2

As we walked toward the house, the green thickness of trees parted onto a rolling lawn of grass, a lawn on which—

I stopped, startled by the spectacle.

—a lawn on which had been arranged several sculptures. At a glance, I took in six—separated from each other so that each was stark, isolated, tall—perhaps four feet high; dark iron figures, corrugated, with extremely thin erect bodies, grotesque yet elegant, solemn.

Paul identified the artist in an ordinary tone. “They’ve been on loan to the museum. I take them out when I’m here.”

I still had not moved. The statues, incongruous on the lawn, were like somber sentinels. I had recognized the name of the artist, a famous one in modern art.

A boy, a young man, came running to meet us—no, not running, but sauntering like someone attempting, not entirely successfully, to ration a display of anticipation. He stood before us as if to assure himself that he had our full attention. He was a good-looking boy, already resembling his father. His hair, longish, streaked blond by the sun, was still wet—like his trunks; probably he had been swimming when Paul called out their signal from the shore. His body—with dots of water glistening on his deep tan—already suggested that of a swimmer, like his father’s. I decided that he was too young to arouse my sense of competition.

“My son,” Paul identified. “Stanty, this is John Rechy.” He rubbed the boy’s head playfully.

The boy dodged the gesture. “I’m too grown-up for that, Father,” he protested, although he did not entirely pull away from the gesture of affection and then tilted his head to allow it. Resuming a commanding pose, and with rigid formality, he held out his hand for me to take.

“Hello, John Rechy,” he said. “I’m Stanty.”

“Stanty,” I said, and reached for his hand, which he quickly withdrew, laughing—suddenly a boy playing a familiar trick. But quickly he was an adult again, firmly shaking my hand. “Actually—can you believe this?—the real name they gave me is—” He looked up at his father with exaggerated accusation, waiting for him to supply the banished name.

“Constantine,” Paul announced.

“Can you believe it?” Stanty said, shaking his head wildly in agitation, then delightedly sprinkling dots of water—a playful, exuberant kid again.

“It’s an elegant name—Constantine,” I said.

“You see?” Paul nudged him.

“It’s ugly,” the boy dismissed. “Please call me Stanty,” he addressed me as we moved up the slight slope of the grounds toward the house.

His note of command added to the annoyance I was beginning to feel that Paul was allowing him to take over—although the feeling of annoyance lessened as he turned to me with the ingratiating smile of a boy welcoming a new friendship.

“Did you ever have another name, John Rechy?” he startled me by asking, drawing my attention away from the blunt display of statuary, an exorbitant exhibition of a collector’s possessions.

“John Rechy, did you ever—?” Stanty seemed annoyed that he had to repeat his question. Now he was irritating me by linking my names for whatever purpose of his own.

“Yes, my real name is Juan,” I told him, thinking that would please him.

“If you will forgive my asking: Why did you change it?”

He seemed to flex before us, straining to show off budding muscles. I laughed unintentionally.

Paul looked quickly at his son.

“You laughed at me,” the boy said to me in a small voice, as if he had been profoundly wounded. He turned to Paul: “Father?” he asked, as if seeking guidance.

“I’m sure he wasn’t laughing at you,” Paul told him.

“Then at who—whom?”

“At myself, Stanty.” I saw an opportunity to adjust the matter. “I laughed at the memory of how my own name was changed. See”—my backing off was working—“I didn’t change my name”—the boy was looking at me with anticipation—“a grammar-school teacher couldn’t pronounce it—it’s Spanish. Mexican,” I clarified. “She changed it to John.” Actually Johnny, though I didn’t tell him. And that was true.

The boy walked a few feet ahead. Stopping before us so that we had to halt facing him, he said, “Why didn’t you change it back, then? Was it because you don’t look like a Mexican and didn’t want to be?”

He had struck meanly. Paul, who remained silent, seemed to be waiting with curiosity for what might follow between me and the boy.

As I remained quiet, gauging the insult, Paul finally interceded: “Stanty, I think our guest might misinterpret your question.”

“Oh, then, it’s easy to apologize. I’m sorry.” The boy turned to me, smiling broadly: “I didn’t mean an insult. There were two Spanish boys—Mexican boys—in my school, and they kept saying they were Spanish. I didn’t understand why, because they were very smart, like you.”

I had prepared a harsh answer to his rude question, but I abandoned it because of Paul’s cautioning reaction toward Stanty—even if late, and mellow—and because of the boy’s apology and unabashed compliment.

But without knowing it, although perhaps suspecting it, he had questioned me in a disturbing way that echoed a judgement. In El Paso, Texas, where I was born, people of Mexican descent would sometimes claim to be “Spanish,” attempting to overcome pervasive, and still at times lingering, prejudice against Mexicans. My father was born in Mexico of Scottish descent, and I had inherited a fair complexion and “Anglo” features, especially since my mother, who was Mexican, was also fair.

Despite his apology, I felt the need to alert this boy—and to do so in front of his father—that I would not accept his rude comportment, to check it. Remembering her tone of displeasure, I said: “A waitress in town asked about you.”

“That gossipy old strumpet?” Stanty said angrily.

“Strumpet?”

“That’s an old English word for a whore,” he said.

I succeeded in withholding my laughter.

As if to halt the subject, he took my hand and Paul’s and led us—this time running and unsuccessfully coaxing us to run—to the house, shifting again, whooping joyously. “Sonya! Sonya!” he called out to a woman standing at the main entrance to the house.

Her astonishing figure looked naked, only a burnished silhouette in the sunset. When we approached her more closely—Stanty still holding our hands and leading us ahead—I saw that she was wearing a pale saffron-colored bathing suit and a wide hat, the same color, a beach hat. Under it, her dark, long hair fell to her shoulders. She wore large round glittery silver earrings. Because of the hat shading her face, I could not make out her features, though I saw more of her sensational body.

“Sonya, this is John Rechy,” Paul introduced me.

“Hello, John,” Sonya said, with a slight French accent.

Stanty said, “His real name is Juan, isn’t it?”

I had not answered the woman; so it was easy to ignore him, although he tilted his head, waiting.

“Hello, Sonya,” I said. Stanty’s mother? No, too young, in her mid-twenties.

“Sonya isn’t my mother,” Stanty clarified my first thought. “I bet that’s what you were wondering. She’s my father’s mistress.”

Now that she had moved out of the shadows, I could gauge her expression: not the slightest frown at Stanty’s blunt designation of her. Instead, she reached out to touch his bare shoulder, a gentle acknowledgement of his presence.

Laughing at Stanty’s boldness, Paul leaned down and again mussed the boy’s hair.

This time the boy easily accepted the gesture. He rushed on, addressing me, then Paul: “My mother will be here soon. Won’t she, Father?”

Paul nodded. “I believe so.”

“Which one, Father?” Stanty asked. “Elizabeth or Corina?”

Which mother? Certainly that hadn’t been what he meant.

“Perhaps both of them,” Paul answered, easily conversational.

One Paul’s ex-wife, another the current one? Whatever relationships were involved—and with Sonya?—those three women would be bound by their closeness to Paul. What would be my place in all this? What role was I expected to play? My conjectures about Paul’s motives for inviting me shifted into new questions. I marveled at his smooth tone throughout what might have been an uncomfortable matter.

“Isn’t Sonya beautiful?” Stanty asked me.

As if to confirm the boy’s words, Sonya removed her hat and shook her hair free—moist from swimming.

“Yes, she is,” I said. “Very beautiful.” And she was. Her face matched the beauty of her body. She was somewhat dark-skinned, or perhaps only deeply tanned. Her breasts, exposed against the tautness of her bathing suit, formed perfect crescents. Her eyes were so dark they appeared black, truly black. She had full lips, scarlet with lipstick, the only makeup that I could detect.

Paul said to her, “Did you hear that, beauty? Our guest is already in your clutches.”

“But he’s—” Stanty pushed himself into the conversation, then stopped, about to say what?

“I’m glad you’re here, John. We’ll be friends,” Sonya said, as if sensing an uncomfortable potential in what Stanty was about to say.

She took my hand and resumed guiding me into the house.

“I am, too, John Rechy.” Stanty clutched her free hand. “I’m glad, too, and we’ll be friends.”

There was urgency in his declamation. “I think we are, aren’t we?” I said.