A Scarcity of Condors

by Suanne Laqueur

  Mayor Edward Sullivan, along with City Manager Lorenzo Acevedo and other officials, will be in attendance to commemorate the breaking of ground.

  “The new playground design will enhance the current park environment, while providing safe and challenging play and community building opportunities for residents and visitors alike,” said Mayor Sullivan in a press release.

  “It’s a tribute to everything our brother Feño was,” said Fernando Paloma’s older brothers Hernán and Patricio. “An incredible athlete. A hardworking man. Amazing husband and father.”

  “Feño never showed any weakness,” said Andrea Molinero, the company owner and Fernando’s stepfather. “He was strong right until the end of his life, devoted to his family and God.”

  “Methinks the brothers doth protest too much,” Cleon said. “Athlete. Man. Husband. Father.”

  “Strong until the end. No weakness.”

  “Jesus Christ, even in death, they’re trying to make him something he’s not. They should name it Fernando Paloma Was Straight Park.”

  Beneath the copy was a color rendering of the planned renovations. Penny sucked her teeth, noting the new playground would be located clear on the other side of the park from where Feño and Jude were attacked by Juan-Mateo Díaz in 1990. Andrea Molinero made sure the equipment and trails would be safely distanced and unsullied by the disgraceful love affair in which he’d declared Jude predator and Feño innocent prey.

  They were both targeted, Penny thought, the old anger licking at the edges of her vision. Every time she thought of her son and his lover walking out of the woods, no doubt tousled with sex and secrecy, and into the Condor’s ambush, her stomach turned over.

  “It was what you’d call a revolting development,” Jude said later. Much, much later when he could make ironic comments and even joke about the night his leg was broken.

  Beneath the landscape rendering were two black-and-white photographs. A formal yearbook portrait of Feño Paloma next to a candid shot of him with his wife and two children.

  The adult Feño was a stranger to Penny, but she recognized the boy in the yearbook photo. The handsome face was inextricably tangled with viscous, vivid memories of their last, harrowing year in Vancouver. And tangled up even tighter with Jude.

  By May of 1974, eight months after Pinochet’s coup, Canada had issued over a thousand VISAs to Chilean refugees. The earliest arrivals in Vancouver were either politically prescient or privy to information that let them slip out before Pinochet’s coup. Next came those who managed to bash their way out via embassies and consulates, or flee across borders, hidden in cars and trucks. Some made their way to the coast and escaped by boat. Their own boats, or else they obtained or bribed passage on a foreign vessel. In some dramatic accounts, exiles stole the first pleasure craft they saw and weighed anchor, sailing up the coast to Peru and never looking back.

  Vancouver’s ex-pat community memorized Chilean airline schedules and went in groups to the airport to welcome refugees. They shuttled them to hotels provided by the government. They obtained medical attention for the tortured, the sick, the traumatized. Passed out pamphlets and guides in Spanish for the newcomers to find their way around the city. Lists of phone numbers were shared so exiles could call for a ride or a translator.

  Where Penny went, Jude followed. From sling to stroller to toddling feet, he was at her side during meetings and demonstrations and events. A sparkling, tender-hearted little boy, he could think of nothing more fun than going to parties at the airport and waving hello to people.

  He was five when Feño Paloma arrived in Canada. By 1978, Pinochet’s regime of terror was systematic. Survivors of the detention centers were more frequent among the arrivals. They were assisted off the planes, missing fingers and ears, faces scarred, noses broken, bodies twisted. They used canes and crutches or needed a wheelchair.

  Feño’s mother walked off the plane unaided, her face swollen and bruised, each step obviously sending a spasm of pain through her slight body. She lurched like an automaton along the welcome line, her papers clutched in one hand, a little boy’s wrist in the other. Behind her trailed two teenaged boys, also with blackened eyes, swollen lips and a constellation of healing cuts and lacerations across their young faces.

  Penny learned later both these boys, along with an older brother and sister, were tortured in front of their parents. The older siblings did not survive.

  Penny kept her manner calm and unthreatening as she moved to the lost, incomplete family, a hand extended.

  “Bienvenida,” she said. She and her compañeras never said welcome home to these traumatized refugees. This was not home and the exiles couldn’t even be sure the situation was trustworthy, let alone well. The past was barely behind them and the future insurmountable. All they wanted were the practical logistics of here and now. Where did they go and what did they do next?

  “We’re here to help you,” the welcome brigade said, moving through the stunned, exhausted crowd. “We’re going to take you to a hotel so you can get some sleep. It’s all arranged and taken care of. Are you hungry? We’ll get you something to eat. Does the baby need a bottle? Formula? If you need a doctor, we’ll help you find one. We’ll come back to see you tomorrow. We’ll make a plan. We’ll be here. We’ll help you.”

  The broken mother wept in Penny’s arms while her littlest son sat on the floor at her feet, wailing. The two older sons stared at Penny when she told them she’d help. One boy’s gaze narrowed in sheer defense, as if the offer of assistance were an insult. And who could blame him?

  No longer surprised by extreme reactions, Penny calmly asked their names. The wary-eyed son made introductions—he was Hernán Paloma, the middle boy was Patricio. The little one was Fernando, or Feño. Then Hernán’s bruised eyes fell hard on the woman still in Penny’s arms.

  “My mother is called Graciela Toro,” he said. “Our father is dead. He’s not coming.”

  The open hostility in his voice made Penny’s arms tighten around Graciela, sensing Hernán’s vitriol was aimed at his mother, not the situation.

  Jude looked around the distraught group, frowning. Then he plopped onto the floor and put arms around his weeping compañero.

  “Don’t cry,” he said. “We’re nice. Don’t worry.”

  By the time the luggage and logistics were sorted out, the two little boys were still sitting on the floor and Feño was asleep on Jude’s shoulder. Penny took a mental snapshot and in later years, asked the boys if they remembered the night at the airport. Both said no, but not before exchanging a tiny, surreptitious glance that told Penny they never forgot.

  “They refused to accept him,” Cleon said. “So they give him a playground and that just makes it all better.”

  His arms were crossed tight over his broad chest, his face unreadable.

  “How do you feel?” Penny asked.

  It was the most intimate question she could pose of her husband. Cleon Tholet was a heavily medicated man. He had pain meds and sleep meds and in the past three decades, he’d been on eleven different antidepressants. His Seattle psychiatrist had finally found the right cocktail and dosage to hold Cleon in balance, determining he functioned best when the balance was tipped toward detachment.

  Cleon wasn’t aloof. Not ambivalent or apathetic. He simply carried a slight air of checked-out-ness. He coasted above extreme situations, whether crisis or celebration. He rode straight down the middle. He never got too upset, he never got too jubilant. The latter was a sacrifice to avoid the former.

  “How do I feel,” he said. “Let’s see. Sad, sure. He was a sweet, good boy and too young a man to die. Frankly, I’m pissed his family has so many stubborn, intolerant assholes in it. These little passive-aggressive digs in the article make me sick.”

  “Micro-aggressions,” Penny said. Serena taught her that expression.

  “But Jude went back for the
funeral, which makes me proud. We were together tonight, which always makes me happy.”

  “Wasn’t it nice?”

  “I don’t have a word for what it was. And all the wordless things together at one time leaves me feeling quite…ordinary.”

  Penny reached and turned off the monitor. “Come to bed.”

  He smiled. “I don’t have a word for that, either.”

  She held out a hand, feeling nothing but gratitude the right cocktail had made Cleon check back into the bedroom. After a bout of long, lonely years, she never tired of welcoming him home to her.

  You are five years old when you see your father cry for the first time. He sinks into his easy chair, his face in one hand, the other hand clutching the telegram from the International Red Cross.

  “Who is it?” your mother says, unshaken in her belief that telegrams only herald death. “Who’s dead? Who died?”

  But this is a rogue telegram: your father’s brother, thought dead in the concentration camps of Europe, is alive.

  You’re five. You think a concentration camp is a haven in the woods where people go to think deep thoughts. You’ve never seen Europe, having been born here in Santiago. You do know what excitement is. The house bursts with joyful anticipation during the three weeks it takes Uncle Louis’s ship to cross the Atlantic. Your father plots the day’s distance on a map in his study. A line of pins starting in the bulge of Turkey, squeezing through the Strait of Gibraltar and across the wide expanse of blue paper, heading for the curvy land bridge connecting North and South America. Through the Panama Canal and along the rump of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Creeping down the spine of the continent until finally the day of arrival is here.

  You drive to Valparaiso to meet the ship—Papi, Mami, your sister Gloria and you.

  You’re too short to see over the masses of people lining the piers. Too big for Mami to carry. You hang onto the belt of Gloria’s coat, terrified of being swept away to sea with no line of pins to mark the way. You know Uncle Louis has been spotted when Papi starts to cry again.

  You’ve never seen two men hug so long. They kiss each other’s cheeks, hold each other’s heads and mop each other’s faces. Finally, Papi comes walking toward the family, his face soaked with tears, his brother’s hand clasped tight and raised between them, as if they’ve won a great race.

  Uncle Louis and Mami hug a long time. The tall man then bows from the waist and kisses Gloria’s hand.

  “And this is your nephew,” Papi says. “Carlos Luis. He’s named for Papa and you.”

  With the same bow from the waist, your uncle shakes your hand. “Thank you,” he says in German. “For keeping our names safe.”

  Louis’s face is thin as a banana. His clothes hang off his shoulders and drag around his mismatched shoes. His hair is dirty and his teeth are broken. But the eyes behind the thick glasses are pale green and when he smiles, two creases flicker in his gaunt cheeks.

  Papi is crying again. His arms open wide and gather Uncle Louis in tight. A passing news photographer snaps their picture and asks their names. The brothers ignore him and keep holding each other. They’re so still for so long, you think they might be sleeping standing up.

  You are five.

  You think, If I am ever lost, I want to be found like this.

  The Vancouver Police could never prove someone from the Condor’s family put the pig blood in Cleon’s car. They couldn’t solve any of the acts of vandalism and harassment against the Tholets. But the speed with which the Díazes agreed to the new settlement and liquidated their assets to pay out, was proof enough. After court and attorney fees and taxes, Jude walked away from Vancouver a startingly well-off young man.

  He wanted the family to split the money—everyone had suffered and should share equally in the reparations. Cleon and Penny firmly but gently insisted the settlement was his, and they put it into trust until he was twenty-five. When he achieved his majority, he paid off his siblings’ student loans. He bought his parents’ house in Alki Beach and his own place on 15th and Olive in Capitol Hill.

  He reconfigured his townhouse’s skinny layout to put all the social space on the ground floor, where his father could walk in at street level and not have to deal with stairs when he visited. His bedroom and bath were on the second floor and on the third his music space—soundproofed so his neighbors didn’t have to endure the endless repetition and frequent cursing.

  The Tholets joked that it cost Jude so much money and stress to hoist his baby grand piano through the windows, he was never moving again.

  Tonight, Jude sat at the piano with the score to Elite Syncopations, Kenneth MacMillan’s quirky ragtime ballet set to music by Scott Joplin. The company danced in skin-tight art-deco costumes while a scaled-down orchestra played onstage. Pacific Northwest Ballet’s principal pianist, Dae-Hyun Cho, had his own natty costume and conducted from two pianos, one specially prepared to produce a tinny, rinky-tink sound.

  One day, perhaps with the help of Giosué’s bad-sushi connections, Jude might play the ballet. Until then, he was relegated to Dae’s page-turner. Which didn’t suck. His costume came with a really boffo hat.

  He played Joplin for an hour, attacking the syncopated rhythms, insouciant and sloppy, ignoring any clunkers. This hour at the end of every day was only for the joy of playing. No repetition, no perfectionism, no making himself crazy. It was his soul’s version of “Taps,” bringing the day to an end.

  He went to close the cover, then slid it back and played “Summer, Highland Falls” again.

  Suspended between sadness and euphoria, he went to bed but didn’t sleep. He gazed at an empty space on the wall that filled up with a vivid recall of steamed-up windows and Billy Joel on a car radio. Feño in the back seat of his Subaru wagon, Jude kneeling across his lap. Naked as birth, sweaty and taut, caught up in a tight fist of adolescent desire.

  “Baby,” Feño said through a moan. “It’s so good.”

  Jude threaded a hand through Feño’s hair to pull his head back on the seat. That smooth, tender neck open to the night and Jude’s hungry mouth. He sucked on the salty tang, tasted the pulse fluttering under his tongue. Then he rested forearms on either side of Feño’s head and they stared as Jude pushed through the tunnel of Feño’s slick hands, not blinking, barely breathing.

  “So good,” Feño said again. He was verbally fearless during sex, while Jude’s words often deserted him.

  “Fucking crazy about you.” Feño’s head wobbled side to side. His damp, tousled profile, eyelashes thick crescents on his cheekbone as his mouth closed around Jude’s skin, careful to leave marks only where no one could see.

  “They’d kill us if they knew,” Feño whispered. “My people would, anyway.”

  “Not mine,” Jude said. “We could tell my parents. They’re fine with me, they’d be fine with you, too.”

  Feño’s mouth strained against the night and his eyes shone wet as he shook his head. “We can’t tell anyone.”

  “Listen. A gay couple lived with my parents in Santiago. They trusted my parents. They were safe with them. You will be too.”

  “No.”

  “You’re safe at my house, Fen. We can be us at my house.”

  “No. It’s only safe if only you and I know.” Feño’s hands grabbed hard at him, jerking and pulling and fingers clenched in Jude’s hair. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

  “We can—”

  “No. We can’t. They’d kill me if they knew I was…”

  “Gay.”

  “Don’t.”

  “You can say it here.”

  “Stop. Just kiss me.”

  Jude knew Feño was being dramatic and dire. But Christ, they were seventeen, hot-blooded and hiding it from the world, thriving on being dramatic and dire. It was their fucking job.

  And it felt so goddamn good.

 
“Am I hurting you?” Feño whispered. He always asked at least once.

  “No,” Jude said, moving deeper down on him.

  It hurt when they first started having sex. Holy shit, the first time hurt like hell.

  “Forget it,” Feño said, watching Jude wince back into his clothes afterward. “We’re not doing this again.”

  “I’m all right,” Jude said through a clenched-teeth smile.

  “Bullshit. No way, Jude, I can’t deal with it hurting you.”

  He was adamant and Jude had to respect it, knowing where his friend was coming from. No word existed for the sexual abuse Feño’s sister and mother suffered in the Estadio. As a child, Feño understood what rape was before he learned where babies came from. Within the struggle of being gay, he had extremely set ideas about sex and no quarter for violence, ugliness or pain.

  Jude respected the rules, but he gently leaned on them. The sex hurt, but at the core of the rocky discomfort was a fascinating, complicated vein of pleasure. He wanted to tap it. Just as sports and music were skills born in repetition, he sensed time and practice were the keys here. He knew well the process of breaking down a musical phrase and coding the information into muscle memory. Feño put hours of training into athletic skill. Why would sex be any different?

  “It hurt because we didn’t do it right,” he said. “We need to get some slippery stuff.”

  Feño put up his palms, shaking his head. “I’m not getting it.”

  Jude had identical reservations. He could buy condoms without being self-conscious, no problem. Lube was something else. That shit was over in the feminine hygiene aisle and with half the cashiers at Lawson’s being classmates, no way was he throwing a tube of KY down with his shaving cream and gum. He considered shoplifting, but the risk of fatal humiliation was too great. He would literally die if he were caught. He opted to swipe what he found in his mother’s bedside table drawer and let the chips fall under his own roof.