Oscar Casares Page 14

  “We need to talk,” he told her that night.

  “¿De qué?”

  “About what you do at the doctor’s office.”

  “Did you see all I learned how to do?”

  “I saw it. You do this with everybody who comes in?”

  “Only when they get busy and they need me.”

  “And to the men?”

  “Sometimes. I don’t choose the patients. They just say, ‘Mrs. Perez, we need you here, Mrs. Perez, we need you over there.’”

  “It don’t matter what they say. I don’t want you doing that anymore.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I don’t want my wife walking around with bottles of you know what.”

  “It’s called a urine sample.”

  “It’s called meados where I come from.”

  “Ay, you’re being crazy now.”

  “Some man sticks it in that glass bottle, makes his chorro, and then my wife walks around the office like she’s carrying a glass of lemonade. And you think I’m the crazy one?”

  “Agustin, por favor.”

  “No, Lola, you’re going to stop all of that ahorita mero.”

  “I can’t stop my job.”

  “Yes, you can. You just tell them tomorrow morning that you’re not going to touch any more bottles with meados. If they don’t like it, tell them I said to call your husband. I’ll explain it to them real clear.”

  She never told them anything and instead quit at the end of the week. When Vangie asked her why, she said her family needed her.

  After she stopped working at the office, Lola saw Vangie only when she or one of her girls was sick. She always stayed a little longer at the office on those visits. Vangie would invite her out to lunch or coffee, and Lola would say she’d call one of these days, but then she never would. Lola might not have seen her again if Vangie hadn’t come to offer her condolences at Agustin’s Rosary. When Lola looked up from her pew, she realized that the woman standing in front of her was the last friend she could remember having made in more than ten years. They held each other and Lola cried on her shoulder, some for Agustin, but also because the scent of cigarette smoke on Vangie’s sweater reminded her of what she had walked away from.

  Lola and Vangie finally went out for the lunches they’d been talking about for years. Usually, they went to Luby’s on Saturdays. They both liked the cafeteria selection and they could stay as long as they wanted to. Vangie was always introducing Lola to her bowling friends she’d see at the restaurant. She and her husband, Beto, were on a men’s and women’s league that played every Wednesday night. When Vangie would introduce her as Lola, and not Mrs. Perez, it felt as if she were trying to pass for someone she’d met once many years earlier. It took some convincing for Lola to finally accept Vangie’s invitation to come watch her bowl. She sat at a table on the upper level, so she could see all thirty lanes at once. Half the lanes were reserved for league play and half were for regular play. The bowling alley was louder than she ever imagined it would be. She found a new world in the thunder of the smashing pins, the musical notes coming from the pinball machines, the laughter of kids running around tables, the mournful sound of Freddy Fender’s voice on the jukebox, the click-clack-click of the Foosball, and the crackling intercom that told everyone Cande’s nachos were ready and getting cold.

  She saw some of the same women Vangie had introduced her to at lunch, and now they came up between games and introduced her to their friends. There was an Alice and a Dora and a Linda and an Edith and a Dolly and a Terri, and so many others that she couldn’t remember who was who. No, she’d never bowled, she kept having to tell all these new people. They looked at her as if she had told them she’d never been with a man.

  “Do you want to try it?” Vangie asked her after the league play ended.

  “Ay, no.” Lola waved her away.

  “Why?”

  “Ya estoy muy vieja, Vangie.”

  “Lola, you’re only two years older than me.”

  “Yeah, but you…”

  “Come on, I’ll show you how. You can quit if you don’t like it.”

  Vangie pulled her out of her seat and brought her down to the floor. Lola stood next to Vangie and followed her motions. It was one, two, three, four steps and release the ball. Vangie held Lola’s left hand and showed her how far back to swing her arm. All she had to do was aim for the little arrows on the floor. Holding Vangie’s ball made her feel as if she were somehow being disloyal to Agustin, worse than if she had been carrying another man’s urine in a glass bottle. Lola knocked down nine pins with her first throw. She picked up the spare on her second throw, and as fast as the number seven pin slammed into the back panel, she was hooked. She had strikes on her fifth and eighth frames. A month later she joined the Rio Grande Valley Women’s League and played for De Luna Lumber Supply. On the back of her team shirt a giant hammer came smashing down on ten bowling pins that were running away with horror on their faces.

  Lola had started bowling with a fourteen-pound ball she bought at the local pro shop. It was a plain black rubber ball that cost her $40. She still remembered how they took special care measuring her fingers for the holes and how it felt as if she were being fitted for an expensive piece of jewelry. She was happy now that she’d stored her old ball in the cuartito, next to the washer and dryer. This was the ball she’d be using for league play that night.

  She spent the afternoon cleaning up the house and putting everything back in its place. Time passed quickly, until she got distracted looking at the old photos in the hatbox. Some of the pictures were more than forty years old. She found one taken in April 1947, when she and Agustin were honeymooning in Monterrey. They had spent the afternoon making love in their hotel room and that evening decided to go for a stroll. In the distance, they spotted an old man struggling to carry his large camera stand through the jardín. Lola waited while Agustin haggled with the photographer for twenty minutes. Agustin had offered him half the standard price. The old man kept saying it was unjust that he would be making only a few pesos for his services. His family had to eat, too. Agustin told him he would be making even less if he continued to be so terco about his price. Lola tried to help by saying she’d put in the extra pesos, but Agustin hushed her and said he would handle it. When he grabbed Lola’s hand so they could walk away, the old man gave in. Agustin squeezed her hand and smiled to let her know he’d been planning it that way all along. In the photo, the newlyweds stood with their backs to a lit water fountain. Lola held a bouquet of flowers that Agustin had borrowed from a young man whose girlfriend hadn’t shown up yet. Agustin gripped his new bride around her slender waist. She wore the nervous smile of a young woman who has just realized that she’s boarded the wrong train.

  Lola arrived at the bowling alley earlier than usual. She wanted to get comfortable with the old ball before everyone showed up. The manager was working behind the counter, and after he heard what happened, he let her borrow a pair of shoes on the house. She stopped by the pro shop and bought the same kind of wrist brace she had before. It took only a few frames for her to find her rhythm with the ball. The lanes had been conditioned that morning for the beginning of league play. She bowled a 174 on her first practice game.

  Word spread quickly about Lola’s cherry red ball. It seemed that she spent half the night answering questions about the break-in. She was having a hard time concentrating on her game. The loss of her ball sank in when her friends said how sorry they were about what had happened. The other ladies on the De Luna team were expecting her to score high for them. For most of the women, this was a social hour, a time to leave their husbands with the kids and go out with the girls. There was always talk going back and forth among the different teams. Lola joined in when they were just sitting around, but during the game she played to win.

  She managed to pull it together in the second game and started knocking down some strikes. Between frames she kept to herself and let her teammates chat with one
another. She thought about the teenager. She saw him laughing at her on the other side of the fence. He was slouching with his pants hanging low since he never ate anything besides other people’s bananas. And he had a smirk on his face because he’d taken something that was hers and there was nothing an old woman could do about it. She put her anger into the release of the black ball. Her power rolled, spun, and hooked down sixty feet of maple wood until she found the perfect place to let out her frustration.

  Her last game was her best. The bowling alley grew quiet each time she lined up with the ball. She had strikes in the first, second, and fourth frames. By then she’d forgotten about the teenager. She still wanted her ball back. It was hers and she’d paid enough for it, but she also knew it was just a ball. The important thing was that she was bowling a little better now. The ball hooked as if it were being pulled along a wire that extended from the foul line to the pocket. It was only the first week of the league, but she played as though it were the last. She had a strike on the tenth frame. On the bonus frame, she split the seven and ten pins and barely missed picking up the spare. Her final score was a 244. De Luna held on to second place, just behind Fernie’s Pest Control.

  Lola and Vangie stayed to have some beers with the rest of the team. One of the ladies commented that Lola must be color-blind because she had scored almost as many strikes with her black ball as she had with the cherry red one. The rest of the ladies laughed. Lola smiled, but she worried about how long it would take to really get her game back. She spent the next few weeks practicing and playing in the league. Afterward, she’d linger in front of the pro shop and gaze at the new bowling balls inside the glass case. At home she had several dog-eared catalogs with the latest models, but she couldn’t make up her mind which, if any, to buy, so she decided to wait.

  Two months passed before Lola regained her old form. It happened one night during league play when she scored a 284, a personal best. The black ball seemed to find a groove on the lane, and the strikes and spares just kept coming. Vangie and the other ladies stayed to have a beer after the last game, but Lola said she was tired. Next time, she told them. Lola drove down International and stared past the occasional headlights on the road. She thought about how well she had bowled that night and how her game had improved over the past few weeks. She felt that maybe she should’ve stayed for one beer. Her friends would be at the bowling alley for a while. Lola considered turning the car around, but she was already close to home. She decided instead to stop at the Jiffy-Mart to buy a six-pack. There were so many beers to choose from; she spent a few minutes opening and closing the refrigerator doors until she picked up a six-pack of Pearl Light. She walked to the counter with her fingers looped through the plastic ring holder. It took a while to get the clerk’s attention because he was watching a boxing match on a mini-TV. “¡Chíngatelo!” he yelled from his wooden stool. She had to wait for the end of the round to buy her beer.

  Lola placed the six-pack in the front seat of the car and pulled out of the parking lot. She had driven less than a block when she thought she saw the teenager walking in the direction of the store. Even in the dark, she recognized him walking the same cocky way he had in the alley with her bowling bag.

  Lola turned the car around and drove back to the Jiffy-Mart. The teenager was about to reach the entrance when she stepped in front him. Her shoulders were back and her chin was up, but he was still a foot taller. She grabbed him by the shoulder and was surprised at the strength she felt in his arm.

  “I want my ball.”

  “What are you talking about, grandma?”

  “Tú fuiste. You stole it from my house. I saw you. I remember.”

  “You didn’t see nothing, okay?” He yanked his arm back and leaned into Lola’s face, close enough to kiss her. “And if you’re smart, you’ll keep your mouth shut.”

  His eyes were glassy and he smelled like the solution they used to condition the lanes.

  “Give me back my ball.”

  “Shit, I already told you, I don’t have your ball.”

  “Did you sell it?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know nothing about nothing.”

  “Le voy a hablar a la policía.”

  “And what? You want me to get all scared? Call them, there’s the pay phone. I’ll be cruising before they even get here.”

  “Just give me my ball.”

  “You’re crazy, grandma.” He shoved her aside and walked into the store.

  Lola walked back to her car. From behind the steering wheel, she could see him standing at the back of the store, flipping through a magazine. He looked up between pages to see if she’d picked up the phone. All she wanted was her ball. If he gave it back, she wouldn’t even report him. She thought about calling from her house, but she knew he’d be gone by the time the police arrived. She wished she’d never stopped at the store or seen the teenager walking down the dark street. Now she couldn’t turn away. She couldn’t let him walk away a second time. Her only chance was to call from the store’s pay phone.

  She opened the trunk of the car and unzipped her bag. She slipped on her wrist brace and pulled it snug around the palm of her hand. As she walked into the store, the black ball felt as if it were a part of her arm. The clerk was still shouting for his boxer to knock out the other guy. “¡Chíngatelo!” he kept yelling. The teenager stood at the end of the long aisle. He was laughing at something he’d seen in the magazine. Lola stepped back as far as she could. The tiles on the floor were white with tiny specks of red and green. The aisle was wider than a bowling lane. She locked her gaze on the teenager. She concentrated as she took her one, two, three, four steps and released the black ball down the aisle. The rumble started low and grew louder with each second. The ball stayed centered as it shot past the shelves of dishwashing liquid, detergent, oven cleaners, aluminum foil, diapers, pacifiers, formula mix, aspirin, cough syrup, cold and flu medicine, and then found its target: Strike!

  Acknowledgments

  Where would I be without you?

  My father taught me how to work. My mother gave me faith. My big sister, Sylvia, and my cuñado, Jones, backed me up. Toni and Idoluis guided me with sound advice. Cindy walked with me one cold February morning in New York. Others called just to remind me I still had family and friends: Noel, Stephanie, David, Jason, Rene, Celeste, Nick, Scotty, DVH, and Jaime. Tío Nico inspired me to find my own stories. Tío Hector held the floor in our living room. Don Américo Paredes set the record straight and cleared a trail for the rest of us. Dago answered my letter and started me down this road. Dorothy Barnett read week after week and believed. David Rice agreed to look at this stranger’s work. My tíos from Bel-ton, Missouri, Imelda and Milton, stood in as my second parents. Matt, Josh, Jarod, and José listened while I first told some of these stories at Joe’s Place. Victor Garcia and Tony Zavaleta filled in the details when my memory couldn’t. El señor Garrido me dio las palabras. Lisa Marie spread the word to anyone who would stand still long enough. TZ sacrificed part of his honeymoon. Los Garcias y los Sassers opened their homes to me. Dylan and Flaco waited patiently for me to stop typing. Richard Abate never stopped asking if he could see the manuscript. Reagan Arthur and everyone at Little, Brown followed me home to Brownsville. And Cristal showed me the good that comes from love and patience.

  A Note on the Type

  The text of this book was set in Sabon, a typeface designed by Jan Tschichold (1902-74), a book designer and calligrapher, in the mid-1960s. Although he was a modernist and advocate of the Bauhaus style, his work as a book designer led him to create Sabon based on the early-sixteenth-century types of Claude Garamond. This classic and elegant typeface is now one of the most widely used in book design for its beauty and legibility.

  The display type of this book is set in Weiss, designed by Emil Weiss (1875-1943), another book designer, in 1931. Weiss studied and admired the work of the classic type designers but was able to design and cut fonts for the then new technology of mechanically s
et type, making his work classic yet fresh and contemporary-looking.