Marcelo in the Real World Read online

  I hear the telephone on my desk ring. The ring is loud, louder than any telephone ring I’ve ever heard, and for some reason the ring sounds as if it is transmitting rage.

  “Hello,” I say.

  I hear a woman’s voice: “Mr. Holmes will see you now.”

  “Now,” I repeat.

  “Yes. Now. As in immediately. He only has a few minutes before his eleven o’clock. If you could get here right away that would be wonderful.”

  “Okay.” I stand up. I’m not sure I can find Stephen Holmes’s office on my own. Then I hear Jasmine’s voice. She has been sitting at her desk all along and I didn’t know she was there.

  “Let me guess, Holmes is summoning you.”

  “Now. He wants to see me now.”

  “It’s always now with Holmesy.”

  I stand there a few moments feeling embarrassed.

  “What?” she asks.

  “I have forgotten how to get to his office.” She stands up and motions for me to follow her. “I will memorize where everyone sits as soon as I get back. I was going to do it as soon as we got back from the mail run but I got carried away looking up something.”

  Jasmine does not seem annoyed by the fact that she has to walk me to Stephen Holmes’s office. She seems to be preoccupied with thoughts of her own. “You might as well try to stay on Holmesy’s good side. He likes it when you ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over his office and when you appear to be in awe of every word that comes out of his mouth. Okay, there it is. When you’re done, or better yet, when Holmesy’s done with you, just walk out of his office, turn left and then another left and you’ll be in the mailroom. Left and left. Okay?”

  “Left and left,” I repeat.

  Then she turns around and leaves. I’m standing in front of Juliet, who is clicking rapidly on her keyboard. “Go in,” she says without looking up.

  I walk in and see Stephen Holmes behind a big glass desk. Everything in the office appears to be made of glass and extremely breakable. Stephen Holmes covers the mouthpiece of the telephone with his hand and says, “Sit down, Gump, I’ll be right with you.”

  At first I think that someone named Gump has come into the room, but then I remember that Gump is what Stephen Holmes calls me ever since I hit the tennis balls with Wendell at the summer barbecue. “Your son is a regular Forrest Gump,” Stephen Holmes said to Arturo after Wendell and I were done.

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” Arturo responded. I remember how all the people sitting on the patio suddenly stopped talking.

  “You know,” Stephen Holmes said, “just like Forrest Gump in that movie, with the Ping-Pong.”

  I remember how Aurora yanked Arturo back down in his chair. I remember also Stephen Holmes and Arturo later that evening as they stood together underneath the tree house and they didn’t know I was up there. Arturo was explaining how the tree house was fully equipped with electricity and how Yolanda’s classmates had designed and built it. Then he said, “By the way, don’t ever call my son names again.” The tone of Arturo’s voice was different than any I had ever heard before. I heard Stephen Holmes chuckle and then say: “Don’t be so touchy, Art.”

  The next day I asked Yolanda why Stephen Holmes had called me Gump and we rented the movie Forrest Gump. When I saw the part of the movie where he becomes a Ping-Pong champion, I understood why Stephen Holmes called me Gump. What I did not understand and still don’t is why Arturo got so upset. The main character in the movie is a very good human being.

  Stephen Holmes hangs up and immediately places his feet on top of the glass desk. There is nothing on the desk but the telephone and a silver pen.

  “Sit, Gump, sit.”

  “My name is not Gump,” I say. “My name is Marcelo Sandoval.”

  “Of course it is. Sit down, Mr. Marcelo Sandoval.”

  Stephen Holmes pronounces my name Marchelo instead of Marselo, the way it’s supposed to be pronounced.

  “How’s the tennis game?”

  “I don’t actually play tennis,” I say, sitting down on the edge of a black chair.

  “Nonsense. You’re a regular Pancho Gonzales. Hey, you know Wendell is working here this summer, helping me with some litigation. You two should go over to the club and play some squash.”

  “Yolanda taught me to hit the ball back to her so she could practice. I can hit the ball back if it is close to me. If the ball is not hit directly at me, I usually don’t get to it.”

  “You’ll do well in squash. You won’t have to chase the ball around like in tennis.”

  “I am not good at competitive sports. It is hard for Marcelo to move quickly. I tend to think too much.”

  “That reminds me of why I wanted to see you. I’d like you to help Wendell with the litigation project he’s working on. He’s a bright kid but not very good at following through on the little details. You know, organizing, filing. And there’s tons of photocopying to do.”

  “Jasmine said to check with her before I did work for you or Wendell.”

  “Jasmine, Jasmine. What your father sees in her is beyond my comprehension.”

  Suddenly my head feels hot. Even though I don’t fully understand, I sense that Stephen Holmes is attacking Arturo, the one thing that always makes me angry. Without thinking I say, “Jasmine must be a good worker if Arturo likes her.” I don’t care if what I say and how I say it sounds disrespectful.

  Stephen Holmes grins. Actually, the thing that Stephen Holmes does with his lips can be better described as a smirk. “She must be good at something all right if your father likes her.” He smirks again. “See if you can figure out why your father keeps Jasmine around. That would be a good project for you this summer. In any event, don’t you worry about Jasmine. I’ll take care of her.”

  “Marcelo does not worry.” I am still angry but the anger is subsiding. I take a deep, deep breath as I have been taught to do at Paterson.

  “I know Marcelo doesn’t.” Holmes laughs. “I wish I didn’t worry about things. It must be nice to have a simple, uncomplicated brain.”

  “You can if you want to.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “It’s not hard to simplify the thought processes of the brain. All you have to do is stop unwanted thoughts from rising up.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I found the best way to do that is to memorize a passage from Scripture and then remember that passage whenever you want to stop unwanted thoughts.” I wonder if that is something that I should not have said. I remember Arturo’s rule not to talk about religious matters in the workplace.

  Stephen Holmes takes his feet down and places both of them on the red rug under his desk at the same time. I can feel him studying me. I always feel a sense of discomfort when I am with Stephen Holmes. “Maybe we can go to lunch someday and you can tell me just how to do that. I’m afraid I have a conference call as of ten minutes ago. I’ll tell Wendell to take you out to lunch sometime. He can teach you how to profligate and you can teach him how to concentrate. Hey, that’s pretty good, if I say so myself.”

  I stay seated, searching through my mental files for the meaning of the word “profligate.”

  “Okay, Gump. You can go back to the mailroom and the auspices of your father’s protégée. By the way, how’s Yolanda doing? Is she enjoying Yale?”

  Yolanda constantly complains about how hard her studies are so I’m not sure how to answer the question. I finally decide to say yes, even if this is not totally accurate.

  “What’s she studying? Does she want to be a nurse like your mother?”

  “Yolanda wants to study the human brain. She has a job as a research assistant at a hospital in New York.”

  “Well, well, well. Does she? That’s interesting. Well, off you go. I’ll tell Wendell to take you to the club for some squash.”

  As soon as I step out of Stephen Holmes’s office, I write down the word “squash” in my yellow notebook. I gather the word refers to some kind of game similar to tennis, but I don�
�t know why they named it after the vegetable.

  “Marchelo! Hey, Marchelo!” At first I think that Stephen Holmes is calling me from his office, but then I see that the voice is coming from the office directly across. I walk to the doorway and see Wendell sitting behind a stack of cardboard boxes. He looks like a younger, messier version of Stephen Holmes.

  “My name is pronounced Mar-se-lo,” I say. I think of the bad word that Yolanda used to refer to Stephen Holmes and his son, Wendell.

  “Of course it is. Sit down, Marcelo, sit for a second.”

  “I need to help Jasmine. She’s going to show me how to operate the copying machine,” I say, still standing.

  “Just for a minute.” Wendell comes from behind the cardboard boxes and removes a paper bag from the chair where he wants me to sit. “I need a mental break from this crap.”

  I sit down and put my hands on my legs. I want to say something to Wendell, who seems to be waiting for me to start the conversation, but I can’t think of anything to say. Despite hours of practicing at Paterson, initiating “small talk” is still a formidable challenge for me. “You play squash,” I finally think to say. Only I’m aware that I did not enunciate the phrase in the form of a question.

  “I see you’ve been talking to the old man.”

  “Your father is not old,” I say.

  “I’ll tell him you said that. It’ll make him happy.”

  “It is good to be happy.” I think of Jasmine. Jasmine is not happy I’m working at the law firm. I’m not happy either. The effort required to converse politely is draining every drop of happiness out of me.

  “Speaking of happy, I’d be happy if I were spending my days in the same room with Jasmine. She’s hot, isn’t she?”

  “Hot.” Why is it that whenever I don’t understand how a word is used, I tend to repeat it?

  “Do you notice things like that, Marcelo? You know, when a woman is hot to look at, pleasant to the eyes, attractive? Do you get that urge we all get when we see a good female body?”

  “No.” I think the answer to that question is no. I gather that Wendell is talking about sexual attraction.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “That’s not possible. Are you attracted to men then?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe your testosterone hasn’t kicked in yet. If it hasn’t, it soon will. The male’s need to sow our seed wherever, whenever, as much and as often as we can—maybe it hasn’t hit you yet. You’re what, eighteen?”

  “I turned seventeen on March twenty-sixth.”

  “Then the hormones of adolescence have long started to flow. I can tell just by looking at you. Look at you. You’re almost as tall as I am and I’m six feet. Your voice is deep. You shave, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re built solid. Look at those biceps.”

  Wendell grabs my arm and squeezes it. I try to pull it away. I don’t like people to touch me without warning me first. I hope that I have not offended Wendell. “I lift weights every day.”

  Wendell ignores my statement and goes back to his original topic of conversation. “You mean to say that looking at Jasmine and looking at me are all the same to you.”

  “You and Jasmine are persons.”

  “But have different types of bodies.”

  “You are both persons. You are essentially the same.”

  “That’s deep, Marcelo. It really is. If you really feel that way and are not trying to pull my leg, or anything else for that matter, I take my hat off to you, I guess. But I’m not so sure. I don’t think you’re being totally honest with me.”

  “You don’t have a hat on.” It is my attempt at humor and at changing the subject but it doesn’t work on either count.

  “You mean to tell me that you never,” Wendell lowers his voice, “never want to, you know, do it.” Wendell has made a circle with his index finger and his thumb and is sticking the middle finger from his other hand repeatedly in and out of the circle.

  “It.”

  “It.” Now Wendell lifts his arm slowly up in the air like an elephant raising his trunk.

  I know that Wendell’s finger poking is a gesture meant to signify sexual intercourse and that the rising arm signifies an erection. The rules regarding sexuality and conversations about sexuality are hazy, confusing. I don’t know whether Wendell is joking or whether he is interested in discussing the topic seriously. I decide that Wendell is most probably joking and I don’t need to respond. I stand up and say, “I need to go help Jasmine.”

  “Hold on, hold on.” Wendell pulls me down. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just curious, from an anthropological point of view.”

  “I was not offended,” I say. I stand up again.

  “Wait a second,” he says, standing up as well. “Let me fix your collar.” Before I know what he’s doing, he unbuttons the top button of my shirt. “If you’re going to spend time with Jasmine, you might as well not look like a dork.”

  When I get back to the mailroom, Jasmine hands me a piece of paper and says to me, “I made a list of the tasks you need to learn. We’ll start after lunch. We’re going to spend the afternoon going over things and tomorrow you’ll do them on your own.”

  I walk to my desk and read the paper that Jasmine has given me.

  12:30 P.M. COPYING, COLLATING, BINDING

  1:30 P.M. WALK OVER TO FEDERAL COURTHOUSE TO FILE DOCUMENTS

  2:30 P.M. SCANNING

  3:00 P.M. MAIL SORTING

  3:30 P.M. FILING SYSTEM AND FILE RETRIEVAL

  4:30 P.M. LAST MAIL RUN (STAY AWAY FROM MARTHA. HER CONDITION WORSENS AS EVENING APPROACHES.)

  5:00 P.M. TIME TO HEAD FOR HOME (YOU MADE IT THROUGH THE FIRST DAY OF CAMP MINI-HELL. CONSIDER SERIOUSLY NOT SUBJECTING YOUR-SELF TO THIS AND STAY HOME TOMORROW.)

  Aurora once told me that she knew I was different within the first few months after I was born, because as a baby, I never cried. She had no way of knowing if I was hungry or if my stomach hurt until I was old enough to point and talk. Even when I fell and it was obvious that I had hurt myself, I did not cry. When I didn’t get my way, I would go off by myself and sulk or have a tantrum. But I never cried. Later, when I was eleven and Abba died, I didn’t cry. When Joseph, my best friend at St. Elizabeth’s, died, I didn’t cry. Maybe I don’t feel what others feel. I have no way of knowing. But I do feel. It’s just that what I feel does not elicit tears. What I feel when others cry is more like a dry, empty aloneness, like I’m the only person left in the world.

  So it is very strange to feel my eyes well with tears as I read Jasmine’s list.

  CHAPTER 8

  Every morning this week, after the first mail run, my task has been to go to all the copying and printing machines in the office and fill them up with paper, as well as leave packages of paper next to them. Moving around the office with a cart full of mail or paper for the copying and printing machines is my least favorite task. Inevitably someone will say something to me and I have to respond.

  Small talk. I know all about small talk. I studied small talk at Paterson and have a number of set responses to small talk initiated by others, as well as a number of small talk questions for those times when, for whatever reason, I feel called upon to start the small talk. In Social Interaction class, we learned to formulate four or five questions from the day’s events. By reading the paper or by searching in our computers, we memorized questions about the weather, about sports, about the latest happenings. Every morning this week, I have gone to a Web page that reports on local events and have written down a few questions just in case. “What do you think of the Boston Red Sox losing to the New York Yankees?” Questions like that.

  Fortunately, I haven’t had to use any of my prepared questions. When I come in the morning Jasmine is already here. She hands me my daily list and we each go about what we have to do in silence. I like it that way. I think Jasmine does as well because most of the work she does at her desk, she do
es with headphones on. But sometimes I wonder what Belinda was like and whether Jasmine would put her headphones on if Belinda were working here instead of me.

  Opening up boxes and taking out packages of paper is something that I can do without too much concentration. Many of the jobs here at the law firm are like that, which is fine with me because then I can think about other things like I’m doing now. What I’m thinking about now is whether there is ever any “large talk” in the law firm. Sometimes I overhear the lawyers talking about their work. They talk about the content of letters they received or what someone said to them over the telephone or about what happened in a meeting. I hear a lot of “Then he said” or “Then she said” and this reporting of what other people have said is retold with a lot of emotion. This I think is the law firm’s equivalent of large talk, since emotion is not something that accompanies small talk.

  I wonder how I would define large talk. Most of my talks with Rabbi Heschel are large talk since they involve questions about God. The conversation that Aurora and I had after Arturo told me about the summer job at the law firm was large talk. All of my conversations with my friend Joseph at the hospital were large talk, even if they were about small things. The reason for that is that both of us knew that each word counted. The one thing I don’t understand is why I never made a distinction between small talk and large talk at Paterson. I know it doesn’t make sense, but for some reason all the talking that I did and heard at Paterson seemed like large talk.

  “Excuse me.”

  Someone is speaking to me. I turn around and there is the secretary who sits in space number eighteen. I search for her name. Space eighteen. Beth. The lawyer she works for is Harvey Marcus. I stand there not knowing exactly what to say to her.