Cuba 15 Read online

  “But then there won’t be so many arguments. It’ll be a package deal.” I desperately wanted out of the decision-making game. I might have pulled off my coup the night before at the kitchen table, but I knew my powers would fade when it came down to the nitty-gritty. And I understood one thing: This quinceañero had to make me look good because, what with the pictures and all, people were going to remember it for a long time.

  “We’ll check into it. Now, what about your theme?”

  The Janus masks had inspired me. “How about ‘All the World’s a Stage’? Since I’m going to be in the spotlight.”

  She considered. “I love it!” she said, smiling. “We can get a real spotlight.”

  “And hundreds of little tiny white Christmas lights, hanging from the ceiling.”

  “And one of those disco balls.”

  “Easy, Mom. Elegant. Think elegant.” I’d have to watch like a hawk to keep her and the others in line. “We need a new notebook for the party plans,” I said. “And a better calendar. The book says you’ve got to keep it all in one place. ‘One places,’ it says.”

  “Party Central.” Mom nodded. “I’ll look for something at the drugstore today.”

  Mom drove Leda and me to school for our meeting on her way to the store. Janell came straight from ballet class. She met us, still in her layered dance clothes, in Room C206, home of the Tri-Dist speech team. The jaundiced walls of the oversized room whispered with anticipation. Older kids, juniors and seniors whom I didn’t know, leapt among the tiered desks, reciting lines and high-fiving their friends. I suddenly wanted to be one of them.

  Leda, demure today in an Indian cotton shirt and jeans, rolled her eyes at me. “Puh-lease,” she said. “Is this Overacting 101?”

  I pretended to swoon. “Intro to Melodrama.” But inside, I was salivating.

  A sophomore named Gina, whom I knew from gym period, smiled my way and passed us some handouts headlined COMPETITION CHOICES. Janell, her sleek cap of dark brown hair pinned up in a facsimile of a bun, scanned the page and frowned. “This stuff all looks okay to me. Why do I have to be the one to do poetry?”

  “Ask not for whom the bell tolls . . . ,” cracked Leda in a quavery voice.

  “Hey, look, Janell.” I waved my copy of the handout at her. “It says choices.”

  “Tell that to The Ax,” she said.

  Leda patted her shoulder. “Maybe I can talk to him for you. Get you into . . . Extemporaneous Speaking. Or how about this one: Radio? Don’t worry. I’ve got some clout.”

  Janell and I exchanged looks. Funny, she probably did have some clout. Leda always managed to slither her way behind the scenes.

  Now Ms. Joyner stood on the practice stage down front. “People! People, let’s get started. I do have a life, let’s get on with the show.” Kids scrambled for seats. “I’m Tracy Joyner. And this is John Soloman,” she said, introducing a short, slightly pudgy teacher with a ruddy face, bowl hair-cut, and brown plastic-rimmed glasses that masked his eyes.

  “Where’s The Ax?” I wondered aloud.

  A tall, quiet-looking guy in a Michael Jordan T-shirt and shorts a couple of seats over caught my eye. Softly he said, “Mr. Axelrod—he never comes down for this kind of thing.”

  I shrugged at him.

  Then the house lights, the fluorescents in the ceiling fixtures that resembled giant ice cube trays, dimmed. A single spot came up on Ms. Joyner. Her pause filled the atmosphere, and she made eye contact with her audience. “Welcome, speechies,” she said powerfully. “You are all here because you have talent.”

  Leda jabbed me in the ribs with an extra-bony elbow.

  Ms. Joyner went on. “I am glad to see so many familiar faces. Most of you already know how speech competition works. For the rest of you, this will be an introduction to the different individual events. We’ll talk about selecting material and competing in tournaments at another time.” She hesitated and stared past us, out over our heads. “Rick? Do you have anything to add?”

  That had to be The Ax. But if he wasn’t down here, where was he?

  The puffy sound that comes from someone touching a live microphone punctuated the air. Overriding the static in an invisible sound system, a deep, none-too-jovial voice boomed: “Ladies and gentlemen, some statistics: We have among us five graduating seniors, four experienced juniors, and several promising new members. This is the year we take State! But—” He arrested a hurrah.

  Everyone sat motionless on the edge of their seats. You could’ve heard a butterfly hiccup.

  “Remember, we have only two rules on this team: Practice like crazy. And kick ass!”

  The room erupted into well-enunciated cheers.

  This, I thought, was going to be interesting.

  8

  Rick Axelrod, department head by day, legendary speech coach by night (and weekends), likes to direct team meetings and practice sessions from the lighting booth, where junior techies learn to run lights and sound for theater productions. This gives The Ax absolute authority, or so Clarence Williams, the soft-spoken guy who’d answered me before, told me as Ms. Joyner tried to restore peace to the room by threatening us with a prop saber.

  Clarence didn’t seem to mind Mr. Axelrod’s arrogance. “The truth is,” he said, sliding into the empty seat next to me, “The Ax is the greatest coach this district—and maybe the state—has ever known. You’ll see,” he added, caramel-colored eyes reflecting an inner grin. I studied him further. His buzz-cut hair was dusty brown, and black-rimmed glasses framed an angular face with a deep bronze cast.

  I smiled back.

  Ms. Joyner menaced us one last time with the rubber sword, and the house lights went out.

  In the darkness, the disembodied voice of The Ax called over the mike: “Zeno Clark. Dramatic Interpretation. You’re on.”

  The stage spot came up on a lone male, one Zeno Clark, presumably. His straight brown hair tapered to his shoulders, and his slim frame swam in loose jeans and an oversized T-shirt. He placed his hands behind his back in a practiced manner and hung his head.

  Was this some kind of punishment? For him, or for us?

  Slowly, he raised his head and met the audience with his eyes. Any awkwardness vanished. Zeno Clark, or whoever he was now, exuded what could only be described as a presence.

  His gaze slid to a point somewhere above our heads and then he began, in character, “ ‘In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.’ ” He cocked his head and shifted his focus to another point in space. A half octave lower, he said, “ ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.’ ”

  Zeno returned to the first voice. “ ‘In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments.’ ”

  He paused.

  “ ‘Only Gatsby was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby,’ ” he said with a sudden, visceral bitterness, “ ‘who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.

  “ ‘But there was something gorgeous about him,’ ” the character admitted. “ ‘His was an extraordinary gift for hope,’ ” and here Zeno’s voice quivered, “ ‘a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.

  “ ‘No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end.’ ” Zeno flashed his eyes. “ ‘It is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams . . .’ ” He slowly dropped his head to his chest for a moment, before falling out of character and regaining his own body posture.

  “What preyed on Gatsby,” said Zeno more intimately, making eye contact with us again, “was the past. In this dramatic interpretation, narrator Nick Carraway observes one man’s futile attempt to recapture the glory of youth and love in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

  Zeno repeated the transformation and went on, in the voice of Nick Carraway, about his neighbor Jay G
atsby, a rich man obsessed with reclaiming his old love, Nick’s cousin Daisy. When a new character spoke, Zeno shifted his weight, changed his tone, and moved his gaze to a different spot in the darkened room.

  I felt like a theatergoing Jonah swallowed by the whale—the story engulfed me.

  Nick said, “ ‘Gatsby wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: “I never loved you.” I said to him, “I wouldn’t ask too much of her. You can’t repeat the past.” ’ ”

  Gatsby answered, incredulous: “ ‘Can’t repeat the past? Of course you can!’ ”

  For some reason, I found myself thinking of Abuela.

  The whole audience knew it was never going to work. After Gatsby’s inevitable downfall, Nick found himself caught up in the same trap. “ ‘So we beat on,’ ” Nick said, arms outstretched, “ ‘boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’ ”

  Zeno dropped his eyes and placed his hands behind his back, and the stage went black.

  Two things were true when the house lights came back up to applause: I was thoroughly, with every cell of my body and every deep well of my soul, in love with Jay Gatsby, Zeno Clark, and the theater. Also, Clarence Williams was looking at me.

  On my right, Leda and Janell were talking to someone else they knew, expressing the awesomeness of Zeno’s performance. I slid my eyes back at Clarence, who still looked at me with that knowing smile, waiting. “Well?” he demanded, as if he had coached Zeno himself.

  “In-incredible,” I sputtered.

  Clarence nodded smugly. “He took State last year in Dramatic Interp, only a junior. The Ax was his coach.”

  I whistled in awe. This got Leda’s and Janell’s attention, and I introduced them to Clarence.

  “You know an awful lot about the team,” I said to him. “Are you a senior?”

  He smiled modestly and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Hardly. I’m a freshman. All my brothers were Extempers. I tagged along for years. I feel like I practically own the event.”

  “Brothers, eh?” said Leda.

  Janell looked impressed. “Extemporaneous Speaking— that’s the toughest, I heard. Don’t you just make speeches up on the spot, in front of the judges?”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Clarence said. “We draw topics and then build an argument. You have to be up on history and current events. There’s lots of prep work.”

  Again, Ms. Joyner touchéed us from the stage with her fake sword, cutting off the conversation. “We have ten more events to get through, gang. Don’t make me commit hara-kiri!” She gave us the old impaled-through-the-armpit gag and turned the stage over to the next speaker.

  We made it through eleven performances, including one girl who read a radio newscast, complete with weather and advertisements, and one unlikely-looking pimply white guy who gave a burning rendition of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Then The Ax let us go.

  “You’ve each been assigned a coach,” Mr. Axelrod’s amplified voice informed us. “Check the bulletin board on your way out.”

  I’d been assigned the “humorous” coach, Mr. Soloman, with an appointment after school the following Wednesday. That was my piano lesson day. I caught up with Mr. Soloman on his way out and told him I’d have to switch times with somebody.

  “Who’s on first?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “No, What’s on second, Who’s on first!” He winked. “Gotcha!” He shook my hand and said we’d get started on Tuesday, then. “What topic do you want to write about?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I Don’t Know’s on third,” he said, and winked again. “See you Tuesday.”

  9

  I barely had time to finish all my homework that weekend. Saturday got kind of busy after dinner, when Dad and I trounced Mom and Abuelo in team dominoes after a lengthy match/rematch syndrome that nobody wanted to end. Abuela came out to kibitz during the commercials of the Spanish television miniseries she was watching, El Amor y Almuerzo.

  “Love and Lunch?” I said. “What kind of show is that?”

  Abuela scrunched up her face, cracking the thick whitish-pink lipstick she’d applied with a steamroller. “No love and lunch,” she said. She began to try to explain, then shook her head. “These things, they do not translate literal-mente.”

  And Sunday we all drove to the old neighborhood to go to twelve o’clock Mass. This seemed to take all day, because Abuela and Abuelo stopped to chat with a few hundred of their old friends out on the church steps afterward.

  St. Ignacio’s is nothing like St. Edna’s, our sleek, modern church in the suburbs. At St. Edna’s, the furnishings are so spare that the stations of the cross look like the universal symbols on rest rooms and road signs. St. Ignacio’s, on the other hand, was built a hundred years ago, when Catholics still believed in pumping up the decor to inspire the proper state of awe.

  The building itself is made of huge limestone blocks set stories high, broken by vaulted archways of heavy honey-colored wood at every door and window. Wide concrete stairs frame the church on all sides, and an old-fashioned copper-tipped steeple, the metal long gone to sea green, tops it off. Tiny first-floor windows shine a deep amber, etched in a crisscross pattern, and a rainbow of stained glass forms starburst designs around ornamental crucifixes in the large panes overhead. Personally, I wouldn’t mind visiting St. Ignacio’s more than just a couple of times a year.

  Inside, hundreds of votive candles flicker from orange glass holders in little alcoves set with kneelers. Rows of maple pews face a high stage that houses the altar and organ. The loft above them holds a choir balcony. The way it’s cut out of the wall reminds me of a puppet theater. St. Edna’s doesn’t have a stage for its altar, much less a loft, choir, or puppet theater. We are supposed to focus on the priest, and therefore on God. I couldn’t help thinking that if God had a flair for the dramatic, as all accounts suggested, he’d probably like St. Ignacio’s better.

  Out on the steps, my brother, Mark, practiced his pitching windup while I trailed after Mom and Dad, who were saying hello to people they knew. A man about Dad’s age, huskier and with more dark hair, approached, shook Dad’s hand, then grabbed him in a bear hug.

  “Berto Paz, ¿cómo estás? ”

  “Quién . . . Rudi? Rudi García, is that you?”

  They danced around a minute; then the man released my father. “This is Rudi García, everybody. Diane, Violet,” he presented us. “Mark,” he said uncertainly, looking over a shoulder; then he spied Mark’s blue Cubs hat a ways away and pointed him out. “Rudi and I grew up on the same block. He moved away when we were teenagers. What are you doing back in the old neighborhood, amigo?”

  “You know what? I got tired of L.A. It’s no place to raise four daughters. Too many movie stars, no?” Rudi smiled, his round cheeks pushing laughter right up into his dark brown eyes. “So this is your Violet,” he said. “I hear you are making your quinceañero . Congratulations!” To Dad and Mom, he said, “You must be very proud.”

  “Proud?” Dad’s olive skin ripened a shade, and he tried to cover with a goofy smile.

  Mom came to the rescue. “Oh, we are very proud. Violet turned fifteen this month, but the celebration is in May. You’ll come, won’t you? And bring your family.”

  Rudi nodded. He clapped a hand on Dad’s shoulder. “Put me down for some of the refreshments, amiguito. Send me a bill.” He leaned over to give Mom and me a kiss on the cheek. “It was nice meeting you! Call me sometime, Berto.” They shook hands again, and he left.

  “You and Rudi grew up together, huh, Dad?” I said. Why was that so hard to picture? “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  My father did some inner calculation. “Oh, it’s been at least twenty, twenty-five years. That Rudi! You know what he did one time . . . ?”

  I wasn’t listening. A guy my dad hadn’t seen in twenty years had just offered to pay for refreshments at my party. That was lik
e signing your paycheck over to someone you met at the bus stop who’d been kind enough to tell you your bus had gone by. Who was that generous?

  Rudi García, obviously. Mom was already making a note on the back of the church bulletin with one of the dozen Chestnut Oaks Golf Course pencils she carried in her purse. “Give this to your abuela, Violet,” she said. Abuela was keeping track of sponsors for the party. “And tell her it’s time to go!”

  We drove by White Castle for lunch on our way home, where Mark made a pig of himself as usual, ordering a whole dozen Slyders but eating only nine and a half. We finished the leftovers in the car.

  “Ay, I am going to miss the White Castillo,” Abuelo declared sadly, crossing his arms over his peach-colored guayabera. He’d be going home in a week or so, and the hamburger chain didn’t operate in Miami.

  “We’ll send you some frozen ones, don’t worry,” Mom said.

  At that, Abuelo displayed several octaves of teeth and practiced a drumroll on his knees. I would miss him when he went home.

  I changed into jeans and watched the end of a late-season Cubs game on TV with Mark (Cubs beat the stinky Mets at Wrigley, 5–3). Then I helped Abuela make Cuban chicken salad for a light dinner. She always lets me decorate the top with baby peas and pimientos. Maybe I’m getting too old for that, but there’s something satisfying about making art out of vegetables. That’s why the guy who invented Mr. Potato Head did so well, no doubt.

  After dinner, which we all picked at, someone said the word domino, and I saw a blood lust surface in Dad’s eyes.

  Mom squinted and returned his gaze. “Rematch?”

  Abuelo was already jingling the change in his pocket for dimes (he can find them without looking), and Abuela rubbed her manicured hands together greedily.

  “Count me in!” I said. “Do you have any dimes, Mom?”

  “Not for you, young lady. These dishes need to be washed, and then homework.”

  “Dishes? But what about Mark . . . ?”