When Tito Loved Clara by Jon Michaud Read Free Book Online Page A

for more. What he really wanted was the impossible—to go back and do something that would preventClara from vanishing. She'd gone off to college and, aside from the one cryptic note, he'd never seen or heard from her again. Tito thought he had made his peace with it, but as he grew older and his losses accumulated, this first one loomed ever larger. The events of that summer assumed the form of a puzzle, which, decoded, would somehow explain why things in his life had not turned out as he had once hoped.
    O N A WINDY afternoon in the spring of his senior year in high school, Tito was kept late by a teacher who was “concerned” about his “academic performance.” There was a lineup of boys waiting outside the teacher's room. One by one they were summoned into the room to receive versions of the same pep talk. Upon hearing what the talk was about, a number of those who were waiting left before their names could be called. By the time Tito got in there, he wished he'd left, too. “You've got some brains in your head, Moreno,” the teacher said to him. He was one of those clean-cut young black dudes fresh out of teachers' college who was going to change the world one kid at a time. He'd raised himself up from a slum somewhere and wanted his students to do the same. Tito waited for him to start in about accepting Jesus as his personal savior, but it never came to that. “Your grades aren't that bad. Maybe you could do something with your life if you
applied
yourself,” the teacher said, getting close enough to him that Tito could smell the man's Pep-O-Mint breath. Tito had already started applying him-self for Cruz Brothers on the weekends, making good money. He didn't see what the teacher's point was and the meeting came to an unsatisfactory end for both of them.
    He headed home. As he made his way down 230th Street past the U-Haul lot, he was thrilled to see a familiar figure up ahead, dressed in a long coat. She tottered as she walked, like someone inside a tube. Then the tube crumpled and down she went. Books were cast across the sidewalk. A three-ring binder sprang open, releasing its pages tothe wind like a flock of doves. Tito ran after the papers, snatching them out of the air, lunging and thrusting for them as they circled and danced. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Clara had gotten up and was doing the same thing, as best she could in that bulky coat. In the end, they captured every page but one, which was carried away from them on an updraft, gliding and flipping over on itself, rising toward the elevated tracks of the 1 and 9.
    â€œI hope that one didn't have all the answers on it,” he said.
    She was jumping in vain, beckoning to the departing page, close to tears. Her coat was like a giant roll of shearling. Tito looked at the papers in his hands. The top sheet had a geometry problem, his footprint, and a big red A minus on it. So, she was good at math.
    â€œYou all right?” he asked.
    â€œYes,” she said. “Yes I am.” She was calming herself. “It's these shoes,” she said, lifting up her coat to show him a pair of ankle boots with silver buckles and leather soles. “No grip.”
    â€œI'll walk you home,” he offered as casually as he could manage. “You still live in that house on Payson?”
    That made her look at him properly for the first time. “Hey, you're Don Felix's kid. My dad says your father is a lying sack of shit.”
    â€œYeah, well, my pops says your old man is a tightwad cock-sucker.”
    They both laughed.
    â€œI've still got the scar from when you kicked me,” she said. She pulled down her lower lip and showed him the pair of short white lines her teeth had made, like a double dash in the bumpy red pulp of her mouth. “I'll never forget how much it hurt to eat,” she said. “And brushing my teeth was a nightmare.”
    â€œYeah, well, I had to have my toe amputated,