Read Someone Like Summer Online
Authors: M. E. Kerr
There was a photo of a young woman carrying a baby, seated with twin women holding a set of twins on their laps, “My sister Pilar and her daughter with my twin sisters Nadia and Nilce, and Nadia's twin boys.”
The third photograph showed his brothers Jorge and Alejandro, seven or eight years old, playing catch with his stepfather.
At first I thought the last picture was Esteban again. Then I noticed the clothes were old, and this man had a tiny mustache. He wore one gold hoop earring. On the back, Esteban had written “Hugolino Santiago, last seen in Providencia July 8, 1991.”
I thought of my own father, of the chance I would never see him again, and I wished I could pray, or believe in anything.
M
Y DAD WAS RECOVERING
from his bypass at Larkin's. The very next day after he went to Seaview Hospital, I'd left a message on Esteban's voice mail that I wanted to see him. I asked him to please forgive me for making him go through such an evening.
I didn't know how Esteban got wherever he was going from our house. His old Pontiac was still in our driveway. As long as it was there, I had the hope of seeing him. I was beginning to lose hope of getting through to him.
If I had been thinking of Esteban instead of myself, I would have known my father would never accept him, for exactly the reason both Larkin and Kenyon had told me. Dad was terrified of losing me. Losing my mother had been hard enough.
All right. I would not be the first daughter who'd disappointed her father by falling in love with the wrong fellow. I was certainly not the first girl to have a boyfriend who'd never measure up in a parent's eyes. And as much as Esteban was bent on measuring up, he'd just have to go without Dad's okay. What I should have done from the beginning was level with Dad: tell him if he really did want me to be part of the family, he had to accept Esteban and me as a couple. We'd follow his rules about curfews and other dating behavior, but he mustn't forbid us to see each other. If he did that, we'd only see each other behind his back. Nobody would be happy that way.
I had gone to Seaview Jewelry and bought a pair of gold hoop earrings. I would wear one
hoop and one would be Esteban's. There went my school clothes budget I'd begun saving for that summer.
It was about time
I
was the gift giver, and about time I understood Esteban better. He hadn't told me so much of what he'd blurted out after some sangria, and whose fault was that? I could still remember when he'd first mentioned that his father had disappeared one day (he'd snapped his fingers and said, “Like that”). I hadn't asked him anything about it. I'd actually said something sarcastic about Dad, about sometimes wishing
he'd
disappear, because I wasn't really hearing Estebanâany more than I was thinking of why he'd muttered at dinner that night something about believing there should be a casket and a burial. Those were two things his father had never had.
At the library I looked for him every time the door opened, and trashed myself for being angry with him because he'd gotten wasted. When I ran through the conversation while eating paella (did anyone compliment him on how good it
was?), I could see the whole evening through Esteban's eyes. I could remember him unpacking the paella and complaining “Don't you even listen?” Who wouldn't get soused?
Wednesday evening he wasn't at the soccer field, which was major! Since I'd known him, he'd never missed a game. None of his old Ridge Road
vatos
played in that game. There was no one I could ask about him. But that night as I bicycled up my driveway, I saw Dario and Virgil standing by Esteban's Pontiac.
They waved at me, Dario with a big smile, Virgil frowning, probably imagining someone with an STD, herpes, or HIV waving back. Like so many two-faced characters, he had his hand out to shake mine and a look of innocence in his brown eyes.
Just Tuesday night Mitzi had called to tell me all was well. She had told her mother everything. They had gone to the family doctor and she was okay. As for Virgil? She said she'd get over him. She'd help me get over Esteban when I needed her. She said, “And you will, Annabel.”
“I don't want to get over Esteban,” I told her.
“Not now,” she said.
Â
Esteban's
vatos
were leaning against his car.
“We didn't want to just drive off in Teban's car,” Dario said, “or you would think it was being stolen.”
“How are you guys?”
“Fine! Great!” they both chorused.
“How did Esteban get home Saturday night?”
“I drove here to get him,” Dario said.
“And where is Esteban?”
“Away,” Dario said.
“He didn't tell me he was going away. Where did he go?”
Dario took a letter from his back pocket. “He has written to you all about where he goes.”
Virgil said, “He gave us the key to the car.”
“He gave us the car,” said Dario.
“To use while he's away?”
“Yes,” Dario said. “To use. We have a new place to live far from Dr. Annan.”
“Very far,” Virgil said. “Far and high. We are
in an attic. I like that because the train whistle sounds late at night.”
“Is Esteban okay?”
“He is okay,” Virgil said.
“Where is he?” I looked him right in the eyes, but if he knew Mitzi and Esteban had told me all about his suspicious ways, he was a good con man. He only smiled, sounding cheerful as he said, “His letter will say where he is.”
“Tell your father we are sorry for his health,” Dario said. “Tell him we work extra hard so he won't lose money.”
They got into the Pontiac, and I waited until they were gone before I opened the letter.
My dear Anna
,
I am so glad to be told by Mitzi your father goes home from the hospital and is okay. I asked her to call you and report back, for I am so ashamed I cannot even go to the library
.
If things had gone in a bad way for your father, I would not have wished it. In the
sober light I see that he is right. Maybe I am no hood rat, but I am no son-in-law material as well. I do not blame him for not wanting me around you
.
When I come to your house, I had an envelope with me where inside were photographs of my family. If you have not found it, look for it please (there is a blue ribbon around it) because I want you to have those. You told me once you would like to see my familia. Maybe you were just being polite, but I still want you to see them even if you will probably never meet them at all
.
Anna, in our house in Providencia there are photographs so there is no wall space. They are all of
familia,
and if you think your father is strict on who dates his daughter, you should meet my stepfather and my mother, for they are so particular about who joins the
familia.
I have thought so much about them since this is happening. We were never one
of money. None of us growing up expected yes we would go to university or college as yours does and your friends. I think it is the cause we are poor, and some come to America to send back money. If no one breaks away from that habit, then we are in for the shame like I now face being a hotbedder, being not fit to date some man's daughter. I see life on the other side of that and I wish it not just for me, but for my own
familia.
I have thought and thought about Ramón's offer to sell me a green card, and I believe it would be another bad, for what if I got caught? I would go from bad to the worst, jail perhaps. Perhaps I would be shipped back and then of no good to anyone
.
But Chino has given me a new idea. When we found him at last, he said a policeman almost arrested him for sleeping on the beach but instead sat down and talked to him about how to become legal
,
how to be a man who matters in this world
.
Anna
, amante,
Chino and I will become soldiers in the United States Army. Anna, by doing that, I can not only get a green card eventually, but this would be my chance for money and for myself to attend college
.
There is a saying we have: “Do not be like them, be better than them. Then you will get someplace.” I have never paid mind to that because how could I be better? Now I see a way
.
Joining the United States Army would give me the tools. Money. College. The rest would be up to me. I want to be like others and better than others, too, and this is now my goal
.
I go with Chino to join up tomorrow, Anna, the very day you read this. I am told I will learn everything, even how to work a computer. So maybe I can send an e-mail to you one day and find out what you are doing, if you choose to answer. Not right
away, dear Anna, but sometimes off in the future.
I cannot take the chance to see you before I go. I cannot face your disapproval if that is your feeling since I was too drunk to be there for an emergency. Neither could I face your forgiveness. It would only remind me of all the times you would have to forgive me until I became educated and mature.
I love you, Anna, but I do not love you more than my pride, my manhood, my wish to be a responsible person. I cannot ask you to be mine, and even as I am changing, I would not ask you to promise me anything meanwhile.
I knew when I met you that you would change my life. The hard part is I did not think of that life without you. Losing my lucky medal began my down the hill. God was telling me something maybe that I was not enough for someone like you. “Dare to Forget Me”? Please do forget me, Anna. Let
me think of you deciding which college would be best and getting back with your Seaview girl friends, going on with what you would have done anyway if you had never met Esteban Santiago.
P.S. Dear Anna, please play Shakira. I wish we could listen together to all of them, but please listen to “Whenever, Wherever.” Not to read any message from me in that song, but some of it will have memories of us. I do not think it is a bad to have sweet memories when you have nothing more of each other. Memories are better than nothing, and memories of you, my love, are my gold. Good-bye, God bless even if you don't want Him to bless you, I pray He will do it.
E.E
.
M
Y DEAREST
, loco, lovely
, amor,
my Esteban
,
This is the sixth letter I've written you, then ripped up because I cannot seem to find the right words to say don't do this, good-bye, stay safe, don't go, I love you so!
I am so sorry about that embarrassing, humiliating dinner party I inflicted on you. I should have known better. We have a saying that you cannot make a silk purse out
of a sow's ear, and neither can you make a gracious, kind father out of Dad, who sees you as this threat to our boring life here in Seaview. Esteban, my father never saw you as a hood rat. He never saw you as someone inferior. He would not have been so frightened of you if that was all he saw. You are from another land and another culture, and the idea of my going there with you was what he feared. I wonder now if he wasn't right about that, for I was always aware that you wanted to go home and live with your family close
.
Now that Larkin has come into my father's life, I don't think of him as a lonely man anymore. Kenyon has his girlfriend, and Kenyon will probably always live near Seaview. I would be the one willing to try a change. Dad knows that
.
But this doesn't make any sense now, does it? There is no point now to my saying I'm sorry for what I've done, or to my saying I suspect I would have gone with you
to Providencia one day, if you had asked me to
.
Now all I can say that does make sense is please, please watch out. Take care of yourself the best that you can
.
There is no point either in my telling you I hate this war, for no one going to it really wants to put him- or herself in such terrible danger! But whenever I hear or see anything about Iraq, I remember Dad helping this veteran a little younger than my brother. He came home blind, minus a leg. That was the first time I ever thought about war at all. After that I wouldn't watch when Iraq came on the TV news. I always remembered Dad talking of this vet's “courage,” and I'd ask myself which would you rather haveâcourage or your right leg? Oh sweet, sweet Swan Man, please try not to prove you are as good as or better than anyone. Try not to be a hero!
Esteban, my e-mail address is AnnaB@ aol.com. You know my snail mail address
.
One day I hope you will use either one to tell me yours, to tell me you're all right, to tell me whatever you feel I should know, or whatever you feel like saying
.
I will never, ever forget you, Swan Man. We do have many good memories and many are view memories. Remember when you told me that we should visit places with wonderful scenery so when we looked back we would have it there to enjoy?
I am enclosing here a gold earring. I hope you won't think it's nervy of me to send you something like the earring I saw your father wore in the photograph. I remembered, too, you mentioning that once to me, that he wore one in his ear. You will have to get your ear pierced, as both of mine are. (It will not hurt you, Swan Man. It will only look that way.) And I am right now wearing the match to the one enclosed for you
.
Oh, Esteban, watch your every step. Don't take chances or volunteer for dangerous missions. Write me someday, please? I
love you. I will never forget you, even if you forget me, because you are the first one who ever made me feel like a woman. I love you so
, mi amor,
I can't say good-bye
.
Anna