BACK
Felipe On the Curve
steve gillis
Driving home, I saw my wife with Felipe, digging and planting white posts on the side of
the road. The posts were three feet high, with bright red reflective tops that looked a lot
like enormous cigarettes glowing.
My wife has dark hair, spiked a bit though not otherwise wild. Her features are high
boned, her voice hard sugar. I love her like an indulgence. She watched me pull up, said
“Charlie,” then finished the hole she was digging.
We live on a road that curves in a sharp ‘S’ shaped turn. In the dark, or during winter,
when rounding the bend, I feel the thrill mixed with hazard. Every few months there's an
accident, cars sliding into the ditch and worse. Those who built our road did so, I think,
after getting bored laying straight routes. The curves are set along a downward arching
slope where reducing speeds requires a deliberate effort.
Both my wife and Felipe were dressed in jeans and a green University of Renton
sweatshirt. Samples of the dirt they dug clung to the sides of their shoes. Felipe came to
live with us during the moratorium, after the government pushed its policies against illegals
so far right they rolled under and came up on the left again. Soon everyone in our
neighborhood wanted one. I went to work early and found Felipe sleeping beneath the
counter in our kitchenette, down among the coffee filters, the artificial dairy powders and
paper plates.
I'm the project coordinator at Aritex Design. We build fantasies for movies, websites
and TV. Everything is computerized hocus pocus, polygonal formulas, curves and lines
inserted into NURBS - nonuniform rational b-spline surfaces - and SUBD surfaces, b-splines
defined recursively through PIEGLs. I like my job and am paid well to do it. When Aritex
creates action figures for video games, we hire illegals. Electronic sensors are strapped to
their arms, their legs and heads and hands as we record their movements, have them
simulate aliens and mutants and ape-like beasts. The work requires a certain dexterity.
Felipe is lean and moves nimbly, a bit stiff but agile still, his size comes in handy when
producing hunched and halfway wicked creatures.
On the ground behind my wife was a troll and claw and other gardening tools. Felipe
used one of the two shovels brought down from our garage. Our station wagon was full in
the back with the unplanted posts. The gloves on my wife's hands were white. Felipe did
not have gloves. His fingers were dark and coiled like sticks. In the first week he lived with
us - he's been here now six months - we concentrated on acclimation. I allowed Felipe to set
the tone, to pick the jobs he could manage and preferred doing. More than anything, the
man had energy. He had stamina and commitment. He had a laugh that shook out from his
chest and launched itself like sparrows. Each night when I came home I found a new task
completed: our entire garage cleaned and reorganized, the driveway salted and cleared of
snow, the fireplace primed and dog walked. The arrangement worked fine at first. My wife
in bed at night had me whisper the word “illegal” as I rolled on top of her. I was for several
weeks well pleased and then I wasn't.
Six posts were planted near the top of the curve. I leaned across the front seat, closer
to the window in order to hear what my wife was saying. She wiped her gloves on the front
of her shirt. The evening was warm and I could see the sweat lines in her hair, migrating
down her cheeks toward her neck. Felipe had on a red bandanna, the top darkened. He
waved and smiled, heaved a sigh for my sake and pretended to be tired. "We want to keep
going,” my wife said and asked me to pick up the kids.
Three afternoons a week Jess and Taylor went to the high school for sports. In the
bushes outside, in the lockers and hiding between parked cars, illegals looking for work
called out in whispers, said “Pssst. Pssst,” offered up their services, pledged to clean our
toilets, clear our tables, trim our trees and mop our floors. I learned to keep my head down
and my hands in my pockets as I got my kids, took them for burgers before driving back
through the 'S' curve where three more posts were planted and standing new. My
daughter, Jess, was eleven, at an age where any change to her immediate surroundings was
treated with suspicion. She noticed the posts and wondered, “Where did they come from?"
"It's good don't you think?" I answered this way, did not tell her otherwise, assumed
she didn't want to hear how much of her world was still controlled by her mother.
"What are they, wood?" Taylor, age eight, was up on his knees, staring out the back
window as we completed the turn. "How's that gonna stop anyone?"
I explained that the posts weren't necessarily there to stop cars from crashing but to
provide guidance and remind people the road ahead was tricky.
"Then why not make them collapsible?" Taylor again, a practical boy, quick to review
functionality, clever in noting the obvious before the rest of us could.
My wife was in the kitchen when we got home, showered and wearing her red robe. She
stood near the stove, one hand on her hip, the fingers of her other hand rubbing the open
space beneath her neck. The flesh was smooth and yellow soft in the light. If I wanted, if
Felipe and the kids weren't around and my wife was permitting, I might have leaned to kiss
her there. Felipe was still in his jeans and sweatshirt, his hands washed and his bandanna
replaced by a yellow baseball cap worn backwards. A white apron covered the front of his
sweatshirt and half his legs. "Hola,” Jess and Taylor shouted. "Ques pasa?"
Felipe noticed our bags from the Burger Barn and turned off the stove. I opened a
bottle of wine. With the kids fed, I looked forward to eating alone with my wife. Felipe was
supposed to give us our space, though lately my wife had started inviting him to join us.
"Here," she'd wave her arm and pat the seat beside her.
I didn't want to cause trouble, preferred to keep my wife happy, but there was
something that made me uncomfortable in having Felipe eat with us. Unlike my wife who
rejected social distinctions, I found disparities necessary, felt differences gave us our
identity, created culture and class and defined who we were. Felipe knew. He didn't gripe
when I asked him to clean up after the dog, to knock ice from our roof and check our crawl
space for dead rodents. Soon after he moved in, I found him in the basement, watching a
replay of a soccer match between Mexico and the United States. He stood as I came down
but I told him to, “Sit." A minute later one of the Mexican players kicked a low ball past the
American goalie and into the net. Felipe cheered, then looked at me with uncertainty, a mix
of apology and need for permission. The gesture was appreciated. I felt we had an
understanding. My wife groaned when I told her.
"Don't get me wrong," I complained in private. "I understand you're being charitable,
but there's a time and a place for having him around." The first day I brought Felipe home,
my wife fed him peaches and spaghetti out of blue Tupperware containers, then took him
upstairs and had him wash in our tub. In the room we provided, up where my office once
was, my wife hung drapes, bought furniture and bedding, posters for the walls and books
she though he'd like. She filled his closet with t-shirts and jeans, jackets and slacks, took
him without me to the movies and the mall, allowed him to drive though he didn't have a
license. I heard them sitting up sometimes late with tall glasses drinking off my favorite
wine.
The meal Felipe prepared that night was a goulash with salmon and rice and beans
placed on garlic toast. Taylor came into the kitchen searching for juice, asking for chips, still
hungry after Burger Barn. Jess had disappeared upstairs, her laptop in tow, her homework
in binders; she'd learned to split the screen on her computer, watching DVDs of ‘Laguna
Beach' and "Friends' while writing book reports and drawing maps of Iraq and China. My
wife pinched me under the table, signaled me to also invite Felipe over. "Come on,” I made
a motion in the air, my arm in spasms.
Felipe hesitated until my wife told him to, “Bring a plate,” then sent me to get one. I
finished my dinner, excused myself and went into the basement where I'd moved
everything from my office, all my notes and books, my ideas stored in LUX and PDF files on
my computer. I had a plan for combining the best parts of SUBDS and NURBS, expanding
how SUBDS made use of dense polymeshes through CySlice v.3.3 applications, avoiding the
rectangular patch topology restrictions of NURBS surfaces even as I included NURBS'
tangency cracking reconfigured.
Above me, I heard my wife with Felipe laughing in the kitchen. I turned on my
computer and started playing with a clean field. After a while, the water upstairs began to
run and I knew Felipe was rinsing dishes while my wife stayed in her chair. The door was
open and I listened to them talking. Their conversation was convivial, the way they got
along like favorite first cousins, like the oldest of friends. "What is it with you two?" I used
to joke, to show I wasn't jealous but rather curious, wondering why my wife put herself out.
My own conversations with Felipe were never so auspicious. Even when I made an effort
and kept my questions from sounding like an interrogation, Felipe bobbed and weaved,
called me “Mr. Charlie,” answered in concise four word sentences as if we weren't really
talking at all.
"Respect,” I told my wife. "He treats you one way and me another because he respects
me more." I doubted this was true but carried on the same. When Felipe came down to the
basement that night and said, "Mr. Charlie?" I didn't turn around at first, made him wait a
moment. He stood at the bottom of the steps. The light overhead wasn't bright though
Felipe's face glowed, his features both boyish and ancient, covered with primal lines and
curves. "We're going to play," he said.
I made a slow pivot in my chair, listened for sounds from overhead. Felipe pointed back
to the first floor. "The children,” he told me. "Your wife." This past spring Jess had started
taking guitar lessons. To encourage her, we purchased a used six-string Martin which fit
her nicely. I'd no aptitude for instruments, my talent more technical, my tin ear suggesting
a disconnect between my fingers and brain. Felipe on the other hand played quite well. At
night my wife and kids would sit in the front room while Felipe picked and strummed and
tried teaching both Jess and Taylor a few chords. I leaned back in my chair, folded my arms
as my kids ran into the front room, my wife calling not my name but, "Felipe," followed by
Jess and Taylor's, "Felipe. Felipe."
Felipe came three steps closer then stopped. For a moment he just stood there,
watching me, then said, "You should come up, Mr. Charlie." We'd settled on his calling me
this. My kids favored "Charlie," but Felipe couldn't quite pull it off and I didn't encourage
him. He had a mid-range voice, his accent curled serpentine through each syllable. "You'll
come up, yes? The children," he said again. "Your wife."
I lifted my elbows, still stubborn even as I heard Jess and Taylor change their chant and
begin to call, "Daddy. Daddy," while my wife added, "Come on, Charlie."
Felipe showed me his hands, hard and dry. He raised them like feathers, like something
I might create for a movie, the way they floated up toward his face and how he smiled
between them. When he pointed upstairs again his smile came close to suggesting
sympathy. I snapped and told him to, "Go on. They're waiting for you," then turned back
to my computer. Felipe remained a few seconds more before leaving. The music followed
shortly. I heard Jess and Taylor each try their hand at chords, heard singing in Spanish and
English. Beneath the sounds, I called up a new file on my computer, constructed a model of
Felipe's face from memory, recreated his features through PIEGL vectors; reshaped his
nose, added and subtracted whiskers, made him a child again and then aged him like the
moon.
That night in bed, I tried persuading my wife to show me some affection but she wasn't
interested. "What's with you?" She rolled away.
"Can't you try making him feel comfortable? He lives here now."
"Tell me you didn't just say that," my wife sat up in bed. I felt my erection retreat and
attempted to coax it back. My wife slapped at my hand, pulled the covers toward her neck,
listed the benefits we received by having Felipe around to cook and clean and care for our
kids when we were out.
"All that may be true," I said, "but I still don't want to come home and have to eat with
the hired help."
"Charlie stop."
"What?" I feigned ignorance, asked her to, "Tell me, haven't I done enough? Wasn't I
the one who brought him home, who gave him a job, provided him with room and board and
an allowance nearly the same as our kids? What more?"
"A lot," my wife had answers. I admired her determination, if this time false of foot, as
realistic as glass slippers, she suggested we enroll Felipe in school. "Assimilation," she said,
"begins with education."
"You can't be serious?" I readjusted my shorts. "It's impossible. Square pegs and
round holes. You're forgetting Felipe's a ghost. He's not really here. Just because he's been
allowed to stay this long doesn't mean he has legal standing."
"All that's changing," my wife wouldn't listen. She told me about Bank of America
offering credit cards to people without social security numbers as long as they had a
checking account at BOA. "They're accepting illegals."
"That's business," I shifted onto my side. "That's for money. They're tapping a market
is all. School's different. School's out of the question. Assimilation's not in the cards."
My wife's heel found my calf. "Listen to what you're saying. How can you possibly look
at another person and think that way?" Here then in summary, my wife reduced the whole
of our argument to sentiment. My reply was a stammer. I tried to maneuver onto some
safe middle ground and said of Felipe, "He's doing alright. I don't hear him complaining."
"Of course not. What's he going to say?"
"That's my point. Still," compromised, "if you want to sign him up for a class, if he's
interested, if there's a way, then go ahead."
My wife challenged my sincerity, said “Don't patronize me." I offered further forms of
reconciliation, an olive branch, something for her to grab so I could pull her closer, but
instead she demanded actual penance. "I think you should take him. You need to extend
yourself."
"I can extend myself just fine," I slid toward her, ready to prove as much but my wife
wouldn't have it. She tossed down the covers and got out of bed. I lay by myself for awhile,
waiting for her to come back, listening for the TV or sounds from the kitchen. I thought
about what I said and wondered how I could have done better. I should have been more
specific, should not have abandoned my position so quickly, should have told her how
fortunate Felipe was, that things were changing everywhere again and illegals were being
forced to scramble. With affirmative action dumped minority admissions hit record lows,
pushing more entry level kids into the market. Jobs recently available to illegals were
snatched up and where would Felipe be if not for my initial kindness?
At some point I dozed and dreamed of my wife dancing the Tlacoloreros. I woke to
whispers, got up and went down the hall. My wife sat on the chair in Felipe's room. The
lamp beside the bed shined dimly. Felipe's legs were folded beneath him on the bed, his
back against the wall. I could see only part of his face, his teeth when he spoke, his smile as
he mentioned my children. I listened for a minute then went back to my room. When my
wife came in later I said nothing, pretended to be asleep.
In the morning I arranged for Felipe to come with me at lunch, said I would swing by
and pick him up, take him out to the Continuing Adult Education Center which required no
more from its students than a pulse and a check. "So," I explained as we drove, "here's the
deal." My mood was poor and I didn't try concealing this. Felipe sat beside me, buckled in.
I asked him, "What are your interests?" But he pretended not to understand.
"Electronics?" I provided a list of practical ideas. "Auto repair maybe? My wife thinks
you need to stretch yourself, spread your wings a bit, you know?" The expression failed to
translate well. Felipe nodded slowly. "You want me to go to school?"
"A class. Something to get your feet wet."
"Wings and feet," he smiled in such a way as to invite me to join him. I refused and said,
"A man should have a trade."
"You think?"
"Yes."
"And Valarie?" Hearing my wife's name surprised us both. Up until then, when
speaking with me, Felipe never referred to my wife by name. He seemed to realize and
stared down at his hands while I responded by barking, "Now see here." The phrase
sounded stupid and I followed this with a warning, pointing as we passed long rows of other
illegals gathered then at the side of the road. Some held signs, offered to work for peanuts,
for coffee, for spare change and chips. Others showed off their talents, juggled and danced
and lifted heavy objects above their heads. To make sure Felipe realized what was at stake,
I said, "My wife tells me the Feldman's have a man who can sing Don Giovanni and cook
twice buttered scallops."
As we reached the Continuing Adult Education Center, I turned off the car, walked up
the steps, the schedule in my hand highlighted. Felipe did not so much select but agreed to
sign up for the auto repair class. We filled out the appropriate form, paid our dues and
returned to the car. I was glad to be done, eager to get back to the office and have all this
nonsense over. Felipe was quiet until we pulled out of the lot, then asked, "If it's about the
work I do for you. If there's something wrong. If that's why you brought me here."
"I already told you."
"A trade, yes."
"A man has to be prepared. It's important. We want you to get out more."
"Get out?" Felipe was looking at me in profile. I paused an extra second for just the
right effect.
"Take the class," I said. "Auto repair is good. Who knows what will come of it."
Felipe turned away. I was impatient to drop him off, assumed he understood now and
was surprised again when he looked at me a minute later and said, "About Valarie."
We stopped at a red light where two illegals ran from the curb, washed the car windows
with grey water and wiped them down with a rag. I honked the horn, drove on as Felipe
continued. "She loves you very much, Charlie. This is a good thing. The children, too.
You're lucky to have them, you know?"
"Wait," I cut him off, startled. "Why are you telling me this?"
Felipe turned from me and watched the road ahead. I grew defensive, indignant,
insisted "It's inappropriate. It's not your place." As soon as I said this I felt foolish, annoyed
with myself for having been baited, exposed. "Do you think I don't know about my own
family?"
"People forget," Felipe continued to stare straight ahead. "Sometimes Charlie, things we
love get lost."
We didn't talk anymore until I let him off at the house. Ten minutes later I was back at
work. I was creating an exploding meteor for New Line Cinema’s ‘Last Day On Earth' and
spent my afternoon calculating the B-splines by way of the knot vector in order to set the
segment of each shape. I didn't want to think about Felipe but couldn't get any of it out of
my head. Shortly after five I drove home. A light drizzle had started to fall and the roads
were slick. At our 'S' curve I was forced to slow in order to avoid skidding into our station
wagon parked at the shoulder. My wife was there, her hair wet and flat. Taylor and Jess
were beside her, wearing green and yellow windbreakers, helping to dig at the dampened
earth.
I watched from my car. My wife saw me and waved. My children, too, eager to show
me what they were doing, danced between the newly planted posts. Felipe carried a fresh
post from the rear of the wagon. The hole as dug was deep enough to wedge a foot of each
post down inside. Felipe brought a cement compound over next and Taylor and Jess
scooped out measured amounts and filled the hole. I felt the wet of the grass through my
shoes as I got out of the car. Felipe saw me approach and stepped back, leaned on his
shovel, wiped the water from his face. Another car entered the top of the curve and headed
down.
I came close to my wife, put my arm around her hip and waited for Felipe to notice. I
thought about borders and boundaries, about lapses and improprieties, about love and
dignity and how a man I found sleeping down among the coffee filters and pre-scented
handiwipes had a clearer perspective than me. Last winter I dressed him in electronic
sensors and made him hop about; mimicking the movements of alien creatures I could not
create on my own. I had him on his hands and knees, crawling about and beneath my
floors. I had license, and took it, and what did that make me, I wondered? Impunity? Not
even, as I never once thought about any of this before now.
I looked at my wife until she realized what I was trying to say. The rain continued as the
car on the road passed. I was relieved to see it get beyond us, guided through despite the
turns and slippery state. I motioned Felipe over, said my wife's name, said "Valarie," and
"Valarie," again. "We should think about dinner," I was quite hungry. After a minute my
kids came and took my hands.
(c) 2007 by Steve Gillis