by Johnny Diaz
I shrug my shoulders, not knowing what to say. I can’t imagine having to take so many pills. They are constant reminders of his condition.
The elevator dings that it has arrived, and we step in and continue the conversation. Soft, instrumental country music plays in the background as we ride five floors down to the lobby.
“Before I leave tonight, I’ll get your prescription, and we’ll see about you joining a gym or taking some sort of class.”
“I’ll be fine, Gabrielito. I will walk more in the development. Don’t worry about your viejo father. I can take care of myself.” Papi grins tightly and stares up at the descending numbers. His right hand begins to shake again, which makes his wrist watch jangle. Papi grabs that hand with his left hand to try and control the shakes. He stands closer to the corner of the elevator as if trying to keep his right hand from my line of vision.
My heart breaks. I try and change the subject, but I can still hear the watch rattle against the elevator’s wood paneling. “So it’s almost noon. You know what time that is?” I rub my stomach. “Don Shula’s Steak House, Papi? My treat!”
“No, my treat.”
“Papi….”
“Gabrielito….”
Again, the father-son draw. I just smile and cave in as we step off the elevator and head back to Miami Lakes for a big, scrumptious lunch.
Chapter 11
AHH, Boston. I’m back home. Well, almost. I am just over the city. One of my favorite things to do as the plane descends into my adopted home is to peer through the oval American Airlines window and gaze at the constellation of triple-deckers and Victorian homes below that dot the Quincy shoreline. I place my right hand under my chin and watch the plane’s wings slice through the puffy clouds that linger over the city like a silk blanket.
The pilot announces that we’re about to land. I sit back and reflect on the entire weekend.
After Papi’s doctor’s appointment this morning, and a trip to Sears, I drove back to my mother’s house, where she cooked another one of her fabulous feasts. Afterward, she dropped me off back at Papi’s place. At the house, she simply waved to him from the car as I got out and kissed her on the cheek. Papi insisted he was fine to drive despite his weakening leg, and he drove me to the airport.
When I visit, our understanding is that Mami picks me up from the airport and Papi drops me off. It’s been our tradition for years, but sometimes I feel like a yo-yo, traversing the complicated world of parents with separate homes in two counties.
Papi promised me that he would take an exercise class per Dr. Steinberg’s orders. At Sears, we looked at various bicycles. Well, at least I did. Papi, who wore a yellow baseball cap, his guayabera shirt, and shorts, was too busy browsing the latest tools in the hardware section. When he returned, I showed him an exercise bike that wasn’t too expensive. As much as Papi fought me on allowing me to pay for the bicycle, I persisted and charged it on my credit card, which is already swollen with debt from my previous trips here and a shopping excursion at IKEA a few weeks ago.
“Gabrielito, this is three hundred dollars! That’s a car payment,” Papi exclaimed as I signed the receipt at the Sears counter.
“Yeah, but you can get a lot of mileage out of this. You can ride it whenever you want, maybe in the mornings for twenty minutes. That will get you going,” I said as we walked toward the shipping area of the store. There, a studly twenty-year-old guy with a crew cut, matching thick dark-brown eyebrows, and toned, tanned arms—typical look for Miami men—fetched the box with the bicycle inside. He carried it to the car, where we loaded it.
During the drive back to his place, Papi and I continued to playfully argue about the purchase and the need for it. Back at his apartment, I struggled to get the fifty-pound box inside. Once I unpacked the bicycle, I assembled it in the living room near the television set.
“You can watch Univision or ESPN while you cycle,” I said as I hopped on the bicycle and pretended I was Lance Armstrong. I bobbed my head left and right like a little kid.
“So you promise me you’re going to do this a few times a week? Remember what the doctor said. You need to loosen your leg muscles. Now it’s your turn, Papi. Get on the bike and test it.”
He sighed and folded his arms before performing my request. “Sí, Gabriel, I will do this. I wouldn’t want your hard-earned dinero to go to waste,” he said as he climbed on the electric bike and slowly pedaled. I stood there and made him exercise on the bicycle for twenty minutes.
I left the apartment with the feeling that I had accomplished my mission for the weekend. I helped Papi get his medication updated. I felt better about being more educated about his medicines. I encouraged him to work out. Hopefully, he’ll continue to do this on his own.
When we said good-bye later on at Miami International Airport, he gave me a big, strong hug. I felt his thin frame during the embrace.
“Call me when you land,” he said
“Of course, I always do. We did a lot today. Maybe that’ll help you sleep better.”
As Dad slowly pulled away from the airport’s curb, I stood on the departures sidewalk where other drivers dropped off their friends or loved ones. As I slung my backpack off my shoulder, I watched Papi and his Chevy recede from my view.
Walking inside the brightly lit terminal, an overwhelming feeling of guilt crept up on me. Thoughts replayed in my head like a compact disc stuck in repeat. I should be here in Miami Lakes. Papi is getting sicker. Mom is in better shape yet alone too. How can I care for my parents as they get older and weaker? This is not going to get easier as they get older. I tried to shake off the thoughts as I printed out my boarding pass at the airline kiosk.
Later, I stood in the snaking line in the security area, where I was required to remove my shoes and expose my socks for the world to see. Although I dozed off for half the flight, those previous thoughts of my parent’s aging resurface as the plane descends into Boston.
The pilot’s voice jolts me from my train of thought. The plane lands, thumping momentarily like a giant, clumsy steel dragon on the runway. “Welcome to Boston, where the temperature is a cool fifty-eight degrees. We know you have your other options in traveling, so we thank you for flying with American Airlines this evening,” the pilot announces with a wicked Boston accent. I’m home, yet so far away from where I’m really needed.
The following morning I’m back to work and standing in front of my class. I fight off memories of the fun weekend—being in my old bedroom at Mom’s house, dancing at Score with the infamous Ted Williams, and having brunch with Papi at Don Shula’s restaurant in Miami Lakes. Whenever I leave South Florida, it’s hard for me to peel myself emotionally from my life there, my old life.
I imagine that I could easily move back home and pick up where I left off, but I do enjoy my job and my life in Boston. The hub remains an educated city, ripe with opportunities in the world of academia. I find that my students are more engaged and involved, taking classes seriously because they (well, their parents or the state) are footing the high tuition costs. In South Florida, where I was a college student myself, I found that we were distracted by the bars, the beach, and the tropical air. Everyone seemed to skate through their classes. Some even came to class on in-line skates. School was a place to pass time when you weren’t going out.
“Class, as I’m sure you’ve noticed in your syllabus, today we have a special guest speaker,” I announce as students scurry in.
I write down the reporter’s name on the whiteboard: Tommy Perez, general assignment features writer at the Boston Daily. “You should have read some of his recent articles online for his visit. This is your opportunity to pick a real reporter’s brain. I want each of you to ask him a few questions. He took time out of his busy schedule to come here, so let’s make the most of his visit,” I say as I slowly pace back and forth. The morning sun softly streams through the wall of windows from the east side of the classroom.
“While we wait for Mr. Perez, I sugges
t you take the time to read the city’s papers online, which you should have, ahem, done already before class,” I say, widening my eyes to emphasize my point.
“How do you know Mr. Perez?” asks Angelica, an aspiring broadcast journalist.
“Well, Mr. Perez interviewed me for a story he wrote a few months back on the lack of bilingual Latino college professors. It turns out he’s from Miami, like myself. Small world, huh? Anyway, I thought you might all want to hear about how he arrived in Boston from Miami. He’s also one of the younger reporters at the paper, so I thought you all might relate to him.”
As I speak, there’s a knock on the door. I glance through the window and see Tommy Perez’s smiling face and waving hand. I open the door. He walks in holding a can of Diet Coke.
“Hey, Tommy, welcome to Covering the News.”
He firmly shakes my hand. “Thanks, Gabriel, for inviting me. I’m happy to help you out. It wasn’t that long ago that I was a J-student myself, so I know how important it is to hear from people working in the industry.”
I introduce him to the class, and he waves at everyone. Tommy then sets down his black Daily messenger bag behind the podium and places his Diet Coke on top of the desk. Instead of using the podium, he casually sits on the desk, his legs dangling.
“So, class… Tommy Perez was kind enough to stop by our class today. He’s a general assignment reporter for the Daily’s Features section, but you already knew that because you read your syllabus, right? Mr. Perez writes about style, pop culture, local TV news, and Hispanic-related arts. Basically, a little of everything. Before joining the Features desk, Tommy worked as a reporter for the paper’s City section, where he wrote about diversity and Boston neighborhoods and how the census figures showed how the city has changed demographically. And before that, he was as a general assignment metro reporter in Fort Lauderdale for the Miami News. Did I miss anything?” I turn to Tommy.
“Yeah, that’s my bio,” he says, tucking one of his curly brown strands of hair behind his ear. It’s one of his habits.
“So without further ado, heeeeere’s Tommy Perez.”
The class claps and welcomes him. I grab a seat in the back of the room as Tommy begins sharing the story of how he broke into the crazy media business. He is positive and cheerful and paces back and forth as he tells his story. My students are completely focused on him. I don’t catch anyone texting under their desks, which happens sometimes in my classes.
“Blame it on my ninth-grade English teacher, who read one of my essays, told me that I wrote very well, clearly, and with a certain rhythm. She encouraged me to join the school newspaper, and I did. I knew right then and there that I wanted to be a journalist. What was I thinking, right?” he tells the class.
I hear some chuckles. I knew Tommy would make a good impression on the students. He’s not your jaded journalist. He remains enthusiastic about his craft, despite all the cutbacks and changes in the industry.
“Then, our high school newspaper mentor, who was an editor at the Miami News, came to our class one afternoon and announced that she needed a high school intern to write a weekly column for her. We all applied, of course. But I ended up getting it. I always believed that my story on condoms—I called them little preventers—gave me the edge,” Tommy continues, burning bright with passion as he recounts his back story. “And that’s when I started writing for the Miami News. I had just turned sixteen years old. I barely had a license. Then….”
Watching Tommy entertain the class with his journalism war stories reminds me of what I could have been. He’s almost a doppelganger, a mirror image of myself. Mow down his thick curly hair and add a few more pounds on him and we could pass as brothers. But more so, he is excelling at the career I left behind to become a professor. I don’t regret my decision, but when I see someone like Tommy, who has a similar background, being Cuban from South Florida and a journalist, I am reminded of what I could have been if I hadn’t quit my newspaper-reporting job in Fort Lauderdale and moved to Boston. Who knows? I could have been a big-time journalist by now. Envy envelops me.
Twenty minutes later, Tommy is still talking about himself as if he was doing stand-up comedy. I gently interrupt and open the session to let students pepper him with their own questions. Tommy takes a sip of his Diet Coke as a forest of hands shoot up.
“Do you ever see yourself writing books or doing another kind of writing?” asks Alex.
“Funny that you should ask that. In between my Daily stories, I wrote a book, and it’s going to be published next spring. Yay!” The class starts whispering and chatting. I hear “wow” and “oh cool!”
“What is it about?” I ask from the back row.
Tommy takes another swig from his soda. “It’s like a Same Sex in the City or like a gay Entourage, you know, that never-ending show on HBO. It’s about three friends who meet up at a bar in Boston called Club Café. It’s a real place, by the way. The book follows their adventures at the bar over the course of a year. They’re basically looking for Mr. Right. But more importantly, the book is about being a newcomer to a city and how having one or two good friends can make all the difference in the world. It’s a fun, light read. Nothing too heavy, but it’s all about Boston. My love letter to the city.”
“And is there a Cuban-American reporter character?” Angelica asks as her chin rests on her hands.
“Yeah, someone like that.” Tommy winks. “Okay, you got me. The main character is a newspaper reporter from Miami, and it’s his first year in Boston. But there’s also a studly Italian guy who is his friend and a reality TV has-been from The Real World.”
“What do you prefer, writing books or news stories?” I ask.
“I like both. They are different forms of writing. One is more third-person objective. My novel is written in first-person, and I can really let loose and write words that I can never get away with in the Daily, like ‘booyah’ and ‘water sports’ and ‘fuck’!”
The class laughs.
“So what stories are you working on now?” asks Tina from the middle row.
“Well, I’m writing a story about a special dance class for people with Parkinson’s. It takes place in Cambridge. The class is designed to help Parkinsonians relax and loosen their muscles, but the dancing also lifts their spirits. You see, a lot of Parkinson’s patients tend to isolate themselves and suffer from depression because of their condition. The class is one of the few in the country.”
I lean forward, intrigued. “How did you hear about that class? When will the story run?” I ask.
Tommy places his right leg over his left and leans his head to the right as he explains.
“I usually get my story ideas from talking to different people when I go out. Sometimes, a previous story begets another one. I had done a story about a yoga class for people with Alzheimer’s or dementia, and after that story was published a few weeks ago, someone e-mailed me about this class for Parkinson’s. I get story ideas when I least expect it. They just come my way. Oh, the story runs in about two weeks. I am just getting started on it, Gabriel.”
I ask the class if there are any further questions. Everyone is quiet.
“Tommy, on behalf of Covering the News, thank you again for visiting our class.”
The class claps.
Tommy flashes his big, wide grin and begins to gather his messenger bag. “If any of you have follow-up questions, feel free to e-mail me,” Tommy says, scribbling his work e-mail on the whiteboard. “And if you want more information about our summer internship program, just let me know.”
I excuse the class, and everyone shuffles out into the hallway. I thank Tommy again and shake his hand.
“Anytime, Gabriel. I love doing these chats. It reminds me of why I got into this crazy business. It recharges me.”
“Well, I owe you lunch or something. I wanted to ask you about the Parkinson’s class. Where does it meet? Does it cost anything?” We casually walk out of the classroom and stand under the fluoresce
nt lights of the hallway as students flow around us. The soundtrack of student chatter echoes throughout the fifth floor.
“It’s at the Jewish community center in Cambridge. There is an admission fee for the class, but it doesn’t cost much. I can send you the information or you can wait until my story runs, because it’ll have all the details. I’m still working on it, though, and I have no control of when my stories run. That’s up to my editors, but I can keep you posted, chico.”
“Thanks, Tommy. I’ll be on the lookout for your article. You’ve given me a lot to think about,” I say, putting my hand on the back of his shoulder. “And thanks again for coming out to my class. The students got a lot out of you.”
“Really? You mean I didn’t scare your students away from journalism?”
We laugh as I escort him to the elevator.
“If anything, you may have inspired them, Mr. Perez.”
As we walk and talk, the whole way, I think about the class and wonder if there is anything like that in Miami for Papi.
Chapter 12
“I’M HERE!” Craig’s voice echoes from my apartment’s intercom.
I punch in the code on my phone and buzz him in. Shortly after, I hear a soft knock at my door. As I open it, I’m tickled by the image. Craig stands in my doorway wearing a light-blue chambray long-sleeved shirt, a snug white T-shirt underneath, brown slacks, and matching boat shoes. His brown eyes are fixed on mine. Looking at Craig makes me feel like a mix of sunshine and honey inside—warm and sweet. Carrying this feeling, I softly kiss him and give him a hearty hug.
“Welcome back to Casa Galan!”
“Thanks, Gabriel. It feels like forever since I’ve been here. I’ve been waiting for our very first official date, señor,” he says, slowly disengaging from the embrace.
I take him by the hand and lead him deeper into the condo. “I know. I’ve had a busy few weeks.” I glance back at him and recall the kisses we shared a few weeks ago here. Oh those kisses! I can still taste him.
