Forsaking All Others by Jimmy Breslin

Author:Jimmy Breslin [Breslin, Jimmy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4537-8
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

18

CHRISTMAS EVE, WHICH SUPERSEDES Christmas Day in religious and family significance to Puerto Ricans, fell on a Thursday that year. On Monday of that week, Teenager was aggravated to find himself in the same defensive circumstances as some pendejito sent out to the store by his wife. He knew of his situation immediately that morning, when he arose to find his wife moving briskly about a kitchen whose surfaces were covered with the white yucca vegetable and plantains that would be formed into pasteles, meat pies, for the Christmas Eve feast. Usually, Teenager’s appearances at home were sporadic, with arrivals and departures made without as much as a nod to the kitchen. This time, arising into eleven o’clock activity rather than midafternoon emptiness, he was attracted and then trapped by his wife’s preparations.

“My aunt and my cousins are coming for Christmas Eve,” Lydia said.

“That’s good,” Teenager said. He was wrapped in a deep blue velour robe that allowed his thick, shaped calves to be displayed.

“Who are you telling to come?” Lydia said.

“All my friends.”

Lydia’s face, which usually had the character of wallpaper in Teenager’s presence, now showed great displeasure. “I don’t like your friends. Somebody nice must come.”

A conversation such as this at any other time would be terminated with a snarl, a slap perhaps, a spinning around and exiting. Yet the most disoriented of Puerto Rican marriages became as formal as a high court during any holiday season, when relatives arrive to eat and peer and carry back to the family networks the precise estimates of the worth of the relationship they have observed. For the highest principle of all, form on a holiday, Lydia suddenly had her husband, for all his evil, pushed into a corner.

“Mama is coming too,” Teenager said.

Lydia rocked her head from side to side in skepticism. “Mama is always somewhere in this house. Is that all we have coming? Mama and these people I don’t like?”

“Oh, no,” Teenager said. “Maximo and his mother are coming too. I asked them and they said they would be here.”

Lydia’s head turned quickly enough to show excitement and pleasure. She immediately tempered it with suspicion. “You asked them?” she said.

“Just the other day.”

“Which other day?”

“Two, three days ago. I told them, ‘You’re coming Christmas Eve.’ They both were very happy.”

“I love Maximo’s mother. I love Maximo,” Lydia said.

“He is going to be an important man,” Teenager said.

“Oh, yes. Everybody says that. What time did you tell Maximo and his mother to come?”

“At eight o’clock.”

Lydia nodded in satisfaction as her hands resumed stuffing the plantain leaves with yucca.

Teenager drank grapefruit juice, then dressed and left for Ana’s. A half hour later, as he walked into the bar, Luisa Maria said to him, “I have to go out shopping for some things.”

“What things?”

“I have to get coconuts and buy good rum, not this rum you have here. I make coquito for you on Christmas Eve.”

“Just for me?” Teenager said.

“Oh, no, I am having my brother and my brother’s wife and all my nephews and my girlfriend.

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