“You are out of gas, dad!”
“No it’s not the gas, the meter is broken, we are fine.”
Through the back seat window I saw the temperature clock marking 36 degrees. Dad was driving this old car, 85 maybe? The air conditioning wasn’t on but I didn’t know if it was because it was broke, or if he just didn’t want to turn it on.
I remember begging my parents to turn on the air conditioning when I was little but they always refused, saying it would use up the gas.
Even though I know it’s not really true, I am always reluctant to turn it on. But then again it’s not that hot in the Bay Area.
We had been driving around for a couple of hours. And even though it was hot, and we were driving, it seemed, in loops, I was happy looking out the window. I hadn’t been in Brazil for 4 years and it looked like a foreign country. A brand new Mercedes honking at scavengers dragging card board on overloaded bikes; graffiti on the cemetery graves; busses so full and streets so crowded.
My sister was sitting next to me yelling at dad asking where we were going.
“See that street? I think I used to come to see a patient there. He was a deputy” answered my dad.
Then he turned to show us the house, talking about how in 1971 he used to have a lot of house calls in this rich area. Then he concluded that he was wrong it was another street and started looking for that street still talking about the patient that had faith in a 24 year old physiotherapist.
Soon we were lost again.
My sister asked where we were going. Then my dad said he was looking for the way back. Where, I didn’t bother asking.
I got interested in the patient talk.
“How long did you practice before you started teaching dad?”, I asked.
“Oh, for almost 10 years, your mother and I worked at the same clinic!” he replied.
“Really?” I was totally intrigued ”I thought you guys went to graduate school right after college.”
“No, no, we lived here for 8 years. We both worked at the clinic. Your mom lived with your grandma and I lived with grandpa. We had a lot of friends, you know. You used to go to these bars.” We were turning a rotary with bars in every corner.
Like a 180 degrees of open Choperias, or breweries, full of students and musicians.
“And we knew everybody”, continued dad.
It was hard for me to imagine my parents with those students, they are old. And I could not remember if they had any friends.
“So why did you guys move to São Paulo? “ I asked.
“Your mom and I never thought we were going to be doctors and live the big city. We just started working and we thought we were always going to live here. Then, we decided that before we had kids we should look into our careers so we moved and went to graduate school. That way, we could also live together” he said, looking right and left, looking for the way.
I still didn’t know where we were headed. But I liked talking to him like this. I really don’t know much about my parents. I don’t how long they were together, what made them move. All I know for sure is that when I was 8 my mom moved to the other side of the world to get away from him. And now he was telling me that once upon a time, they moved the equivalent distance from their families so they could be together.
Joe was napping in the front seat, surely hypnotized by the heat and 3 hours drive.
I was listening to my dad. And I saw my sister crying, but silent.
- - - -
We drove another hour or so. Camila. Joe and I joked about how dad was pretending to be lost so he wouldn’t have to drop us off back at grandmas. We joked how he had lived in this city for years and didn’t know his way around. How he had gotten so lost. We joked about how, when confronted about the air conditioner dad had replied:
“Of course it works, it just works with limitations”
We talked in English so my dad could not understand.
But when we laughed, he laughed too.
- - - -
No comments:
Post a Comment