Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman (free ebook reader for pc txt) 📗

to an investment banker; they live in Dover. They’ve given Feli and Giorgio five grandchildren so far.

Through the window, I see Feli drive into the parking lot in her blood-orange Jaguar, a late-1970s model that Giorgio rescued at his garage and beautifully restored, using all his expertise. She crosses the parking lot, spritely as ever, pixie hairdo dyed a dark reddish hue, big sunglasses of a coppery tint, magenta lipstick, tight maroon corduroys, a waist-length leopard-print jacket. When she comes in through the front door and sees me, she puts her fists out by her sides and sways her hips like she’s inviting me to dance and exclaims: Frankie! Her caramel features are a bit sharper, more drawn, but she’s the same. When we go up to order, the counter girl’s grin is rakish as she says, Separate or together, sir? She thinks Feli is my wife or partner. I give a wink, answer: Together, and I order the meatloaf sandwich special and a bottle of Snapple. Feli has an apple spice muffin and a chamomile tea. Back at the table, Feli explains that she wanted to meet out here instead of in the square because she’s fed up with the way even the young mothers in our town stare at her. The other day she was in Walgreens and speaking on her cell phone when, as she approached the checkout, she was so provoked by a woman’s stare that she erupted, Excuse me, do you know me? Have we met? Then why you look at me like that? It bother you that I am speaking Spanish? It’s not illegal, right? Because Feli laughs, I do too. Ay no, Frankie, she goes on. Every year this town get richer, and the people get worse, and she puts two fingers under her nose and lifts it. I don’t doubt the truth of that or that the town is as white as ever, but I also think that those young mothers mostly see other adults who resemble themselves day after day and never encounter anyone like Feli, driving around in her magnificent old Jaguar. She clearly isn’t somebody’s nanny.

We’ve been talking about her family, how proud she is that her eight-year-old grandson, Colum, is fluent in Spanish as well as English. She says that she never hears from Lexi in a tone meant to let me know she’s a little hurt by that. But they were never as close as Feli and I were. Lexi was a newborn when Feli came, whereas Feli and I immediately, in our shared solitudes down there in the basement, bonded. I’ve finished my sandwich, but Feli has only eaten some pinched morsels of her muffin. I ask her about my parents’ marriage, back during those first years when she was living with us. Did they at least get along a little better than they did later? You know, just doing some research for The Newlywed Game’s special fifty-year anniversary show, I joke, but Feli doesn’t even seem to hear me. Her expression, the way she takes off her sunglasses, brings me to a stop.

Her smallish amber eyes, rimmed in black, shift inside a second from unsettled to resolved. With a surge of emotion, she says, Oh Frankie, no child should ever have to see and hear what you and your sister did in that house. Lexi was too little to understand, but you were so frightened. You were always crying, ay no.

I don’t know what she’s talking about. I don’t remember being frightened in the way she’s suggested. I remember during that first winter in our town when I was recovering from tuberculosis standing on my green sofa by the picture window to look out at the other neighborhood children who came into our snowy yard in their snowsuits and hats to look at me on the other side of the pane. I remember raucous crows streaming across the gray winter sky like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. I remember wrists seared by ice-stiffened mitten cuffs and how icicles dangled from the eaves of the house and over the doorstep, silvery and transparent, narrowing into long sharp points that as I stood ringing the doorbell, desperate to come inside to pee, might break off and stab through my skull, down into my brain. I could sit back if I wanted to and immerse myself in a kaleidoscope of childhood memories. But I have no memory of what Feli begins to tell me about my parents.

Twice your mother tried to leave your father in those years, she says.

Twice Mamita had her luggage packed and set out in the living room, ready to flee back to Guatemala again and to her parents’ house. The first time she packed for my infant sister and me, too, but if I understand Feli correctly, that second time she was going to flee without us. Both times, Aunt Milly, summoned by my father, rushed to our house to tell my mother that she wouldn’t allow her to abandon her husband, wouldn’t allow her to destroy her brother’s family and ruin his life.

Feli says, Mr. Goldberg sat in his chair doing this with his hands, and she puts out her hands, wringing them. But ohhh, she says, Aunt Milly scolded Mr. Goldberg too. She told him that he had to change or he was going to lose his wife and family. Doña Yoli was all packed and ready to go to the airport, but Aunt Milly convinced her to stay. Two times I saw that, Frankie. At your father’s funeral, says Feli, Aunt Milly came from Florida in her wheelchair, so old now, and she apologized to Doña Yoli. I heard your aunt say, I am sorry, Yolanda, for how you suffered with Bert all those years. I feel responsible, because I forced you to stay.

Your tío Memo didn’t like to visit your mother here, says Feli. That’s why when he came, he would stay at the Holiday Inn in