going. Weâve got a long drive ahead of us.â
I T WAS UNSETTLING at first, having a copilot after more than two years of flying solo. Elena was a smaller, quieter presence in the car than Jess had been, and her perfume was stronger and flowerier. I kept my eyes on the road, hyperaware of her beside me, but she seemed totally at ease, and after half an hour or so I started to unclench a little. She asked me about my family and I sketched the basics: second son of two Yuppie doctors, one an orthopedic surgeon and the other an English professor at NYU; Upper East Side, upper middle class, mediocre test scores and grades unbefitting a Larssen; cut-up and chronic underachiever until my early twenties, when Iâd discovered comedy.
âSo did you go to college?â Elena asked.
âOf course. I majored in beer and girls, but I managed to graduate.â
âHuh.â
âWhat?â
âJust the way you said that. So . . . offhandedly.â
Good job, Michael, I chided myself . Elenaâs father had been a factory worker. College wouldnât have been an âof courseâ for her, and she wouldnât have diddled her way through it like I had. âI must sound like an entitled jerk,â I said.
âNot at all,â she replied, fairly convincingly. âThatâs just how you grew up, in a world where college was no big deal.â
âWere you the first in your family to go?â
âYes. I had a full scholarship to Wellesley.â
âWow. Your parents must have been incredibly proud of you.â
Elena didnât answer, and I glanced over at her. She was biting her lip, fighting tears. âIâm sorry,â I said, feeling like the worldâs biggest ass. âI shouldnât have brought him up.â
She shook her head. âItâs all right. I want to talk about him. If you donât mind listening.â
âTell me,â I said.
And so she told me about her father, Julio Santiago, Santa to his friends. Heâd grown up dirt poor in a small village in Puebla, where heâd met and married Elenaâs mother. Heâd emigrated illegally to the States in 1981, leaving his pregnant wife in Mexico, and worked whatever jobs he could getâbusboy, farmhand, janitorâsending money home to support his wife and daughter. Elena hadnât even met her father until she was six years old, when he became a citizen under the Reagan amnesty and was finally able to send for them.
âHe sounds like an amazing guy,â I said.
âHe was. Heâd have given you the shirt off his back if you needed it. Thatâs one of the reasons everyone called him Santa, because he was so generous. That, and because he was always laughing. He was a small man, but he had this big, booming laugh. You couldnât hear it and not laugh with him.â
I thought of Jess and was silent.
âI never understood that,â Elena went on. âHis joy, I mean. He worked so hard for so long and had so little to show for it.â
âHe had you.â
âYeah, his malcontent of a daughter, who wanted things he couldnât give me and a life that made no sense to him. How could I be happy without a husband, a family? He didnât understand it, because he wouldnât have been. My mother and I were the center of his universe.â
âSo . . . do you not want to get married and have kids?â
âSure I do, but Iâm not even thirty. Iâve got plenty of time.â
âYeah, I thought that too, once,â I said, around the balled-up sock lodged in my throat.
Elena touched my shoulder. âHeyââ she began, but I cut her off.
âI really donât want to talk about it.â
âOkay, then we wonât talk about it.â
She retrieved her hand and sat back, but if she was stung I couldnât sense it. The silence between us was surprisingly comfortable, and after a while I realized I was no