Free Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

was the way it was going to be with me and him, this man who was my father. He was the rule maker. I was the rule follower.
    And then I sketched my room and put the sketch pad under my bed. It wasn’t a very good drawing. But I didn’t care.
    And then, before I put my yellow writing pad away, I wrote down my new name: Maximiliano McDonald. I liked Gonzalez better.
    5.
    My father sent me to St. Patrick’s. I could walk there from where we lived. I knew the school wasn’t free. My father, who I called Eddie behind his back, said when the time came to go to high school, he was going to send me to Cathedral. I asked him what kind of school that was. “It’s a Catholic boys’ school.”
    I nodded. I did a lot of nodding around my father.
    I got used to living in El Paso. I had friends. I liked school. I made A’s. There was nothing special about my life. And special wasn’t something I expected. I learned how to cook, sort of. I could fry eggs and I learnedto make omelets because my father liked them. I knew how to make hamburgers. We ate a lot of sandwiches. We ate a lot of pizza and take-out food. My father and I would watch television together sometimes. But he went out at night a lot. I think I was numb, that’s what I think. I’ve been numb most of my life. That’s how I’ve survived.
    When school ended that year, I hung out at the house a lot. I checked out books from the library and read and read and read.
    Like my mother, my father didn’t work. He spent a lot of time on the phone and a lot of time in his room and he would take off in his truck. Sometimes he didn’t come home at night. I asked him about that.
    “Are you my mother?” he said. But then he said, “Do you get afraid when you’re alone at night?”
    “No. Mom used to leave me alone all the time.”
    “What kind of a mother does that?”
    I shrugged. “Look, alone doesn’t scare me. It’s just that I worry.”
    “Worry?”
    “What if you don’t come home? What will I do?”
    He didn’t say anything for a while, and then he said. “I like women. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “So don’t worry.”
    “Okay,” I said. “I won’t worry.” And then I asked him, “Why don’t you work?”
    “I do work,” he said. “I’m a businessman.”
    “What kind of businessman?” I asked.
    “You’ll find out on your own,” he said. “And I don’t like you hanging around the house so much.”
    I shrugged. Where was I supposed to go ?
    “Listen, Max, you know how to swim?”
    “No,” I said.
    “Learn,” he said.
    Another rule.
    “When’s your birthday?” he asked.
    “Next week. June seventh.”
    “I’ll get you a bike.” That made me happy. He didn’t throw me a birthday party, but then my mother had never thrown me a party either. And anyway, I didn’t like parties. But I liked the bike. I would ride around with Pete, a friend from school. I asked Pete if he knew how to swim and he said yes. So he taught me how to swim. It was a good summer: swimming, reading and riding my bike. It wasn’t such a bad life.
    One afternoon when I got home, there was a man in our living room. “Hi,” I said.
    He nodded at me.
    I looked at him and asked, “Where’s my dad?”
    “He’s getting something for me,” he said.
    I turned on the television.
    My father came into the room with a package wrapped in brown paper. He handed the man the package and the man handed my father a wad of money. They went outside and talked, then the man left.
    When my father came back inside, he looked at me and said, “Never talk about what I do.”
    I nodded.
    He handed me two twenties and a ten. “I’m giving you fifty dollars a month for your allowance.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “If you’re smart, you won’t spend it all and you’ll put some away.”
    “Okay,” I nodded. I wondered if saving money was a rule. It didn’t sound like a rule. It was more like a suggestion. Never talk about what I do . That was a