Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

I heard a step behind me. I jumped. At least it felt as if my heart did. I turned to face the small television room where they kept the fold-out couch that had been my bed as a child. My father stood astride the door sill. His hair was all white, thinner of course and receding, completely exposing his high forehead. His thick eyebrows were still mostly black. He stood straight, just as I remembered him, his chest out, proudly. He had no paunch, although his face was full. He was very tan. I was impressed by his handsome, dignified, and commanding appearance. That had not been an illusion created by my childhood, after all. My father was no fantasy.

“Hi Dad,” I said, and now I had shrunk to the size of a boy. The sound of my voice was foreign to me: unsure, sweet and scared.

He said nothing. He watched me as if he were seeing something that didn’t require a reaction, as if I were an image, not a living thing.

“You look great,” I said. I seemed to have no defenses, no ability to plan what came out of my mouth. “I’m really glad to see you.” I studied him again, amazed that this vigorous figure was seventy-four years old. Perhaps because of the stories of Cuba’s economic woes, or more likely some sort of guilty projection, or worse, a deeper wish from buried rage, I expected the years to have treated him harshly, to find a withered broken man.

“I’m not glad to see you,” he said in that extraordinary voice, so convinced of its correctness, so musical and dramatic — the kind of voice that sells us cars, beckons us to fly the friendly skies, and reads us the news headlines. “I hoped you wouldn’t come.” He glanced down pensively. When he looked up again, he nodded toward the dining room. “You brought someone? Your wife?”

“No. We’re not married. But she’s a friend. I mean, we’re very close …” I stammered like an embarrassed teenager.

“You mean you’re fucking her,” he said and chuckled. He caught himself doing it, glanced at me and then away, frowning. “We’re going to look at two nursing homes tomorrow and pick one. Then I want you to return to New York. For my father’s sake, I’ll act courteous in his presence. Otherwise, don’t speak to me.” He stepped into the television room, and seemed to remember something. “Unless,” he added, beginning to swing the door at me, “you don’t mind being ignored.” His timing was perfect, shutting it in my face with his last word.

When I returned to the living room, Cuco interrupted whatever he was saying to Diane to ask, “You are done talking so fast?”

“I said hello.” Diane twisted to look at me. I added, “Maybe we’d better find a hotel.”

“No, no,” Cuco said. “There are no hotels. And we have a date.”

“A date?” Diane asked.

“At a home for seniors. Eight o’clock. That’s early, yes?”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“It’s better you stay here.” He smiled at me, showing his jumbled teeth. Cuco added, nodding in the direction of the kitchen, “He’s hard-headed.”

I was amused. Hard-headed was a favorite comment of my grandmother’s, what she used to say when caving in to a demand she didn’t approve of — my third Coca-Cola of the day, allowing me to swim less than an hour following a meal; or, permitting a more dangerous act, letting my hair dry in the air after a shower, rather than insisting she towel it. “You’re so hard-headed,” she would say and pretend to rap me on the skull with her knuckles. Once, she got into a fierce squabble with my father and I was thrilled when she said it about him too. “We’re both hard-headed,” I called out cheerfully. Francisco and Jacinta stopped their fight. They looked at me, puzzled for a moment, and then their grim faces broke into smiles. “He’s proud of it,” Grandma said, and laughed so deeply, she held her belly. Francisco took my head in his arms and squeezed out the world. When he released me, although my ears were ringing, I could hear him say, “He’s right. Hard-headed people get things done.”

What have we gotten done, Father?

“How about you, Cuco?” I asked. “Are you hard-headed too?”

“Me?” He touched his chest with the palm of his hand, astonished. “No.” He smiled at Diane. “I’m soft-headed,” he said and laughed pleasantly.

I sat opposite them, in the armchair where my father used to hold court on cool nights, explaining the world to his family. “Tell me about yourself, Cuco. Do you mind? We’re brothers and I don’t know anything about you.”

“No?” He shook his head as if this were a sad and astonishing fact. “You said. On the phone. That you were not told about me.”

“It’s my fault, too,” I said. “I could have asked.”

“Yes?” He seemed skeptical.

“Do you live in Havana?”

The answer was, some of the time. He was a coach for the Cuban Olympic baseball team. He had been a player — a first baseman, he said. But he’d hurt his back a year ago. He stood up to illustrate the problem. I was surprised when he got into a left-hander’s batting stance.

“You’re a southpaw?” I said, pleased and proud, for some odd reason. We had no lefties in the family: the novelty somehow made me feel he really was my brother. I could almost hear myself boring someone sometime in the future with anecdotes of Cuco’s left-handed feats.

“I throw right,” he said.

“No kidding. Did you always bat left-handed?”

“No,” he said, eager to explain, breaking out of his batting stance into the pose of a frozen runner. “You know it’s faster to first base if you’re a lefty.” He pointed to the bedroom. “And there’s the hole at first and second when there is, you know …?”

“A runner on first,” I finished for him.

“You know baseball!” he said and actually clapped.

Diane laughed. “Rafe’s a big baseball fan.”

That was something of an exaggeration, but it was the one sport I kept track of, and I even attended a couple of games each season. I asked, “You played first base for the Cuban team?”

“For the national team. You’re a fan, but you don’t know me?” He wasn’t petulant, merely curious.

“They don’t cover Cuban baseball here,” I explained.

“We know all your players.” He nodded to himself. “They censor news about us, that’s what they say. Many of our boys are as good as the major leaguers. Linares is better than most of your players.”

“We know your players are good,” I assured him. “They tell us that much.”

“It’s a pity they can’t come here and play for our teams,” Diane said.

“Yes?” Cuco asked, again with that mild tone of surprise. “Why?” he added.

“Why?” Diane repeated. “Well, you know, so they could be in the big games.” She knew she had gotten herself into an awkward spot. She pressed on anyway, “So they could become famous and play in the World Series.”

“It would be good for a Cuban team to play in your so-called World Series, but not so good for the Cuban players to become toys for the owners.”

Diane didn’t blink. She insisted, “The players here have a lot of power, almost as much as the owners.”

“No,” Cuco said, confidently.

“Yes.” Diane was just as confident about the life of a professional ballplayer, and, I suspect, just as ignorant. “Anyway,” she added. “It’s wrong that you can’t play here. It’s a shame when people aren’t free to do their work wherever they want.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Cuco said. Diane cocked her head at him, surprised. I wasn’t.

“You agree?”

“Yes, of course.”

“But you can’t say that in Cuba,” she commented, not provocatively, with sympathy.

Cuco sat down sideways on the couch, angled to her, his massive legs as big as a coffee table. “Why not?” he asked.