Carry Me Like Water

  “How come I’m allowed to have a big heart and not a big head?”

  “Hearts and heads are different things, dear Eddie—and speaking of hearts, I would very much like to speak to the mother of your child.”

  “Ahh yes, the mother. The mother is cooking dinner.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t get mad—I’m not making her do it. She wanted to cook.

  We could be eating Frito sandwiches for all I care.”

  “Frito sandwiches?”

  “I used to have them in college. If you put Tabasco on them, they’re not half-bad.”

  “Yuck, Eddie. And your wife kisses you?”

  “Oh, she does more than that.”

  “Not my Helen—I thought she was still a virgin.”

  They both laughed. “Let me get Maria Elena for you.”

  “Maria Elena?”

  Eddie was silent for an instant, stumbled, then laughed nervously.

  “Yeah, I’m calling her that lately. She’ll tell you all about it, I’m sure.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Let me just get her, OK?”

  She sipped on her coffee as she waited for Helen to come to the phone. She wondered at Eddie’s sudden nervousness, then laughed at the sound of Helen and Eddie laughing in the background. They always made her laugh. She heard Helen’s voice on the other end.

  “Lizzie! I’ve been needing to get in touch with you.”

  “Anything important or do you just want to see my face?”

  “Well, of course I want to see your face, but I”—she stopped—”I have something I want to tell you.”

  “Well?”

  “I don’t want to tell you over the phone.”

  “You want me to drive all the way to Palo Alto just so you can talk to me?”

  “I know you work, but—”

  “Well, actually, I have a month off.”

  “You have a month off? Come be with me for a month. You can be here when the baby comes. He’ll be here any day.”

  “He?”

  “I have a feeling.”

  “Oh, a feeling? And what do you mean by ‘any day’? I thought the baby wasn’t due for another seven weeks. And first babies are always late.”

  “Always?”

  “I’m a nurse—take my word for it.”

  Helen laughed, “Anyway, how come you have a month off? Didn’t you and Conrad take a trip not too long ago? How much vacation time do you get?”

  “I’m on a month’s leave.”

  “How come?”

  “I wanted to resign, but Cassie wanted me to take a month off and think about it—so she gave me some time to think.”

  “That was generous.”

  “She’s very generous.”

  “I thought you loved your job, Lizzie.”

  She took a deep breath. “Oh, Helen, I don’t know what to say, what to think. I’m a mess.”

  “What’s wrong, Lizzie? You sound exhausted.”

  Lizzie could bring herself to say nothing.

  “Lizzie?”

  “What?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I told you I didn’t know. I’m lost, Helen. Have you ever felt lost? I feel as if I’m alone, and I don’t know what—” She began sobbing into the phone.

  Helen let her cry. Finally she whispered, “Can you drive?”

  Lizzie nodded into the phone.

  “Lizzie?”

  She took a few deep breaths, “Yeah, I can drive.”

  “Well, I want you to pack a few things—toothbrush, clothes, earrings—and I want you to get in your car and drive to Palo Alto and come and stay with me.”

  “But what about Eddie?”

  “Eddie won’t mind. Eddie adores you. I keep telling you he adores you.”

  Lizzie blew her nose from a roll of paper towels.

  “Please come.”

  “I hate being a sympathy case.”

  “Don’t insult me, Lizzie.”

  She nodded. “OK.”

  “OK, then. I’ll keep the light on for you.”

  Lizzie hung up the phone, stared at it, then put on a pair of jeans. She put on a flannel men’s shirt she’d inherited from a former lover, then started getting a few things together. “How the hell am I going to explain ail this to Helen?” She shook her head so hard that she found herself out of her body. The two men whom she’d felt in her apartment came to her mind and occupied it as if it were an unpeopled country that they were claiming for their own. She found herself weightlessly floating toward an unfamiliar apartment house on Divisadero. It was nice, clean, well-kept, almost expensive. She found herself in their bedroom. A sandy-haired man was sitting on a big overstuffed chair and holding a thin black-haired man in his arms. They were whispering to each other. “You have to let me go, Jacob.”

  “Shhhh. Don’t talk.”

  “You never wanna talk.”

  “What will happen will happen, J.”

  “Say my name. I want to hear you say my name.”

  “Joaquin.”

  “Say it again.”

  “Joaquin. Joaquin. Joaquin.” He stood up, slowly, careful not to fall, careful to keep his balance, careful not to hurl the man he was carrying to bed. She had no idea why she was there. A part of her wanted to stay and watch them, but another part wanted to leave immediately. She was an intruder, a voyeur, a tourist in the land of someone else’s pain. She willed herself to leave. As she left their apartment, she heard Jacob’s racing heart. His rage racing through her like a river about to break through its own banks. Then the raging was gone. Lizzie found herself in her apartment again. She stared at her body lying on the floor next to the bed. She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. She stood up, and repeated the men’s names. “Jacob and Joaquin, Jacob and Joaquin. Jacob loves Joaquin. Joaquin loves Jacob.”

  She could have sworn she heard Jacob’s voice in her head as she drove to Palo Alto. “J, don’t leave—never, never leave.” She wanted to hold him. She felt he had come to her before. She felt she belonged to him as much as she had ever belonged to anyone.

  9

  May 7, 1992

  Dear Jon,

  Joaquin told me today that I have to let him go. “It’s time, Jacob Lesley,” that’s what he told me. Spring is almost over, but it hasn’t felt like spring. I met Joaquin in the spring. I left home in the spring, and I was a boy, but I didn’t feel like one. Summer will be here soon, and the fog will be endless, I never liked summers in San Francisco. Joaquin won’t die—not this spring. I won’t let him. I’ll make him live another year—and then another year after that. I will give him my rage.

  Where do you live, Jon? I thought I saw you once in the street. I was drunk, I think. I haven’t been drunk in ages. When Joaquin dies, I’m going to drink until I die. He’s your age. Young. I’ve told you that before.

  I wonder how much you remember. I wonder what they put you through. I’m not superstitious but I do believe there’s such a thing as evil. Mom and Dad were evil. Then how come you’re so good? Are you good only because I need you to be?

  I wish I could see you. I say this all the time to you. Lately, it’s not enough to write to you.

  Joaquin is very peaceful about dying. He was always peaceful about everything. Why is it, Jon, that some men are bom decent? Are they born? Are they made? I can’t find a reasonable explanation for Joaquin’s goodness. There isn’t one, I hit him once. I guess I told you that. Sometimes, I think I could live my life hitting face after face after face. I should have been a boxer. A gay boxer? How would the fans like that one? Maybe they’d like it just fine—people love a show—especially when freaks are involved.

  We were together for a long time, and he loved me. I blame myself. I will always blame myself. I wasn’t always so faithful. Then there was this thing, this disease—and Joaquin and I—we live it. Funny how love couldn’t make me faithful—but a disease could. But it was too late.

  I’m tired lately. I don’t
know if I’m at the beginning stages or if I’m just tired from the life we’ve been living. Bone tired.

  Joaquin has dreams. We no longer make love. It’s OK. I don’t care about sex these days. I don’t know that I care about anything. When he dies, I’ll be alone. All the friends we have, we have because of him. He told me today he wanted a funeral Mass at Mission Dolores. He goes to Mass there every Sunday. I don’t understand why a gay man would go to Mass every Sunday. He told me once, “Look, gringo, Catholics aren’t even good at heterosexuality. What do you expect? I go to Mass for my own reasons.” He was pretty goddamned silent about those reasons. So he wants a Mass. He’ll get a Mass. No Church is threatened by a dead fag—only a living one.

  He wants his ashes spread over the desert. I promised him I’d spread his ashes near the ruins of Casas Grandes. He said he loved those ruins. He said he started dreaming wonderful things after he visited there. I don’t even know where Casas Grandes is. I just know it’s somewhere in the Mexican desert. I guess I’ll have to make a trip there. I promised him. He asked me once if I prayed. I laughed. I told him I wrote disconnected tetters to my brother in my journal. I told him that was all the praying I did.

  When he sleeps he whispers that the earth is holy. Sometimes, when he says things like that, he scares me. The earth is just the earth, and that’s all I feel. It’s hard for me to have empathy for an inanimate object. Is the earth inanimate? Maybe not. Sometimes. I lose definitions of words I know. Joaquin says the earth is not inanimate. I don’t think about it much, anyway. I only think about my job when I have to, and Joaquin—and you. I think about you all the time.

  Joaquin’s breathing is very labored. He’s beginning to look dead. I want to die. I’m wondering if his memory—and yours—will be enough to keep me alive. Everything is too heavy. My thoughts, my body, my past. Everything is too heavy. Sometimes I’m so angry that I think I’ll explode.

  Joaquin sometimes fades in and out of reality, constantly crossing between fantasy and reality. He confuses the two. He no longer knows where he is. Sometimes, he’s in Mexico and he’s a boy and he asks for his mother. Sometimes he’s in El Paso working as a busboy. He mentions a man by the name of Carlos. He says he can’t die without seeing him one last time. And sometimes he comes back to me, here, in San Francisco.

  I’m wondering why I never got in touch with you. If I would have tried to find you, maybe I would have succeeded. I think I say more when I talk to you than I say in real life. I don’t talk to people much.

  Are you me?

  10

  WHEN EDDIE ANSWERED the door, Lizzie stared at him as if she expected him to look like a different man. Everything had changed. She smiled. She was relieved he looked like the kind and familiar man she knew—and yet she thought she recognized something about him, but she was unable to retrieve that something from her memory, from that place within her that recognized an identity that remained inaniculate, at the edge of her consciousness. She suddenly had an image of him sitting outside, the noonday sun shining on his face, and him writing carefully, in a black book—writing so carefully and sadly that he seemed to be writing an elegy. She couldn’t see what he was writing, but he was thinking of a man, the man’s name was—she could begin to make it out—

  “Say hello,” he laughed.

  “Huh?”

  “You OK?”

  “Nothing a good drink can’t fix.”

  “Not until you say ‘hello.’”

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Eddie, you look better than the best pizza in Chicago,” he said.

  “Hello, Eddie, you look better than the best pizza in Chicago,” she repeated.

  “You’re no fun. You didn’t even sound like you meant it.” He grinned, the light behind him making his face dim and unreachable as if he were only a silhouette. He reached for the backpack she was carrying. She watched him lift the bag and smile at her. She began to feel calmer in his presence, Eddie could be as calm as water in a glass. “Still,” he smiled, “you said it, didn’t you? It’ll have to do. Bar’s open—what’ll you have?”

  “Maker’s Mark on the rocks.”

  “Ahhhhhhhh. The lady knows what she wants.” Eddie took her by the arm and pulled her into the house. “It’s the house specialty. How did you know?”

  “I read minds.”

  “Hey, Maria Elena,” he yelled up the stairs, “Our Lady of Palo Alto has just arrived.”

  “Why are you calling her that?” she asked.

  “Calling her what?”

  “Maria Elena.”

  “Well, we’ll get to that.” He didn’t look at her face.

  “You just turned red,” she said.

  He smiled nervously. Lizzie’s presence suddenly embarrassed him. He felt silly and self-conscious. The game he and Maria Elena had played had been so silly, ludicrous. He felt ridiculous. She would look at them and laugh. “Be patient,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek.

  Helen was at the top of the stairs looking down at them. She smiled to herself as she saw her husband kiss her best friend. In another life, she would have been suspicious, jealous, protective. She would have wanted her husband to like her friend, but would have also demanded that he keep his distance from her. Lizzie enjoyed being a woman—that in itself was inexplicably threatening. She had often watched her husband as he laughed and listened to Lizzie’s amusing stories—but she had always been more than just amusing. Eddie never hid his affection for her from the first time she’d introduced them to each other—and she had always managed to ignore her own ambivalence toward her husband’s relationship with her best friend, a relationship that had life independent of her. Now as she watched them at the bottom of the stairs, the threat seemed as ridiculous as the silly name she’d chosen for herself. She repeated her own name, “Ramirez.” She held on to the railing as she laughed. “It takes a while for me to climb up and down the stairs,” she said. Lizzie watched Helen as she moved slowly toward her, she waited for Helen to reach the bottom of the stairs, and then kissed her friend on the cheek. “That backpack doesn’t seem to have enough stuff for a long stay,” she said.

  “I’m only staying the weekend,” she said. They walked into the kitchen holding each other, Eddie reappeared with a drink in his hand. “Here,” he said handing the glass to Lizzie, “I’m going to bed.”

  “Stay,” Helen pleaded.

  Eddie shook his head, “Really, I have to go to bed.” He looked straight into Lizzie’s eyes. “You look a little beat up.” He looked at his wife. “You guys need to—”

  Helen looked at her husband and pleaded. He looked back at her with a look that said “I don 7 want to get into this—you do it.” “Eddie,” she said half-begging, half-demanding that he stay.

  “I’m tired,” he said firmly, “really tired.”

  Maria Elena nodded reluctantly. She wanted him to stay, wanted him to be a part of the conversation—and yet she understood that he did not want to repeat the story of his father to another human being. “You tell her,” he’d said, “I don’t mind—just let me be out of the room. Let me be absent.” She placed her hand on his cheek.

  Lizzie watched them and wondered why nobody had ever loved her like Eddie loved Helen. Sometimes she wanted to hate them for what they had. And yet she loved them and wanted to always love them. “Eddie,” she said as Helen pulled her hand away, “pour yourself a drink. You might as well hear this.”

  “Hear what?” Maria Elena asked.

  Lizzie hesitated, “Helen, something’s happening.”

  “Her name’s not Helen.” Eddie covered his mouth as soon as the words came out. He shrugged his shoulders and looked at his wife. “It just came out—I’m sorr—see, honey, I should just let you two guys—”

  “It’s OK, Eddie.”

  “But you should have been—”

  “Does it matter?”

  “What the hell are you two talking about?” Lizzie asked. She looked at Maria Elena suspiciously. “If your
name isn’t Helen, then who the hell are you?” She volleyed her gaze back and forth from Eddie to Maria Elena. “Is that why you keep calling her Maria Elena?”

  Eddie nodded. He tried to pretend he was invisible. He wanted to leave the room as graciously as possible. “Do you love your father?” “Of course I love my father.” “And your mother?” “Yes, I love my mother.” The business of revealing the truth was as impossible as keeping secrets. “They hurt me, they hurt…”

  Maria Elena popped her knuckles.

  “You only do that when you’re nervous,” Lizzie said.

  “Do I?”

  “Helen, will you tell me what the hell’s going on!”

  “Maria Elena,” she said, “my name’s Maria Elena Ramirez.” Her voice cracked. As she articulated her name to her friend—her closest friend—she was completely embarrassed by the charade she and her husband had been playing. She felt stupid and awkward and self-conscious—the same way she’d felt the first time she’d been to a high school dance. But she wasn’t a girl anymore. She was sitting in front of a woman she loved, a woman she respected, a woman she’d hidden from. “Hide-and-seek at thirty-four. Shit.”

  Lizzie’s response was slow in coming. “What?”

  “I’m not who I said I was.” She stared at Lizzie’s drink. She imagined how the bourbon would taste in her dry throat.

  Lizzie sipped on her bourbon, then crossed her arms. Maria Elena and Eddie waited for her to say something. “It would be nice to have a cigarette,” she said finally.

  Maria Elena nodded.

  “It makes sense,” Lizzie said. “Your past was so vague. I was the one who had a million stories about growing up, and you, you never had any. It was as though your life began when you went to college.”

  “In some ways, it did,” She squeezed her husband’s arm. “In some ways I didn’t lie, Lizzie. Life began with Eddie—it really did. Do you hate me for lying?” she whispered.

  “It’s too late to hate you,” she said. She took another sip from her bourbon, then laughed. “And here I thought you were anything but a woman with a past.” She laughed again. Maria Elena’s back relaxed as she heard Lizzie’s familiar laughter. It would be fine, it would all be fine. “I should have known,” Lizzie yelled, “I knew you weren’t Italian. Somehow I just knew—I just knew.”