The Infinite Plan (16 page)

Gregory Reeves's senatorial aspirations ended abruptly the day after his high school graduation, when Judy asked him what he meant to do with his life and told him it was time for him to move out of his mother's house because it was too crowded for the three of them.

“It's long past time for you to live somewhere else. There's no room here; it's terribly uncomfortable.”

“All right, I'll look for a place,” Gregory replied, with a blend of sadness for this brusque manner of being expelled from the family and relief for leaving a home where he had never felt loved.

“We need to have Mama's teeth fixed; we can't put it off any longer.”

“Do you have anything saved?”

“Not enough. We need three hundred dollars. And besides, there's the television we promised her for Christmas.”

Judy had suffered an unhappy adolescence, to become a woman soured by unspoken indignation. Her face was still surprisingly beautiful, and her hair, even slashed by scissors, was the gold of her childhood. Pernicious layers of fat had settled over her bones, but because she was still very young she was not totally misshapen; despite her obesity, the original contours of her figure were discernible, and on the rare occasions that she forgot her self-loathing and laughed, she regained her earlier charm. She had had several love affairs with the Anglo men she met at work or in other neighborhoods; her Hispanic neighbors had long ago abandoned the chase, convinced that she was unattainable. She made it her business to frighten off her most diligent pretenders with fits of arrogance or cool silences.

“That poor girl will never marry; you can see she hates men,” Olga predicted.

“Unless she loses some weight, she's had it,” Gregory added.

“Weight has nothing to do with it, Gregory. She won't end up an old maid because she's fat but because she's so mad at the world that she
wants
to be fat.”

For once, Olga's clairvoyance failed her. Regardless of appearance, Judy married three times and had countless lovers, some of whom lost their peace of mind pursuing a love she could not or would not give. She had several children by different husbands and adopted others, all of whom she raised with great affection. The natural tenderness that had left its mark on the first years of Gregory's life, something he tried many times to recapture throughout his stormy relationship with his sister, had lain dormant in Judy's soul until it could be channeled toward the responsibilities of motherhood. Her own and her adopted children helped her overcome the emotional paralysis of her youth and to bear with fortitude the tragic secret hidden in her past. She eventually dropped out of school and went to work in a garment factory; the family situation was precarious and the money that she and Gregory brought home insufficient for their needs. After a year of cleaning houses after school, with work-reddened hands and the conviction that she was going nowhere down that road, she decided on a full-time job at the factory. Sitting beside other badly paid and badly treated women, she stitched away in a dark, airless room where cockroaches paraded unmolested. In that industry, laws were violated with impunity and workers exploited by unscrupulous bosses. She brought home bundles of cloth and sat at her mother's sewing machine far into the night. She was not paid overtime for her piecework, but she needed the money: at the first complaint, her employers would turn her out into the street—there were many desperate people waiting in line.

As for Gregory, he, too, was used to hard work; he had contributed to the household income since he was seven. Several improvements were made from his earnings: the old icebox was exchanged for a modern refrigerator, the kerosene camp stove for a gas range, and the wind-up gramophone for an electric record player on which his mother could listen to her beloved music. Gregory was not daunted by the idea of living alone. Both his friend Cyrus and Olga tried to convince him that instead of toiling for subsistence wages he should try to work his way through college; that alternative, however, was not one often considered among young people from his surroundings, who were forced by an invisible ceiling to keep their eyes on the ground. Once he finished high school, Gregory found himself again limited by the low horizons of the barrio. For eleven years he had done everything possible to be accepted and, despite his color, had nearly succeeded. Although he could not have put it into words, the real reason he became a laborer may have been his desire to remain part of the world in which he had grown up: the idea of using education to rise above the others seemed a betrayal. During the happy years of high school he had deceived himself briefly, believing he could escape his fate; deep down, however, he had accepted his social marginality and at the moment of confronting his future had been crushed by reality. He rented a room, furnishing it with crates containing his few belongings and books lent to him by Cyrus, with Oliver as his only company. The dog was old and half blind, had lost several teeth and large patches of his coat, could barely drag his heavy mongrel bones around, but he was still a discreet and faithful friend. A few weeks of working at a wetback's wages were enough to teach Reeves that the American dream was not within everyone's reach. He would return to his room at night, exhausted, throw himself on his bed, stare at the ceiling, and review the extent of his despair; he felt trapped in a bottomless pit. He worked all summer in a freight warehouse, lifting and carrying heavy loads; he developed muscles where he hadn't known he had them and was beginning to look like a gladiator, when an accident forced a change in his life. He and another man were carrying a refrigerator, strapped between them, up a narrow stairwell; it was suffocatingly hot, and on each step Gregory bore all the weight on one side of his body. Suddenly he felt a burning electric charge in his right leg; he had to call on all his strength not to drop the load, which would have crushed his mate. A terrible bellow escaped him, followed by a string of curses, and when he could set down the refrigerator and examine his leg, he saw a purple tree with thick trunk and branching limbs; he had ruptured the veins, and in a matter of minutes his leg was grossly deformed. He was taken to a hospital, where he was told that absolute rest was required and that only surgery would repair the varicose veins. His employer gave him a week's pay, and Reeves spent his convalescence in his room, sweating beneath the ceiling fan, sustained by the faithful companionship of Oliver, therapeutic massages by Olga, and Mexican dishes prepared by Inmaculada Morales. Cyrus's books, classical music, and visits from friends were his entertainment. Carmen came often to tell in detail the plots of the latest movies; she had a gift for narrating, and listening to her, he felt he was watching the screen. Juan José Morales, who like Gregory had reached his eighteenth birthday, came to say goodbye before enlisting in the armed forces. As a remembrance he left a photograph album of naked women, which Gregory put aside to spare himself additional torture; he had enough with the scorching heat, his immobility, and boredom. Cyrus came to see him every day and reported the latest news in a sepulchral tone: humanity was on the verge of catastrophe, the cold war was endangering the planet, there were far too many atomic bombs ready to be activated and far too many arrogant generals willing to use them—at any moment someone would press the fatal button, the world would go up in a final blaze of light, and that would be the fucking end of everything.

“We've lost our sense of ethics; we live in a world of small-mindedness, of gratification without happiness and actions without meaning.”

“Come on, Cyrus. How many times have you warned me about the dangers of bourgeois pessimism?” his disciple replied mockingly.

From time to time Nora would materialize, discreet and tenuous. She would bring cookies for Gregory and a bone for Oliver, sit near the door on the edge of her chair, and discuss with greatest formality her perennial topics: history, recollections of his father, and music. With each visit, she seemed more ethereal, less substantial. On Saturdays they listened to the opera on the radio, and Nora, with teary eyes, would comment that those were surely the voices of supernatural beings, for humans could not achieve such perfection. With habitual good manners, she looked at the stack of books from her chair and courteously inquired what he was reading.

“Philosophy, Mama.”

“I don't care for philosophers, Greg; they are against God. They try to rationalize Creation, which is an act of love and magic. To understand life, faith is more useful than philosophy.”

“You would like these books, Mama.”

“Yes, perhaps I would. We have to read a lot, Greg. With knowledge and wisdom, evil could be vanquished on this earth.”

“These books say with different words what you taught me: that all men and women are one in the eyes of God, that no one should possess the earth, because it belongs to everyone, and that one day there will be justice and equality for all.”

“And those are not religious books?”

“Just the opposite; they're about men, not gods. They're about economics, politics, history—”

“I pray, son, that those are not Communist books.”

As she left, she would hand him a pamphlet on Bahaism or some new spiritual guide among the many to be found everywhere and leave with a quiet wave of her hand, without having touched her son. Her presence in the room would have been so faint that Gregory wondered whether she had really been there or whether that lady with the mist-colored hair and old-fashioned dress was only a trick of his imagination. He felt a painful affection for her; she seemed seraphic, untouched by evil, as fine and delicate as a ghost in a tale. At times he was devoured by his anger toward her; he wanted to shake her out of her persistent haze, shout at her to open her eyes, just once, and look at him—Look at me, Mother, here I am, can't you see me?—but usually he wanted only to be near her, to touch her, laugh with her, tell her his secrets.

One evening Pedro Morales closed the garage early to come see him. Following the death of Charles Reeves, he had tacitly assumed the task of watching over his Maestro's family.

“You were injured on the job. They should pay you compensation,” he explained to Gregory.

“They told me they don't owe me anything, Don Pedro.”

“Your boss has insurance, doesn't he?”

“The boss said that he's not the boss and that we're not his employees, that we're independent contractors. They pay us in cash, fire us at will, and there's no insurance. You know how that goes.”

“But that's illegal. You need a lawyer, son.”

Reeves had no money for lawyers, however, and he was discouraged by the idea of slogging through years of tangled negotiations. The minute he was back on his feet he found a less demanding but no more agreeable job in a furniture factory, where the workers were always half dazed from the fine sawdust in the air and fumes from glue, varnish, and solvent. For several months he made chair legs, all exactly alike. The accident to his own leg had put him on his guard, and he confronted the foreman so many times, demanding rights written in the contract but ignored in practice, that he was branded an incorrigible troublemaker and fired. After that he bounced from job to job, dismissed from each after only a few weeks.

“Why do you raise such a ruckus, Greg? You're not in high school now, you're not the president of anything. As long as they pay you, keep your mouth shut and don't complain,” Olga counseled, with little hope of being heard.

“That's the way, son; we have to have class solidarity. In union there is strength,” Cyrus exclaimed, pointing a trembling forefinger at an invisible red banner. “Work is elevating; all labor is equally worthy and should receive equal pay. All men do not have the same abilities, however. This isn't for you, Greg, this is wasted effort; you're not getting anywhere; it's like shoveling sand into the sea.”

“Why don't you be a painter?” Carmen asked. “Your father was an artist, wasn't he?”

“And he died a pauper, leaving us on public welfare. No, thanks. I'm up to here with being poor. Poverty is a piss-poor way to live.”

“No one gets rich working in a factory. Besides, you don't know how to take orders, and you get bored too fast. The only thing you're good for is to be your own boss,” insisted his friend, who had applied the same principles to herself.

Carmen was too old now to go out in bright clothes and juggle on some street corner, but she had no desire to earn a conventional living; the idea of spending the day locked up in an office or sitting at a sewing machine appalled her. She earned a little money from crafts she sold in gift shops and traveling fairs. Like Judy and many other girls in the barrio, she had never finished high school and had no skills, but she had imagination to spare, and secretly she counted on her father to help her escape the torture of a routine job. Pedro Morales's resolve weakened before the blandishments of his untraditional daughter, and he allowed her liberties he would not tolerate in his other children.

The work was simple in the plant for manufacturing tin cans, but a moment's inattention could cost a worker a couple of fingers. The machine Gregory was in charge of sealed cans on the endless rows passing before him on a conveyor belt. The noise was earsplitting: the ring of levers and sheet metal, grinding presses and gears, squeals from badly oiled machinery, hammering, screeching blades. Gregory, even with wax earplugs, was nearly crazed by the din in his head; he felt as if he were inside a clanging bell tower. The noise left him drained; once outside, he was so dazed he was not even aware of the roar of traffic but felt as if he were at the bottom of a silent sea. All that mattered was productivity; each worker was forced to the limit of his strength, and often past that limit if he wanted to keep his job. On Monday the men reported for work limp from weekend hangovers and could barely stay awake. When the five o'clock whistle blew and the racket abruptly ceased, Gregory was always disoriented for a few minutes, suspended above a void. The workers washed up at faucets in the factory yard, changed clothes, and poured out toward the bars. At first Gregory hung around with the other men, swimming in smoke, saturated with cheap tequila and dark beer; he laughed at their dirty jokes and sang their raucous
rancheras,
more bored than enjoying himself. For a few minutes he could pretend he had friends, but as soon as he was outside and the vapors of the bar cleared from his head, he realized he had been fooling himself. He had nothing in common with the men he worked with; they distrusted him as much as any other gringo. He soon renounced that false camaraderie and went straight from the factory to his room, where he locked the door and read and listened to music. To gain the men's confidence, he organized protests; he was the first to declare war when someone was injured or had an accident, but in practical terms it was difficult to disseminate Cyrus's ideas on social justice when he could not count on the support of the intended beneficiaries.