A Scarcity of Condors Read online

  “They couldn’t have been safe there long,” Giosué said. “Nazis invaded France, when, nineteen forty?”

  “In June,” Cleon said. “Round-ups began in May forty-one. Louis was arrested and my parents fled to Spain on false papers. They were there only a short time before they immigrated to South America.”

  “You were born in Spain or Chile?”

  “Chile. In forty-two.”

  He was registered with Santiago’s civil clerk as Carlos Luis, but neither the names nor their diminutives settled on him. Friends and family alternated between Carlín and León until his Uncle Louis dubbed him Cleón, which stuck forever.

  “He ditched the accent mark when he came to Canada,” Serena said. “Now it’s Cleon, rhymes with neon.”

  “But enough about me,” Cleon said, nodding his chin toward Penny. “Talk about the Canadian. She’s the interesting one.”

  “How did you end up in Chile?” Giosué asked.

  “My father was an engineer,” she said. “He worked on a lot of international projects. After my mother died, I wanted a change of scene. Dad was working on the Pont Baldy dam in France, so I went with him and finished high school there. Then he took a job with the Franco-Chilean consortium that designed Santiago’s metro system, and I tagged along.”

  Penny fell in love with Chile’s capital city, completed her university degree and sat the civil service exam to land an administrative job at the Canadian embassy.

  “She met Dad on the bus to work,” Serena said. “They went to lunch and fell in love.”

  “Who does that?” Jude said.

  “When you know, you know,” Penny said.

  “Really, that was it?” Giosué said. “One date and you knew?”

  “Maybe two,” Cleon said.

  “Three,” Penny said, now perched on the arm of his chair. “I definitely knew by that dinner at La Jonda.”

  “That unfinished dinner.”

  She swatted him.

  “They went to lunch twice, they went to dinner, they fell in love and got married,” Serena said. “Piece of cake.”

  “Then Pinochet took over,” Cleon said. “And that was the end of cake.”

  “What a revolting development,” Serena said.

  A pause as Giosué judged the temperature of this opened furnace. “Is it true,” he said slowly, “that Pinochet staged his coup on September eleventh?”

  “Yes,” Penny said. “Twenty-eight years to the day before Nine-Eleven in the States.”

  Giosué looked at Jude. “You must’ve been a baby when Pinochet took over, no?”

  “Not even. I was born two months after, in November of seventy-three.”

  “I see.” He drained the dregs of his wine and chewed it thoughtfully. “It’s incredible. I mean, your family flees Nazi Germany for Chile. Then flees Pinochet’s Chile for Canada. You move to the States and then, in a manner of speaking, you experience a third coup on Nine-Eleven. It’s crazy.”

  The Tholets nodded as one, none of them choosing to mention 9/11 was their fourth coup.

  It’s such a drag, Jude thought, rubbing his left shin.

  “When I first met Serena,” Giosué said, in the chipper tone of an awkward subject change. “I pronounced your last name wrong. I was saying the T at the end.”

  “It’s silent,” Jude said. “Tholet. Rhymes with Swiss chalet.”

  “Oy vey,” Serena said.

  “Tell us you’ll stay,” Cleon said.

  Giosué smiled. “Have a nice day.”

  “Olé olé olé.” Penny stood up. “Let’s eat.”

  Dinner started with ceviche, from which Jude patiently picked out the cilantro.

  “Give it to me,” Serena said, holding her plate across. “Giosué doesn’t like it either.”

  “Ugh, tastes like soap.”

  “Can’t stand it,” Jude said.

  “Raw carrots taste like soap to me, too.”

  Jude pointed his fork at him. “Holy shit, yes.”

  “Did you know it’s a genetic trait?” Serena asked.

  “What?”

  “Cilantro tasting like soap. It’s a gene you have. Lots of taste preferences are genetic.”

  “Does your other brother like cilantro?” Giosué asked.

  “It’s difficult to know anything Aiden likes.”

  The sixth, empty chair at the table rolled its eyes, filling Jude with a wry guilt. He was tight as a knot with his sister, but his relationship with Aiden was complicatedly loose. Jude loved his little brother—of course he loved him, but only in the most general and fraternal of ways. Aiden belonged to Jude’s tribe and if Aiden were in trouble, Jude would be there, he’d do anything. Which was the crux of the complication: unless Aiden was in trouble, which he never was, Jude had no motivation to be there and do.

  “We don’t really need each other,” he told Phil once. “I love him because not loving him isn’t an option. But he’s not a personality I naturally gravitate toward.”

  They had nothing in common, no overlapping edges. Even if they had shared interests, Aiden’s nature was to keep the world at arm’s length and move in a universe of his own. He wasn’t cold or cruel, he just seemed to be missing some essential wiring that made him relatable.

  And yet, right when you wrote him off as an emotionless Vulcan, he shocked you. Jude woke up in the hospital after the Condor’s attack to find Aiden sitting bedside, fast asleep with his head on the mattress by Jude’s hip. His hand wrapped around Jude’s wrist.

  “He’s been here two hours,” a nurse whispered. “He won’t leave.”

  Aiden didn’t explain himself. He didn’t ask questions, talk about the attack or how he felt about it. He simply posted himself at Jude’s side and would not move.

  Jude was in trouble and Aiden was there.

  Thus Jude measured the relationship with his brother in intervals of cordial distance bordering on apathy, punctuated by intense moments of devotion and understanding. Aiden’s work as an environmental researcher took him all over the world. Long stretches of time with no contact were the norm, but if something moved Aiden enough to reach out, Jude dropped everything and gave him his full attention. When Aiden retreated back behind his walls, Jude learned not to take it personally. He reached a point in his adult life where he accepted this was his brother’s way and it would not change.

  “Where is Aiden now anyway?” Serena asked.

  “Last Skype call he was in the Galapagos Islands,” Penny said.

  Cleon shook his head. “He’s back in Patagonia.”

  Serena patted him. “Of course, he let Papi know.”

  “He better.” He pointed his fork at her. “And don’t you dare not be where you say you are.”

  In their tender years, Cleon Tholet’s children thought his vehement, obsessive need to know their whereabouts was just a weird dad-quirk. Penny wanted to know what they were doing, but Cleon only wanted to know where. He was the father who, if you didn’t phone in to say where you were, called every single one of your friends or, worse, drove around the neighborhood looking.

  “Just let him know,” Penny said, after privileges were revoked or plans grounded. “It takes two seconds and does a world of good. When he isn’t anxious, your life is beautiful.”

  Cleon did relax as his kids became adults and learned the root of his anxieties lay in the Villa Grimaldi: the long weeks separated from Penny, with no way to contact her. He didn’t need a check-in between every point A and B, but he still liked to know their vacation itineraries and didn’t rest until a call or text heralded safe arrival.

  “You guys go sit,” Serena said when they were done eating. “Jude and I will clear the table.” Which was sibling-speak for let’s go in the kitchen and discuss my new boyfriend.

  “Isn’t he delicious?” she whispered.
/>
  “Seems like a keeper.”

  Her expression turned wicked. “If you want him to eat out of your hand, go play some Billy Joel.”

  Jude laughed. “This is the first time you’ve given me permission to tempt one of your boyfriends.”

  “Because I’m a hundred percent sure of his persuasions.”

  “Challenge accepted.”

  A startled twitch in her face. “I will kill you.”

  “Dude, I’m kidding.”

  She whacked him with the dish towel.

  “Again with the hitting. Stop hitting me.”

  “What, you going to tattle, little boy?”

  “Mami,” Jude cried, now backed against the refrigerator.

  “Serena, stop hitting your brother,” Penny called.

  Jude grabbed the towel and yanked his sister into an armlock. “Ha. Who’s your bitch now?”

  “Let go.”

  “Tap out.”

  “Mami.”

  “You have to tap out, Serena,” Penny called.

  Serena tapped out and shoved Jude away. “Asshole.”

  “You love me.”

  “Go play.”

  Cleon and Penny had an upright piano that the humidity of Alki Beach was forever putting out of tune. Ears braced, Jude lifted the lid and played a few chords.

  “Oh, don’t make that face,” Penny said. “I had it tuned last week.”

  Jude grimaced at her, then thanked Giosué, who set a cup of coffee on the piano’s top.

  “Serena told me you play in an orchestra?”

  “Not quite,” Jude said. “I’m a company pianist with Pacific Northwest Ballet.”

  “Oh. So you play when the dancers take class?”

  “I started out as a classroom accompanist but now I’m what’s called a rehearsal accompanist.”

  “Two extremely different skill sets,” Serena said. “As Jude never tires of telling us.”

  “Do you ever get to perform?” Giosué asked.

  “A few ballets have the piano onstage but for those, our principal pianist plays. I’d only go on if he were deathly ill. Which he never is, the son of a bitch.”

  “Well…” The Italian’s expression narrowed and his voice dropped a tone. “I know people. I could make something happen. Some bad sushi, maybe.”

  Jude gave him a quick nod. “We’ll talk.”

  “Play,” Penny said.

  He played “Penny Lane” because it was her favorite. Then he played “Let it Be” for Cleon.

  At age four, Jude was picking out tunes on the beat-up piano at the Chilean housing co-op. He started formal lessons at six. By eight, he was entering regional music competitions and winning. His talent was unquestionable, but it had no ambitions outside personal pleasure. He didn’t want to be a pianist. He just wanted to play piano.

  He was in middle school when he discovered the social power of music. He had lots of friends and was always invited to parties and events, but never felt quite included. Especially when his buddies started getting interested in girls, while Jude’s interest was in his buddies. Sensing he was different in a potentially hazardous way, he kept to the fringes of school society, achieving a delicate balance of popular invisibility.

  One night, he went to a house party where there was a piano. He touched the keys cautiously, half-expecting to be told not to, please, the host’s parents would be pissed.

  Nobody objected or even noticed. He sat down and because it was the holiday season and A Charlie Brown Christmas had just been on TV, he played Vince Guaraldi’s iconic bass riff.

  Head after head turned in his direction.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, man, cool.”

  “Charlie Brown.”

  “Play the rest of it.”

  “You know the rest of it?”

  Suddenly he was surrounded. Suddenly his perfect pitch and musical memory and ability to play by ear, which seemed to be talents only adults appreciated, were cool.

  “Hey, can you play Journey’s ‘Faithfully’?” a girl asked.

  Sure, he could.

  “You know ‘Imagine?’”

  He did.

  “‘Crocodile Rock.’”

  “‘We Are the Champions.’”

  “‘Come Sail Away.’”

  The requests flew. Some songs asked for, others begged for, and a few thrown like gauntlets. He played them all and from then on, the piano was his calling card, his bodyguard and his manager. He didn’t have to seek out company as long as a piano was present. As El Pianista, he was never without a topic of conversation. He could pick out a commercial jingle on the keys and create instant, smiling community.

  Classical music would always be his first love, but in company he played pop, rock, show tunes and TV theme songs. People sat next to him on the bench, stood behind his shoulders, leaned on the piano top and sang.

  “When I wasn’t hiding in the closet, I was hiding under the piano,” Jude told Phil.

  “Well, there’s a Freudian analyst’s wet dream,” Phil said, miming a horizontal keyboard across his lap. “The strong, solid barrier of wood and ivory hiding your genitals with definitive, black-and-white distinctions of tone and… Sorry, I forgot where I was going with that.”

  Fucking Phil.

  The last notes of “Let it Be” died away. Jude drank the rest of his coffee, then played the opening arpeggios of Billy Joel’s “Summer, Highland Falls.”

  “Oh man,” Giosué said behind him. “No way.” He came to lean on the piano again, eyes wide and a smile of pure joy. “I love this song.”

  Jude winked, because the warm coil of I want someone was back in his chest and he wanted to flirt with it. He nodded encouragingly when Giosué sang the first line, shy and self-conscious, gaining confidence when Serena joined in. Jude played “Always a Woman” next, then Giosué asked for “Roberta” off Streetlight Serenade.

  “Best tune about a hooker ever,” Jude said.

  “Now do your song,” Penny said.

  So he played “Hey, Jude,” which he only enjoyed playing for a big group of people, the bigger the better. The song struggled with only three people singing. It didn’t get under your skin and the sadness couldn’t be made better. He stopped after the big build up into the falsetto scream.

  “We don’t need to na-na ourselves to death.”

  “Did you name him after the song?” Giosué asked Penny.

  “His real name is Juleón. A young man who lived with us in Santiago came up with Jude as a nickname.”

  She took a picture down off the wall. In it, two men stood with arms around shoulders. One had his head thrown back, laughing. The other wore the smug expression of a well-timed joke.

  “That’s Ysidro,” Penny said, indicating the laughing man. “He lived in the bungalow apartment on our property. He loved the Beatles. Didn’t always understand the lyrics, but he loved their music.”

  “Who’s this man with him?”

  “His boyfriend. Tatán.”

  “Ah. Where are they now?”

  “Disappeared,” Jude said.

  “Really?”

  Penny raised and lowered one shoulder. “We’ve never been able to find out. Both men lived with us because they were estranged from their families. We had no next of kin to contact.”

  “I’m sorry,” Giosué said, running his thumb along the edge of the frame. “Did you lose many friends?”

  “We lost nearly everything,” she said. “We boarded the ship in Valparaiso with a couple suitcases of clothes and a box or two.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Penny smiled at the Italian. “It’s only stuff. I got on the ship with Cleon and the baby, that’s all I cared about.”

  “But still…” Giosué shook his head. “It’s an incred
ible story. Have you ever been back to Chile?”

  “Never.”

  “No desire to,” Cleon said. “Too many ghosts.”

  Sitting with his leg up and Walter in the crook of his arm, Cleon looked tired. His tank always dumped its fuel abruptly in the evenings and though he remained pleasantly attentive, he said less and less. The light from the lamp backlit his soft, sleepy face and shone through his white hair. Giving him a weird transparency that made the coil of peace in Jude’s heart tighten. Soon it would be a serpent, intent on squeezing all his newly cultivated joy into pieces. His most extreme emotions were on a forty-eight-hour delay and the clock was ticking.

  He sought comfort in the keys again, thinking it was a good thing he had that appointment with Phil on Monday morning.

  As she washed the last of the dessert plates and coffee cups, Penny Tholet kept turning her head into her shirt collar. Giosué’s aftershave lingered in the fabric from when he hugged her goodbye. His questions lingered in the living room, too, still posed thoughtfully in front of the gallery of family photos.

  “Pen, come see this,” Cleon called.

  “I thought you went to bed?”

  “I just checked my email and Aiden sent me something.”

  “Our Aiden?” Penny wiped off her hands, interested. Any missive coming from their reclusive younger son was something of an event.

  Cleon sat at the desk in a nook of the bungalow’s living room, splashed with blue light from the computer monitor. Penny slid arms around him from behind, pressing her cheek to his. His stubble pricked her skin as her eyes swept the screen, brows furrowing as she read Aiden’s typically terse intro—Hey, thought this was weird—followed by an article from the Vancouver Sun.

  Groundbreaking Ceremony Set for Park Renovation Project

  The City of Vancouver is gearing up for the playground renovation of Central Park with a special groundbreaking ceremony.

  The celebration is to introduce the plans for the new skate park, running trails, bike path and playground equipment. Molinero Construction—a family-owned business in Vancouver for nearly forty years—both financed and designed the project. Upon completion, the park will be renamed Fernando Paloma Memorial Park, in honor of the owner’s stepson who died of cancer last week.