The Life and Times of Benny Alvarez (3 page)

Grandpa

W
hen I get home, my father's finishing up laundry. He seems distracted, so I know he's been working on his book about the stock market crash of 2008. I should say he's
rewriting
the book, because every time he sends it to a publisher, they tell him it's “too general.”

“If I hear that one more time,” he says, “I'm going to blow up something.” You might think someone who talks like this is pretty crazy, but he exaggerates on purpose to jerk people around.

My mother would say this rant is a “negative response to rejection.” But she's not saying anything right now, because she's at work. She's a hospital administrator. I'm not sure what she does, but that hospital must be the most positive one in Providence. I imagine nurses sticking smiley-face decals onto your head as they wheel you into the operating room.

“Where's Crash?” I ask, watching Dad empty the dryer.

“Up in his room.”

“What for?”

“For shooting off his mouth.”

“Boy, is he having a bad day.”

“The whole world's having a bad day, Benny.”

I let that one go. “Can I help?” I ask.

“With the world?”

“No, with the laundry.”

“You don't think it's feminine to do housework?”

“Huh?”

“That's what Jocko or whatever-his-name-is-this-month said.”

I try to place that conversation but can't.

“You were on the back porch talking about your English teacher again.”

Now I recall Jocko saying something about my father being like a mom.

“You got Jocko wrong, Dad. He thinks it's cool you're home and that I have an older dad.”

“He won't feel that way when I'm dead before you even get to college. You know, three out of my five best friends have bitten the dust.” He makes this point quite frequently, which annoys my mother, who's thirteen years younger than him. She thinks this kind of talk scares Crash, who has obviously demolished the mood of the house today. I often wonder whether he'd be different if my parents had called him Jay or Asher, since both those names mean “happy” in other languages.

“You'll live forever, Dad,” I say.

He can always detect a fake positive response, so he ignores me. “Look,” he says, “I'm going to finish this pile. Then we're taking your grandfather putting. He's not doing too well.”

“You want me to get our clubs?” I say.

“Whatever you do, don't forget Crash's putter or we'll have to sedate him.”

Ten minutes later, we're on the road to my grandfather's house in East Providence. It's a pretty uneventful ride. Crash seems exhausted by eight hours of his own orneriness, and my father doesn't discover any rich CEOs or incompetent drivers to yell at.

When we pull up to the house, my grandfather is sitting on the front porch, holding his putter between his legs. It's October but warm, so he's wearing tan shorts and a striped polo shirt, along with golf shoes and his blue Navy PT Boat hat, whose headband is stained white with sweat. Strands of gray hair fall to his neck, and his arms and legs are spotted with different shades of brown moles, which my father says are the result of years of playing golf and being a mailman.

“Hi, Dad,” my father says.

“Hi, Grandpa,” Crash and I chime in. My grandfather's about the only person Crash seems happy around.

“That woman,” my grandfather says, pointing behind him. His eyes, sky blue, seem agitated.

“That woman” is Gloria, my grandfather's second wife. He's been married to her for about thirty years, and all they do is fight.

“Two marriages,” he says, “and I couldn't get it right. Boy, did you luck out with Marjorie.” He has a little trouble standing, so my father helps him.

“It's Margaret, Dad.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

After the second stroke, my grandfather dodged paralysis, but he has trouble with names and can't make sense of words when he tries to read, which ticks him off. But he can still putt a ball around the practice green at Firefly, the par-three course where my father works.

“I'm going to whip you guys today,” he says.

“If you can stand that long,” Crash says.

Crash can get away with being a wise guy to my grandfather.

“What a mouth on that kid,” my grandfather says, laughing. “A real Alvarez. What's his name again?” And then the words get jumbled up. “Cramp? Crap?”

“It's Crap, Grandpa,” I say, my father scowling at me. And that's what he calls Crash for the rest of the day, with no one correcting him. Even Crash gives him a pass, knowing my grandfather's hearing a different word than the one coming out of his mouth.

“Well, let's get rolling,” he says. “Let's get the show on the road. Let's kick some butt.”

“Let's get you some socks first,” my father says.

Crash and I look at my grandfather's feet, and sure enough, they're sockless. But he's not embarrassed, because he knows where to put the blame. “That woman,” he says again, pointing toward the house.

My father ignores him, goes into the house, and returns with a pair of white ankle socks. Gloria's standing behind him, smiling. It's almost four thirty, but she's still in her bathrobe. A black hairnet holds the bulk of her gray hair in place. “Have fun,” she says.

“Yeah, right,” my grandfather says.

“You're the love of my life,” she croons playfully, which makes us all laugh. Despite what my grandfather says, Gloria's okay, and she takes good care of him.

Before long, we're on the practice green at Firefly.

“One ball, one club,” my grandfather says, holding up his putter. He brought the long one. The top of the shaft touches his chest, so he doesn't have to bend over, just sway it back and forth like a pendulum. We actually don't have a chance against him, because he practices on his living-room rug about two hours a day, putting balls into the mouth of a Dixie cup, which is pretty difficult.

Even if we could beat him, my father and I would lose on purpose, but not Crash. One day, my father got lucky and was a stroke ahead of my grandfather until he messed up the next two putts on purpose. When I mentioned it to him later, Crash said, “Grandpa wouldn't want to win that way. He's no weak Sally.” A weak Sally is what Grandpa calls us when our putts come up short.

There are five holes on the practice green, and the idea is to play them twice, then add up our strokes. My grandfather decides how far away we should putt from by tossing a quarter behind his back. He gets really serious when he does this, like it's a ritual handed down from Alvarez to Alvarez since the beginning of Alvarez time.

Crash, with his little putter, almost beats him today, but his last putt goes four feet past the hole. He unintentionally lets slip a swear word, and my father says, “Totally unnecessary, Crash.” But then my grandfather's putt ends up short, and he says the same word, waddling over to Crash and placing his brown-spotted hand on Crash's shoulder. “Never up, never in,” he says, and Crash nods, smiling broadly. My father just shakes his head, and for a moment, I'm a little jealous of Crash, wanting my grandfather all to myself.

After golf, we go to McDonald's, and my grandfather abuses the counter people because they won't let him use his senior discount to pay for everyone's meal. He does this every week, so they're used to it. Then we take him home. Gloria's waiting at the front door in the same outfit, ready for round fifteen. She invites us in, but my father says my mother's expecting us for dinner.

On the way home, I apologize to Crash for letting the “Crap” thing go on. “You know Grandpa would've beaten up on himself if he knew he messed up your name.”

“Well, you could've gone with Cramp.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I admit.

“Is he losing it?” Crash asked.

“Strokes aren't like that,” my father says. “They mess up your wiring, so he has to try to retrain his brain, like he did the last time. Now even reading's been taken away from him.”

“Who took it away?” Crash asks.

“Fate,” I say. I'm not sure where that comes from, but my father seems to agree with me, while Crash probes the inside of his cheek with his tongue and nods, repeating his favorite phrase, “It's a dirty trick.”

“It is what it is,” my father says.

Moving Targets

I
t isn't unusual for my father to become more serious when talking about my grandfather. From what I've heard over the years, they butted heads most of their lives, and I guess my grandfather was pretty hard on him, especially when he was a teenager, which is hard to believe, considering how laid-back and jokey he is with me and Crash. Sometimes when the four of us are together, it's like we're all fighting for my grandfather's attention: my father probably trying to make up for those lost teenage years, and Crash and me jockeying to be top grandson. When we were much younger, at a birthday party for my grandfather, I remember us pushing and shoving to see who'd help him blow out the candles, my grandfather seeming to enjoy it all.

One day, shortly before his first stroke, he and I were hitting golf balls off a green mat into a stretch of black netting he had tacked across the back of his garage, and I surprised myself by asking if he liked Crash more than me. He moved the mat a few feet onto the driveway, so we wouldn't break a club on our upswings; then he teed up an old range ball.
Whack!
I heard, the ball's flight cut short by the net. He leaned on his driver with one hand and rubbed his chin with the other, saying, “What makes you think I like Crash better than you?”

“Maybe ‘better' isn't the right word, but you always cut him slack.”

“Crash acts like a tough guy,” he said, “but he's a gentle soul. That kind of Alvarez is born with a ‘Handle with Care' sign around his neck.”

I laughed. “Crash, a gentle soul?”

He teed up another ball and swung hard.
Whack!
“Your father was like Crash, Benny, and I made some mistakes there.”

“I've heard.”

He seemed taken aback by this confession. “Come here a second,” he said, placing another ball on the mat. “Let me see you swing.”

I grabbed a five iron and made a pass at the ball, following its low trajectory into the net.

“Take a shorter backswing,” he said. “That shot would've never made it over the water hole at Firefly.”

He was trying to distract me, but I wouldn't let him off the hook. “Are you proud of me, Grandpa?” I said.

He sighed deeply, then brushed some hair away from my eyes, as if admiring me. “Every day, Benny. You're our Golden Boy.”

“Golden Boy?”

He laughed, stepping away a few feet. “Oh, you're a pain-in-the-neck Alvarez, all right, but you have your mother's grit and heart.”

“That's not what I hear from everyone else.”

“Then you'll have to prove them wrong. But I trust my instincts. Just be yourself, Benny. The real trick is to be crafty, kind of like a boxer, learning when to punch and when to duck and dodge. As my father once said, ‘Trouble can't hit a moving target.'”

“Trouble, Grandpa?”

He didn't answer but instead asked for my five iron. “You need a stronger grip,” he said, positioning his hands around the top of the club's shaft to demonstrate. “See what I mean?”

I grabbed the club and followed his suggestion, happy to see the ball take flight toward the top of the net.

Aldo

M
y sister's looking nervous this morning. Aldo's picking her up for school, and he's not one of my father's favorite people. I think he wanted her first real boyfriend to be a clean-cut jock with a social conscience, but Aldo's got long, stringy black hair and looks like an undertaker: black jeans, black Converse low basketball shoes, a black T-shirt with the name of some rock group on front, and a black jean jacket. I read somewhere that Albert Einstein had seven of the same outfits hanging in his closet, one for every day of the week, so he could focus on the meaning of the universe instead of worrying if the green tie went with the brown sports coat. Likewise, I imagine Aldo's closet being a sea of black denim.

What really drives my father bonkers, though, is that Aldo has a yellow tattoo of Tweety Bird on his neck. My father would've hated any tattoo, but Tweety Bird? What the heck is that about? We're almost afraid to ask.

Surprisingly, Aldo's a good basketball player; actually, a great basketball player. He often shoots hoops with me, even though I make a point to frequently bust him because his cockiness rubs me the wrong way. Once, when I asked him why he didn't play for the school team, he proudly said, “Team sports suck. Coaches suck. Been there, done that.” The next time I saw him I said, “Did you mean ‘suck' as in ‘stinks' or ‘rots'?”

He smiled broadly, though it wasn't a friendly smile, more like one of those I'm-about-to-smack-your-punk-behind smiles. “I meant sucks as in sucks,” he said.

Ironically, Aldo's cockiness is the only reason my father tolerates him. Anyone who goes against the status quo is okay with him. But he still can't get past the tattoo. Also, the fact that Aldo is a drummer and lead vocalist in a band named the Cro-Magnons. You would've thought a guy who has a tattoo of Tweety Bird on his neck would've called his band the Flintstones, but Aldo told my parents they were looking for “something prehistoric, something primeval.” At the word “primeval,” my father's eyeballs widened about a quarter of an inch, and even my mother flinched. It was downhill for Aldo after that. If he had said “archaic” or “antediluvian” instead of “primeval,” my parents wouldn't have been so terrified for dear sweet Irene. But none of it mattered, anyway, because Aldo could've been a budding serial murderer and Irene would have turned him to the good side.

I'm actually feeling sorry for her today, as she's sitting nervously, waiting for Aldo to show. We have a wide-open kitchen attached to the family room. Irene's at the kitchen table, checking her watch, pretending to flip through the pages of a novel. My mother's emptying the dishwasher, and my father's on his leather recliner, reading the paper, so he can have a ringside seat when Aldo arrives. Crash is upstairs for hiding the TV's remote because my mother wouldn't let him watch a rerun of
Good Luck Charlie
.

When the doorbell rings, everyone freezes except for me and Spot, who's barking and attacking the screen door. I open it a crack, and Aldo says, “Is Irene home?”

“No,” I say. “She ran off with a Russian ballet dancer.”

“I thought it was a Bulgarian prince.”

“That was last week.”

Aldo smirks. “Well, tell her I'll have the car running.”

“I'm telling the truth this time,” I say.

He starts to walk to his car, an old black BMW with a sharp-toothed caveman painted on the hood. I have to admit, it's pretty cool. Suddenly, he turns and says, “Tell your father I miss him.”

Before I can reply, Irene's at the door with her backpack. “You're impossible,” she says, kissing me on the cheek, “but I love you.” Sometimes I wish she'd smack me or cut holes in the crotch of my jockey shorts.

I watch her get into Aldo's car and drive away, thinking his car and Irene's personality are oddly contradictory. To my father, it's probably like watching Alice in Wonderland disappear on Attila the Hun's horse. I sit down on the couch and look up “contradictory”: “inconsistent, incompatible, supine” (forget that one), and finally come to what I'm looking for, “incongruous.” “Aldo and Irene are an incongruous couple.” That's my phrase for Beanie and Jocko today.

“Is it really necessary to tease Aldo?” my mother asks.

“All great heroes have to pass a test,” I say, echoing one of my father's expressions.

She looks professional today in a light-blue pants suit. She has long, curly blond hair and green eyes. I wish I had gotten that hair. Mine is straight and black, so I keep it short. My father says I got the Black Irish gene, whatever that means.

“I find this constant teasing negative and a waste of time,” she says.

There's that word again.

“You can also see it as humorous,” my father interrupts.

“What could possibly be funny about telling that poor boy every morning that Irene has eloped with assorted strange men?”

“
Repetition
is a fundamental staple of comedy,” my father says. “We laugh at comedians when they keep hitting themselves in the face with a hammer. That's why Charlie Chaplin was so famous.”

“I'm not one of your students, Colin,” she says, then turns her attention to me. “Anything unusual happening in school today?” She says it as if she already knows.

“No,” I say.

“Not even in Ms. Butterfield's class?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Not something to do with poetry?”

“Oh yeah,” I say, as if just remembering, then add, “What do you do, talk to her every day?”

“It was on the website.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it's always exciting when a guest visits. Ms. Butterfield has brought that dimension to your school.”

I'm about to respond, impressed by her use of “dimension,” but Crash interrupts from upstairs. “I'm going to be late for my bus,” he says. He's right, so I walk him there, returning just in time to meet up with Beanie and Jocko, who are parked by my front door on their bikes.

“Aldo and Irene are an incongruous couple,” I say.

“Wow, you're on your game today,” Jocko says. He's a big kid with a round face, a buzz cut, and so many freckles his face glows like a wet pumpkin. His size makes him appear tough, but he's no bully. In fact, he can be kind of nervous and is a compulsive worrier. Most girls I know worry, so maybe that's why they like him.

“You don't have to answer now,” I say.

“I can't even tie my shoes this early,” Beanie says.

Jocko seconds that, so we hop on our bikes and head to school.