Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

She held me for a moment. “Shhh.”

  The world was so silent. There was a barrier between me and the world, and I thought for a moment that the world had never wanted me and now it was taking the opportunity to get rid of me.

  I looked up and saw my mom standing in front of me, holding out two aspirin, a glass of water.

  I sat up and reached for the pills and put them in my mouth. When I held the glass, I could see my hands trembling.

  She put a thermometer under my tongue.

  She studied the time on her watch, then pulled the thermometer out of my mouth.

  “A hundred and four,” she said. “We’ve got to break that fever.” She shook her head. “It’s all those germs at the pool.”

  The world seemed closer for an instant. “It’s just a cold,” I whispered. But it seemed like someone else was talking.

  “I think you have the flu.”

  But it’s summer. The words were on my tongue but I couldn’t say them. I couldn’t stop shivering. She placed another blanket over me.

  Everything was spinning but when I closed my eyes, the room was motionless and dark.

  And then the dreams came.

  Birds were falling from the sky. Sparrows. Millions and millions of sparrows. They were falling like rain and they were hitting me as they fell and I had their blood all over me and I couldn’t find a place to protect myself. Their beaks were breaking my skin like arrows. And Buddy Holly’s plane was falling from the sky and I could hear Waylon Jennings singing “La Bamba.” I could hear Dante crying—and when I turned around to see where he was, I saw that he was holding Richie Valens’s limp body in his arms. And then the plane came falling down on us. All I saw was the shadow and the earth on fire.

  And then the sky disappeared.

  I must have been screaming, because my mom and dad were in the room. I was trembling and everything was soaked in my sweat. And then I realized that I was crying and I couldn’t make myself stop.

  My dad picked me up and rocked me in the chair. I felt small and weak and I wanted to hold him back but I couldn’t because there wasn’t any strength in my arms, and I wanted to ask him if he had held me like this when I was a boy because I didn’t remember and why didn’t I remember. I started to think that maybe I was still dreaming, but my mother was changing the sheets on my bed so I knew that everything was real. Except me.

  I think I was mumbling. My father held me tighter and whispered something, but not even his arms or his whispers could keep me from trembling. My mom dried my sweaty body with a towel and she and my dad changed me into a clean T-shirt and clean underwear. And then I said the strangest thing, “Don’t throw my T-shirt away. Dad gave it to me.” I knew I was crying, but I didn’t know why because I wasn’t the kind of guy who cried, and I thought that maybe it was someone else who was crying.

  I could hear my father whisper, “Shhhh. It’s okay.” He laid me back down on the bed and my mother sat next to me and made me drink some water and take more aspirin.

  I saw the look on my dad’s face and I knew he was worried. And I was sad that I had made him worry. I wondered if he had really held me and I wanted to tell him that I didn’t hate him, it was just that I didn’t understand him, didn’t understand who he was and I wanted to, I wanted so much to understand. My mother said something to my father in Spanish and he nodded. I was too tired to care about words in any language.

  The world was so quiet.

  I fell asleep—and the dreams came again. It was raining outside and there was thunder and lightning all around me. And I could see myself as I ran in the rain. I was looking for Dante and I was yelling because he was lost, “Dante! Come back! Come back!” And then I wasn’t looking for Dante anymore, I was looking for my dad and I was yelling for him, “Dad! Dad! Where did you go? Where did you go?”

  When I woke again, I was soaked in my own sweat again.

  My dad was sitting on my rocking chair, studying me.

  My mom walked into the room. She looked at my father—then at me.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.” I couldn’t make myself talk above a whisper.

  My mother smiled and I thought she must have been really pretty when she was a girl. She helped me sit up. “Amor, you’re soaked. Why don’t you take a nice shower?”

  “I had nightmares.”

  I leaned my head on her shoulder. I wanted the three of us to stay that way forever.

  My dad helped me to the shower. I felt weak and washed out and when the warm water hit my body, I thought of my dreams . . . Dante, my dad. And I wondered what my dad looked like when he was my age. My mother had told me he was beautiful. I wonder if he’d been as beautiful as Dante. And I wondered why I thought that.

  When I went back to bed, my mom had changed the sheets again. “Your fever’s gone,” she said. She gave me another glass of water. I didn’t want it but I drank all of it. I didn’t know how thirsty I’d been, and I asked her for more water.

  My father was still there, sitting on my rocking chair.

  We studied each other for a moment as I lay in bed.

  “You were looking for me,” he said.

  I looked at him.

  “In your dream. You were looking for me.”

  “I’m always looking for you,” I whispered.

  Two

  THE NEXT MORNING, WHEN I WOKE, I THOUGHT I HAD died. I knew it wasn’t true—but the thought was there. Maybe a part of you died when you were sick. I don’t know.

  My mom’s solution to my predicament was to make me drink gallons of water—one painful glass at a time.

  I finally went on strike and refused to drink anymore. “My bladder’s turned into a water balloon that’s about to explode.”

  “That’s good,” she said, “You’re flushing your system out.”

  “I’m done flushing,” I said.

  The water wasn’t the only thing I had to deal with. I had to deal with her chicken soup. Her chicken soup became my enemy.

  The first bowl was incredible. I had never been that hungry. Not ever. She mostly gave me broth.

  The soup returned the next day for lunch. That was okay too, because now I got all the chicken and the vegetables in the soup with warm corn tortillas and my mother’s sopa de arroz. But the soup came back in the form of an afternoon snack. And for dinner.

  I was sick of water and chicken soup. I was sick of being sick. After four days in bed, I finally decided that it was time to move on.

  I made an announcement to my mother. “I’m well.”

  “You’re not,” my mother said.

  “I’m being held hostage.” That’s the first thing I said to my father when he came home from work.

  He grinned at me.

  “I’m fine now, Dad. I am.”

  “You still look a little pale.”

  “I need some sun.”

  “Give it one more day,” he said. “Then you can go out into the world and cause all the trouble you want.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But no more chicken soup.”

  “That’s between you and your mother.”

  He started to leave my room. He hesitated for a moment. He had his back to me. “Have you had any more bad dreams?”

  “I always have bad dreams,” I said.

  “Even when you’re not sick?”

  “Yeah.”

  He stood at my doorway. He turned around and faced me. “Are you always lost?”

  “In most of them, yeah.”

  “And are you always trying to find me?”

  “Mostly I think I’m trying to find me, Dad.” It was strange to talk to him about something real. But it scared me too. I wanted to keep talking, but I didn’t know exactly how to say what I was holding inside me. I looked down at the floor. Then I looked up at him and shrugged like no big deal.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m so far away.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “No, it’s not.” I think he was
going to say something else, but he changed his mind. He turned and walked out of the room.

  I kept staring down at the floor. And then I heard my father’s voice in the room again. “I have bad dreams too, Ari.”

  I wanted to ask him if his dreams were about the war or about my brother. I wanted to ask him if he woke up as scared as me.

  All I did was smile at him. He’d told me something about himself.

  I was happy.

  Three

  I WAS ALLOWED TO WATCH TELEVISION. BUT I DISCOVERED something about myself. I didn’t really like television. I didn’t like it at all. I switched the TV off and found myself watching my mother as she sat at the kitchen table, looking over some of her old lesson plans.

  “Mom?”

  She looked up at me. I tried to imagine my mother standing in front of her class. I wondered what the guys thought of her. I wondered how they saw her. I wondered if they liked her. Hated her? Respected her? I wondered if they knew she was a mother. I wondered if that mattered to them.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “You like teaching?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Even when your students don’t care?”

  “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m not responsible for whether my students care or don’t care. That care has to come from them—not me.”

  “Where does that leave you?”

  “No matter what, Ari, my job is to care.”

  “Even when they don’t?”

  “Even when they don’t.”

  “No matter what?”

  “No matter what.”

  “Even if you teach kids like me, who think life is boring?”

  “That’s the way it is when you’re fifteen.”

  “Just a phase,” I said.

  “Just a phase.” She laughed.

  “You like fifteen-year-olds?”

  “Are you asking me if I like you, or are you asking me if I like my students?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “I adore you, Ari, you know I do.”

  “Yeah, but you adore your students, too.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Can I go outside?” I could avoid questions as skillfully as she could.

  “You can go out tomorrow.”

  “I think you’re being a fascist.”

  “That’s a big word, Ari.”

  “Thanks to you, I know all about the different forms of government. Mussolini was a fascist. Franco was a fascist. And Dad says Reagan is a fascist.”

  “Don’t take your father’s jokes too literally, Ari. All he’s saying is that he thinks President Reagan is too heavy-handed.”

  “I know what he’s saying, Mom. Just like you know what I’m saying.”

  “Well, it’s good to know that you think your mother is more than a form of government.”

  “You kind of are,” I said.

  “I get your point, Ari. You’re still not going outside.”

  There were days when I wished I had it in me to rebel against my mother’s rules.

  “I just want to get out of here. I’m bored out of my skull.”

  She got up from where she was sitting. She placed her hands on my face. “Hijo de mi vida,” she said, “I’m sorry that you think I’m too strict on you. But I have my reasons. When you’re older—”

  “You always say that. I’m fifteen. How old do I have to be? How old, Mom, before you think I’m smart enough to get it? I’m not a little boy.”

  She took my hand and kissed it. “You are to me,” she whispered. There were tears running down her cheeks. There was something I wasn’t getting. First Dante. Then me. And now my mom. Tears all over the damned place. Maybe tears were something you caught. Like the flu.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I whispered. I smiled at her. I think I was hoping for a full explanation for her tears, but I was going to have to work to get it. “Are you okay?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m okay.”

  “I don’t think you are.”

  “I’m trying hard not to worry about you.”

  “Why do you worry? I just had the flu.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “What?”

  “What do you do when you leave the house?”

  “Stuff.”

  “You don’t have any friends.” She started to place her hand over her mouth, then stopped herself.

  I wanted to hate her for that accusation. “I don’t want any.”

  She looked at me, almost as if I were a stranger.

  “And how can I have friends if you don’t let me go outside?”

  I got one of her looks.

  “I do have friends, Mom. I have school friends. And Dante. He’s my friend.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Dante.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Dante.”

  “I’m glad for Dante,” she said.

  I nodded. “I’m okay, Mom. I’m just not the kind of guy—” I didn’t know what I was trying to say. “I’m just different.” I didn’t even know what I meant.

  “You know what I think?”

  I didn’t want to know what she thought. I didn’t. But I was going to hear it anyway. “Sure,” I said.

  She ignored the attitude.

  “I don’t think you know how loved you are.”

  “I do know.”

  She started to say something, but she changed her mind. “Ari, I just want you to be happy.”

  I wanted to tell her that happy was hard for me. But I think she already knew that. “Well,” I said, “I’m at that phase where I’m supposed to be miserable.”

  That made her laugh.

  We were okay.

  “You think it would be all right if Dante came over?”

  Four

  DANTE ANSWERED THE PHONE ON THE SECOND RING. “You haven’t been going to the pool.” He sounded mad.

  “I’ve been in bed. I caught the flu. Mostly I’ve been sleeping, having really bad dreams, and eating chicken soup.”

  “Fever?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Achy bones?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Night sweats?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bad stuff,” he said. “What were your dreams about?”

  “I can’t talk about them.”

  That seemed okay with him.

  Fifteen minutes later, he showed up at my front door. I heard the doorbell. I could hear him talking to my mother. Dante never had any trouble starting up conversations. He was probably telling my mom his life story.

  I heard him walking down the hall in his bare feet. And then there he was, standing at the doorway to my room, wearing a T-shirt that was so worn you could almost see through it, and a ratty pair of jeans with holes in them.

  “Hi,” he said. He was carrying a book of poems, a sketch pad, and some charcoal pencils.

  “You forgot your shoes,” I said.

  “I donated them to the poor.”

  “Guess the jeans are next.”

  “Yeah.” We both laughed.

  He studied me. “You look a little pale.”

  “I still look more Mexican than you do.”

  “Everybody looks more Mexican than I do. Pick it up with the people who handed me their genes.” There was something in his voice. The whole Mexican thing bothered him.

  “Okay, okay.” I said. “Okay, okay” always meant it was time to change the subject. “So you brought your sketch pad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you going to show me your drawings?”

  “Nope. I’m going to sketch you.”

  “What if I don’t want to be sketched?”

  “How am I going to be an artist if I can’t practice?”

  “Don’t artists’ models get paid?”

  “Only the ones that are good-looking.”

  “So I’m not good-looking?”

  Dante smiled. “Don’t be an asshole.” He seemed embarrassed. But not as embarrassed as I
was.

  I could feel myself turning red. Even guys with dark skin like me could blush. “So you’re really going to be an artist?”

  “Absolutely.” He looked right at me. “You don’t believe me?”

  “I need evidence.”

  He sat in my rocking chair. He studied me. “You still look sick.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Maybe it’s your dreams.”

  “Maybe.” I didn’t want to talk about my dreams.

  “When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending. I’d get up and look in the mirror and my eyes were sad.”

  “You mean like mine.”

  “Yeah.”

  “My eyes are always sad.”

  “The world isn’t ending, Ari.”

  “Don’t be an asshole. Of course it’s not ending.”

  “Then don’t be sad.”

  “Sad, sad, sad,” I said.

  “Sad, sad, sad,” he said.

  We were both smiling, trying to hold in our laughter—but we just couldn’t do it. I was happy that he’d come over. Being sick made me feel fragile, like I might break. I didn’t like feeling like that. Laughing made me feel better.

  “I want to draw you.”

  “Can I stop you?”

  “You’re the one who said you needed evidence.”

  He tossed me the book of poems he’d brought along. “Read it. You read. I’ll draw.” Then he got real quiet. His eyes started searching everything in the room: me, the bed, the blankets, the pillows, the light. I felt nervous and awkward and self-conscious and uncomfortable. And Dante’s eyes on me, well, I didn’t know if I liked that or didn’t like that. I just knew I felt naked. But there was something happening between Dante and his drawing pad that made me feel invisible. And that made me relax.

  “Make me look good,” I said.

  “Read,” he said. “Just read.”

  It didn’t take long for me to forget Dante was drawing me. And I just read. I read and I read and I read. Sometimes I would glance over at him, but he was lost in his work. I returned to the book of poems. I read a line and tried to understand it: “from what we cannot hold the stars are made.” It was a beautiful thing to say, but I didn’t know what it meant. I fell asleep thinking what the line might mean.

  When I woke, Dante was gone.

  He hadn’t left any of the sketches that he’d done of me. But he did leave a sketch of my rocking chair. It was perfect. A rocking chair against the bare walls of my room. He’d captured the afternoon light streaming into the room, the way the shadows fell on the chair and gave it depth and made it appear as if it was something more than an inanimate object. There was something sad and solitary about the sketch and I wondered if that’s the way he saw the world or if that’s the way he saw my world.