Carrie Soto Is Back(86)

I look at my father, who looks back at me, incredulous.

Oh, fine.

“Bowe!” I call out.

He turns around.

“Stay for dinner,” I say.

Bowe looks at both my father and me. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Yes.”

I walk toward him and take his kit off his shoulder. “Stay. Please.”

He watches me take his racket bag and put it down on the bench. When I catch his eye, I can tell that he wants to ask me many different questions. But I have just one simple, precarious answer. “I want you to stay.”

He smiles. “Okay,” he says.

He claps his hands together and says, “All right, let’s do this. What are we having? Javier, don’t even try me with the steak or the salty food right now. You know what? Why don’t I fire up the grill and make chicken?”

My dad laughs. And then he begins walking to my house with Bowe and me. Bowe walks up ahead of us, ever so briefly. And my father puts his arm around me.

“Siempre supe que no hay monta?a que no puedas escalar, paso a paso.”

I have always known there is no mountain you cannot climb, one step at a time.

Bowe makes dinner, and we eat outside. They play a game of chess while I look up at the stars. My dad hugs me good night. And nobody pretends Bowe is going home tonight.

Bowe and I go inside. I start doing the dishes, and Bowe comes up behind me. He kisses me and I laugh. He says he loves my laugh, and then he says, “Can I say that? Can I say I love your laugh?”

And I say, “I don’t know. I mean, I guess yes. Sure.”

I can see my father’s living room window from my kitchen. I watch as his light goes off.

Bowe grabs my waist and spins me toward him.

And I wonder for a moment why I have spent all my time worried about losing things, when there is so much here.



* * *



—

When Bowe and I wake up in the morning, instead of sneaking out, he goes downstairs in his underwear and makes me a blueberry smoothie. I drink it while he makes himself a black coffee. When we’re done, he picks up the paper and goes into the den. I go out onto the court.

I stretch my legs. As I start on my shoulders, I look at my watch. It’s three past eight.

Where is my dad?

My heart drops through my belly.

I run toward my father’s front door. I put my hand on the doorknob and I turn it.

There he is. Lying on one of his sofas, with the TV on ESPN.

Here but gone.

And all that escapes from my mouth is a hushed yelp. “Papá.”





From then on, everything feels like those moments just before you wake in the morning. I am not asleep but somehow still dreaming, the world an ambiguous combination of reality and hallucination.

At some point, I am standing on my father’s front stoop, staring at my sneakers when somebody—I can’t tell if he’s an EMT or someone from the coroner’s office—comes to find me. I look over and realize Bowe is at my side, holding my hand.

“Your father had another heart attack last night and passed away, most likely sometime between eleven and one a.m.,” the man says.

“Yeah, no shit, genius!” I hear myself shout.

Bowe pulls me into his arms.

I think someone gives me a sedative.



* * *



—

Gwen comes over with dinner. Bowe tries to make me eat something. When I look at him, I can’t figure out why Bowe Huntley is in my house, why he is the one beside me.

Gwen tells me this is going to make the news soon. “I’ll do my best to hold it all off until you’re ready.”

I tell her I don’t care who knows. Hiding it won’t fix it.



* * *



—

Bowe feeds me lunch and dinner and breakfast the next morning. I know that because I can see the dishes piled up around me in my bed.

I see my own face on the television and see Greg Phillips reporting that “Javier Soto, father and coach of Carrie Soto, has died unexpectedly. He was not with his daughter at Wimbledon this past July, and some speculated it was due to health concerns. But he was expected to be with Carrie in New York next week for the US Open.”

Bowe tells me later that I threw the remote at the TV and cracked the screen.



* * *



—

In the paper, they print a picture of him from the early seventies at the French Open. He looks young and handsome in his polo shirt and panama hat. He would have loved it. I try to tear it out of the paper to save it, but I accidentally rip it.



* * *



—

At some point, Bowe gets in bed and holds me. He makes me smoothies every morning. He always gives me the wrong type of straw, but I don’t know how to tell him without screaming at him and I don’t want to scream at him.

I walk into the bathroom, thinking Bowe is in the shower. But instead, I find him sitting on the edge of the tub, with the shower running. When he sees me, he looks up and his eyes are bloodshot. He stands up and asks me if I am okay.

I wonder when he is going to leave. I’d have left by now.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, even though I can’t tell if I said any of that out loud.