Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (25 page)

I stopped struggling.

And everything stopped. Everything stood still.

Mr. Rodriguez was staring at me. “What the hell’s the matter with you, Ari?
Que te pasa?
”

I didn’t have anything to say. I looked down at the ground.

“What’s going on here, Ari?
A ver. Di me
.”

I couldn’t talk.

I watched as Mr. Rodriguez knelt down and helped Julian get up off the ground. His nose was still bleeding.

“I’m gonna kill you, Ari,” he whispered.

“You and whose army,” I said.

Mr. Rodriguez glared at me. He turned toward Julian. “Are you okay?”

Julian nodded.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.”

I didn’t move. Then I started to get in the truck.

Mr. Rodriguez shot me another look. “You’re lucky I don’t call the cops.”

“Go ahead and call them. I don’t give a damn. But before you call them, you better ask Julian what he’s been up to.”

I got in my truck and drove away.

I DIDN’T NOTICE THE BLOOD ON MY KNUCKLES AND ON
my shirt until I drove up to my house.

I just sat there.

I didn’t have a plan. So I just sat. I would sit there forever—that was my plan.

I don’t know how long I sat there. I started shaking. I knew I’d gone crazy but I couldn’t explain it to myself. Maybe that’s what happens when you go crazy. You just can’t explain it. Not to yourself. Not to anyone. And the worst part about going crazy is that when you’re not crazy anymore, you just don’t know what to think of yourself.

My dad came out of the house and stood on the front porch. He looked at me. I didn’t like the look on his face. “I need to talk to you,” he said. He’d never said that to me before. Not ever. Not like that. His voice made me afraid.

I got out of the truck and sat on the front steps of the porch.

My dad sat next to me. “I just got a call from Mr. Rodriguez.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What’s wrong with you, Ari?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I could hear the anger in my father’s voice.

I stared at my bloody shirt. “I’m going to take a shower.”

My dad followed me into the house. “Ari!”

My mom was in the hallway. I couldn’t stand the way she was looking at me. I stopped and looked down at the floor. I couldn’t stop the shaking. My whole body was trembling.

I stared at my hands. Nothing could stop the shaking.

My father grabbed my arm, not hard or mean but not soft either. He was strong, my father. He moved me toward the living room and sat me down on the couch. My mother sat next to me. He sat on his chair. I felt numb and wordless.

“Talk,” my father said.

“I wanted to hurt him,” I said.

“Ari?” My mother just looked at me. I hated that look of disbelief. Why couldn’t she believe that I’d want to hurt someone?

I looked back at her. “I
did
want to hurt him.”

“Your brother hurt someone once,” she whispered. And then she started sobbing. And I couldn’t stand it. I hated myself more than I had ever hated myself. I just watched her cry and finally I said, “Don’t cry, Mom, please don’t cry.”

“Why, Ari? Why?”

“You broke that boy’s nose, Ari. And the only reason you’re not at a police station is because Elfigo Rodriguez is an old friend of your father’s. We have to pay for that little hospital visit.
You
have to pay, Ari.”

I didn’t say anything. I knew what they were thinking.
First your brother and now you.

“I’m sorry,” I said. It sounded lame even to me. But part of me
wasn’t sorry. Part of me was glad I’d broken Julian’s nose. I was only sorry that I’d hurt my mom.

“Sorry, Ari?” He had this look on his face. Like steel.

I could be like steel too. “I’m
not
my brother,” I said. “I hate that you think that. I hate that I live in his f—” I stopped myself from using that word in front of my mother. “I hate that I live in his shadow. I hate it. I hate having to be a good boy just to please you.”

Neither of them said anything.

“I don’t know that I am sorry,” I said.

My father stared back at me. “I’m selling your truck.”

I nodded. “Fine. Sell it.”

My mother had stopped crying. She had a strange look on her face. Not soft, not hard. Just strange. “I need you to tell me why, Ari.”

I took a breath. “Okay,” I said. “And you’ll listen?”

“Why wouldn’t we listen?” My dad’s voice was firm.

I looked at my dad.

Then I looked at my mom.

Then I looked down at the floor. “They hurt Dante,” I whispered. “You can’t even tell what he looks like. You should see his face. They cracked some of his ribs. They left him lying in an alley. Like he was nothing. Like he was a piece of trash. Like he was shit. Like he was nothing. And if he would have died, they wouldn’t have cared.” I started to cry. “You want me to talk? I’ll talk. You want me to tell you? I’ll tell you. He was kissing another boy.”

I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop crying. And then I stopped and I knew I was really angry. More angry than I’d ever been in my
life. “There were four of them. The other boy ran. But Dante didn’t run. Because Dante’s like that. He doesn’t run.”

I looked at my dad.

He didn’t say a word.

My mother had moved closer to me. She couldn’t stop combing my hair with her fingers.

“I’m so ashamed,” I whispered. “I wanted to hurt them back.”

“Ari?” My father’s voice was soft. “Ari, Ari, Ari. You’re fighting this war in the worst possible way.”

“I don’t know how to fight it, Dad.”

“You should ask for help,” he said.

“I don’t know how to do that, either.”

WHEN I GOT OUT OF THE SHOWER, MY FATHER WAS
gone.

My mother was in the kitchen. The manila envelope with my brother’s name was on the table. My mother was drinking a glass of wine.

I sat across from her. “I drink beer sometimes,” I said.

She nodded.

“I’m not an angel, Mom. And I’m not a saint. I’m just Ari. I’m just screwed-up Ari.”

“Don’t you ever say that.”

“It’s true.”

“No, it isn’t.” Her voice was fierce and strong and sure. “You’re not screwed up at all. You’re sweet and good and decent.” She took a sip of her wine.

“I hurt Julian,” I said.

“That wasn’t a very smart thing to do.”

“And not very nice.”

She almost laughed. “No, not nice at all.” She was running her hands over the envelope. “I’m sorry,” she said. She opened up the envelope and took out a picture. “This is you. You and Bernardo.”
She handed me the picture. I was a little boy and my brother was holding me in his arms. And he was smiling. He was handsome and smiling and I was laughing.

“You loved him so much,” she said. “And I’m sorry. It’s like I said, Ari, we don’t always do the right things, you know? We don’t always say the right things. Sometimes, it seems like it just hurts too much to look at something. So you don’t. You just don’t look. But it doesn’t go away, Ari.” She handed me the envelope. “It’s all in there.” She wasn’t crying. “He killed someone, Ari. He killed someone with his bare fists.” She almost smiled. But it was the saddest smile I’d ever seen. “I’ve never said that before,” she whispered.

“Does it still hurt a lot?”

“A lot, Ari. Even after all these years.”

“Will it always hurt?”

“Always.”

“How do you stand it?”

“I don’t know. We all have to bear things, Ari. All of us. Your father has to bear the war and what it did to him. You have to bear your own painful journey to becoming a man. And it is painful for you, isn’t it, Ari?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And I have to bear your brother, what he did, the shame of it, his absence.”

“It’s not your fault, Mom.”

“I don’t know. I think mothers always blame themselves. Fathers too, I think.”

“Mom?”

I wanted to reach over and touch her. But I didn’t. I just looked
at her and tried to smile. “I didn’t know I could love you this much.”

And then her smile wasn’t sad anymore.

“
Hijo de mi corazon
, I’ll tell you a secret. You help me bear it. You help me bear all my losses. You, Ari.”

“Don’t say that, Mom. I’ll only disappoint you.”

“No,
amor
. Not ever.”

“What I did today. I hurt you.”

“No,” she said. “I think I understand.”

But the way she said it. It was like she understood something about me that she’d never quite understood before. I always felt that when she looked at me, she was trying to find me, trying to find out who I was. But it seemed at that moment that she saw me, that she knew me. But that confused me.

“Understand what, Mom?”

She pushed the envelope toward me. “Aren’t you going to look through that?”

I nodded. “Yes. Not right now.”

“Are you afraid?’

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” I ran my finger over my brother’s name. We sat there, my mother and I, for what seemed a long time.

She sipped on her glass of wine and I looked at pictures of my brother.

My brother when he was a baby, my brother in my father’s arms, my brother with my sisters.

My brother sitting on the front steps of the house.

My brother, a little boy, saluting my father in uniform.

My brother, my brother.

My mother watched me. It was true.
I had never loved her more
.

“WHERE DID DAD GO?”

“He went to see Sam.”

“Why?’

“He just wanted to talk to him.”

“About what?”

“About what happened. They’re friends, you know, your father and Sam.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “Dad’s older.”

She smiled. “So what?”

“Yeah, so what.”

“CAN I FRAME THIS ONE AND PUT IT IN MY ROOM?” IT
was a picture of my brother saluting my father.

“Yes,” she said, “I love that one.”

“Did he cry? When Dad left for Vietnam?”

“For days. He was inconsolable.”

“Were you afraid Dad wouldn’t come back?”

“I didn’t think about it. I made myself not think about it.” She laughed. “I’m good at that.”

“Me too,” I said. “And all this time I thought I got that trait from Dad.”

We laughed. “Can we put that picture in the living room? Would you mind, Ari?”

That was the day that my brother was in our house again. In a strange and inexplicable way, my brother had come home.

It wasn’t my mother who answered my hungry questions. It was my father. My mother would listen sometimes as my father and I talked about Bernardo. But she would never say a word.

I loved her for her silence.

Or maybe I just understood it.

And loved my father too, for the careful way he spoke. I came to understand that my father was a careful man. To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.

I VISITED DANTE EVERY DAY. HE WAS IN THE HOSPITAL
for about four days. They had to make sure he was okay because he’d had a concussion.

His ribs hurt.

The doctor said the cracked ribs would take a while to heal. But they weren’t broken. That would have been worse. The bruises would heal on their own. At least the ones on the outside.

No swimming. He couldn’t do much, really. He could lie around. But Dante liked lying around. That was the good thing.

He was different. Sadder.

The day he came home from the hospital, he cried. I held him. I thought he would never stop.

I knew that a part of him would never be the same.

They cracked more than his ribs.

“ARE YOU OKAY, ARI?” MRS. QUINTANA WAS STUDYING
me just like my mother studied me. I sat across from Dante’s parents at their kitchen table. Dante was asleep. Sometimes when his ribs were bothering him, he took a pill. They made him drowsy.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“You think I need a therapist?”

“There’s nothing wrong with going to see a therapist, Ari.”

“Spoken like a therapist,” I said.

Mrs. Quintana shook her head. “You didn’t used to be smart aleck until you started hanging around with my son.”

I laughed. “I’m fine,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be fine?”

The Quintanas glanced at each other.

“Is that a parent thing?”

“What?”

“Those looks moms and dads like to give each other.”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

I knew that my father and he had talked. I knew that he knew what I’d done. I knew they both knew.

“You know who the boys are, don’t you, Ari?” Mrs. Quintana was back to her strict self. Not that I minded.

“I know who two of them are.”

“And the other two?”

I thought I’d make a joke. “I bet I could make them talk.”

Mrs. Quintana laughed. That surprised me.

“Ari,” she said. “You’re a crazy boy.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“It’s all about loyalty,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“But, Ari, you could have gotten yourself in a lot of trouble.”

“It was wrong. I know it was wrong. I just did it. I can’t explain it. They’re never going to do anything to those boys, are they?”

“Maybe not.”

“Yeah,” I said, “like the cops are really working this case.”

“I don’t care about those other boys, Ari.” Sam was looking straight into my eyes. “I care about Dante. And I care about you.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“And you’re not going to go after those other boys?”

“The thought crossed my mind.”

Mrs. Quintana didn’t laugh that time.

“I promise.”

“You’re better than that,” she said.

I wanted so much to believe her.

“But I’m not going to pay for Julian’s broken nose.”

“Have you told your father?”

“Not yet. But I’m just going to tell him that if those bast—” I stopped. I didn’t finish the word I’d started. There were other words I wanted to use. “If those
guys
don’t have to pay for Dante’s hospital stay, then I don’t have to pay for Julian’s little ER visit. If Dad wants to take the truck away, then it’s okay with me.”