Marcelo in the Real World

by Francisco X. Stork

  I whistle softly and watch Namu immediately stand up and turn around. “I will wait for you here,” I say and start to walk down toward the pasture where Namu and Gomer are guarding the cows and horses. It is almost noon. I can tell because the sun is halfway through the arc of the horizon. It strikes me that a house built on that knoll would receive sunlight from dawn to dusk.

  “Your mom’s sandwiches will be on the kitchen table if you get hungry,” Jasmine says.

  I stop and begin to climb back to where she is still standing. “Where are we going tomorrow?”

  “We’ll load up Kickaz with camping gear and the four of us—Namu included but not Gomer because he’s too old—we’ll hike up Amos’s hill and down the other side and over a few more hills until we get to Hidden Lake. About a three-hour slow hike. Amos has a shack he slides to the middle of the lake for ice fishing and a canoe he uses in the summer. We’ll fish and canoe on the lake and on the stream that feeds it.” She sounds excited. “We’ll head back Monday morning and then we drive home.”

  “Okay,” I say. I take a deep breath. Monday’s drive home will get here much too soon.

  Halfway down to the pasture where the cows are grazing, I change direction and walk toward the two white crosses. I sit in front of them and read out loud the names and dates inscribed on the granite. Lila and James. Mother and son. One lived fifty-five years, the other eighteen. I hear the sound of Jasmine’s Jeep and then it comes into view and I follow it until it becomes a green dot down the road and disappears.

  I remember why Jasmine brought me to Vermont. She was worried about me and thought this was a good place to sift through all that has happened, to decide. I promise myself that I will do so. Tomorrow when we get to the camping place, I’ll make sure I find the time and place to weigh all of it. But today—today I will just be.

  CHAPTER 23

  In the evening Jasmine and I are washing the supper dishes when we hear the motor of a car. Amos is stuffing a pipe with tobacco that smells like chocolate. He asks, “I wonder who that could be?”

  “Oh, Dad. You asked them to come, didn’t you?” “I did not,” he says. “Busybody Shackleton took it upon himself to come and check out the boy as soon as he knew you were here.”

  Just then the kitchen door opens and three men walk in. They come the way people come into a house they’ve entered many times before. The oldest man, the one I believe to be the father of the other two, looks like a younger, less bent version of Amos. The one I believe to be Cody is carrying a box of Bud Light. The one that I believe to be Jonah has two bags of potato chips in his hands.

  “Oh no,” Jasmine exclaims as soon as the three are in. “There’s not going to be any carrying-on tonight. We have to get up early tomorrow.”

  “Oh yeah?” the father says as Jasmine leans over to receive a peck on her cheek. “Going camping, are you?”

  “Jonah?” Jasmine asks.

  He points at himself and shakes his head. The gesture means I didn’t say anything. “I’m Jonah.” He stretches his hand toward me. I feel my hand gripped by a much larger and stronger hand than mine.

  “And I’m Cody.” The grip of this hand is only slightly softer.

  “So you’re the young fellow. I’m Samuel Shackleton.” The older man holds on to my hand while he studies me. “He’s strong for a city boy,” he says to Amos, who is having trouble getting the fire in his pipe to catch on.

  “Wouldn’t know,” Amos answers between puffs.

  “We’re not staying long,” Jonah says to Jasmine. “I couldn’t keep them from coming. Mom wanted to come but I talked her out of it. She would have killed him with questions.”

  “Where do you want us to sit?” Samuel Shackleton asks. “On these backbreakers or in there in the comfy chairs?”

  “Here,” Jasmine responds quickly, “since you’re only going to be here a short while.”

  “There’s no room in the fridge to put these in,” Cody complains.

  “Full of cereal boxes,” Amos says.

  “You don’t need to put them in the fridge. Just put the box there on the floor. They’ll keep cold.” It’s Jonah speaking.

  “But we got them lukewarm at the store,” Cody says. “I’ll put a few in the freezer. Just enough to last us for a couple of hours.”

  “What?” Jasmine yells.

  Samuel Shackleton pulls out a chair across from Amos and sits down slowly. He is a large man and it does not seem as if the wobbly legs of the kitchen chair will support him. “How you doing, old man? Found that lost marble of yours yet?”

  “I got all the marbles I need,” Amos says. Finally, a red dot begins to glow from his pipe bowl. “They’re still wrinkled from the soaking they made me give them today.” He shoots a glance at Jasmine. “But I suppose they’re still working just fine, wrinkled and all.”

  “How the heck would you know?” Samuel Shackleton asks him.

  “Here we go,” Jasmine says.

  There’s a whoosh from a beer can opening. “Who wants a beer?” Cody is asking.

  “Why don’t you get some of the good stuff you hide under the seat of your car?” Amos suggests.

  “No way,” Jasmine pleads.

  But it is too late. Samuel Shackleton nods to Cody and Cody is out to get the good stuff, whatever that is.

  I resume scrubbing the frying pan Jasmine used to cook the corned-beef hash. Jonah stands beside me and says, “I always find it better to let the pan soak. After a day or two the burned stuff comes off by itself.”

  “There’ll be no soaking tonight,” says Jasmine. “You go ahead and finish scrubbing that. You dry.” She hands Jonah a white dish towel that is already soaking wet.

  Jonah shrugs his shoulders at me—the universal gesture for Oh well, I tried.

  Cody is back again with a clear bottle full of golden liquid.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Amos says, licking his lips. “Pass me one of those glasses, James.”

  It takes me a few seconds to realize he is speaking to me. There is a brief moment when everyone in the room is silent. Then I grab the biggest glass I see and give it to Amos.

  “Fill it up,” Amos orders Cody.

  “If he fills it up you’ll be asking me to drive you to Montreal for you-know-what, just like you used to before you got married,” Samuel Shackleton says.

  “Don’t get him started,” Jasmine says.

  “Why, what’d you guys used to do in Montreal?” Cody asks.

  “Cody!” It’s Jasmine again. “God, all of you are hopeless.” She walks out of the kitchen.

  “Where you going?” Samuel Shackleton yells after her.

  “To pee! You mind?” she answers from down the hall.

  “Cody, go get your fiddle while she’s peeing,” Samuel Shackleton says.

  Cody stands up immediately. Apparently he thinks that’s a great idea.

  I hand the frying pan to Jonah.

  “Don’t worry,” Jonah says. “We really won’t stay too long. I won’t let them.”

  “It is all right,” I say.

  Cody is taking the fiddle out of a black case when Jasmine enters the kitchen again.

  “I give up,” she says. “Go ahead and go in the living room.”

  “Will you play the piano with me?” Cody asks.

  “No way.”

  Jonah hands the pan to Jasmine for inspection. “Have you ever seen this pan so clean?” he asks her.

  She holds it up to the light and traces her finger around the inside and outside. “Not bad,” she says.

  “So where’s the Spam?” Samuel Shackleton asks her as he and Amos walk out of the kitchen.

  “Very funny,” she says as she follows.

  When Jonah and I are alone in the kitchen, he says to me, “When we were kids our two families used to go camping together. We’d take about a hundred cans of Spam in case we didn’t catch any fish, which we usually didn’t. Jasmine and I, we decided one time to break off all the tiny tabs th
at came with the cans to open them. Then when we got up to the lake, everyone was mad at us because they had to use can openers to open the Spam, and can openers don’t work too well on Spam cans.”

  I realize that I have never seen a can of Spam.

  “I think we’re done here,” Jonah says. He spreads the dish towel on the counter so that it will dry. “Is that your dog outside?”

  “Namu,” I say. I don’t know where to put my hands.

  “Great dog. He just kind of inspires respect, doesn’t he? He doesn’t really care whether you pet him or not. He lets you if you want to but he’s happy either way.”

  “Gomer is a calm dog also,” I say.

  “Now he is. He’s got no choice, he’s about fifteen years old.”

  “Namu is nine. Do you have a dog?”

  “About half a dozen at any given time. Cody there is always trying to breed something or other, only what doesn’t get bought stays with us.”

  We are facing the group in front of us. Amos and Samuel Shackleton are sunk in the big living room sofa. Cody is trying to drink beer and tune his violin at the same time. Jasmine has sat on the chair that is the farthest away from the piano. She is motioning us to come in.

  “Do you want a beer?” Jonah asks.

  “I do not drink alcohol,” I respond. I attach a smile to the response so that my statement does not appear rude.

  “Wow. You scrub pans to near perfection and you don’t drink. No wonder Jasmine is taken with you.”

  I am not sure whether this is intended as a joke or not. “Excuse me,” I say, “I need to go fix Namu’s bed. He is sleeping in the barn with Gomer.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Jonah says quickly.

  “Where are you guys going?” I hear Jasmine ask. Jonah yells, “We’ll be right back. We’re going to see Namu.”

  “Jonah…” I hear Jasmine’s voice trail off as we step outside.

  When the door closes, Jonah says, “She’s afraid we’re going to have a heart-to-heart.”

  “A ‘heart-to-heart’?”

  “A man-to-man. Two men talking straight and honest to each other.”

  I see Namu head toward the barn. I follow him. “Do you want to have a heart-to-heart?” I ask.

  “To tell you the truth, I kind of do. Although she’s threatened me with all kinds of tortures if I do.”

  It occurs to me that lately, heart-to-hearts are the only type of conversations I seem to be having. The last conversation with Wendell, when he poked my chest, falls, I think, under Jonah’s definition of a heart-to-heart, although I do not think what I had with Wendell was a conversation.

  In the barn Namu heads to the pile of blankets where Gomer is lying. He sniffs Gomer and then comes back to me as if wanting to see where I’m going to sleep before deciding on a place for himself.

  “I am going to sleep inside the house,” I inform Namu. Just as I turn to point at the house, I feel something push me in the middle of my shoulder blades. It is a push that for all its force I recognize as a simple nudge. I look around and see Kickaz smiling at me. I know a horse’s smile from working with the ponies at Paterson. The ponies also liked to play practical jokes and then their eyes would sparkle.

  I tap Kickaz lightly on the nose, which is what I always did with the ponies at Paterson. Kickaz responds by shaking his head and then lowering it and asking for another tap. Instead I pull both of his ears in jest.

  “I never saw Kickaz be friendly to anyone other than old Amos,” Jonah says. There is surprise in his voice. He tries to touch Kickaz’s face as well, but Kickaz shakes his head away from his touch. “That’s amazing.”

  I find a place for Namu to sleep. “There,” I tell him. Just outside of Kickaz’s stall there is a flattened-out cardboard box and two empty burlap sacks. I unfurl the sacks and Namu sits on top of them.

  Now I look at Jonah. “How do you start a heart-to-heart?”

  “I guess there’s two ways to do it,” Jonah says, walking out of the barn. “We can circle around slowly getting to know each other a little bit, or we can straightaway say what’s in our minds. You have a preference?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Uhh. I’m gonna compromise and just circle a little bit, if it’s okay with you. While I’m circling I may be able to find the words for the heart-to-heart because I’m not sure I have them yet. Is that all right with you?”

  “You love Jasmine.”

  Jonah gasps, “Wooo. Uhh. Ahh. That’s a heart-to-heart, all right.” He shuffles his feet. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

  “Asking. Sometimes it is hard for me to turn a statement into a question.”

  “Are you asking whether Jasmine and I are boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  “No, that was not my question. But you can tell me that if you prefer.”

  The flap in the back of Amos’s truck is down and we sit there. Jonah takes out a cigarette and lights it, but this time I refrain from saying that smoking is bad.

  “With regard to your question, the answer is no, I’m not her boyfriend or ever have been. Not for lack of trying on my part. I was seven when she was born and we grew up together. We live three miles down the road.”

  Someone in the house opens a window. The sound of the violin reaches us and for a moment I imagine a silk ribbon waving in the breeze.

  “One of those things where you think that with time the person will…maybe not love you, that would be too much to ask, but see how good you are for them and take you that way. I think that after James died she went to Boston in part to get away from everything that reminded her of him, including me. You always do this to people?”

  “Do what?”

  “Get them to empty their guts out just like that.”

  “We do not have much time. We should talk about what is important.”

  “Well, that’s pretty much the story.”

  “You would marry Jasmine if she let you.”

  “Yes. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. Jasmine needs someone smart like her…someone like you.”

  “Me, smart?” I laugh. “If you knew how much of what people say or do I fail to understand, you would not call me smart. I stop myself from asking what something means because otherwise no one would talk to me. I’m not smart. I have been trained. It is training and concentration. Years of learning how to communicate.”

  Jonah flicks the cigarette away. “Did she show you her studio?”

  “Her studio?”

  “The one’s she’s building on top of the hill.”

  “Where the hole is.”

  “We just finished digging the foundation. We’ll be putting in the sewer pipes connecting to the septic tank next. Cody and I help her on weekends. She figures old Amos there will need some looking after in a few years, so she’ll come live here, but she and Amos need their space, so she’s building a house-slash-studio up on the hill. One of the rooms will be soundproof so she can eventually put some recording equipment in there. She’s got the whole thing planned. Wood stoves in every room, practically.”

  “That’s what she is saving her money for,” I say.

  “That and for taking care of Amos. She saves all she gets, living in that little cave the way she does.”

  “You know where she lives.”

  “She’s told me about it. Not much she doesn’t tell me. That’s kind of what I wanted to have a heart-to-heart with you about, before you went for the real heart.” Jonah touches his chest and coughs.

  “You are worried about Jasmine.”

  “She says you are a good person. Are you? It’s just that she’s like a sister to me. I want to make sure she is not hurt.”

  I do not have the slightest idea of how I could possibly hurt Jasmine. Maybe he knows about Wendell’s request. But how could he? Then I remember the memo and the risk she took by giving it to me. Whether he knows about these things or not, his question is relevant. “No,” I say. “I will not hurt her.”

  “Good. That’s wha
t I wanted to know.” Then Jonah looks at me deeply. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you attracted to Jasmine?”

  “Attracted.” I am at a loss as to what to say. I like being with Jasmine. I like the comfort and the ease and the not worrying about how I sound or look when I am with her. I like hearing what she says and how she responds to my questions. I like what I see through her, what she leads me to discover, and what her presence opens up for me. I like talking music with her and I like being here with her. I am pulled toward her in a way that resembles the pull of the IM. Is this the kind of attraction Jonah is asking about? “I do not understand what you mean when you use that word. Can you be more specific?”

  Jonah hesitates. “Do you have sexual desire for her?” He looks away. I interpret this gesture as embarrassment, as if the question he is asking is not something he should be concerned about. I do not know, in fact, if it was proper for him to ask me that or if it is proper for me to try to answer it, but I decide to do so anyway, as best I can, not knowing exactly what I will say.

  “As far as I have been able to determine, sexual desire is a kind of energy or attention directed at someone’s body or even at parts of a body. It consists of imagining doing sexual acts with the body of a person or with a part of a person’s body. But I do not imagine doing anything with Jasmine other than what I am doing at the time. That seems to be sufficient. I like spending time with her. I like it when we talk about music or when I ask about the meanings of words. She makes me laugh and makes me think about things I never thought about.”

  “Boy, you really break things down, don’t you?”

  “Some say it is an illness.”