Pops

New England in the winter is an apocalypse. Only, instead of some flesh-eating disease rampaging the streets, ten tons of blizzard snow is responsible for immobility. Instead of dead-men walking, Italian, Irish or Portuguese (any blend of the two) slumlords grimmace from the top floor of their low-income units. Instead of some medicinal cure, every man who roots for the Patriots or the Sox buys beer to get through the hibernation.

I put my beater through hell driving through the streets with only two rounds of plowing done. I knew he would be home, because he always was, and I wanted to get this all over with. I wanted to survive the apocalypse and come out the other side with the last of my strings detached.

I ran up the three dilapidated steps to the blue townhouse and took a guess at which door was the correct one. It had been over a decade since I felt there was dire enough reason to visit. I stood there for a moment, watching the puffs of cold air escape my lips. I shook my head as I raised my fist, knocking twice before returning my gloveless fist back to my coat pocket. I heard a series of clambers from the other side, the dropping of a plate, the stumble to pick up said plate, and a strand of curses I once tried to use myself when I was in first grade. The door swung open, revealing someone who had managed to remain unchanged in the past “over a decade” all while aging double.

He stood there, mouth agape in a stained, white t-shirt and jeans that fell over the bottoms of his heels. His bushy brows crumpled at the sight of me and I wondered if he knew he was the one who looked terrible in this moment.

“So uh–,” I began, not having thought this part through. “Ma is dead. I thought I would see if you wanted to clear her things out with me.”

My father took a step back and glanced at the tv, not wanting to miss his program for something so unphasing. “Hey Pops … good to see you, Pops …,” he grumbled, telling me what dialogue he preferred from me. He took a few more steps back and turned his back on me, leaving the door wide open. “Dead, huh? How’d that happen?”

His accent seemed thicker than I remembered, a reminder of the culture I tried to leave behind. I took a daring step over the threshold, fighting the instinct to hold my hand over my nose. The place wasn’t all that messy for an old man living alone, it was just that his choice of food was the Indian restaurant down the road. That didn’t pair well with garbage pick-up and a blizzard. He had a soap opera playing on the television that caught my focus.

“How’d that happen?” he repeated, louder. “Are you deaf?”

“She was sick.” I found the remote and lowered the volume. “Remember? I told you in that voicemail.”

“You know I don’t use that cellular thing.”

“So you ignored it when it started automatically sharing your only son’s message with you?” I tossed the remote to his La-Z-Boy and returned my fists where they would be safe.

He shoved his wallet in his back pocket and reached for his flannel, shifting it onto his shoulders with grunts. He faced me again, “Well, yeah. The finale of Survivor was on that night.”

“You remember that Survivor was on but not that your wife was dying? Are you mentally screwed in the head?” With every word, I regretted my choice to invite him along.

“Ex-wife,” he clarified, taking slow strides past me. “And it was Season 7, did I mention that?” He walked out of his half of the townhouse and beckoned me over his shoulder. “Let’s get this over with. She took something from me and I want it back.”

I hurried after him, surprised to see he was going down the stairs easier than he did getting up from his La-Z-Boy just minutes before. He trucked forward through the snow as if it was nothing. One thing about having immigrant parents, they seemed to know how to travel through the worst kinds of weather.

We drove in silence and I sat with the memories that came with his aftershave. Growing up as a boy, I didn’t feel that my parents were strange. I just thought they were dangerously in love. Until I was around six, I recall them dancing late at night in the kitchen after a blow out fight about nothing in particular. They would laugh and cling onto each other in such a way that made it seem like those arguments could never amount to anything. My mom was beautiful. I told her all the time that I was glad she didn’t look like the other mommies. I thought Pops and I had our very own island queen at home. “That’s because she is an Island Queen, my boy,” he would say.

They came over from Portugal together, before they were anything but likeminded people in search of a land with more opportunity. They hit it off and Pops gambled below deck, enough for an engagement ring when they reached land. They were married weeks later in the courthouse and I, evidently, was already on the way.

I only knew something about us was different when my school teachers sent me off to the front office every few days. The secretary would lower her glasses at me and press her lips together, showing me pity. “Martim, your mother called. She said you’ll need to walk home today.”

These schedule changes became frequent and, eventually, they also came with a brown paper bag of canned food. I would arrive home from school to a mess of broken tableware on the floor and my parents holding each other tightly on the futon. Pops’s money book was open on the coffee table and receipts scattered about. They didn’t pay much attention to me that year and things became so violent that child services came for me. They didn’t ask me any questions and I never got to tell them I wanted to stay right where I was.

“They need me,” I said through tears in the back of the social worker’s Lincoln.

The foster care workers told me all sorts of things about my parents I didn’t know until just then. They told me that the bruises on my arms and legs weren’t normal, that I should have more than one pair of shoes as a growing boy, and that I had a better chance at a good life if I spent it with other adults.

Pops reached across to turn the radio on, growing weary of the silence. I had grown weary of the remembering, so I understood where he was coming from. “We’re almost to her place,” I told him.

“Is Richard there?” he asked about Mom’s second husband.

“Uh, no. I asked him to give me some time with her things.”

Mom and I reconnected once I was out of the system. She visited often. No one wanted a little Portuguese boy, she explained. “Oh but I do and I am going to get you back, my Martim.”

I pulled up the long driveway to the house Pops could never give her. He let out a sickened groan and wiped his mouth with his palm. He swore in Portuguese, clearly irritated by his own shortcomings, even if he didn’t see them as being to blame. He hoisted himself out of my car, adjusting his baggy jeans once the door was slammed and I could no longer hear his complaints.

I rubbed my hands against my eyes, trying to jolt energy into myself to get this over with. When it didn’t work, I left the car anyway and hurried to the side of the house, where Richard left a door unlocked for us. I was stopped by a note taped to the glass storm door. I lifted it off and read.

-I found a letter from Leonora addressed to you. It’s in the wooden box by the dryer.

Richard

I crumpled the note and stuffed it in my coat, glancing over at Pops as he hobbled my way. He squinted at the brightness of snow clouds, another storm coming in. As it was, flakes were already falling and peppering his still-dark, curly hair. I balanced the glass door on my knee and fussed with the old door knob until it relented. The colonial home smelled of firewood and thyme. It didn’t feel lived-in at all. Not like our one-bedroom apartment with passionate argument items thrown around everywhere. There were no holes covered up with my childhood drawings, or spiderwebs Mom refused to get rid of because they weren’t harming us.

When I looked around Richard’s home, it was just that. His. He sailed in his free time and there were paintings of boats everywhere. Even their wedding photo sat in a frame decorated with ropes and anchors. Pops let out a whistle behind me and I almost forgot this was his first time seeing the two-story house.

“See, I knew she didn’t love the bastard.” He tiptoed into the kitchen and snooped around, reaching his fingers for the light. “Just like I thought. You are sure she lived here?”

“Pops …,” I tested, feeling unexpectedly about him being there right then. “Don’t move anything.” I heard cabinets opening and I resisted the urge to go in there and pull him away. The kitchen was her safe place. It always had been.

“There’s no sardines.”

“They could afford real fish, Pops.”

The cabinets slammed shut and he stomped back to the living area. “Where’s her junk at? I have a program to get back to.”

I scoffed as I passed him, making my way to the basement where I knew she had boxes of things stacked. I walked down the dark steps warrily, having gotten one too many twisted ankles on them when I lived there the first time. Once at the bottom, I reached for the string that controlled the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. There were half a dozen more like it and I went and turned them all on.

“Those boxes over there are from the ‘60s. What you’re looking for is probably in there,” I told him, pointing at the stack on the far left. “I’ll be going through the ‘80s, but uh, let me know if you need my help or something.”

He reached for the tallest one and began digging through it in silence, determining rather quickly whether it had what he wanted or not. While I searched through my own stack, I found myself constantly distracted by his noises and carelessness with all of her things. I wasn’t sure how I had started thinking so poorly of him. Before I was taken away, my pops was my best friend. I thought of the times he snuck us into the Zoo right before closing. There was a slim chance we would be caught and, by the time we would have been, the workers would let us go to prevent going home late. Which did happen on occasion. They knew who we were by the second or third and started turning a blind eye.

Pops would prop me on his shoulders so I could try and be as tall as the giraffes. “Martim, you will be so tall like them one day. You know why?”

“Why, Papa?”

“Because, your Mother and I have brought you to America and you can be anything you want to be, Martim.”

I looked up to him like most little boys looked up to the superheroes in their comic books. I wanted to be a husband the way he was because, no matter how much they fought, Mom always wanted to kiss him good night. I wanted to be a father like he was, because he was bigger than other dads and could protect us just with his arm span. I think it was the alcohol that changed him. Or the gambling. Maybe both. Portuguese men didn’t deal well with their emotions and so I was really only just beginning to wonder about these things from my life.

“What are you even looking for?” I wanted to leave the questions in my head and focus on less important ones.

“My money book,” he responded quickly.

“Really?” I connected my hands to my hips. “Mom is dead and all you care about is money? Again? All for what … s-seven dollars? Is that what you had when they took me?”

“Do not take that tone with me, boy, or I’ll, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” I was yelling and tears collected, threatening to spill during my grown man moment. “You’ll hit me like you used to? Not sure if you’ve noticed, Pops, but I’m not smaller than you anymore!”

He stumbled backward and clutched his chest, rubbing at the spot. I blinked away the tears as he squatted down and sat on the cold floor. I ran my fingers through my hair and shook my head, disgusted by his dramatics. His harsh breaths drove me insane and I needed to do something to distract myself. I suddenly remembered Richard’s note and realized I had forgotten all about my mother’s letter. I scanned the laundry area for the wooden box he mentioned and went over to it.

“I never did anything you or she accuses me of,” Pops attempted to defend himself. “Your generation is just so soft. Everything is abuse now.”

The box was small, like a jewelery box and I didn’t think I had ever seen it before. I lifted the gold latch and peered inside, seeing a note with my name just as Richard said. I took it from its place and tore into the envelope, wondering if its contents would make this day even worse. Pops continued droning on in the background while I read.

As I took in her words, saw her familiar penmanship, and tried my best not to lose the last of my sanity, he just kept on speaking behind me. It turned to Portuguese when I reached the end of her letter. “Pops?”

“And she was just always such a stubborn woman. What was I supposed to do? I was new to this country, new to being a husband, then I had to be a father,” he said, all in his home language. “But I loved her. We loved each other. She just couldn’t handle a small life, is all.”

“Pops.” I repeated, looking over the middle part of the letter again.

“You know, I warned her, too. I told her, ‘Leonora, I will never be a wealthy man. But I promise we will always hold each other come nighttime.’ That’s what I told her.”

“Pops!” I took the box and hurled it across the room, my heart beating out of my chest.

His eyes followed the box with shock and what I thought could be a smidge of fear. They landed on me next, those thick brows crumpling again. He rolled to his knees and tried to get up swiftly, failing to do so. “What is it, Martim?” he asked.

“When was the last time you saw my mother? Because this woman isn’t her.”

He ran his fingers along his jaw and bit down on his lip, not receiving the information the same way I just did. “She wasn’t supposed to tell you,” he said, hardly loud enough for me to hear.

“What?”

He motioned me forward. “Son, let’s sit down. I’ll tell you everything.”

For the next half hour, the truth became knowledge to me. Shortly after I was brought in by child services, my mother experienced a mental breakdown. She ached for her home, for her own parents. According to Pops, she was so distraught, she could not remember me. He said he tried to get her to go and visit with me, but she would refuse, convinced he was trying to keep her in The States.

“She was not well, Martim. I didn’t know she wasn’t until after we were married. I didn’t care,” he looked to the ground as he spoke. “She was becoming restless. I did not know what to do and I worried people would come and take her from me too. So, I allowed her to go home.”

“To the islands?”

Pops nodded slowly, almost moved to real emotion himself. “They sent her sister in return. Leonora’s papers were a hassle to get and the two of them looked so alike.”

“So she gave her papers to her sister.”

“Yes.”

“And this … woman,” I motioned to the boxes, “is my aunt?”

“Yes. As I said, she was never supposed to tell you. I felt I had caused enough pain in your life. You deserved a mother for at least part of it,” he got to his feet and I instinctively helped him, seeing him differently now. He approached the stack of boxes he was going through and pulled out his money book. He flipped through the pages until he landed on one and extended it to me. I took it from him, confused by what he wanted me to see. “She filled that check out. That’s her handwriting.”

We packed the box of ‘60s and ‘70s in the back of my car together, determining that those were the only ones with anything that belonged to my real mother. The drive back to Pops's house was another quiet one that ended with head nods to each other. In a matter of two hours, everything I thought I knew about myself had changed. Fortunately, one good thing had come about.

When I returned to my lonely apartment, there was a voicemail on my machine. It was from my Pops, inviting me out to breakfast.