The Inexplicable Logic of My Life

  “Yeah, but I was gonna get one at Walmart for sixty bucks. You know, like the one that died.” Then Fito kept shaking his head. “Look, I’m really sorry. I just can’t take this. It’s not right.”

  My dad took a seat at the table. He took the iPhone out of its fancy white box. He held it in his hand. “These things are really light these days,” he said. “You like baseball, Fito?”

  “Yeah, I love baseball.”

  “You know, Fito, some people believe from the start that things belong to them. My father used to say, ‘Some people are born on third base, and they go through life thinking they hit a triple.’”

  Fito laughed. “I like that.”

  My dad nodded. “Yeah. Fito, you’re not one of those people. A guy like you was born in the locker room, no one ever pointed you in the direction of the baseball diamond, and somehow you managed to get yourself into the dugout. And something in you just doesn’t believe he belongs in the game. But you do, you do belong in the game. One of these days you’re going to be up at bat. And you’re going to hit it out of the ballpark. Anyway, that’s what I think. I’m gonna go outside and have a cigarette.”

  The three of us sat there. Fito pushed the phone away, and it sat in the middle of the table. “Your dad is really cool, you know. Super cool. He’s nice. But—”

  Sam stopped him dead in his tracks. “Oh, you think he thinks these things about you because he’s a nice guy. Maybe you’re a nice guy too. Maybe you deserve more than the shit you’ve been given most of your life.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “don’t you get that, Fito?”

  He was biting his lip, and then he sort of pulled at his hair.

  “Fito,” I said. “This is a present we got you for your fucking birthday. And if you don’t take it, I’m gonna kick your ass. I mean it. I’m gonna lay you out flat.”

  Fito nodded. He slowly reached for the phone, took it in his hand, and stared at it. “I never know what to do when people are nice to me.”

  “All you gotta do, Fito, is say thank you.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “You’re welcome,” I whispered back.

  The three of us didn’t say anything. We just sat there and smiled. And then Fito said, “Your dad, man. I really like that cat.”

  Sam smiled and shook her head. “Why is everyone a cat?”

  “Not everyone’s a cat. Just cool people, you know?”

  I kinda liked that cat thing Fito had goin’ on.

  Sam was teaching Fito how to operate his iPhone—​and I was sitting next to Dad on the back steps. It was dark out and not too cold. The Christmas lights around the back door were blinking off and on. I was beginning to like the smell of my dad’s cigarettes, which was a really bad thing. Then I heard him say, “So how come you’re sitting out here with your old man?”

  “Do you believe in heaven, Dad?”

  “That’s a helluvan answer to my question.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m not sure. I believe there’s a God. I believe there is something greater, a force that transcends this thing we call living. I don’t know if that answers your question.”

  “If there’s no heaven, I don’t really care. Maybe people are heaven, Dad. Some people, anyway. You and Sam and Fito. Maybe you’re all heaven. Maybe everyone’s heaven, and we just don’t know it.”

  My dad was wearing this great smile. “You know something? I think you’re a little bit like Fito.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, I know you’ve been going through a lot lately. And it seems that our lives have gotten a little complicated, and I know you well enough to know that that particular word doesn’t sit well with you. Me going back and forth to see Mima and talking to doctors, and Sam’s mom—”

  “And you dating Marcos.”

  “And me dating Marcos,” he repeated. “And it seems you’re more in your head than I’ve ever seen before. I don’t know what’s going on in there. Not really. But—” He stopped. “But,” he repeated, “I do know you. And I’m guessing that you underestimate yourself. That’s why you had such a hard time writing your essay.”

  “I didn’t tell you I’d finished it.”

  “I know.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I just did. One of those things.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Wow,” he said. “Salvie, I have a theory that you can’t sell yourself on an application form because you don’t believe there’s much to sell. You tell yourself that you’re just this ordinary guy. Is that true?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s part of it, I think.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “Can I get back to you on that?”

  My dad nodded. “Can I just say one thing, Salvador?”

  “Sure.”

  “There’s nothing ordinary about you. Nothing ordinary at all.”

  Sam actually made the taco shells. I taught her how. The first few were total losses, but she got the hang of it. Well, she burned her hand when some hot oil splattered. The F word went flying through the kitchen and landed in the living room, where it hit my dad right in the heart. He walked into the kitchen and looked at Sam, shaking his head. “You okay?”

  It wasn’t that bad. “She’s fine,” I said. “Just a little burn. She hasn’t had her drama fix for the day.”

  Marcos dropped in. He looked a little tired. You know, I had never thought of Marcos as a person. Not really. I thought of him only in relation to my dad. And that awkward conversation he had with me and Sam, that sort of impressed me a little. Yeah, it impressed me, but it hadn’t impressed me enough. I still saw him as my dad’s boyfriend. I guess that’s what he was. Or at least they were working toward that, I think. And Dad was shy about the whole thing, which was kind of sweet in a way. Sweet. He’s the guy who introduced me to that word. Part of me wanted to like Marcos. He was decent. And him and Fito, they really got along. But part of me wanted to push him away.

  I found myself sitting in the living room, where Marcos was having a glass of wine. Dad and Fito and Sam were still eating cake in the kitchen and fooling with Fito’s iPhone, so I looked at Marcos and said, “I don’t know anything about you. I mean, I know you like my father. But that’s about it.”

  “You mind? That I like your father?”

  “Nope. Don’t mind.” I thought about telling him that if he ever hurt my father again, I’d go after him. I mean, well, I just smiled. Then I found myself opening my mouth and saying, “You hurt him.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  I shook my head. “Guess it happens,” I said.

  We sat there in that awkward silence. And I guess he decided to talk—​or at least try. You know, talk like normal people.

  “Your mother introduced me to your father. Did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t.” That surprised me. I wondered why Dad hadn’t told me. Not that Marcos came up much in our conversations.

  “I was with someone at the time. But I really liked your father. He was real, the kind of guy who never pretended to be anything other than who and what he was. And then I saw his work and I thought, Wow. Wow. The funny thing is, I had just moved in with this other guy, and I was so new to this thing called the gay scene. I wasn’t really comfortable in my own skin. And I was so not a grownup. Not at all like your dad.”

  “So when did you start, you know, seeing him?”

  “I think you were about ten. I ran into him at an art opening in L.A. I was on vacation and saw this thing in the LA Weekly about all the art openings in town. And there was your father’s name at some gallery. So I went.”

  “Did you at least buy a painting?”

  “I did buy a painting, as a matter of fact. And we started seeing each other. And then something happened.”

  I looked at him with a question mark on my face.

  “I ran. I was so scared of what I felt for your father that I ran. I ran as fast as I could. As far away as
I could.” He shook his head. “It took me a long time to become a man.” It seemed he was still kind of upset with himself. Or maybe he was sad that it had taken so many years to become who he was today. I wondered how long it would take me to become whoever I was supposed to become. How many years? Before the start of the school year, I’d thought I was a totally calm kid who knew himself. But I wasn’t so sure anymore.

  “You know what I told your dad?”

  “What?”

  “I told him I couldn’t handle kids. That was a lie. But I knew that for your father, that was a deal-breaker.”

  The guy was being honest. I liked that. And he’d been scared. I got that. Because right now I was scared too. And maybe being scared was part of the whole growing-up thing, the whole living-life thing. “And did you tell my dad the truth? I mean now?”

  “Yeah, I did. Why do you think he gave me another chance?”

  “Well,” I said, “everybody deserves a second chance.”

  You know, I guess love is a really scary thing. I hadn’t ever thought of that. I mean, I didn’t think that any of the crushes I’d ever had on girls qualified as love. I think I was the kind of guy who, well, if I fell in love, it was going to hurt. I just had a hunch.

  Sam and I walked Fito home. I wanted to ask them both if they’d ever been in love, and I wondered what was stopping me. So I did it. I asked.

  “I’m always in love,” Sam confessed. “Well, I always think I’m in love, but now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever been in love. Not really. Just these little, I don’t know what to call them, these attractions to good-looking bad boys. Nothing serious. They just seemed serious at the time. I’m kind of intense that way.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” I said.

  “Shut up. You asked, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  Fito was shaking his head. “You gotta stay away from those vatos, Sam. No bueno.”

  “No bueno is right,” I said.

  “Me?” Fito said. “There was this guy I met last year. He went to Cathedral. Can you believe that shit?”

  “Ah,” Sam said. “So you have a thing for good boys, do you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I sort of fell in love with him. Turns out he wasn’t such a good Catholic boy. I won’t get into it. I’ll tell you something: it hurt like hell. I went out and got all fucked up. First and last time I’ll ever do drugs. That’s bad shit. No bueno.”

  Sam and I both nodded.

  “How come we need to love?”

  “Maybe we don’t,” Fito said.

  “Like hell,” Sam said. “We need it. Like the air we breathe.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it, Sally?”

  “Do you think the heart needs love to keep on beating? You know what I mean?”

  “Well,” Sam said, “isn’t that what a heart’s for?”

  “But not everybody loves. Not everybody.” Fito had a real serious look on his face. “And that’s the fucking truth.”

  Sam and I just looked at Fito.

  “You okay?” Sam whispered.

  “I’m not always okay. I don’t want to talk about love. Sometimes life is shit.”

  (More) Shit Happens

  WHEN SAM AND I went for our Saturday morning run, I tried to keep up with her. Lately she’d been stepping it up. We ran to the Santa Fe Bridge, and on our way back home, we stopped in front of the library. After my breathing returned to normal, I glanced over and saw Sam looking up at the sky.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “You thinking?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I got a text from this guy at school.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. He likes me.”

  “You like him?”

  “Sort of. He’s my type.”

  I smiled. “Yeah? Gonna go out with him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Nope?”

  “I turned him down flat.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup.” She gave me one her fantastic smiles. “I don’t always know who I want to be. You think I do. But I don’t. But, Sally, I know who I don’t want to be. A lot of guys got this thing into their head that I was easy.”

  “They were wrong,” I said.

  “Yeah, they were wrong.”

  We just looked at each other. And then I said. “And a lot of people got the idea that I was this calm guy who always had his shit together. They were wrong.”

  “Hey,” she said, “go easy. The jury’s still out.”

  That made me smile. “Let’s go home,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You know we gotta talk to Fito. He’s got something going on in that head of his.”

  “Well, it’s not just in his head.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve that screwed-up family.”

  Life wasn’t always about deserve. That much I knew.

  I was starting to get why Dad has this thing with uncertainty. He told me more than once that you don’t need certainty to be happy. And I was starting to get it. You never know what’s going happen. You really don’t. One day, you’re going along with your life and everything is normal. You go to school, you do your homework, you play catch with your dad, and the days go like that, and then bam! Bam! Mima’s cancer comes back. Sam’s mom gets killed in an accident. Fito gets thrown out of his house. I used to wonder at the emotional ups-and-downs that Sam went through all the time. I mean, all the time. But suddenly that’s how I felt. I woke up and felt good, at lunch I’d be all pissed off about something stupid, and then I’d be kind of okay. I flipped back and forth between being the old me and the me I didn’t know or understand. And just when I’d think that things were more or less balancing themselves out, well, shit happened. It’s the perfect way to put it. Shit happens.

  I’d just gotten out of the shower after our run, and Sam had gone out with her Aunt Lina. That was nice, that she had her aunt. And it was really sweet, what they had. I walked into the kitchen, and my dad was reading the paper. He put the newspaper down and said, “What’s Fito’s last name?”

  “Fresquez.”

  “Would you text him and ask him what his mother’s name is?”

  “What?”

  “Just do that for me, will you?” He had a serious look on his face. I didn’t like it when he wore that look. So I texted Fito: What’s ur mom’s name?

  Fito texted back: Elena

  I looked at Dad. “Her name’s Elena.”

  “How old is she?”

  So I texted Fito: How old is ur mom?

  Fito texted back: 44

  I looked at Dad. “She’s forty-four.”

  And then Fito texted back: ?

  “Do you know where Fito used to live?”

  “Yeah, on California Street. Close to school.”

  Now Dad looked really sick. “Fito’s mother is dead,” he said. He handed me the newspaper. “Forty-Four-Year-Old Woman Found Dead.” That was the headline. I started reading. The neighbors found her. “An apparent drug overdose.”

  I looked at my dad. “So what are we gonna do?”

  “It’s not as if he’s not going to find out. You better tell Fito to get over here.”

  “I have some bad news for you, Fito.” Dad’s voice was soft. Kind. Really kind. “There’s no good way of breaking this news, Fito.”

  Fito shrugged. “I’m kinda used to bad news, you know, Mr. V.”

  “Yeah, Fito, I get that.” Dad looked down at the newspaper. “It’s about your mom. I read it in this morning’s newspaper.”

  Fito stared at the newspaper. He took it and started reading. When he finished, he put it down. Dad was popping his knuckles and studying Fito. Then Fito started hitting himself. I mean, he was punching the hell out of his chest, and he started crying, like, really loud, and he was saying stuff that I just couldn’t make out. And he wouldn’t stop hitting himself, and he got up from his c
hair and he ripped the newspaper up, and he started hitting himself again, and his crying was breaking my heart and I was really glad that Sam wasn’t home to see it, really glad she was out with her Aunt Lina, because this would’ve really killed her, to see Fito that way. And then I just couldn’t stand it anymore, and I took Fito’s fists and I was stronger than he was, and I held his arms and kept him from hitting himself. And then I just pulled him in to me, and I held him and he cried and he cried and he cried. And I couldn’t do anything about all the hurt, but I could hold him. And then Fito whispered in a voice that sounded tired and old, “Why am I crying? She didn’t even love me.”

  Then I heard myself whisper back, “Maybe all that matters is that you loved her.”

  “My life is shit,” he said. “That’s all it’s ever been.”

  “No, it isn’t. I promise you, Fito, it isn’t.”

  Friends

  FRIENDS. I GUESS I met that word when I met Sam. But sometimes you get to reintroduce yourself to certain words you already know. That’s how it was with Fito. He gave me that word again. It was exactly like Sam had said, about how we had to see people because sometimes the world made us invisible. So we had to make each other visible. Words were like that too. Sometimes we didn’t see words.

  Friend. Fito was my friend. And I loved him.

  And it killed me to see him so broken.

  It killed Sam, too.

  And it killed my dad.

  It’s hard to fix a heart when it’s been so damaged. But that was our job. That was our job.

  Dad went out and bought an extra baseball glove. We had only three. Actually, he bought two extra gloves. One for Marcos. Not that he said it was for Marcos. So we played catch. Sam and I tossed the ball to each other. And Dad and Fito tossed the ball to each other. Marcos came over and watched. Then Dad took a break, and Marcos and I tossed the ball to each other, and Sam and Fito tossed the ball to each other.

  We weren’t really talking. Sometimes there isn’t much to say.

  Dad was smoking a cigarette on the back steps.

  It was a week before Christmas. The day was cold, but not too cold, and the sun was warm on our faces. Then I noticed Lina sitting next to my dad, and they were talking.