So why aren’t I doing a goal-line boogie in the doorway? Who knows? Nerves, maybe. Mario said there’d be a final, and I haven’t studied, haven’t taken notes. I clutch my journal and thank God no one will read it.
There are five guys now. Across the circle, A.J. enlightens us about the gymnastic abilities of a girl he met at driving school, and I tune out Kelly’s latest spin on why did the Cuban cross the road? I realize I know more about these guys, and they about me, than anyone I’ve ever met, so when Tiny sends around a phone list, I write my number—though I’ll never call anyone.
It’s Tiny, also, who says, “What about the final, Mario?”
Groans, but Mario silences us, saying, “Chill, hombres. This final’s for me, not you. And there’s only one question.”
“What’s the question?” Ray says.
Mario leans against his desk, flanked by pictures of his wife and son. “It’s been six months. We’ve talked a lot, shared some memories, said things we wish we hadn’t, maybe even made some lifelong friends. Question is: What was this class about?”
I jiggle my hand on my knee, avoiding eye contact. Around me, there’s silence, like the first day again. Finally, Ray, with his gift for stating the obvious, rescues us. “That’s easy. It’s about not hitting women.”
Give the man a prize.
Mario says, “Okay. Who else?”
“It’s not just that, right?” Tiny says. “I’ve been telling Donyelle all that stuff about primary emotions and expressing anger. It’s that too, right?”
Mario nods. He surveys the circle, his eyes resting on each of us. An idea’s forming in my head, but I don’t mean to speak.
Still, it pops out. “I think it’s about being a loser.”
Except that wasn’t what I’d meant to say.
“Who you calling a loser?” Tiny says.
I stand. “Me, Tiny. I’m a loser. That’s what my dad says, anyway. Loser. Failure. I tried to prove him wrong, finding things I could control, like my grades. And Caitlin. When she said no, or I’d think there was someone else, there’d be this voice in my head, almost too soft to hear, whispering loser. You’re a loser, a mistake. And I had to drown it out, had to win, no matter the cost.” I feel a bead of sweat on my forehead. “But, what it cost was Caitlin. Hurting her made me a loser.”
I sit, silence engulfing me. Beside me, Tiny and Ray eyeball their shoes. Someone speaks.
“How do you stop the voice?”
The speaker, surprisingly, is Kelly.
“My daddy says that shit, too,” he adds.
“I don’t know,” I say. I turn to Mario. “Do you?”
Mario laces his fingers behind his head, glancing at the ceiling. Then he looks at us. “If I said it’s something you have to figure out yourself, you’d call me chicken, right?” We nod, even some who won’t look up, and Mario says, “Then, I guess you’re ready to hear about me.”
There’s silence except for the sound of Mario’s chair legs scraping floor tiles as he joins the circle. Then he begins.
“My wise uncle Gustavo used to say, ‘You can tell a man there are fifty billion stars in the sky, and he’ll believe you. But if he sees a sign saying wet paint, he has to check for himself.’” We all laugh at this joke we heard as kids, but Mario holds up a hand, saying, “Don’t laugh at the truth. We accept without question that we—human beings—are the center of the universe. Talk about hubris. But when a woman says, ‘I love you,’ that won’t go through our skulls.”
I thought of Caitlin saying she loved me that last night. I’d barely even heard it.
“It’s easy to believe what’s in books or even television commercials, but no one teaches us to believe in ourselves. Our parents slept on the job there, didn’t they?” He looks at me and Kelly. “They let us cry one or one hundred times too many and said we were failures until we knew it like a religion. And once you join that Church of Fear, Jesus or Buddha or Cousin Kevin’s Cult of Wonders down the street may look good, but that Fear is what holds you until finally, when a woman says she loves you, you know she’s lying. Or it’s just a matter of time ’til she sees what you’re really like and finds someone better. And that adds up to a lot of fear.”
“How would you know?” I ask, glancing again at his photos.
“I know because Fear’s a friend of mine,” Mario says. “My father trained me in its ways from birth. Seven years ago, I was neck deep, sinking faster than burnt sugar in flan. I had my degree, my practice, and a wife who said she loved me. Then I started hearing my father’s voice.
“Teresa wanted to have a baby. First Papi thought that was fine—keep her in her place. But when she started showing, he was there, whispering, ‘She doesn’t love you. She won’t stay once the baby comes,’ and I tried to drown him out, yelling louder and louder and making Teresa cry until one day, yelling wasn’t enough. I pushed my pregnant wife from a moving car.”
The room is silent. Mario wipes a tear, but clearly, one is all he’ll allow himself. Wife and baby smile from his desk.
“Teresa lost the baby, and I lost Teresa. My father got off scot-free. I couldn’t blame him for what I did. He wasn’t there, just me. Teresa told everyone it was an accident—she learned fear at her own mama’s knee, so I got away with it.”
Slowly, it dawns on me. Mario was one of us, one of the walking wounded. And now—he’s fine. What’s to stop me from ending up like him? Nothing. “What happened?” I asked.
“Somehow,” Mario says, “I ended up in a class like this, not planning on learning anything. But in the end, I retook the class. And again. And again, until finally I taught my own class. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t know how to stop your voice, Nick. But hearing it is a good start.”
“Hearing it?”
Mario walks to me. “Don’t let that voice be your elevator music. Turn it up ’til it’s like you’re by the speaker at Lollapalooza. Then, turn it off and listen to something else.
“For me, the voice stopped when I decided to teach these classes, to work with men like myself. I told my father about my new life plan and got his voice in stereo. I watched him, yelling, hopping like a live fish on a frying pan, and I thought: If I met this idiot at the supermarket, I wouldn’t ask his opinion about whether the tomatoes were fresh. I stopped listening that day, and after a while, the voice moved out.” He looks at me. “You can’t respect yourself if you’re letting someone beat you up—inside or out. What you learned here is only half the equation. The other half is self-respect.”
He stops talking. He sits, staring at his hands a long moment. I have something to say but, rather than interrupt him, I raise my hand. When he acknowledges it, I say, “I think I know what you’ve been trying to teach us.” This time, I have the words I want.
He nods for me to go on, and I say, “It’s about being a man, isn’t it? A real man. Not just about who’s bigger or stronger or who gets more women. But…” I stop. Everyone’s looking at me, and I don’t like it. I sound like a wuss.
But Mario says, “Go ahead. You’re on the right track.”
I think about not liking to talk with everyone’s eyes on me, and I say, “It’s about doing the right thing even if you don’t want to do it. About taking responsibility for your actions, like you always told us.” I think of Caitlin and add, “It’s about letting go when you really, really want to hold on so bad.”
Mario looks at me a second, then nods. “You passed the test, Nick.”
I glance away. It wasn’t what I wanted to learn. What I wanted was Caitlin back, not the knowledge I’d lost her forever. But I have. How will I learn to deal with it?
Now, Mario’s talking again, saying he’ll report back to the court that we all completed our requirements. He dismisses us for the last time.
After everyone else leaves, I approach him.
“I want to retake the class,” I say.
I expect raised eyebrows—I haven’t been a model student—but he says, “Yes. I’d like that.”
I tap my toes, silently, inside my shoes before saying, “See you next week, then.” I start to leave, then turn back and shove my journal toward him. “Could you read this? I mean, if you have time.”
He takes it. “I’ll find time.” Then he does something shocking. He puts the notebook on his desk and holds out his arms. I hesitate a moment before stepping toward him and letting him take me in. I’ve never hugged a guy before, never really held anyone but Caitlin. The warmth of it surprises me.
We finally separate. I’m out the door before I remember all the things I wrote about my father. I reach for the knob, wanting to ask for my notebook, say I was kidding about coming back.
Then I decide I don’t care—I’ve been trying to breathe underwater too long. It’s time to get some fresh air into my lungs.