2007 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (21 page)

Was I really reading my roommate’s journal behind his back? Of course I was.

Oh, but you should have seen the O. He was like I’d never seen him, love the transformer. Started dressing up more, ironing his shirts every morning. Dug this wooden samurai sword out of his closet and in the early morning stood out on the lawn of Demarest, bare-chested, slicing down a billion imaginary foes. Even started running again! Well, jogging. Oh,
now
you can run, I carped, and he saluted me with a brisk upsweep of his hand as he struggled past.

I should have been happy for the Wao. I mean, honestly, who was I to begrudge Oscar a little action? Me, who was fucking with not one, not two, but three fine-ass bitches
at the same time
and that wasn’t even counting the side-sluts I scooped at the parties and the clubs; me, who had pussy coming out my ears? But of course I begrudged the motherfucker. A heart like mine, which never got any kind of affection growing up, is terrible above all things. Was then, is now. Instead of encouraging him, I scowled when I saw him with La Jablesse; instead of sharing my women wisdom I told him to watch himself — in other words I was a player-hater.

Me, the biggest player of them all.

I shouldn’t have wasted the energy. Jenni always had boys after her. Oscar only a lull in the action, and one day I saw her out on the Demarest lawn talking to the tall punk kid who used to hang around Demarest, wasn’t a resident, crashed with whatever girl would let him. Thin as Lou Reed, and as arrogant. He was showing her a yoga thing and she was laughing. Not two days later I found Oscar in his bed crying. Yo, homes, I said, fingering my weight belt. What the hell is the matter with you?

Leave me alone, he lowed.

Did she diss you? She dissed you, didn’t she?

Leave me alone, he yelled. LEAVE. ME. ALONE.

Figured it would be like always. A week of mooning and then back to the writing. The thing that carried him. But it wasn’t like always. I knew something was wrong when he stopped writing. Oscar never stopped writing — loved writing the way I loved cheating — just lay in bed and stared at the SDF-I. Ten days of him all fucked up, of him saying shit like, I dream about oblivion like other people dream of good sex, got me a little worried. So I copied his sister’s number in Madrid and called her on the sly. Took me like a half-dozen tries and two million
vales
before I got through.

What do you want?

Don’t hang up, Lola. It’s about Oscar.

She called him that night, asked him what was going on, and of course he told her. Even though I was sitting right there.

Mister, she commanded, you need to let it
go
.

I can’t, he whimpered. My heart is overthrown.

You have to, and so on, until at the end of two hours he promised her that he would try. Come on, Oscar, I said after giving him twenty minutes to stew. Let’s go play some video games. He shook his head, unmoved. I will play Street Fighter no more.

Well? I said to Lola later on the phone.

I don’t know, she said. He gets like this sometimes.

What do you want me to do?

Just watch him for me, OK?

Never got the chance. Two weeks later, La Jablesse gave Oscar the coup de friendship: he walked in on her while she was ‘entertaining’ the punk, caught them both naked, probably covered with blood or something, and before she could even say, Get out, he went berserk. Called her a whore and attacked her walls, tearing down her posters and throwing her books everywhere. I found out because some whitegirl ran up and said, Excuse me, but your stupid roommate is going insane, and I had to bolt upstairs and put him in a headlock. Oscar, I hollered, calm down, calm
down
. Leave me the fuck
alone
, he shrieked, trying to stomp down on my feet.

It was pretty horrible. As for punkboy, apparently dude jumped right out the window and ran all the way to George Street. Buttnaked.

That was Demarest for you. Never a dull fucking moment.

To make a long story short, he had to attend counseling to keep from losing his housing, couldn’t go to the second floor for nothing; but now everybody in the dorm thought he was some kind of major psycho. The girls especially stayed away from him. As for La Jablesse, she was graduating that year, so a month later they relocated her to the river dorms and called it even. I didn’t really see her again except once while I was on the bus and she was out on the street, walking into Scott Hall with these dominatrix boots.

And that’s how our year ended. Him vacated of hope and tapping at the computer, me being asked in the hall how I liked dorming with Mr. Crazyman, and me asking back how their ass would like dorming with my foot? A lame couple of weeks. When it came time to re-up at the dorm, me and O didn’t even talk about it. My boys were still stuck in their moms’ cribs so I had to take my chances with the lottery again and this time I hit the fucking jackpot, ended up with a single in Frelinghuysen. When I told Oscar that I was leaving Demarest he pulled himself out of his depression long enough to look astounded, like he was expecting something else. I figured — I stammered, but before I could say another word, he said, It’s OK, and then, as I was turning away he grabbed my hand and shook it very formally: Sir, it’s been an honor.

Oscar, I said.

People asked me, Did you see the signs? Did you? Maybe I did and just didn’t want to think about it. Maybe I didn’t. What the fuck does it really matter? All I knew was that I’d never seen him more unhappy, but there was a part of me that didn’t care. That wanted out of there the same way I had wanted out of my hometown.

On our last night as roommates Oscar housed two bottles of orange Cisco I had bought him. You remember Cisco? Liquid crack, they used to call it. So you know Mr. Lightweight was
fucked up
.

To my virginity! Oscar shouted.

Oscar, cool it, bro. People don’t want to hear about all that.

You’re right, they just want to
stare
at me.

Come on, tranquilisate.

He slumped. I’m copacetic.

You ain’t pathetic.

I said
copacetic
. Everybody, he shook his head, misapprehends me.

All the posters and books were packed and it could have been the first day again if it hadn’t been for how unhappy he was. On the real first day he’d been excited, kept calling me by my full name until I told him, It’s Yunior, Oscar. Just Yunior.

I guess I knew I should have stayed with him. Should have sat my ass in that chair and told him that shit was going to be cool, but it was our last night and I was fucking tired of him. I wanted to fuck silly this Indian girl I had on Douglass, smoke a joint, and then go to bed.

Fare thee well, he said as I left. Fare thee well!

What he did was this: drank a third bottle of Cisco and then walked unsteadily down to the New Brunswick train station. With its crumbling façade and a long curve of track that shoots high over the Raritan. Even in the middle of the night, doesn’t take much to get into the station or to walk out onto the tracks, which is exactly what he did. Stumbled out toward the river, toward Route 18. New Brunswick falling away beneath him until he was seventy-seven feet in the air. Seventy-seven feet precisely. From what he would later recall, he stood on that bridge for a good long time. Watching the streaking lights of the traffic below. Reviewing his miserable life. Wishing he’d been born in a different body. Regretting all the books he would never write. Maybe trying to get himself to reconsider. And then the 4:12 express to Washington blew in the distance. By then he was barely able to stand. Closed his eyes (or maybe he didn’t) and when he opened them there was something straight out of Ursula Le Guin standing by his side. Later, when he would describe it, he would call it the Golden Mongoose, but even he knew that wasn’t what it was. It was very placid, very beautiful. Gold-limned eyes that reached through you, not so much in judgment or reproach but for something far scarier. They stared at each other — it serene as a Buddhist, he in total disbelief — and then the whistle blew again and his eyes snapped open (or closed) and it was gone.

Dude had been waiting his whole life for something just like this to happen to him, had always wanted to live in a world of magic and mystery, but instead of taking note of the vision and changing his ways the fuck just shook his swollen head. The train was nearer now, and so, before he could lose his courage, he threw himself down into the darkness.

He had left me a note, of course. (And behind it a letter each for his sister, his mother, and Jenni.) He thanked me for everything. He told me I could have his books, his games, his movies, his special dio’s. He told me he was happy to have been friends. He signed off: Your Compañero, Oscar Wao.

If he’d landed on Route 18, as planned, it would have been lights out forever. But in his drunken confusion he must have miscalculated, or maybe, as his mother claims, he was being watched from up on high, because the dude missed 18 proper and landed on the divider! Which should have been fine. Those dividers on 18 are like concrete guillotines. Would have done him lovely. Burst him into intestinal confetti. Except that this one was one of those garden dividers that they plant shrubs on and he hit the freshly tilled loam and not the concrete. Instead of finding himself in nerd heaven — where every nerd gets fifty-eight virgins to role-play with — he woke up in Robert Wood Johnson with two broken legs and a separated shoulder, feeling like, well, he’d jumped off the New Brunswick train bridge.

I was there, of course, with his mother and his thuggish uncle, who took regular bathroom breaks to snort up. He saw us and what did the idiot do? He turned his head and cried. His mother tapped him on his good shoulder. You’ll be doing a lot more than crying when I get through with you.

A day later Lola arrived from Madrid. Didn’t have a chance even to say a word before her mother launched into the standard Dominican welcome. So now you come, now that your brother’s dying. If I’d known that’s what it would take I would have killed myself a long time ago.

Ignored her, ignored me. Sat next to her brother, took his hand.

Mister, she said, are you OK?

Shook his head:
No
.

It’s been a long long time, but when I think of her I still see her at the hospital on that first day, straight from Newark airport, dark rings around her eyes, her hair as tangled as a maenad, and yet she still had taken the time, before appearing, to put on some lipstick and makeup.

I was hoping for some good energy — even at the hospital, trying to get ass — but she blew me up instead. Why didn’t you take care of Oscar? she demanded. Why didn’t you do it?

Four days later they took him home. And I went back to my life too. Headed home to my lonely mother and to tore-up London Terrace. I guess if I’d been a real pal I would have visited him up in Paterson like every week, but I didn’t. What can I tell you? It was fucking summer and I was chasing down a couple of new girls, and besides I had the job. Wasn’t enough time, but what there really wasn’t enough of was
ganas
. I did manage to call him a couple of times to check up on him. Even that was a lot because I kept expecting his mother or sister to tell me that he was gone. But no, he claimed he was ‘regenerated’. No more suicide attempts for him. He was writing a lot, which was always a good sign. I’m going to be the Dominican Tolkien, he said.

Only once did I drop in, and that was because I was in P-town visiting one of my sucias. Not part of the plan, but then I just spun the wheel, pulled up to a gas station, made the call, and the next thing I knew I was at the house where he had grown up. His mother too sick to come out of her room, and him looking as thin as I’d ever seen him. Suicide suits me, he joked. His room nerdier than him, if that was possible. X-wings and TIE-fighters hanging from the ceilings. Mine and his sister’s signatures the only real ones on his last cast (the right leg broken worse than the left); the rest were thoughtful consolations from Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, and Samuel Delany. His sister not acknowledging my presence, so I laughed when she walked by the open door, asked loudly: How’s la muda doing?

She hates being here, Oscar said.

What’s wrong with Paterson? I asked loudly. Hey, muda, what’s wrong with Paterson?

Everything, she yelled from down the hall. She was wearing these little running shorts — the sight of her leg muscles jiggling alone made the trip worth making.

Me and Oscar sat in his room for a little bit, not saying much. I stared at all his books and his games. Waited for him to say something; must have known I wasn’t going to let it slide.

It was foolish, he said finally. Ill advised.

You could say that twice. What the fuck were you thinking, O? He shrugged miserably. I didn’t know what else to do. Dude, you don’t want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times ten.

It went like that for about half an hour. Only one thing sticks out. Right before I headed out, he said: It was the curse that made me do it, you know. I don’t believe in that shit, Oscar. That’s our parents’ shit. It’s ours too, he said.

Is he going to be OK? I asked Lola on the way out. I think so, she said. Filling ice-cube trays with faucet water.

He says he’s going back to Demarest in the spring. Is that a good idea? She thought about it a second. That was Lola for you. I do, she said. You know best. I fished my keys out. So how’s the fiancé? He’s fine, she said blandly. Are you and Suriyan still together? Killed to even hear her name. Not for a long time. And then we stood there and stared at each other. In a better world I would have kissed her over the ice trays and that would have been the end of all our troubles. But you know exactly what kind of world we live in. It ain’t no fucking Middle-earth. I just nodded my head, said, See you around, Lola, and drove home.

That should have been the end of it, right? Just a memory of some nerd I once knew who tried to kill himself: nothing more, nothing more. But the de Leóns, it turned out, weren’t a clan you could just shake of.