by M. E. Kerr
“Are you all right? Does your father know it was me?” he asked. “You know, I was right there listening to the doctor, just the other side of the garage.”
“When I came down the stairs, I should have told him you were with me, but everything happened so fast.”
“That would have made things worse, Anna. Then your father would know about us.”
“He has to know someday.”
“Not as a surprise. He would not like to find out that way. Besides, the dog doctor was looking for a fight. He jumped out of his car and came at me. He was not ready to listen, so I ran, but he caught me.”
“Did he hurt you, E.E.?”
“I think I did the hurting. But he took my holy medal, the gift from mi madre. It’s my lucky piece!”
“I’ll find a way to get your medal back. I know it was lucky for you.”
“Like the new moon, huh? Some luck, Anna. Well, is Dalí okay? I prayed to San Antonio for him. San Antonio de Padua. He cares for sick family members and distressed animals.”
I was always surprised when Esteban spoke of praying. Even though I knew my father and Kenyon probably prayed, I never thought of them that way unless they were in church.
“Dalí’s wearing a cast. The doctor’s really not a bad man, Esteban.”
“I’m really not a spic, either.”
“My father sometimes uses that language, too,” I told him, “but he doesn’t mean to offend anyone. He’s just from the old school. They don’t know how offensive it is.”
Esteban said, “They know better, the same way they know to hire men who’ll work for nothing. They claim we do work no white man will do, but that is a lie! What is truth is no white man will work for what we are paid!” He pulled me close to him and said, “I don’t hold you responsible for what your father or Charlie Annan do. We’re our own society. You. Me.”
I thought of that preacher at Casa Pentecostal saying, “We are God.”
The soccer players were calling his name.
“They don’t need me,” he said.
“Play,” I said. “You need them.”
He held me away from himself for a second and smiled. He looked at me as though I was this wise, wise babe, knowing him better than he knew himself. All I really had to know was that soccer was part of our society. Esteban. Me. Soccer.
That was all right with me.
I’d watch.
When it got dark, the cars turned their headlights on and parked circling the field, so the teams could finish the match. Esteban told me to go home, that after the game he would not have time to be with me anyway. He had to try and find Chino, who was still missing after the eviction. Rumors were he was camping on an ocean beach, terrified because years ago the INS had sent his brother home where living conditions were dangerous. Some Colombians were simply disappearing forever.
I went home to find Dad waiting for me, sitting in the screening room watching some old baseball game on TV. He was wearing shorts, which he never wore around Larkin, and a T-shirt saying SUPPORT OUR TROOPS. Dad never wore that around Larkin either. Larkin had been against the Iraq war before it started, and when Dad said he was, too, but he supported our boys, Larkin would get angry. She’d say if he was for them, he’d get them out of there before they were all dead. It was a subject both of them avoided after one shouting match that sent Larkin into the night crying.
My father said, “What are you pulling, Annabel? If you’re not coming home for dinner, how about calling?”
“I didn’t think we were back having dinner every night at seven,” I said. “Half the time you go to Larkin’s.”
“And I let you know. Ahead of time.”
“Yes, you do. It’s hard when I don’t have a cell phone.”
“All right, you can have it back. I’m trusting you’ve come to your senses about Pedro.”
“Esteban.”
Dad shrugged. “Whatever. He was living there in that Ridge Road rat house, you know.”
“How would I know that?”
“I’m telling you. That was the address I had for Dario. And Ramón. When I went down there that Saturday morning to find your friend” (he said the word with as much sarcasm as he could manage), “they all came out like cockroaches in the light.”
“Maybe with what they get paid, they can’t afford our big rents.”
Dad picked up the remote control and turned the set off.
“Annabel, they were all paying some landlord from Montauk $300 each a month. So their landlord was getting about $9000 a month in rent. Why don’t those boys put their Juan Does on a mortgage? Why don’t they buy a place?”
“I don’t know why, Dad.” I knew why. I think Dad did, too. How could they go through bank inspections and all the legal entanglements without papers?
I had made up my mind that soon I would talk with Dad about Esteban. I would ask him to let me make dinner for us, with Larkin there. If Dad could just get to know Esteban, I believed, he would not be so dead set against him.
I wanted to plan it. I had to be sure of the timing. It couldn’t be an evening like this one, with Larkin worried about Dalí and refusing to leave his side. That didn’t go over very big with Dad, who never fancied anything on four legs being featured over him, even if one of the legs was in a cast.
I had an idea that Larkin would help me, too, at the right time. She was a romantic, for sure. I think that really appealed to Dad. Mom and he had become like old shoes, used to each other for years and years. Loving, yes, chemistry, I suppose…but no visible sparks.
I couldn’t remember Mom ever really flirting with Dad. Larkin was always on around him, touching him, calling him her pet names (Kenny was inevitable, I suppose, but Dear Ears? Tootsie Roll? Beauty Guy?). It was a nice gift for Dad, this vamp landing in his life suddenly, making him worry about wearing the wrong shirt or pants.
“I suppose a lot of them are illegals. Of course I hire illegals,” Dad continued. “Sure, some are illegal, but I don’t ask.”
“You’re not supposed to.” I remembered that from Current Events class. Employers couldn’t ask about race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, or disability.
“I wouldn’t ask anyway,” Dad said. “I’m only interested in having them work and stick around. It’s business, that’s all it is. Business is business.”
“Well, the landlord from Montauk is in business, too.” I was sorry I said it. Dad was ready for an argument. I knew that the second he told me Larkin couldn’t see him that night because Dalí needed her. Dad had now turned his back on the TV. He was headed toward the refrigerator, dropping an empty beer bottle into the garbage can by the stove.
He said, “Annabel, I wouldn’t be in that kind of business—taking advantage of people. I pay my muchachos a decent salary. Some of them are raising families on what I pay them, sending money home with some left over. But I’ll tell you something, Annabel, people who are taken advantage of are often people who take advantage, if you know what I mean.” Pop! Another beer bottle top hit the dust.
I said, “I’m beat, Dad. I’m going up to bed and watch a Seinfeld rerun.”
“I like Seinfeld,” he said.
“I want to be in bed when I watch it.”
I knew he was going to make me feel guilty, leaving him alone that way.
I knew he knew it, and he’d make a joke so I wouldn’t feel bad.
“Leave your old man to cry in his beer,” he said.
Thank heaven the phone rang. It was Larkin, because after Dad said Hello, he gave me a wave and then carried the phone down the length of the room, to the couch.
I couldn’t help remembering being on that couch with Esteban under me, calling him Swan Man, smelling his sweat and his sweet breath, neither of us at that moment knowing there were nails in our future, too.
“I was just watching Masterplace Theater,” I heard Dad say. How was he supposed to know it was Masterpiece Theater, that it was never on in summer, and that it was too late to
be on, anyway?
NINETEEN
“GET IN,” KENYON SAID. He was waiting for me in front of the library, driving a new Cooper. Red with the white top down. His graduation gift from Dad. I’d promised I wouldn’t drive until I was eighteen, even though I could have gotten a junior license.
If I wasn’t out on the road, Dad said, that meant one less worry for him. If I kept my promise, said Dad, we’d talk about a secondhand car he’d get me for summers and vacations from college.
Kenyon said, “Dad and Larkin are going out for a lobster dinner, so I thought we could go for a fish fry. Are you free?”
“Yes, Esteban’s working.” I got into the front seat.
“Is he your whole life now or something?”
“Sure, Kenyon. He’s my whole life. I’m never without him.”
“You don’t have to be so sarcastic.”
“Do you realize how little time Esteban and I have together?”
“I think stolen moments make a new relationship all the more intense,” Kenyon said. “Maybe if you could see him every night the way you did Trip, he wouldn’t be—”
I didn’t let him finish. “I didn’t see Trip every night. I saw Trip every night he decided we’d see each other. He wasn’t in love with me, and now I know I wasn’t in love with him, either. I was in love with his boat, his car, the restaurants we could afford to go to—all the superficial stuff.”
“Don’t you miss any of that, Sis?”
“I don’t yet.”
“That’s an honest answer. I was hoping we could discuss this without me saying something gross or something that would make you angry.”
“Why?”
“Because I know you can tell me things you can’t tell Dad. Remember, Sis, I’m part of the team looking out for you. Mom would want that. She’d want me to make sure you’re not getting in over your head.”
“I’m trying not to. It’s different, though, with Esteban. He’s not Trip. He’s not like any boy I’ve ever dated. He really feels the same way I feel about him.”
Kenyon looked so handsome, tall and tan, wearing white shorts, a red T, and a Yankees cap. I had the thought that we looked like some steady couple off for an evening of fun, in a convertible where everyone could see us. How long had it been since that had happened? Maybe I did miss that life a little bit, but what I had with Esteban was unique. I had never seen someone look at me the way he did. I had never felt myself tremble when he just strolled toward me with that look in his eyes.
Kenyon said, “Since we’re on the subject of Esteban, Sis, I have to tell you something. I can’t offer my apartment to Esteban anymore. If Charlie found out, he’d be mad as hell at me for helping a Latino, and also for keeping you and Esteban secret from Dad. It’d all come out.”
“I know. I thought of that. Sometimes I think I should just marry Esteban. I’ll be eighteen next winter. He’d be a citizen automatically, and if we were married, Dad would have to accept him.”
“Marry him?”
“Don’t get excited. That just popped into my head from nowhere. We’ve never talked about getting married.”
“I hope not. That would be a sure way to get him deported if he has no papers. He probably doesn’t.”
“Kenyon, I’m not serious.”
“But be serious about what can happen to your Esteban if he needs identification for any reason.”
“He hasn’t any papers. He’s very vulnerable, isn’t he?”
“Very, honey. There’s something else.” He sighed. He said, “Charlie’s afraid there’s some Ridge Road revenge in the cards because of coming upon Esteban a few weeks ago.”
“He has no idea who it was, Kenyon.”
“But he thinks it was someone from Ridge Road trying to get even. Now he’s stirring things up trying to defeat the hiring hall. That could be trouble too. That’s one issue Dad and he don’t see eye to eye on at all!”
In Seaview a lot of people were sick of seeing Latinos waiting for jobs down by the railroad station. They wanted them to be in a hiring hall. There was a plan to buy the old police station and turn it into a place where they could congregate, where there were rest rooms and where they weren’t conspicuous. Of course, Charlie Annan opposed it. He didn’t want to encourage Latinos to live in Seaview at all. There were plenty of people who agreed with him. Dad didn’t, because he needed Latinos to stay in business.
“Charlie Annan had that idea way before anything happened at Ridge Road,” I said.
“I know he did. But he’s really going to push it now. So Dad and Charlie are going to be at odds,” said Kenyon. “I just thought you ought to know. Not that there’s anything anyone can do about it.” He looked across at me and smiled. “Hey, let’s put this behind us and have a fun evening.”
“There’s just one thing. Can you get Esteban’s holy medal back, Kenyon? Charlie grabbed it when they fought.”
“If there was any way I could, I would. But how would I do that?” Kenyon said.
He drove out to Fish Eddy’s on the highway near Montauk. We took our food to Lookout Point and ate dinner watching the kayaks in the bay on one side, and the huge ocean waves on the other. Kenyon said he knew it was corny to park there, that not many locals did, but it was the one view he’d longed for when he was back at Cornell during one of upstate New York’s winters.
I told Kenyon my plan to have Esteban to dinner one night.
Humongous sigh.
“Good luck!” he said.
“You don’t have to come. Just Larkin and me and Dad.”
“I said, good luck!”
“You aren’t really cheering me and Esteban on, are you?”
“It’s just so much trouble to go through,” Kenyon said. “He’s unskilled and undocumented.”
“All of which can be fixed with time,” I said.
“And if it can be fixed, what happens then? You don’t even look at the college catalogs anymore. I see they’re piled up in the hall at home.”
“When school’s out, it’s hard for me to think about college. I need people around me who are thinking about college.”
“No danger of that now,” Kenyon said sarcastically. “Even if he can become legal, what does that mean to the two of you?”
“I don’t know, Kenyon. I just know we have this chemistry. Right from the start we’ve had it. Remember you taught Mom and me coup de foudre?”
“Mom wasn’t talking about someone from South America nobody knows anything about! Anna B., he may be a great guy; he probably is. But what I’m concerned about is you. You’re getting into something with someone who isn’t accountable. He could be here today and gone tomorrow. Where would that leave you?”
“He’s accountable. He is unless your boss sics Immigration on him.”
“Well, that’s Charlie’s bugaboo. He’s a little crazy on the subject. Yesterday he told me he was composing a petition to stop the library from buying books in Spanish. He said taxpayer money shouldn’t be spent on anything that promotes languages other than English.”
“How do you stand him?”
“He’s a very skilled vet, Annabel. He can do surgery a lot of New York doctors don’t know how to do. And he’s an old friend of our family’s.”
Who wanted to hear accolades for Charlie God-awful Annan? Change the subject, Anna B.
I said, “Kenyon? Mom would like Esteban!”
“What would she like about him, Sis?”
“He’s a believer. She’d like that. He says without God life doesn’t make sense. I don’t ever ask him what sense it makes with God.”
“Don’t start on that subject,” Kenyon said. “Tell me what else Mom would like about Esteban.”
“Give me time to think.”
“You brought it up. I imagined you’d given it some thought. You don’t even know him, Sis.”
“I’m trying to get to know him. It’s not easy with both my father and my brother down on him.”
“I’m not down on him, Si
s. And Dad is clueless about you two. His head is in the clouds, thanks to Larkin. I see he returned your cell phone.”
“Yes, I have it back. Kenyon? Wait until you fall for someone,” I said. “I don’t think you’ve ever been in love.”
“I already have fallen for someone,” Kenyon said. “Her name is Maxine, and she’ll be staying with me for a week, in two weeks.”
When I got home later, Larkin was watching an HBO movie about Jackson Pollack, the abstract artist who put his canvas on the floor and threw paint at it.
She turned it off, and I said, “Larkin, keep watching it. I’ll watch with you.”
“I’ve seen it, Annabel. Poor Pollack. Do you know, before he was famous, Life magazine called him Jack the Dripper.”
“At least he got into Life magazine,” I said.
“That was his beginning.”
Dad was at the kitchen counter on the phone, handling a work emergency, trying to get a crew together for a new job. Even weeks later he was still missing fellows from Ridge Road. Some had left Seaview and some were relocating to a house down near the train station. Esteban was planning to relocate there too.
Dalí was up on the couch, his cast finally off, wagging his tail because I’d entered the screening room.
I thought of telling Larkin that it was Esteban at Dr. Annan’s that night, but I still wasn’t sure yet how much she told Dad. I didn’t want to get Kenyon in trouble, either.
“Poor Kenny can’t ever relax,” Larkin said. “Do you ever cook dinner, Annabel?”
“I cook a few things. Dad likes my meat loaf.” (Of course—Mom’s recipe.) “Has he complained that I don’t cook?”
“No. Your father has nothing but praise for you. It’s my idea that he should come home to a good meal at night. I’d do it if there was any way I could, but I’m mounting a show now.”
“We’ve always managed, Larkin.”
“He’s never been so stressed, though. Now there are rumors Dr. Annan is causing more trouble.”
“Kenyon says he wants the library to stop buying books in Spanish,” I said. “And he’s back opposing the hiring hall.”
“Poor Charlie. Sometimes perfectly nice people get these fixations. Your father says Charlie needs a woman.”
