Читать книгу Fish Out of Agua: - Michele Carlo - Страница 12

It was a hot summer’s day a year and a half after my mother had won her block’s first TV. Daisy, a girl named Lydia, and she were walking along East 106th Street on their way to a party, when Daisy stopped the girls to chat up a group of boys hanging out on the front stoop of a three-story apartment building. On the second floor, lying on the sofa and listening to a New York Giants vs. Dodgers baseball game on the radio, was my father. He stuck his head out of the window when he heard Daisy’s loud laughter and saw my mother. Years later he would tell me that he ran downstairs like hell because he was afraid if he didn’t, she would disappear.

The person who made up the saying “Good things come in small packages” must have seen my mother at the age of twenty. When my father looked out of the window and saw her for the first time, she was petite and curvy, wearing tight but not too tight red Capri pants, a white-on-white, Swiss dot sleeveless blouse tied at her tiny waist, a black patent leather belt, and black patent leather wedge sandals. When he got downstairs for a closer look, he saw her liquid dark-brown eyes, flawless ivory complexion, and jet-black wavy hair. (He would later learn that she slept every night with her hair wrapped around orange juice cans in order to tame its tight curls and that there were other things she was equally rigid about.) That day he thought he could willingly drown in those eyes. His tongue filled up his mouth, and he, who had an answer for everything, could not think of a thing to say.

My mother looked at the boy standing in front of her. He was good-looking at five feet nine inches, with a slim, athletic build from years of recreational stickball, baseball, and dancing. He had brown wavy hair with a cowlick that fell in a curve over his forehead, a ruddy complexion, and a small cleft in his angular chin. (My mother would later learn just how often he relied on his good looks and charm to get him through tough situations.) That day she got butterflies waiting for him to talk to her. She was attracted to him, but would not chase him. Even at twenty, my mother was absolutely a lady.

Rudy didn’t talk to Lucy that day. Instead, he talked to Daisy and Lydia and found out every place they were going to be for the rest of that summer. From Central Park to Orchard Beach to the Starlight Room’s famous dances at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, Rudy appeared and tried to get my mother to notice him—but to no avail. He did become friends with Daisy and Lydia. He danced with them and introduced them to his other friends, while my mother remained a mystery.

That is, until the night Daisy got toasted. The girls usually had a cocktail or two on the nights they went dancing. My mother’s signature drink was one classic martini with olives. It made her feel refined and in control. Daisy, on the other hand, liked whatever was sweet and fruity—and lots of it. Piña coladas, sidecars, and daiquiris all made her happy, and one night, Daisy became so happy that my mother thought it best if they immediately went home.

My mother looked around for Lydia to help her with Daisy, but Lydia had already left with her boyfriend. As my mother steered Daisy out of the hotel, trying not to draw attention, my father appeared. He immediately hailed a cab, but after Daisy got sick in the backseat, they were kicked out, still thirty blocks from their destination.

In the hour it took to walk to 99th Street and Lexington Avenue (where Daisy now lived), my father told every joke, story, and anecdote he knew to keep the girls entertained—and Daisy from barfing again. He told them about the pigeons he kept on different roofs, the horses he used to take care of at the West Side riding stables, and the turkey he and his brothers once had as a pet when he was a child.

Lucy saw there was another person besides Daisy who could make her laugh. She also saw that he had paid for the cab, argued with the driver when they were thrown out, and walked them both home without complaining or asking for anything in return. It was the first time a man had ever taken care of her so unselfishly, and by the time Rudy left her on her stoop with just a handshake and a “See you soon?” Lucy was in love.

Initially, neither one of their families was pleased about the relationship. Neither my mother nor my father was their parents’ favorite child, and they both knew this. Grandma Izzy, a city person, thought my mother’s family, coming from a small town in the mountains, were jibaros. But my mother’s perfectly put together outfits; perfect manners; and soft, perfectly pitched voice—she was a “Jackie O” well before Jacqueline Bouvier ever met John F. Kennedy—won over Grandma Izzy’s heart. She had to admit that my mother was a lady, and therefore almost too good for her son.

Papa Julio, the same man who had almost forced my mother to drop out of high school, didn’t like it that my dad hadn’t gone to school past ninth grade. But my father liked having money in his pocket and quit school to work anywhere. He sold beer at the Polo Grounds until he was fired for being underage; he made bread at an Italian bakery until he was fired for being Puerto Rican; and then he got his driver’s license and got a job driving a forklift, which he kept.

When my father came to my mother’s family’s apartment to watch TV, he would “accidentally” leave change in the sofa cushions for Ofelia and Dulce to find. He even tried to fix the teenage Carmen up with his younger brother Papo, (which sadly didn’t take). Eventually his charm and genuine goodwill touched my mother’s family the way it had my mother, and Grandma Mari was glad her oldest daughter would finally be taken care of.

So Lucy took a chance and said yes for the second time in her life. She did love my father, but she also married him to get out of the house, which was not as cynical then as it would be today. In those days, in that culture, you needed a man in order to leave home. You needed to be rescued.

My father, who was sure from the first time he set eyes on my mother, married her in part because she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He also thought she’d give him the love and recognition he didn’t get from his family.

They both wanted their lives together to be completely different from the way they had been when they were growing up. Their children would definitely have American names, and they would grow up speaking only English. There would be no societal stigma of bilingualism. No difficulty in school because of switching from one language to another at the age of six. No being teased or left back. There would be no language or any other cultural barrier. Nothing would keep their children from having the life they both felt they were denied. Rudy and Lucy would figuratively and literally keep my brother Kevin and me as far away from the finca, the fogón, and El Barrio as they could get.