Close Call?

When finished filling the kiddie pool, I ran to the patio to turn off the spigot. My parents were sitting at the patio table, supervising us––dad with his usual can of Coors squinting passed the smoke of the Marlboro Light hanging from his mouth, and mom with her lemonade-laced tequila.

“Come over here,” my dad motioned. “I was telling your mama about your birthday present.”

“My birthday?” I shouted in excitement. I was turning eleven in two weeks, and this was the first I’d heard my birthday mentioned. I sat down in front of them, eager to hear about this gift. 

“I’m going to get you a dirt bike,” he announced.

“A what?” I asked, trying to mask any signs of devastation with a forced smile.

“A dirt bike. That way you’re prepared for when I get you a motorcycle when you turn sixteen,” he said as if we had discussed this plan before.

“Oh. That sounds cool, dad,” I said, immediately looking over at my mother, whose eyes said, “Don’t worry about it.” 

The older I got, the more he realized I was nothing like my brother or his sister Malvina’s sons. He liked to play rough with all the boys, but I was sensitive. If Dad body-slammed me on the couch too hard, I would cry and/or run to my mother, whereas my little brother would just get back up and punch him as hard as he could. I didn’t play or watch sports like my brother and cousins. I played dolls with my sister when no one was looking. Once he began to notice the lack of masculine resemblance between I, his firstborn son, I could tell my dad was starting to not like me much. 

“The mayor came into the restaurant yesterday,” he continued after a sip of Coors. “Did you know his daughter is your age?”

“I didn’t know that, dad.” I wondered what this had to do with my birthday.

“You’re going to take her to the prom,” he proudly informed me.

“I am?” I looked at my mother again. Fifth grade had just ended a week ago. Was my dad about to tell me my whole life’s plan?

“Yes! I’m going to get you a limo, and I’m going to give you my good watch to wear.” His “good watch,” I later learned, was Gucci, and a gift from one of his many mistresses.

“Oh, that’s cool, dad.”

“That’s cool, dad” he mocked, getting up from the table and running toward me. I was already laughing when he picked me up. “That’s cool, dad,” he said again, laughing with me. I loved it when he threw me over his shoulder. He ran toward the kiddie pool and tossed me in. 

The pain of my tailbone hitting the bottom made me gasp, inhaling water through both my nose and mouth. He yanked me out by my arm. The inside of my nose was burning, but that was the least of it.

“What? Why are you crying now?” he yelled. But I couldn’t answer. I was choking on water.

My mother ran to me, bent me over, and patted my back like you would an almost empty bottle of ketchup. I threw up all the water I swallowed, then cried out. She picked me up and took me to the porch, rubbing my tailbone. My father followed us.

“Why are you such a pussy?” 

“He hit his tailbone!” my mother defended. “The tailbone is fragile! Le duele. It hurts.”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed. I still remember the look of disgust in his eyes. “He cries for everything. He’s such a pussy,” he said again, then left us to play with his other son. The one who wouldn’t cry every time he got hurt. 

During summer break, we'd pull all the pillows off the couch, lay them down in front of the TV, and stay up late to watch Nick at Nite. But not too close to the TV, because according to my mother, we could go blind. We'd grab the blankets and pillows from our beds and fight for a good spot on the floor, and once we fell asleep, my dad would carry us to bed. But that night, I thought, he must have forgotten. It was five in the morning when the loud knock woke me. I assumed it was my dad, who had been locked out of the house again by my angry mother for staying out too late.

“I’ll let mom get it,” I thought and rolled over, anticipating an argument I would pretend I couldn’t hear. 

The next series of knocks were louder. Pounding.

“Ya voy! I’m coming!” My mother sounded groggy and frustrated as she stepped over us, her robe brushing the side of my face. She opened the door, and I heard her say, “Great. What did he do now?” 

 I opened my eyes, momentarily blinded by the red, blue, and white lights taking turns flashing through the front window. 

I knew he was gone. 

I had watched The Witches with Angelica Houston many times. It’s what happened to the boy when the cops came to inform his grandmother that his parents had died.

I haven’t heard her scream like that again. I hope I never do. 

I lay still for a while, listening to her denial. I didn't want to believe it either. “Maybe it's a bad dream?” I wondered. Maybe if I go back to sleep, I'll wake up, and everything will be back to normal. We'll get up in the morning to freshly made pancakes and watch Bugs Bunny with my dad. He'll make us take off his smelly socks and wrestle us to the ground, forcing us to smell them while we lose our minds with laughter. If he’s too rough, I bargain, I won’t cry. Not this time. Maybe not forever. He'll teach me how to change the oil in my motorcycle, which I suddenly want. He'll teach me how to talk to girls I have no interest in but will pretend to. He'll teach me to shave with an actual razor and not the rusty pink one my mom uses to shave her legs. 

I heard a thud. My cue. I pushed the blankets off me and walked over to my mom, crumpled on the floor. She grabbed and pulled me into her sobs. “No, no, no. No tu papa. Not your dad. No puede ser. Mí Nacho. It’s not true.” 

But it was. And that’s all I remember of that night. That’s all, and that’s enough. 

Later that summer, Malvina brought her sons over to take us all swimming in the reservoir. 

“I know someone killed him,” Aunt Malvina said as my mother gazed out at the water, keeping an eye on my brother and sister. 

I wasn’t in the mood for swimming. Besides, I didn’t like taking my shirt off in front of anyone.

“Aye, Malvina,” my mother sighed. 

“But Silvia!” Malvina pleaded. “He was found in the passenger seat. Someone must have hit him over the head, put him in the car, and pushed it in the ditch.”

“They found proof the car flipped before it landed in the ditch, Malvina. Your brother didn’t have his seatbelt on. He never wore his seatbelt.”

“Well, then maybe someone was driving him and got out when the car flipped into the water. Left him there! And—”

“He was drunk!” I yelled, interrupting her ridiculous rant. “That’s what killed him. He didn’t care that we were at home, waiting for him.  He got drunk after work and then got in a car and flipped it into a ditch full of water. He killed himself. No one killed him. He just didn’t love us enough to not drive drunk.”

Aunt Malvina looked at my mother, as if her face could answer why I said what I had just said. But it couldn’t. She continued her campaign of blame. “Quien le dijo eso? Who told him that? Where did he get that from?” Her tone becoming accusatory. “Why is he saying that?”

“Yo no se. I don’t know,” my mother said, her instinct to defend kicking in as she placed her hand on mine. “I never said any of that.” But her voice got softer, as if this new, eleven-year-old perspective broke her. “But if he had, loved us enough, porque? Why did he drink and drive? It’s true, isn’t it? He didn’t love us enough.” 

It was true. For a while. And it would take decades to forgive me for the shame I inflected on myself for believing that. Decades for me to realize that my parents were not superheroes. Their mistakes, merely human, affected me in a lot of ways, yet their poor decisions had nothing to do with me. Decades for me to refocus, again and again, not on this idea driven by anger that he didn't love me enough to know any better, but that my father took a shortcut through a dark, unfamiliar road to get back to his family sooner but never made it. 

Although I have come to terms with the unknown, I often wonder what my life would have been like had he lived. What would have happened when I would inevitably come to reject the dirt bike, the motorcycle, and the obligatory girlfriend? How would he have reacted as I became more and more unlike him? With death came the closing of the possibility of anything. Experiences, both joyful and challenging, have equal value in our lives; still, it's the difficult experiences that foster the most growth. His death robbed us of that. I will never grow through the rejection that had begun to peak its head around the corner and he will never have the chance to learn or understand the normality of who I was and who I have become.