Chapter 20 - The Man of Wind and Moss

Sasha found someone in New York who could help and she headed back alone. Marco wanted to go with her, but his birthday was at the end of the week. It had been a tense few days since seeing Doll in the forest. The come-to-Jesus talk with Pansy was a disaster. He wasn’t getting any sleep. And every time he felt nauseous or queasy, he was confident he’d throw up dirt and mud. Although he hadn’t seen Dean’s truck since Keith’s service, and he hadn’t seen anymore muddy footprints in the house either, he kept seeing a yellow pair of eyes, always over his shoulder, in mirrors, in the night. He was to turn thirty and he felt obligated to spend it with his parents because if Sasha’s plan didn’t shake out, then he’d be worm chow before his thirty-first.

As the days slipped by and he patrolled his house, it began to feel more like he haunted the place. So many things in his house pointed to where his life could’ve gone. How things should’ve ended up. A soccer trophy suggested a budding athleticism quickly abandoned in college. A collection of scripts gave the idea of a thespian, shaken off when finding friends was difficult. He went through it all: ribbons and streamers of festivals, fliers for county fairs and swim meets, souvenirs from pep rallies, boxes of essays for courses he had barely passed, job applications for the least bit of work, a dusty box of condoms, a gym key fob, his old student ID, piles of loose papers covered in algebra and barely correct calculus. A photo set showed him and Pansy at a football game; their faces caked in garnet and gold. Another had him and Keith and Sasha changing the wheels on Keith’s mother’s van. One was him and Dean on a porch, empty cans of Coors at their feet, back when Dean had only one tattoo. The skull.

A deep resentment started to unfurl in him. He started to feel duped. Lied to. Sitting on the floor surrounded by boxes of these items felt mocking. These were the staples of a generation that was set up for success. A generation not his. Embodied in trinkets and bric-a-brac were the versions of him he never became. And in the reflection of the picture frames, the window of his room, the screen of his phone, someone else looked back. It was a man with a crooked nose, garish braces, and a face still puffy on the edges.

On the day of his thirtieth birthday, he went to Publix off Dale Mabry and got a sheet cake that his mom custom-ordered. “Happy Birthday!” blue cursive said on white frosting. The inside was chocolate, and the curved corners looked swollen and crusty with bloody sprinkles. He set the cake in the passenger seat and drove back with the windows down, fighting every urge to not Frisbee the thing into traffic.

Marco also had to get rum for his dad. Mojitos tonight, he texted with a bunch of emojis. It had been a while since he tied one on with his parents and not merely around his parents, and considering he had nobody else to celebrate with, he thought why not. Drinking on his parents’ dime and crashing in his bedroom was depressing in theory (and on paper, and in execution) but again, beggars can’t be choosers. Frankly, the most off-putting element about it was his father. Since Marco returned home—face smashed, friends dead—his father never left the backyard. The kitchen was always sticky with lime and mint and sugar, and giant bottles of rum clattered around in the liquor cabinet. His father would stay out there all night. When he’d come in, he’d just ask, “¿Qué pasó?” And that question always made Marco angry. So, he’d just reply, “No sé,” because that was the truth. The only time this routine didn’t play out was when Marco had researched Zaäper, and the mud man stood in the den, and Dad waltzed in unseen. ¿Qué pasó? Again, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

In the kitchen, Marco put the sheet cake in the fridge and set out the groceries. He put the rum (two Bacardi Silvers and one nauseating Malibu) in their resting spot, he put the soda waters in the door of the fridge, and then he looked at the sprigs of fresh mint. In the right light, the way the sun came through the kitchen window and fell on the wet plastic, it almost looked like a face was looking back at him. Like a Green Man was struggling to breathe.

Marco thought of what Monchito told him all those years ago. “When Dad drinks mojitos, he talks to ghosts.”

Suddenly, he wished he had left with Sasha.

* * *

Mojito night wasn’t all it was it was cracked up to be. Marco’s mom made picadillo and tostones and Pat stood quietly cutting limes and cracking ice trays. La greca sat in the corner like a little reminder of where Monchito was and where Marco wasn’t, and although he couldn’t confirm it, a sneaking suspicion told him that the moka pot was hardly from the “homeland” but actually something purchased last minute at the San Juan airport. Depression. Depression. Depression.

“Has Ray called?” Marco asked.

“No,” Mom said. “But we talked a little a few weeks ago.”

“What? You didn’t tell me,” Marco said. “What did he say?”

His mom kept at her work. She was short and pudgy and always wore these blown-out slippers. She had an apron on but ignored it, wiping her hands on the back of her house pants.

“Well?” Marco asked again. “What did Ray say?”

“He asked for money,” Pat answered. With one hand he squeezed three lime wedges into a glass, and he stirred it up with his index finger. “He always asks for money.”

“Oh.” Marco sat back.

“I know you wished this could’ve been a better day,” his mom said. “But we’re happy to have you back home, mijo. I don’t know what you’re getting out there in the city. It’s so blegh.”

Pat placed a tall glass in front of Marco. The muddled mint leaves swirled like a galaxy. The stove fan was on turbo, and the oil popped loudly. Marco sat in the seat he always sat in, his back to the wall, and he stared at Monchito’s empty chair across from him.

“He’s doing his own thing, it’s fine,” Marco mumbled. He sipped from his mojito, and a piece of mint went down the wrong pipe, and he choked and coughed and then settled. His father stared at him from the corner of the kitchen. Like Marco, he was thin and angular, ethnic only in his mustache and his big mouth. Behind him a pile of lime wedges threatened to topple off the counter. Monchito looked like their mom, round in the face and with a big forehead. She placed the tostones on a wire rack and then started pulling out silverware.

“What are your plans now that you’re old?” his dad asked.

Marco picked a piece of lime out of his braces. “Get these off first and foremost.”

“You got lucky with those,” Pat remarked, baring his teeth. “Only a few months.”

“Yeah,” Marco mumbled sarcastically. “Retainer every night. Nose fucked up.”

“Language.”

Marco paused. It sounded just like the figure in the den, the day of the service. But it wasn’t his dad then. Was it his dad now? “Sorry,” he mumbled, suddenly very conscious of the nearest knife.

Marco’s mom set plates down and the three of them ate in a stilted silence. The kitchen smelled of ground beef and sofrito and sazón and when the overhead fan was turned off only their forks and the clatter of ice was heard. Pat refilled his mojito more times than Marco could count, and Marco wondered if there was someone specific his dad was going to talk to or if it was everyone at once, some overwhelming audience of the dead.

When he was younger, Marco believed in ghosts, spirits, all of the supernatural. When he was twelve and his mom first mentioned a mojito night, he peppered Ray with a million questions before Ray shot him down with, “He’s just a drunk, don’t romanticize it.” After that, with each passing year, Marco believed in that stuff less and less while his dad, apparently, leaned the other way. It was similar with Sasha. Every new witch tchotchke he bought her, every time he listened to her speak breathlessly about a new group or ideology, it slowly stoked the ashes of something he snuffed long ago. But now the flames were up and burning and spreading fast. Him. Erether. Images filled his head and overlapped. The Grafting. Doll. Sasha standing by the treeline. Pat standing by the lake. Remember what nature is for. Jesus-fucking-Christ did Paula know too? Was everybody in on it?

Marco ate slowly. The anxiety was impossible. Every sound made him jump; every move made him sweat. Sitting by the sliding glass doors had his foot tapping, almost drilling a hole in the cheap linoleum of the kitchen floor. He needed another drink like bad. He moved to the counter and made himself another mojito.

“So, what’s next then?” Pat asked. “You didn’t say.”

“I don’t know, Dad,” Marco replied. “To be honest, all my plans have gone to shit.”

“What did I just say?”

“Sorry. Have gone south. I’m thirty years old now and I have nothing.”

“You should stay here,” his mom suggested.

“I don’t want him moving back in,” Pat said. “He’s a grown man.”

“I meant Tampa,” Mom said. “Why not?”

What could he say? He didn’t want to freak them out, but he had to say something true. “You want to know why?” he asked. “Because when I’m here in this house, around this city, moving through Ray’s stuff, I feel like there’s an emptiness inside of me.”

“An emptiness?” his mom asked. Her voice cracked. She was suddenly emotional. The mere suggestion that her baby boy was depressed unraveled her. “Are you sad?”

“I’m beyond sad, Mom,” Marco said. “Look at me.”

“Watch the tone,” Pat growled. He had to be on his fifth or sixth glass.

“Why did you let Ray leave?” Marco asked. The question burst out of his chest. The thought behind it wasn’t even formed yet. He was surprised, himself, to hear it aloud. “You let Ray leave me behind like nothing. Why did you let him leave? He was your son. My brother. And now he doesn’t talk to us.”

“He talks to us when he asks for money.”

“Nice, Dad, really healthy stuff.”

“Let me ask you something,” Pat said. “Are you going to blame everything on us all the time?”

“This specific one, yes, in fact,” Marco replied. He stood by the stove. The kitchen stretched between him and his father like a battlefield. “He left because you told him you didn’t like us. A few Thanksgivings ago you got hammered and told Ray that. The next week he bought his flight. So yeah, I am going to blame this one on you.”

“Dramático,” Pat said. He started counting his fingers, “We gave you trauma, we ruined the housing market, we took the jobs, do you not think anybody else has ever struggled?”

“I think you guys had it easier.”

“We came from Puerto Rico with nothing.”

“It was Puerto Rico, Dad, it wasn’t the last chopper out of Saigon.”

“You are a spoiled brat,” Pat said.

“No digas eso,” Mom said, touching Pat’s arm.

“But he is, he’s a spoiled brat,” Pat doubled down. “You have everything. Ever since you were a baby you cried and cried about wanting more and about not understanding and about not knowing what to do. Ever since you were a baby you cried for help for everything. How long will your mother and I have to answer for these made-up crimes?”

“Let me explain something to you.” Marco leaned in. “Ray left and you will never see him again. That’s your son. He knows you will keep sending him money, because he knows you don’t know any other way to show affection. And you are happy to give him money if it means you don’t actually have to talk to him about his feelings. If you want that relationship with your son, that’s fine, but now my relationship with my brother is a casualty. You are a broken man and now it’s everyone’s problem. So, I went out to the woods with my best friends to try and find a new family and they all got fucking killed!”

“Watch your language!” Pat said.

“Fuck my language!”

Pat grabbed his mojito and beamed it at Marco’s head. Marco flinched out of the way and the glass shattered into the stovetop fan. Lime and ice and rum went everywhere. Glass too. His mom screamed. Then, Marco grabbed the bigger pitcher of mojito and whipped it back at his dad. Pat put his elbow up, but the force of the big pitcher knocked him off his seat. He fell to the floor in a collapse. The explosion was loud and the shards flew everywhere, millions of pieces in all directions.

“What are you doing!” Marco yelled. His jaw got tight again, but he didn’t want to grab his mouth. He thought that’d make him cry. Instead, he winced and powered through. “Look at this! Look around you! I feel like I’m losing my mind. I’m a fucking adult and I feel like a child and, yes, I blame you. I blame both of you. I just want my brother back. I want my friends back. I want this all to be over!”

Pat stayed on the ground with his arm raised in defense. His eyes were wide in fear and his mouth was agape, shocked at his son’s rage. Marco’s mom went over to help him up and to brush off all the glass and rum. Marco stayed by the counter. He was breathing fire. The mint sprigs, still in their plastic bag from Publix, looked up at him like a grinning face, and, on impulse, he reached his hands in and shredded them.

Pat got back into his chair. He white-knuckled the table. Mom was crying at this point. Sniveling. Marco felt shame fall over his shoulders, but he resisted it.

“Why don’t you go outside?” Mom asked Pat. “I’ll bring you a fresh one.”

Marco was dumbfounded. Pat nodded and shambled, woozy and drunk, to the sliding glass door. The roar of crickets and frogs poured in, and Pat disappeared into the hot Florida night like he was going through a curtain. His mom turned back to him. She was tear-stricken. Wordlessly, she got the dustpan and brush from under the sink.

“Let me help,” Marco said.

“No,” she said. She crouched down, so small and vulnerable. She swept the mess from the table and from the ground by the stove where the first glass rained down. Marco stepped around her.

“He threw it first,” Marco said.

“Yo sé.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yo sé.”

“Tomorrow, I’m gone. We don’t have to do this again.”

“Okay.”

“Mom. I’m sorry. It’s him.”

“Yo sé. Just go. Happy birthday.”

Marco left the kitchen, but not before grabbing la greca off the counter and taking it with him.

* * *

When the sad anger of the fight dissipated and Marco found the strength to get off his bed, it was still the dead of the night and ol’ Patty Wonder was still talking to the wind. The what? The sky, the lake, the drunken phantoms in his dad’s crazy head.

At first, Marco came out ready for round two. He wanted to go toe-to-toe right then and throttle his dad in the lake. He imagined his mom shambling out in the crack of dawn and seeing Patty bloated and drowned half in rum and half in lake water, the little limes stuck in the mud like dead turtles. But as he stepped further from the house and got closer to his dad, he started to feel sad.

On top of everything else, with his generation’s endorsement of all things therapy, more than ever before his friends and peers had to play psychologist for their stunted parents. They have trauma, they have this, they have that. Your parents never met you halfway, that was a myth. You had to go 90 percent of the way to explain their behavior and their beliefs to yourself and to them, and you had to suggest helpful ways of healing without scaring them away. Talking to your parents about mental health was like tricking a dog to eat a pill. You had to wrap it in the cheese of tolerance and power dynamics, and once your parents got spooked, there was no going back.

“I’m tired of bending over backwards to love him when he won’t even budge for us,” Monchito had once said. It was during one of the many arguments in the days before his flight. Their mom sat at the kitchen table as Monchito paced the kitchen. Marco remembered how small he felt, leaning against the doorway. How ol’ Pat was never around when they all argued about him.

“He’s stuck in his ways,” their mom said. What a classic line. A get-out-of-jail-free card for the older generation. Change was always suggested, but never a requirement. You can be bigoted, withholding, abusive, racist, whatever you wanted, as long you were stuck in your ways—a concession of guilt usually offered by their more supporting, better half.

“I don’t care if he’s stuck in his ways!” Monchito hollered. “I’m dying here!”

The memory faded.

Now Marco saw his dad in the partial moonlight and his heart ached. It’s so hard to love somebody, he realized. It’s the hardest thing in the world. You have to be the bigger person, you have to forgive, you have to move on, you have to give second chances, but you also have to hold them accountable, you have to teach them, and you can’t change them because they have to change on their own and you have to love their original version, and the rules contradict and stretch and scratch at each other and none of the books or podcasts or essays about love help you approach your drunk dad at two in the morning standing by a lake with his back to the house.

And two yellow eyes in the darkness.

Oh no.

Who was Pat talking to?

Marco wanted Sasha back. Marco needed Sasha back. This was a nightmare. He was too drunk and too skittish and too tired to witness what he thought he was witnessing. His dad was talking to Him.

Or was he?

Marco stepped slowly, his bare feet sinking in the soft grass of their ugly little yard. He got within earshot of him and then stopped. The yellow eyes were gone. They were the lights of another house. Marco exhaled. He sat on the grass, exhausted, and the bottom of his jeans grew damp.

He loved his dad. Of course he did. That was half of the problem! He loved everyone, and nothing was working out. Was there something more than love that you needed? And what was it?

Without turning, Pat finally spoke. “You grow up and you get married and have kids and you say a few wrong things and then your son leaves you. ¡Coño!”

A groan escaped Marco. He dropped his face into his hands. The grass was wet against his butt, and a cold wind came over the lake. Patricio stood still and drank from his glass. The moon hung weak and dim. His dad kept talking. “Y cuando . . . er, when that happens, you learn that home isn’t real. Family isn’t real. We all pretend it is, pero es todo delicado. When it breaks it’s done. And then you look back and see with new eyes that it was fake the whole time.”

“What? No. This can’t be your big lesson for me.”

His dad shrugged. “Pero es verdad. You’ll go back to New York, and you’ll have nobody. And you won’t come home either, which is fine. And you’ll keep bitching and moaning because that’s your nature. That’s who you are. You cry out at people for help, but nobody has answers for you. You don’t understand that simple truth, but nobody can help you. Each of us are alone.”

Marco shook his head. He could feel his dad’s words stick to his clothing and his hair and he felt them latching their teeth onto his skin. He shook his head some more. “Then who the hell are you talking to? When you come out here all fucked-up? Who are you talking to?”

“No sé. Myself. Nobody.”

Another breeze blew and Marco watched the trees sway, and the ripples of the lake moved to the shoreline and an emptiness expanded inside of him. Pat didn’t see the yellow eyes that Marco saw. Pat wasn’t haunted by the specter of someone who misguides you. He believed that there was no guidance. There was never anybody to help or point in the right direction. The “ghosts” he talked to were probably real, but they were just that: ghosts. Dead, useless, agonized ghosts. Pat seemed to embrace this black void. The yellow eyes that haunted Marco were just regular lights for Pat, lights blinking in the darkness at the far end of the lake, completely careless if he steps in and drowns or turns back into the house. To him, none of it made a difference. Marco considered it. There was no resentment or despair. Just loneliness.

* * *

Back in his bedroom, Marco packed his one bag. When he had first come out of the woods, he had to phone his roommates in Brooklyn and tell them the news: he wasn’t coming back. They were annoyed at first but then quickly understood the gravity of the situation. They put his room up on Craigslist and because Marco was living a relatively monastic lifestyle, there wasn’t much he was leaving behind. They sold most of it, mailed some of it, and just trashed the rest. Marco didn’t care. Now, the one bag he still had, like some cruel joke, was the very bag he took hiking with him. He hadn’t looked at it since he came back, and it sat like an amputee in the corner of the room.

He grabbed it and turned it upside down. A crusty Nalgene fell out. Swim trunks. The flashlight and batteries still in their packaging. Lots of dirt and twigs and leaves. And a bag of granola now depleted to just the raisins.

“Nice packing,” he mumbled to himself. With the side of his foot, he kicked the leaves and twigs across the room. He picked up la greca. He reversed course on the San Juan airport idea. La greca had to be legit. His brother definitely certainly 100 percent bought it authentically in Aguadilla. Never mind the ridiculous frog rocking sunglasses and a straw hat, this is what locals used! He decided he’d use it in Brooklyn, and it would connect him to his brother. Connect him to Puerto Rico. He jammed it in first. On the sides of the bag were dried stains of blood and moss. He picked at them with his thumb nail, but nothing changed.

He threw in a pair of jeans and some underwear and a sweater. This was the lightest of light packing. The idea of arriving like he first did, rolling up like a college freshman, checked bags and all, embarrassed him. He needed the bare minimum. Whatever it took to blend into the masses of New York and leave his whole life behind. Whatever it took for nobody to find him. Of course, all of this was contingent on Sasha figuring out a plan. If she didn’t, then well, all of this was pointless.

When he finished packing, he turned to see his phone and his stomach dropped. He had missed a call from Monchito.

“No, no, come on,” he pleaded. He quickly dialed his brother back, but it only rang. “Pick up, pick up, I know you’re there.” He tried again but it still only rang. “Don’t you do this to me.”

Monchito never picked up, and Marco fought back tears. He sat on the edge of the bed, and he ran his fingers through his hair. Then he saw that Monchito had left a voicemail. A long one. Marco’s thumb hovered over the play button. There was something nice knowing it wasn’t a ten-second happy birthday message, but something was off-putting about the runtime. Maybe his mom had called him and told him about the fight. Maybe his dad did. Marco pressed play.

“Marco, it’s Monchito. Feliz cumpleaños, hermano.”

Marco scoffed. Always did when Monchito called him that.

“Mom told me what happened in the woods. Goddamn. My man. I’m sorry.”

There was a beat.

“Listen. I can’t let you in, man. I love you so much. I miss you so much. But I can’t let you in. This place is mine. What I found here is mine. I’m already sharing it with too many people. I’m sharing it with the forts and the museums and the old men with the helado carts. I’m sharing it with the coasts and the beaches. I’m sharing it with the abuelas that will never die. I’m sharing it with the parrots and the lizards and the meatheads with the forty pitbulls. I’m sharing it with the rum distilleries and the clubs. I’m sharing it with everyone that got here before me. Marco, I’m hanging on by a thread.

“My Spanish is shit compared to everyone else, you know? Maria laughs at me because I can’t roll my R’s—I can’t let you in on that. I keep saying despacio, despacio, like a dumbass. I don’t even know the lyrics to her favorite songs. It’s on repeat but it never clicks. I can’t let you make that harder. Think about that. Picture that. I’m serious. You and me playing tug-of-war over this thing. Then we break it, and it shatters, and I go home and put a gun in my mouth. Do you want that, bud? Huh, ese?

“What do you want anyway, bro? What I want is to figure this out. You gotta want your own thing. Look inward. Look inside. I can’t help with that. And if you jump onto my thing, we’ll both go down. And mom says you’re living in Tampa now. Get the fuck away from Mom and Dad. Trust me on this one. Find a girl and settle down somewhere else. Find someone who gets it and leave everyone else behind. Who gives a shit?

“Do you know what a flock call is? Maria’s old man has this parrot, and we have to watch over it now because he’s sick and stuff. Her dad, not the bird. These birds, you know, they’re so smart. And because they’re so smart they feel everything we do. They feel anxious and nervous and happy and cozy. They feel abandoned and lonely. And they belong in flocks, right, and so in the rainforests when it’s dark and rainy they’ll send out a flock call. They whistle really loud, right? And their flock whistles back and that’s how they know they’re not alone. That’s how they find their family. And so this parrot, Campeche, it whistles all night. These desperate, depressing whistles. It’s not singing. It’s calling for its flock, and Maria’s old man warned us about this and said it’s an easy fix: just whistle back. So all day and night I’m whistling at this bird, but it just keeps calling for its flock. I’m trying my best. The thing is breaking my heart, it’s so fucking sad, it’s so miserable, this bird, and I can’t convince this thing it’s not alone. There it is. You hear it? Did you hear it just then? I’m standing right in front of it whistling back but it won’t be convinced. It’s like he’s a different type of alone. He’s so alone it makes me feel invisible and then I start to feel alone. And we’re just whistling at each other back and forth across this empty house and neither of us feel good about it. And now it just makes me angry, and I want to wrap my hands around its little neck. I’d be doing it a favor, you know? Snuffing it out before its loneliness calcifies. Snapping its neck and putting it out of its misery. It’s whistling right now; can you hear it? It’s driving me up the wall. I gotta go.”