The Cuban Club

by Barry Gifford

  Roy’s father, who died at the age of forty-eight on December 5, 1958, not quite two months after Roy’s twelfth birthday, never spoke to him of his Austrian childhood, nor did Roy ever hear him speak either German or Yiddish, as his father did. (Roy’s grandmother died before he was born.) He became an American, a Chicagoan, and a criminal who was arrested several times for receiving stolen property and violations of the Volstead Act, known as Prohibition, during the years when the sale of liquor was illegal in the United States. His longest jail term was one year. Roy was, therefore, by birth a first-generation American, the son of a gangster who died young. Like his father, Roy eventually made his own way without much help. He wanted to know where his father came from, so he travelled first to Vienna, later to Romania, and found out. What Roy discovered did not surprise him; what did surprise him was that among those who had been closest to him, Roy was alone in his interest: neither his brother nor his mother particularly cared. Roy was not sure why he thought they would.

  For Roy, the question that remained was why, during the twelve years he knew him, his father chose never to share with him any information, let alone details, of his or his immediate family’s pre-American existence. As William Faulkner famously stated, “The past is not dead, it’s not even past.” This was a sentiment with which Roy agreed, and so he hated knowing that he would never know.

  For his seventh birthday, in 1953, on an unseasonably cold and snowy October afternoon in Chicago, Roy’s mother took him and a few of his friends to see the movie Phantom from Space. It was in black and white and the title figure could appear and disappear at will; one moment visible to earthlings, invisible the next. This is how Roy’s father remained in his memory, a kind of phantom, there but not there, and no longer here; not enough for Roy.

  ROY’S LETTER

  Dear Dad,

  It’s almost Christmas of 1962. You died four years ago, when I was twelve. We didn’t talk after you went into the hospital for the last time. Mom told me to call you there and I tried the night before you died but the nurse said you couldn’t talk. The next day Mom asked me why I hadn’t called you and I told her I did but she didn’t believe me. I don’t know why. She was acting crazy maybe because you were dead saying she was going to faint. She went out on a date that night and didn’t tell me you might die. She’s talking about getting married again which would make this her fourth marriage since you and she were divorced. I was five then and didn’t really understand what that meant. By the time I was eleven I understood that it was up to me to take care of myself. You had a new wife and the man my mother was married to and I did not like each other. Anyway, he didn’t last much longer with her. You remember I got a job delivering Chinese food on a bicycle for 25 cents an hour and a dime a delivery plus tips. I’ve been working ever since, mostly in hot dog and hamburger places. I give Mom money every month for her and my sister, who was born a few months after you died. Mom is working part time as a receptionist in a private hospital. I hope she doesn’t get married again until after I graduate from high school. I’ll be gone then and not have to deal with another guy who doesn’t want me around.

  I’m not sure what I want to be yet but I write stories and articles about sports. I’m a pretty good athlete, especially in baseball. I remember all of the times we spent together in Chicago and Key West and Miami and Havana. I wish we could still go to Cuba. I miss the people and the food there. I remember one morning when we were having breakfast on the terrace at the Nacional and there were some very beautiful girls sitting near us and you told me Cuban women didn’t usually have big breasts but their rear ends were exceptional. I liked the weather there even though it got so hot. I won’t live in Chicago after I finish high school. I don’t know if I’ll go to college even though Uncle Buck says I should. He wants me to be a civil engineer like him, or an architect, but I don’t think I will. I just want to go places, to travel everywhere that interests me and see what happens and write about it. You were only a few years younger than I am now when you came to America from the old country. Other than wishing you were still alive I wish I could have known you when you were a boy, that both of us could have been boys at the same time and that we could have been friends.

  Love, your son,

  BARRY GIFFORD has been the recipient of the Maxwell Perkins Award and a Syndicated Fiction Award from PEN; the Ingmar Bergman Chair on Cinema and Theater from the National University of Mexico; the Premio Brancati in Italy; and a Christopher Isherwood Foundation Award for Fiction, among other awards. The film based on his novel Wild at Heart won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and his other film credits include Lost Highway, Perdita Durango, City of Ghosts and The Phantom Father. His books have been translated into thirty languages and his work has appeared in many magazines, periodicals and newspapers throughout the world, including The New Yorker, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, La Nouvelle Revue Française (Paris), The Guardian (London), El País (Madrid), and La Repubblica (Milan). His most recent books include The Roy Stories, Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels, Writers, and The Up-Down. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information visit www.BarryGifford.net.