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Andrea Saenz

The Tenth and Final Thing

In the minutes before Saul Solano walked into the house of his father to pluck out his soul and place it raw before the old man like uncooked carnitas from the butcher, he took a pen and the back of a credit card bill from the glove compartment and made a numbered list of all the worst things his father might do when he heard the truth: act like he hadn’t heard it; curse; blame college; compare him unfavorably to his brother Gabriel; pray; offer to fiz him up with a nice girl; break something; cry; declare it good his mother wasn’t alive to hear this; disown him by saying, You are not my son. This last one he wrote in shaking blue letters next to the number 10, and then the pen was capped and the list was read over three times while Saul breathed shallow, stuffy breaths inside the car, waiting. He rubbed a little yarn Virgin Mary hanging from the rearview, and opened the car door wondering if he was about to throw up into the gutter. He wasn’t. He stood, and went into the house.

            And when Saul told his father, his jefe, his captain, his jailer and judge and benefactor and giver of life, the truest secret of his heart, that he was in love, and showed him with terror in his hands the small picture of Roger grinning with all the sweetness of a burnt-milk candy, the old man did not disappoint and performed each number in turn: he blinked, Innocent and blank, and asked who the picture was of; he cursed, in florid Spanish; he blamed the American professors for exposing his son to this tripe; he pointed out Gabriel’s identical upbringing which had resulted in a fiancée and shining business career; he opened his address book to find the number of the Vela daughter right then and there; he turned to the santos on the mantel and asked them what they would have him do with this wayward child; he became agitated pacing about and slammed his coffee cup down so hard the mug wavered and he sank to the worn recliner, tears in his throat, unable to look at his younger son; he murmured that the heart of Saul’s mother would be breaking to hear these words and that is was a blessing he alone was witness to the tragedy, And Saul sat and said nothing, frozen the thing ball of shame sticking in his windpipe and scraping behind his eyes.

            But the last one, the tenth and most terrible thing the old man did not say, did not do, and when the son finally broke into his hands, thin shoulders shuddering, hiccupping out his fear and his need in his father’s tongue, mi ‘apa, mi general, a rough and bronzed hand came up and rested on the boy’s black-straw hair. The tenth and final thing. His father never said it.

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