A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son. Sergio Troncoso
The Shaker table and chairs. Even the chipper-shredder and your father’s antique motorcycle.” Carlos had often disliked how his sister-in-law smiled to get her way, how she slyly turned conversations to her “brilliant” kids and her cocker spaniel, how she pretended to care about others. Sarah, Deborah, and even Sam were all black-belts in passive aggression. For three decades, Carlos thought himself an amateur taking lessons from pros. In Ysleta, he would’ve simply shoved one of his brothers in the chest if they had crossed him.
“Deborah’s the one who found Arbor Gardens. She’s arranged for all the painting to be done for Mom’s rooms. Getting the furniture she wants moved there. She’s been packing her all morning. We’re almost done.”
“Okay, fine. Deborah’s done a lot. Your mom okay? I mean, all of you are going through her stuff, and she just sits there staring at the river. She doesn’t have a choice, I know. But has she said anything to you? How’s she feeling about all this commotion around her?”
“She’s happy to have a nice place to go. I think she’ll love Arbor Gardens.”
“Your mom, when I talked to her, when I brought her coffee this morning, she apologized to me. She apologized for treating me badly. She told me I was a good husband.” Carlos could see Sarah getting teary-eyed again.
“You see, she’s not evil. She loves you, Carlos. So did my dad. He knew you had started from nothing, just like he did. He always admired that.”
“I know, I know,” Carlos said, his voice breaking just once. He did feel some sort of allegiance to Stanley. From the very first day in Newburyport, Carlos had never felt adequate about who he was, a poor kid from the border. Without support, without encouragement, he dared to choose the life of the mind, instead of becoming a lawyer, which he had thought about, which would have brought immediate recognition from his mother-in-law Nancy, his sister-in-law and her husband, and their friends. Carlos’s father and mother thought their son was crazy: the life of the mind was not for a Chicano from El Paso. “Can you make a living as a historian?” his father had said in Ysleta years ago. “Are you out of your goddamn mind? You’re turning down law school?” Sarah was the one who gave him the space and time to achieve his doctorate, Sarah was the one who had always earned more money than him, even after his tenure as a professor, and Sarah was the one most proud when his first and second books won accolades, despite that she had sacrificed her time with Ethan and Jonathan as children to become a partner in her law firm. For years, they had made their uncommon bond work, but Sarah had never forgiven Carlos for depriving her of the motherhood she had envisioned for herself. Ironically, only his father-in-law had truly understood Carlos. His Jewish ‘other father’ who had always wanted to write a book, but never had. The doctor-intellectual who never tired of arguing history and politics at the Newburyport kitchen table. Stanley Phillip Mondshein. Turn any name in the sun and one will always discover a new refraction of dark and light. “We’ll come back as often as we have to. Make sure your mother’s taken care of. That’s what your father would have wanted.”
“Thank you. It’s not too much driving?”
“Five hundred miles each weekend. But it’s fine. We need to do it. You need to be here with your mother. She didn’t remember, by the way.”
“Who didn’t remember?” Sarah asked, already on her knees, packing her suitcase. Her sneakers, shoes, pants, a few family photographs for their New York apartment. Her head was but a few inches from Carlos’s waist, and he remembered—how could he not?—how a young Sarah used to smile slyly at him for no reason, without warning, and just start to unbuckle his belt, and unzip his khakis… What is wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with me? Carlos thought.
“Your mother,” Carlos said, sitting down on the bed and adjusting his pants. “She didn’t remember what she said when we told her we were engaged. She didn’t remember what she said at our wedding, in the kitchen downstairs. She didn’t remember. But she was sorry.”
“Well, that’s how it is. Her memory comes and goes. I’m glad she said she was sorry. She probably remembers she said something bad. I know she does.”
“I just brought her the coffee and she blurted it out. Even if she doesn’t quite remember why, I’m still glad she said it. It meant a lot to me.” Carlos forced himself not to get choked up. Why does it still matter to me? Why am I still fighting battles decades old?
“I love you,” Sarah said.
After three more trips to the Dumpster in the driveway to dispose of what all of them did not want, their cars full, they were done. Perhaps one more visit to Massachusetts next weekend would finish the job of cleaning out Sarah and her sister’s childhood home.
Carlos and Sarah drove for four hours, from Interstate 495 South to 90 West, the Mass Pike, to I-84, to Route 15, which after New Haven became the Merritt Parkway, to the Hutchinson River Parkway, joining the Cross County Parkway, finally to 9A South and Manhattan’s Upper Westside. Carlos memorized the route like the lines on his face. Sarah never drove anymore. Sometimes he imagined he was a lighter-skinned Morgan Freeman, “Driving Ms. Sarah,” without the hat. Carlos often made life convenient for his wife, dropping her off in front of their apartment, after which he drove three subway-stops away to dump the Highlander in their garage just west of Lincoln Center. She texted him they needed whole milk for tomorrow’s coffee. Carlos walked home, not really wanting to get there quickly, unless he was more exhausted than he was. Tomorrow he would prepare for his classes and finish that research paper on Zapata in the stacks of Butler. At home Sarah would be talking to Jonathan or Ethan, if they were around, and getting dinner ready. He would be just like an invisible father-butler, in the way, trying to find a Yankees game on TV, feeling that distant look in Sarah’s eyes every time she walked into their bedroom. Why are we even together anymore? Why isn’t she more affectionate? Why does she torture me like that? She got everything she wanted. And now she hates me? It’s never enough. But why am I blaming her? Maybe there’s a problem with me.
Carlos hated himself for wasting time with these thoughts as he walked north on Broadway to stretch his legs. It was a gorgeous October day in Manhattan. He had forced her to work, when young Sarah would have been quite happy as a stay-at-home mom. That’s what love did: it warped them into different selves. His schedule was much more flexible than hers, which she had never stopped resenting. For her, weekends became sacrosanct time to be with Jonathan and Ethan. Carlos thought they should already have learned to be on their own and not be depending on their mother to remind them constantly about college applications, term papers, driving lessons. The Mondscheins were like that: always on top of their children, a family trait they had passed from generation to generation. Can anyone ever escape these cycles of history within a family? Carlos never forgot when he asked Sarah a question at the Newburyport kitchen table years ago, and her mother Nancy, without skipping a beat, answered for her daughter, as if Sarah had not been a New York lawyer but still a teenager in Massachusetts. That’s how it often was in that family. His parents from Juárez loved him, but that meant they pushed him out of the house and encouraged him to take fifteen-mile bike-rides on weekends by himself—as a grade-schooler, through traffic, with only a “God be with you!” at his back. After Carlos had announced to his parents (who didn’t speak much English) that he wanted to apply to colleges in Boston, and after he was accepted to a school he had never visited and in a state he knew nothing about, his father handed him three hundred dollars. “The rest is up to you, Carlos.” The first and only time his parents visited him in college was when he graduated. It was brutal, but also clarifying.
“Excuse me,” Carlos said to Sarah as he worked his way around her in the kitchen to put the milk in the refrigerator. He had waved at eighteen-year-old Ethan on the couch, engrossed in his computer. To interrupt him, Carlos walked over and kissed his son on the forehead. Sarah was chopping a tomato and mozzarella in slices. His younger son Jonathan was nowhere in sight. Carlos had overheard their conversation about Ethan’s “personal essay” for college. This past summer Carlos had driven Ethan and Sarah to a dozen colleges, from Maine to Pennsylvania and back.
“Dinner will be ready in about fifteen minutes.”
“Okay,