THE GOMEZ BROTHERS

"Dad-Dee! Dad-Dee!?" I hear Marcos' voice echoing down the hall. "Your son is waiting for you," follows Fabiola's voice. They are both in bed with their backs propped against pillows. Fabiola has opened her book and Marcos has his five--Sam I Am, two collections of animal stories, a children's dictionary of dinosaurs and a Mickey Mouse book with his entourage featuring the alphabet and ending with Mickey going to bed--spread before him. "Milk, Dad-Dee, milk." Marcos stands on the bed and wraps his arms around me. "Who loves his baby more than anyone in the world?" "Dad-Dee." "Give me a kiss, papacito." He kisses me on the lips. When I was a teenager my father asked me why I didn't kiss him anymore. I responded with a look that he must be crazy. I supposed that he had assumed the bird had flown its nest. I place Marcos on the sofa while I continue to the kitchen. I take the milk from the refrigerator and locate his plastic cup among the clean dishes. "Chocolate, Dad-Dee, chocolate," he pleads from the frontroom. "There is no chocolate." Fabiola has issued unequivocal orders that he can have no chocolate prior to bed. She has determined that I put too much chocolate in his milk. I return to the livingroom to collect him, avoiding the throw rug in the middle of the room out of habit since Fabiola doesn't want anyone stepping on it with shoes. I make the superficial concessions while the rest of the universe spins out of control toward the black hole. Fabiola is immersed in her book and ignores us while we accommodate ourselves next to her. "You have a date with destiny," I remind her. She turns a page. Is she on the road to becoming a religious conservative like her mother or has she buried herself in literature about confused women pining for a more fulfilling life? I will continue with her until she discovers the truth about my secret life and then I will have a frontrow seat to the spectacle that ensues. I feel Iliana pounding her fists against me in throes of desperation while I retreated into my rope-a-dope defense until the boys pulled her off me."Who is going to make me those sandwiches?" she screamed. Marcos is jumping on the bed. Fabiola is biting her bottom lip as she reads. There is a Mexican song that insists that all relationships are condemned to failure because even beauty grows old. She is beautiful. "All his wives were beautiful," my friends and family will say when I have passed. "I know that you're staring at me," she grumbles. "You know I hate that." When we first started seeing each other I would sit in bed waiting for her while she performed her chores. We haven't been separated physically for more than ten nights and those first 100 days we screwed every morning and night. I fucked her fanatically. I fucked her as if I were trying to extinguish a fire that no matter how much I smothered it, it kept burning. "I said stop staring," she growls a second time. "Read to your son." She has poky ears and a large mole under one of them. No black hairs sprout from it. I remarked to her that too many black hairs were sprouting from her nipples and she took tweezers and yanked them out. If I mention that there is a black hair, which there never is, dangling from a nostril, she pulls her head against her chest. "I know that I have my defects," she told me when we were squabbling. With an exquisite face that has blinded suitors, she further deprived them of the light by burying them beneath her big tits and hairy pussy. She would sweep them away by fucking them within hours after meeting them. They would stare into her huge brown eyes while they drove their dicks deep into her innards. She was going to fuck while the fucking was good and in the process drive her lovers loco because they knew that they couldn't possess her even though they were fucking her. The pills have unleashed their potency. I'm raw with desire. I am possessed and obsessed. I will fuck her tonight like I have on a previous 1,500 nights. I will ejaculate inside her, fall on my back in exhaustion and frustration, and begin to wander through the house looking for a place to sleep. I can't remember the last time I told her I loved her. "I'm not going to read tonight, papi. I'm going to tell you a story?" "Which one, Dad-dee?" "The Gomez brothers!" "I like that one." "How many brothers were there?" "Five." "And who did they live with?" "With their mother." "There was Raul, Rene, Ramiro, Reymundo and Rafeal. They didn't have a father, but who did they love very much?" "Their mother." "But she was very sad? Why?" "Because they all died." "Except?" "Rafael." "There was Raul who was crossing the river when the water moccasins attacked him. His mother was very sad. Who was next?" "Rene." "Rene was in the middle of the street, but he didn't see the stage coach and the horses trampled him to death. His mother was very sad. Who was next?" "Ramiro." "Ramiro was planting tomatoes on his farm when bad men shot him. His mother was very sad. Who was next?" "Reymundo." "Reymundo was coming to Brownsville to buy tortillas when other bad men hung him from a tree. His mother was very sad. Who was next?" "Rafael." "Did Rafael make his mother happy or sad?" "Very, very happy." "Exactly. Rafael became the first Mexican-American president of the United States." "Can I be president like Barack Obama?" "You can be anything you want to be, papi, but you won't be a big boy if you don't go to sleep and eat well tomorrow. I love you, baby." "I love you, Daddy." He settles into the crook of my arm. Five minutes later I carry him to bed, lie him on his side and give him a kiss on the top of his head. I walk quietly to the computer in my office and call up the letter that I have written to Fabiola but haven't delivered. I have made numerous presentations in public, but I have prepared my speeches beforehand, delivering them to my audiences with a poetic understatement. I can ad-liv, but I prefer to read from a prepared statement to be sure to cover all the salient points. I have attempted to broach my dark sentiments to Fabiola, but I haven't been successful in articulating my anger against her. I am working on a letter that I will deliver to her when I have reached the point of no-return. I pull it up on the screen and peruse it for the umpteenth time: "You have exhausted me both physically and emotionally. As little as I excite you, you excite me less. As miserable as you are, I'm ten times more. miserable. Our sex life is a shambles. We used to make love every morning and evening. Now you don't want me next to you. I think of all the guys with whom you made, and god knows how many there were, and you won't make love to me. These friends with rights would feed you dinner and then feed on you for the rest of the night. There is no hope for us because I can't forgive you for your promiscuous past. How many were there? I've counted twelve, but I'm sure there were dozens more. Their stories have entwined themselves in my brain and I feel like my head is choking with a cancerous weed. I have to live with these lascivious images 24/7. How many were there or are you too embarrassed to admit the number? How many nights did you leave your children with your parents while you partied and fucked all night long? All your stories are branded in my brain. I know by heart the scores of stories describing in excruciating detail your inability to resist the moment. Nobody appreciated the aphrodisiac qualities of ecstasy more than you. You've never had any problems controlling yourself with me. The best you can do is lie there without any movement and bark that I have the face of a dog. We have nothing. You hate me. I can feel it. You wish I were dead. Between a small insurance settlement and the face-saving escape of not having to endure another divorce, you would be in heaven if I dropped dead of a heart attack tomorrow. I think about the price I had to pay, the loss of my two sons, for a woman who is secretly counting the days, although she fears it may be years, until we're parted. I can feel your rejection by the way you push me away when we are together. I haven't forgotten or forgiven you when you told me I had "la cara de un perro" because I was panting to make love to you. Last Mother's Day I couldn't believe you complaining that the book and flowers I gave you weren't enough. I remember as a child when times were tough we would buy my father a book of crossword puzzles and a Mr. Goodbar and he felt we treating him like a king. When a woman loses respect for her man's contributions, then he should recognize that all is lost. I have given your children a hundred times more than their father has. I have given them more financially than my own sons. I have coached their teams and I have taken them to places they would have never visited otherwise. I have done these things for no other reason than I love them. I am paying too much for a house, but you insisted the kids have their own rooms and a big yard, and I am paying for the most expensive daycare in Brownsville so you can watch our son on your monitor at school. And you choose to give me no credit for my sacrifices. I am so short of money that my clothes sit in the dry cleaners for months. And I have to think twice about renewing my magazine subscriptions. No matter how much I wish things were different in our relationship, it is impossible because your past wrecks havoc in my mind and allows me no peace. I cannot accept your rejections, particularly when I imagine you opening your legs for a series of lovers. I suppose this rancor will allow me to hate you more and reinforce my opinion that you are little more than a puta. So you don't have illusions about where I stand on our marriage, I have been cheating on you with several women over the past six years. I have had it with you and this relationship. Is there anything I have expressed that you don't understand? When I told Iliana I had had 100 affairs during our time together, she collapsed on the couch, but she quickly forgave me. I didn't care one iota for her. When I slapped Marisa across the face when she told me she had been cheating on me, I didn't give a shit. When I deliver you this epistle, I will have proven once again that I don't give a shit."