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

rule. So I started separating suggestions from rules.
    After a while, I figured it out. My father was a drug dealer. I don’t think I cared, not really. And what was I supposed to do about it anyway? Some of his customers seemed really normal. Some guys came by in business suits. Some guys looked liked normal college kids. Others, not so normal. I really liked to study the guys who came to do business with my father if they had tattoos. One guy had a tattoo of a mermaid on his shaved head. I had a thing for tattoos.
    One morning, I asked my father, “Can I get a tattoo?”
    We were eating breakfast. I’d made him a cheese and jalapeño omelet. “No fuckin’ way,” he said.
    “Not even if I pay for it with my allowance and the money I save?”
    “I said no fuckin’ way.”
    “So that’s another rule,” I said.
    “You’re goddamned right,” he said.
    I guess I must have looked sad or disappointed because he said, “Look, you’re a good kid, and you’re gonna stay a good kid.”
    “Dad, what if I’m not really good?”
    He smiled. “That’s the first time you’ve ever called me Dad .”
    “You want me to call you Eddie?”
    “No, Dad works.”
    I nodded. “Look, Dad, maybe I’m not a good kid. It’s not like you know me.”
    “You’re soft,” he said.
    “I’m not.” I hated him for saying that.
    He could tell I was mad. He put his hand on my shoulder. He hardly ever touched me. “I know a few things. I know what I see.”
    I did hate him. I did.
    6.
    Sometimes I would take out the picture of my mother and stare at it. I took out my pencil and tried to draw her. I couldn’t remember her first name. But I didn’t want to forget her face.
    7.
    One day my father came into the room and handed me my birth certificate. I stared at it. I saw the name on the birth certificate: Maximiliano Gonzalez McDonald.
    I looked at my father. “Thought I was gonna have to change your name. Turns out you had my name all along.”
    I nodded.
    “Why’d she name you Maximiliano?”
    “She thought the story of Emperor Maximiliano and the Empress Carlota was romantic.”
    My father laughed—then shook his head. He looked a little sad. “Carlota was mad. Fucking crazy. Just like your mother.”
    8.
    I made my first communion when I was eleven. I was about four years older than the other kids. Not that I cared all that much. From the very beginning, I knew that I would never be a very good Catholic. I wasn’t interested in Godand I didn’t think he was interested in me either. We sort of just ignored each other. I was going to do the Catholic thing because it was one of my father’s rules. I guess he figured that the church thing would make me a better person. But this was what I didn’t really get: if my dad thought that going to church made you a better person, then why didn’t he go to mass? Maybe he didn’t want to be a better person? But if he didn’t want to be a better person, then why would he want me to be a better person? Maybe I thought too much about things.
    On the Saturday before my first communion, my father bought me a new pair of black pants, a new pair of shoes, a new white shirt, my first tie and my first sports coat. He took me to mass that Sunday. It was strange. I was used to going by myself. He was all dressed up, wore a suit and shaved. He looked really handsome. Before he left the house, he handed me a rosary. It was old and worn. He just handed it to me and said, “It belonged to my father.”
    I took it and looked at him. He looked sad. “He came over from Ireland when he was a young man. He settled in Guanajuato. Married a woman named Rosario. I was born in San Antonio. And that about sums up what I have to say about my family history.”
    I wanted to ask him if he’d loved his father, but I thought he’d hate me for asking the question. I smiled at him, “This is better than an allowance.” I put it my pocket.
    After mass, we stood outside the cathedral and one of my friends