“This was ninety-four? The people still dying were mainly like Papi—junkies. Brown and Black addicts. Some gay men, trans girls. But by this time, they, too, were all Black and Brown. I don’t know what it was like in the eighties, but the doctors and nurses treated them fine—shit, for lots of people, sadly, the hospitals were more stable than their home situations. But these people were lonely as fuck. No one was visiting these homies. The hospitals were like ghost towns. But we would go, religiously, and see Papi. My aunt Lola would bring him food, though he couldn’t eat by then. My abuela would give him sponge baths. Even my uncles would come—which, honestly, I have to remind myself often these days, since my Tío Richie’s become one of these nutty Make America Great Again people, which I can’t even get started on. Anyway, my brother never went. Not once. At first, I thought it was because of my mother. But then I began to think it was something else.”
Olga could feel the weight of her words in the air, but felt a heaviness move off her chest a bit. She smiled at Matteo very faintly, felt her cheeks get flushed.
“What’d make you think your mom wouldn’t want him to visit your dad?”
“I assumed she sent him a letter like the one she sent me. She sort of took a ‘don’t let his shit weigh you down’ tack. But my brother and I? We think she was angry. Like legit pissed. The way she saw it, she’d fallen in love with a powerhouse activist who wanted to change the world with her, and then he goes and lets himself become another tragic Puerto Rican statistic.”
“And how did you see it?” he asked as he rubbed her legs. She pretended not to hear.
“Prieto never came to the hospital and he’d tell my grandma and anybody who was listening that he was just trying to preserve his good memories of Papi. Which was Mami’s advice, I knew. But, in the back of my mind I’d always wondered if he didn’t go because he was afraid.”
“Of AIDS?” Matteo asked.
“Of fucking everything,” Olga said, her head shaking in disbelief. She sat up straighter. “We had a big fight today—”
“About his fundraiser?”
“No, about a favor I wanted to do for a friend. It’s a long story…”
“You see me trying to go anywhere?” Matteo asked.
Olga sighed. “Okay. Have you ever been talking to somebody about, ostensibly, one small, specific thing, but the implications of what you’re saying shifts the way you perceive everything that came before and after it?”
“Absolutely,” Matteo offered flatly. “When the doctor told me my mother was dying. We were having a conversation, but in my mind, I was revisiting her taking me to school for the first time, trying to give me a haircut at home, going to look at colleges. Within seconds, I was also imagining her funeral and sitting shiva and how impossible that would be.”
Olga sat up and rested her head on his shoulders, taking one of his hands in hers. They sat silent for a moment.
“I wasn’t trying to bogart the conversation or anything, it’s just that I knew what you meant. Please keep going.”
Olga had never aired family business to a stranger before, but her only real-life confidant was, in this moment, the person she could not talk to. She took a breath.
“See, my brother cares so much what other people think. He wants to be liked so badly by everyone. It’s something about him that’s irritated me since we were kids. I’d always thought my brother was probably gay. I thought it was stupid for him to not just say who he is, especially these days, but, like I said, he gives so many fucks about his image and well, he’s kind of boxed himself into this persona. Today, we’re driving home, right? And I ask him for this favor—we have a rental unit in our house, it’s about to be vacant, and I want to offer it to a friend going through some shit. Anyway, in this one conversation, my brother basically confirms that yes, he is gay, and is completely closeted about it—”
“Shit,” Matteo interjected.
“That’s not even what I’m really tripping on. See, at his heart, Prieto’s an intensely compassionate person. The things he did for my father, the way he would care for him when he was just even dope sick, were ridiculous. But, he’s like that about strangers, too. Every person with a sob story in the neighborhood goes to him because they know what a sucker he is. If someone’s WIC gets screwed up, he’ll buy them milk and eggs to hold them over. So, here’s my friend—the boyfriend of my friend who killed himself. My brother’s met him before, the poor guy is grieving, he’s broke, he’s in need of a cheap apartment. To help him costs my brother nothing. And I was like, damn, this is a first, my brother turning his back on a sob story.”