Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  Dante!

  The End of Summer

  Do you remember

  the summer of the rain . . .

  You must let everything fall that wants to fall.

  —Karen Fiser

  One

  I REMEMBER THE CAR SWERVING AROUND THE CORNER and Dante standing in the middle of the street holding a bird with a broken wing. I remember the slippery streets after the hail storm. I remember screaming his name. Dante!

  I woke up in a hospital room.

  Both of my legs were in a cast.

  So was my left arm. Everything seemed really far away and my whole body hurt and I kept thinking what happened? I had a dull headache. What happened? What happened? Even my fingers hurt. I swear they did. I felt like a soccer ball after a game. Shit. I must have groaned or something, because all of a sudden my mom and dad were standing right beside my bed. My mom was crying.

  “Don’t cry,” I said. My throat was really dry and I didn’t sound like me. I sounded like someone else.

  She bit her lip and reached over and combed my hair with her fingers.

  I just looked at her. “Just don’t cry, okay?”

  “I was afraid you’d never wake up.” She just sobbed into my father’s shoulder.

  Part of me was beginning to register everything. Another part of me just wanted to be somewhere else. Maybe none of this was really happening. But it was happening. It was. It didn’t seem real. Except that I was in some serious pain. And that was real. It was the most real thing I had ever known.

  “It hurts,” I said.

  That’s when my mom just shut off her tears and became herself again. I was glad. I hated to see her weak and crying and falling apart. I wondered if that’s the way she felt when my brother was taken away to prison. She pushed a button on my IV—then put it in my hand. “If you’re in a lot of pain, you can push this every fifteen minutes.”

  “What is it?”

  “Morphine.”

  “At long last I get to do drugs.”

  She ignored my joke. “I’ll get the nurse.” My mom, she was always moving into action. I liked that about her.

  I looked around the room and wondered why I’d woken up. I kept thinking that if I could only get back to sleep, then it wouldn’t hurt anymore. I preferred my bad dreams to the pain.

  I looked at my dad. “It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s okay.” I didn’t really believe what I was saying.

  My father was wearing a serious smile. “Ari, Ari,” he said. “You’re the bravest boy in the world.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “I’m the guy who’s afraid of his own dreams, Dad. Remember?”

  I loved his smile. Why couldn’t he just smile all the time?

  I wanted to ask him what happened. But I was afraid. I don’t know. . . . My throat was dry and I just couldn’t talk, and then it all came back to me and the image of Dante holding a wounded bird flashed in my head. I couldn’t catch my breath and I was afraid, and I thought that maybe Dante was dead, and then there was all this panic living inside of me. I could feel this awful thing going on in my heart. “Dante?” I heard his name in my mouth.

  The nurse was standing next to me. She had a nice voice. “I’m going to check your blood pressure,” she said. I just lay there and let her do what she wanted. I didn’t care. She smiled. “How’s your pain?”

  “My pain is fine,” I whispered.

  She laughed. “You gave us a good scare, young man.”

  “I like scaring people,” I whispered.

  My mother shook her head.

  “I like the morphine,” I said. I closed my eyes. “Dante?”

  “He’s fine,” my mother said.

  I opened my eyes.

  I heard my father’s voice. “He’s scared. He’s really scared.”

  “But he’s okay?”

  “Yes. He’s okay. He’s been waiting for you to wake up.” My mother and father looked at each other. I heard my mother’s voice. “He’s here.”

  He was alive. Dante. I felt myself breathe. “What happened to the bird he was holding?”

  My father reached over and squeezed my hand. “Crazy boys,” he whispered. “Crazy, crazy boys.” I watched him as he left the room.

  My mother just kept staring at me.

  “Where did Dad go?”

  “He went to get Dante. He hasn’t left. He’s been here for the last thirty-six hours—waiting for you to—”

  “Thirty-six hours?”

  “You had surgery.”

  “Surgery?”

  “They had to repair your bones.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’ll have scars.”

  “Okay.”

  “You were awake for a little while after the surgery.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You were in pain. They gave you something. Then you were out again.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “The doctor said you probably wouldn’t.”

  “Did I say anything?”

  “You just moaned. You asked for Dante. He wouldn’t leave. He’s a very stubborn young man.”

  That made me smile. “Yeah, well, he wins all our arguments. Just like the ones I have with you.”

  “I love you,” she whispered. “Do you know how much I love you?”

  It was nice the way she said that. She hadn’t said that to me in a long time.

  “Love you more.” When I was a boy, I used to say that to her.

  I thought she was going to cry again. But she didn’t. Well, there were tears, but no real crying. She handed me a glass of water and I drank a little bit from a straw. “Your legs,” she said. “The car ran over your legs.”

  “It wasn’t the driver’s fault,” I said.

  She nodded. “You had a very, very fine surgeon. All the breaks are below the knees. God—” She stopped. “They thought you might lose your legs—” She stopped and wiped the tears from her face. “I’m never going to let you out of the house, ever again.”

  “Fascist,” I whispered.

  She kissed me. “You sweet, beautiful kid.”

  “I’m not that sweet, Mom.”

  “Don’t argue with me.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m sweet.”

  She started crying again.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s okay.”

  Dante and my dad walked into the room.

  We looked at each other and smiled. He had some stitches above his left eye and the left side of his face was all scraped up. He had two black eyes and he was wearing a cast on his right arm. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “We sort of match,” he said.

  “I got you beat,” I whispered.

  “Finally, you get to win an argument.”

  “Yeah, finally,” I said. “You look like shit.”

  He was standing right next to me. “So do you.”

  We just looked at each other. “You sound tired,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m glad you woke up.”

  “Yeah, I woke up. But it hurts less when I sleep.”

  “You saved my life, Ari.”

  “Dante’s hero. Just what I always wanted to be.”

  “Don’t do that, Ari. Don’t make fun. You almost got yourself killed.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  He started crying. Dante and his tears. Dante and his tears. “You pushed me. You pushed me and you saved my life.”

  “Looks like I pushed you and beat the crap out of your face.”

  “I’ve got character now,” he said.

  “It was that damned bird,” I said. “We can blame it all on the bird. The whole thing.”

  “I’m done with birds.”

  “No you’re not.”

  He started crying again.

  “Knock it off,” I said. “My mom’s been crying, and now you’re crying—and even Dad looks l
ike he wants to cry. Rules. I have rules. No crying.”

  “Okay,” he said, “No more crying. Boys don’t cry.”

  “Boys don’t cry,” I said. “Tears make me really tired.”

  Dante laughed. And then he got really serious. “You took a dive like you were in a swimming pool.”

  “We don’t have to talk about this.”

  He just kept talking. “You dove at me, like, I don’t know, like some kind of football player diving at the guy with the ball, and you pushed me out of the way. It all happened so fast and yet, you just, I don’t know, you just knew what to do. Only you could have gotten yourself killed.” I watched the tears falling from his face. “And all because I’m an idiot, standing in the middle of the road trying to save a stupid bird.”

  “You’re breaking the no-crying rule again,” I said. “And birds aren’t stupid.”

  “I almost got you killed.”

  “You didn’t do anything. You were just being you.”

  “No more birds for me.”

  “I like birds,” I said.

  “I’ve given them up. You saved my life.”

  “I told you. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  That made everybody laugh. God, I was tired. And it hurt so much and I remember Dante squeezing my hand and saying over and over, “I’m sorry I’m sorry Ari Ari Ari forgive me forgive me.”

  I guess the aftereffects of the surgery and the morphine made me feel a little high.

  I remember humming. “La Bamba.” I know that Dante and my mom and dad were still in the room, but I couldn’t stay awake.

  I remember Dante squeezing my hand. And I remember thinking, Forgive you? For what, Dante? What is there to forgive?

  I don’t know why, but there was rain in my dreams.

  Dante and I were barefoot. The rain wouldn’t stop.

  And I was afraid.

  Two

  I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL. A few days. Four days. Maybe five. Six. Hell, I don’t know. It felt like forever.

  They ran tests. That’s what they do in hospitals. They were checking to make sure I had no other internal injuries. Especially brain injuries. I had a neurologist come in and see me. I didn’t like him. He had dark hair and really deep green eyes that didn’t like looking at people. He didn’t seem to care. Either that or he cared too much. But the thing was, he wasn’t very good with people. He didn’t talk to me very much. He took a lot of notes.

  I learned that nurses liked to make small talk and were in love with taking your vitals. That’s what they did. They gave you a pill to help you sleep, then they woke you up all night. Shit. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to sleep and wake to see that my casts were gone. That’s what I told one of the nurses. “Can’t you just put me to sleep and wake me up when they take my casts off?”

  “Silly boy,” the nurse said.

  Yeah. Silly boy.

  I remember this one thing: My room was full of flowers. Flowers from all my mom’s church-lady friends. Flowers from Dante’s mother and father. Flowers from my sisters. Flowers from the neighbors. Flowers from my mother’s garden. Flowers. Shit. I never had an opinion about flowers until then. I decided I didn’t like them.

  I sort of liked my surgeon. He was all about sports injuries. He was kind of young and I could tell he was a jock, you know this big gringo with big hands and long fingers and I wondered about that. He had the hands of a pianist. I remember thinking that. But I didn’t know shit about pianists’ hands or surgeons’ hands and I remember dreaming them. His hands. In my dream, he healed Dante’s bird and set it free into the summer sky. It was a nice dream. I didn’t have those very often.

  Dr. Charles. That was his name. He knew what he was doing. A good guy. Yeah, that’s what I thought. He answered all my questions. And I had lots of them.

  “Do I have pins in my legs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you won’t have to go in again?”

  “Hope not.”

  “Big talker, huh, Doc?”

  He laughed. “You’re a tough guy, huh?”

  “I don’t think I’m so tough.”

  “Well, I think you are tough. I think you’re tough as hell.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve been around.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Really, Aristotle. Can I tell you something?”

  “Call me Ari.”

  “Ari.” He smiled. “I’m surprised at how well you held up during the operation. And I’m surprised how well you’re doing right now. It’s amazing really.”

  “It’s luck and genes,” I said. “The genes I got from my mom and dad. And my luck, well, I don’t where that came from. God, maybe.”

  “You a religious guy?”

  “Not really. That would be my mom.”

  “Yeah, well, moms and God generally get along pretty well.”

  “Guess so,” I said. “When am I going to stop feeling like crap?”

  “In no time.”

  “No time? Am I going to be hurting and itching for eight weeks?”

  “It’ll get better.”

  “Sure. And how come, if my legs were broken below the knee, my casts are above the knee?”

  “I just want to keep you still for two or three weeks. I don’t want you to be bending. Might hurt yourself again. Tough guys, they push themselves. After a few weeks, I’ll change your casts. Then you’ll be able to bend your legs.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit?”

  “A few weeks?”

  “We’ll give it three weeks.”

  “Three weeks without bending my legs?”

  “It’s not such a long time.”

  “It’s summer.”

  “And then I’ll get you to a physical therapist.”

  I took a breath. “Shit. And this?” I said, aiming my arm cast at him. I was getting really depressed.

  “That fracture wasn’t so bad. It’ll be off in a month.”

  “A month? Shit.”

  “You like that word, don’t you?”

  “I’d prefer to use other words.”

  He smiled. “Shit will do just fine.”

  I wanted to cry. I did. Mostly I was mad and frustrated and I knew he was going to tell me that I needed to be patient. And that’s exactly what he said.

  “You just need to be patient. You’ll be good as new. You’re young. You’re strong. You have great, healthy bones. I have every reason to believe that you’re going to heal very nicely.”

  Very nicely. Patient. Shit.

  He checked the feeling in my toes, had me breathe, had me follow his fingers with my left eye, then my right eye. “You know,” he said, “that’s a helluva thing you did for your friend, Dante.”

  “Look, I wish people would stop talking about that.”

  He looked at me. He had this look on his face. “You could have wound up a paraplegic. Or worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “Young man, you could have been killed.”

  Killed. Okay. “People keep saying that. Look, Doc, I’m alive.”

  “You don’t much like being a hero, do you?”

  “I told Dante I didn’t do it on purpose. Everyone thought that was funny. It wasn’t a joke. I don’t even remember diving toward him. It wasn’t as if I said to myself, I’m going to save my friend, Dante. It wasn’t like that. It was just a reflex, you know, like when someone hits your funny bone below the knee. Your leg just jerks. That’s how it was. It just happened.”

  “Just a reflex? It just happened?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you’re responsible for none of it?”

  “It was just one of those things.”

  “Just one of those things?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have a different theory.”

  “Of course you do—you’re an adult.”

  He laughed. “What do you have against adults?”r />
  “They too have many ideas about who we are. Or who we should be.”

  “That’s our job.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “Nice,” he said. “Listen, son, I know you don’t think of yourself as being brave or courageous or any of those things. Of course you don’t.”

  “I’m just a regular guy.”

  “Yeah, that’s how you see yourself. But, you pushed your friend out of the way of an oncoming car. You did that, Ari, and you didn’t think about yourself or what would happen to you. You did that because that’s who you are. I’d think about that if I were you.”

  “What for?”

  “Just think about it.”

  “I’m not sure I want to do all that thinking.”

  “Okay. Just so you know, Ari, I think you’re a very rare young man. That’s what I think.”

  “I told you, Doc, it was just a reflex.”

  He grinned at me and put his hand on my shoulder. “I know your kind, Ari. I’m on to you.” I don’t know exactly what he meant by that. But he was smiling.

  Right after that conversation with Dr. Charles, Dante’s mom and dad came to visit. Mr. Quintana came right up to me and kissed me on the cheek. Just like it was this normal thing to do. I guess for him it was normal. And really, I thought that the gesture was kind of nice, you know, sweet, but it made me a little bit uncomfortable. It was something I wasn’t used to. And he kept thanking me over and over and over. I wanted to tell him to knock it off. But, I just let him go on and on because I knew how much he loved his Dante and he was so happy and I was happy that he was happy. So it was okay.

  I wanted to change the subject. I mean, I didn’t have a lot to talk about. I felt like crap. But they were there to see me and I could talk and, you know, I could process things even though my mind was still a little foggy. So I said, “So you’ll be in Chicago for a year?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Dante hasn’t forgiven me yet.”

  I sort of just looked at him.

  “He’s still mad. He says he wasn’t consulted.”

  That made me smile.

  “He doesn’t want to miss swimming for a year. He told me he could live with you for a year.”

  That surprised me. Dante kept more secrets than I thought. I closed my eyes.

  “Are you okay, Ari?”

  “The itching makes me crazy sometimes. So I just close my eyes.”