurting and itching for eight weeks?” “It’ll get better.”
“Sure. And how come, if my legs were broken below the knee, my casts are above the knee?”
“I just want to keep you still for two or three weeks. I don’t want you to be bending. Might hurt yourself again. Tough guys, they push themselves. After a few weeks, I’ll change your casts. Then you’ll be able to bend your legs.”
“Shit.”
“Shit?”
“A few weeks?”
“We’ll give it three weeks.”
“Three weeks without bending my legs?” “It’s not such a long time.”
“It’s summer.”
“And then I’ll get you to a physical therapist.”
I took a breath. “Shit. And this?” I said, aiming my arm cast at him. I was getting really depressed.
“That fracture wasn’t so bad. It’ll be off in a month.” “A month? Shit.”
“You like that word, don’t you?” “I’d prefer to use other words.”
He smiled. “Shit will do just fine.”
I wanted to cry. I did. Mostly I was mad and frustrated and I knew he was going to tell me that I needed to be patient. And that’s exactly what he said.
“You just need to be patient. You’ll be good as new. You’re young. You’re strong. You have great, healthy bones. I have every reason to believe that you’re going to heal very nicely.”
Very nicely. Patient. Shit.
He checked the feeling in my toes, had me breathe, had me follow his fingers with my left eye, then my right eye. “You know,” he said, “that’s a helluva thing you did for your friend, Dante.”
“Look, I wish people would stop talking about that.”
He looked at me. He had this look on his face. “You could have wound up a paraplegic. Or worse.”
“Worse?”
“Young man, you could have been killed.”
Killed. Okay. “People keep saying that. Look, Doc, I’m alive.” “You don’t much like being a hero, do you?”
“I told Dante I didn’t do it on purpose. Everyone thought that was funny. It wasn’t a joke. I don’t even remember diving toward him. It wasn’t as if I said to myself, I’m going to save my friend, Dante. It wasn’t like that. It was just a reflex, you know, like when someone hits your funny bone below the knee. Your leg just jerks. That’s how it was. It just happened.”
“Just a reflex? It just happened?” “Exactly.”
“And you’re responsible for none of it?” “It was just one of those things.”
“Just one of those things?” “Yeah.”
“I have a different theory.”
“Of course you do—you’re an adult.”
He laughed. “What do you have against adults?”
“They too have many ideas about who we are. Or who we should be.” “That’s our job.”
“Nice,” I said.
“Nice,” he said. “Listen, son, I know you don’t think of yourself as being brave or courageous or any of those things. Of course you don’t.”
“I’m just a regular guy.”
“Yeah, that’s how you see yourself. But, you pushed your friend out of the way of an oncoming car. You did that, Ari, and you didn’t think about yourself or what would happen to you. You did that because that’s who you are. I’d think about that if I were you.”
“What for?”
“Just think about it.”
“I’m not sure I want to do all that thinking.”
“Okay. Just so you know, Ari, I think you’re a very rare young man.
That’s what I think.”
“I told you, Doc, it was just a reflex.”
He grinned at me and put his hand on my shoulder. “I know your kind, Ari. I’m on to you.” I don’t know exactly what he meant by that. But he was smiling.
Right after that conversation with Dr. Charles, Dante’s mom and dad came to visit. Mr. Quintana came right up to me and kissed me on the cheek. Just like it was this normal thing to do. I guess for him it was normal. And really, I thought that the gesture was kind of nice, you know, sweet, but it made me a little bit uncomfortable. It was something I wasn’t used to. And he kept thanking me over and over and over. I wanted to tell him to knock it off. But, I just let him go on and on because I knew how much he loved his Dante and he was so happy and I was happy that he was happy. So it was okay.
I wanted to change the subject. I mean, I didn’t have a lot to talk about. I felt like crap. But they were there to see me and I could talk and, you know, I could process things even though my mind was still a little foggy. So I said, “So you’ll be in Chicago for a year?”
“Yes,” he said. “Dante hasn’t forgiven me yet.” I sort of just looked at him.
“He’s still mad. He says he wasn’t consulted.”
That made me smile.
“He doesn’t want to miss swimming for a year. He told me he could live with you for a year.”
That surprised me. Dante kept more secrets than I thought. I closed my eyes.
“Are you okay, Ari?”
“The itching makes me crazy sometimes. So I just close my eyes.” He had this really kind look on his face.
I didn’t tell him that my new thing was trying to imagine what my brother looked like every time I couldn’t stand the sensation in my legs. “Anyway, it’s good to talk,” I said. “It keeps my mind off things.” I opened my eyes. “So Dante’s mad at you.”
“Well, I told him there was no way I was going to leave him behind for a year.”
I pictured Dante giving his father a look. “Dante’s stubborn.” I heard Mrs. Quintana’s voice. “He takes after me.”
That made me smile. I knew it was true.
“You know what I think?” she said. “I think Dante’s going to miss you. I think that’s the real reason he doesn’t want to leave.”
“I’ll miss him too,” I said. I was sorry I’d said that. It was true, okay, but I didn’t have to say it.
His father looked at me. “Dante doesn’t have a lot of friends.” “I always thought everybody liked him.”
“That’s true. Everybody likes Dante. But he’s always been something of a loner. He doesn’t seem to go along with the crowd. He’s always been like that.” He smiled at me. “Like you.”
“Maybe so,” I said.
“You’re the best friend he’s ever had. I think you should know that.”
I didn’t want to know that. I didn’t know why I didn’t want to know that. I smiled at him. He was a good man. And he was talking to me. To me. To Ari. And even though I didn’t particularly want to have this conversation, I knew I just had to go with it. There weren’t that many good people in the world.
“You know, I’m kind of a boring guy when you think about it. Don’t know what Dante sees.” I couldn’t believe I’d said that to them.
Mrs. Quintana had been standing further away. But she came up and stood right next to her husband. “Why do you think that, Ari?”
“What?”
“Why do you think you’re boring?”
I thought to myself, “Great, the therapist has arrived.” I just shrugged it off and closed my eyes, knowing that when I opened them again, they would still be there. Dante and I were stuck with parents who genuinely cared. Why couldn’t they just leave us alone? Whatever happened to parents who were too busy, too self-absorbed, or simply indifferent to what their sons were up to?
I decided to open my eyes again.
I sensed Mr. Quintana was about to say something else. I could just feel it. But maybe he picked up on my mood. He didn’t say anything more.
We started discussing Chicago, and I was relieved we weren’t talking about me, Dante, or the incident. Mr. Quintana mentioned that the university had found them a small place, and Mrs. Quintana was taking an eight-month leave from her practice. So, they wouldn’t be gone for a whole year, just a school year. Not such a long time.
I don’t recall everything the Quintanas talked about. They were trying so hard, and part of me appreciated their presence, but another part of me just didn’t care. Inevitably, the conversation shifted back to Dante and me. Mrs. Quintana mentioned she was taking Dante to see a counselor. “He feels so bad,” she said, and suggested it might be a good idea for me to see a counselor too. Classic therapist advice. “I’m worried about both of you,” she added.
“You should have coffee with my mother,” I said. “You can worry together.”
Mr. Quintana thought that was funny, but really I didn’t say it to be funny.
Mrs. Quintana grinned at me. “Aristotle Mendoza, you’re not the least bit boring.”
After a while, I was just really tired and stopped concentrating.
I don’t know why I couldn’t stand the gratitude in Mr. Quintana’s eyes when he said good-bye. But it was Mrs. Quintana who really got to me. Unlike her husband, she wasn’t the kind of woman who let people see what she really felt. Not that she wasn’t nice and decent and all of that. Of course she was. It was just that when Dante said that his mother was inscrutable, I knew exactly what he was saying.
Before she left, Mrs. Quintana took my face between her two hands, looked right into my eyes, and whispered, “Aristotle Mendoza, I will love you forever.” Her voice was soft and sure and fierce and there weren’t any tears in her eyes. Her words were serene and sober and she looked right at me because she wanted me to know that she meant every word of what she’d said to me.
This is what I understood: a woman like Mrs. Quintana didn’t use the word “love” very often. When she said that word, she meant it. And one more thing I understood: Dante’s mother loved him more than he would ever know. I didn’t know what to do with that piece of information. So I just kept it inside. That’s what I did with everything. Kept it inside.
I GOT A PHONE CALL FROM DANTE. “SORRY, I HAVEN’T gone to
see you,” he said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not really in the mood to talk to people.” “Me neither,” he said. “Did my mom and dad tire you out?” “No. They’re nice.”
“My mom says I have to go to a counselor.” “Yeah, she said something like that.”
“Are you gonna go?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Your mom and my mom, they talked.” “Bet they did. So are you gonna go?”
“When Mom thinks something is a good idea, there’s no escape. It’s best to go along quietly.”
That made me laugh. I wanted to ask him what he’d tell the counselor.
But I don’t think I really wanted to know. “How’s your face?” I said. “I like staring at it.”
“You’re really weird. Maybe it is a good idea for you to see a counselor.”
I liked hearing him laugh. It made things seem normal. A part of me thought things would never be normal again.
“Does it still hurt a lot, Ari?”
“I don’t know. It’s as if my legs own me. I can’t think about anything else. I just want to yank the casts off and, shit, I don’t know.”
“It’s all my fault.” I hated that thing in his voice. “Listen,” I said. “Can we have some rules here?”
“Rules? More rules. You mean like the no-crying rule?” “Exactly.”
“Did they take you off the morphine?” “Yes.”
“You’re just in a bad mood.”
“This isn’t about my mood. It’s about rules. I don’t know what the big deal is—you love rules.”
“I hate rules. I like to break them mostly.”
“No, Dante, you like to make your own rules. So long as the rules are yours, you like them.”
“Oh, so now you’re analyzing me?”
“See, you don’t have to go to a counselor. You have me.” “I’ll tell my mom.”
“Let me know what she says.” I think we were both smiling. “Look, Dante, I just want to say that we have to have some rules here.”
“Post-op rules?”
“You can call them that if you want.” “Okay, so what are the rules?
“Rule number one: We won’t talk about the accident. Not ever. Rule number two: Stop saying thank you. Rule number three: This whole thing is not your fault. Rule number four: Let’s just move on.”
“I’m not sure I like the rules, Ari.”
“Take it up with your counselor. But those are the rules.” “You sound like you’re mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
I could tell Dante was thinking. He knew I was serious. “Okay,” he said. “We won’t ever talk about the accident. It’s a stupid rule, but okay. And can I just say ‘I’m sorry’ one more time? And can I say ‘thank you’ one more time?”
“You just did. No more, okay?” “Are you rolling your eyes?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, no more.”
That afternoon, he took the bus and came to visit me. He looked, well, not so good. He tried to pretend it didn’t hurt him to look at me but he could never hide anything that he felt. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” I said. “The doctor said I was going to heal very nicely.”
“Very nicely?”
“That’s exactly what he said. So give me eight to ten or twelve weeks, and I’m going to be myself again. Not that being myself is such a great thing.”
Dante laughed. Then he looked at me. “Are you going to initiate a no- laughing rule?”
“Laughing is always good. Laughing works.”
“Good,” he said. He sat down and took out some books from his backpack. “I brought you reading material. The Grapes of Wrath and War and Peace.”
“Great,” I said.
He gave me a look. “I could have brought you more flowers.” “I hate flowers.”
“Somehow I guessed that.” He grinned at me.
I stared at the books. “They’re fucking long,” I said. “That’s the point.”
“Guess I have time.” “Exactly.”
“You’ve read them?” “’Course I have.”
“’Course you have.”
He slid the books onto the stand next to my bed. I shook my head. Yeah. Time. Shit.
He took out his sketch pad.
“You going to sketch me in my casts?”
“Nope. I just thought that maybe you’d want to look at some of my sketches.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Don’t get too excited.”
“It’s not that. The pain comes and goes.” “Does it hurt right now?”
“Yes.”
“Are you taking anything?’
“I’m trying not to. I hate the way whatever the hell they give me makes me feel.” I pushed the button on the bed, so I could sit up. I wanted to say “I hate this” but I didn’t. I wanted to scream.
Dante handed me the sketch pad. I started to open it.
“You can look at it after I leave.”
I guess I was holding a question on my face. “You have rules. I have rules too.”
It was good to laugh. I wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh until I laughed myself into becoming someone else. The really great thing about
laughing was that it made me forget about the strange and awful feeling in my legs. Even if it was only for a minute.
“Tell me about the people on the bus,” I said.
He smiled. “There was a man on the bus who told me about the aliens in Roswell. He said that . . .” I don’t know that I really listened to the story. I guess it was enough just to hear the sound of Dante’s voice. It was like listening to a song. I kept thinking about the bird with the broken wing. Nobody told me what happened to the bird. And I couldn’t even ask because I would be breaking my own rule about not talking about the accident. Dante kept telling the story about the man on the bus and the aliens in Roswell and how some had escaped to El Paso and were planning on taking over the transportation system.
As I watched him, the thought came into my head that I hated him.
He read me some poems. They were nice I guess. I wasn’t in the mood.
When he finally left, I stared at his sketch pad. He’d never let anybody look at his sketches. And now he was showing them to me. To me. Ari.
I knew he was only letting me see his work because he was grateful. I hated all that gratitude.
Dante felt he owed me something. I didn’t want that. Not that. I took his sketch pad in my hands and flung it across the room.
