She sneaked off on the day of Kennedy’s apparent triumph, when Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the nuclear devices from Cuba. She set up a sign in the windy U.N. Plaza. It read: THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD WILL END. She poured gasoline over her head while a confused knot of people watched and then she lit a match.
She died without regaining consciousness three days later. I was told she had been killed in a car accident. I didn’t go to the funeral because I became violently ill, vomiting uncontrollably for hours. A doctor injected me with what I presume was a sedative. I was kept in bed for two days. Uncle Bernie slept on a cot in my room the night of my mother’s funeral. Years later Aunt Charlotte told me he had never done that for his son Aaron or his daughter Helen. She thought it proved his love. I think it proved he felt responsible.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Hamlet’s Ghost
THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS A BOX SENT BY JACINTA AND PEPÍN ARRIVED on a UPS truck. It was their yearly Christmas package, jammed with a dozen gifts for me. Each was wrapped in red paper decorated by many Santas and sleighs, and each was tied with festive red bows and each was identified by a green card on which my grandmother had written in a large oval cursive: Feliz Navidad, followed by the person to whom she had apportioned the gift-giving. Five were ascribed to her and to Pepín. One apiece were credited to Uncle Pancho and a cousin my age. Those gifts were traditional, the usual amount that Francisco would hide in the back of his bedroom closet until the night before Christmas. They would be put under our tree after I fell asleep alongside his and my mother’s gift. What was new were the five additional presents allocated to my father.
Uncle Bernie handled the problem of these gifts clumsily. The day they arrived he left instructions for them to be put in my room without ceremony. I found them when I came home from school and opened them with Eileen, my caretaker. She was offended by Uncle’s treatment of the Christmas presents. She expressed that disapproval loudly to me and not at all to her employer.
“You’re half-Christian. He can’t hide from that. He should put a tree out for you and you should go to Sunday school. Don’t tell him I said so. It’s not my place, but you’ve got people who believe in Jesus, whatever may be wrong with your father. And they mean you to know about Christmas.”
Judging from the gifts, Grandma Jacinta’s true intention was to keep me warm — she had sent three sets of pajamas. Living in Florida she must have had an exaggerated notion of New York’s winter. There were also two sweaters, a package of underpants and another of socks. The remaining five presents were small toys: two Matchbox trucks, a set of dominos, a yo-yo, and a book about dinosaurs.
I thought they were pathetic. Cheap and too babyish for me — heart-breakingly inadequate when compared to even a casual purchase Uncle Bernie might make on his way home from the office. They made me angry. After Eileen and I opened them she left the room to put the discarded wrapping paper in the garbage. I threw the Matchbox cars at my Lego storage chest so hard that I dented one of their doors. I crushed the yo-yo with the heel of my brown loafer and I scattered the dominos all over the room by flinging the box. The top came off in mid-flight and the white ivory rectangles spun out. I spent the rest of my rage trying to rip the dinosaur book in half. I was only a little ways through the tyrannosaur’s head when Eileen reappeared.
“My God!” she gasped at the wreckage I had made of the Catholic presents. She grabbed the book away and let out a torrent of words about poor children who needed things if I didn’t want them and my not forgetting that it was the thought that counted and many other clichés. I didn’t listen. I sagged onto the bed and tried to hear in my head my father talking on the Miami radio station. I could. Francisco still reverberated in the old radio console’s speaker, the music of his voice lightened by a sexy melody that was quite different from Uncle’s somber cello. I was discouraged by both male examples: how could I match their vigor, confidence and commitment to principle? And why were the women so weak and foolish, stuck in the literal world, believing it mattered whether I was grateful for toys, believing it mattered whether my father had sent a message while he was so busy fighting for the revolution?
Eileen’s monologue came to an end with a dramatic exit, accompanied by this closing line: “And that’s all I can say as a God-fearing Catholic!” She came back in a minute wearing her winter coat and carrying mine. “Come on,” she said, shaking my jacket at me as if taunting a bull. “We’re going to church.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Your grandparents want you to.”
“Uncle won’t like it.”
Eileen nodded, moving her red mass of hair with emphatic agreement. “That’s the truth. If he finds out I’ll lose my job.”
This threat made the excursion attractive. I liked secrets between a man and woman: they betokened love.
Eileen owned a beat-up Plymouth, possibly the same make and model Grandpa Pepín drove. His was kept in immaculate condition, despite the role he played as chauffeur for an extended family that included many young grandnieces and grandnephews. By contrast, Eileen was single. Her unsteady romance with the Irish immigrant carpenter was often rocked by violent changes of mood about his drinking, flirtations with other girls and reluctance to marry. She slept at Uncle Bernie’s six nights a week, spending her night off with an aunt. Thus her car was rarely used. And yet its interior resembled that of a suburban mother of five — litter covered most of the floor and every inch of the back seat.
We drove off to church without leaving a note for Bernie or Charlotte. Both were still in the city. Eileen was confident we’d be back before they arrived. It was a Friday afternoon in December, freezing and gray. There was no snow on the ground, but the black road was streaked white by frost. We were only a short distance out of Uncle’s driveway before we had to stop at a light. A car pulled up beside us and a tanned handsome man beamed across Eileen at me. It was my father.
The sight was electrifying. It felt as if his smile surged through my chest. I called out joyfully: “Daddy!”
Eileen was confused at first. She stared at me as if I had lost my mind. Francisco honked to get her attention. She shifted her stunned look to him while he got out of his car and came around to my side. I rolled the window down, using both hands to do it faster. I don’t know why I didn’t simply open the door. Dad did. Because of my fierce grip on the window handle I fell out. My father lifted me up into his arms. I had forgotten how tall he was. I was five feet myself, only seven inches shorter than my powerful uncle. Francisco, although leaner and much less threatening than Bernie in his manner, was a comparative giant at six feet three. His hug lifted me off the ground effortlessly. All that grace and strength was thrilling. And no one, no one on earth has ever said Rafael so musically. He pronounced it several times while squeezing me tight. He rolled the “R” and separated the “fie” and “el” long enough so that it sounded like the drumroll for the main attraction, the summoning of a magical being, at once heroic and mysterious. If only I could be the Rafael my father called for. I felt no regret that I wasn’t, simply fascination with his desire. I listened for myself in Francisco’s song of my name, ready to accept the role if I could find the necessary talent.
Eileen’s half-a-year-long disapproval of my father was defeated in seconds by his charm. “What a beautiful accent,” he said when she demanded to know who he was, although I had made that apparent. “I’m Rafael’s father,” he said. “Are you from Dublin?”