Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

I went to the kitchen, stopping in the doorway. Diane was saying, in answer to an offer from my father, “I would love to visit Cuba. Shouldn’t we, Rafe?” she asked me. Her casual tone was effortless.

“Yes, we should.” My father was in a chair next to Diane. In front of him was a cereal bowl with a puddle of milk and a few drowned Cheerios. Behind him stood Pepín, his hands resting on my father’s shoulders. Grandpa’s face was impassive, a distant look in his eyes. He was dressed in clean linen black pants and an ironed white shirt without a tie, although it was buttoned to the collar. He was clean shaven. Here and there, on his chin, under his nose, by his left temple, were dots of dried blood where he’d nicked himself. Diane wore white shorts and a oversize blue cotton top that would gradually slide off her left shoulder until, when it was bare, she’d pull it up and the erosion began again. Her plate was covered with toast crumbs. The room was already hot from the morning sun and pungent with the smell of brewed coffee.

“Quieres cafe con leche?” Cuco asked from the stove. He shook a tall tin pot at me.

“Yes, thank you,” I said.

Cuco put the espresso maker on top of a low flame. He poured milk into a saucepan and lit another burner to heat it.

“The coffee is incredibly good,” Diane said.

“Cuban coffee puts hair on your teeth,” my father answered.

“Good morning,” I said in his and my grandfather’s direction.

Neither answered. Francisco raised a coffee mug to his lips and sipped. Pepín looked through me.

Diane filled the silence before it widened too much. “So what’s our schedule?”

“We have to leave in fifteen or twenty minutes,” Francisco said. He stood up carefully, taking his father’s hands off him and holding one of them to maneuver him gently out of the way. “Speaking of hair I’d better brush mine. And comb my teeth too. We don’t want these gringos to think we’re white trash,” he said to Pepín. He seemed to notice something. “Don’t button this,” he said, unfastening Grandpa’s collar. “You’re not wearing a tie.”

“I’m cold,” Grandpa said in Spanish and redid the button.

“You’re cold!” Francisco answered him in Spanish. “Man, it’s already seventy. And the sky’s clear. By noon, it’s going to be eighty, eighty-five.” He reached for Pepín’s collar.

Grandpa slapped at his son’s hands. “It’s air-conditioned in those places,” he said.

Francisco gave up good-naturedly, patting Pepín on the side of his shoulder. “How do you know, old man?”

“Those crackers air-condition everything.”

“And they’re right. I’m sick of the tropics. You can’t think in the heat.” He said to Diane in English, “It’s too hot down here, that’s what we’re saying. The brain doesn’t work.”

“Oh, I love it,” Diane said. “I’m sick of it being winter.”

“Winters in New York,” Francisco declaimed, looking up, arms spreading, like a hero in a Broadway musical about to transpose into song. “Beautiful women in long coats.” He smiled at her as if she were one of them. “And that air! There’s nothing like taking a deep breath on Fifth Avenue on a cold February night. Clears all the junk out of your head.”

“You’ve been away a long time,” Diane said. “Now the air is polluted.”

“It was always polluted. Wonderfully full of pollution.” Diane laughed. “Really,” he assured her. “There are ideas in that air. It even makes the stupid people think. They don’t think great thoughts, but at least they think. Down here, and in Cuba, when it gets too hot, everybody sits around stupefied, sweating their brains out. You can’t have a serious conversation in Havana until the sun sets. And in Tampa! It’s too humid. Even at night, it’s impossible.”

“Don’t say that to her!” Pepín slapped Francisco’s back, but feebly, hand trembling. “This is a good place to live. Of course she likes our weather. Nobody wants to be cold.”

“Don’t get agitated,” Francisco said in Spanish. “I’m not serious.”

“You sound serious,” Pepín complained. His mouth quivered as if he were going to cry. He switched to English and insisted to Diane, “Many people like to visit Tampa. They put up a new building almost every day. And we may get a baseball team,” he added to Cuco. “People love to come here,” he said to me.

“Of course,” I said. “Diane and I will come every winter to escape the cold.”

This earned me a stare from my father, the first look that acknowledged I was in the room.

“That’s right,” Pepín said. His trembling hands went to his already buttoned collar, ready to button it again. “You can come for Noche Buena and stay through New Year’s. Make a good vacation.” He looked down, confused that he couldn’t button the collar. “Ah,” he said and added in Spanish: “It’s buttoned.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “That’s what we’ll do.”

“Great,” my father said as he moved to leave the room. “Why don’t you make your reservations now?”

Diane reached for him. “Wait.”

Francisco paused at the doorway.

“Is it all right if I dress this casually?’”

Francisco stepped to her, bent over, and kissed her on the forehead. “You’re lovely. Don’t worry, they won’t mistake you for a peasant. They’ll know they’re dealing with a superior person.” He moved off, out of the room, saying, “But us Latinos, we’d better put on the dog.”

Cuco poured the heated milk and espresso in a large mug for me. Pepín continued to stand in the middle of the room and look at nothing, his hands worried and worrying at his clothes, touching his cuffs, pulling at the ironed crease of his pants, feeling his collar. At one point he undid his belt buckle, stared at the separated pieces, then refastened them. He smiled afterwards and commented in Spanish, “It’s hot, no?”

By then Cuco had left to dress and Diane and I were talking in whispers. We had tried to engage Grandpa in conversation, but he seemed not to hear our questions, and that was the first time he had spoken on his own. “Do you want to open your collar?” I asked.

“My collar?” A hand went to his throat. His fingers pressed all around the top button and he frowned.

I stood up. “Should I undo it?”

“No, no,” he backed away, turning toward the barred window, a hand guarding his throat. “No,” he said once more, softer, sadly.

I sat down. Diane held my hand. “Your father’s very charming,” she said.

“I told you.”

“And he’s very handsome.”

“I can’t believe he’s seventy-four.”

She squeezed my hand. “You look like him, you know. Very much like him.”

“That must stick in his craw.”

“No …” Diane was disappointed. “He must like it.”

“Makes it harder to deny me.” Pepín tapped me on the shoulder. “Yes, Grandpa?”

He spoke in English. “This is no problem. Don’t worry about it. It will be no problem.”

“I won’t,” I said. He patted my shoulder and winked. “What shouldn’t I worry about?”

“Today! Don’t you remember the appointment?”

“Oh, yes. I’m not worried,” I assured him.

“Good. Because there’s nothing to worry about.”

Cuco appeared, dressed in what appeared to be brand-new chinos and a white dress shirt, also with no tie. “We must go. Papá’s bringing the car out of the garage.”

That was the first time I heard Cuco refer to my father as Papá, his natural address for Francisco. I envied him and had to push down a swell of resentment. Perhaps that was why, when we went outside to find Francisco behind the wheel of Pepín’s white Buick, I walked to the driver’s window and leaned in to ask him, “Do you have a valid license to drive in America?”