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Nineteen. My dad and I got into a routine






MY DAD AND I GOT INTO A ROUTINE. WE’D GET UP really early on Saturdays and Sundays for my driving lessons. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I guess I thought that maybe my dad and I would talk about stuff. But we didn’t. We talked about driving. It was all business. It was all about the learning-to-drive thing.

Dad was patient with me. He could explain things about driving a truck and his philosophy of paying attention and watching out for the other guy. He was actually a really good teacher, never got upset (except the time I brought up my brother). He said something once that really made me smile. “You can’t expect to go both ways when you’re driving on a one-way street.” I thought that was a funny and interesting thing to say. I laughed when he said it. He hardly ever made me laugh.

But he never asked me any questions about my life. Unlike my mom, he left me to my private world. My dad and I, we were like that Edward Hopper painting. Well almost—but not exactly. I noticed that somehow my dad seemed more relaxed with himself when he and I were out on those mornings. He seemed so at ease with himself, like he was at home. Even though he didn’t talk much, he didn’t seem as remote. That was nice. He sometimes whistled, like he was happy to be with me. Maybe my dad just didn’t need words to get by in the world. I wasn’t like that. Well, I was like that on the outside, pretending not to need words. But I wasn’t like that on the inside.

I’d figured something out about myself: on the inside, I wasn’t like my dad at all. On the inside I was more like Dante. That really scared me.

 

 

Twenty

I HAD TO TAKE MY MOM OUT FOR A DRIVE BEFORE she’d let me go out on my own. “You drive a little fast, ” she said.

“I’m sixteen, ” I said. “And I’m a boy.”

She didn’t say anything. But then she said, “If I even suspect that you’ve taken one sip of alcohol and driventhis truck, I’m going to sell it.”

For some reason that made me smile. “That’s not fair. Why should I have to pay for the fact that you have a suspicious mind? Like that’s my fault.”

She just looked at me. “Fascists are like that.”

We both smiled at each other. “No drinking and driving.”

“What about drinking and walking? ”

“None of that either.”

“I guess I knew that.”

“Just making sure.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Mom. Just so you know.”

That made her laugh.

So my life was more or less uncomplicated. I got letters from Dante and I didn’t always write back. When I did write back, my letters were short. His letters were never short. He was still experimenting with kissing girls even though he said he’d rather be kissing boys. That’s exactly what he said. I didn’t know exactly what to think about that, but Dante was going to be Dante and if I was going to be his friend, I would just have to learn to be okay with it. And, because he was in Chicago and I was in El Paso, it was easy to be okay with it. Dante’s life was way more complicated than mine—at least when it came to kissing boys or girls. On the other hand, he didn’t have to wonder about a brother who was in prison, a brother his parents pretended didn’t exist.

I think I was trying to make my life uncomplicated because everything inside me felt so confusing. And I had the bad dreams to prove it. One night I dreamed I didn’t have any legs. They were just gone. And I couldn’t get out of bed. I woke up screaming.

My dad came into the room and whispered, “It’s just a dream, Ari. Just a bad dream.”

“Yeah, ” I whispered. “Just a bad dream.”

But you know, I was used to them in a way, the bad dreams. But why was it that some people never remembered their dreams? And why wasn’t I one of those people?

 






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