In Perfect Light

  The one he was going to, her name was, he’d forgotten. Grace. Grace Delgado—that was it. A Mexican name, and she was probably a Catholic, and for the most part he didn’t mind Catholics. They mostly left their crosses at home. He could picture her. In her late forties or early fifties—something like that. They were always that age. Probably she’d have a nice voice. Probably she knew how to keep calm. Probably nothing would shock her. Shit, they heard enough stuff, all kinds of crap. He wasn’t stupid or arrogant enough to believe he was telling them something new. Hell, what had happened to him had happened to a million other kids. In China and Mexico and Chile and fucking London and Belfast. Who could be shocked? He’d talked to lots of women with nice voices who went to church and had sex with their tax-paying husbands on Saturday mornings and who had become immune, had become incapable of being shocked, had trained themselves to listen as if everything he was saying was normal or neutral when they knew it was all too fucking much. They nodded in all the right places. Sure. And when they spoke to him, there was something in their voices that made him feel as if he was a disobedient dog who’d had a bad owner. Not your fault. Here, let me get your chain.

  He would hate her. He would talk to her. He would answer her questions. She would take notes. Sometimes they took notes on a piece of paper. Sometimes they took notes in their heads. But they always took notes. They were mothers, most of them, and like all mothers, they had good memories, learned the habits of their children, the things they did and didn’t do—though they didn’t talk about that. Their children. Not ever. But he knew. They felt sorry for him, because of the things that had happened. Because he was an orphan. Because they were sentimental, and they mistook their goddamned sentimentality for care. But who could blame them? If he had been them, he would’ve fucking wept at the mere sight of a man like him.

  He would talk to her. He knew that. He would tell her about his life. Some of it, anyway. He would have to decide how much to tell. But he knew this—the more they knew about him, the more they pitied him. That’s why he hated them.

  What’s a Boy? What’s a Son?

  He’d been thinking of the boy. Vicente Jesús. The boy that might be his. But he would never be his, that boy he was already in love with. And anyway, boys weren’t belongings—boys weren’t something you owned. He remembered the harshest words Grace had spoken against his wife. “She thinks she owns you. Tell her you’re not a car or a pair of jeans.” Boys and girls and men and women and husbands and wives and sons and daughters, they weren’t something you owned.

  He drove through the streets of downtown, through the streets of Segundo Barrio, catching glimpses of a mural here and there. He loved this part of the city. He headed south on Campbell, then headed down the César Chávez Border Freeway. Grace would hate the fact that he was driving around and thinking about things. “Don’t think and drive. You’re going to die in an accident—and all because you were thinking about something. What if you kill someone? What will you do then?” Grace was great at worst-case scenarios.

  Grace, I want to be a father. You disapprove. I can tell. You disapprove of so many things, Grace. She was always there, in his head. And Grace, you’re wrong about Liz.

  He stopped at a gas station. He felt the slap of the hot air as he stepped out of his truck. This is the kind of light that makes people sad and tired. That’s what the old priest had said, the one that used to come over for dinner when Sam was alive. The priest was long dead, but there was something of his death in the punishing light of the afternoon.

  On certain days, the sun was in no mood for mercy.

  The World Comes to an End

  (in One Apocalyptic Moment)

  Grace took out Andrés Segovia’s file for the third time that afternoon. She had questions. She’d written them down on a piece of scrap paper and stuck them in the file. Who hurt you? When did it happen? How many times? Where? Tell me. Why do you hate yourself? Where do you keep the hurt? There was no art to this, coming up with these questions. But she would never ask them. They were too direct and unsubtle and disarming. And too unearned. Unearned questions deserved no answers. Everything had to be earned.

  She kept the questions in the file. A compass for the journey.

  She tried to think of more practical questions. Not real questions. Not important questions, not questions that needed answering, but questions that were like doorways. They could walk through them. Questions that would let him know she was listening, that would let him know she wasn’t a lawyer deposing a client. The trick was not to sound too prepared—as if you could be too prepared to listen to young women and men as they stumbled to articulate their sufferings. Maybe, if she worked hard enough—if she could make him work hard enough—maybe he would answer the questions. And he would let it out and listen to his own words. That would be a start. If he listened to the sound of his own breaking voice, if he could hear the rage and the hurt. But what if he already knew? The possibility existed he already knew everything about himself, and knowing everything brought him no closer to a cure. And what constituted a cure? What was healing for a damaged human being? Who needed help and who didn’t? And anyway, was there really a cure for the truly hurt? People could be totaled, just like cars.

  Maybe there was just management. More painless days than painful ones. Sometimes that was the supreme victory. Some, she sent to doctors and psychiatrists who were competent to deal with their maladies, doctors and psychiatrists who decided they needed meds—and for some, it worked. For a few years, anyway. But for a lifetime? Who knew? But hadn’t she seen it happen before? People healed. Cripples who learned to walk. Hadn’t she been a witness to recoveries? Somehow, miraculously, they forced themselves, told themselves they were going to live. They wrote themselves new lives. Fictions, perhaps, but what did it matter? They had kept the chaos at bay. They had managed to stop cursing the darkness. They’d lit a torch.

  Others stopped swimming, their arms and legs limp in the dark waters. And they drowned.

  Andrés Segovia, tell me what happened that night? That was a good first question.

  The resemblance to Mister was uncanny. They could have passed for brothers. He almost took her breath away. Not that she showed him what she felt. She’d always had the kind of face that hid her emotions. She offered a handshake, natural, friendly, at ease. Andrés hesitated for an instant, then smiled back at her as they shook hands. He sat down on the chair across from her desk.

  “We can sit here,” she said, “the safety of this large desk between us—or we can sit over there.” She pointed to the opposite side of the room, which was arranged like a living room. A small couch, a coffee table with a stack of books on it, two comfortable chairs.

  “This is good,” he said. He looked around the room.

  She noticed a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. “You’re either looking for an escape route, or you’re searching for an ashtray?”

  “Both, I think.” He looked straight at her. “This wasn’t my idea, to be here.” He started reaching for a cigarette, then stopped himself. “You let people smoke in your office?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Some people claim they can’t really talk to me without a cigarette.”

  “And you believe them?”

  “What I believe isn’t always important.”

  “But you let them smoke?”

  “You want an ashtray?”

  “No.” He leaned back on his chair. “I had to take off from work. Now I have to work tonight. To make up for lost time. I don’t like that. My boss doesn’t like it either.”

  “I can change the time of your appointments. That won’t be a problem.”

  “Good,” he said. “I still don’t want to be here.”

  “But you came.”

  “You saw my file?”

  “Of course.”

  “The judge thinks I need to learn to manage my anger before I get into deeper trouble. He said I’m a good candid
ate for Huntsville, if I’m not careful. And my lawyer, he thinks I need help.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think the judge—never mind the judge. Fuck him. And my lawyer, he needs a project. So I’m the project. He thinks I need saving.”

  “And do you need saving?”

  “Everyone needs saving. Isn’t that why people go to church?” He laughed. “My lawyer’s full of crap. I bet he called you.”

  “As a matter of fact, he did.”

  “He wants you to check in with him every time I come in, doesn’t he?”

  “He just wanted me to know that he thought you were—” She paused, weighed her words for an instant. “He cares about you.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s very nice.”

  “So he just wants to make sure you’re on board to save me, too. Maybe I should go find one of those churches and let myself be slain in the holy spirit. Let Jesus come into my heart.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. Not a loud or boisterous laugh. Not like that. “That’s funny.”

  He tried to hide his smile. “So you don’t think Jesus saves?”

  “I don’t believe in cheap shortcuts.” She chastised herself—not for what she said, but for the way she said it. Too much edge in her voice. Not that he seemed to mind.

  “Counseling doesn’t help, you know? I’ve tried it. I’ve talked to you people before. I’ve talked and talked and fucking talked. I’ve even played the game of refusing to fucking talk. I’ve answered questions and refused to answer questions—and sometimes it even felt good. For about a second. And nothing’s ever changed.” He reached into his pocket and took out a cigarette. He played with it. “Look, these are my choices. I either come to talk to you every week until you write a nice report and say, Look, Judge, this guy can walk the streets again. I either do that, or I go to jail. Hell, I’m probably going to wind up there, anyway. Maybe I should fucking save us both the time.” He got up from where he was sitting, nodded at her. “Look, I’m sorry.”

  “Why don’t you have a cigarette?”

  She’d thought of chasing him down, pleading with him, convincing him that he was worth it. That’s what Dave had told her on the phone, “Look, Grace, this guy, he’s worth it. Do what you can. I’m counting on you.” Wasn’t that her job, to convince them all that they were worth the trouble? But she wasn’t a pleader, and it didn’t work that way. She wasn’t a jilted girlfriend, and he wasn’t a little boy. He was a man, articulate, and whatever it was that he had in him, she couldn’t pin him to the floor and yank it out of him, any more than he would be slain in the spirit and be saved by Jesus.

  What a waste.

  She would have to call his probation officer. She would have to tell him that he wasn’t interested in counseling. This was the part she hated. She picked up the phone, then stared at it. She looked up, her door open. He was standing there. He was looking at her. He lit his cigarette. She took out an ashtray from her desk and slid it across the desk.

  “You can’t help me.”

  “Probably not.”

  He sat back down on the chair. “Were you going to call Dave?”

  “I don’t know who I was going to call.”

  “You know him, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How? How do you know him?”

  “I think you should ask him about that.” His cigarette looked good.

  He nodded. “So what do you want to know?”

  “What happened that night? The night you were arrested?”

  “I went out.”

  “Went out?”

  “I was at home. At my apartment. I was writing something.”

  “Writing?”

  “I write sometimes.”

  “What do you write? Stories? Poetry?”

  “Poetry?” He smiled. Not a smile, a sneer. “Nothing like that. I just write things. Things I’m thinking.”

  “Does it help?”

  “Sort of. Like having a cigarette when you need one.”

  “So you were writing, and you decided to go out.”

  “Something like that. I got restless. And I went to this place I like to go to. El Ven Y Verme.”

  Grace smiled. “I like the name. Makes me want to go there.”

  “You wouldn’t like it. It’s a dump. So I was there, and I got to thinking. Sometimes too much beer makes me think about things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Things that make me sad. And I’d brought along the stuff that I was writing. And I took out what I’d written, and I wrote some more—right there in the bar. And this guy starts hassling me, asking me what I was writing, was I writing a letter to my girlfriend or maybe I didn’t like girls and was I writing to my boyfriend, and I wanted to punch his goddamned lights out. So I just left. I don’t know what time it was. I just wanted to be alone. So I just walked. I don’t even know where I was, but I sat down under a streetlight and I just started reading what I had written, and then these cops come along. And they treat me like I’m some kind of goddamned animal—like I’m some kind of wild dog on the loose—that’s how they treat you. And I wasn’t going to let them treat me like that. I wasn’t. So I wind up in jail.”

  “What happened between you and the cops?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  “Were you drunk?”

  “No. Maybe a little drunk. But not very.”

  Grace took out a file. “Would you like to see a copy of the police report?” She handed it to him.

  He read it slowly. “I don’t—I don’t remember any of this. I don’t remember acting that way.”

  “Is there any truth there?”

  “I didn’t say they were lying. I just said I didn’t remember.”

  “What happens—when you get mad?”

  He pushed the file back toward Grace.

  “You don’t think I know that I hurt people?”

  Grace pushed the file aside. “Tell me something about yourself. Something important.”

  “Is this a game?”

  “No. Not a game exactly. Let’s call them ground rules. You come and see me twice a week, and—”

  “Twice a week?”

  “Then later, maybe just once a week. Every time you come and see me, you tell me something important about yourself. Something absolutely necessary.”

  “I don’t like that rule.” He put out his cigarette. He wanted to light another. He stopped himself. He looked at her. She was beautiful. And young. Like a girl, but a girl who had always been a woman. He hadn’t expected that. She was old enough to be his mother. And still she was beautiful. “I don’t have a family,” he said.

  “How did that happen?”

  He took out a cigarette. He held it tight. “I was ten years old. I was ten that summer. It’s hard, sometimes, to remember. I remember my dad had bought me a bike that day. It was Saturday. It was a nice day. Not too hot. Dry. Like today. I hate Saturdays. He was a funny guy, my dad. Unreliable. A party guy, I think. That’s how I remember him. He’d gotten me a bike because my dog had died. I loved that dog. And he’d died. I found the dog, dead, in the backyard. He’d gotten mad at me because I started crying. But I didn’t care if he was mad. It was my dog, and my dog was dead, and I wanted to cry—so I did. My mom helped me bury him. She said a prayer, and I put a cross in the ground. And I think, later, my dad felt bad. Because I’d lost my dog and because he’d gotten mad at me. So I think that’s why he’d gotten me a bike…”

  “A bike! You got me a bike!”

  “Sure I did. It’s summer. What kind of summer would it be without a bike?”

  The boy looked at his bike. Then looked at his dad. He wanted to kiss him, but he’d told him that the days for kissing dads were over. He didn’t understand that. But those were the rules. “Can I ride it?”

  “Go. Go on!” And so he’d ridden his bike up and down the streets. Up and down, showing everyone his new bike. God, a bike! Hi
s heart was bursting, God, he could ride all summer. He rode all afternoon—until it was almost dark. When he got home, his mother was at the door.

  “I was starting to get worried.”

  “You don’t have to worry, Mom. You don’t. Not about me.” He looked into her hazel eyes. She wasn’t happy. He knew that. Maybe she’d had another fight with his father. Or maybe his father had been fighting with Mando again. Sometimes she got in the middle of it. Sometimes she succeeded in making them stop. Sometimes they refused to stop and cursed her. Both of them. She’d been crying. He could tell. “Can we go to the movies tonight, Mom?” She liked the movies.

  “Not tonight, mi’jo. Your father and I are going to a wedding dance.” That’s why she was all dressed up.

  “Oh. Where’s Dad?”

  “He went to put gas in the car.”

  He nodded. “Will you come home late?”

  “Not too late. But Yolanda will be here.”

  “And Mando?”

  “He’s gone out.”

  “Oh.” He knew what that meant. It meant he’d left as soon as his father had gone out to gas up the car. He’d come back when he felt like it. It wasn’t a new story. And Yolanda, she would stay until they left—and then her boyfriend would come, and then they would leave for a while, and he would be the only one left to stay and take care of Ileana. But she was good, and she went to sleep early anyway, and the house was peaceful and he could watch anything he wanted on the television—sometimes there was an old scary movie. Sometimes he’d just read a book. He liked the quiet of reading. “And Yolie?”