After the Hurricane(63)

Her parents were always so kind to him, not the careful kindness of people around someone they fear to offend, but real bone-deep kindness, consideration. He wondered, if he had grown up in a place like this, with all this love and warmth, would he be as good as Rosalind was, as giving? Surely it was easy to be giving when you had so much, he thought, not without bitterness. But he had more, now, than ever before, and he was still selfish, still the same.

He had not seen his mother in months. He couldn’t see her. It took too much away from him and he had so little to begin with. He was selfish, he knew it. He remembered a line from a Chekhov play Rosalind had dragged him to in college, incredibly boring but for these two lines: When you only get your happiness in bits and pieces and then lose it anyway, like me, you begin to get bitter about it. You don’t care what you say anymore. They lived in him, those lines, and he knew his problem was less about what he said and more about what he did. He didn’t care what he did or didn’t do anymore for his mother. He couldn’t, not if he wanted to survive. And yet you send money and call and worry and think and— He had to shake his head to clear it, banish those demons. Like the ones she sees.

He would have liked to stay in Philadelphia with Rosalind forever, but he had booked his ticket in advance, and so in August he left from Philadelphia International Airport on a plane bound for Puerto Rico. He did not bring Rosalind. He could not. He had not seen his father in years, and he did not know what would happen. He was not sure what would happen anyway when he brought a white woman home. Better to leave it for later, better to make sure Rosalind wasn’t going to leave him, whatever happened, whatever she learned there, saw there.

When he arrived, his father picked him up at the airport. Santiago wore a light blue peasant-style shirt over a pair of wide bell-bottoms. He had grown out his hair, and his beard and mustache. He looked like most of the students at Stanford had looked when he graduated, that intersection of hippie culture and California cool. His father looked him up and down, but said nothing. On the drive, though, instead of heading toward his new house in Bayamon, where he told his son over the phone that he had moved two years ago, he headed into San Juan.

“Where are we going?” Santiago asked. They were the first words he had spoken since he arrived. His father said nothing, but stopped the car in front of a barbershop, and motioned for him to get out.

“There is no parking. I will circle until you are done. Tell him to fix this,” his father said, and then he drove off, cars impatiently honking behind him. The barber removed the mustache, the beard, and cut Junior’s hair high and tight, smoothing it with wax, into a military-style haircut, exactly what his father had. He looked in the mirror grimly, and realized for the first time how much of his father’s face was in his own. The beard had covered that. He wanted it back.

When they got to his father’s new house, his father directed him toward the shower.

“Clean up. Then we will go see everyone, for dinner.” When Santiago emerged from the shower, all of his clothing was gone. He came out with a towel wrapped around his waist, furious, to find his father drinking a beer with the same steady determination he had always shown toward alcohol.

“Where are my things?” he asked.

“I burned them,” his father said, dryly. Santiago gaped at him. He had left his new suits and shoes in Philadelphia, but brought with him most of his other warm-weather clothing. That was all he had.

“I will take you to get new things. You can’t wear that clothing. You look like a clown. Put this on for now.” His father gestured to a pair of trousers and a guayabera, his own, Santiago assumed. The pants were too short and too loose on him, but he cinched them with a belt, and the shirt billowed against his skinny chest. His father looked at him, grunted, and drove him to San Sebastián, where the rest of the family were waiting for him to eat dinner. They spent the ride in complete silence, and for the rest of the trip he only spoke to Chavela and his siblings, who had all grown by leaps and bounds, though they would never be tall, and who listened to his stories about America with awe and disbelief. He did not speak to his father again until he said goodbye, at the airport.

When he got back to Philadelphia, Rosalind laughed at his haircut. He grew his beard out as soon as he possibly could. He would not be clean-shaven for years, not until his father died, and he wanted to see his face in his own.



He had had no intention of going to law school in New Haven. He got the call from Yale when he was eating lunch in the cafeteria, something he only did on Tuesdays because he had a full day of classes on campus. They had called the office of student affairs at Stanford because he had no number listed—well, he didn’t have a phone. He had received the letter the day before and hadn’t known what to do about it. He had already gotten into Berkeley, was already planning on going. Santiago could see his future in California perfectly, and how good it would be. He would stay here, marry Rosalind in Golden Gate Park, or they would live together, whatever she wanted. She would paint, and he would work at a small firm defending immigrants, Spanish speakers like his mother, helping them settle, making sure they knew their rights. It would be a beautiful life, bathed in California sunshine, coated in the fog off the bay.

“I’m looking forward to seeing you in New Haven in the fall, son,” the law school dean said to him, his voice warm and rich.

“Sir, I think there must have been some kind of mistake,” Santiago said, his voice thin. He heard laughter.