I keep thinking of that woman I saw. I wonder what she’s like? She looks Mexican—or maybe Italian. She looks a little sad, but when she smiles—I want to hear her laugh.
Have you ever made love to someone you loved? What was it like? I’m going to be twenty-one in a couple of weeks. I always think I was born on such a sad day. This guy asked me what I was doing on the day John Kennedy was assassinated. I told him I was busy being born.
1 never told you, did I? I found them. I’m the one that found them. I came back from a camping trip on a Sunday night. And they were lying there. It was disgusting, their bloody bodies lying next to each other. My mother, my father. When I called the police I wanted to say, “I killed them.” I wanted it to be true. I wanted to make it seem like I killed them. I couldn’t make myself touch the gun. I couldn’t go near them. I just stared at their bodies, and I didn’t even utter a prayer. Am I a bad man because I did not forgive them—even in death, I did not forgive them. I do not forgive them now. They sent you away from me, sent you away because they sensed how close we were—they must have hated that. People who can’t love resent people who do. You know what? After I called the cops, I didn’t feel sad, and I didn’t feel disgusted. I felt relieved. I felt weightless. I thought, “My God, they’re gone. They’re gone and I’m still here.” When the cops arrived, I cried. They thought I was crying because I was afraid. I still feel guilty for feeling happy.
Maria Elena was mesmerized by Eddie’s handwriting. She touched the letters. She could hear his voice reading it to her. She imagined the look on his face as he handed over his journals. It wasn’t a look of defeat or surrender. It was as if he was completely unafraid, completely open, as if his body had become indistinguishable from hers. She looked at her hands and half-expected to see her husband’s fingers. All these words, she thought, and he’s given them to me. She looked at her stomach and rubbed it gently. “Your papa’s very beautiful.” She looked at her watch, then stretched herself out on the couch, and kept reading.
July 12, 1985
Dear Jake,
I’m getting married tomorrow. I know I’m still kind of young, but I’m twenty-three. That’s old enough, I guess. I just want to be loved—that’s not so strange, is it? I haven’t written to you in a long time. I haven’t been thinking about the past too much lately. She doesn’t know about you. I told her I had a falling out with my family. That’s kind of true. I suppose. I never thought I would be happy—not like this. I sometimes panic and think it’s just an emotion that will pass. I thought I would always feel alone, and now I don’t remember what it was like before I met her. I think our bodies change when we love someone. The first time I made love to Helen, I went home and went for a run. I wanted to run and run and think of her body, the way it felt, the way I felt when I came in her. I felt as if I had emptied out my entire body, and now she was carrying me around. And I. I was carrying her around too. And she was so light, her laugh inside me. I see her eyes everywhere I go.
I promise I will always be good to her. I promise I will remember what has happened to me—and I will never repeat it. I will bury everything about the past today—except you. I will never bury you. I will carry you everywhere I go.
I want someday to, be a father. I never thought I’d say and feel that. I used to think that to have a body was nothing but a burden. But that was before I knew that people could be kind to the body—like her. It sounds like a strange thing to say, but I know you know. I want to be a father, Jake. I want to teach my child to be kind, and I will love that child like no child has ever been loved—and that child will love the staying earth …
Time had no meaning that day, not for her, just the words her husband had written, his voice, his hurt, his haunting vision. Reading his words made her hunger even more to find her brother, a hunger that was growing and growing like a twin to the child she was carrying. She was certain Eddie would love him, both of them addicted to books. She tried to picture them in the same room, two men with dark eyes and smiles on their faces, and her child between them. Eddie, Diego, Jacob. Eddie, Diego, Jacob.
She whispered these men’s names carefully, as if, by uttering them in a certain way, she could make them all appear, photograph them, embrace them, show them her repentant heart. “Someday they will live in my house, someday—”
When Eddie walked in the door, she looked surprised. “What are you doing home?”
“I live here,” he said, “and I only work until five.”
She looked at her watch. “Oh damn—and I didn’t even make dinner.”
“Have you been lying there all day?”
She waved one of his journals in the air. “I’ve been reading a good book.”
“Ahh—I’ve read it. The author could have used a good editor.”
She just stared at him.
“Come here,” she said.
He sat next to her on the couch. She placed her palm on his cheek. “You’re going to be a wonderful father.”
“I used to think I would be.”
“What happened?”
“We got pregnant.”
She laughed.
“It’s real now, Nena.”
“You won’t be like your father, Eddie.”
“Well, there’s more than one way to be a bad father. What if—”
“Shhh. You worry too much.”
“You worry, too.”
“Thank God we worry about different things.”
“Aren’t you scared, Nena?”
“No.”
“You sound so certain.”
“I want this. I’ll love him.”
“Still think it’s a going to be a he?”
“Yes.”
“We’re certain about a lot of things today, aren’t we?”
“And mostly I’m certain that I’m crazy about my husband.”
“Your storybook husband?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Introduce him to me sometime.”
She handed him one of his journals. “Here,” she said, “He’s here.”
12
EVERY DAY, Joaquin grew weaker and weaker, lighter and lighter. He felt as though he was being transformed from a solid into a gas. Some days he was sad. Other days he was euphoric. A part of him was in mourning for what he was losing. Another part of him looked forward to dying. Some days, he said nothing. Other days he would talk to Jake all evening, and his voice was as strong and as deep as the Pacific beyond the Golden Gate.
They no longer shared the same bed, no longer woke up feeling each other’s skin, smelling each other’s breaths. Every morning, Jacob would walk into Joaquin’s room and wake him. He would bring him water or juice and sometimes hold him or just look at him. He would go to work slowly and reluctantly. Joaquin would push him out the door with a voice that could still be strong: “We need the money—and besides, Tom comes by every day—he has a key. And I get visitors. And Jose cooks me lunch, and if Jose can’t come, then he calls Mrs. Cantor who sits and reads to me after she makes me eat her soup—the best chicken soup you ever ate. There’s nothing better than soup from a Jewish mother. That’s the truth, Jacob. I’m fine.” But he was getting thinner and farther away, and sometimes he was lost as if he didn’t know where he was, and his eyesight was growing worse and worse, and some days he couldn’t see at all, and the world was dark for him, Jacob felt he was slowly disappearing from the world, but he kept himself from mourning because he was afraid of what might happen to him if he let himself think about the word “death.” There would be plenty of time for mourning, for thinking, for being sad after J was gone. He wasn’t responding to any of his medications, almost as if nothing on this earth had the power to affect his body. Whatever medication Tom tried, Joaquin’s body rejected—or ignored. Tom looked at Jake soberly one evening and said a little numbly: “He wants to die, Jake—all we can do is make him comfortable.” Jacob nodded. “Comfortable? Comfortable? A helluva doctor we have—a helluva doctor.” He went to w
ork, came back home, read the newspaper to Joaquin, and at night he would sip a beer and wonder how long they would live like this. Four weeks passed, and strangely, their lives took on an air of normalcy, of familiarity—even of a strange and peaceful calm. Friends still visited them—Mike and Connie Sha and José—and there was still some laughter in their house. Joaquin made jokes about his blindness, and kept his grief at bay, but once, in the middle of a joke, he wept. “I want my eyes. I want them back.” Jake held him, and that night they made love, both of them knowing it would be the last time. As Joaquin fell asleep, he thought that the only thing he would miss about the physical world was Jacob’s touch. He wanted to tell him that, but thought it would only make him sad. He fell asleep in his arms. After that, Joaquin’s body would no longer desire anything but death.
Joaquin sat on his bed and thought of Jake, tried to remember the color of his eyes. He asked himself if his life had meant something. He laughed. He wondered why the time he had spent on the earth had to mean anything at all. It occurred to him if his life had a meaning, he couldn’t possibly know what it was. Before she died, his mother had said that love was all that mattered. As he sat there, he didn’t know what she had meant. “Jake, is love all that matters?” He thought of his father, and about the time he and his brother caught him with another woman. He thought of how his father had never been capable of being monogamous, had never been capable of communicating affection, had never been capable of love. Love was always one woman away. His mother must have known, and yet she never said a word. In some ways she had never existed in his world. But the reverse was also true: In some ways, he had never existed in her heart. They protected each other from the elements. If his father had not died, she would have remained his wife. She had not loved him. He had not loved her—and yet she is the one who had said: “Love is all that matters.” What did she mean by love?
He thought of his father’s mustache, his eyes that never looked directly at him, his smile that hid everything he thought or felt. “I didn’t turn out to be at all like you, did I Dad?” It seemed to him that his father was standing in front of him, and he was wearing that impenetrable look he wore as other men might wear hats to protect them from the sun. He nodded at him. “Not like you at all. Papá.” “Speak Spanish,” his father said. Joaquin shook his head. “Aren’t the dead bilingual, Papá?” His father shook his head. “Entonces, vete. Ya no te quiero ver. Ya se acabó todo, tu vida, mi vida, la vida de tu esposa. Ya se acabó el tiempo de las palabras.” His father opened his mouth as if to speak, but Joaquin stopped him. “You’re a ghost with no power in my house. Te me vast No te quiero en mi casa.” His father disappeared from the room. He was glad he had stopped him from speaking. He would have only voiced his disapproval, but he suddenly wondered what part his father would have disapproved of most: the part of him that loved men, the part of him that had abandoned Mexico, or the part of him that had played the same patient role as his mother in the face of the repeated indiscretions of his lover. “You wouldn’t understand, would you, Papá—everything that is me, me, Papá—Joaquin—so foreign to what you were. Do you disapprove of me as much as I disapproved of you?” His father had disappeared from the room and he was still trying to explain. Twenty years and another country later, and he was still trying to talk to a man who had not been born to listen. “Will I be your son till the day I die? It shouldn’t matter so much, but it does. Goddamnit, it does,” Is this what his mother had talked about when she talked about love?
He heard the doorbell ring. He wondered who it could be—didn’t they know he was dying? “I’m dying,” he wanted to yell, “Go away.” Why were they still coming? To see—to see the show, to see the magic man do his disappearing act? “Look, I am walking on a wire, and I am going to fall gracefully, so gracefully that you won’t even notice when I hit the ground.” He felt his mind leaving his body. He tried to focus on the color of walls in the room. If he could only name the color, his mind would come back. He focused his eyes on the things in the room—his saints, his candle burning in the room. He could see them despite the fact that everything else was blurry and dark. He imagined himself to be lying in a coffin. “Someone is at the door. I can reach it, I can reach it. I can make myself open the door, I can make myself speak.” He found the knob and pulled. He stared out into the hallway of the apartment. He saw nothing. He felt the air in front of him with his hand. “Is someone there?”
“Yes. You must be Joaquin.”
The voice was soft and familiar. A woman, he thought, the voice belongs to a woman. He looked out into the void and said nothing.
“Joaquin?” the voice asked.
“Help me. I can’t seem to see. Can you help me?”
The woman took him around the waist. “Let’s get you back to bed,” she said.
Her arms were almost as strong as Jacob’s. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Let’s just get you back to bed first, shall we?”
“Did someone send you—did Jake send you?”
She sensed the panic in his voice. “Dr. Michaelsen said I might drop in and see you, I was your day nurse at St. Mary’s hospital.”
“Tom, Tom sent you?” He seemed relieved, more focused at the sound of his doctor’s name.
She helped him into his bed.
“I remember your voice. I remember your voice,” he said. “You said Jake and I were beautiful—is that what you said?”
“Yes.”
“I remember your voice—a good voice.”
She looked around the room, everything so neat and orderly. “Is Jake at work?”
“Yes. He gets home around five-thirty.”
Joaquin looked so thin and hungry. “Would you like some tea? Something to eat?” She wanted to make him strong.
“Crackers,” he said, “Crackers and orange juice, Tom sent you?”
“Yes.”
“I remember. Your name’s Lizzie.”
She smiled at him though she knew he could not see her. His mind seemed better. Yes, he was better. She grabbed his arm. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I’m your friend.”
He nodded. “I need to use the bathroom. Will you help me?”
She took his hand and led him slowly into the bathroom. She helped sit him down on the toilet. “I’m so much worse,” he said.
She combed his hair with her fingers. “I’ll wait outside. Let me know when you’re ready.” She walked back into Joaquin’s room. She picked up a photograph of Joaquin and Jake that was sitting on the dresser. She traced the frame with her finger and stared at their images, Joaquin with his dark eyes and perfect skin and perfect teeth and Jake with his fine blond hair and eyes that burned a hole in your skin as he stared at you—even in a photograph. She was not surprised they had met, not surprised they were lovers, and she was not surprised to be standing in this room. She looked up and saw Joaquin standing in the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom. He hung on to the wall as if it were his life. “Are you there?”
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m just looking at a picture of you and your lover.”
“Yes. It was taken at the beach. Tom took it.”
“It’s a wonderful photograph. I didn’t know Tom was such a good photographer.”
He placed his head against the doorway. “Tom wanted to be an artist. Sometimes, I think he’s sorry he became a doctor. He wanted to please his father.” His voice was so light, almost as fine as powdered sugar, “Are you holding it in your hands?”
“How much can you see?”
“Not very much. Everything’s a little fuzzy, kind of dark. A little bit. I can see a little bit—but I can’t see what you look like, but you’re wearing a white blouse.” He paused, then seemed to go away from her. “And a skin with flowers. My father could have never understood all this.”
She walked over to him and placed her hand on his cheek. “Well, fathers are sometimes a little limited—they can’t help it. Maybe it’s our fault. Maybe we shouldn’t t
ry to please them.”
He leaned against her as they walked toward the bed. When he felt the blankets, his hands trembled. She helped him slip under the blankets.
“Do you love yours?”
“My father?”
He nodded.
“No.”
“Me neither. Well, he’s dead. But if he were alive, I wouldn’t love him.”
“It’s OK,” she said.
“I shouldn’t hate him—he’s dead.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and placed her hand on his forehead. “Forgive yourself,” she whispered. “It’s you that matters now.”
“I don’t know you.” he whispered.
“You know me well enough.”
“It’s easy to forgive everyone but yourself.”
“It’s possible.”
“You really think so?”
She squeezed his arm. “Yes. Still want the crackers?”
“No. I want to sleep.”
His breathing was labored. She reached over and took his wrist. “I’m going to take your pulse.”
He laughed. “I’m dead.”
“Funny man.”
She looked at her watch and counted. She took his hand when she finished. “I think I’ll have Tom come have a look at you. You know, most doctors don’t make many house visits—you’re lucky.”
“He was in love with me once.”
“Well, it must’ve ended well.”
“It never started.” He breathed in deeply, then coughed. His coughing continued for several minutes. She handed him a glass of water with a straw. When he stopped, he sipped on the water. “He never told me. I just knew. Nothing ever happened. Sometimes, he looked at me—and I knew what he was thinking. I don’t think he ever thought Jake was good enough for me. Don’t tell him I said that. He’s a good man, such a good man. I always wanted to make them like each other.”