Chapter 6

Tossing Armando Through The Dining Room Window

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TOCAYO
Part 1
Prologue
Playa Norte
Charly the American
A Catholic Education
Cold Showers
A Peruvian Name...
Tossing Armando...
Bob Cousey's Shorts
Inside Immaculada
Warming the Bench...
A Little Socrates...
Running From Lola
Ping Pong Politics
A Perfect Basketball Day
A Man Needs His Friends
A Pig In a Hole
Condors Over Ticlio
Wrestling in the Plaza
Handcuffs and Curfews
Rochabus
A Hero Hiding
Hitting A Brick Wall
Part 2

Without knowing the disaster she prevented, or perhaps knowing fully --I will never glimpse the far reaches of a mother knowledge-- Mamina touched Charly gently on the sleeve and offered him more bread. That little touch saved Armando, I think, and perhaps the wall of glass behind him.

Looking disoriented, as if he'd been at the end of a journey and suddenly found himself at the beginning, Charly grabbed a bun of bread from the napkin-lined bowl and thanked Mamina politely. Alessandra asked him to, please, not lose his appetite over Armando's polemics. Charly nodded obediently and began to butter his bread. "It's his way of showing interest," Alessandra added, and smiled sweetly at him. Then Mamina turned to Fernando and, after breathing a great sigh, asked him to bring everyone up to date on the latest news about President Belaunde.

"He's useless," Fernando said with the careless confidence of a ten year old, and the family turned their attention away from the faults of Americans and toward the faults of their President.

After dinner, Tato and I returned to the room we shared where we regaled our guest with tales of the arrogance of older brothers. I delivered a veritable lecture on the art of irritating your older brother and Tato laughed till his stomach hurt. Then I slapped him across the head and warned him not to get any ideas.

"By the way, what does that word mean, what you called your brother?" Charly asked me from the corner of the room, where he was sitting, crosslegged on the floor.

I leaned back against the wall and ran down a lengthy list of insults, with Tato laughing more uproariously as the list grew, until I mentioned huevon.

"That's it! What does huevon mean?"

I yawned. "It means your balls are larger than your brain, Tocayo."

Charly remained quiet as he thought about it. My answer made no sense to him. I understand that, now, since I understand Americans, now. I did not understand, then. Was calling someone a huevon a compliment or an insult? In America, large balls are a symbol of courage. In Peru, they were a symbol of stupidity. Perhaps we believed back then that an overabundance of courage is a form of stupidity. Regardless, my innocent brother Tato ended both of our reveries, Charly's and mine, with the question I never had the balls to ask.

"You don't have an older brother, do you?" Tato asked him.

Charly moved his head side to side slowly.

"How about your father," Tato asked him, "Do you have a father?"

That is not a question a Peruvian would ask a friend, since divorce was rare in Peru back then, and likely to bring great shame. Not because Peruvian men are any more holy than American men, no. A younger mistress has been the secret ingredient in the sexual recipe of prosperous Peruvian males for generations. It's just that in a certain social class, family and school connections are so strong that Peruvian men did not divorce their wives. Perhaps I have that wrong. Perhaps it is that Peruvian women cannot divorce their husbands. In either case, this is a topic that I would rather not discuss. I am, as you say in America, out of my depth.

Charly replied to Tato's question. "He travels a lot," he said.

"Ah, so your parents are not divorced, then," Tato said, then looked at me. Why did he look at me!

Charly followed Lufi's eyes and looked at me, too.

I ignored them both, while resolving to put a snake in Tato's bed that night.

"He comes to my games when he's in town," Charly explained. "One day I'll introduce you." After saying that, he stood up to leave. No longer yawning, I walked him to the door and said good-bye.

I learned later that Charly was lying. Yes, his father did attend his basketball games when he was in town. In fact, he was Charly's loudest fan, jumping into the air when Charly's shot fell through the net in the soft way that it had a habit of doing, cheering when he stole the basketball from the other team. Unfortunately, Charly's mother had changed towns. His father had made the mistake of getting his picture in the social pages of a South American newspaper. The well dressed Señor McDonald, successful American businessman. How beautiful his young wife was. How pretty their two-year old boy. So happy among the rich furnishings of their splendid mansion in the South American capital city.

The paper and the pictures had found their way into the hands of Charly's mother, sitting alone in her middle class home in Southern California, far away from her family, waiting patiently for him to return from his long business trips. Apparently, the business trips were not all business. Charly's mother dropped the newspaper in Charly's lap before jumping into the family station wagon and making the tires squeal like people in a mental hospital all the way up the street. Charly waited for her on the front stoop. She returned late that night, and the next evening they were on a plane to Peru. Left the car at the airport and the furniture in the house. No note. Not a word to the neighbors. That would be his punishment. Come home and nobody is there to say Hello.