so much as ever laying eyes on my father again.
After his brotherâs death, the sadness of life came to be written all over my fatherâs face, and he must have lamented the fact that instead of showing that other Oscar Hijuelos the excitements and pleasantries of New York, his invitation had, however indirectly, delivered him to the gates of heaven, or hell, or purgatory, or to wherever such kindhearted campesino souls go when their eyes close for good: For months after, on his nights home from work, he rarely left the apartment, and assumed the posture and habits by which I would most remember himâby the kitchen table, drinking rye whiskey followed by one glass of beer after the other, a cigarette burning down until it singed the cuffs of his shirt. He slumped in misery, lashed out at my mother, swinging his arms out at her, just because he could not allow anyone else to enter into that cage of his pain. He couldnât hear a thing that anyone said to him, not even his sisters. Heâd wince with the realization that certain events cannot be undone, and, blaming himself for that tragedy, embarked upon a sea of regrets.
When I was born in 1951, at about five thirty on a summer morning, at the St. Lukeâs Womanâs Hospital, my father named me after his brother, and I suppose for that reason alone, my father always accorded me a special affection. Iâve been told that as a baby I was good-natured and on the quiet side, that I rarely carried on or cried and had a certain dulzura âa sweetnessâabout me that, Iâve always believed, must have come from him. By the time Iâd entered my infancy, his sisters had finally moved out, relocating to Miami. Borja left when her husband, Eduardo, suffering from a bad heart, became ill, and Maya and her husband soon followed. As for my father? Dividing his days between his job at the Biltmore and home, he still threw the occasional weekend party, as he and his sisters used to, the apartment filling with Cubans and Puerto Rican couplesâprobably a mix of his friends from the hotel and from the dance hallsâas well as a few single strays, male and female alike, from around the neighborhood. On those nights, the drinks and food flowedâmy father spending âtoo much,â as my mother would later complain, on sponging fulanos , most of whom heâd probably never see again and who, in any case, couldnât give ni un pÃo âa pissâabout him; but because he found it almost unbearable to be alone, those parties took place at least once a month, if not more often. His guests came for their doses of Cuban warmth, the congeniality, the music, blaring on those nights from a living room RCA console, and, aside from the fully stocked bar and the ice-packed bathtub filled with bottles of beer, the immense quantities of food, which lay stacked on platters in the kitchen. It wasnât long before the crowd, revved up, would get onto the living room floor, dancing away. And there I would be, the little â rubio ââblondieâthe cute little americano -looking son of that nice guy Pascual, crawling innocently along our living room floor, bounded by a forest of pleated trousers, shapely nylon-covered legs, and kicking two-toned and high-heeled shoes. My brother swears that, innocent though I may have been, Iâd roll onto my back and pass the time doing my best to steal a peek at the mysteries residing inside the plump upper reaches of those swirling ladiesâ dresses.
Sooner or later on those nights, while the music flowed out of the living room record player, which, as with most of our furniture, had been left behind for us by my aunts, with the lights turned low while my mother remained in the kitchen tending to the food or finishing up with the dishes, my father, a sucker for flirtation and a suave rumbero , especially after heâd had a few drinks, took to the dance floor, smitten by some womanâs