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

Years later, when I was in my thirties, a published novelist and journalist, when even Bert was proud of me, I came home on a visit to introduce my parents to my then-serious girlfriend, Camila Seabury. Bert took Camila out into the yard on the pretense of showing her his rosebushes but really so that he could get her alone. Frankie always gets hurt by his girlfriends, he told her. Promise me that you’re not going to hurt him, too, or else end it now, before it goes too far. I’m begging you, dear. That conversation so freaked her out she kept it secret from me for years, until long after our relationship had ended and we were friends again.

But I’m not like you, Daddy-O. Oh no I am not. If there’s one thing I’m especially sure of right now, it’s that I’m not like you, at least not in the way that, after what Feli told me, seems most crucially definitive. In Pénèlope Myint’s grad student penthouse apartment in Cambridge, only a couple of months into our relationship, she did something so uninhibitedly and joyously erotic that my dick wilted in terror. Too much woman for me. Futilely flopping against her, soaked in anxiety sweat, the scarlet fish fin of shame rising from my spine. It lasted a couple of weeks, frantic failure repeated over and over, but impossible to give up, to creep away and curl up in some dark corner forever; the terror of going for it again every night and day, though, was like a virus of anguish and humiliation digging down into every part of me, infecting every organ, vein, and nerve ending. But Pénèlope was incredibly patient. Ohh, no fun, she’d pout, never anything harsher. So, Pops, here we can draw the significant distinction. Never felt a flash of anger toward Pénèlope, instead took it out on myself, getting out of bed and punching the wall until my knuckles throbbed and bled. Finally something happens to unblock the cognitive processing of sexual stimuli and hush the horrible, panicked inner voices, letting the divine spark fly: lying in bed one evening, she casually lifted a knee up through the opening of her white bathrobe, revealing a glide of inner thigh so supple and soft it looked never before exposed to light or air, spontaneously drawing my lips to it, and I was cured.

You see, Daddy. Not like you. Was never even close to tempted to hit her. I, despite my humiliation, the nonstop hurt and disappointment of it, the fear that I was being revealed not just to her but to myself as a ruined man, instead went forward, kept trying, trusted the love I had inside me, not only for Pénèlope but for what I wanted life to be and desperately believed it could still.

No. Not ever like you. If I can feel sorry for you, it’s because you weren’t more like your own son. Well, that’s been clear to me since I don’t even remember when, maybe from that moment when I socked you in the face, left you on the ground squealing Yoli Yoli. What’s unforgivable is what you did to your young foreign wife, your captive, my mother. Though I know it’s really for her to forgive you, not for me.

A tattered crimson awning over the door, aleph laundry in faded but legible white letters in the front fabric. Aleph, really, like in the Borges story? María Xum comes out from behind her counter to greet me between the rows of washing machines and dryers. Her obvious excitement makes me think she must not have thought I was really going to show up. She’s a smaller woman than I remember, but I recognize her unguarded smile, her plump lips, though if she were sitting directly across from me in the subway, I wouldn’t have known it was her. With gray-streaked black hair falling loosely to her shoulders, wire-rimmed glasses, and jeans and a thickly knit comfortable gray sweater, she could be a long-tenured professor of Marxist theory. After we’ve embraced, with a proud sweep of her hand, she says, This is my laundromat. The machines are old but they are still good. You mean you’re the owner? I ask. Yes, she is the owner. Careful not to sound too surprised, I say, That’s wonderful, María. Her smile widens, evidently she agrees. She says, Yes, thank you. But now her expression has turned solemn. She looks at me and says, Of course, in this story there are reasons to cry too, Frankie. She holds my gaze, until I respond, I’m sure there are, María, and she says, Pues sí, with a sad little half-smile. She turns to step back behind her counter. I stand a little awkwardly, hands shoved down into my pockets, across the counter from her, as María begins to tell me the story, her English animated by the energetic pronunciations of her native Mayan language. She’d been working here for sixteen years when the original owner, el señor Alberto Markowitz, an Argentine, committed suicide. With her savings, she bought a half share from the widow; the other half was bought by Alberto’s younger cousin, Alicia. The widow returned to Argentina with the twelve-year-old son. Two years ago, María bought Alicia’s half, so now she’s sole owner. María tells me she raised her own son, Harry, alone. Her first marriage to the Mexican, Juan Camacho, was brief, and she never remarried. Harry is an Afghan war vet who lives out on the West Coast now, but she doesn’t live alone. For years, through her church she’s been involved with the local Central American community. Several times, she says, she’s taken people in who needed help getting settled in Boston. But Rebeca has been with her five years now; she’s from Quiché, like María herself. She’s graduating from high school in the spring. Rebeca comes