The Boy: A Novel

by Santoro, Lara

  “I don’t like tomatoes,” Eva said at dinner, and Anna nearly gave her little girl a standing ovation, so in keeping with tradition was the objection.

  “Eat your dinner,” Esperanza said, spearing a fingerling potato and examining it from every angle and in this way confirming the solidity of their arrangement, the fixity of time and space within the narrow confines of their dining room.

  “What did you do today?” Eva asked in her little voice. Esperanza, whom Anna had burdened with a full confession, shot Anna a quick look but said nothing.

  Fork in midair, Anna stared. “What did I do?”

  Eva raised her eyes. “Yes. What did you do?”

  “Don’t ask your mother what she did,” said Esperanza. “It’s none of your business what your mother did.”

  Eva looked from one to the other. “Don’t ask her? She’s my mother.”

  “That don’t mean nothing,” Esperanza said, and in the silence that fell, for the first time since the big move out West, past and future failed to meet in the present. Separated by a crack lengthening with a low lament down the dinner table, the past stood as a monument to clarity and congruity while the future began to twist and turn darkly upon itself like some shapeless thing come to exact some price. What could Anna say? I feasted on a human body? I sank my hands wrist-deep into a human heart and suffered the same encroachment in return? I traced the outlines of a boy’s dragon with my tongue? I died a thousand deaths so I could come back to life?

  “Mom.”

  “What?”

  “I want to know what you did today.”

  Anna looked at Esperanza, whose inspection of the potato was far from over, cleared her lungs, speared her own potato, and said, “I went to the movies.”

  “The movies? What did you see?”

  “What did I see?”

  Eva nodded, her eyes bright.

  “I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

  “Mom.”

  “What?”

  “That movie is, like, a hundred years old.”

  “It was a retrospective.”

  “What’s a retrospective?”

  “When they show old things. They’re showing all the Indiana Jones movies.”

  Eva’s eyes lit up. “Can I go? I want to go.”

  “It was the last one.”

  “But that’s the first one.”

  “They went backward.”

  “Mom.”

  “What?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Esperanza put her fork down. “Who’s coming to Sonic?”

  “Me!” yelled Eva.

  Alone at the dinner table, Anna cradled her forehead with one hand and sat in the pulsating silence of her home, in the whiteness of her empty shell, for a long time before getting up and slowly going to the phone.

  “I’ve just lied to Eva for the first time, Mia, a stupid little lie, but a dirty lie nonetheless. After everything the girl’s been through, you’d imagine I’d spare her the indignity, but there you have it. I’m calling because I want your voice mail to record for posterity that I am not going near that boy again. I’m not going to his place, and I’m not having him over. In fact, I’m not having anybody over. Not even you, Mia. If you were to do a Lazarus and come back from the dead or wherever you are, we’d still have to meet for coffee in town.”

  And she made good. For days all entreaties went unanswered, access was denied to young and old alike. She switched to herbal tea instead of coffee in the morning, she went to the farmers’ market and purchased a forest of greens that she parceled out to her neighbors the next day. She clipped her toenails and sloughed her feet to avoid further censure from her yoga teacher, who had reluctantly relayed a message from a woman so revolted by Anna’s hooves that she’d quit her practice and left the studio in a rage.

  Then Mia called.

  “Back from the dead,” said Anna.

  “What dead? I was in Brazil.”

  “You went to Brazil?”

  “You forgot I was going to Brazil?”

  “I did. How was Brazil?”

  “Full of lovely Brazilians and their lovely children. How’s my angel?”

  “Good. She’s running for president of the dog.”

  “Tell her she has my vote.”

  “I cut my toenails. I sloughed my feet.”

  “That should improve your standing for a while.”

  Anna smiled. They’d started down the ashtanga yoga path together, Mia progressing smoothly to the end of the first series, Anna cursing her way from injury to injury until the final surrender and the humble new beginning. Mia had moved into the second series by then. She had memorized the name of every posture in Sanskrit and added to her repertoire a lengthy final prayer, also in Sanskrit, whose hypnotic, painfully redemptive closure consisted of the word shanti—the peace that surpasseth understanding—chanted three times.

  At first Anna had failed to understand. She had practiced in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Santa Fe, and Taos. The ashtanga studios of America were packed with all-star athletes outdoing each other in the name of yoga. Only in her tiny studio on Morada Lane—a single room where orchids bloomed all year round and silence condensed like matter around human breath—had Anna truly rested in the heart of the practice. To the people who came from out of town to dazzle, to impress, her teacher—a lunar creature with eyes like pools of amber—would say, “Lie down. Find your breath. You’ll be doing better yoga that way.”

  Mia was a curious blend when she’d shown up. She was clearly unconcerned by the performance of others and yet so obsessed with her own that Anna had looked upon her with some suspicion. It hadn’t taken long to figure out that every extra effort she put into the practice was in the service of a religious ritual, an exercise of absolute devotion. She had a good way of putting it, a solid way of putting it. “Without this practice,” she’d say, “I’d be smashing bottles into the wall.”

  Mia had a ridiculously successful marriage, but she also had a thing about Persephone, who was dragged down into the underworld by Hades and there enslaved and raped. Nothing in her childhood suggested exposure to trauma on that level, but Mia was raised on a ranch, in the spare world of horses and cattle, fences and gates, dry manure, constantly rising dust. She was raised in a world where little life moved and where her drawings—pencil first, charcoal later—drew pitying smiles from the women, savage laughter from the men. “You gonna eat that, honey? You gonna day-gest that, baby girl? Get the calories you need to pull that gate shut?” And because she’d loved that world, she’d lingered in it far too long—coming out of it a fury.

  “Look at that idiot, that knucklehead.”

  “Where?”

  “Over by the cash register.”

  It was early in the morning, not long after they’d first met. The coffee shop was full. Anna squinted and eventually brought into focus a relatively benign-looking man in a pert cowboy hat.

  “What did he do?”

  “His wife just asked him for twenty bucks and he said no.”

  Anna took a second look. The man was putting his money clip away. There didn’t seem to be much in it.

  “Here, darlin’,” he said, handing his wife a tall Americano.

  Mia shook her head. “Fucking men,” she said.

  A couple of weeks later, in the same coffee shop, after enduring a leisurely stare from a total stranger for what had clearly been a minute too long, Mia took the man’s cup of coffee and poured it in the trash. The man jumped out of his seat.

  “You got a problem with that?” asked Mia.

  “Yeah, I got a problem with that, that’s my fucking coffee, you crazy bitch.”

  “Didn’t your momma teach you not to stare? No? She didn’t? Well, somebody’s got to teach you not to stare.”

  And maybe six months after that, down in
Santa Fe, at a stage when Anna had begun to physically maneuver Mia away from all potential offenders, including bent-over old men with walking canes, three lads in suits and ties had watched them come in and strategically positioned themselves next to them at the bar. Anna had purchased a drink and kept her eyes glued to it. Mia had turned to one of the men.

  “What are you standing here for?”

  “I was thinking we might strike up a conversation.”

  “Do I look like I’m in a mood to talk?”

  “I can’t tell, honey. It’s kinda dark in here.”

  “Do I look like you can call me honey?”

  The man had cast around for aid. “I guess not,” he’d said.

  “You can call me ‘ma’am.’ And you can leave me the fuck alone.”

  Hence, the yoga practice.

  “Where’s the boy?” asked Mia.

  “In his lair.”

  “Doing what?”

  Anna sighed. “Fumigating, one would hope.”

  “Have you had sex?”

  “We have.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m too old for this shit. I should be sloughing my feet, keeping the peace. Did you really tell me you were going to Brazil?”

  “You booked Corumbao for me.”

  “As I was saying, I’m too old.”

  “Come for dinner. I’m all about caipirinhas these days.”

  In the casual comfort of Mia’s dining room, under the casual spell of her mellow marriage to a man exactly her age, Anna renewed her vow: no commerce with the boy, no matter the cost.

  “Does Richard know?” Mia said, pulling out a cigarillo.

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should tell him.”

  “Are you kidding? He’ll shoot me.”

  “Not if you shoot him first. You seen his last one?”

  “The one with the orange hair?”

  “Blue and white.”

  “You’re behind. The blue-and-white one got the boot.”

  “Why?”

  “She put out her cigarette on his leather couch. She was a Gnostic, an early Christian, and a firm believer in putting out her cigarettes on his furniture.”

  Mia let out a tendril of bluish smoke. “You sure he doesn’t know?”

  “Nah.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “He would have called.”

  Eva was fast asleep later that night, Esperanza in front of the television, when the phone rang.

  “Now?” asked Anna.

  “Now.”

  Richard Strand was in the kitchen making chicken mole, filling the house with the deep, sweet scent of melting chocolate.

  “Have a seat,” he said, and Anna lowered herself onto the same stool of that untroubled night in May, wishing desperately she could turn back the hands of time.

  “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “A shot of vodka. Actually, two. Two shots of vodka.”

  Richard Strand went to the freezer, took out a bottle of vodka, and poured out a double for himself, a thimbleful for her. “Cheers,” he said, and they actually clinked glasses before he pierced her with a stare so cold and resolute that she considered a clean leap out the kitchen window.

  “Jack is my son,” Richard Strand said. “Did you know Jack is my son?”

  “Of course I know Jack is your son.”

  “So what do you think you’re doing with my son?”

  Anna lowered her eyes.

  “Look at me. My son is twenty years old. How old are you?”

  “Richard . . .”

  “Answer the question. How old are you?”

  “Old,” she said sharply, holding his stare. “And you? How old are you? I mean specifically in relation to the half-naked high schoolers I keep seeing around here.”

  Richard picked up a wooden spoon, turned to the melting chocolate. “I’m making chicken mole. My son loves chicken mole,” and in his voice, impossible to miss, were both the yearning and the distance, the unmistakable signs of an impossible pursuit. She drained the vodka as Richard went on stirring, releasing traces of cinnamon and cumin along with his own deep need. For what? thought Anna. For the reconstituted dream? For the exalted return to the place that never was? The boy’s only reference to his father had been short and not particularly sweet, some barbed remark about the number of barely legal girls Richard Strand had installed in his home and in his children’s lives.

  “He came to my house once,” she said softly. “I went to his house once. I haven’t seen him since.”

  Richard Strand turned and glared.

  “I know what went on,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me what went on. I have a son who’s a wreck and a friend who doesn’t give a damn.”

  Anna pulled back, surprised. “A wreck? How could he be a wreck?”

  “He’s a kid, Anna, a kid.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah,” Richard Strand said between tight teeth. “Literally and figuratively.”

  “All right, let’s strive for a degree of civility.”

  “Civility? You call what you did to my son civil?”

  “I didn’t do anything to your son.”

  “You fucked him. You fucked him and you dumped him and you did it knowing that he was my son. How about I send somebody along to fuck your daughter up? How does that grab you?”

  Anna was off her stool before she knew it.

  “Watch what comes out of your mouth.”

  “You watch your hormones.”

  The two stood facing one another until Richard laid a heavy hand on her shoulder and said, “Just talk to him, explain to him. Don’t just drop him like some piece of trash. He’s my son.”

  “Richard, there’s nothing to talk about. He’s twenty, I’m forty-two. End of story.”

  “End of story, my ass. You started it. You wrote the first chapter, you wrote the second chapter. Now write an ending that is respectful of who my son is and how far he’s come.”

  “How far he’s come? Richard, I don’t know your son from a hole in the ground. I have no idea how far he’s come.”

  “Well, find out, why don’t you.”

  “I can’t,” Anna said, fighting a wave of panic. “I can’t be around him, I’m sorry, but it’s not something I can do. Please don’t make me explain. It should be obvious enough.”

  Richard Strand went back to stirring. For a while no one spoke. Then Richard turned to face her. “He needs to hear that. You’re not getting involved with my son again, but he needs to hear that.”

  “Richard . . .”

  “Make sure he hears that.”

  She called the boy, and they agreed to meet at the southernmost coffee shop in town, past the church of Saint Francis of Assisi, where immediately after their move Anna and Eva had spent every Sunday morning between nine and ten—Eva doodling in her red notebook, bored by the priest, Anna staring up at the bruised, bleeding god wondering how someone as badly fucked up as that could lend assistance just then.

  “God will help us,” she kept telling Eva, who’d pierce her with her indigo eyes and say things like, “But if God is in the trees, how can he help us?”

  “Who told you God is in the trees?”

  “My teachers at school. They say God is in the air and in the trees. They say he’s inside me and inside you.”

  “Inside you, maybe.”

  “You too, Mom.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Mom.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Say it.”

  “What?”

  “Inside me and inside you.”

  “Inside me and inside you.”

  “And the trees.”

  “Screw the trees. There can’t possibly be enough to go around.”

  In church, those empty mornings, Anna had the time to revisit the day her life had fallen apart. Like walking through an empty house in the dead time before dawn, she moved from moment to moment as if from room to ro
om—past smoky mirrors, daybeds shrouded in white linen—toward a door and a bed by an open window on which two bodies lay asleep. Time and time again in her memory she stopped at the door, knowing what she would find but not knowing if her heart could take it. Time and time again she went ahead so those pale limbs entwined in sleep could catch fire in her imagination and remind her why she had put a continent plus an ocean between Eva’s father and herself—why there was no going back.

  Years slipped past without a single reference to their desperate departure until one afternoon, on the way to soccer practice, Eva said, “I want my daddy to take me to soccer.”

  Oblivious to the tempest raging in her little girl’s heart, Anna had shrugged.

  “The likelihood is small.”

  “Why?”

  “Your father lives on a different continent.”

  “He lives on a different continent because you left him! You left him and now I don’t have a dad!”

  “Your father cheated on me, Eva.”

  “No he didn’t!”

  “Yes, he did. He cheated on me.”

  “My daddy doesn’t cheat!”

  “No? Go ahead and ask him. Ask him why I left.”

  “Liar! You’re a liar!” her little girl screamed, and out of nowhere, impetuous and wild and absolute in its desolation, came a flood of tears—sobbing so deep and uncontrolled Anna felt like ripping her own teeth out.

  It had never come up again, not once. Like a confession before a priest, the exchange had grown faint and seemed to have left no trace in time.

  Now, the church came into view and impulsively Anna stopped, got out, and galloped toward the door, pulling on the handle with a smile, only to find it locked. She stepped back in disbelief. A locked church was like a turned grave; it spoke of some violation, some desecration, not just the breach of an agreement but a betrayal, an omission bordering on outrage. Resisting the urge to beat on the door with both fists, Anna slid to the ground and sat there, knees against chest, pursuing distant flocks of birds with tired eyes until the moment came, and she got up.

  There was no one in the café, only the boy. He was slumped on a chair like a boxer between rounds, looking at her out of eyes that were impossible to meet. She had rehearsed her speech. It was going to be short and businesslike, drained of emotion, free of apology. But when she opened her mouth not a sound came out. He shifted in his seat and she caught a glimpse of the dragon against the whiteness of his flesh. She’d forgotten how creamy his skin was, how smooth against her own. She had forgotten how beautiful he was, how strong, how tall, and before she could help herself she had a hand on his knee, her forehead on his shoulder. He was rigid at first, cold and unyielding at first, but gradually he turned on his chair so she could slide one leg over his knees and straddle him and their mouths could meet—and they could kiss.