Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (7 page)

“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?”

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.

I stared at the sketch for a long time. It scared me. Because there was something true about it.

I wondered where he’d learned to draw. I was suddenly jealous of him. He could swim, he could draw, he could talk to people. He read poetry and he liked himself. I wondered how that felt, to really like yourself. And I wondered why some people didn’t like
themselves and others did. Maybe that’s just the way it was.

I looked at his drawing, then looked at my chair. That’s when I saw the note he’d left.

Ari,

I hope you like the sketch of your chair. I miss you at the pool. The lifeguards are jerks.

Dante

After dinner, I picked up the phone and called him.

“Why did you leave?”

“You needed to rest.”

“I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

Then neither one of us said anything.

“I liked the sketch,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because it looks just like my chair.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“It holds something,” I said

“What?”

“Emotion.”

“Tell me,” Dante said.

“It’s sad. It’s sad and it’s lonely.”

“Like you,” he said.

I hated that he saw who I was. “I’m not sad all the time,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

“Will you show me the others?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“For the same reason you can’t tell me about your dreams.”

THE FLU DIDN’T SEEM TO WANT TO LET ME GO.

That night, the dreams came again. My brother. He was on the other side of the river. He was in Juárez and I was in El Paso and we could see each other. And I yelled, “Bernardo, come over!” and he shook his head. And then I thought he didn’t understand, so I yelled at him in Spanish. “
Vente pa’aca, Bernardo!
” I thought that if I only knew the right words or spoke them in the right language, then he would cross the river. And come home. If only I knew the right words. If only I spoke the right language. And then my dad was there. He and my brother stared at each other and I couldn’t stand the look on their faces, because it seemed like there was the hurt of all the sons and all the fathers of the world. And the hurt was so deep that it was way beyond tears and so their faces were dry. And then the dream changed and my brother and father were gone. I was standing in the same place where my father had been standing, on the Juárez side, and Dante was standing across from me. And he was shirtless and shoeless and I wanted to swim toward him but I couldn’t move. And then he said something to me in English and I couldn’t understand him. And I said something to him in Spanish, and he couldn’t understand me.

And I was so alone.

And then all the light was gone and Dante disappeared into the darkness.

I woke up and I felt lost.

I didn’t know where I was.

The fever was back. I thought that maybe nothing would ever be the same. But I knew it was just the fever. I fell asleep again. The sparrows were falling from the sky. And it was me who was killing them.

DANTE CAME OVER TO VISIT. I KNEW I WASN’T A LOT
of fun. He knew it too. It didn’t seem to matter.

“Do you want to talk?”

“No,” I said.

“Do you want me to go?”

“No,” I said.

He read poems to me. I thought about the sparrows falling from the sky. As I listened to Dante’s voice, I wondered what my brother would sound like. I wondered if he’d ever read a poem. My mind was full and crowded—falling sparrows, my brother’s ghost, Dante’s voice.

Dante finished reading a poem, then went looking for another.

“Aren’t you afraid of catching what I have?” I said.

“No.”

“You’re not afraid?”

“No.”

“You’re not afraid of anything.”

“I’m afraid of lots of things, Ari.”

I could have asked
What? What are you afraid of?
I don’t think he would have told me.

THE FEVER WAS GONE.

But the dreams stayed.

My father was in them. And my brother. And Dante. In my dreams. And sometimes my mother, too. I had this image stuck in my mind. I was four and I was walking down the street, holding my brother’s hand. I wondered if it was a memory or a dream. Or a hope.

I lay around and thought about things. All the ordinary problems and mysteries of my life that mattered only to me. Not that thinking about things made me feel better. I decided that my junior year at Austin High School was going to suck. Dante went to Cathedral because they had a swim team. My mom and dad had wanted to send me to school there, but I’d refused. I didn’t want to go to an all-boy Catholic school. I’d insisted to myself and to my parents that all the boys there were rich. My mom argued that they gave scholarships to smart boys. I argued back that I wasn’t smart enough to get a scholarship. My mom argued back that they could afford to send me there. “I hate those boys!” I’d begged my father not to send me there.

I never said anything to Dante about hating Cathedral boys. He didn’t have to know.

I thought about my mom’s accusation. “You don’t have any friends.”

I thought of my chair and how really it was a portrait of me.

I was a chair. I felt sadder than I’d ever felt.

I knew I wasn’t a boy anymore. But I still felt like a boy. Sort of. But there were other things I was starting to feel. Man things, I guess. Man loneliness was much bigger than boy loneliness. And I didn’t want to be treated like a boy anymore. I didn’t want to live in my parents’ world and I didn’t have a world of my own. In a strange way, my friendship with Dante had made me feel even more alone.