“She doesn’t have to know, right?”
Claudio held the receiver hard
against his left ear as he caressed the granite by the kitchen sink with his
right hand. His fingers were still moist
with perspiration from his workout.
Claudio rubbed the smooth cool granite that was interrupted periodically
and randomly with miniature canyons that dipped down far enough to avoid the
polisher’s tool. His eyes traveled over
its dappled black and tan surface following an imaginary line from his fingertips
to the bone white lip of the porcelain Kohler sink. Claudio remembered choosing the granite with
his wife several years ago after the Northridge quake. They were forced to live in “corporate”
housing for three long hot summer months courtesy of their Aetna policy. Their contractor had visited them at their
temporary home schlepping six different granite samples. He laid the small chunks of stone on the
orange carpeting like they were diminutive Monets. His name was Lionel—a former
soap opera actor, or so he said—who decided
on a complete change of lifestyle seven years earlier immediately after he and
his second wife split up. An attorney in
Claudio’s office swore by him. Lionel’s
black curly hair and sharp tanned features looked too planned and he dressed
better than any of the other contractors they had interviewed. He proved to have a great eye for design but,
as Claudio and Lois eventually learned, he stumbled a bit in the execution. Lionel stood by the granite samples, one hand
on his hip, the other at his chin, and he hummed a nervous little tune.
“Well,” Lionel had said after the
silence got to him, “which will it be?”
Luckily, Claudio and Lois have similar esthetic sensibilities so they
chose the same sample almost simultaneously both pointing with their right
index fingers. Lionel exclaimed in an
overly dramatic voice, “Lovely! I would
have chosen the same piece.”
Claudio quickly switched the
receiver and pushed it against his right ear even harder. “I mean, look, she shouldn’t have to
know. Right? I mean, where does it get any of us? It isn’t really necessary, is it?”
As the woman’s voice started again,
he looked out the kitchen window. The
cawing grew louder and harsher. Claudio
never saw the bird but he knew it was a crow because his father identified its
call when they first moved out to the west end of the San Fernando Valley ten
years ago. The whole family had come
over for a housewarming.
“Mijo,” his father had said. “Sounds like you got a big ol’ crow living in
one of those trees in back. They’re such
noisy and mean birds.” His father took a
sip from his can of Coors and added: “I
hate crows.”
“Me, too, Pop,” Claudio had answered
though he never really thought about it before.
Now, ten years after his father’s pronouncement and his unthinking
agreement, he did indeed hate crows.
Especially the one that wouldn’t shut up just then.
The woman’s voice stopped. Claudio said, “Okay, then. We’re in agreement.” After a pause, a few more words and then a
curt good-bye, he hung up letting out a long breath of air. “Goddamn her,” he said softly, almost
gently. He headed to the refrigerator
and scanned the bottom shelf. He stood
there mesmerized by the bottles and cans of Snapple, Diet Coke and various fruit
juices in small rectangular boxes that his son loved. Claudio suddenly felt dizzy from
dehydration. He grabbed a Snapple Peach
Tea.
◙
Earlier that morning, Claudio woke
at six o’clock with the obnoxious shrill buzz of his combination telephone,
AM/FM radio and alarm clock, the Chronomatic-300 sold under the Radio Shack
label. His wife, Lois, bought it for
Claudio’s thirty-eighth birthday last year.
It was a thoughtful and useful gift but he grew to hate that damn
buzzer. Lois was already showered and
stood in front of her sink with a white towel wrapped around her head like the
strolling Turk on the Hills Brothers coffee can. She wore her delicate floral cotton robe and
brushed her teeth with a Braun electric toothbrush. He sat up at the edge of their bed and rubbed
his face while listening to the soft hum of the Braun.
“Morning,” he said.
Lois didn’t turn around but answered
with a muffled noise and a nod of her head.
She turned off the toothbrush and spat into the sink.
“Morning, sweetheart,” she answered. Lois then turned and looked in the general
direction of her husband but because she didn’t have her contacts in yet, all
she saw was a blur.
It was Friday and that meant that
Claudio could work at home. A couple of
years ago, they purchased a computer, laser printer and fax machine so that
Claudio could telecommute at least once a week because his normal commute to
downtown was pretty God-awful. So was
Lois’ but her office didn’t believe in telecommuting. But, because Claudio worked for the government,
his employer had an institutional bias in favor of parent-friendly flexible
work hours and anti-smog programs. So,
if he didn’t have to be in court on Friday, he could work on his briefs in
peace and quiet at home and check his voicemail every so often when he needed a
break from the computer.
Claudio went to his son’s room but
he wasn’t there. He then heard muffled
voices from the downstairs TV so he walked to the staircase. As he went down, the sounds of Scooby Doo
became clearer. Before going to the den,
he headed out to the driveway to get the Los
Angeles Times. It was chilly and a
bit foggy. The week and a half between
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur had been particularly difficult this year. Claudio reached down and grabbed the
paper. As he stood up, he saw his
neighbor across the street reach down and get her paper. She was wearing a short nightshirt that
exposed plump and very white legs. What
was her name? She gave birth to a baby
girl a month ago and she complained that she would never get her figure back
though she really never had one in the first place. Claudio waved and she looked up, clearly
embarrassed by her outfit. She waved
without a smile and scurried back into her house slapping her fleshy bare feet
on the dew-covered cement.
Claudio went back in and headed to
the den to check on his son. Jonathan
still wore his Goosebumps glow-in-the-dark pajamas and was, as usual, doing
several things at once: as he looked up to the TV every so often to keep track
of Scooby Doo’s exploits hunting ghosts, he was using his kid’s scissors to cut
an old T-shirt to make a cape for his new Spider-Man that his Grandma bought
him and, every few minutes, he reached over to his box of apple juice perched
on several books on the floor and took a drink from a tiny straw.
“Morning, mijo,” Claudio said.
Jonathan just stared at the TV.
“I said, good morning, Jon.” Claudio grew annoyed. Still, Jonathan didn’t answer. Finally Claudio put himself between the TV
and Jonathan and said again: “Good
morning, I said.”
This broke Jonathan’s trance and he
looked up to his father. “Good morning,
Papa.”
Claudio reached down and kissed his
son’s hair. It smelled like blueberries
from Aussie Land Blue Mountain Shampoo.
Jonathan’s hair was soft, straight and dark blond like Lois’ but his
skin resembled Claudio’s and had an olive glow about it. He had long dark eyelashes like his father.
“Jon, I’m making Pop Tarts for
you. What kind do you want?”
After a moment of contemplation,
Jonathan said, “One strawberry, and one cinnamon. And cut them up in funny pieces.”
“And?”
Jonathan looked puzzled. “That’s all.
And milk, too.”
Claudio looked at his son and said
again: “And?”
Finally, Jonathan got it. “And, thank you Papa.”
Getting the answer he wanted,
Claudio walked to the kitchen and got his son’s breakfast ready and got the
coffee going, too. Lois came down and
pulled a bowl out of the cabinet and poured some Quaker Oats granola. She opened the refrigerator and said, “Honey,
you gotta’ get some milk tonight. We’re
almost out.”
◙
Their routine that morning was well set. They ate breakfast, each glued to their
respective portions of the newspaper: Lois read the movie reviews in the
Calendar section, Jonathan earnestly worked through the funnies, and Claudio
scanned the front page. After putting
her bowl and coffee mug into the sink, Lois went upstairs and threw down their
son’s clothes and then went to finish doing her hair. Claudio made Jonathan’s lunch and then went
up to put on some sweats, a ragged Stanford T-shirt, and his cross-trainers
while their son got dressed, made his bed and then brushed his teeth with a
miniature version of his mother’s Braun electric toothbrush. Lois kissed them good-bye and left
first. Within ten minutes—at exactly seven forty-five—Claudio loaded his son and his son’s
Star Wars backpack into their Honda Accord and headed towards school. They chatted about silly things and listened
to “The Wave” —the local
soft jazz station—during the
seven-minute drive.
As they entered the school’s driveway, the teachers
signaled the cars to keep on moving after dropping off the children. Jonathan pointed to one of the teachers and
said, “She’s Mrs. Horowitz. I hate
her. She has really bad breath and she
breathes on all the children.”
“Maybe she’s a nice person with bad breath,” said Claudio
trying not to laugh. He made it his
quest to teach his son that you have to look deeper into people to really know
them. “Maybe she doesn’t know that she
needs to brush more. Or, maybe she needs
to floss.”
“Oh, she knows she has bad breath. She’s mean so she doesn’t care.”
When Claudio could stop safely, he unlocked the doors
with the master switch and said, “I love you.”
Jonathan said, “I love you, too,” and opened the door and dragged his
backpack behind him. Claudio locked the
doors and headed to the exit as he changed the radio station to hear the news
on NPR. There was something about the
ethnic Albanians. Claudio didn’t
understand what was going on over there even though he knew that he should care
more. But he decided that he simply
couldn’t listen to that story right then so he pushed the button preset for
KUSC. Ah, Bach. The Goldberg Variations.
Claudio drove north on Shoup and
then turned right on Sherman Way. He
aimed his car to the Spectrum Club for his usual half-hour on the recumbent
stationary bicycle and half-hour with the weight machines. As he turned into the parking lot, he tried
to decide whether to bring the paperback edition of Bless Me, Ultima or the latest Ploughshares
to read while pedaling. Claudio always
kept books and literary journals stashed in the armrest and glove compartments
so that he never lacked for reading material.
He decided on Anaya’s book. When
he majored in English back in the late ‘70s, Chicano writers weren’t studied
the way they were now. So, last year,
Claudio made a list of classic Chicano authors to read like Anaya, Morales and
Rechy and then he added the “newer” ones like Cisneros, Soto and Villaseñor.
He slid his car into a spot, turned
off the motor, pulled the paperback out of the armrest compartment and stuffed
it into his gym bag. Claudio got out and
locked his car and walked slowly to the entrance of the club. He felt stiff. At the front desk, he handed his membership
card to a young woman who wore a gleaming white uniform Polo shirt with a large
nametag that said DONNA. She smiled and
exposed large and very straight white teeth that matched her shirt. Donna stared at Claudio with translucent blue
eyes
“Got your braces off,” said Claudio
realizing that she wanted him to notice.
A tall skinny young man, another gym employee, leaned against the wall
near Donna and glowered.
Donna smiled even wider. “Yes,” and she looked down at his membership
card, “Claudio.” Donna swiped the
membership card through a narrow plastic trough and the computer let out a
little beep. She then leaned forward on
the counter and brought her face closer to Claudio’s. She smelled like almonds and honey. “I was totally sick of them but now, you
know, it was totally worth it.”
Claudio smiled. “Yes.
You look nice.”
Donna bounced a little on her toes
and tossed her blond hair away from her face.
“Have a good work out, Claudio,” and she handed the card back to him
letting it linger in Claudio’s palm before releasing it.
“Thank you.” Claudio headed to the locker room to dump his
bag and glasses in a locker before going to the weight room. By this hour, there wasn’t much of a
crowd. Claudio shuffled by an obese
older man who stood naked, hands on his hips and legs spread in a pyramid like
Balzac, while an electric wall dryer blew his sparse stringy white hair into a
frenzy. The man’s belly hung so low that
his private parts were not visible.
Claudio quickly averted his eyes, found a locker at the far end of the
room and put his bag and glasses away.
He snapped shut the lock, looped the key on his right shoelace and
trotted to the weight room taking a different route to avoid the fat naked
man. Once out of the locker room, Claudio
slowed and walked the long hallway of racquetball courts, his head hanging
down. He came to several older men and
women who were laughing.
“Beat the shit out of those two
little punks,” snorted a man who looked like the little guy on the Monopoly cards
but without the top hat and tails. “Didn’t
know who he was messin’ with,” and he shook his fists from side-to-side like a
bear showing his strength. The younger
vanquished couple slunk away towards the showers.
“Yes, sweetheart,” said a short
stout woman whose plump legs were covered with a maze of spider veins. “We showed him and his girlfriend.”
“What do you mean ‘we,’ white woman?”
her husband answered and their two other friends burst out laughing.
Claudio tried to pass them but they
blocked the way. “Excuse me,” he said
still holding his head down.
“Sorry,” said the Monopoly man. “Didn’t see you with your head down so
low. Cheer up. Can’t be that bad, can it?”
Claudio looked up and smiled a small
smile in appeasement just so he could pass without getting into a
conversation. He learned that the
retired people who used the gym loved to talk it up with anyone because they
didn’t have to get to work. Claudio
smelled stale perspiration and some kind of medicated ointment.
“Now, that’s better,” said the
Monopoly man’s wife and they let Claudio pass.
In a few moments, he got to the safety of the weight room, grabbed a
little towel from a plastic shelf and wandered over to the stationary
bicycles. Since the remodeling after the
Spectrum Club bought out Racquetball World, everything was newer but in a
different place. Claudio liked the
greater variety of weight machines but hated learning a new floor design. He looked at the six stationary bikes. The one to the far left by the StairMasters
was occupied by a stroke victim and his trainer. The stroke victim looked as though his body
was once a magnificent specimen of strength and agility. Now, his left side dragged and he used a
cane. The trainer said, “Good, Howie,
good! You’re moving way better this
morning! Pedal, pedal, pedal!” The trainer was probably a sophomore or
junior in college. His flattop made him
look like a Marine and he had a serpent tattoo on his right forearm. Howie pedaled slowly staring up at one of the
five large TV screens that hung suspended from the ceiling. He didn’t acknowledge his trainer’s presence
and wore what appeared to be a sneer on his face though the expression could
have been the result of the stroke. When
the trainer wasn’t around, Howie liked to flirt with the young women.
Claudio approached the
bicycles. A very thin woman pedaled on
the one to the far right. Large splashes
of perspiration covered three of the four unoccupied bicycles. Claudio chose the dry one near the thin
woman. He adjusted the seat, chose the
program, set it for thirty minutes, opened his paperback and started pedaling.
After a few minutes, Claudio felt
the thin woman staring at him but he kept his eyes on his book. Finally, the woman said, “Excuse me.”
Claudio turned, “Yes?”
“Could you do something about that
noise?” Claudio noticed that the young
woman was so thin and white that he could see what appeared to be most of her
circulatory system throughout her face, neck and shoulders like algae-filled
canals. She reminded him of those
pictures of Auschwitz and he wondered if she had cancer or an eating
disorder. Perspiration rained from her
face and arms. Claudio worried that
there’d soon be nothing left but her tiny tank top, shorts, and Nikes sitting
in a pool of liquid.
“What noise?” said Claudio.
She shifted in her seat and looked
annoyed. “Your shoe. The plastic tip on your shoelace keeps
hitting your bike as you pedal and it makes a noise.”
Claudio hadn’t noticed the sound
before the woman mentioned it. “And?” he
asked betraying a less than charitable tone.
“Can you please stop it?”
Claudio took a deep breath and tried
not to get angry. “Okay.” He stopped pedaling, double knotted the
offending shoelace and started pedaling again.
No more noise.
“Thanks,” she said with a smile.
“Don’t mention it,” Claudio answered
and he tried to find his place in the book.
After working out, Claudio came home
and walked slowly into the den from the garage when he heard the phone
ringing. He hurried and got to it before
the answering machine picked up.
“Hello,” he said still out of breath
from his workout.
“Oh, hi. It’s Doctor Kayess.” She had a heavy and deep voice punctuated
with an Israeli accent that didn’t match her petite body and elegant face. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight
years old.
“Hello, Doctor. A belated Happy New Year.” Claudio tore a sheet from the roll of Scott
Towels that stood on the counter and wiped his forehead. Though he had converted from Catholicism ten
years ago, he still felt ill at ease with the Jewish calendar and didn’t want
to sound foolish.
“L’Shona Tova,” she answered
half-heartedly.
The crow started to caw and Claudio
looked out the window vainly trying to spot it.
“Do you have any news?” he asked as he pushed to on side several of the
plastic vertical blinds.
“Yes,” she started. “Yes, the tests came back. Should I call your wife at work?”
Claudio sighed. “No, she said that you could tell me if you
called here.”
On Rosh Hashanah, Lois miscarried
for the fifth time. Each time, she
carried for only eight or nine weeks.
Getting pregnant wasn’t an issue.
Keeping it became the battle. Dr.
Kayess and her older partner, Dr. Mizrahi, also an Israeli, had run every
imaginable test on Lois and Claudio
but they produced no answers. The team
had come very highly recommended from two moms at their son’s school who had
tried to have babies for years but couldn’t get pregnant until they went to
these doctors. Dr. Mizrahi was about
fifty, trim and dapper, with a medical degree from UCLA and a very kind
demeanor. Dr. Kayess studied at Harvard
but, because of her youth, she still had not mastered the nuances of the
doctor-patient relationship. Lois’
miscarriages stymied both doctors. But
this time, they had some fetal tissue from the D&C and ran some tests. Was there an anomaly in the DNA? Maybe they would have some answers.
“Well, the tissue came back normal.”
“Oh,” Claudio said as he threw away
the sopped paper towel in the trash can under the sink. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Though she was only eight weeks along, we
know that it was a girl.”
Claudio suddenly stiffened his back
and looked up to the ceiling. It was as
though an unseen attacker had shoved a long knife between his shoulder blades
and held it there just for emphasis.
Claudio took a deep breath trying
not to raise his voice. “She doesn’t
have to know, right?”
There was silence on the other
end. Doctor Kayess stumbled on her
words. “I’m so...so...sorry.”
“I mean, look, she shouldn’t have to
know. Right? I mean, where does it get any of us? It isn’t really necessary, is it?” He looked down to the piles of medical bills
and insurance statements that covered a full third of the kitchen counter.
“You mean the gender, right?” she
said.
“It would be devastating. We’ve been hoping for a girl. We even know that we’d name her Rachel. There’s no reason for her to know that we
lost a girl. Unless that’s part of what
you need to tell her for a complete consultation.”
There was silence. Finally, she said, “She doesn’t have to
know. I’m very sorry. Have her call me so that we can set up an
appointment and we can talk about your options.”
Claudio said, “Okay, then. We’re in agreement.”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded very small as though she
felt stupid and inexperienced.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Claudio said
and hung up. “Goddamn her.” But he didn’t mean it.
The crow’s sharp squawking grew
louder and he looked out the window again searching for it. The morning fog already burned off and the
bright sun blinded him momentarily. The
fig and lemon trees displayed deep green leaves though one of the six cypresses
that lined the back wall was dying from some kind of orange fungus. They had to get a tree doctor out there,
sometime. Claudio finally gave up resigned
to the fact that he would never see the creature that tormented him. He moved his hand from the vertical blinds
and they waved back and forth making a hollow clacking sound. Claudio slowly walked over to the
refrigerator to get something to drink.
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