“Don’t you recognize me? It’s your papa, man.”
Jeff closes his eyes. “We appreciate your thoughts, Victor.”
“Listen, there’s stuff we got to talk about.”
“I’m afraid now’s not a good time. As you’ve pointed out, my grandmother just died.”
A silence follows, through which Jeff can almost hear his father scheming. Victor says, “Well, I’m probably dying, too. Cancer.”
Jeff laughs. Brooke’s hands on the counter are still; she watches him, impassive. Jeff half-turns, leans into the receiver, as if to protect her from the conversation. “I can’t help thinking this is a coincidence, Victor. Your calling now.” His grandmother’s phone is equipped with a foam shoulder rest, which Jeff crushes in his hand. With effort he relaxes his grip. “The funeral ended two hours ago.”
“That’s what I’m saying. A death really makes you think about mortality and all that. Man, poor Becky. I’m just saying you might want to see me. It’s my stomach. They say that’s a bad one.”
“What’s this about, Victor? Do you need money?”
“No.” Victor sounds offended.
Jeff doesn’t know why he asked. His father has never asked for money, not even after the divorce. He could tell Victor to screw himself, but part of him is curious to know if his father actually is dying. The man’s history of manipulation doesn’t exempt him from real cancer, Jeff supposes. He wonders if his father’s illness will trigger grief and catharsis, forgiveness and reconciliation. He shudders, then flips to a new page, clicks the pen. “Fine. We’ll say our goodbyes. You still at the same place? Give me your address.”
“No need!” His father’s tone is cheerful. “I’m right out back.”
“What?”
“Just look.” And, indeed, there he is, their father, in the middle of the dry lawn in their grandmother’s backyard. He waves sheepishly, cell phone pressed to his ear. “I could see you two standing there. I almost came in, but I didn’t want to freak you.”
Jeff hangs the phone on the wall but continues to steady himself against the receiver. “He says he’s got cancer,” he says, jerking his thumb at the window. “So make of that what you will.” There’s something almost pleasing in the anger Jeff feels toward his father. He feels beleaguered, wronged, and also energized, because once again he has to take charge.
Brooke turns and shrugs her hunched shoulders, crossing her arms over her breasts, matching Jeff’s show of nonchalance. Her whole life she’s had bad posture; she even slumped as a defeated little toddler. Outside, Victor is taking a leak in the tomato bed, squinting into the colorless sky.
“I should see what he wants. Care to join?”
Brooke looks at her stubby fingernails and shakes her head.
“How long do you think he’s been lurking out there?” Again Brooke shrugs, and he feels his frustration mount. “Well, if I’m not back in twenty minutes, send a search party.”
Jeff turns the deadbolt on the back door and steps outside.
THIS CALL SHOULDN’T BE a surprise. As if driven by an instinct for calamity, Victor pops up when Jeff and Brooke are at their most vulnerable. Two years ago, for instance, when Brooke was just home from the hospital, still trying to keep down clear fluids, Victor arrived to announce he was getting clean, moving to Alaska to work on a commercial fishing boat, and wanted to make amends before he left. While Victor wept and wrung the hem of his t-shirt, Jeff blocked the doorway, trying to prevent his father’s voice from reaching his mother and sister at the back of the house.
Jeff remembers more of life with their father than Brooke does. He had eight years of it, while she was just a year old, too fat to walk, when Victor left. Jeff is glad she was spared the memories, but he knows she just feels excluded.
Victor has never been the kind of father to demand visitations or parental rights, and seems to accept his role as failed father and human with remarkable good humor, holding no one—not his ex-wife, not his children, and least of all himself—responsible.
Jeff encounters his father about once a year, never by choice. Now and then when back in town Jeff will bump into relatives of his father or see them on commercials or the evening news. Victor’s family is immense and tangled: half of them are drunks and the others have had success in real estate and local politics. All their children go through the public school system, so periodically one ends up in Jeff’s mother’s classroom, where she guides its little hands, tracing letters on a table dusted with flour.
She came to Albuquerque from New Hampshire for college, hair in a long braid, full of enthusiasm for the desert flora, the vistas and dry air, what she called the realness of the place. That same realness presumably drew her to Victor, an electrician rewiring the Education Building, and they were married within a year. There are pictures from this time, his mother dragging playfully on Victor’s shiny tanned arm, her braid swinging.
This was before Jeff was born, before Victor punched Jeff’s mother in the throat and stomped on her hand, breaking six of those matchstick bones. This was before his grandmother moved to join her only child. “Your mom needed help,” she said. “She’s always needed help.”
“HEY, MY MAN!” Victor comes in for a hug, but Jeff puts his arms up, absurdly defensive. Victor laughs and waves his hands in mock surrender, then slouches against the cinder-block wall of the guesthouse. He squints into the kitchen window, where Brooke’s dim figure is bent over the counter. “Make your sister come out. I haven’t seen her in forever.”
Jeff shrugs. “She will if she wants.”
Victor seems about to argue, but instead he says, “How’s your mom?”
Jeff hesitates. “How do you think? She’s a wreck.”
Victor perks up. “She’s not doing good?”
Jeff hooks his fingers in his pockets and pretends to survey his grandmother’s backyard. Victor doesn’t look sick, doesn’t seem to have aged at all. His hair is wet and a little long, combed straight back, curly at the nape. The man isn’t even balding, which Jeff finds galling, since his own hairline has been in retreat since college. Victor’s undershirt is worn thin enough that Jeff can see his dark nipples, a queasily intimate sight.
“How’s Lupe?” Jeff asks, then regrets taking responsibility for the conversation, making things easier on Victor.
“Didn’t work out. She just wanted my money. But was she fine.” Jeff’s father purses his lips and bobs his head as though appreciating good music.
Lupe was Jeff’s twenty-three-year-old stepmother. The one time Jeff met her, last year, she served saltines on a plastic TV table in the dirt outside their travel trailer. While Victor swigged his beer and talked about his plans for fixing up the place, building a deck—no mention of Alaska—she and two pit bulls watched Jeff sullenly as he sipped warm orange juice. When Jeff made to refill his cup, she moved the carton away.
“Yep,” says Victor philosophically. “Went back to Chihuahua. Took the dogs and car and TV and everything.” He shrugs. “She was mad the whole time, anyway. She married me ’cause she thought I had a pool. The city one was just down the street, but it wasn’t good enough for her.”
“So,” Jeff says, because he doesn’t have all day. “Cancer.”
Victor bats the word away and turns abruptly to the guesthouse. He pushes hard on the door, and it scrapes along the concrete. He stands aside and extends a formal arm to let Jeff pass. “Come in, see my place.”
Jeff steps inside automatically, but his brain seems to be taking a very long time to process the information before him. The dusty, comfortable jumble is gone, all of it. The boxes and bureaus, his mother’s childhood dollhouse, the Victorian cabinet filled with his grandfather’s mineral collection. Victor has robbed them. Sold their history. With real grief, Jeff remembers the pleasure of finding a set of little wooden village pieces belonging to his grandmother when she was a child, remembers how she’d brightened when he brought them to her.
The violation is astonishing. �
��What have you done, Victor?” Jeff’s voice comes out strangled.
“I knew you’d flip out,” Victor says, as though once again disappointed by the sheer uncoolness of his son. “Shit.”
The dim air smells of urine. A square of brown shag covers the concrete between the couch and the TV. Daylight falls on an open microwave crusted with exploded food, a plastic trashcan stuffed to overflowing, a bag of pork rinds scattered across the floor. Three or four metal restaurant chairs with brown vinyl backs are covered in beer cans, clothing, fast-food wrappers, plastic empties of cheap vodka.
Victor is also surveying the place, and he looks a little uneasy. “I let it go a bit, I guess, but it’s usually real cozy. Home sweet home.”
Jeff turns to his father, disbelieving. His father in his grandmother’s home. None of this makes sense. “You broke in. You’re squatting.”
“Would you quit?” Victor screws up his face in annoyance. “I didn’t break in anywhere.”
“Oh, God. You don’t have cancer. Did you really think I wouldn’t press charges if I thought you were dying?”
“Becky let me stay. She said if I cleaned it out it was all mine. I’m telling you, she’s one nice lady.”
There is no way his grandmother let Victor stay here. There is no way. She didn’t even know Victor anymore; if they’d had any contact at all, she’d have told Jeff, he’s certain. The last time they saw each other was when? Jeff’s high school graduation? Almost ten years ago. He remembers them talking, briefly, smiling and standing apart like strangers, while Jeff kept his hand on his mother’s arm and involved her in a conversation with his English teacher. “I’m calling the police,” he says without conviction. Then he hears it: a snuffling, squeaking noise.
Along the back of the dim room is a huge terrarium. At first Jeff is under the impression that Victor has a dog living in there, one of his pit bulls, maybe. As his eyes adjust, however, he sees that the tank is filled with rats. A wire top is held down with bricks. The rats are glossy gray and brown and black, teeming behind the glass with their obscene naked tails and intelligent faces.
“Jesus,” he breathes.
Victor grins proudly. “There’s probably twenty or thirty now. They keep breeding—brothers and sisters, sons and mothers, every which way—but half the time they eat each other. I don’t even have to feed them.”
The rats scramble over one another’s heads, impossible to count. Jeff is riveted. “Jesus,” he says again.
“Disgusting, huh?” Victor says. “You should see them flip their shit when the snake gets near. You gotta wear special gloves or they’ll bite through your hand. Even leather won’t hold them back. I got to stun them”—he demonstrates dashing an imaginary rat against the concrete—“or they try to bite her.”
“What do you mean, snake?” asks Jeff faintly.
Victor leads him to the bedroom, which is even darker and more fetid. Orange light slinks through the slats of the blinds. In the corner, heaped like laundry next to the unmade bed, is an enormous boa constrictor.
“She’s digesting,” says Victor, nudging it with his work boot.
The snake unwinds until it’s stretched to full length. Jeff steps back. The boa constrictor is huge and butter yellow, shining like something moist that lives underground. It watches Jeff and his father through dull pinprick eyes. A black tongue as glossy as plastic flicks in and out.
Jeff has never been afraid of snakes; he’s used to seeing them in the desert. Once he ushered a rattler out of his mother’s garden with the tip of a shovel. But this is a monster.
“Hey there, Sabrina, honey.” Victor squats, rocks on the balls of his feet, and lifts the snake. The muscles in his arms strain. “Want to hold her?”
Jeff shakes his head, a single jerk.
Victor seems hurt. “She’s not going to go and strangle you. She’s not hungry. And besides, she’s gravid. That’s why she’s slow.” He hoists the snake over his head and drapes it around his shoulders, stroking the thick creamy flank. It moves with muscular silkiness, lifting the weight of head and tail, curling itself around Victor’s body. It’s languid and sensual and Jeff is repulsed by the thought of his father and the snake living here together.
All at once he remembers something he hasn’t thought of in years: staying overnight with his father soon after the divorce, being tucked into his father’s bed, and waking in the dark next to him. On his father’s other side lay a woman Jeff had never seen. He sat up, watching his father asleep on his back, belly high and bare, and the woman beside him, whom he knew was naked under the sheets. She opened her eyes and looked right at Jeff until he clamped his eyes shut and lowered his head to the pillow. In the morning she was gone; his father stood at the tiny linoleum counter making coffee, no mention of her at all. Jeff is sweating.
“She’s my new business, Jeffy. Three thousand bucks every time this lady births. More even. You haven’t seen anything cuter than thirty baby snakes.”
Under the anger and revulsion, Jeff can’t deny a thrill of fascination, because Victor is always, always surprising him. The marvel of Victor is that for all his malefactions—and after today, Jeff can safely add criminal trespass and animal cruelty to the catalogue—still he manages to play the role more of fool than villain. Even this scenario—Jeff shoots another glance at the tank full of incestuous, cannibalistic rats—is darkly, appallingly comic. The story would make for excellent entertainment at the bar with Lisa and his graduate school friends, except that telling it would be a public admission of Jeff’s genetic link to this man.
“She’s incredible, I’m telling you, a real miracle of creation. She lays eggs, but inside. Ovoviviparous! Shit, I love that word.”
Jeff hears the door push open in the front room. It’s Brooke, blinking in the dark. “Holy crap,” she says.
Victor rushes forward, remarkably nimble under the weight of the boa, his smile almost heartbreakingly eager. “Hey, Brooke, baby. Good to see you.” He makes as if to embrace her, but Brooke backs up in alarm and presses against the door, arms crossed. Victor shakes his head with sad affection. “It’s been forever, girl! When’d you cut your hair so short?” He turns to Jeff. “She’s not a, you know?”
Brooke’s presence shakes Jeff from his stunned inaction. “You’ve got to leave, Victor. Now.” He gestures at the room, the rats.
“But that’s what I’m trying to explain. Your grandma said I could stay.”
“There is no fucking way she said that.”
Brooke laughs.
“Jeffrey, your grandma always liked me. She used to tell me, ‘Victor, you got potential. Victor, you need to make something of your life.’” Victor is talking like he’s about to close a sale. “I’m telling you, every time I ran into her, she inspired me. Over the years we kept in touch on and off. When I saw her in Albertsons maybe six months ago, I’d of recognized her anywhere but she recognized me first, said, ‘Victor, honey, how are you?’ She told me how you two were doing, college and Columbia and everything, and you know, that was real considerate, seeing as you two never tell me nothing, my own kids. She offered to buy my groceries, but I told her, ‘Becky, you keep your money,’ and I carried her bags out to the car. Ever since, it’s been great between us.”
“Does Mom know about this?” Brooke steeples her hands over her nose, gaze fixed on the snake. “Oh my God, that thing is so creepy. Can I touch it?”
Victor brightens. “A beauty, isn’t she? They’re America’s fifty-fourth most popular pet.”
Jeff is tempted to slap Brooke’s hand away. She extends an index finger, hovers, then makes contact. The boa regards her coldly and tastes the air.
“You need to leave now. A real estate agent is coming tomorrow. You need to clean this shit up and get out.”
Victor looks stricken. “You’re selling Becky’s house?”
“We haven’t decided,” says Brooke.
Victor massages the snake’s tail, which flicks obscenely between his fingers. Afte
r a moment, he says: “Tell you what. You can sell it, man, fine by me. I’ll be your real estate agent, show it to buyers. I know all about property from my cousin Yvette. I’d keep the bathroom and kitchen real clean. I only got to be here until Sabrina has her babies, two months max, and then I can sell them off and get my own place.” Victor is jittery, running his free hand through his hair, over and over. “It’s the ideal setup, Jeff. You go on back to your school, and I’ll take care of everything. You can’t sell the house like this, anyways. It needs work. Have you seen under the kitchen sink? Must’ve been leaking for years.”
“You think someone’s going to buy this house with you and Animal Planet out here? No fucking way.”
“Are you really dying?” asks Brooke.
“Of course I am! Where’m I going to go, Jeff? I don’t have a deposit or nothing.”
Jeff tries to picture the cancer coiled in his father’s abdomen, but he can’t make himself believe it. The man is indestructible.
Victor swivels to Brooke. “You want to know the truth, I’m scared. It was awful seeing your grandma get weak like that. Know what I found in her closet?” Victor lowers his voice to a tragic whisper. “Depends. God, poor Becky.”
“I didn’t know that,” Brooke says softly. “That’s so sad.” Her eyes fill, her first real sign of grief, and Jeff is almost annoyed at her for allowing herself grief at a time like this.
“You went inside the house?” Jeff demands.
“The bathroom out here hasn’t been working too good. Would you relax? I didn’t go and sell nothing. I’m no criminal. Listen, Jeff, what you got to understand is that I’m not the same guy I was when you were a kid.”
Jeff is bilious at the thought of Victor in his grandmother’s house, moving with a snake among her belongings. “So you exploited her? You threatened her? Did you punch her in the throat?”
Victor is perfectly still for a moment, and when he speaks his voice is careful. “I made mistakes in the past, Jeff. That’s on me. Your grandma gave me a key. I helped her out, it wasn’t just a one-way. Dishes, vacuuming, I did it all. Every single day I made her breakfast.”
Night at the Fiestas: Stories Page 11
