I WALKED INTO THE KITCHEN. MY MOM WAS PREPARING
lunch for a meeting with her Catholic-Church-lady friends. I poured myself a glass of orange juice.
My mom smiled at me. “Are you going to say good morning?” “I’m thinking about it,” I said.
“Well, at least you dragged yourself out of bed.” “I had to think about it for a long time.”
“What is it about boys and sleep?”
“We’re good at it.” That made her laugh. “Anyway, I wasn’t sleeping. I was listening to ‘La Bamba.’”
“Richie Valens,” she said, almost whispering. “So sad.” “Just like your Patsy Cline.”
She nodded. Sometimes I caught her singing that song, “Crazy,” and I’d smile. And she’d smile. It was like we shared a secret. My mom, she had a nice voice. “Plane crashes,” my mother whispered. I think she was talking more to herself than to me.
“Maybe Richie Valens died young—but he did something. I mean, he really did something. Me? What have I done?”
“You have time,” she said. “There’s plenty of time.” The eternal optimist. “Well, you have to become a person first,” I said.
She gave me a funny look. “I’m fifteen.”
“I know how old you are.”
“Fifteen-year-olds don’t qualify as people.”
My mom laughed. She was a high school teacher. I knew she half agreed with me.
“So what’s the big meeting about?” “We’re reorganizing the food bank.” “Food bank?”
“Everyone should eat.”
My mom had a thing for the poor. She’d been there. She knew things about hunger that I’d never know.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”
“Maybe you can help us out?”
“Sure,” I said. I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else’s idea.
“What are you going to do today?” It sounded like a challenge. “I’m going to join a gang.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m Mexican. Isn’t that what we do?” “Not funny.”
“Not funny,” I said. Okay, not funny.
I had the urge to leave the house. Not that I had anywhere to go.
When my mom had her Catholic-Church-lady friends over, I felt like I was suffocating. It wasn’t so much that all her friends were over fifty—that wasn’t it. And it wasn’t even all the comments about how I was turning into a man right before their eyes. I mean, I knew bullshit when I heard it. And as bullshit went, it was the nice, harmless, affectionate kind. I could handle them grabbing me by the shoulders and saying, “Let me look at you. Dejame ver. Ay que muchacho tan guapo. Te pareces a tu papa.” Not that there was anything to look at. It was just me. And yeah, yeah, I looked like my dad. I didn’t think that was such a great thing.
But what really bugged the living crap out of me was that my mother had more friends than I did. How sad was that?
I decided to go swimming at the Memorial Park pool. It was a small idea.
But at least the idea was mine.
As I was walking out the door, my mom took the old towel I’d slung over my shoulder and exchanged it for a better one. There were certain towel rules that existed in my mother’s world that I just didn’t get. But the rules didn’t stop at towels.
She looked at my T-shirt.
I knew a look of disapproval when I saw one. Before she made me change, I gave her one of my own looks. “It’s my favorite T-shirt,” I said.
“Didn’t you wear that yesterday?” “Yes,” I said. “It’s Carlos Santana.” “I know who it is,” she said.
“Dad gave it to me on my birthday.”
“As I recall you didn’t seem all that thrilled when you opened your father’s gift.”
“I was hoping for something else.”
“Something else?”
“I don’t know. Something else. A T-shirt for my birthday?” I looked at my Mom. “I guess I just don’t understand him.”
“He’s not that complicated, Ari.” “He doesn’t talk.”
“Sometimes when people talk, they don’t always tell the truth.” “Guess so,” I said. “Anyway, I’m really into this T-shirt now.” “I can see that.” She was smiling.
I was smiling too. “Dad got it at his first concert.” “I was there. I remember. It’s old and ratty.”
“I’m sentimental.” “Sure you are.”
“Mom, it’s summer.”
“Yes,” she said, “it is summer.” “Different rules,” I said. “Different rules,” she repeated.
I loved the different rules of summer. My mother endured them.
She reached over and combed my hair with her fingers. “Promise me you won’t wear it tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said. “I promise. But only if you promise not to put it in the dryer.”
“Maybe I’ll let you wash it yourself.” She smiled at me. “Don’t drown.” I smiled back. “If I do, don’t give my dog away.”
The dog thing was a joke. We didn’t have one.
Mom and I shared a sense of humor. It was one of the things we had in common, and it worked well for us. But she was still something of a mystery to me. I completely understood why my father had fallen in love with her, but why she had fallen for him was something I couldn’t quite grasp.
I remember one time when I was about six or seven, I was furious with my father because I wanted him to play with me, but he seemed distant and absent. I felt like I didn’t even exist to him. In a burst of childish anger, I asked my mom, “How could you have married that guy?”
She smiled and gently combed my hair with her fingers—her signature gesture. She looked me straight in the eyes and said calmly, “Your father was beautiful.” There was no hesitation in her voice.
I wanted to ask her what had happened to all that beauty.
