PRIVATE FACES, PUBLIC SPACES : In the Ledger of Life, Dreams and Losses Don’t Always Balance
We see one another as if through glass, as if what we seem, we are. Here, for instance, is Fabio Cabezis, 55, small, bland, neatly turned out. His older customers might remember when his hair was darker, figure trimmer, smile more roguish. But to all who deal with him, he seems a contented man, eager to serve: a man who has made something of himself.
Cabezis has had his upholstery store near Vermont Avenue for more than 20 years. Time surprises him: Where did his life go--his young years, hearty and strong, his plans to hire eight upholsterers, three seamstresses, a team of salesmen, to call himself an “interior decorator”?
People “discover” his small, dark, dusty shop, wedged between the vacuum repair and carpet cleaning stores, and think of him as “my little man.” The slight stings. He is from Ecuador; he once sold real estate in Quito. He does not see himself as a tradesman.
He is proud of his work--the heavy red brocade neatly turned on a sofa, the smooth, clean finish of a gray cotton love seat. But it is journeyman stuff, and he is good enough to know the difference. He had an apprentice with a real gift once. “Now he does only furniture for the rich people. Me? I was busy selling jobs, nice and clean jobs. But I never got deep into it. It takes time to learn to cut perfectly, takes time to do better.”
Pieces of furniture spill out of the always open door. A battered chair waits on the sidewalk, a naked sofa, stuffing gone. In the store window, a bolt of dusty yellow brocade was draped carefully over a chair years ago, and there it has stayed.
He remodeled the shop himself, years and years ago. He put in paneled walls and curtains to shield his “office,” built high shelves for the rolls of fabric he no longer stocks. “I don’t want to risk any more of my money.” He keeps books of small samples instead; he has drawn his world into small, containable spaces. He is, he realizes sadly, a man who enjoyed life better in another time--when he was younger, for a start, before he felt his body betray him. “I feel like I’m old and if I do too much, I’m going to die.”
He lives alone, surprised to find that, after all this time, his closest friends are from the old country--people who knew him when he was full of adventure, who share his customs and language. When he was married, his wife took him to church. A girlfriend took him later. He is embarrassed to go now, alone: In his mind, men have to be “made” to go to church by women. He is a man from another time, and this age confuses him. It is why he dreams of retiring to London, of running a small snack bar in a subway station--as if uncertainty and change would not pursue him there.
And what he really wants is to have his young years again, before he knew loneliness--the years with his only son, the one for whom he made the sacrifices. His son, he says, went to the best schools--no matter that the father worked 16 or 20 hours a day to find the money. His son went to USC, to law school--and then away. “My son says, ‘Except for New York and Washington, where can you find educated people in this country?’ ”
When the boy was young, they went fishing together. They spent days messing about on the water in a small boat they kept at San Pedro. Fabio sold the boat five years ago, and he misses the memory of something he, a man from another country, could share with his son, the American. They never shared his work. “Impossible--he was a magnificent student, always an intellectual sort of guy. He never touched anything like upholstery.”
Other memories intrude. “He said to me: ‘Speak English, we’re in America. You make me feel ashamed.’ He said to me: ‘You write an order and you make three or four mistakes. In this country, you’ve got to get an education.’ I said: ‘Never mind, as long as I make money.’ ”
These days, his son tells him to spend his money. “I say to him, ‘I don’t need your money.’ I think I did terrific, just working hard. But the years my son said, ‘Thank you,’ ‘Thank you,’ ‘Thank you.’. . . Yes, those were good years.”
Fabio Cabezis passes his neighbors in the street. “How are you doing?” they ask. “Fine,” he says with a bright, fixed smile. And tucks his loneliness away.
We see one another as if through glass.
