He knew which piece to play.
lourde s
Eggs/milk/coffee/bacon/cheese/
bread/tortillas/lettuce/tomatoes/
flour/sugar/oatmeal/baking powder/
ground beef/chicken/fideo/tomato sauce/onions
On most days she didn’t mind the lists, the shopping, the er-
rands, the getting out of the house, the time to be alone, the sitting in the car before and after, listening to a song or two on the radio. But today her husband had said something as he walked
out the door. “Try not to spend so much.”
“It’s food,” she said.
“Just try,” he said.
He got that way, sometimes, that man, Octavio, her husband,
that man whom she knew and did not know. Yes, he got that way.
Got worried. About money. Not that they were poor. Not that
80 l t h e d a y t h e w a r c a m e they were rich. But he worried. Sometimes he mentioned the
word retirement. She hated that word, had uttered it out loud as she washed the dishes, wondered about where that word came
from. Charlie had asked her about it once as it slipped out of her mouth. Look it up. Charlie had run to the dictionary: withdrawn from the business of public life. She’d nodded. Yes, it means that your father doesn’t have to work anymore. She remembered the curiosity in Charlie’s eyes and his editorial comment. But it also means this: seclusion, privacy. He’d smiled. I think Dad ’s already retired.
“Oh, Charlie,” she whispered. “Oh Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.”
She shook her head. “Oh, shit! To hell with retirement.” Octavio was only fifty-four. Not old. But ever since he’d introduced that word into their house, he got that look in his eyes. She hated that look. The accusation. The wife who did nothing but spend.
The wife who understood nothing of work and money. In six
years, I’ll be turning sixty. And in six months she would be turning forty-five. There was time. For her. Nursing school. The thought entered her head. No, didn’t enter, had never left. Becoming an actress, that had left. Becoming a professor of letters, that had left. Becoming a nurse, that had never left. She’d be working in a hospital by now. Octavio’s objections would not have stopped her.
But there was the fact of her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law.
A fact. A hard and beautiful fact. Most days she didn’t mind the sacrifice. Except when he said things: Try not to spend . . .
She walked to the frozen food section, selected a gallon of ice cream and a frozen apple pie. Octavio hated frozen food, hated, hated it. She stormed over to the vegetables and looked over the avocados. They were expensive, try not to . . . She put four of them in the basket. Bread/milk/eggs/bacon—dammit I hate this, all of this!
“Lourdes, you’re scowling.”
She put the avocados in the basket. “Avocados. They’re ex-
pensive.”
lourde s l 81
“You were scowling about avocados?”
“No.”
Sylvia smiled at her. “Were your ears ringing?”
“Why?”
“My mother was taking you to task last night.”
“About what?”
“Gustavo.”
“Gustavo?”
“She holds you responsible.”
“Because he doesn’t go to Mass?”
“You’ll burn in hell.”
“I’m sure I will. But for that?” She laughed. “And to make
matters worse, I let him wear his hair long.”
“Yes, exactly. And you allow him to wear that black arm-
band.”
“Black armband. Who does he think he is? What does he
think he’s doing?”
“And where’s his mother?”
“His mother? Well, I wash that armband, sometimes, you
know?”
Sylvia laughed.
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’ll tell my mother it’s clean.”
“I use Tide.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Why doesn’t Octavio get the blame?”
“He’s not responsible.”
“Why not?”
“Women raise children.”
“And men, what do they raise?”
“Crops.”
“Right. So women get the blame.”
“And if Gustavo becomes a doctor?”
82 l t h e d a y t h e w a r c a m e
“Octavio will get the credit.”
“Right. I see. I don’t like your mother’s logic.”
“She hates herself. Or just other women. She says Gustavo
probably has lice.”
They laughed.
“It’s not funny.”
“No, Lourdes, it’s not funny. But what am I going to do with
her? Shoot her?” She shrugged. “Let’s have coffee.”
“The ice cream will melt.”
“Screw the ice cream.”
Lourdes shrugged. “Well—”
“Come gather round people—”
“Are you singing?”
“I love to sing.”
“I hate Bob Dylan.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do.”
“Nobody hates Bob Dylan.”
“He can’t sing.”
“I love that song.”
“The song is fine. Just don’t sing.”
“Okay. I won’t sing. We’ll have coffee and I’ll tell you all about my husband. How if he hadn’t died of a heart attack, I was going to leave him.”
Lourdes looked at her but said nothing. She always made an-
nouncements like that, brought up serious topics by introducing them as jokes. She hated that habit.
“What’s that look on your face?”
“Why?”
“Why? Why was I going to leave him? I thought you didn’t
like him.”
“That’s not the point. I wasn’t the one who was married to
him.”
lourde s l 83
“The why’s still on your face.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“Because I’m thirty-seven years old.”
“And?”
“Because I married him when I was seventeen.”
“And?”
“Because he was a beautiful gringo and God knows I like
gringos. Because he seemed sad and I thought I could fix what
was wrong with him.”
“We’re getting closer.”
“You asked what men raised? In my house, the man raised his
fists.” Her lip was trembling. “And you know why else I was going to leave him? Because our oldest son enlisted to please him. And shit, Lourdes, he’s gone AWOL.”
It was strange and beautiful, all that pain in her voice. Lourdes nodded softly. “Let me put the ice cream back.” And the apple pie too. She smiled. She could see Sylvia was fighting back her tears.
“Let’s have some coffee.”
Sylvia nodded. “You can’t let Gustavo go. Lourdes, if they call him, you can’t let him.”
She placed her hand on Sylvia’s shoulder. “Let’s have coffee.”
“He’ll go to jail when they find him.”
She grabbed Sylvia gently by the arm. “Come on. Let’s get
out of here.”
“You think he’s a coward?”
“Men who go AWOL, they have to be brave. I’ve always
thought that.”
Sylvia looked at Lourdes, tears running down her face. “You
really believe that?”
“Yes. I really believe that.”
adam
You were eighteen.
You didn’t know what you were supposed to do with your life.
Except that you wanted your life to matter. You saw your father waste away into nothing. You saw him live his days as if they
n
ever mattered. You tell yourself you will not throw your life away as if it were nothing more than a wadded up piece of paper.
Your life will matter. That is why you enlisted.
You did not enlist because they were going to take you any-
way.
You did not enlist because you were a true believer.
You did not enlist because you were patriotic.
You did not enlist because you were political. What the hell
was that, anyway?
You wanted to go. To fight. To be in a war. A war that could
be yours. You did not join because you wanted to save America.
adam l 85
You did not even join because you were going to win the war. It was the fight that mattered.
You wanted to be a man. You were eighteen.
This was the test. You knew you could pass the test.
Politics was nothing. Men who made laws were nothing to
you. Just as you were nothing to them.
You wanted a gun and a uniform. And a chance.
So you go and get trained. And the men who train you tear
you down. Tear you down until you are nothing. And slowly,
slowly, build you back up again. And then you understand that
you belong to something bigger than yourself.
You are stronger, more beautiful than you have ever been.
o c t avio
Better early than late. That’s what Octavio told himself as he sat in the car, windows rolled down, the sky as clear and blue as he’d ever seen. The blueness didn’t fool him. He could smell the rain.
He could almost taste it on his tongue. Tonight, it would come, he knew it, lightning and thunder, a real storm. He knew about rain.
He lit a cigarette and took out his file, thumbed through it,
though he knew it by heart. Thorough. He didn’t like overlook-
ing anything, didn’t like surprises. If his life was a city, then there was not one piece of litter on the streets. Everything mapped out perfectly.
He put down the file, took a puff from his cigarette, then let out the smoke slowly. He tried to remember why and how he’d
gotten into this business of insurance. How had curiosity ended up as a twenty-five-year career? Good money, good job, respectable colleagues, respectable clients, good hours, good money,
o c t avio l 87
just right for a man like him, a family man, a man who liked to read, who liked quiet, who liked his words on a page but not his tongue, a man who was good at paper work, a conservative man
who could be trusted. A fine thing to be trusted. An insurance man, yes, but a special kind of insurance with special clients, and getting more lucrative every year. Insurance for doctors. Liability.
The word that fed his family. Who had thought of that? Insur-
ance for clients who always paid up. Brilliant.
There would be a bonus at the end of the year. There had
always been a bonus.
His list of clients had grown longer. He didn’t mind the Sat-
urday morning appointments, the meetings after-hours. He liked doctors, mostly; well, at least respected them. Some of them drank.
Some of them were kind. Some of them weren’t fit to be around
other people. He knew that. He could see it. But, mostly, they were like anybody else. And Dr. Hallbecker, he was one of his oldest clients, had referred him to others, a good man, liked to talk.
The business part of their appointment would last twenty
minutes. But their meeting would last more than an hour—may-
be longer. He would listen patiently, the list of complaints about those goddamned lawyers and the patients who refused to take
his advice and his bad second marriage and if he’d known he
would have stuck with the first one but at least this one was beautiful and knew enough to keep her mouth shut in public and
wasn’t marriage like an interminable war and Octavio, I’m glad as hell I wasn’t born Catholic, no offense, but that divorce thing . . . Or maybe today he’d talk about his stint in Korea. I was just a young medic. Cut my teeth there. . . . He always had a story about Korea.
He didn’t mind the stories about the war.
Dr. Chesbrough. A good man. A pain in the ass. Unhappy.
But a good doctor. But spoiled too. Liked to be deferred to. Doctors. They were all spoiled and they all complained about money, and they all had too much of it.
88 l t h e d a y t h e w a r c a m e But he had a good job, didn’t he?
But didn’t he hate it? God, it was true. He hated it. Bored
him. Twenty-five years. Jesus Christ on a cross. Twenty-five
years. What had happened to his life? What had happened to
the young man who’d wanted to become an attorney? What had
he told himself ? What had kept him from packing his bags and
leaving for law school, his acceptance letter now lost somewhere among his old letters in the basement?
You couldn’t put your heart in a basement.
And whose fault was it anyway? And what the hell. It was
a good life. He had nothing to complain about. He provided.
His children had never wanted for a thing. Didn’t that count?
Didn’t that matter? Everyone had to swallow a piece of their
heart. Everyone had to chew on a stone sometime and pretend
it was bread.
He looked at his watch.
He saw Dr. Chesbrough’s car pull into the parking lot.
He stepped out of his car with his briefcase. He took a deep
breath. You couldn’t tell by looking at the sky, but it would come, the rain. He was certain of it.
He was good with doctors. And good, too, at predicting rain.
g us t avo
Your book. You forgot.”
Gustavo turned around and stared at the familiar face. For
a second, just one second, the face seemed young. And then it
disappeared, that young face, replaced by the face he saw six days a week.
Mr. Ortega waved a book in the air and repeated, “It’s yours,
yes?”
Gustavo nodded, walked toward him. “Yes. It’s mine.”
Mr. Ortega studied the book, then studied Gustavo’s eyes.
“What does it say?”
“It’s just a book.”
“¿San Agustín?” That question in his eyes.
Gustavo nodded.
“It’s good. You read the saints.”
Gustavo shrugged. “Yeah, they all had long hair.”
“Wise guy.”
90 l t h e d a y t h e w a r c a m e
“Yeah. That’s what I am.”
“Gringos, they’re wise guys. Don’t be like the gringos.”
“I can’t help it.”
Mr. Ortega shook his head. “Agringados todos.”
Gustavo hated that accusation. Of becoming just like the
gringos. He didn’t get him. He was just like his father—that
whole generation—they wanted their sons to stay Mexican. Yet
they wanted them to love America, absorb its history, its customs, fight in its wars, fit in, belong, speak English perfectly. And when you fit in and were as American as you could possibly be, they turned around and hated you for it. He smiled. “I’ll never be a gringo. I’m a Chicano.”
“Chicano? That’s bullshit. Don’t start with that shit.”
“Okay,” he said. “But if I’m not a gringo and I’m not a Mexi-
can, what the hell am I? I’m a Chicano, that’s what.”
Mr. Ortega handed him his book, a sign he didn’t want to
have this discussion. “What does it say, this book?”
He knew the real question. Why are you reading it?
“There’s things in it,” he said. “Things about Chicanos.”
He laughed. “Wise guy
.”
“Yeah. Agringado.”
“I’ve seen you reading it when you eat your lunch.”
“I like to read.”
“That’s good. Where did you buy the book?”
“I borrowed it from my father.”
“Your father, he reads?”
“Yes.”
“It’s his book?”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t leave your father’s books lying around in a ga-
rage. Have respect.”
Gustavo nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You like the book?”
g us t avo l 91
“Yes. It’s fine. I like all kinds of books.” He nodded, smiled at Mr. Ortega. “I like Shakespeare. He had long hair too.”
Mr. Ortega laughed. “I don’t understand you. You listen to
shit rock music and read the saints. You’re crazy. Go home. Bother somebody else.” He took out a folded check from his front
pocket. “Here. You forgot your check. Don’t get drunk. And don’t smoke that marijuana shit.”
Gustavo laughed. “Yes, sir.”
. . . There is one war after another, havoc everywhere, tremendous slaughterings of men.
All this for peace. Yet, when the wars are waged, there are new calamities brewing. To begin with, there never has been, nor is there today, any absence of hostile foreign powers to provoke war. . . .Mas-sacres, frequent and sweeping hardships too dire to endure are but a part of the ravages of war. I am utterly unable to describe them as they are, and as they ought to be described; and even if I should try to begin, where could I end?
Gustavo put down the book. He wondered what his fa-
ther thought about the writings of St. Augustine. Every time
he read a book he always wondered what someone else would
think—maybe because he knew he had a strange way of looking
at things. You translate Augustine differently than Dad and that’s a fact. That’s what Xochil had said. She was probably right. And anyway it was useless to read Augustine. Everything was useless. Some days, he knew exactly what he believed and didn’t
need Augustine or anybody else to give him fucking permis-
sion. Other days, he didn’t know anything, didn’t know what
he felt, what he thought, what he should do. Were wars wrong?
How the hell did he know? Was it right that his country was in Vietnam? Was it? How the hell did he know? No one died and left you God. Xochil loved saying that to him. Are you a pacifist?
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