The Secret Side of Empty Read Online Free PDF Page B

being an architect. But no one in his family had gone to college, and he left school after his sophomore year in high school. At twenty-two, he came to America. He wanted to save up money and go back home to start a little business. He might not be able to be an architect, a professional, but he’d be a businessman .
    But even when I was little, he still used to talk about architecture. He loved drawing and dreaming things up. He used to get architecture books and sketch late at night. I’d find his drawings scattered all over our little plastic table.
    Now he is thirty-nine, and he is still a waiter. And he doesn’t draw or make models anymore.
    I sit on the futon and look at the model airplane for a second. It’s got to be about six or seven years since we built that model together. The day we made it, it was raining outside. I remember because he came in out of the rain and his jet-black hair drooped a little over his forehead, but he was still handsome. He turned and half-handed, half-threw me the box under his arm.
    “I found a Messerschmitt,” he said.
    I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. My brother hadn’t been born yet. I was still young enough to want to be the boy he’d never had.
    “Let’s build it,” I said.
    He moved some of my mother’s sewing off the Formica table and spent a long time organizing all the parts, sending me for glue and paper towels and cotton swabs. Finally, he started building.
    “Okay, hand me the propeller.”
    “Can I glue this one, please?”
    “You want it to be perfect, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well then, just let me do it.”
    “But I want to help.”
    “You’re helping me by getting me the stuff.”
    “What kind of plane is this again?” I asked.
    He pointed to the box. “A German Luftwaffe Messerschmitt twin engine. This is an old model. I got lucky at the craft store.” His eyes lit up. “You know, when we move to Argentina, we’re going to have one whole room in our big house just for all our models. That will be cool, right?”
    I said nothing.
    “You love Argentina, right? You can’t wait to go back?”
    “I don’t really remember Argentina. It wouldn’t be like going back.”
    “No, of course, silly, you were a baby when you came here.”
    “So how can I want to go back?”
    “Because it’s where I’ll be. And your mother will be. It’s where all your people are. It’s where you’re from. We’re only here temporarily.”
    “How will I see Chelsea when we go to Argentina?”
    “That doesn’t really matter. You have cousins over there. Your real blood. You love your cousins, don’t you?”
    “Well, I . . .”
    “Of course you do. Hand me the plastic part, the top of the cockpit.” I did, and he picked it up carefully with my mother’s tweezers while holding the little glue tube in the other hand. “You’re going to have the best life in Argentina. We’re going to be rich and build our round house. Remember the round house blueprints I showed you? With that big room? The secret staircase? Mendoza is the best place on earth. Not gross and humid like here, with all these bossy people.”
    “But I’ve only ever been here. This feels like home to me.”
    He looked away from the model and raised his eyes to meet mine and straightened his spine slowly. I felt his mood change, like a cold wind that gets in your mittens and up your coat.
    “This isn’t home. You’re just a kid. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “But what if . . . when I’m a grown-up . . . what if I wanted to stay here?”
    “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”
    “I’m just asking.”
    “Well, you can’t, because we’re going home. We’re illegal here, so you can’t stay anyway, even if we wanted to, which we don’t. Now hand me the wheels.”

    A FEW DAYS LATER , MY MOTHER ’ S COUSIN C AROLINA is sitting at the kitchen table when I get home. Her baby, Julissa, is on the brown linoleum, picking at a little corner that is broken and