He Forgot to Say Goodbye Read online

  But where? What happens after you reach home plate?

  I worry about my mom. I don’t know if she’ll be all right when I’m gone. I worry about my little brother too. He’s gotten into smoking pot. Other stuff too. All that stuff that messes with his head, he thinks it’s the effen kicks. Yeah, sure, I tell him, the real effen kicks. I tell him all that crap is gonna beat the holy hell out of him so bad that he’ll never think straight again. Tito just smiles like I’m full of all that leftover grease from the grill at WhataBurger. And then he says if I tell Mom, he’ll kick my ass all the way to Denver. I laugh. I mean, I don’t even think Tito knows where Denver is.

  I keep an eye out, and I drag Tito’s good-for-nothing ass home when I need to. And every day I tell him to cut that shit out. And every day he gives me those looks like he’d really like to hurt me. Those eyes are stone. And they hate. But I’m not afraid of those eyes. And I tell him that it’s him who doesn’t know his skinny brown ass from a store-bought tortilla. Tito, he goes through my closets and asks me which shirts I don’t wear anymore, so he can take them and sell them and try to score some dope. He takes my shoes even when they’re still good and my pants—anything he can get his hands on. And sometimes he steals other people’s old clothes too. I followed him once to one of those places that sell used clothes by the pound. The border’s full of those places. And pawn shops and loan shops that screw people. So my little brother, he’s learned how it all works. He’s become a regular little entrepreneur so he can score some pot. A regular little capitalist trying to make the most of whatever capital he has. Capital. It’s a new thing for me. I’m studying basic theories of economics. My brother, Tito, doesn’t have to take that class. He knows all the basic rules already.

  My mom took me to one of those loan shark places once. It was called Border Loan Company. Their motto was “Money for the people.” She said it was time I learned a few things—so she took me there and pretended to want a loan of five hundred dollars. She took the paperwork as some guy who was wearing way too much cologne was trying to make her sign. She said she wanted to read the contract. He said he could tell her what it said. She looked at him and said she’d like to take it home.

  When we walked out, she looked at me and smiled. “Never trust a man who smells nicer than your mother.” We both laughed. I liked to do that, laugh with my mother. When we got home, she showed me how she would’ve had to pay three times the amount of the loan because of the interest they charged. And then she took me to a real bank. She got a real loan there. A home-improvement loan. She said she could redo the bathroom and the kitchen, get a new stove and a new refrigerator and new cabinets, and paint the house with that loan. She took me through the whole thing. It was an education all right. I asked her how come those loan shops were allowed to do stuff like that to poor people. She said that half the rich people in the world got rich off the poor, and that was the God’s honest truth. And since those same rich people ran the world, why on God’s good earth did I think the whole messed-up system was going to change? My mom gets really angry about things like that. But the thing is, she’s not angry at me and my brother.

  She’s great, my mom. Even when she’s being strict, I know she’s keeping her eye on the ball. I know a lot of guys, and they’re always pissed off at their mothers. Not me.

  I wish my dad would have seen what kind of woman she was. He wouldn’t have left her. He’d have stayed with her forever.

  Me, Jake

  (you know, Upthegrove)

  I don’t think anybody really knows where anybody lives.

  Him

  (Upthegrove)

  You see, the Upthegrove whose name I inherited happens to reside in the state of Florida. Miami. He has a house on the beach, or near it—like I really know. According to my mom, “Your father was neither remarkable nor reliable.” (I take it he was good-looking. My mother likes to stare at nice-looking men. Don’t think I don’t notice). “He was born rich and he’ll die rich, and he’ll go from job to job and place to place, and the minute he gets bored, he’ll move on. He has the attention span of a black crow.” I don’t know anything about the attention span of black crows—and to tell you the truth, neither does my mother, but she always says things like that. I’ll give my mother one thing—she believes everything she says.

  Right when she came to the part about black crows, that’s the part where she crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “When he walked out on us, he wrote out a check and handed it to me. It was as if he was paying me off. Which is all he’s ever done. It was no different than buying a new car or paying a call girl for a well-spent evening.” And then, at that part of her story, she clenched her fists and laughed. “Sorry about the call-girl business. I shouldn’t have said that. Anyway, since me, well, your father’s gone through several other women.”

  The thing is that my mother always fails to mention one of the most important parts of the story: She took the check. Look, let’s just move on. But my mom was probably right about Upthegrove going through several other women. I wondered if he’d gone through several other sons, too.

  My mom hears from him sometimes. I know she does. It’s not that he’s really interested in her. I think he just gets lonely sometimes, and my mom, well, she likes to listen. Even to him. Not that she says that much about their conversations. He always asks her to give me some kind of useless message: Tell him I said to keep studying. Tell him I said that he shouldn’t get sidetracked by girls. Tell him I said that it’s not good for him to continue down the road of all that political nonsense he gets all hot and bothered about—and tell him that anarchy thing he has going in his head will only get him into trouble. I mean, the guy only knows about me through my conversations with my mother. He knows what she tells him. For all he knows I’m gay. I’m not. But I could be. For all he knows.

  Well, at least Upthegrove wants to make sure I have a good life even though he’s not very interested in seeing me. I even called him once. I made my mother give me his phone number. I was twelve at the time. “Hi,” I said, “it’s me.”

  The guy on the other end of the phone, my father, said, “Who’s me?” His voice was deep and he sounded like he was distracted. Maybe he was with some woman.

  “Me. Jake.”

  “Jake?”

  “Yeah, Jake.”

  “Jake who?”

  “Jake Upthegrove.”

  “Oh,” he said. And then he said it again, “Oh.” And then there wasn’t anything coming from the other end. Nothing. And then finally, he said. “Is your mother all right?”

  “She’s fine,” I said. “And me, hell, I’m fine too.”

  “I was getting to that,” he said.

  “Sure you were,” I said.

  And then there wasn’t anything coming from the other end again. Nothing. And then he asks: “She still married to that guy? What was his name?”

  “You destroy me, Dad.” That’s what I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean.”

  “It means you’re killing me. In a complete kind of way.”

  He didn’t say anything. And then he asked me again what my stepfather’s name was. Okay. I was getting the picture that he wasn’t real big on talking. At least not to me. “David,” I said. “His name is David.”

  “Yeah. He still around?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “She happy?”

  “Yeah.” I had no idea whether she was happy or not.

  “He’s good to her, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And this guy, David, he’s not mean to you or anything like that, is he?”

  “No. He’s nice,” I said. And David was nice. He just wasn’t my father.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And you like him? I mean, he doesn’t destroy you or anything?” Then he laughed, like he was really amused because he’d used my expression.

  “Nope,” I said. “He doesn’t destroy me.”
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  “So you like him?”

  “I didn’t say that. Right now, I don’t like anybody.”

  “Well, that’s normal,” he said.

  “Does that make you happy, that I’m normal?”

  “Every man wants a normal son.”

  God, he really was destroying me. “Yeah, well, every son wants a normal father.”

  I could tell he was lighting a cigarette.

  “Guess so,” he said. I could tell he was puffing on his cigarette. “Look.” he said, “is that why you called—to fight with your old man?” And then I think he felt bad for scolding me, and he mumbled something, and finally, he just said, “You need money?”

  I was twelve. What would I need money for? He knew damn well that Mom and I weren’t exactly living in South El Paso. He knew that. And I knew that he knew that David was, as my mother put it, “an extremely sought-after and successful attorney.” I hated that he’d asked me about money. I really hated that. I didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, I said, “I just wanted to talk.”

  “About what?” he said. And then, well, I just hung up the phone.

  I think I cried. I think I cried for a long time. Days maybe. Destroyed. Completely destroyed. I think I was sad all that summer. Well, hell, I was twelve and that’s what twelve-year-olds do, they mope. And then I wasn’t so sad after that. But sometimes I still want to call old Upthegrove up. But I don’t even know what I’d say to him. Maybe I’d call him by his first name. Maybe I’d say, “Gerald, what do you say me and you go golfing?” Mom says he loves to golf. I hate that crap. White balls and green grass. I’d rather piss in my pants than go golfing. I would. I just don’t dig that sport. I’m not playing around, here. Hell, I don’t have anything to say to Upthegrove. I don’t. I don’t have anything to ask him. Maybe I’d ask him for money. At least it’s something he knows how to give. But what would I do with it? I have everything. Mostly everything. Two iPods, a BlackBerry, a laptop, a desert bike, a car, five pairs of tennis shoes including a pair of Chuck Taylors, and, well, I could go on and on. Yeah, I have everything. Well, except a father.

  Sometimes, I just want to yell at him, “Listen, you roach, you lazy fly-eating lizard, you polluted puddle of rancid rainwater, you spineless excuse for a man, you piece of dog crap in the neighbor’s yard, you creep among creeps, you worm in a perfect red apple, you chewed-up piece of gum that’s stuck under my foot, you can keep your last name and put it in your good-for-nothing bank account! You just keep the damn thing! I don’t want it! I don’t! Can you dig it, Upthegrove? Are you listening?”

  Ah, I know I’m just sore at him. I get real sore at people sometimes.

  I have my reasons.

  Look, the thing is there are certain things we’re all entitled to. The pursuit of happiness—that’s one thing we’re entitled to. And who the hell can be happy when you got a father who lives in Florida and doesn’t care enough about you to pick up his cell phone and call you on your birthday? Not so much as a text message.

  My birthday. I’ll lay you all the money you got in your pocket that Upthegrove doesn’t have a clue as to when my birthday is. Hell, he doesn’t even know how old I am.

  Yeah. I get real sore sometimes.

  I have my reasons.

  You know that summer when I thought Upthegrove had completely destroyed me. I was wrong. He didn’t. I’m still here.

  Me, Ramiro

  (son, brother)

  Brothers. They’re great. Everyone should have at least one. Sure.

  Him

  (My Brother)

  I keep a journal. In my computer. I write things in it. Things that happen to me. Things I’m thinking. Keeps me sane. Not that I’m a crazy kind of guy. I’m not. Keeping a journal, it’s like talking to myself. Sometimes I think I write in this journal because I think that someday my father’s going to read it. Wouldn’t that be effen something? My dad reading all the things I wrote? My dad knowing everything I thought—wouldn’t that be the effen kicks? Man, that would be effen something. It scares me, though. It scares the living crap out of me.

  I know what my little brother, Tito, would say. He would say I was full of Ralphie’s dog shit. Ralphie’s this mean dog that lives down the street. They keep the poor dog all chained up, and my mom’s always after those people. She tells them it’s a bad thing to chain a dog up and make him mean like that. “Dogs are like people,” she says. “Chain them up, and they get real mean.” I sometimes think Tito has something in common with Ralphie. Somewhere inside, Tito feels all chained up. And so he’s really mad all the time. The kind of mad that makes you growl and bare your teeth and bite. It seems like he wants to attack everyone who passes in front of our house. I don’t know where he gets that, though. Maybe because my mom is so strict. Maybe he thinks my mom is chaining him up. But hell, he doesn’t listen anyway, so why’s he so damn mad? I mean chains just don’t work on that dude. Dude—that’s one of Tito’s favorite words. Dude and vato.

  Every time Tito gets into my clothes to sell them, I get mad at him and tell him to knock it off. He just sits there and looks at me and says: “You’re fuckin’ loco, dude.” And he gives me this look—like he wants to hurt me. And I give him a look right back and say, “I’m not a dude, ese.” And he says, “You sure as hell aren’t a vato.” Vatos to him are the kicks. They rock. The coolest. And me, well, to him I’m as uncool as you can get. How could someone so uncool be a vato? “Ahh,” he says, “you’re lucky to be a called a dude.” Then he gives me that look again. That I-might-hurt-you look. That stone look. That hate look. And I just keep looking back at him. It’s like a game of ping-pong.

  I don’t know why Tito and I are so different. He’s younger, but he’s a lot harder than me. He was always harder. Maybe people are just born that way. Maybe there’s not a reason, and if we keep looking for reasons then we’ll just go crazy. That’s what my Uncle Tabo says. He says, “We think there’s a reason for everything, as if life was supposed to make sense. It’s not exactly math. People aren’t numbers. Everybody knows life doesn’t make any sense at all, so we just better deal with the whole mess. Have a beer. Have a cup of coffee. Have a piece of cake. Go out to a movie. Enjoy the popcorn.” He shrugs and laughs. Maybe he says that because two of his sons are in jail. But he has another son who just started law school. How’d that happen? Maybe my Uncle Tabo is right. I mean, it’s like he gets it, and he’s all chilled out about it. Maybe it’s because he got married when he was eighteen and had four kids in five years and had to learn a lot of things the hard way. But he never ran away from his family. Not like my father.

  Look, I’m not my Uncle Tabo and I have my own problems. And I still want to know why me and Tito are so damn different. We don’t look different. We don’t. We look alike—well, we look like my father, the one we’ve never seen. I mean, we must look like him since we don’t look like my mom. Who knows? I don’t know anything about genetics. I’m not pre-med. I’m just a Mexican who’s got a lot of questions.

  When Tito was about five, I saw him get mad at another little guy at a birthday party. They were fighting over a toy and he pushed that kid down on the ground—and then started kicking him. I had to pull Tito off him. I mean, that poor kid was just lying on the ground crying. And I made Tito shake the other little boy’s hand and tell him he was sorry, and I made Tito give the little boy his toy back. Man, Tito was mad. He went and sat in the car for the rest of the afternoon. When we got home, he told me he wasn’t sorry and when he grew up he was never going to say he was sorry about anything he wasn’t really sorry about. And you know what? I don’t think Tito is sorry about most things he does. I mean, even Lalo’s sorry about the stuff he pulls. I mean, sometimes when Lalo gets drunk, he just cries. He cries about everything and how sorry he is about everything. Makes me sad. I hate being sad.

  And my brother, Tito, he really makes me sad. But he’s not sorry about anything. He says I’m always saying I’m sorry. “What are you sorry about, bro? Give it
up, pendejo.” I hate it when he calls me pendejo. And I told him I always said I was sorry when I was wrong.

  “Most people think you’re wrong ‘cause you’re nothing but a poor Mexican. And if you’re poor, that just means you’re stupid.”

  “Where do you get that shit?” I said. “And you know what? I’m not worried about what most people say.”

  “You should be,” he said. “They’ll screw you.”

  Tito, he thinks everyone’s out to screw him. Truth is, it’s Tito that’s out to screw everyone. Never turn your back on that guy. Not if you want to hold on to what you’ve got.

  The problem is, when you only have one brother, then that brother means a lot. Maybe he means more than he should. When I hear someone say: “Look, he’s my brother, man. What am I supposed to do?”, when I hear someone say something like that, I really know what they’re talking about. I mean, I really know.

  My mom, she likes to hug us. Not all the time. But sometimes. Well, why not? Moms have certain privileges. I don’t mind. It’s nice, to have a mom who wants to hug you. But, Tito, hell, he just pushes her away. He says, “Don’t do that. I don’t like that. Just don’t do that.” And he has this look in his eyes, like maybe he means business. It makes me afraid. Well, not quite. But almost. I’m glad that my mom isn’t afraid of him and doesn’t let him push her around. Sometimes, moms let that happen, they let their kids push them around—but not my mom. Nope. Last week she kissed my brother right on the cheek. And he got really mad, and he started to say something and my mom stopped him cold. “I’m your mother. I can hug and kiss you anytime I want. I have a license to do that just like I have a license to be a nurse. So you just have to be a man and deal with it.” That really got to him—because she brought up the whole business about being a man. And if there’s one thing Tito wants to be, it’s a real man. He’s all about that man stuff—even though he doesn’t know the first thing about the whole man thing. My mom, I gotta hand it to her, she knows exactly what she’s doing. I don’t mess with her, not if I don’t have to. Not a chance.