American Road Trip

by Patrick Flores-Scott

  I ask him what he thinks of all that.

  “Not my thing,” he says. “Talking about stuff with people I don’t know.”

  “Or people you do know,” I say.

  No response.

  I’m not ready for quiet, so I ask him about the farming.

  “I been sitting on my ass for so long. The work feels good.”

  The conversation seems over.

  Then Manny really surprises me and asks how I’m doing.

  “New Mexico?” I say. “For the whole summer? It’s a shock. And Wendy? She’s great, and it’s good when I’m with her. But when I’m not with her, I spend a lot of time wondering how I’m going to mess it up. And studying with her? One of us is smart, and the other one is me. I’m gonna be exposed and Wendy will—”

  “T,” he says. “Just study hard. Work hard and get that stand ready. Then let the chips fall.”

  “You’re right, Manny. You’re right.”

  In a minute, the sleeping pills take hold and he’s out like a log.

  I can’t sleep.

  Because that was the most Manny’s talked to me since he got home.

  And that has to mean something.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 2009

  We’re in the shack at seven thirty for our first study session.

  We’ve got books out. Pencils at the ready. We’re on that bench, sitting so damn close I can feel vibes, like, shooting off her body. And there are so many vibes it’s impossible to dodge them. And the vibes are so powerful, it’s taking all the self-control we have to not hurl ourselves at each other because it’s freaking electromagnetic up in here.

  Wendy leans my way, so I lean her way, and she starts moving her lips—my God, her lips—all I see is lips! And when words come out of those lips, they say …

  “I need you to dial it way the hell down, Teodoro. Way down. Right now.”

  “Awesome, Wendy!” I take a gulp from my water bottle. “I am dialing it down.” I take a bunch more gulps.

  “And scoot.” She points to her side of the bench. “This is my bubble of teaching.” She points to my side. “That is your bubble of learning. And between those bubbles … is space. A space bubble.”

  “I am hearing you. And I am dialed down so low.”

  “Lower. Teodoro.”

  More gulps. Then I wipe my face with the back of my hand and say, “I am ready to be professional for you.”

  “Good. First question: What is calculus?”

  I got this one. “Calculus, Wendy, is often referred to as the mathematics of change.”

  “Yes, dork. But what does that mean?”

  “I know what it means. But since you’d like to land the job of tutoring me in calculus, I need to be sure that you know what it means.”

  Wendy rolls her eyes and smirks. “I’ll take a stab at it. You measure straight-line, same-speed kinda stuff with regular math—algebra and geometry. You use calculus to measure changes in slope and speed and force and that kind of thing. Like figuring out the amount of materials needed to build the roof of a domed stadium. Or the amount of energy it takes to pull a trailer over a mountain highway. Or how much cable you need to hold up a suspension bridge.”

  “Very interesting, Ms. Martinez.”

  “Did I get it right, Mr. Avila?”

  “Close enough. You may tutor me now.”

  “You’re not just a dork. You’re the biggest dork.”

  Wendy says the best thing we could do to ensure I ace pre-calculus is to review algebra. Cuz when you’re dealing with those curves and slopes in calculus, you’re actually just zooming in so superclose that you get little tiny straight lines. You do the algebra on each of those tiny straight lines, and you add ’em all up? That’s calculus. But you have to understand the algebra first. If you do, then calculus will be a lot easier.

  Caleb and Bashir helped drag me to that B. But I’m not sure how much I’ve forgotten and how much I really know. Wendy’s right. I better review.

  For a couple hours, Wendy kicks my ass on everything you can do with a fraction. Then we get into absolute value and powers.

  Each thing we do in algebra, she gives a quick explanation of what it will look like in calculus. We’re reviewing, but she makes it feel like we’re always looking ahead.

  “Don’t forget any of this, Teodoro. Lock it in there. I want to move on to roots and simplification of roots tomorrow. If you’re really good, we’ll get to factoring, which you totally need for calc.”

  “Let’s get there,” I say.

  Wendy points at me. “That’s the attitude, Teodoro!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah! You can do it!”

  “Yeah!” I pop off the bench and hop onto a dusty crate and thrust my arms in the air. “I think I can do it!”

  “You think you can do it?”

  “I know I think I’m almost pretty sure I can maybe do it!”

  Wendy laughs and says we’ll be working on my math confidence throughout the summer.

  Then hugs. And kisses. And talk of how we earned them. By being so professional.

  I have to admit, I don’t think the first study session could have gone any better.

  * * *

  We break for lunch. Wendy keeps with the power nap routine.

  I throw down a cup of coffee with my burrito. And flip through some bad daytime TV.

  Wendy gets up and I prep her burrito.

  She takes one bite and freaks about the green chile. She says damn way more times than I did! And each time she says damn I can see chewed burrito in her mouth. And she doesn’t even care.

  Sometimes I think it’s impossible to fall for Wendy any harder than I already have. Then she lets herself get disgusting eating green chile. Right in front of me. It’s a wild thing to watch. And I think maybe my love for her knows no bounds.

  We head outside for an afternoon of dividing junk. Some goes into the adds-character-to-chile-stand pile and some goes into the haul-it-to-the-dump pile.

  The afternoon feels as productive and fun as the morning.

  Afterward, Wendy goes upstairs to clean up.

  Manny and Xoch are still out.

  I want to call Caleb. I want to hear his voice and tell him how great everything is going. But I don’t want him to get on my case for leaving him. And I don’t want to hear him tell me to come home.

  So I call Mami and Papi again.

  I tell them about my schedule with Wendy. I tell them Xochitl and Manny are working the fields in the morning and afternoon, except for when Manny takes a break to see his doctor. I tell them about the group and about his counselor.

  “I got some news, too,” Papi says. “I took a job at Home Depot. And I’m trying to get Mami one there, too.”

  “That’s great. Right?”

  Papi says he’ll be making a third of what he did at Fauntleroy Fabrication. “But it’s something, mijo.” He says it feels good to be working after so long but the best part is the employee discount. It turns out Papi’s gonna need it because Mami told a teacher friend about the Captain’s Quarters and the friend says she wants Papi to build her this room-divider/shelf thing for her classroom. Papi’s busy with the designs. Says it’s gonna be very Swiss Army Knife–y.

  Mami says he’s real excited about it. She sounds excited, too.

  About Papi.

  And that is amazing.

  The hard thing about talking to them is hanging up. You can hear in their voices how bad they miss us. But it’s not about missing us. I think a big reason for the emotional good-byes is how bad they feel that Manny had to leave home—leave them—to get better.

  SUNDAY, JUNE 21, 2009

  “It’s time for your first quiz, Teodoro.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Linear functions, man! You’ve been doing great. We’re moving fast. But are you retaining stuff?” She hands me a page. “You ace this and we’ll move on to factoring.” She walks over to some splintered old shelves. “Don’t
mind me. I’ll just be over here polishing these jars.”

  “Don’t mind me,” I say. “I’ll just be over here killing this quiz.”

  Wendy has me learning this stuff for real. Some secret nighttime studying has me retaining it. I’m done with her quiz in minutes.

  Wendy checks it. She scrunches her eyebrows. “Hmm. Uh-huh. Mmm-hmm.” She squeals with delight. “I thought I’d be a good tutor, but I didn’t know I’d be this good.”

  “Hey, I’m the one who took the quiz. Give me a little credit.”

  “I’m prepared to do that. I’m offering you…” She winks at me, sexy. “A prize.”

  “Whoa. What’s the prize, lady?”

  She reaches behind our stack of books and whips out a red folder. She slides a page out of the folder, hands it to me, and says, “Pick one.”

  It’s a sheet of wild animal stickers.

  “You get one each time you ace a quiz,” she says.

  “Stickers, Wendy? Seriously?”

  “You deserve them, Teodoro! Take one.”

  I hesitate and she pops me on the shoulder.

  “Ow! All right, all right.” I choose a grizzly bear and stick it on my shiny red folder.

  “Doesn’t look like much now,” Wendy says, “but soon, your folder will be covered with stickers. And when that day comes you’ll say, Wow, that’s a lot of stickers. And you’ll know you’re ready to conquer pre-calculus this fall.”

  I know it’s stupid, but I want to fill that red space up. I want my folder to be the Point Defiance Zoo of folders.

  “You’ve earned one more thing,” Wendy says, grabbing a small white sack from behind a wooden box. She holds it out to me.

  I reach in and pull out a frosted cupcake. It’s got writing on it: Nice work, kid!

  “Wow. You bake this?”

  “I get up a lot earlier than you. And I have the single-serving recipe memorized.”

  “That’s cool. Split it?”

  We’re all quiet and smiles as we eat our cake.

  “I like this, Wendy.”

  “I like this, too, Teodoro.”

  * * *

  At lunch, it’s just me and Tía Luci in the kitchen.

  She offers me some reheated pizza.

  I can’t turn down the offer, or the opportunity to finally grill her about the house. “So you designed this place?”

  “I did. What do you think?”

  I tell her I like how open the house is—the way the kitchen and dining and living rooms make up one big room. It makes the house feel bigger than it really is. The skylights, the patios off the bedrooms, the windows and glass doors running the whole length of the room, the cactuses and trees straddling the windows inside and out, the way the exposed beams jut out the wall into the sky. All that stuff makes the house feel connected to the outside.

  Luci smiles big, “Where did all that come from?”

  “I don’t know, Tía. The second I saw this house … it was like…”

  “Yeah, Teodoro?”

  “I want to know how you did it.”

  She leaves the table and says, “Follow me.”

  Upstairs, in her office, Luci pulls out blueprints. She boots up her computer and opens a design program. She walks me through her project page. She explains why the house faces the way it does. Why she placed the rooms where she did.

  I ask her if I can start a new design.

  She opens a fresh project window. Shows me how to get going. I plot out a quick footprint and name the file Lopez Farm Stand.

  I start tinkering around with door and window placement. It’s fun. And the more I work on it, the more fun it is. I click and drag and pretty soon I’m thinking about Papi’s design for the Captain’s Quarters—how seriously he took it. And I think about us building it together.

  I wanna tell him about this program.

  And I don’t just want to make Tío Ed’s farm stand. I wanna make it great.

  * * *

  I’m awake in bed again, thinking about how well things are going. With Wendy and the work we’re doing. And my conversation with Luci.

  I can’t sleep because Manny’s on his way back from group. I wanna talk to him and I wanna hear that things are going good for him, too.

  When the door finally opens, I act like he wakes me up. And I ask him how it went.

  He says it was fine.

  “That’s better than bad,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “Hey, you think you might take Tío Ed up on his offer someday?”

  He slaps his pillow a couple times. “I dunno, T.” He climbs in and tries to get comfy.

  “Here’s a scenario, Man. Say you take over the farm. And say I don’t get into college, and I got zero job prospects … do you think I could work for you?”

  “T,” he says, “if there are no other workers around, and I get a debilitating disease so I can’t do the work myself, and farm robots still aren’t functional and selling the place isn’t an option, then I’d consider hiring you. After a lengthy application and interview process and thorough reference and background checks, followed by a couple years’ probationary period.”

  “That means the world to me, Manny.”

  A pillow flies in the dark. Nails me in the gut.

  “So that’s how it’s gonna be, Man?”

  “That’s how it’s gonna be.”

  “Then you better check yourself, bro.”

  He laughs at that. I laugh right back.

  “What’s so funny, bro?” he says.

  “You are,” I say. “Funny looking.”

  I get slammed by the pillow one more time. It hurts, but I can’t stop laughing.

  Manny can’t stop laughing. But it’s not like in Florence. This laughing sounds silly and normal. Not manic. It sounds like my brother.

  MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2009

  I’m sitting in the kitchen, alone at lunch, when I hear something coming from down the hall.

  I get up and follow the sound. It’s coming from Tío Ed’s office door.

  It’s Xochitl. She’s singing and playing guitar.

  I knock.

  “Yeah?” she says.

  “You should have heard Manny last night. He’s back, Xoch. He’s—”

  The door opens. She pokes her head out. “You gotta drop it, T.” Her smile is so big it looks like it’s gonna pop off her face.

  “He was hilarious. He was joking and laughing and—”

  “I know, T. You should hear him talk when we’re working. But it’s too new, so you can’t go around saying stuff like—”

  “He’s a human being again. He’s really—”

  “T, I need you to do two things. One: Shut up. And two: Find some wood, and knock on it. Now.”

  I knock on wood.

  “When stuff is good,” she says, “enjoy the hell out of it. But don’t ever say it, dumb-ass.”

  “Okay. I’m not ever gonna say, Thank you for making this all turn out great.”

  “Good. Now get outta here.” She closes the door.

  I wait till she starts strumming again.

  I poke my head back in. “This what you been doing at lunchtime?”

  “Good-bye, T.”

  “That song sounds great. Whose is it?”

  “Love you, T. Get out.”

  * * *

  It’s before dinner. The coast is clear, so I sneak back into the office.

  See, when I was in there earlier, I noticed two things that made me real curious: a GarageBand window on the laptop screen. And a microphone and headphones sitting on the desk.

  The headphones are still there. I put them on. I run my finger across the track pad. The window pops right up.

  Xochitl would kick my ass for this, but … I press play.

  The song starts with slow finger-picked, folk-country guitar. Then her voice.

  Thank you, Sal, you got us this far

  We needed you, you were a good old car

  I’m singing this song ’
cause I got to say

  I’m so damn sorry we treated you that way …

  I’m shaking by the end. My guts are churning. Because her voice. And those lyrics that put me right back in the desert. Back on the road.

  I click and drag the track window outta the way. There’s a folder called Road Trip Songs. I click on that. There are more music files. I wanna open them all. I need to hear these songs.

  Footsteps tap on the tile hallway.

  I click out of the files and reposition the track window in the center of the screen and set the headphones back on the desk.

  And I get the hell out, thinking people have to hear that song. Somebody’s gotta hear my sister sing that song.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 2009

  I’m at the wheel of Tío Ed’s red Dodge pickup. Wendy’s riding shotgun on a hot date to the county dump.

  We take a right off Ed’s property onto Valley Drive. The green of the farms and the pink mountains and popcorn clouds … It’s like we’re in a painting. And somehow, after only a week down here, it’s starting to feel normal. So is Wendy sitting real close.

  So is this feeling that I can tell her just about anything.

  “Wendy,” I say, “I been thinking about my essay for U-Dub.”

  “That’s great. Lay it on me.”

  “First, though, I want to be an architect.”

  “Wow,” she says. “Really?” And she asks me when I figured that out.

  “It’s been a few days,” I say. “Luci showed me the program she used to design the house. I been messing around with it, plotting out the stand. I think I finally got our hinged frame units worked out.”

  “Okay,” she says. “That’s cool.”

  But she doesn’t sound so excited. So I try again. “I wanna design houses. Like Luci and Ed’s house. I wanna make people feel like their house makes me feel.”

  The look on her face. It’s like she’s not understanding.

  So I tell her about our house from when we were kids. Something about it made you feel like it was there to protect you. Like, embrace you. And I tell her about the big box house. It was huge. But it made you feel the opposite of embraced. I talk about how dark and demeaning the rental is. And I tell her about Papi designing the Captain’s Quarters. I think that’s what got me started. And seeing Luci’s house … and fixing up the stand …