We carried our overnight bags to the dark porch. A gate covered the door. To ring the bell you had to reach through its bars; Grandpa’s sounded a plaintive pair of notes, a corny ding-dong. From the avenue a block away I heard a series of popping sounds, like distant firecrackers.
“What’s that?” Diane asked.
“Who is it?” called a thin voice that had told me on the phone he was my brother.
“It’s Rafael,” I said, rolling the R and lingering on the L. Diane glanced at me.
Inside, another voice spoke inaudibly. A light came on in the front room. There was a sliding noise and an eye peered through a circular peephole. “That’s him,” I heard my father say and the eye disappeared. After that came another pause, then some fumbling with locks. At last the door opened.
Cuco filled the entrance, dressed in a white T-shirt and what looked like new blue-jeans. He was at least three inches taller than me, six seven or six eight, his eyes the warm brown of my father’s. Otherwise, the family resemblance was not obvious. His skin was coffee-colored, his hair kinky, and his features were rounder, less defined than my father’s. His chin, for example, barely existed. And although he was far from fat, he had inherited Carmelita’s big bones and square shape: he did not have the wide shoulders and narrow hips of the Gallego that my father used to brag about. In fact, he looked as if he would be an excellent outside linebacker, a big man whose long legs and thick body could make him both quick and punishing. I thought of Albert, graduating high school that spring. He was being heavily recruited by top colleges as just that — a premier defensive player, the next Lawrence Taylor, his hyperbolic coach liked to say. Cuco’s voice, however, was far from suggesting brute force: high, thin, and gentle. “Rafael?” he said and smiled sweetly, his broad cheeks opening to show little teeth set in a crooked jumble, like a Mediterranean hillside town. “Come in,” he urged, easily lifting our bags with one hand, as if they were empty.
“Were those gunshots?” Diane asked him as she entered.
“I think so,” he said with a sad shake of his head as he shut the door behind us. “All night, there are crazy noises.”
“I’m Diane Rosenberg,” she said and offered a hand that looked preposterously small. The two of them made a hilarious sight; Diane is a foot and a half shorter than Cuco.
I looked around. The furniture was unchanged from thirty years ago, except that the couch had been re-covered. Everything looked neat and tidy, but if Grandmother Jacinta had seen it she would have fainted. The rug wasn’t shampooed, the credenza’s surface wasn’t polished, and the drapes needed washing. Behind Cuco was the door to the bedroom where I had napped after returning with my arm in a cast. It was dark. I maneuvered to see the dining room and beyond to the kitchen. There was a light on in the kitchen, but no one in evidence. “Abuelo is asleep,” Cuco said, gesturing to the front bedroom.
“Is my—” I changed my mind about how to put it. “Is Francisco here?”
Cuco looked toward the kitchen, then back at me. His pleasant face now seemed pained. “Yes. He said if you need a bed, take that room.” Cuco indicated the doorway off the dining room, where my parents used to sleep when they visited.
I gestured to the kitchen. “I’m going to say hello.” I asked Diane, “You’ll be okay?”
Cuco took Diane’s elbow with a huge hand and gently urged her toward the couch. “We’ll talk and become friends,” he said.
Diane beamed at him. “It’s not fair.”
“Not fair?” Cuco was puzzled.
She sat on the couch. “Your family. God made all the Nerudas too big.”
I walked through the dark dining room toward the kitchen. The house had seemed small to me even as a boy. To my adult eyes, it was so shrunken from the memories of childhood that I felt as if I were dreaming. I was a giant now beside these tokens of the past. At least, I was physically. Stepping into the kitchen I could swear my legs buckled. I paused to look at them, surprised I hadn’t collapsed. The linoleum was the same black and white squares. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the yellow Formica table with its aluminum legs. I looked up at the sink to see if my grandmother was cleaning a plate I had dirtied from a late-night snack. There were bars on the window she used to look out while preparing meals, but, of course, no Jacinta. I inhaled for courage and turned to survey the table. My father wasn’t there.
I heard a step behind me. I jumped. At least it felt as if my heart did. I turned to face the small television room where they kept the fold-out couch that had been my bed as a child. My father stood astride the door sill. His hair was all white, thinner of course and receding, completely exposing his high forehead. His thick eyebrows were still mostly black. He stood straight, just as I remembered him, his chest out, proudly. He had no paunch, although his face was full. He was very tan. I was impressed by his handsome, dignified, and commanding appearance. That had not been an illusion created by my childhood, after all. My father was no fantasy.
“Hi Dad,” I said, and now I had shrunk to the size of a boy. The sound of my voice was foreign to me: unsure, sweet and scared.
He said nothing. He watched me as if he were seeing something that didn’t require a reaction, as if I were an image, not a living thing.
“You look great,” I said. I seemed to have no defenses, no ability to plan what came out of my mouth. “I’m really glad to see you.” I studied him again, amazed that this vigorous figure was seventy-four years old. Perhaps because of the stories of Cuba’s economic woes, or more likely some sort of guilty projection, or worse, a deeper wish from buried rage, I expected the years to have treated him harshly, to find a withered broken man.
“I’m not glad to see you,” he said in that extraordinary voice, so convinced of its correctness, so musical and dramatic — the kind of voice that sells us cars, beckons us to fly the friendly skies, and reads us the news headlines. “I hoped you wouldn’t come.” He glanced down pensively. When he looked up again, he nodded toward the dining room. “You brought someone? Your wife?”
“No. We’re not married. But she’s a friend. I mean, we’re very close …” I stammered like an embarrassed teenager.
“You mean you’re fucking her,” he said and chuckled. He caught himself doing it, glanced at me and then away, frowning. “We’re going to look at two nursing homes tomorrow and pick one. Then I want you to return to New York. For my father’s sake, I’ll act courteous in his presence. Otherwise, don’t speak to me.” He stepped into the television room, and seemed to remember something. “Unless,” he added, beginning to swing the door at me, “you don’t mind being ignored.” His timing was perfect, shutting it in my face with his last word.
When I returned to the living room, Cuco interrupted whatever he was saying to Diane to ask, “You are done talking so fast?”
“I said hello.” Diane twisted to look at me. I added, “Maybe we’d better find a hotel.”
“No, no,” Cuco said. “There are no hotels. And we have a date.”
“A date?” Diane asked.
“At a home for seniors. Eight o’clock. That’s early, yes?”
“Yes,” I agreed.