Marcelo in the Real World

by Francisco X. Stork

  She takes the picture from me and goes to the copying machine. I follow her. “Let’s try enlarging it one hundred and fifty percent.” From the side of the copying machine a blurry picture of the girl emerges. But now the words behind her are clear.

  SU TAQUERÍA

  02130

  “Taquería is a place where they sell tacos, right? Like a cafetería is place where they sell coffee,” Jasmine says.

  “You know how to speak Spanish?”

  “Three years in high school. Besides, I hate to tell you, but taquería is not that hard to translate. This picture could have been taken in any of the countless places in Spanish-speaking countries where Vidromek does business. Except that…”

  “Except that.”

  “Except that we only represent Vidromek in accidents that took place in the U.S. So if this picture is somehow related to a case we are handling, then this taquería is in the U.S., which doesn’t narrow the options all that much. Mmm.”

  “What is it?”

  “The numbers. So this is a calendar advertising a taquería somewhere in the United States. The advertisement would have an address for the taquería, right? And what usually goes in an address?”

  It seems like an easy question to answer, but my mind is a total blank.

  “Either a street address or a zip code. But since there are no words following these numbers, this is probably a zip code. Zip codes have five numbers,” Jasmine says.

  “A zip code,” I repeat. I probably should feel dumb but I don’t. Probably because I’m so thrilled by the sound of excitement in Jasmine’s voice.

  “Do you have to get back to Juliet?”

  “I have to bring Robert Steely two boxes. To pack his personal belongings.”

  “Do that. I’ll do a search of taquería and 02130 and see what I get. Take the boxes, and when you come back I’ll know more.”

  I grab two empty boxes, the kind used for the copying paper, and I go to Robert Steely’s office. I put the boxes in the office. Robert Steely is still talking to Arturo, I suppose. How long does getting fired take? Perhaps Arturo is trying to be as kind as possible.

  “That took you long enough,” Juliet says to me on my way back to the mailroom. “Now where are you going? Look, Jasmine and I worked out a schedule and you’re now operating on my time. I need you to fold and stick these letters in the envelopes and then seal the letters. You can use this bottle with a sponge to seal the envelopes or you can lick them if you prefer.”

  I look at the stack of paper. There must be two hundred letters. Juliet hands me the stack, and she places a box of envelopes on top of it. Then with her chin she points in the direction of Wendell’s office. That’s where she wants me to work.

  It is the first assignment at the law firm that I do not perform as well as I can. I am rushing and I can see that some of the letters are getting folded in uneven ways. Then when all the folding and inserting is done, I wet the envelopes with the bottle of water that has a miniature sponge attached to the end. It is hard to control the exact amount of water and some of the letters look as if Namu had licked them.

  I wait for Juliet to leave her desk, then I head toward the mailroom. The letters need to get stamped by the machine in the mailroom anyway. Jasmine is intent on the screen of her computer. At first I think she does not notice when I come in.

  “Listen to this,” she says without looking at me, “I typed in taquería and 02130 and found a site for Mexican restaurants in Boston. Then it hits me, 02130 is a Boston zip code! Anyway, I click on this site for the Boston restaurants and I see all these restaurants that have the zip code 02130. I get about thirty restaurants, all in Jamaica Plain. It’s a neighborhood that has many Latino residents and businesses. So then I narrow the search by clicking taquería and Jamaica Plain and I come up with ten restaurants.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We call the restaurants. How many of those ten restaurants send out calendars? And then, I don’t know, maybe we go and show them the girl’s picture to see if they know her. This picture was taken in an office. You see the file cabinet?”

  “It looks like a file cabinet in this law firm.”

  “Right. That’s what I was thinking. Like the picture was taken in a lawyer’s office, which makes sense, since the picture ended up here and is probably tied to some kind of legal action.”

  “A lawyer that eats at a taquería in Jamaica Plain.”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s a figure of speech. Look, here’s the plan. We look up what lawyers work in Jamaica Plain, and when we call the restaurants that send out calendars, we read them the names and ask if the lawyer is on their mailing list or if they know him or recognize the name. I mean, how do people get calendars? They get them in the mail or they pick them up when they shop at the place that’s giving them out.”

  “We.”

  “We what?”

  “It was I who needed to find the girl and now it is we—Jasmine and Marcelo.”

  “I don’t need to find her like you do.” Jasmine’s voice sounds serious. “I don’t know, it makes me feel kind of alive, playing detective in your good cause.”

  “Like Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jasmine is logical in her thinking. One step leading to another. Analyzing probabilities and discarding them.”

  “You look surprised. Didn’t you know I was smart?” She pretends to be angry.

  Even though I know she is teasing me, I feel my face get red-hot. How can I tell her that I knew but I didn’t know—like seeing the sunset every evening but not seeing it.

  CHAPTER 19

  It turns out that Cielito is the only taquería in Jamaica Plain that hands out calendars. They didn’t have a mailing list but gave them to their customers starting in early December. It turns out also that there are thirty-seven lawyers that practice in Jamaica Plain, and when I called Don Ramon, the owner of Cielito, and asked him if he knew any of the names I read to him, there was only one he recognized without any hesitation. His name is Jerry García and, according to Don Ramon, he practically lives at Cielito. Jerry García’s office is half a block away. Jasmine and I are certain that the picture of the girl was taken there.

  Jasmine walks me to the entrance to the subway on Washington Street but doesn’t want to come with me. She thinks it is something I should do on my own. I have a detailed map showing exactly what to do in order to get to Jerry García’s office once I get off at Jackson Square. I have a cell phone that I can use if I get lost. “You can do it,” Jasmine said just before I descended the stairs of the subway station.

  I am on extreme alert on the subway, standing up, holding on to the back of an empty seat.

  I get out at the Jackson Square station and walk west on Centre Street. Jerry García’s office is only five blocks away. I block out the traffic on the street, the people on the sidewalks, the words and noises that come flying at me. I touch the sides of buildings for reassurance and then continue.

  I look for and finally find the number to Jerry García’s building. His office is in Suite 3A. I look up and see a window with white lettering:

  GERONIMO (JERRY) GARCÍA ESQ.

  SU PROBLEMA ES MI PROBLEMA

  I walk up three flights of stairs. Suite 3A has a wooden door with the same name and logo as the window. The door is partially open. Inside there are a dozen people, adults and children, sitting in a parlor. There is a small desk with a telephone in the front of the room but no one at the desk. A tall fan in the corner is whirring left and right. Some of the children are playing on the floor with plastic cars and trucks. I see a box of toys in another corner. I may be in the wrong place. This looks like the doctor’s office where Aurora used to take Yolanda and me when we were children. Everyone is staring at me as I stand in the doorway, not knowing what to do or say.

  “¿Busca a Jerry?” an elderly woman is asking me.

&nbs
p; “Sí.” I remember the Spanish that I learned from Abba.

  “He’s here. Sit.” She makes a small space on the crowded sofa. I remain standing.

  A door next to the desk opens. A man with a white shirt and blue jeans holds it open as a young woman comes out, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. The man looks at me. I must seem out of place in this room, standing with my backpack and my hands in my pockets.

  The man with the white shirt and blue jeans is Jerry García. I know because Jasmine and I found a picture of him on the Internet. He has an ad in a Spanish-speaking newspaper, telling people to call him if they have an accident.

  He motions to the lady who first spoke to me. She gets up slowly, holding on to the side of the sofa. He comes over and takes her arm. “Sit, please.” He is talking to me. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

  I wait three hours. Every time he comes out he tells me he will be with me in just a little while. Everyone who was there when I came in is gone but more people have come in so that the room is full again. I stand up so as not to be squeezed on the sofa.

  “Okay,” he says. “Come in.” It takes me a while to understand that he is finally talking to me. I walk in and he closes the door behind us.

  “You’re in the autism spectrum, aren’t you?” Jerry García asks me.

  This question has become even more difficult to answer accurately as the summer has progressed. There are times when I wonder whether I ever belonged at Paterson. Here I am functioning in the real world, having conversations with people, detecting what is on their minds, imagining what they must be feeling, in a way that many autistic kids are never able to do. But I like it when people do not walk on eggshells (one of my favorite figures of speech) and say what is on their minds, the way he has just done. It makes me like him almost immediately.

  “The closest description of what I have is probably Asperger’s syndrome. It falls on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum.” It is as good an answer as I can give.

  “I could tell. Sometimes I represent autistic kids and their families, trying to get the schools to comply with federal law and provide the special services they need.”

  “Why did you ask?”

  “Something in your eyes, you know, kind of looking sideways when you speak.” Then when I look at him and rest my eyes on him, he adds quickly, “But to a much lesser degree than the kids I’ve met. Also the way you stand and sit: very formal, very still. Most kids your age slouch and fidget.”

  “Arturo says I stand like a lead soldier.”

  “Arturo?”

  “My father?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Marcelo Sandoval.”

  A big grin appears on his face. “I knew you reminded me of someone. I was a classmate of your father’s in law school.” “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “I did not know you knew my father but I knew you graduated from Harvard Law School the same year he did. I found that information on the Internet.”

  “Oh.”

  Now comes the hard part. He is going to ask me why I am here to see him. I have rehearsed the reply to this question many times, but I keep changing my answer. Despite the fact that I am here in front of Jerry García, I am still not sure why I am here. Despite all the planning, the lying to Juliet about how I had a doctor’s appointment, the studying and memorizing the directions to Jerry García’s office, despite all that, this feels as if I were being asked to enter a dark room. I cannot remember a single time in my life when I have not known where I was going. I have always been sure I could see what was ahead before I stepped toward it.

  So now I see him moving about his cramped office, making room for me to sit on a blue sofa that has pieces of cotton sticking out. As I sit, I hear him saying something about how he wishes he could be more organized and how there is just too much work for one person to do and something about how much I look like my father, how I have the same determined, intense look. I hear all these things but only pieces of them because I am wondering what I will say when he asks me why I am here. Different words from different people play in my head along with the chatter of Jerry García. “The right note sounds right and the wrong note sounds wrong,” I remember Jasmine saying. And so I listen carefully now and try to detect what I hear inside, trying to listen for the note.

  Jerry García pulls a wooden chair in front of me and crosses his legs and asks, “What I can do for you?”

  Although my eyes have been open all along, it is at this point that I begin to truly see where I am. Jerry García works out of a desk cluttered with files and papers and boxes. There is a table behind his desk with a computer, a printer, and a fax machine. To the side of the room is the sofa where I’m sitting. This room too is full of shelves lined with books and brown folders. Except that on one of the shelves, the one that is closest to me, I see a picture of Jerry García, his arms around an older man with dark sunglasses, who I know is blind because he is holding a German shepherd on a harness.

  After I don’t know how long, I say, “I have a German shepherd. His name is Namu.”

  “Namu. Nice name. As in Namu Amida Butsu?”

  “Yes.” No one has ever recognized the source of Namu’s name before. “Do you think it’s wrong to name a dog after a Buddhist prayer?”

  “Of course not. That way every time you call Namu you can say the Nembutsu.”

  “That is what I thought also. I thought the Buddha would be okay with that.”

  “I have no doubt he would.”

  “My uncle Hector brought Namu and Namu’s brother, Romulus, from Texas when I was twelve years old. He gave Romulus to Paterson, the school I attend.”

  “Your uncle Hector lives in Texas?”

  “In San Antonio. He is the head of Furman, a reformatory school for delinquent boys. They breed and train the dogs there. The contact with the animals helps the boys. And the dogs raise money for the school.”

  “A good idea. A very good idea.”

  “We have Haflinger ponies at Paterson, where I go to school, for similar reasons. The ponies—we call them ponies but they are not technically ponies, they are small horses—help the kids with coordination and with their confidence.”

  “Yes, I can see they would.”

  There is a pause. I breathe slowly one, two, three times. I speak. “I helped with the Vidromek litigation. I found a picture. In the picture I saw that.” I point to the calendar hanging on the wall behind his desk. “That’s how we found you.”

  “We?”

  “Jasmine works with me at the law firm. She helped me.”

  “Ahh.” Jerry García smiles, as if he knew that was the reason for my visit.

  I remove the picture from my backpack.

  He takes it in his hand but hardly looks at it. He is obviously familiar with the picture. Jerry García smiles and returns it to me.

  He sits back on the chair he has placed in front of me and begins to speak so softly I can barely hear him. “When your father and I were in law school, there was a poker game every Friday night without fail. There were seven of us, the seven Mexican-Americans at Harvard Law School. Your father, myself, this guy Rudy, and I don’t remember the names of the other guys. These poker games were unbelievable. There was so much hostility there. When I went there, I thought, well, this will be a nice support group with my carnales, mi raza—you know, my brothers. But all everyone did was openly envy and insult each other. I kept on going because I needed the money. I could eat for the next week with that money. So in that sense my carnales helped me out despite themselves.” Jerry García laughs and slaps his knees at the same time. “Do you play poker?”

  “No.”

  The phone rings. Jerry García gets up and pushes a button on it. “My secretary left me last week,” he says when he sits down. “She went to work in a law firm like your father’s. Imagine, after I trained her and everything.” He shrugs. This shrug means, What can you do?

  “Where wa
s I? My brain is like one of those balloons that you untie and they go prrrrr all over the place. You know what I mean?”

  “I do.” Every time I have to do more than one thing at once my brain feels like that. “What happened with the poker game?”

  “Wow! They were something, those poker games. Where was all the anger and downright meanness coming from? I mean, it wasn’t gentle ribbing. I could tell that people were really pissed when one got an A and the others didn’t or when one got a job offer with a bigger law firm. It was craaaazy-loco! When I walked out of there, I felt like I needed to take a shower. Only I needed the money. It made me sad. Really, they’d ask me what I wanted to do after law school and I told them my plan. First, I’m working with the U.S. Attorney’s office to get some experience in litigation and then I’m opening a solo practice in a poor neighborhood. They’d look at me like I was from, I don’t know, like I was from…”

  “Mars.”

  “Yeah. Exactly. Except…except your father. He never made fun of me. Then one evening he and I got to walk together back to our dorms and, I don’t know, I guess he had a couple of tequilas in him, I did too, so he said to me, ‘I hope you make it through law school still feeling like you do.’ ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ I asked him. And he answered, ‘Sometimes you start off going one way and you end up going another way and you don’t know how it happened. It’s kind of like a current veered your boat.’ When he said this, I knew he was talking about his own life, about a decision he had made that he wasn’t sure about. ‘Veer it back,’ I said to him. ‘It’s never too late.’ But he patted my back and walked off toward his dorm. We were about to graduate and your dad had already received an offer from one of the most prestigious law firms in Boston.”

  “My father said that to you?” It was a different image of Arturo. Arturo, only eight or so years older than my present age, a young man, wondering about the path he was about to take.