Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

WHY DO WE SMILE? WHY DO WE LAUGH? WHY DO we feel alone? Why are we sad and confused? Why do we read poetry? Why do we cry when we see a painting? Why is there a riot in the heart when we love? Why do we feel shame? What is that thing in the pit of your stomach called desire?

The problem with my life was that it was someone else’s idea.

I was fifteen. I was bored. I was miserable.

I started wondering what had gone through Richie Valens’s head before the plane crashed into the unforgiving ground. Hey, Buddy! The music’s over. For the music to be over so soon. For the music to be over when it had just begun. That was really sad.

“Maybe Richie Valens died young—but he did something. I mean, he really did something. Me? What have I done?” “You have time,” she said. “There’s plenty of time.” The eternal optimist.

“Well, you have to become a person first,” I said. She gave me a funny look. “I’m fifteen.” “I know how old you are.” “Fifteen-year-olds don’t qualify as people.”

“So what’s the big meeting about?” “We’re reorganizing the food bank.” “Food bank?” “Everyone should eat.” My mom had a thing for the poor. She’d been there. She knew things about hunger that I’d never know.

The problem with my life was that it was someone else’s idea.

I decided to go swimming at the Memorial Park pool. It was a small idea. But at least the idea was mine.

Mom, she got my sense of humor. I got hers. We were good that way. Not that she wasn’t something of a mystery. One thing that I completely got—I got why my father fell in love with her. Why she fell in love with my father was something I still couldn’t wrap my head around.

Once, when I was about six or seven, I was really mad at my father because I wanted him to play with me and he just seemed so far away. It was like I wasn’t even there. I asked my mom with all my boyhood anger, “How could you have married that guy?”

She smiled and combed my hair with her fingers. That was always her thing. She looked straight into my eyes and said calmly, “Your father was beautiful.” She didn’t even hesitate. I w...

I didn’t like the fact that I was a pseudo only child. I didn’t know how else to think of myself. I was an only child without actually being one. That sucked. My twin sisters were twelve years older. Twelve years was a lifetime. I swear it was.

My parents were young and struggling when my sisters and brother were born. “Struggling” is my parents’ favorite word. Sometime after three children and trying to finish college, my father joined the Marines. Then he went off to war. The war changed him. I was born when he came home.

Sometimes I think my father has all these scars. On his heart. In his head. All over. It’s not such an easy thing to be the son of a man who’s been to war.

When I was eight, I overheard my mother talking to my Aunt Ophelia on the phone. “I don’t think that the war will ever be over for him.” Later I asked my Aunt Ophelia i...

“But why won’t the war leave my dad alone?” “Because your father has a conscience,” she said. “What happened to him in the war?” “No one knows.” ...

When I was eight, I didn’t know anything about war. I didn’t even know what a conscience was. All I knew is that sometimes my father was sad. I hated that he was...

So I was the son of a man who had Vietnam living inside him. Yeah, I had all kinds of tragic reasons for feeling sorry for myself. Being fifteen didn’t help. Sometimes I thought...

What do you do in a pool when you don’t know how to swim? Learn. I guess that was the answer.

I had managed to teach my body to stay afloat on water. Somehow, I’d stumbled on some principle of physics. And the best part of the whole thing was that I’d made the discovery all on my own.

All on my own. I was in love with that phrase. I wasn’t very good at asking for help, a bad habit...

Maybe life was just a series of phases—one phase after another after another. Maybe, in a couple of years, I’d be going through the same phase as the eighteen-year-old lifeguards. Not that I really believed in my mom’s phase theory. It didn’t sound like an explanation—it sounded like an excuse.

And there wasn’t anything mean about him. I didn’t understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on you. How could a guy live without some meanness?

Dante became one more mystery in a universe full of mysteries.

I read Conrad’s book because of him. When I finished reading it, I told him I hated it. “Except,” I said, “it’s true. The world is a dark place. Conrad’s right about that.” “Maybe your world, Ari, but not mine.” “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Yeah, yeah,” he said.

The truth is, I’d lied to him. I loved the book. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever read. When my father noticed what I was reading, he told me it was one of his favorite books.

I was darker than he was. And I’m not just talking about our skin coloring. He told me I had a tragic vision of life. “That’s why you like Spider-Man.”

“Would you ever?” I said. “Run away?” “No.” “Why not?” “You want me to tell you a secret?” “Sure.” “I’m crazy about my mom and dad.” That really made me smile. I’d never heard anyone say that about their parents. I mean, no one was crazy about their parents. Except Dante.

“That lady two seats in front of us. I think she’s having an affair.” “How do you know?” I whispered. “She took off her wedding band as she got on the bus.” I nodded and smiled. We made up stories about the other bus riders. For all we knew, they were writing stories about us.

I always kept my distance from the other boys. I never ever felt like I was a part of their world. Boys. I watched them. Studied them. In the end, I didn’t find most of the guys that surrounded me very interesting. In fact, I was pretty disgusted.

And another thing about my father: He didn’t give lectures. Not real ones. Which pissed me off. He wasn’t a mean guy. And he didn’t have a bad temper. He spoke in short sentences: “It’s your life.” “Give it a try.” “You sure you want to do that?” Why couldn’t he just talk? How was I supposed to know him when he didn’t let me? I hated that.

Everything was a mystery. I guess I didn’t have it so bad. Maybe everybody didn’t love me, but I wasn’t one of those kids that everyone hated, either. I was good in a fight. So people left me alone.

I was mostly invisible. I think I liked it that way. And then Dante came along.

He introduced me to his father, the English professor. I’d never met a Mexican-American man who was an English professor. I didn’t know they existed. And really, he didn’t look like a professor.

He seemed like a man who was in love with being alive. So different from my father, who had always kept his distance from the world. There was a darkness in my father that I didn’t understand. Dante’s father didn’t have any darkness in him. Even his black eyes seemed to be full of light.

Dante walked up to his father and kissed him on the cheek. I would have never done that. Not ever.

“You can call me Sam,” he said. “I can’t,” I said. God, I wanted to hide. He nodded. “That’s sweet,” he said. “And respectful.” The word “sweet” had never passed my father’s lips.

It made me smile, the way they got along, the easy and affectionate way they talked to each other as if love between a father and a son was simple and uncomplicated. My mom and I, sometimes the thing we had between us was easy and uncomplicated. Sometimes. But me and my dad, we didn’t have that. I wondered what that would be like, to walk into a room and kiss my father.

“As my mom would say, ‘It’s your responsibility, Dante.’ Responsibility is my mother’s favorite word. She doesn’t think my father pushes me hard enough. Of course he doesn’t. I mean, what does she expect? Dad’s not a pusher. She married the guy. Doesn’t she know what kind of guy he is?” “Do you always analyze your parents?” “They analyze us, don’t they?”

“Tell me you don’t analyze your mom and dad.” “Guess I do. Doesn’t do me any good. I haven’t figured them out yet.” “Well, me, I figured my dad out—not my mom. My mom is the biggest mystery in the world. I mean, she’s predictable when it comes to parenting. But really, she’s inscrutable.” “Inscrutable.” I knew when I went home, I would have to look up the word.

“I figured my mom out, mostly,” I said. “My dad. He’s inscrutable too.” I felt like such a fraud, using that word. Maybe that was the thing about...

“Poetry,” he said. “It won’t kill you.” “What if it does? Boy Dies of Boredom While Reading Poetry.” He tried not to laugh, but he wasn’t good at controlling all the laughter that lived inside of him.

I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn’t get—and never would get.

I was impressed by the fact that Dante could be so systematic in the way he organized everything in his room. When we’d walked in, the place had been all chaos. But when he finished, everything was in its place. Dante’s world had order.

When Dante read the word “bastard” he smiled. I knew he loved saying it because it was a word he was not allowed use, a word that was banned. But here in his room, he could read that word and make it his.

I didn’t worry about understanding them. I didn’t care about what they meant. I didn’t care because what mattered is that Dante’s voice felt real. And I felt real.

Until Dante, being with other people was the hardest thing in the world for me. But Dante made talking and living and feeling seem like all those things were perfectly natural. Not in my world, they weren’t.

That afternoon, I learned two new words. “Inscrutable.” And “friend.” Words were different when they lived inside of you.

My dad glanced at my mom. I think they were smiling at each other. Yeah, they were thinking, he’s finally found a friend. I hated that.