It was the first time I had successfully
joked around with my father.
I knew it was a joke that would make him smile.
As I drove home that afternoon, I decided to get a passport.
I don't remember what had happened to the one I had.
My mother had always kept it in her possession.
I wanted to go to Juarez.
I wanted to find Marcos and Jorge.
I wanted to see who they had become,
or maybe I wanted to find out what I had become.
It took me three months to get my passport.
When I got it in the mail, it also included my border
crossing card.
My father intercepted my mail.
I didn't like that, but I never crossed my father.
I was afraid of him.
I'd seen his temper, and though his temper had never
been aimed at me, I knew what could happen.
Maybe that's why I kept all his rules.
He asked me why I wanted a passport.
"To go to Juarez and visit my old friends," I said.
"Don't you think it's been too long?
Don't you think they've moved on?"
"I don't know," I said.
And I was really mad.
And though I never talked back to my father, this time, I did.
"And you don't know either," I said.
"No fucking way you're going to Juarez.
Don't you read the goddamn newspapers?
Don't you fucking know what's happening over there?"
"I know."
"For such a smart kid, you're something of a dumb ass,"
he said.
I nodded and took my passport out of his hand.
"I have a rule," I said.
"Never open my mail.
And never walk into my room."
I didn't bother to study the look on his face.
I grabbed my passport out of his hand and turned away from him.
I think I knew something about addiction.
I was addicted to drawing my mother.
I had hundreds of sketches of her.
I never sketched my father.
I heard my father talking to a man.
He was in the kitchen and I was doing my homework on my laptop
while I watched the television.
My father was excited, and I noticed his cell
phone was on the coffee table.
I knew he was using one of his throwaway cells.
Once, when we were on our way to eat dinner,
we took the scenic route.
He stopped to toss a cell phone out into the desert.
My father was saying something about his fucking
ship coming in.
He left on a business trip.
"I'll be back in a couple of weeks," he said.
"I won't be in touch."
He gave me the business card I'd seen the one with the lawyer's
name and number and address.
"If something happens, call him."
I nodded.
He must have left early in the morning
because when I got up the next day, he was gone.
He left me a note on the kitchen table.
"Don't go to Juarez.
Don't go into my room.
Don't fucking do drugs, and start thinking about what
college you want to go to.
That's your homework."
So every night, I would come home from school,
do my homework, then get on the internet
and study all the schools I might like to go to.
I stayed up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning every night.
I got lost in the homework my father gave me.
It helped to keep me from worrying.
In the end, I made the following list.
One, Georgetown.
Two, University of Texas.
Three, University of Chicago.
Four, Stanford.
Five, UCLA.
Six, Brown.
Seven, Washington University.
Eight, UC Berkeley.
Nine, Northwestern.
10, Harvard.
I didn't want to go to Harvard.
But if it hadn't been on the list,
it would have made my father mad.
So I made another list and put Harvard as number one.
Even though in my world, it was number 10.
I don't know what I had against Harvard.
And anyway, it was just an assignment for my father.
I doubted any of these schools would want to take me.
My father came home from his business trip
on the last day of school of my junior year.
I was happy to see him.
That was the first time my father ever hugged me.
And it was the first time that he seemed really happy.
"Everything's going to be just fine," he said.
He was smiling and he looked so young to me.
And I thought that maybe now he would quit the business.
He had money now, real money.
So maybe he would quit.
But I was just fantasizing.
Something inside me knew that this is what he knew.
This is what he loved.
I loved reading, and drawing, and music, and writing,
and my father--
well, he loved his business.
Everyone had to love something.
"Maybe," he said, "we should think
about getting you an apartment.
You know, so you could live on your own.
So you could get used to it.
You know, like a practice run before you go away to college."
"I don't need to practice," I said.
"I hear that tone," he said.
"You don't get mad much, but when you get mad,
you really get pissed off."
"I must get that from somewhere," I said.
"Look, dad.
I follow your rules.
I follow every fucking rule, and now you're throwing me out?"
"It's not like that.
Look, there's a lot of shit that goes down here.
I don't want you to be in the middle of it."
"I am in the middle of it, dad."
I sat down and put my face in my hands.
I took a breath and then another.
I walked into my room and took out my list.
I walked back into the living room
and handed my list to my father.
"I did my homework."
I handed him the list.
"And how am I going to get the money
to go to any of these schools, Dad?"
"Don't worry about the money."
"Like I said, Dad, I am in the middle of it.
I'm in the middle of all of this.
I'm all in the middle of all the shit that goes down
in this house and I'm not moving, not unless you're
fucking throwing me out."
"Watch your mouth."
"Is that another rule?"
He was quiet.
He bit the side of his mouth.
He was in too good a mood to fight me.
He studied my list.
"Harvard," he whispered.
"Get dressed.
Let's go to a nice place."
My father wanted to know my reasoning for picking
the schools I put on my list.
So I did all the talking at dinner.
He asked, questions.
I answered them.
It was the longest conversation we've ever had.
I guess it was because we didn't have to talk about ourselves.
He was going to put some money into my education,
and he wanted to know what he was getting himself into.
He was an investor.
It was more like a business transaction
than a conversation.
Harvard said no.
My dad was pissed.
"Fuck Harvard," he said.
My sentiments, exactly.
The day I got an acceptance letter from Georgetown,
my father was out.
His addictions were getting worse,
and I couldn't talk to him about it.
I told him I was worried.
He said, "People who worry never change."
I wanted to tell him that addicts never change either.
But I said nothing.
I left my father a note, "Got into Georgetown."
I went out with my friends to celebrate.
I had fun.
I was happy.
I was so happy.
When I walked into the living room that night,
the house was full of people.
Some guy was snorting coke.
My father must have been in the kitchen or in his room.
I recognized some of his guests.
I suppose some of them were more than just clients.
Some guy came up to me.
He smiled.
He sort of scared me, but I relaxed.
Hell, I was really drunk.
The guy offered me a glass pipe.
It was just a little straight glass tube.
I'd seen them before.
I knew what those little glass tubes were used for.
"You ever smoke?"
I shook my head.
"Try it," he said.
And I wanted to.
I wanted to try it.
I wanted to see what it was like, to know,
to really know what it was all about.
He handed me the pipe.
I took it.
He reached into his pocket and unfolded a piece of tin foil.
He took out a little piece of white rock.
"You're going to like this, kid," he said.
And then I saw my father standing next to him.
It all happened so fast.
"Motherfucker," my father's face was grotesque and contorted.
He was pounding the shit out of him, pounding and pounding.
And when the guy was on the floor,
my father was kicking and kicking him.
And I thought for a moment that my father
was going to kill him.
Some of my father's friends were yelling for him to stop.
But he wouldn't stop, couldn't stop, and finally some men
had to pull him away.
My father stared down at the man.
Just stared down at him.
Get that motherfucker out of here.
The man that offered me the pipe was all bloody,
but he was alive and moaning.
A few guys dragged him out of the house.
My father looked at me and said, "Give me that pipe."
I handed it to him.
"I'll kill you if you ever come near one of those pipes again.
I will fucking kill you."
I nodded.
I was so ashamed.
I walked into my room.
I'd never felt so empty in all of my life.
My father never mentioned what happened that night.
I always wondered if he thought about it.
I always thought about it.
My father and I flew to Washington in July.
It was hard for him to do without his drugs,
so he drank a lot and I suppose that helped.
We were there for a week.
At night, he would disappear.
I knew he'd found what he was looking for.
During the day, we took in the sights, father and son.
My father knew a man who died in Vietnam,
and we looked for his name on the wall.
And we found it.
My father traced his finger on the letters that
formed the name of his friend.
He didn't tell me about the man, didn't say a word about him.
My father seemed so normal that day.
We found an apartment for me.
I knew it was expensive, but my father
sent me away when he made the arrangements.
On the plane ride back to El Paso, I asked my father,
"Are you sure you can afford that apartment, Dad?"
"Remember that trip when my ship came in?"
"Yes," I said.
That's when the conversation ended.
I was sitting in the backyard, pad in hand.
I was making a list of the things
I needed to take with me when I drove to Washington.
Me and my lists.
I was drinking a beer and I was trying
to imagine what my life was going
to be like as a student at Georgetown University.
I wondered if I would miss my father, and it was odd.
But the thought occurred to me that I
had stopped missing my mother.
It was as if she had never existed.
And there was a blank piece in my heart
that would live there permanently.
Not a wound.
Not a hurt.
But a blank piece.
My father stumbled into the backyard.
He looked like shit, and I could tell he was coming down
from his last high.
He sat down on the lawn chair next to mine.
He lit a cigarette, and his hands were shaking.
"Can you bring me a beer?"
I walked into the kitchen, grabbed a beer,
walked back into the backyard, and handed it to him.
"Dad, you have to stop."
He just looked at me.
"Who the fuck do you think you are?"
"You have to stop, Dad."
I was standing above him.
He took a drink from his beer.
He got up, looked straight into my eyes.
"Say it again.
Go on.
Say it again."
I looked right back at him.
I never took my eyes off of him.
"You have to stop."
And then I felt his fist on my jaw.
And I fell back on the ground.
I took a breath and closed my eyes.
I just lay there for a while feeling the pain in my jaw.
My lip was bleeding.
My father looked down at me.
"Get up," he said.
I got up slowly then I heard his voice.
"You haven't earned the right to tell your father what to do."
I nodded.
I wanted to hide my tears.
But I wasn't strong enough.
I sat there and cried.
Tears falling from my face.
I wanted to help, but I kept the hell inside me.
I don't know how long I sat there.
I heard my father's voice.
"Here," he said as he handed me a beer.
"Have a beer with your old man."
After a week, there wasn't much of a sign of my father's
fist on my jaw, or my lip.
I would not wear the scar of that afternoon on my face.
That's not where I would keep it.
The day before I left for Georgetown,
my father bought me a new car.
It was practical.
A Prius.
Not my father's style, but the kind of car
he imagined his son should have.
I thanked him.
I think we even hugged.
Yeah.
Yes, I hugged him.
And he hugged me back.
He was on something, I knew.
By then he was almost always on something.
We went to dinner and he was shaking.
He ordered a nice bottle of red wine, and we drank together.
And I wanted to cry, but I didn't.
I Don't remember what we talked about but my father wasn't
in any hurry that night to get anyone.
He wanted to be with me that last night.
And I wanted to be with him.
After dinner, he looked at me, smiled and said,
"Let's go get our passports.
I didn't know what he meant.
Let's go have a drink at the Kentucky Club."
"In Juarez?"
"Yeah."
"But you said--" "It's where you were raised.
Don't you want to have a drink with your old man
where it all started?"
"Where it all started, it's where
your mother and I used to go."
He smiled.
I'll always remember that smile.
The only thing I remember about having a drink with my father
at the Kentucky Club was my father telling me
that he loved my mother.
"I loved her."
And then I knew.
She was the one.
She hadn't loved him back.
The morning I left the house where I became a man,
my father helped me put my things in the car.
I didn't have much.
My father was wordless, and I was, too.
"Bye, Dad."
I said.
"Bye, son," he said.
He looked sad.
He just stood there as I drove away.
I'm sitting here in my Georgetown apartment
and I'm thinking about my dad.
I'm packing a few things and I'm going back home.
He's on a respirator.
He overdosed.
Heroin, meth, I don't know.
It all seems so predictable, so inevitable.
His attorney called me.
"You need to come home and see to your dad," he said.
I'm going back to take him off the respirator.
I know that's what he would want--
what he would have wanted.
I can give him something, something that matters.
I just finished reading the journal I kept when
I lived with him, my father.
Every rule he ever made me follow is in my journal.
I can almost hear his voice.
I'm holding the rosary he gave me for my first communion,
the one that belonged to his father.
I'm staring at the picture of us in front of the cathedral taken
at my first communion.
I always told myself I didn't know my father.
I sometimes told myself that I hated him.
I always told myself that he didn't know me.
But that wasn't true.
It wasn't true at all.
I knew him.
I really knew him.
My girlfriend, Emma, she asked me what kind of man
my father was.
"Who was he, Max?"
she asked.
"You never talk about him."
"No, I never do."
She wiped the tears from my face.
"He punched me out once, my dad," I said.
And then I laughed.
"My father," I whispered, his name
was Eddie, not Edward, but Eddie.
He was the man who saved my life.
That's who he was.
[APPLAUSE]