No Place for Heroes

5

WHEN LORENZA RETURNED to the hotel room late that afternoon, she found her son still in his pajamas, his hair tousled, sitting beside the phone.

“Did you call?” she asked.

“No.”

“Come on, kiddo, just get it over with,” she tried to encourage him. “What are we, heroes or buffoons?” The question was her papa’s. Anytime that he had to take a risk he’d said it aloud: Heroes or buffoons?

“I’d rather be a buffoon,” Mateo said. “The heroes can all go to hell.”

“Then I’ll call. Just to confirm that it’s his number,” she proposed. But he screamed no, not to do it.

“Don’t stick your nose in this, Mother. I have to take care of this on my own, by myself.” He grabbed the phone from her, but immediately settled down and handed it back. “Fine, call, Lolé. But I forbid you from saying anything. Just see if it’s his voice and hang up right away.”

She promised that she wouldn’t say anything, that he had nothing to worry about, she knew that the words had to come from him, from Mateo, and only him. Then she dialed the number and let it ring a few times, as he obsessively twisted the lock of hair that fell over his brow with his index finger, like he always did when he was nervous.

“No one picks up?”

“Not yet.”

“Maybe Ramón doesn’t live there anymore,” Mateo said, and she realized how badly he was tormented by doubt. “Maybe he leaves early for work and doesn’t come back till late at night.”

“We won’t know unless we call,” his mother said, and waited until a machine picked up, the recording asking for the caller to leave a message because there was no one home at the moment. She listened to the voice and hung up without leaving a message, just as they had agreed.

“It’s him,” she told him. “It’s your father’s voice.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Did he say his name? Did the voice say that it was Ramón Iribarren?”

“No, not in so many words, all it said was, I am not here to take your call, or something like that. But I know it was him.”

“Well, at least we know that he is alive. That’s something, right? Unless, of course, he died after he recorded the message, but no, no, that would be too Gothic. And what exactly did he say: I am not here to take your call, or we are not here? You have to remember, Lorenza.” Mateo grew impatient when she claimed that she couldn’t really remember, and he shot her an angry glare.

“You’re right, wait a second, let me think,” she responded. “But don’t give me that murderous look.”

“So just tell me then. It’s very important. If Ramón said, I am not here, then he could live alone. But if he said, we are not here, then he probably has kids, another wife. Do you think that he would speak to his other children about me?”

“If you want, I’ll call him.”

“That’s not the point … with that expression.”

“What expression?”

“No expression at all, that’s the problem. How many years has it been since you heard Ramón’s voice? And now you hear it, and it’s like nothing, and you answer my questions like a robot. I don’t even know if you still love Ramón or despise him.”

“I neither love him nor despise him. I keep him in mind.”

“I know, so he can never harm me again. Yet you do me more harm, robot face,” Mateo said, with an affectionate nudge to his mother’s chin that landed a little too rough. He began to shadowbox around the room like Muhammad Ali, dancing like a butterfly and stinging like a bee. “Shit, fuck, shit,” he chanted, throwing jabs and uppercuts in the air. “Are you sure, Lorenza?”

“Of what?”

“That it was his voice.”

“I could pick it out from a million other voices, that muffled and guttural voice was his. Besides, it’s almost exactly like yours, Mateo. You both mumble and speak so low that one can barely understand what you are saying.”

“So you’re saying that his voice hasn’t changed at all.”

“Not at all, not even a little bit. It’s exactly the same voice of the young man I knew. Yours, on the other hand, changes day by day, and there are times now when you sound just like him.”

“I don’t think so,” Mateo said, continuing to shadowbox against some invisible foe. “There’s nothing about me that resembles Ramón. I don’t want to look like him. Shit shit, what a bitch son of a fucking shit,” he went on, and his fist assaulted a pillow until it began to spit out its down. It was not rage but a swarm of uncertainty that needed release.

“All right, take it easy, Cassius Clay,” she implored and passed him the phone receiver. “Stop monkeying around and make the call.”

“No! What if he’s come back home and answers? What if the real him answers?”

“Tell him you’re in Buenos Aires.”

“And then hang up?”

“No, then you talk to him, if you want.”

“That’s not what I want,” he said but dialed the number anyway and listened closely. “You’re right, this guy really mumbles, you can barely understand him. Besides he sounds like such an Argentinean … he is so Argentinean.”

“Relax, Mateo, you’re revved up like a squirrel.”

“It’s true,” he laughed, “I must look like a fucking electrocuted squirrel. Do you remember, Lolé, the time that the squirrel crawled up my pants and shirt and perched on my head. I think Ramón was still with us then.”

“No, that was much later, at the Parque de Chapultepec. In Mexico.”

“Unbelievable, the only thing that I remember about Ramón is not Ramón but a yellow cur that he picked up in the park and named Malvina. I know I played with her, but I can’t remember what city it was.”

“That was in Bogotá. We lived in an apartment in the Salmona towers. Not the one we live in now, a smaller one we rented with your father.”

“I wonder whatever happened to that doggie. You think Ramón took her with him? Or maybe he let her back out on the streets where he found her. Do you know why we didn’t keep Malvina with us? Or, I don’t want to know,” Mateo said, throwing another punch in the air. The memories he had of his father were in truth not his but his mother’s, and having to continually ask her was worse than asking to borrow a toothbrush.

He dialed the number again, listened for a moment, and hung up again.

“I just wanted to know if his voice really sounded like mine. It’s weird listening to Ramón again after all these years,” he murmured, and a cloud of frustration dimmed his gaze.

“And?” Lorenza asked. “What does he say exactly?”

“There’s no one here to take your call, that’s all, there’s no one here.”

Mateo fell on the bed. He leaned back against the pillows, turned on the TV with the remote, let the tension escape his body, and was soon engrossed with Thundercats, a cartoon that he had loved as a child and that on that afternoon in Buenos Aires, so long afterward, hypnotized him once more. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, and Mateo did not move, not really there, silent, his eyes fixed on the screen, lazily twirling the same lock of hair with his index finger.

“Aren’t you going to call again, Mateo?”

He said that he would, but not at the moment, later.

“Then get dressed, and if you want we can go out and grab a bite. You must be starving. Hello? Knock, knock. Is anybody home?”

Lorenza tapped him on the head to see if he had heard her.

“Okay, Lolé, but not now, later.”