After another week and with no calls from the lawyers, Papi saw the company doctor. His spine felt as if there were broken glass inside of it but he was given only three weeks of medical leave. Ignoring the instructions on the medication, he swallowed ten pills a day for the pain. He got better. When he returned to the job he could work and that was enough. The bosses were unanimous, however, in voting down Papi’s next raise. They demoted him to the rotating shift he’d been on during the first days of the job.
Instead of taking his licks, he blamed it on Nilda. Puta, was what he took to calling her. They fought with renewed vigor; the orange elephant was knocked over and lost a tusk. She kicked him out twice but after probationary weeks at Jo-Jo’s allowed him to return. He saw less of his son, avoiding all of the daily routines that fed and maintained the infant. The third Ramón was a handsome child who roamed the house restlessly, tilted forward and at full speed, as if he were a top that had been sent spinning. Papi was good at playing with the baby, pulling him by his foot across the floor and tickling his sides, but as soon as the third Ramón started to fuss, playtime was over. Nilda, come and tend to this, he’d say.
The third Ramón resembled Papi’s other sons and on occasion he’d say, Yunior, don’t do that. If Nilda heard these slips she would explode. Maldito, she’d cry, picking up the child and retreating with Milagros into the bedroom. Papi didn’t screw up too often but he was never certain how many times he’d called the third Ramón with the second son Ramón in mind.
With his back killing him and his life with Nilda headed down the toilet, Papi began more and more to regard his departure as inevitable. His first familia was the logical destination. He began to see them as his saviors, as a regenerative force that could redeem his fortunes. He said as much to Jo-Jo. Now you’re finally talking sense, panín, Jo-Jo said. Chuito’s imminent departure from the warehouse also emboldened Ramón to act. London Terrace Apartments, delayed because of a rumor that it had been built on a chemical dump site, had finally opened.
Jo-Jo was only able to promise Papi half the money he needed. Jo-Jo was still throwing away money on his failed negocio and needed a little time to recover. Papi took this as a betrayal and said so to their friends. He talks a big game but when you’re at the final inning, you get nada. Although these accusations filtered back to Jo-Jo and wounded him, he still loaned Papi the money without comment. That’s how Jo-Jo was. Papi worked for the rest of it, more months than he expected. Chuito reserved him an apartment and together they began filling the place with furniture. He started taking a shirt or two with him to work, which he then sent to the apartment. Sometimes he’d cram socks in his pockets or put on two pairs of underwear. He was smuggling himself out of Nilda’s life.
What’s happening to your clothes? she asked one night.
It’s that damn cleaners, he said. That bobo keeps losing my things. I’m going to have to have a word with him as soon as I get a day off.
Do you want me to go?
I can handle this. He’s a very nasty guy.
The next morning she caught him cramming two guayaberas in his lunch pail. I’m sending these to be cleaned, he explained.
Let me do them.
You’re too busy. It’s easier this way.
He wasn’t very smooth about it.
They spoke only when necessary.
Years later Nilda and I would speak, after he had left us for good, after her children had moved out of the house. Milagros had children of her own and their pictures crowded on tables and walls. Nilda’s son loaded baggage at JFK. I picked up the picture of him with his girlfriend. We were brothers all right, though his face respected symmetry.
We sat in the kitchen, in that same house, and listened to the occasional pop of a rubber ball being batted down the wide channel between the building fronts. My mother had given me her address (Give my regards to the puta, she’d said) and I’d taken three trains to reach her, walked blocks with her address written on my palm.
I’m Ramón’s son, I’d said.
Hijo, I know who you are.
She fixed café con leche and offered me a Goya cracker. No thanks, I said, no longer as willing to ask her questions or even to be sitting there. Anger has a way of returning. I looked down at my feet and saw that the linoleum was worn and filthy. Her hair was white and cut close to her small head. We sat and drank and finally talked, two strangers reliving an event — a whirlwind, a comet, a war — we’d both seen but from different faraway angles.
He left in the morning, she explained quietly. I knew something was wrong because he was lying in bed, not doing anything but stroking my hair, which was very long back then. I was a Pentecostal. Usually he didn’t lay around in bed. As soon as he was awake he was showered and dressed and gone. He had that sort of energy. But when he got up he just stood over little Ramón. Are you OK? I asked him and he said he was just fine. I wasn’t going to fight with him about it so I went right back to sleep. The dream I had is one I still think about. I was young and it was my birthday and I was eating a plate of quail’s eggs and all of them were for me. A silly dream really. When I woke up I saw that the rest of his things were gone.
She cracked her knuckles slowly. I thought that I would never stop hurting. I knew then what it must have been like for your mother. You should tell her that.
We talked until it got dark and then I got up. Outside the local kids were gathered in squads, stalking in and out of the lucid clouds produced by the streetlamps. She suggested I go to her restaurant but when I got there and stared through my reflection in the glass at the people inside, all of them versions of people I already knew, I decided to go home.
December. He had left in December. The company had given him a two-week vacation, which Nilda knew nothing about. He drank a cup of black café in the kitchen and left it washed and drying in the caddy. I doubt if he was crying or even anxious. He lit a cigarette, tossed the match on the kitchen table and headed out into the angular winds that were blowing long and cold from the south. He ignored the convoys of empty cabs that prowled the streets and walked down Atlantic. There were less furniture and antique shops then. He smoked cigarette after cigarette and killed his pack within the hour. He bought a carton at a stand, knowing how expensive they would be abroad.
The first subway station on Bond would have taken him to the airport and I like to think that he grabbed that first train, instead of what was more likely true, that he had gone out to Chuito’s first, before flying south to get us.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A debt to the community, especially Barrio XXI. And to Those who watch over us.
My family had my back for years: Virtudes, Rafael, Maritza, Mari, Paul, Julito, Mercedes, Julio Angel, David, Miguel, Yrma, Miguel Angel, Mildred, Vanessa, Jeffrey. Y los abuelos, Osterman y Elba.