Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  “Mom? Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask me anything.”

  “Is it hard to love him?”

  “No.” She didn’t even hesitate.

  “Do you understand him?”

  “Not always. But Ari, I don’t always have to understand the people I love.”

  “Well, maybe I do.”

  “It’s hard for you, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know him, Mom.”

  “I know you’re going to get mad at me when I say this, Ari, but I’m going to say it anyway. I think someday you will understand.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Someday.”

  Someday, I would understand my father. Someday he would tell me who he was. Someday. I hated that word.

  Ten

  I LIKED WHEN MY MOM TOLD ME ABOUT HOW SHE FELT about things. She seemed to be able to do that. Not that we talked that much, but sometimes we did and it was good and I felt like I knew her. And I didn’t feel like I knew a lot of people. When she talked to me, she was different than when she was being my mother. When she was being my mother, she had a lot of ideas about who I should be. And I hated that, fought her on that, didn’t want her input.

  I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be. Maybe if you weren’t so quiet, Ari . . . Maybe if you could just be more disciplined . . . Yeah, everyone had suggestions as to what was wrong with me and what I should become. Especially my older sisters.

  Because I was the youngest.

  Because I was the surprise.

  Because I was born too late.

  Because my older brother was in prison and maybe my mother and father blamed themselves. If only they’d said something, done something. They weren’t going to make that mistake again. So I was stuck with my family’s guilt—a guilt that not even my mother would talk about. She sometimes mentioned my brother in passing. But she never said his name.

  So now I was the only son. And I felt the weight of a son in a Mexican family. Even though I didn’t want it. But that was the way it was.

  It made me mad that I’d felt like I’d betrayed my family by mentioning my brother to Dante. It didn’t feel good. There were so many ghosts in our house—the ghost of my brother, the ghosts of my father’s war, the ghosts of my sister’s voices. And I thought that maybe there were ghosts inside of me that I hadn’t even met yet. They were there. Lying in wait.

  I picked up my old journal and thumbed through the pages. I found an entry that I’d written a week after I turned fifteen:

  I don’t like being fifteen.

  I didn’t like being fourteen.

  I didn’t like being thirteen.

  I didn’t like being twelve.

  I didn’t like being eleven.

  Ten was good. I liked being ten. I don’t know why but

  I had a very good year when I was in the fifth grade.

  The fifth grade was very good. Mrs. Pedregon was a

  great teacher and for some reason, everyone seemed

  to like me. A good year. An excellent year. Fifth grade.

  But now, at fifteen, well, things are a little awkward.

  My voice is doing funny things and I keep running

  into things. My mom says my reflexes are trying to

  keep up with the fact that I’m growing so much.

  I don’t much care for this growing thing.

  My body’s doing things I can’t control and I just don’t like it.

  All of a sudden, I have hair all over the place. Hair under my arms and hair on my legs and hair around my—well—hair between my legs. Okay, I’m not liking it. I even got hair growing on my toes. What’s that about?

  And my feet keep getting bigger and bigger. What’s with the big feet? When I was ten, I was kinda small and I wasn’t worried about hair. The only thing I was worried about was trying to speak perfect English. I made up my mind that year—when I was ten—that I wasn’t going to sound like another Mexican. I was going to be an American. And when I talked I was going to sound like one.

  So what if I don’t look exactly like an American.

  What does an American look like, anyway?

  Does an American have big hands and big feet and hair around his—well, hair between his legs?

  Reading my own words embarrassed the hell out me. I mean, what a pendejo. I had to be the world’s biggest loser, writing about hair, and stuff about my body. No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to remind myself what an asshole I was?

  I don’t know why I didn’t throw the journal across the room. I kept thumbing through it randomly. And then I found a section about my brother.

  There are no pictures of my brother in our house.

  There are pictures of my two older sisters on their wedding days. There are pictures of my mother in her first communion dress. There are pictures of my father when he was in Vietnam. There are pictures of me as a baby, me on the first day of school, me holding a first place trophy with my little league teammates.

  There are pictures of my three nieces and four nephews.

  There are pictures of my grandparents, who are all dead.

  All over the house, there are pictures.

  But there are no pictures of my brother.

  Because he’s in prison.

  No one in my house talks about him.

  It’s like being dead.

  It’s worse than being dead. At least the dead get talked about and you get to hear stories about them. People smile when they tell those stories. And they even laugh. Even the dog we used to have gets talked about.

  Even Charlie, the dead dog, gets a story.

  My brother doesn’t get any stories.

  He has been erased from our family history. It doesn’t seem right. My brother is more than a word written on a chalkboard. I mean I have to write an essay on Alexander Hamilton and I even know what he looks like.

  I’d rather write an essay on my brother.

  I don’t think anyone at school would be interested in reading that essay.

  I wondered if I would ever have the courage to ask my parents to tell about my brother. I asked my older sisters once. Cecilia and Sylvia both shot me a look. “Don’t ever bring him up.”

  I remember thinking that if they’d had a gun, she’d have shot me.

  I caught myself whispering over and over again, “my brother is in prison, my brother is in prison, my brother is in prison.” I wanted to feel those words in my mouth as I spoke them aloud. Words could be like food—they felt like something in your mouth. They tasted like something. “My brother is in prison.” Those words tasted bitter.

  But the worst part was that those words were living inside me. And they were leaking out of me. Words were not things you could control. Not always.

  I didn’t know what was happening to me. Everything was chaos and I was scared. I felt like Dante’s room before he’d put everything in order. Order. That was what I needed. So I took my journal and started writing:

  These are the things that are happening in my life (in no particular order):

  - I got the flu and I feel terrible and I also feel terrible inside.

  - I have always felt terrible inside. The reasons for this keep changing.

  - I told my father I always had bad dreams. And that was true. I’d never told anyone that before. Not even myself. I only knew it was true when I said it.

  - I hated my mom for a minute or two because she told me I didn’t have any friends.

  - I want to know about my brother. If I knew more about him, would I hate him?

  - My father held me in his arms when I had a fever and I wanted him to hold me in his arms forever.

  - The problem is not that I don’t love my mother and father. The problem is that I don’t know how to love them.

  - Dante is the first friend I’ve ever had. That scares me.

  - I think that if Dante
really knew me, he wouldn’t like me.

  Eleven

  WE HAD TO WAIT OVER TWO HOURS AT THE DOCTOR’S office. But my mom and I came prepared. I brought the book of poems Dante had brought over, the book of poems by William Carlos Williams—and Mom, she brought a novel she was reading, Bless Me, Ultima.

  I was sitting across from her in the waiting room and I knew that sometimes, she was studying me. I felt her eyes on me. “I didn’t know you liked poetry.”

  “It’s Dante’s book. His father has poetry books all over the house.”

  “It’s a wonderful thing, what his father does.”

  “You mean being a professor?”

  “Yes. How wonderful.”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “When I went to the university, I never had one Mexican-American professor. Not one.” There was a look on her face, almost anger.

  I knew so little about her. About what she’d been through—about what it felt like to be her. I’d never cared, not really. I was starting to care, starting to wonder. Starting to wonder about everything.

  “You like poetry, Ari?”

  “Yeah. I guess I do.”

  “Maybe you’ll be a writer,” she said. “A poet.”

  It sounded like such a beautiful thing when she said it. Too beautiful for me.

  Twelve

  THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME. THAT’S WHAT the doctor said. Just recovering normally from a severe flu. An afternoon wasted. Except I’d seen rage appear on my mother’s face for an instant. That was something I would have to think about.

  Just when she was becoming less of a mystery, she became more of one.

  I finally got to leave the house.

  I met Dante at the swimming pool, but I got winded easily. Mostly, I watched Dante swim.

  It looked like it was going to rain. They always came this time of year, the rains. I heard the distant thunder. As we were walking toward Dante’s house, it began to rain. And then it began to pour.

  I looked at Dante. “I won’t run if you don’t.”

  “I won’t run.”

  So we walked in the rain. I wanted to walk faster, but instead I slowed down. I looked at Dante. “Can you take it?”

  He smiled.

  Slowly, we made our way to his house. In the rain. Soaked.

  Dante’s father made us change into dry clothing when we got to his house, and gave us a lecture. “I already know that Dante doesn’t have an ounce of common sense. But, Ari, I thought you were a little more responsible.”

  Dante couldn’t help but interrupt. “Fat chance, Dad.”

  “He just got over a flu, Dante.”

  “I’m okay now,” I said. “I like the rain.” I looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry.”

  He put his hand on my chin and lifted it up. He looked at me. “Summer boys,” he said.

  I liked the way he looked at me. I thought he was the kindest man in the world. Maybe everybody was kind. Maybe even my father. But Mr. Quintana was brave. He didn’t care if the whole world knew he was kind. Dante was just like him.

  I asked Dante if his father ever got mad.

  “He doesn’t get mad very often. Hardly at all. But when he does get mad, I try to stay out of his way.”

  “What does he get mad at?’

  “I threw out all his papers once.”

  “You did that?”

  “He wasn’t paying any attention to me.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “So you made him mad on purpose.”

  “Something like that.”

  Out of nowhere I started coughing. We gave each other a panicked look. “Hot tea,” Dante said.

  I nodded. Good idea.

  We sat, drinking our tea and watching the rain fall on his front porch. The sky was almost black and then it started hailing. It was so beautiful and scary, I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.

  I was staring at the hail when Dante tapped me on the shoulder. “We need to have a conversation.”

  “A conversation?”

  “A talk.”

  “We talk every day.”

  “Yeah, but. I mean a talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About, you know, what we’re like. Our parents. Stuff like that.”

  “Did anybody ever tell you that you weren’t normal?”

  “Is that something I should aspire to?”

  “You’re not. You’re not normal.” I shook my head. “Where did you come from?”

  “My parents had sex one night.”

  I could almost imagine his parents having sex—which was a little weird. “How do you know it was night?”

  “Good point.”

  We busted out laughing.

  “Okay,” he said. “This is serious.”

  “Is this like a game?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll play.”

  “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Blue.”

  “Red. Favorite car?”

  “Don’t like cars.”

  “Me neither. Favorite song?”

  “Don’t have one. Yours?”

  “‘The Long and Winding Road.’”

  “‘The Long and Winding Road’?”

  “The Beatles, Ari.”

  “Don’t know it.”

  “Great song, Ari.”

  “Boring game, Dante. Are we interviewing each other?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What position am I applying for?”

  “Best friend.”

  “I thought I already had the job.”

  “Don’t be so sure, you arrogant son of a bitch.” He reached over and punched me. Not hard. But not soft either.

  That made me laugh. “Nice mouth.”

  “Sometimes don’t you just want to stand up and yell out all the cuss words you’ve learned?”

  “Every day.”

  “Every day? You’re worse than me.” He looked at the hail. “It’s like pissed off snow,” he said.

  That made me laugh.

  Dante shook his head. “We’re too nice, you know that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our parents turned us into nice boys. I hate that.”

  “I don’t think I’m so nice.”

  “Are you in a gang?”

  “No.”

  “Do you do drugs?”

  “No.”

  “Do you drink?”

  “I’d like to.”

  “Me too. But that wasn’t the question.”

  “No, I don’t drink.”

  “Do you have sex?”

  “Sex?”

  “Sex, Ari.”

  “No, never had sex, Dante. But I’d like to.”

  “Me too. See what I mean? We’re nice.”

  “Nice,” I said. “Shit.”

  “Shit,” he said.

  And then we busted out laughing.

  All afternoon, Dante shot questions at me. I answered them. When it stopped hailing and raining, the hot day had suddenly turned cool. The whole world seemed to be quiet and calm and I wanted to be the world and feel like that.

  Dante got up from the step of the porch and stood on the sidewalk. He held up his arms toward the heavens. “It’s all so damned beautiful,” he said. He turned around. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “Our tennis shoes,” I said.

  “Dad put them in the dryer. Who cares?”

  “Yeah, who cares?”

  I knew I had done that before, walked barefoot on a wet sidewalk, knew I had felt the breeze against my face. But it didn’t feel like I’d ever done that. It felt like this was happening for the first time.

  Dante was saying something but I wasn’t really listening. I was staring at the sky, the dark clouds, listening to the distant thunder.

  I looked at Dante, the breeze alive in his long, dark hair.
>
  “We’re leaving for a year,” he said.

  I was suddenly sad. No, not exactly sad. It felt like someone had punched me. “Leaving?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why? I mean, when?”

  “My dad’s going to be a visiting professor for a year at the University of Chicago. I think they’re interested in hiring him.”

  “That’s great,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  I’d been happy, and then, just like that, I was sad. I couldn’t stand it, how sad I was. I didn’t look at him. I just looked up at the sky. “That’s really great. So when are you leaving?”

  “At the end of August.”

  Six weeks. I smiled. “That’s great.”

  “You keep saying ‘that’s great.’”

  “Well, it is.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Aren’t you sad, that I’m leaving?”

  “Why would I be sad?”

  He smiled and then, I don’t know, there was this look on his face and it was so hard to tell what he was thinking or feeling, which was strange because Dante’s face was a book that the whole world could read.

  “Look,” he said. He pointed at a bird in the middle of the street that was trying to fly. I could tell that one of his wings was broken.

  “He’s going to die,” I whispered.

  “We can save it.”

  Dante walked into the middle of the street and tried to pick up the bird. I watched him as he picked up the frightened bird. That’s the last thing I remember before the car swerved around the corner. Dante! Dante! I knew the screams were coming from inside me. Dante!

  I remember thinking that it was all a dream. All of it. It was just another bad dream. I kept thinking that the world was ending. I thought about the sparrows falling from the sky.