My understanding is that the family, the Guzmans, are from Colombia, and they’ve been here nine years. I don’t know if they’ve been illegal the whole time. He works in a medical lab. I think she works in elder care. Two kids, both elementary school age. —Doris Raskin
They live east of Franklin Grove, I believe in Montgomery Heights. That’s where you find most of them. —Sonny Green
Sonny, what do you mean by “them”? Undocumented aliens? Foreign-born people? Working-class people trying for their shot at the American dream? —Dotty Engleman
The logic of what you’re saying, Dotty, defending the right of illegals to have their shot at the “American dream,” eludes me. By definition, the American dream belongs to Americans. Come to this country legally, become a citizen, and then you can chase the American dream. —Sonny Green
Legal immigrants, not just citizens, also have the right to work toward this so-called American dream, don’t you think? Once we say, okay, you may live here, then why would we draw a distinction between their rights and ours? —Eric Templeton
How about minor details such as voting? Are you saying we should open up the right to vote to immigrants who aren’t citizens, who haven’t pledged their allegiance to this country? —Nan Kimmel
I was referring to economic rights, Nan. Of course you have to be a citizen to vote. I was saying we don’t want to put economic barriers in front of the immigrant population. We want them to integrate into the economy, contribute to it, and not end up needing public assistance and other costly social services. —Eric Templeton
The plain fact is that they are, overall, a drain on our resources. This is the logical outcome of the clash of cultures that our nation is becoming. Don’t learn English, and you can’t get a decent job. Don’t adopt American culture, including basic things like maintaining your property so it doesn’t drag down the neighborhood, and you will remain outsiders, clueless as to how things work in this country. —Sonny Green
Hey, Sonny—who “maintains” your property? Seems to me it’s the same brown-skinned men who cut my lawn. They seem to know what they’re doing. —Tim Watkins
Hey, Tim—take a drive through beautiful eastern Montgomery Heights. Messy vegetable patches in front of the houses instead of front lawns. Tacky ceramic statuettes. If you like that kind of “maintenance,” I think I counted eight For Sale signs when I was last there. I’m sure they’d welcome you. —Sonny Green
Sonny, haven’t you seen the articles recently about the stupidity of front lawns? They waste precious water, they spread chemicals, and otherwise are a complete waste. Maybe those people in Montgomery Heights have the right idea with their front yard gardens. —Jennifer Hernandez
Maybe lawns aren’t a *complete* waste, Jennifer—they allow people like Sonny to display their shameless hypocrisy. Yes, Tim, that is Manuel’s truck you see outside Sonny’s house every week…. —Michael Hunter
Neighbors, just a friendly reminder from your Franklin Grove Listserv administrator that we keep things civil and respectful here. Thank you all for your cooperation. —Moira McGillicudy, Listserv administrator
I don’t usually lurk on the Franklin Grove e-mail list. But this whole illegal immigration thing has become kind of a hot topic in our neighborhood, and I can’t help but want to know what all the heat is about. An article in the Observer said that someone brought it up at the community meeting after I left, but the Franklin Grove Board chairman said the subject wasn’t on the agenda, and shut down any discussion. By the way, don’t you just love it when people (like Sonny Green) use the word “logical” to describe their arguments, as if calling them “logical” settles everything? And how ’bout that sarcasm (Sonny Green, Michael Hunter)? I’ve never been averse to a good sarcastic jab. But some of this stuff I’m reading seems more mean than anything else.
Actually, the argument is reaching way beyond our neighborhood. The Washington Post had an article about it—that is, how the accident is triggering debates in Meigs County and even in the state assembly over undocumented immigrants.
There’s a video, too. Not of the accident itself. Jeez, thank the Lord. And not of me sitting in the street, either. The video is of Mr. Stashower, when he was yelling at the kids who gathered on the side of the road to gawk at the disaster. “Stay there!” he yells in the video. He’s looking right at the camera. “You kids stay there!” Funny thing is, there are no kids visible in the video at all. You do hear someone off-camera muttering, “Chill. No one’s going anywhere.” And if you listen really carefully, you can hear—at least, I think I can hear—someone saying “Oh my God. Oh my God,” over and over again. That would be Mrs. Stashower.
“Hey, Danny.”
Adrian’s come by for dinner again. He looks over my shoulder. “Ah, the infamous Franklin Grove e-mail list.”
“It’s infamous?” I say.
“It should be,” he says. “This is a perfect example of why adults should be barred from any communications technology more advanced than the touch-tone phone.”
I smile, although I don’t exactly know what a touch-tone phone is.
“Want to cook with me?” Adrian asks.
“Uh …” I’m fairly incompetent in the kitchen.
“I amend my invitation. Want to watch me cook?”
Sure. Adrian isn’t just here to eat dinner; he’s here to make dinner, which is great. Mom won’t be home for another hour. Dad, who almost always gets home from work before Mom, is most often the cook now that Adrian’s moved out. He makes edible meals, my father does, but Adrian is the true chef in our family. Tonight’s menu includes his famous (to me) Moroccan chicken, couscous, honey-glazed carrots, and a green salad. Dad’s in the basement, exercising.
As he browns the chicken in a big pot, Adrian tells me about a restaurant-bar type of place that some guys he knows want to open. I haven’t heard him sound so excited since Guitar Hero first came out.
“It’s in the boonies,” he says, “near where I live. There’s no decent place around there where people can get good food and listen to live music. So we thought—actually, really, they thought, I’m definitely the junior guy on the project—why not open a place that we’d want to hang out in? Not a rowdy bar scene. Not a dump, but also not fancy. And definitely not another chain restaurant.”
“Would you—cook?” I ask, watching him chop an onion and a green pepper “And what’s that spice you put in this chicken that makes it taste the way it does?”
“Cumin,” he says. “It goes in when I put the pot on simmer. And—would I cook? I’m not really qualified to do anything in the kitchen other than be a helper, but I’d do that. I’d wait tables. And—here’s the amazing part—I’d play music.” He adds the onion and green pepper to the pot and stirs them to the bottom.
I give out a whoop. “Really!”
“Yup. Since I took my drum set out to my place over the summer, I’ve been playing with a group of guys. Some of them are also part of the group that wants to open the restaurant. We wouldn’t be the only act to play there, but we’d play there some of the time.” Now Adrian is draining and rinsing a can of chickpeas in the sink.
“Bluegrass?” It’s Adrian’s favorite. Not exactly what he got to play in high school band class.
“Bluegrass.” He adds the chickpeas, along with crushed tomatoes and seasonings, to the browned chicken. Once they boil up, he turns the heat down under the pot and covers it.
“Wow,” I say. “It sounds great.”
“I’m really excited about it,” he says.
“What about plumbing?” I ask him.
“Less excited about that,” he says. “It’s earned me some money. I don’t mind it. But it’s not what I want to do with my life. For now, I’ll keep doing it. Once the restaurant opens, I’ll try to do both. We’ll see.”
When Adrian told our parents he was apprenticing to a plumber, you would have thought from the looks on their faces that he was joining al-Qaeda. Afterward, when he vented to me, I said, “Adrian, what reaction were you expecting? I mean, we know them by now.”
“Look, if they hadn’t shut me down with their inane questions—Do you intend to make plumbing your life’s work? Do you not have higher dreams than this?—we might have had a reasonable discussion,” he said.
And the thing was, he wanted to have that reasonable discussion.
“Maybe Mom’s work is the fulfillment of her highest dream,” Adrian said. “I mean, it definitely fits her personality. Lecturing. Telling people what the rules are.”
Oh, yes.
“But Dad—you can’t tell me that he, or anyone, ever dreamed of looking at people’s feet day after day.” Dad is a foot doctor. “Does being a foot doctor really ring his chimes?”
“It might,” I said. “It’s Dad, Adrian. His chimes are easily rung.”
I didn’t mean anything mean by it. Just, Dad’s easy. It doesn’t take much to satisfy him.
“Point taken,” Adrian said. “And actually, Dad’s a good example here. He doesn’t love feet. He’s not fulfilled by feet. He likes being his own boss, and being good at something.”
“Even if it’s feet,” I said.
“Exactly. Feet, toilets, whatever. So, to answer the question you were tactful enough not to ask me, no, snaking drains isn’t the fulfillment of my highest dream. I don’t know that it will be my life’s work. The point is, I feel the need to stake out on my own. So I learn a trade, I make money, I support myself, and that makes me happy. Because I can’t live under this roof.”
“Why?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking, even though I knew I was practically whining. “Why can’t you live under this roof? I like you under this roof.”
He moved over to me then and hugged me.
“I can’t take from them anymore,” he said.
“Is that different from I can’t take them anymore?” I asked.
“It’s close, but different,” he said. “I can’t take their money or food or a room in this house. Because then I have to take all that comes with it. Especially all that disapproval I see in their faces.”
I wanted to disagree. But he was right. Sure, they were right that Adrian had higher dreams than being a plumber, but it’s just too bad that they couldn’t lay off enough to let him work his way toward those dreams while living under the same roof as the rest of us. Down the hall from me, where he belonged.
The front door opens and closes.
“It smells wonderful in this house!” Mom says. “I detect the presence of Adrian Snyder!”
“Hi, Mom,” Adrian calls out.
“How great to come home to my talented son cooking,” Mom says as she walks into the kitchen. “Danielle, are you taking notes?”
“Copiously,” I respond.
Mom goes to change. Dad pokes his head in the kitchen and makes appreciative noises on the way from his basement workout to a quick change of his own. Ten minutes later, we all sit down at the kitchen table to eat. Adrian serves; when he cooks, the food even looks attractive.
And, of course, it’s totally delicious. As always.
We talk about the buzz on the neighborhood e-mail list a little bit. Mom and Dad aren’t exactly in total agreement with each other on immigration issues. Mom has become more negative about undocumented immigrants ever since a day labor center opened up near the mall. As for Dad, he likes to remind us that we’re only two generations away from being immigrants ourselves; both his and Mom’s grandparents came from Europe in the 1930s.
After some aimless back-and-forth on all this, Adrian says, “I have exciting news.”
This is not the smartest strategy for him. With an introduction like that, you know my mother is thinking that he’s announcing his decision to go back to school. I can already see a smile beginning to form around her eyes.
Instead, he tells Mom and Dad about the restaurant thing.
Dad repeats something Adrian says: “Seven people are starting this restaurant?”
This is a Dad-ism. He repeats a piece of information, and cocks his head as if he doesn’t get something. But, Adrian and I both know, he almost always does get it. This is his way of expressing his doubts about whether something is a good idea.
“Yeah,” Adrian says. “There are seven guys in total, including me. Five of us have been playing music together.”
Pause. Their carefully arranged faces give my parents away. Dad, especially, is trying to keep his face expressionless, but he’s so not good at it. Mom exercises less self-control, and I see her attempt to maintain neutrality break apart, one eyebrow at a time. I know she will go in for the kill. Resist, I message her telepathically.
She doesn’t get the message.
“Does anyone in this group of seven have experience in the restaurant business?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Adrian says. “Two of the guys have managed places. Applebee’s, I think.”
“Where’s the money coming from? Creating a business isn’t cheap. There’s rent, probably renovation, equipment, supplies, labor costs—”
“We’re all putting in some money. And we’re getting investors. We might also get a bank loan.”
“You’re putting in some of your own money?” Mom’s voice rises to a higher register on this question.
“Some,” Adrian says. “I’ve saved. But it’s not like I’m putting up an equal share of the money. We’re forming a kind of partnership, but with different levels of participation. So I risk less of my own money than some of the other guys. Which also means I’ll make less when we start earning money.”
“Adrian, did you know that the majority of new businesses fail within a year?” Mom says. “And the percentage is significantly higher for non-chain restaurants? The likelihood that this place will earn money is—not great.”
Adrian briefly closes his eyes. He doesn’t answer.
“Son—the place will serve liquor?” Dad asks.
“Yes,” Adrian says. “It will. That’s how most restaurants make money.”
“And it’s not a problem getting a liquor license for you, one of the owners, to be under the legal drinking age?” Dad asks.
“No,” Adrian says. “We checked. You can own a restaurant that sells liquor if you’re nineteen. You can bartend if you’re nineteen in Meigs County. You just can’t drink.”
“Who are your outside investors?” Mom asks.
I see Adrian’s jaw tighten. “So far, only one’s for sure. My bass player friend’s parents.”
“Don’t worry,” Adrian says. “I’m not asking you to invest in this.”
I see the gears clicking in Mom’s brain, and here’s what they signal: Adrian is doing something unwise. She disapproves. She will not support this. He tells her it’s happening anyway. He tells her he doesn’t need her support—her money, in this case.
Wait for it. If he doesn’t want her to invest, then, of course, she’ll go in the opposite direction.
“Why aren’t you asking us to invest?” Mom says.
Bingo. She can’t help herself.
Adrian just shakes his head. It’s almost unnoticeable, but I notice. Other than that, he doesn’t react. And Mom doesn’t press for an answer. So there isn’t a big unpleasant scene, but the rest of the meal isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs.
After dinner, Adrian doesn’t stick around. Before he leaves, though, there’s another debate between him and Mom about, of all things, leftovers. She wants him to take them. He cooked, after all. He pushes back: He was happy to cook. She: There’s enough for one, not three. He: Plenty of food at his place. She: Don’t be stubborn. He: Now he’s stubborn because he’s not taking food out of her house.
Mom gives up, says good night, and goes upstairs.
“Adrian,” I say as he shrugs on his jacket to leave. “Take the poor Moroccan chicken. Otherwise Mom will deport it.”
He doesn’t laugh, but he does smile. A little. And he takes the chicken.