He Forgot to Say Goodbye Read online

  Look, all they have is this parent perspective thing. They have this image of themselves as having a more global view of things, like they really see the big picture. Right, right, sure. I mean, can you dig that? Let’s look at the big picture by all means. Let’s put it this way: I am not responsible for all the chaos in the world. I am not responsible for dudes with attitudes and the twisted, grotesque things they have in their screwed-up heads. Please. Someone help me out here. And even though there’s no excuse for going around hitting people so hard that you draw blood, there’s also no excuse for bullshit bullies with pedestrian names like Tom and John. And when we all grow up to be forty, who the hell do you think is going to be screwing people over? Me? Or Tom and John? Now you’re getting the picture. I’d say my long-term perspective is pretty global.

  So, the whole thing about punching Tom got really involved and complicated. Of course it did. I mean, there were adults involved. We know what happens when adults step in. They have to be in charge. They have to have a plan. They like plans. Not that they ever work—but coming up with a plan feels like they’ve done something. You know, I don’t see that the adults around me have done such a hot job of running things. Nope, not in my opinion. Adults, they really destroy me.

  The thing is, just because they all go to work and bring in some cash, they figure they know how to run the world. Well, take a look around. Global warming, pollution, poor people without health insurance, bad schools, bad streets, underpaid teachers, overpaid insurance lawyers, and gasoline prices that are as high as Katie Scopes at a party. (Katie Scopes, I like her, but, hell, she’s always stoned—probably due to the fact that adults are running the world). Look, I could get a list going here that could get really long—I’m talking seriously long. Dig it? So, anyway, without asking my opinion, the adults took over “the situation.” That’s what the principal said when he called my mom: “We have a situation here.” The principal, he really destroys me.

  In the end, the adults proposed a “solution” to “the situation.” There were apologies from me and apologies from Tom and John, none of them sincere, though no one seemed to give a damn about sincerity. See, I get criticized for being glib and ironic all the time. Well, when I try sincerity, you want to know what happens? I get stepped on like an ant. Like a worm. Like a cockroach. Bring on the irony, that’s what I say. I’m sure you can dig that.

  So, of course detention was part of the solution. We had to write essays about how we wound up there. I had to write mine again because I was told that the “tone of my essay lacked a genuine sense of remorse.” I see, I said to myself, we can live without sincerity but we cannot live without remorse. I told Mr. Alexis, the principal, that if the president of the United States could start a war in Iraq on false pretenses of WMDs and didn’t have to apologize for his big fat lies, then there was no reason to expect more from a worthless, out-of-control anarchist like me.

  Mr. Alexis put on this stone face and looked right at me. He told me I hadn’t earned the right to speak that way about the president of the United States who was a decent, Christian man. And, in addition, he informed me that I didn’t have a nickel’s worth of knowledge about the serious philosophy of anarchism. I explained—disrespectfully, I’m sure—that my opinions of the president were at least based on something that resembled reality, and even if they weren’t, I was entitled to them and would he please keep his well-intentioned but small-minded lectures defending our nation’s political leaders to himself. I didn’t stop there. Of course I didn’t. I just felt I had to add that I probably had a better idea of the serious philosophy of anarchy than a man like him whose addiction to order seriously undermined his feeble attempts at engaging his imagination.

  He returned my remark by reminding me that he remained unimpressed with my shallow intellectual demeanor and that nothing could disguise my obstinate, disrespectful, and undisciplined attitude. He said being a smart aleck didn’t actually make me smart. And then he said it again: “Despite your extensive, if aggressive vocabulary, you’re nothing but an angry, disrespectful young man who needs a little discipline.” You see, the thing with adults is that respect is just a word they use to guilt us nonadults into doing what they want us to do. But did Mr. Alexis leave it at that? Of course not. He reminded me and Tom and John that it was a privilege to attend a pre-med magnet school and if we weren’t very careful, well, we just might be sent back to a normal school. That’s how he put it. A normal school. That guy, he destroys me. Where in the hell was he going to find a normal school? How can schools be normal when they’re run by adults like him?

  I could make the exchange between me and Mr. Alexis as long as it actually was. But it’s pointless, really. He did warn me about my politics which I thought was totally out of line. “Apart from the fact that you’re a completely unmanageable young man, your politics are offensive to the thinking people of this nation.” I told him pretty much that I didn’t think he—or anybody of his ilk—qualified as a thinking person. He tried to say something at that point but I just kept on going. I told him that as far as being unmanageable, well, I came to school to be taught, not to be managed. “I’m a person, not a portfolio.” And then I really got myself into trouble by telling him that if he wasn’t careful, I was going to make his nose look like Tom’s.

  He said he could throw me out of school for that threat. I said to take it up with my stepfather, the attorney (not that David would have sided with me). I eventually agreed to put more remorse into my essay. I even started to refer to him as “sir.” He wasn’t smart enough to pick up on the fact that I was mocking him. Look, he won the argument. I put remorse into my essay. But seasoning my essay with remorse was not the final solution that the adults around me had concocted. That was just the beginning. To put some à la mode on top of the apple pie, I was forced to attend anger management classes, where the only thing I really learned to do was to keep my mouth shut and my hands to myself. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing to learn. And all of this because of my name. There’s a lot of irony here, of course. Irony—that’s my favorite word. Look, I live in a seriously ironic world and if there is a God, I’ve decided irony is his favorite word too.

  And to layer irony upon irony, I don’t even know the guy whose name I own. I mean, I really am destroyed. I don’t mean to play victim here, but c’mon. People get to make fun of me because I have a last name that got stuck on me like a permanent bumper sticker? Look, my mother left that guy—my father—when I was about three. In my seventeen-plus years of living, I’ve talked to the guy only once.

  And he has never, never, never tried to communicate with me directly. Sending advice secondhand through my mother doesn’t qualify as paternal involvement. Not in my book, it doesn’t. I don’t talk to him, I don’t know him, and I don’t even remember his face. What do three-year-olds remember? Ducks in a bathtub, that’s what they remember. Red wagons with wheels. Books made of cardboard you could bite.

  I’m not happy about any of this. Look, I’m destroyed.

  Me, Ramiro Lopez

  Look, just because you don’t have a girlfriend doesn’t mean you don’t know anything about love. I know more than I want to know.

  Her

  Mom is a pretty lady. Even without makeup.

  She’s not even forty yet. I mean, that sounds old, but it’s not. I mean, fifty, that’s getting old—but she’s thirty-eight. She’s younger than a lot of my teachers. And her sister, Tía Lisa (who’s even younger) is always trying to fix her up on a date. When she brings up some guy’s name as someone that might be on the market, my mom shakes her head and says things like “I’ve already dated a man like that once, remember?” or “I’d rather work at the Dollar Store than go out with a man like that.”

  Once, my Tía Lisa invited this guy over to a backyard barbecue at my uncle’s house. At first, I thought it was her boyfriend. But pretty fast I got the whole scene in my head: This guy named Steve was there because my Tía Lisa met him at some party and
thought he’d be perfect for my mom. All the women at the barbecue thought he was really fine and all that. They called him a “fox.” Sure. I mean, women can be as bad as guys when they see good-looking guys. Believe me, I’ve listened to enough of that crap. This business of women falling all over themselves over a good-looking guy, nothing original there. Nope. And guys? They’re the same. Hell, they’re worse.

  So, anyway, everyone thinks this guy, Steve, is the star on a Christmas tree. Even my Great Aunt Chepa said he was bien chulo, and she never says anything good about anybody.

  But my mom wasn’t that impressed. “What would I do with a man who spends more time combing his hair than I do?” My mom doesn’t trip over herself for anyone.

  Well, to me he seemed okay. I thought he was a gringo, but really he was mostly Mexican. You know, my uncle Rudy, he calls people who are half Mexican and half gringo “coyotes.” I don’t know where he got that, but that’s what he calls them. He called Steve a good coyote. And you know, that guy, Steve, spoke Spanish and everything like that, and he seemed to be a regular Joe. And I think he really liked my mom, the way he looked at her when she talked which really made me a little bit, well, you know, I didn’t like that. Look, she’s my mom. I know she had to have sex in order to have me and my brother, Tito, but I don’t think it’s a very good idea to think about those kinds of things. I mean, it’s not normal. Not that I know that much about normal. Look, I don’t know anything about normal. But I know what’s not normal. So, when this guy is looking at my mom in a certain way—you know which way—well, I didn’t like that much. Not much, nope, just didn’t like that.

  But look, the guy was decent. He had a job and didn’t seem like a pervert or anything like that, and he didn’t give me the creeps, and he even asked me all kinds of questions, like where did I go to school and did I have a girlfriend and what kind of music did I like. He was trying real hard. He wasn’t so bad. And he liked to say “cat,” which I liked. I mean, he’d refer to people as cats. This cat did this. And this cat did that. And when he was talking about the Beatles, he said he really liked those “cats.” And I thought that was a very cool way of talking. My Tía Lisa said it was “fantastically retro.” But, you know, retro’s not necessarily bad. Yeah, that cat was okay.

  But I got to thinking that maybe that cat might start hanging around a lot. I wasn’t sure what to think about that. I mean, it’s not as if I want a father. I have a father. It’s just that I don’t know who he is or where he is. But I have one. I didn’t want any proxies. Proxy, that’s a cool word. That’s what my friend Louie says about girls he takes out. “They’re all proxies,” he says, “cuz the real one, she won’t go out with me.” He’s funny. He’s always in love with girls who don’t love him back. So, the poor guy is stuck with proxies. I’m not like Louie. I don’t do the proxy thing.

  I know that if my mom ever got interested in another man, well, that wouldn’t necessarily mean she was looking for a father for me and Tito. Maybe it would only mean that she still had a heart and that she wasn’t dead and that she didn’t like being alone. Women don’t like being alone. I hear them talk. But sometimes they’d rather be alone than be with a real creep. Creep, I like that word. It’s been around awhile—that’s why I like it. You know, maybe I’m a little bit like that guy Steve. I like retro. Anyway, like my Tía Lisa says, “Creeps are a dime a dozen. Mejor sola que mal acompañada.” But my Tía Lisa also says: “Everybody needs to be loved—even mothers,” and then she bops me on the head. I’m crazy about my Tía Lisa.

  But, you know, I don’t think I need to worry too much about my mom and other men. She’s just not ready. “Your dad left her wounded.” That’s what my Tía Lisa says. When I think of wounded, I think of dogs that have been run over. But a dog doesn’t always die when he’s been hit by a car. Sometimes the dog recovers and lives a normal dog life. I’ve even seen dogs with three legs hop a fence.

  Mom never says much about what went wrong between her and my dad. She just says, “He left us one day.” I know a part of her wants to talk about it—about everything. But a part of her is used to being quiet. Not talking about things is an addiction. I didn’t make that up. I heard some woman say that to her friend at the Big 8 grocery store as she tried to decide which avocado she wanted to buy. She said, “Dios mio, these avocados are terrible, and my good-for-nothing husband, he’s addicted to television and to silence. That husband of mine, he just doesn’t talk. Así son, that’s the way they are. They won’t talk.” And her friend says, “It hurts men too much to talk, so they just sit there and watch television. But just get them into a bar with all their no-good, beer-guzzling boracho friends, and hell, they talk so much their lips get sore.” They both nodded at each other as they picked just the right avocado.

  But the thing is, it’s not just men who are addicted to not talking. It’s women too. It’s like the flu. Everyone gets it—and then they just pass it on. My mom, she has that flu. Maybe she’s passed it on to me. For sure she’s passed it on to Tito. He’d rather be hit by an effen hammer than to tell you what he’s thinking. He’s seriously addicted to not talking.

  Mom works as an assistant nurse to a doctor. “We do okay,” she says. That means we have enough money to get by. And we have a good doctor because her boss, Dr. Gómez, he’ll always see us for free. Or close to free, anyway. “And that’s a lot,” my mother says. “There’s a lot of people in the world who never see a doctor because they just don’t have the money.” She’s proud. But she can be hard, too. She says if you didn’t earn something, well, then you just shouldn’t have it. With her, you have to earn everything. It’s like life is a job, and you don’t even get paid for it. But she’s soft too, my mom. I like that about her, she can be hard and she can be soft. It makes her interesting. I never know which part of her is going to be in the kitchen—the hard Mom or the soft one. Sometimes, I get tired of trying to guess which Mom is going to show up.

  “Life is up and down,” my Tía Lisa says. She’s the kicks. I mean the real effen kicks. She’s about ten years younger than my mother and sometimes she looks like she’s still a girl, and she’s always smoking a cigarette and she’s always talking about life. Life is this and life is that, and life, life, life, life. I never heard anyone talk about life so much. “Be good to your mom,” she says, “life’s been hard on her. You know, your dad was never good to her. She didn’t deserve that.” I think she wants to tell me all sorts of things about them, but she always winds up changing the subject. Usually, the subject she changes back to is life. Life this and life that. “Life is always better with a cup of coffee.” She likes saying that. I wouldn’t give you a dime for a cup of coffee. Not a dime. Not a nickel. Tastes like a pigeon crapped in your mouth. I pretty much stick to orange juice. Cherry Cokes sometimes.

  We have our own house on Calle Concepción. It’s a white house that my mother wants to paint another color. She just can’t seem to decide on the color—so it’s kind of stayed white by default. I got that expression from Mrs. Herrera, my English teacher. She loves to say that. She says things like “Mr. Lopez, you’re the best student in this class by default.” Which means that she thinks we’re just a bunch of dumb-ass Mexicans good for nothing but flipping burgers and making breakfast burritos at Whataburger, and that I’ll grow up to be one of the better burrito-makers. Yup, that’s what she pretty much thinks, we’re all a bunch of burrito guys. Well, hell, I do work at Whataburger. I flip a good burger. But that’s only a part-time job and it’s only temporary. Screw Mrs. Herrera.

  Our house is pretty close to Thomas Jefferson High School—but we just call our school “La Jeff.” That’s what we say, “I go to La Jeff.” And our rival school, well, that would be “La Bowie.” We’re foxes and they’re bears, and, hell, my friend Lalo, he says we’re just a bunch of animals. And then he starts laughing his stupid animal head off. I like Lalo. He scares me, though. He takes drugs and drinks and cusses like a drunk man in a bar and does everything he’s not all
owed to do—and he tells me I’m too straight and that being straight doesn’t do me a damn bit of good because I’ll never be good enough anyway, not for the teachers and not for anyone who’s in charge of anything in this hellhole of a world and who in the hell ever told me I was ever gonna make it. I don’t know. Lalo, he can be mean. I don’t know why he likes me but he does. He comes over all the time and eats with us. My mom’s nice to him—but when he leaves, she shakes her head. “Poor Lalo,” she says, “His mom and dad just don’t give a damn.” My mom gets real mad at parents who don’t care. That’s one of the things that make her cuss. That and drunks. And memories of my father.

  I’m a senior this year. Next year I’m going to college. My mom, she says I knew what a verb was when I was six. She knew it was a good sign. She says I was born with two strikes against me—I was a poor Mexican and I didn’t have a father. But this summer she took me aside and said, “You’ve done a beautiful job, hijo de mi vida. You’re on third base, now.” My mom, she loves baseball. I don’t know where she got that, because a lot of girls don’t like sports, but my mother, she loves baseball. She likes the Dodgers and the Cubs and secretly she likes the Yankees but they win too much, and she normally doesn’t like people and teams who win more than their fair share of the time. So now my mom says I’m on third base. It means I’m about to score. It means I might be going somewhere. Father or no father, I might be going somewhere.