Barely Missing Everything

by Matt Mendez

  At the clinic, she had managed to avoid looking at the sonogram screen. She’d been almost mute, answering the doctor’s questions with one-word answers. No, she didn’t abuse drugs or alcohol. No, she didn’t have insurance. It had probably been a mistake to take the roll of paper when he offered her the photo, her hand reaching for it of its own accord. Because now she found herself looking at it practically every free moment. The image seemed to change each time she looked at it. At first the little white smudge seemed so lonely against the blackness, like a lost satellite floating in outer space, destined to always be so. At least that’s what she’d thought until she began to think of her body as the outer space, her name, Fabiola Ramos, printed alongside the sonogram. Her being an infinite universe, expanding and endless. Possibility unexplored.

  • • •

  Paradise was down in Five Points, where the clientele had changed over the years even if the name didn’t. When she first started working there, the place served mostly old neighborhood drunks. Then came gente fom Juárez, crowds of displaced men and women who’d come to escape the drug-war horror show, but they were eventually chased out by the current hipster crowd, who liked to ironically enjoy the dumb tropical-themed decor and cheap beer. Fabi pulled into the parking lot and saw Ruben’s lime-green Hummer, the KING OF THE DEAL decal emblazoned on the back. Now, Ruben was a guy who never seemed to fit no matter the crowd. Not a drunk, not a refugee looking for community, and for sure no hipster, Ruben had one day wandered into Paradise, telling her he’d done so because paradise was exactly what he was looking for. So corny. He’d returned the following night, this time with a friend, and the two spent the night at the bar, chatting with each other but obviously there to see her. He became a regular, striking up conversations, telling her all about his dealership and the secrets to closing a deal. Ruben’s talk had been a buildup to asking her out. Fabi said no to a night of dancing, then to dinner and a movie. Just not that interested. When he asked if she would go for coffee, just for an hour, she tiredly agreed, deciding Ruben was somewhat cute and at least harmless.

  “Why don’t you return my calls or texts?” Ruben now said as soon as Fabi walked inside the bar. The first rush of the dank air, the smell of stale booze and harsh cleaner, took her breath. The plastic pink flamingos normally perched at the corners of the bar had been knocked over and not put back; the inflatable palm trees, centerpieces for the booths, had gone flat. She had no idea where the pump could be.

  “I did,” Fabi said. “I told you I was busy moving.”

  “And I told you to let me help.” He paused as if unsure, then added, “That you could even move in with me.”

  “Ay Dios. I thought I was being nice by not asking,” Fabi lied. The bar was mostly empty, which was a bad sign. While the hipsters tipped okay, they usually started partying late and drank the cheapest booze. The owners hated them and were thinking of turning Paradise into a sports bar or worse, a strip joint, but their dummy son Chuchi loved them. They were his drinking buddies most nights.

  “How’s that nice, you ignoring me all the pinche time?”

  “I gotta get to work.” And that was the truth. And not just here. She still had unpacking to do. She had Juan to deal with. Not to mention a pregnancy.

  “Then get me a beer, since all you wanna do is work.”

  “What?”

  “Get me a beer. That’s your job, qué no?”

  Fabi sighed. So this was what she was going to have to deal with now. “Yes, fine . . . what kind?”

  “Un PBR.” Ruben straightened his suit jacket, tipped his cowboy hat, and winked the same cocky wink he did at the end of his commercials. She’d never really noticed his ads before meeting him but now saw them all the time, playing during the local news and during sports. She could recite all of his cheesy jokes and knew the shoddy camera work and effects, the lens zooming in and out on his face, arrows pointing at the cheap cars as the words LOW LOW PRICES flashed across the screen.

  “Whatever you say.” Fabi disappeared behind the bar to grab him a beer and start her shift, wishing the night were already over.

  • • •

  Ruben was still at the bar when the hipsters eventually showed. They ordered their PBRs and IPAs. A few made fun of Ruben while waiting for their drinks, talking shit about his clothes and Hummer. One called him the King of Neon. He gave them a thumbs-up as he kept trying to get Fabi to talk to him, while she served him beers and eventually shots. She expected him to leave at some point, but he stayed instead and got drunk. Why was it that men like Ruben, the “nice” ones, were just as relentless as the so-called bad boys and machos and bros at not taking no for an answer?

  “Otra,” Ruben said, shaking his empty can of beer at her. Someone had popped cornball surf music on the jukebox, the guitar fretting loudly, making it hard to hear. A group that had taken the table behind Ruben pounded shots and played with the underinflated palm tree.

  “I’m cutting you off,” Fabi said, arms crossed.

  “Again? You can do that here, too?” Ruben laughed, slamming the open palm of his hand against the bar.

  “Stop it, Ruben,” Fabi said, noticing the crowd at the table beginning to turn their attention their way. “You’re drunk, cabrón.”

  “No shit, cabrona. I’ve been drinking. What’s wrong with you? Or, es más, what’s not wrong with you?”

  “Right now, you’re what’s wrong with me.” Fabi turned and noticed a dude sitting at the table with black plastic glasses and a patchy beard whip out his phone. He started recording them.

  “What did I do? I did everything you wanted.” Ruben wasn’t even looking at her, talking instead to the camera phone.

  “You didn’t do anything.” Fabi knew reasoning with drunk men was a mistake, a rookie mistake, yet here she was.

  “Mentirosa!” He looked back at her. “Why don’t you love me? Tell me! Why do you think you’re too good for me? You’re a fucking waitress.”

  There was a pause of silence. The patrons at the bar turned to Fabi, waiting for her to say something. Ruben’s eyes were red and glassy, the cowboy hat now sitting crooked on his head, his fists balled in anger. She realized the ongoing cost of saying yes to Ruben. That having that first cup of coffee meant one day moving into his house and having his babies; it meant slowly changing herself into whatever thing he imagined her to be that first day he walked into Paradise. Saying yes meant being part of some deal.

  “I don’t know,” Fabi said, looking directly at Ruben, her eyes steely. “I’m just a fucking waitress.”

  “Whatta bitch,” Patchy Beard yelled, holding the camera phone steady on them. Ruben stood up from his stool at the bar and immediately fell to the ground. The table laughed. “All the king wanted was his queen!” Patchy Beard called out.

  “The waitress must have good credit,” someone yelled to a roar of laughter. “Long live the queen.”

  Crawling on the ground, Ruben reached for his cowboy hat. Fabi crouched down and tried to help him up, but he shoved her, knocking her backward into the table. The half-empty bottles of beer and shot glasses rained down on her. Her clothes were soaking and instantly reeking of booze as she struggled to her feet. Bottles clanked around her. The zippy guitar played on the jukebox as a sea of hipsters gawked.

  “That’s what you get,” Patchy Beard said, shoving his phone in her face. “Just wait until Chuchi sees this; his bar is like a novela!”

  “Fuck Chuchi,” Fabi said, pushing the camera away. The drunken hipster idiots erupted into cheers. She scanned the room and realized she was surrounded by men. All of them were drunk, their swollen faces sneering. Shoving her way through the crowd, she ran outside. The whole incident was going to be uploaded onto some Twitter feed or other Internet bullshit. And that was the best-case scenario. She didn’t want to imagine the worst case. It was time to go.

  Outside, the tiny parking lot was dark, the only light coming from a city street lamp on a faraway corner. She heard footsteps cru
nching on the gravel for a moment, then nothing. Ruben’s vehicle was still there, parked feet away from hers. She cautiously approached her truck, her heart beating fast. Where had Ruben gone? As Fabi hopped inside her truck she noticed the Hummer’s driver’s side door was partly open. Ruben was passed out in the driver’s seat. She turned her headlights on and buckled her seat belt, her head throbbing, when she paused for a moment. She knew she should drive away. But the thought came again, the thought about being pregnant, about the possibility of another baby of hers growing up without a father. Fabi took a deep breath and slowly exited her truck. She cautiously approached the Hummer.

  Ruben was slumped over, his keys still pressed in his hand. Fabi delicately took the keys and tossed them into the darkness. Muffled music seeped from inside Paradise as though nothing had happened. Business as usual. Fabi’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She paused for a moment before pulling it out, already knowing who the text message was from. It was Chuchi, the boy boss who stayed hidden in his back office and only came out to party. She flipped open her phone.

  YOU’RE FIRED!!!!!

  WE ARE MONSTERS

  (CHAPTER TWELVE)

  Juan watched as Grampá sat in the driver’s seat of his 1965 Imperial Crown listening to oldies. The sedan needed work—the leather interior was rotted from the sun and splitting along the seams, the dashboard cracked, and most of the wood paneling missing. The body needed paint, too. The midnight black had blotched and faded to a dull purple, and the chrome trim around the fenders and the trunk had stripped away. The music sounded muffled, hissing like songs played on a record player. Los Lobos sang: “Here I am on the short side of nothing / Can’t find my way home / No escape in sight . . .

  The Imperial sat in the backyard and had been there for as long as Juan could remember. Sometimes the hood was popped open, Grampá messing around underneath it. The car seemed to be the one thing in the house that never got completely fixed. Just last month Grampá had installed a new main after the pipe burst in the front yard. When Má asked why he didn’t just patch the old one, he said he didn’t want to risk another hundred-year freeze bursting it again. Grampá was crazy.

  “Does it run?” Juan called out, standing in the kitchen doorway. He didn’t know if he should go into the backyard; the swelling on his ankle finally was down, but it still felt sore. Walking in the dark through Grampá’s junky backyard seemed like a sure way to retwist it. Grampá liked making Juan his helper when he visited—usually when Juan was in trouble for something—the old man explaining the importance of being a good wrench, of being able to fix things. Not having to depend on no one but having people need you isn’t a bad place to be, he once explained while the two installed a fuel pump on a neighbor’s Chevy Impala. Juan didn’t mind helping, but Grampá didn’t seem to be turning wrenches on the Imperial.

  When Juan and Roxanne had finished studying—he was surprisingly getting the hang of quadratic equations and moving on to probability—Roxanne booked, saying she wouldn’t hang out with him until he passed his test, and then only if he quit acting so stupid, now that she knew he wasn’t actually stupid.

  “She runs better than you, Juanito,” Grampá said. “Get out here. I’ve been wanting to talk to you. That girl gone? Your má?”

  “Yeah. It’s just us.”

  “Good. Good.”

  Juan took shotgun. He hadn’t noticed Grampá had been drinking. In fact, his abuelo was probably more than a little fucked up, a tallboy resting between his legs and a couple of empties tossed on the passenger floor. Juan had never seen Grampá like this before. He’d never thought of how much time the old man spent alone, whether this was normal for him.

  “Are you drunk, Grampá?”

  “Nah,” Grampá said. He gripped and pulled at the steering wheel, as if correcting from a slow veering off. “I just closed my eyes for a second, officer. I’m fine.”

  “I’m gonna have to take you in,” Juan said, joking. “Even though this car don’t run, you’re obviously a danger to society.”

  “Speaking of the law, let me tell you something, Juanito.” Grampá turned and put his hand on Juan’s shoulder, squeezed tightly. “You’re not gonna get nowheres making all the mistakes you’ve been making, doing all the same pendejadas every other cabrón out here does. Mexicans don’t get second chances.”

  “Whoa. I was just joking, Grampá. Take it easy. I know what you’re saying.”

  “What do you know?”

  “About what?”

  “About what I’m saying.”

  “That I’m Mexican?” Juan had no idea what Grampá was trying to say.

  “Don’t be a smartass.” Grampá let go of Juan, gripped the wheel of the Imperial again, and stared out the windshield. Grampá’s house, Grampá’s rules, Grampá’s crazy-ass words. Juan didn’t how long he should stay inside the car. If he was allowed to leave.

  Then Grampá started up again. “Look, gringos, especially the rich ones, they get to fuck up. ¿Tú sabes? They still get good lives. Shit, great lives. They go to private schools and colleges and get lawyers on the spot—that’s why none of them got drafted to the war with me. Mira, when they get arrested for whatever bullshit you got arrested for, or worse, they get a second chance. They are boys being boys. Or whatever bullshit the judge says about them. ‘They don’t know any better. They’ll grow out of it. They’re good guys.’ Well, not you. If you wanna have shit in life then you can’t be fucking up. Es más, you have to do a whole lot better than not fucking up. You gotta be perfect. You gotta be better than everyone around you just to prove you’re not a piece of shit. Trust me, I know.”

  “Is that right?” Juan could see the windup for Grampá’s been-there-done-that speech, but now he wanted to hear it anyway. He wanted a beer, too.

  “Look. Before I got drafted and went to Vietnam, before they shot me in the head and left me for crazy, I was gonna be an engineer. I had the best grades in school. The best! But I didn’t know I needed to apply to the university before going. To be accepted first. ¿Me entiendes? I thought I could just show up, fill out some papers, and go inside. Nobody ever told me how it was supposed to go. On the first day I showed up and they told me I couldn’t get in until the next year. Maybe. I tried to argue, told them how smart I was, pero ni modo. I got drafted a month later. I went to the war. Infantry.” He sucked down the rest of his tallboy and this time tossed the empty on the ground.

  “That’s fucked up, Grampá.” Juan knew the story of Grampá’s final mission, maneuvering through the jungle in an attempt to take some hill when a sniper’s bullet swiped the top of his helmet, knocking him unconscious. Juan had always thought Grampá had been lucky to still be alive. He also realized that he hadn’t applied to any school and didn’t know how the whole thing worked, either. Shit. Was it already too late? He wondered if the coach from Arizona actually offering him a scholarship was enough to get him admitted. What if it wasn’t? He thought of the draft, the country seeming to have been at war his entire life. Shit, what if they brought that back?

  “Don’t use those words around me, malcriado. That’s first. Show some respect. And it’s not too late for you. Not yet, but almost. You’re wasting your time with basketball. That’s for the blacks.”

  “Ay, Grampá. Don’t say stuff like that. It’s racist.”

  Grampá studied Juan, his face pinched with confusion, and Juan was sure he seemed ridiculous to him. Like a designer puppy or a robot created to play the trumpet. “Don’t ‘Ay, Grampá’ me. You could still get on with the city in some way. Or try being a mailman. Federal has way better pay and insurance. You’re gonna need that if you ever want a family. It’s too late for you to be an engineer.”

  For a moment Juan imagined himself sitting in an office, wearing a blue short-sleeved button-down, matching blue shorts that didn’t fit well, and black Velcro shoes. Surrounded by stacks of coupons for fast-food joints and envelopes with bills ready to be endlessly stuffed inside mailboxes. “I was jus
t studying algebra. I could be an engineer if I wanted.”

  “With that girl in your room? You were studying?”

  “Yes.”

  “No mames. You two were making babies, or trying to. Maybe you got lucky and couldn’t figure it out. Stay away from that girl before you ruin her like your father ruined your má.”

  “Now that’s fucked up, Grampá.” He liked bullshitting with the old man, talking like he imagined other men talked. But on second thought, he added, “Sorry.”

  On the radio, José Feliciano sang Bill Withers’s “Ain’t No Sunshine.” The sound was muffled and full of static, but Grampá surrendered to the sound. An engineer. Juan wished he actually believed he could be one. He felt stupid for not really knowing what an engineer actually did. “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone / Anytime she goes away / And I know, I know, I know . . .”

  Grampá lightly pounded his fist against his thigh at each “I know.” “I still miss your Grammá, Juanito. Her being gone is still a punch to the heart. A punch every pinche day.”

  “I’m sorry,” Juan said, wishing the damn song were over. As the evening turned to night, Juan could see his breath. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, just black with a scatter of stars. He looked for the moon and thought of heaven, about praying. He’d asked God to give him a sign that shit was going to work out. That he’d be able to play, to get that scholarship. If not that, then maybe, finally, he could meet his dad. It was the least He could do. “At least Grammá is in heaven, waiting for you. You can see her again, right?”