One day Ms. Malanga told the class that there was a hole in the ozone and that everyone was making that hole bigger by using hair spray and air conditioners. She described the effects of refrigerants and solvents, Freon and foam-blowing agents. Alfonzo asked if it was like the hole in his sweater or the one in the middle of a frozen pond. But Ms. Malanga answered no, it was not like that. There is no actual hole, but more like a thinning patch, an area of wispy fragility, like a father going bald. One little goat named Raquel got so upset about this lesson that she started to cry. Her dad repaired air conditioners. He complained to the principal, who in turn reprimanded Ms. Malanga. Alfonzo’s mom huffed that boneheads like Raquel’s father would rather see the world end than change jobs.
After that, Alfonzo would perk up whenever he heard TV reporters mention the ozone layer. It felt personal but also galactic. He imagined that his neighborhood had some vital responsibility in protecting the planet. Alfonzo liked imagining the sky’s layers. To soothe himself he pictured all of Earth’s creatures tucked in safe under the atmosphere’s wispy gaseous blankets.
Everyone learned about the existence of the ozone layer at the same time that they learned it was burning up. It was like learning someone had been alive all this time by reading their obituary. When Alfonzo became a teenage Red, he thought back critically to Ms. Malanga’s emphasis on individual responsibility. He decided this kind of singular focus was bullshit that just drew attention away from the overwhelming-yet-hidden damage done by corporations. As a teenager, and still to this day, he blamed the corporate entities for just about everything.
Libertad Diner of Ozone Park, Queens, had silver siding like a submarine. A sign spelled out its name in blue neon. It was his father’s default spot. He’d been a loyal customer for ages, but since Gina’s passing Libertad had become his de facto dining room. The interior was decorated in wheat-and-olive hues with flourishes of tomato red. The place resembled a Naugahyde sandwich wrapped in tinfoil.
Alfonzo’s father, Luis, sat reading the Times. They both looked at the clock.
It wouldn’t have mattered if Alfonzo had showed up on or before the dot; his dad would have already been there. He was forever before him. Luis arrived for trains and buses with hours to spare. He went to movie theaters early enough to watch the slideshow of local advertisements that played pre-trailers. He ordered drinks before happy hours began. He was always already there, reading the paper. Being early was no small matter to Luis. It was a key indicator of one’s morality, professionalism, respect, and capacity to succeed. Luis assumed that those who were late were wastrels. He’d been born before his due date, and if he had any say he would have liked to die early. Alfonzo suspected that his father hadn’t entirely forgiven his mother for getting to the afterlife ahead of him.
Luis did a shame thing with his eyebrows which caused Alfonzo to slump down into the booth.
“Have you heard from your cousin?” Luis asked.
“No, why?”
“They’re expecting another baby.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“You should have congratulated them.”
“I’m hearing about it right this second.”
His father hummed something like “That’s no excuse.”
“I reserve my time machine for important shit.”
Father and son stared. Here was how his father prodded him.
Alfonzo hadn’t loved any creature since Viviana, and Luis still considered their breakup a personal affront. Viviana was the should-have-could-have-been mother to Luis’s nonexistent grandbabies. Both of Alfonzo’s parents had yearned for another generation to dote on. When his mother died, his father channeled grief into this issue of the failed coupling and the marriage that never was.
“All your mother wanted was to live long enough to see you happy and successful.”
Alfonzo rolled his eyes. His mother, he said, wanted to stay alive for life, not to see her son repeat a story. His mother loved love, Luis would tell Vivi, ignoring his son.
Alfonzo wondered still if he’d rejected Vivi to hurt his father. After their breakup, Luis called his son a fool and wouldn’t speak to him for months. When they got back to some kind of relating, Luis would drop in questions about new mates. At holidays, other family members would join in the chiding. “When are you going to marry and have young?” his aunts would ask. His cousins, Hernando and Alan, would also get in on the game, but with more subtlety. They’d chew their grass lumps while casting him a you-poor-sucker look. They’d point him in the direction of that llama waiting tables or the sheep paralegal who was so-and-so’s sister. “She’s sweet,” they’d promise. Alfonzo reacted so poorly that eventually the family gave up.
Back when they were kids, his cousin Hernando had talked a big game about how he would live a life radically different from that of his parents. He had played bass in a goose punk band called Gaggle Reflex. He wanted them, he and Al, to travel to Patagonia, or at the very least to hike Mount Katahdin. Anything to get out of the dirty city grind. Who knows, his cousin fantasized, they might even fall in love with animals far outside their species. They’d seen Hernando’s brother, Alan, dabble in that kind of behavior in college by falling for a fox bartender. Both the fact that she worked as a bartender and that she was from the Canidae line had caused a minor family scandal. “I like her just fine,” Alfonzo’s aunt grumbled of her son’s relationship, “but come on, she eats mice! Literally!”
As they’d aged, Alfonzo had watched Hernando succumb to the social pressures of the herd. Very little of his youthful yearning was evident in his current life. What was saddest to Alfonzo was that he couldn’t even get Hernando to admit to the old dreams. He called his old music stupid. Alfonzo insisted it was psychedelic brilliance. Hernando was now a dentist in Floral Park. He mostly hung out with Alan, a forever square who worked as an account manager at Bobst Hospital. Hernando had a job his mom approved of. He had the thick wool belly of his father. He jogged but then stress-ate too many fried vegetables and followed them with too many grass beers. Alan was an avid catnip smoker. After his kids went to bed, he would sit in his basement and get high while watching nature documentaries. He called this his hobby. Alfonzo called it depression.
At family gatherings, Alfonzo would drink along while listening to his cousins try to convince him to join their way of life. It was time for him to get serious, they argued. He would feel better as soon as he strapped on bags of debt and started the long walk toward retirement, and beyond that, Alfonzo presumed, death.
Luis agreed with Hernando and Alan. They were what he could have been, if only. If Alfonzo had listened or heard, absorbed, or behaved. If Alfonzo hadn’t been beguiled by liberal arts classes on chromatics and empires. If Alfonzo had known his place, he’d have one. If you came from a rich uptown family, it was all well and good to go searching for yourself in a foreign land or to make sound art with hummingbird collaborators, but these kinds of practices were off-limits to the working class. Wanting them just muddled the natural order. You go to college to get a job. Or at least, this was what Alfonzo imagined his father thought.
Alfonzo would rather drown himself in the East River than end up like his cousins. Luis sensed this but never mentioned it. But snob hovered on his tongue like a seed never spit.