When Tito Loved Clara

by Jon Michaud

  Thomas had served on a team that digitized paper resources, turning card catalogs, vertical files, and corporate archives into databases searchable through Web interfaces. His team worked for insurance brokerages, law firms, and newspapers on large-scale projects, involving the scanning of hundreds of thousands of pages and the assembly of complex relational databases. Clara, who managed the library at a medium-sized law firm in Newark, occasionally peeked at the work Thomas brought home with the same bemusement she felt when happening upon a piece of twelve-tone music on the radio or a chemical formula on the Internet. She sometimes felt that her rather traditional library career was lacking by comparison, a Victorian scrivener next to Thomas’s twenty-first-century cyberman—at least, she did until her husband was laid off.

  Losing his job, he seemed to lose his confidence. She feared that he had been too much defined by his career and not enough by his family, that one day, when he took off his shirt, she would discover that he was made of binary code. It was her hope that having Deysei in the house would somehow galvanize him. He’d been withdrawn of late, but he was, for the most part, a good father to Guillermo, and having a second child to parent might coax further engagement from him.

  Clara waved at him as she pulled into the driveway. Thomas waved back. Yunis looked over at her and, in a voice not loud enough to be heard by Deysei, said, “Sis, we got to talk.”

  “Right now?” said Clara.

  “Right now,” said Yunis.

  Thomas had come around the side of the house. He opened the back of the van. “How’d it go?” he asked.

  “Fine,” said Clara. “Deysei, why don’t you help your tío take your things into the house?”

  Thomas appeared to get the subtext. “Yeah, I’ll show you your new room,” he said with stagy enthusiasm.

  “OK, Tío,” Deysei said, pulling the white buds from her ears and getting out of the van. She looked warily back at her mother.

  Clara and Yunis watched them go into the house through the back door. Clara had wanted to be the one to show Deysei her new room, the room that had, until a month ago, been set up as a nursery for the baby she and Thomas had lost the previous year. It was now an impersonal space, with no trace of its former intended use—a queen-sized bed, a chest of drawers in which they’d stored linens, and a closet where Thomas had kept his suits back when he had a job. It was the only room in the house without something on the walls. Deysei would have a clean slate.

  “What is it?” Clara asked her sister once Thomas and Deysei were inside.

  “You ain’t gonna believe this,” said Yunis. “But my daughter is pregnant.”

  Clara drew a breath and nodded her head. The news did not completely surprise her. It wasn’t that she’d somehow anticipated her sixteen-year-old niece entering her household knocked up; it wasn’t that she thought of her as promiscuous or careless; it wasn’t that she believed Deysei was doomed to repeat her mother’s mistakes (Yunis had given birth to Deysei when she was seventeen). It was merely that, lately, she had come to expect such news—the unpleasant, the inexplicable, the complicating. Every day, she readied herself for the latest in what seemed to be a widening circle of troubling developments—job loss, miscarriage, now teenage pregnancy.

  She realized that Yunis was trying to read her reaction, waiting for her to say something. “Let’s go get some lunch,” Clara finally said.

  “Lunch?” said Yunis.

  “Yes. Wasn’t that the plan?” she asked, deadpanning. “Lunch and then the airport.”

  Yunis shook her head. “You bugging, Sis. This is serious.”

  “I know it’s serious,” said Clara, “but she’s not having the baby today is she? And anyway, shouldn’t we include her in this discussion? Isn’t she the one who’s pregnant?”

  Yunis looked at her with complete bafflement. “All right. You want to have lunch? Let’s go have lunch.”

  Clara was buying a little time, time to think about what this meant. They would go to Church’s, a soul food restaurant on a bleak stretch of Springfield Avenue near the on ramp to 1-78, with quick access to the airport. It was her favorite place in Millwood to go when she needed comforting. Church’s was where they’d gone after Thomas lost his job and Church’s is what Clara had wanted after the latest miscarriage. It was the only food in town that made her feel like her mother’s cooking did, a menu featuring fatty hunks of pork, crisp fried chicken, heavy starches, and vegetables boiled to mush. She called Thomas and Deysei downstairs and told them what the plan was. On their way out the door, she took her husband into the mud room and gave him the news.

  “Is she going to keep it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess we’re going to talk about it at lunch.”

  “My God,” he said. “Well, it’s ironic, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “All the trouble we’ve been having . . .”

  “Yeah, watch me die laughing,” she said, and they went out to the Odyssey, where Deysei and Yunis were waiting.

  It was a short, tense trip to the restaurant. Thomas drove. Clara was in the passenger seat, looking out the window, woolgathering; Yunis in the first row behind them, sullen; and Deysei all the way in the back, the most animated of the three women. She had her hood down, but the iPod buds were in her ears, her chin jutting ever so slightly to the beat. Thomas left the radio off and cheerily asked Yunis a series of questions to which Clara was sure he already knew the answers: What time is the flight? (4:05.) Who’s meeting you in the D.R.? (Tío Modesto.) Do you need to get anything before you leave? (Of course.) This effectively passed the time until they got to the restaurant.

  Inside, Church’s looked as unprepossessing as the street scene outside. Most of the business was takeout; the interior was dominated by a long red counter. There were four plastic patio tables with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and beach umbrellas—garden furniture brought indoors. To add to the effect, strings of fake ivy climbed the walls near the tables. On either side of the counter were cork boards with photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Church and their daughter, Rose Mary, along with newspaper reviews of the restaurant, including one with the headline BEST RIBS IN ESSEX COUNTY. It was barely noon, and though they were the first customers, the place smelled like food—like grease and barbecue sauce and boiling cobs of corn. Behind the counter was Mrs. Church herself, a slow-moving, good-humored woman who was given, Clara had noticed, to narrating her own actions.

  “Got some customers,” she said as they entered. She handed each of them a folded paper takeout menu. “Have a look,” she said. “Tell me what Edwin and I can make for you today.”

  They perused the offerings but there was no doubt what their order would be: chicken and ribs, rice and beans, corn and collard greens.

  “I’m not hungry,” Deysei said, pulling out her earphones and winding the cord around her pink iPod. She put her menu back on the counter.

  “The food is great here,” said Thomas.

  “You’ve got to eat,” said Yunis.

  “I’m not hungry, Mami,” said Deysei again and went to sit at the nearest table.

  “ Dios mío,” said Yunis. “You’re not in Washington Heights now, baby. You can’t just walk to the corner and get a slice whenever you feel like it.”

  “I know, Mami. I’m. Not. Hungry.”

  “Ayuda me,” hissed Yunis, looking at Clara.

  They gave their orders to Mrs. Church, who shouted each item to her husband before going back to help him in the kitchen. Then they joined Deysei at the table. As soon as they were seated, Clara spoke up. “Your mom told us, Deysei. Is it true? When was your last period?”

  Deysei looked first at Clara and then at Thomas. She was not used to having a man present during such discussions—Clara had almost asked Thomas not to come. But if he was going to be a kind of stepfather to Deysei, he needed to be a part of this discussion.

  “Six weeks,” she said.

  “Have you taken a pregnanc
y test?” Thomas asked. That was her husband, thought Clara, always seeking the empirical.

  “Yes, Tío,” she said, and glanced at her mother.

  “I made her,” said Yunis. “Last night. She didn’t want to. But I knew something was going on. It had been too long since she took one of my pads.”

  “So, you haven’t been to a doctor yet?” said Clara.

  Deysei shook her head.

  “OK,” said Clara. “We’re going to get you to a doctor this week. I have a good OB.”

  Deysei nodded, not saying anything. She looked like a framed corporal facing a military tribunal—frightened but hopeful of exoneration.

  “Does the father know?” said Clara.

  Yunis interjected. “She won’t tell me who the damn father is. It’s probably that fool Eduardo. That moron has been following her around for months. ‘Hey, baby. Hey, baby.’ I told you to stay away from him.”

  Hidden beneath her overalls and her hoodie, Deysei had the kind of rounded, big-boned, heavy-bottomed body most Dominican men loved. Clara, who was skinny by comparison, could tell it was a burden for her niece and, surely, a big reason for her choice of attire. “Does the father know?” she asked again, ignoring her sister’s outburst.

  Deysei’s face contorted as she tried to keep the tears back. She shook her head.

  “It’s all right,” said Clara, and put her hand on her niece’s cheek. “It’s OK.”

  “God damn it. It’s not all right,” said Yunis. “How can I leave now? How can I go to D.R. now, like this? I can’t leave her with you.” And Clara saw that this relatively minor inconvenience—missing her flight, delaying her escape—not the larger issue of her daughter’s pregnancy, was irking Yunis.

  “Let’s all try to stay calm,” said Thomas, to which Yunis rolled her eyes.

  “Do you want to tell us who the father is?” Clara asked. She put her hand on Deysei’s and squeezed.

  Deysei shook her head.

  “Sis, you’re being way too nice. You can’t ask her. She’s got to tell us. You’ve got to demand.”

  “Now isn’t the time,” said Clara. She looked over at Thomas. He in turn was looking at Deysei intently—as if he were the father and about to be blamed for all of this.

  Clara continued: “Deysei, sweetheart. You don’t have to tell us the father’s name, but there are two questions you’re going to have to answer before too much longer. The first is, are you going to tell him? The second is, do you want to keep the baby?”

  Deysei appeared overcome by the magnitude of these questions. She covered her face and began to weep.

  “Why you crying?” said Yunis. “This ain’t nobody’s fault but yours. If you hadn’t been screwing around there wouldn’t be anything to cry about.” Clara now regretted suggesting they go out to lunch. Her hope had been that a public venue would keep the tone of the discussion civil. She hadn’t expected the place to be so empty. It was August. Everyone was somewhere else.

  “Yunis!” said Clara. “Don’t be so hard on her. It’s too late for that now. You did the same thing when you were her age.”

  “Yeah, like I was the only teenage mother in New York,” said Yunis.

  “All right, all right,” said Clara, holding up her hands, wanting to get off that subject. “Look, there’s no reason you can’t go to Mami’s today, as long as Deysei is OK with that. There’s still a couple of weeks before school starts. We don’t have to decide anything right now, except whether you’re going to get on the plane this afternoon. And if you don’t get on the plane, Mami’s going to wonder what’s going on.”

  “I’ve got to tell her.”

  “That’s up to you,” said Clara.

  “Please don’t tell Abuela,” said Deysei, wiping her nose on a paper napkin. “Please don’t tell her, Mami.”

  “Wow. She’s going to be a great-grandmother,” said Thomas. “And she’s not even sixty yet, is she?”

  “No,” said Clara. She hated the fact, hated every stereotype it conformed to, but it was true.

  “My mother was almost sixty when Guillermo was born,” said Thomas.

  “OK,” said Clara.

  “Shit,” said Yunis. “Mami’s going to flip. All right. I ain’t gonna tell her until we decide what we’re going to do.”

  “You mean until Deysei decides,” said Clara.

  Yunis looked at her daughter. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Mrs. Church emerged from the kitchen door with a basket of biscuits and a pitcher of iced tea. “You look hungry,” she said. “I got food for you. A lot of good food. Edwin has outdone himself today. I’m bringing it now. Here I come.”

  “Let’s eat,” said Clara. “We have a plane to catch.”

  CLARA HATED AIRPORTS. It was her conviction that the airport experience was a fair analogy of what awaited her immediately after death—that her credentials for the afterlife were more likely to be inspected by someone who dressed like an airline attendant than a pre-Raphaelite archangel and that the Pearly Gates would probably resemble customs and immigration more than the entrance to an upscale retirement community. As she pulled into the short-term parking lot for Newark Liberty Airport’s terminal A, she recalled a flight to the Dominican Republic she’d taken the summer between college and library school. She was going there to be feted by her mother, to be shown off like a prizewinning show dog, the first in the family to get a degree. Half an hour into the flight, the pilot had announced that they were turning the plane around and going back to New York. There was something wrong with one of the engines—or at least the possibility of something being wrong with one of the engines, the announcement wasn’t clear. The pilot said that it was nothing to be concerned about, that the other engines could take the weight of the plane in the event one failed. They were just being careful. Clara’s reaction to this announcement was emphatic disappointment. “No!” she said aloud, drawing stares from her fellow passengers. Her disappointment was not because of the lengthy delay that was sure to follow, but rather because she thought of air travel, like death, as irrevocable. From the moment the ticket was purchased, the die was cast. It was partly for this reason that she refused to entertain the idea of Yunis not going to D.R. It was fate, fate that Deysei would become her responsibility, fate that Clara would learn that her niece was pregnant the same week that a doctor had told Clara that she might not be able to have another child.

  There had been little talk in the Odyssey since they’d stopped at the CVS on Springfield Avenue. Thomas had parted company with them at Church’s, walking home to meet Guillermo off his summer-camp bus. The iPod buds were back in Deysei’s ears, isolating her as firmly as a language barrier. Meanwhile, Yunis had spent the drive to the airport making last-minute phone calls to her friends and associates in New York and Santo Domingo. While she talked, she distributed her purchases into various pockets of her purse and her carryon bag as if trying to hide something. Clara had left the radio off and driven in silence, eavesdropping on her sister. There were buried motives for everything Yunis did. There was always an angle, always a scam, and Clara hoped to overhear something that would help her understand more fully what her sister was up to in running away to their mother’s house and abandoning her daughter. From the beginning, the decision had seemed impulsive to Clara, but that was how it went with her sister. Plans were anathema. Yunis’s cell phone conversations left Clara unilluminated. They were mostly business—making sure that the woman she’d sublet her apartment to was still planning to move in the next day and reminding Tío Modesto that he was supposed to pick her up at the airport. “I hope you got those Presidentes on ice, 'cause I’m thirsty already and I ain’t even on the plane yet!” she said, switching off her phone.

  They parked and found a cart to transfer Yunis’s luggage into the airport. Entering the terminal, Clara felt it—the hollow chill of the place. Because they were late, there wasn’t much of a line at the checkin. A family of panicked, abrasive Dominicans ahead of them were squabbling with
the agent about the weight of their gargantuan bags. Meanwhile Yunis was delving again through the contents of her purse.

  “I hate this e-ticket shit,” she said. “You remember when you used to get your ticket in a nice plastic wallet? Like a diploma or something? Now it’s these fucking printouts.”

  Every event in her sister’s life was like a scene out of a telenovela: Days of Our Yuniverse. Maybe it really was best for everyone if she just went away.

  “Here you are, you son of a bitch.” From her bag, Yunis pulled a crumpled piece of paper with the Yahoo! logo on top.

  “You got your passport, Mami?” asked Deysei.

  “Yeah. I got both. Dominican and American. Nobody’s going to give me no trouble today. Where are they?” She rooted once more in her purse, as if to pull a loose thread from the lining. Her bag fell from her hands and spilled half its contents across the hard, shiny floor.

  “Fuck!”

  “Last call. Santo Domingo. Last call,” said one of the attendants behind the counter.

  “Wait! That’s me!” shouted Yunis. Clara and Deysei squatted down to help her gather her belongings. Clara picked up a lipstick, an envelope, and a photograph of a man she’d never seen before, a young Dominican in a muscle shirt and a black Yankees cap, palm trees in the background. Perhaps he was the real reason behind Yunis’s departure. She handed the items to her sister, who was yelling, “Santo Domingo! Right here!”