On the Road to Thebes by Jason Arias
“I still end up hugging him when he opens his arms before disappearing again”
Siblings Jason and Laura Arias each wrote about the shared experience of meeting their father for the first time as adults. NAILED Editor Kirsten Larson heard both stories side by side and collected them, adding an introduction essay about memoir, veracity, and art. You can read her essay here. There is a link to Laura Arias’s essay at the bottom of this page.
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The first time I can remember meeting my dad I’m 33.
He’s a foot shorter than me. He has freckles, like our family dog. He has an accent half Dominican, half Harlem, half something else; a smile I don’t trust. He’s a carnival mirror I can’t stop looking for myself in. The way he scans his environment, like me. The way he smiles at everybody, but puts the serious on quick. The way he tries to play off this meeting at the ground floor of his apartment complex as “happenstance,” like Uncle Cecil hadn’t warned him with a covert phone call on the subway ride over.
This guy’s such a shitty actor, but a part of me wants to believe him.
When he says, “Oh my God, are you mine?” and pulls my sister, Lu, and me in and says, “Jou’re beautiful,” he catches me off-guard.
He tells us to call him “Papi” like they do in the D.R. Papi like the plant they make heroine from. Papi and Lu and me are standing here between these two sets of glass doors with our arms around each other, our necks bent inward, our heads together as one. And it feels almost euphoric.
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Uncle Cecil, who brought us here, begs off quick, saying he doesn’t get along with Papi’s girl. Lu thanks Cecil, and we hug, and he’s out. Papi nods to a security guard sitting behind a thick sheet of glass and presses the up arrow for the elevator.
When we enter Papi’s place, on the seventh floor, his girl’s in the kitchen wearing a floral scarf around her head. She says she’s a cancer survivor.
She says, “Ju here for money or somethink?” and isn’t joking, but tries to act like she is.
Papi starts talking. We all eat chicken together.
At the end of the night he walks us to the subway and tells Lu he’ll meet us in the morning.
On the ride back to our Bronx hotel I tell her, “That guy’s full of shit.”
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The next day Papi isn’t returning Lu’s calls.
I tell her to forget it, to forget him. But eventually he answers. He asks us to meet him at the edge of Manhattan.
On the ride in Lu asks me to give Papi a chance. She says, “This shit has to be weird for him too.”
When we arrive, I’m surprised that he’s there. The three of us board another train to our aunts’ apartment in Queens.
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“I remember when ju was a baby,” our aunts tell me, because that was the last time they’d seen me.
They have a picture of my mom and Papi holding me between them on their wedding day. But Papi’s sisters have never seen my sister. They don’t have a picture of her. There’s no question whose she is, though. She looks just like me. Just like him, even more so because they’re the same height.
The whole time we’re at our aunts’, Papi’s phone keeps blowing up in his pocket. He ignores it.
My phone starts ringing, but I don’t recognize the number.
“Who is it?” Papi asks.
“I don’t know,” I say
“Let me see,” he says. “Oh, ju gotta answer it, Papito. Tell her I’m not with ju.”
“I’m not really comfortable with that, man,” I say. “I’ll just let it ring.”
I don’t know how his cancer survivor got my number.
“Hason,” he says, “Ju my son, I’m asking this one thing. Can ju help me?”
Papi doesn’t know me, so he doesn’t know I hate lying, even to people I don’t like. But, somehow, despite this, I still do what he asks. I answer my phone the next time his girl calls and say, “No, I don’t know where Ramone is.”
“I know he’s with ju, Hason!” she yells. “Don’t you fuckink lie to me!”
“Sorry,” I say, “I’ll tell him to call you if I see him.”
She starts in again and I hang up on her.
“What did she say?” Papi asks.
“She’s convinced you’re with us, man. You better come up with a good alibi.”
I feel like Papi’s mistress.
“Thank you, Hason,” he says. “I know ju didn’t want to, but ju did that for me? Thank ju.”
I keep getting little glimpses of why my sister keeps looking for this guy; for this kind of confirmation. Papi puts one hand on my shoulder and squeezes, and I don’t show it, but inside, I’m fucking melting like some newly-found orphan being given a puppy.
“Hey, you’re my Papi,” I say. And I get a taste of what having a proud father might be like. And now Papi and me have this between us. Even if it’s only this little, sticky bond of deceit, it’s more than we had. It’s a pact we can share, something we can build on.
We leave our aunts’, promising to call, and the three of us walk back to the subway. Papi and Lu have their arms linked. His phone’s still ringing, but it’s just background noise; it’s been ringing about every five minutes all day. Maybe he doesn’t know how to silence it.
Just before we reach the subway Papi pulls his phone out and says, “Ello?” He speaks fast Spanglish. Then low and slow. Then he hangs up and stares at the platform we’ve walked on to.
“What’s up, Papi?” I ask.
“Oh, ju know, she’s angry,” he says rolling his eyes.
“What’d you tell her?”
“I had to tell her I was with ju, and jour sister.”
There’s this ball of heat that forms thick in my chest and goes straight through the top of my head.
“You threw me under the bus?” I say. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”
I look at Lu and see the fear on her face; that I might fuck this up, that I might forever exile this guy. She’s the only reason I turn and walk to the edge of the platform and stare down at the tracks. There’s a bunch of trash down there. I find myself looking for the third rail, the widow-maker.
I hear Papi say, “Lorda, talk to jour bruda,” like I’m some fucking kid, and it’s all I can do to not turn around and beat the last thirty-three years out of this fucking guy.
Lu comes to my side and stares at the tracks with me.
“You…all right?” she asks.
I stare until the rails go blurry and the trash down there disappears.
I don’t cry easy. And I don’t cry now.
Instead I say, “I swear to God, Lu, if he gets close to me I’m throwing his fuckin ass in front of a train.” I make sure to say the last part loud enough for Papi to hear.
Lu nods. She knows me. She knows I haven’t been in a fight since I was a teenager, but that right now I’m so fucking angry; that this part of me has always been angry.
“I just need a minute,” I say.
She nods and walks back to where Papi sits.
I hear her ask him, “Why?” And the way her voice shakes makes me want to hurt Papi more.
I hear him trying to console Lu with that Dominican smoothness. That: Lorda, Lorda. I picture him trying to talk his way out of shit with my mom in that same voice. I wonder why I ever let my guard down.
I think of how the world’s so fucking backwards. How we’re born with open arms and slowly learn to close them in around ourselves to keep everything else out. How on the subway ride back into the city I stumble as the train stops short and Papi cowers, like I’m going to hit him or something. How I feel like an abusive son because of this. How I hate him, but I still end up hugging him when he opens his arms before disappearing again. How I know I’ll never see or hear from him. How I never do.
How I feel like I should be okay with this.
But I’m not.
And I’m afraid of what that says about me.
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Read Laura Arias's essay "New York, New York" about this shared experience of meeting her father for the first time, here.
Header image courtesy of Smith Smith. To view a gallery of his collage, go here.
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Jason Arias lives in Portland, OR with his wife and two sons. He spends a lot of time trying to figure out how he can do things better. Some of the places his work can be found is in Perceptions Magazine, online at Blue Skirt Productions and thick jam, and in the new anthology (AFTER)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead.
