“Can we torch it now?”
“Let’s wait until it’s dark—we can watch the flames in the night.”
“What if they catch us, Eddie? What will we say?”
“We’ll say we came back to see our old house. There’s no insurance, anyway, I cancelled it a long time ago. We’ll say it got dark and we lit a candle, and that it caught something on fire, and that we couldn’t put it out—and that we barely escaped with our lives.”
“Did you bring a candle?”
“Yup.”
“Smart kid.”
“Yup.”
They sat perfectly still in their parents’ bedroom, a sanctuary neither one of them had ever been allowed to enter. Jake lit one of the carpets—it was old and it lit as easily as paper. The room caught fire quickly, the flames burning higher and higher, as yellow and red as anything he’d ever seen. Eddie pulled him toward the door, coughing. ‘ ‘Let’s get out of here, Jake.” Jake was reluctant to move, his feet planted on the floor as if he were rooted and the floor was the soil that gave him life. He thought of Joaquin, his hundred indiscretions, he thought of the heron dying in flight and wondered how it might feel to die, to bum with this house. He would be dying soon, anyway. This would be over quickly, no hospital rooms, no IV, no complications of the body caving in on itself It would be better to burn with the house, and he could die with it. It would be like becoming one of Joaquin’s candles. The room filled with smoke, and he could hear his younger brother calling him: “Jake! Jake! What’s wrong? We have to get out—” His voice was distant in his ears, but he remembered a little boy who loved him and had treated him as if he were as valuable as the air. He felt his brother trying to pull him toward the door. “Jake!” And suddenly that voice became more real and urgent than the smoke and the flames and the burning room. He felt his feet run toward the door.
Suddenly, as if he had reentered his body, he was alive and vibrant and happy, and he laughed as he and his younger brother ran down the stairs. He looked up and saw the flames shooting out of his parents’ bedroom. They found themselves in the living room. Jake stood in the middle of the room and started dancing and jumping and yelling, soaking wet in his own sweat. Eddie watched him and was terrified at the look of joy on his face. “Let’s get out of here, Jake!” He grabbed his older brother by the shoulder and spun him around. Jake looked at his brother and laughed—then walked toward the door, the house filling with smoke. Eddie followed him out of the house, leaving the door wide open. Jake calmly slammed the door shut: “Burn, baby, burn!” he yelled. “Burn!”
“Jake, Jake, wake up. Wake up!” He felt Eddie shaking him awake.
“Huh—what?”
“You were having a nightmare.”
“What time is it?” He stared at his brother who sat on the floor next to the couch he was lying on. He watched the candle flicker on the coffee table.
“It’s late,” Eddie said.
“I was dreaming. We burned it, me and you. We burned it. I wanted to burn with the house. You called me back.”
Eddie said nothing as he listened to Jake’s voice. “You want to stay here tonight?” he asked after a long time.
“You don’t want to burn it, do you, Eddie?”
“This house—it can’t hurt us anymore.”
Jake sat up on the couch. “How long was I asleep?”
“A couple of hours.”
Jake lit a cigarette from the flame of the candle. “And you?”
“Oh, I took another tour of the house.”
“So we won’t burn it?”
“We already have,” Eddie said.
Jake smiled.
“You’re not disappointed then?”
Jake shook his head. “You know what Joaquin would have said? He would have said that we came to pick up our ghosts.”
15
“I’VE SOLD EVERYTHING.”
“And you gave the money to the poor.”
“Actually I pocketed all the cash.”
“So what are you going to do with all the dough?”
“Buy another set of earrings, and then I’m going to move to El Paso.”
“El Paso? Do you know how to spell it?” The two women stood in the middle of the living room amid half-packed boxes and stacks of books. “Did you really sell everything, Lizzie?”
“Well, almost everything. I kept all my earrings, I kept a few sentimental kitchen utensils, I kept my first IUD, which I had bronzed—”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious. Do you realize that if I hadn’t worn that thing, I would have probably wound up pregnant and marrying Michael Topp?”
“Michael Topp? Where do you find these guys?”
“Can you imagine me as Mrs, Michael Topp? So I’ve kept it as a good luck piece. And I kept my clothes, of course. Well, I’m actually giving my brother a couple of my dresses.” She gave her friend a knowing look. “Remember when you said that dress of his was probably his girlfriend’s? Well, it wasn’t.”
“Did you stick your psychic nose in his bedroom one night?”
“Actually, I wanted to, but I refrained. I found out the honest way—I asked him. He said the only way he could get excited was by wearing women’s clothes.” She laughed triumphantly. “I love being right.”
“Did he model one for you?”
“I asked him to—but he wouldn’t.” She laughed. “I was right—I was right.”
“You love being right too much, if you ask me,” Maria Elena said. She tried to keep herself from smiling.
“Oh, and the bed, well, I burned the bed.”
“You didn’t.”
“I was afraid it would talk.”
“You really burned it?”
“Actually, I sold it to a couple of guys who were moving in next door. I warned them the bed was cursed but they liked the price—they couldn’t resist.”
Maria Elena placed some books in a box. “That man has books everywhere. I wonder if he would mind burning a few of them before we moved.”
“Does he read them?”
“Yes. All of them. That’s the good part. The bad part is that he wants to talk about them.” She looked around the room for some tape to seal the box. “He actually follows me from room to room sometimes, reading passages of books to me.” She caught a glimpse of Lizzie’s hair as it caught the morning sun. “I can’t get over your hair.”
“Lovely, isn’t it?”
Maria Elena laughed as she headed toward the kitchen. “You want some coffee?”
“No thanks.” Lizzie looked around the disorganized room. “Why don’t we just go to it?” She followed Maria Elena into the kitchen. “Where are those boys, anyway? When the packing begins, they disappear—but call them into the bedroom and they’re ready.”
“The boys are at their lawyer’s.”
“Oh yeah, what are they doing there?”
“They’re talking to him about what they should do with the house—he’s going to help them dump it.”
“I still think they should have burned it.”
“It’s not a game, Lizzie.”
“I know. It’s very serious. Serious business burning down houses. How come they didn’t do it?”
“They thought better of it. They can’t just go around burning old houses down.”
“Why not, Helen? It’s their house. I’d have torched it.”
“Big talker. And the name’s Maria Elena.”
“I slip sometimes. It’s a big ugly house—someone should bum it.”
“You’ve never even seen it, Lizzie.”
“I’ve heard enough about what went on in that house—that’s reason enough to watch it crumble to the ground—in flames, baby, in flames. Besides, who’s going to buy it? Who wants to buy a house where people committed murder?”
“Oh, someone will buy it.”
“What if someone doesn’t?”
“Who cares, Lizzie? Let it sit there and rot.”
“Oh,
you don’t care if it sits there and rots, but you don’t think it should be torched.”
“I’m much more patient than you, Lizzie.” She laughed. “And a lot less theatrical.”
“You’re funny, you know that? About certain things, you’ll talk till the cows come home—about other things, you just want to shut up, and hope it will go away.”
“Like what?”
“Like parts of your past, like,” she hesitated, “like—your son.”
“What are you talking about, Elizabeth Edwards?”
“Promise me you won’t get mad.”
“I won’t promise anything.”
“Then I won’t talk, either.” She looked toward the half-packed boxes in the living room. “We should get packing. What room should we do?”
Maria Elena shook her head in exasperation, “OK, I promise I won’t get mad.” “OK, I’ll tell you—but I’ve changed my mind about the coffee.” Lizzie watched her friend as she put the coffee on. “Are you sure we’re going to be able to live in the same house?”
“Are you worried?”
“I’ve always lived alone.”
“I’ve never lived alone. Couldn’t afford it. It’s not so hard to live with other people, you know?”
“Well, not if you don’t talk.”
“There you go again.”
“Have you told Eddie your father beat your mother?”
“I told him he was a violent alcoholic—and that my mother couldn’t take it anymore.”
“And you call that revealing secrets?”
“There are always more secrets. You tell one—and another one pops up.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You’re telling me you don’t have any secrets?”
“Yes. It’s just not a way of life.”
“Bullshit.”
“I tell you everything, Nena.”
Maria Elena laughed victoriously. “We’ll live fine together. I’m not worried about us at all.” She bit the inside of her mouth. “Jake looks a little tired, don’t you think? How’s his blood count?”
“Medium.”
“Medium?”
“In the seven hundreds.”
“When the time comes, it’s going to be hard on Eddie. It’ll be hard on you, too, Lizzie.”
“Maybe he’ll live for a long time. Medium is good.”
“Something tells me he won’t.”
“Oh, so now you’re a seer, too.”
“Sometimes. And then of course, there’s your dream, isn’t there?”
Lizzie nodded. “I know, but let’s not talk about it, not today. Today, let’s talk about gardens and new places and the ba—Hey, Where’s the baby?”
“Eddie and Jake took him.”
“To the lawyer’s?”
“You knew he’d be deaf, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“You didn’t want to hear it. He!—Maria Elena. I don’t have to be psychic to know what you could and couldn’t hear.”
“When did you know?”
“When I felt him kick. When you took my hand and placed it on your belly. I was here having dinner with you and Eddie one night—and all of a sudden the room was sad and silent, and I didn’t know what it meant. But later, I knew.” Maria Elena handed her a cup of coffee. “Remember when I was here right after little Jake was born? He was lying there perfectly still. And I let out one of my barroom laughs, and the baby didn’t respond—and you knew. You knew. That knowledge was a kind of dying for you, and I felt it, but you pushed that knowledge away with everything you had. It was as if you were concealing something that could never be concealed. And you knew—and I knew—so what was I supposed to do? So I did what all good friends do—I played stupid.”
Maria Elena looked down at her hands. “It’s hard, Lizzie. You’d think at this point I could say anything I felt, speak about all the ghosts—everything. I keep so many things—old habits are so damned hard to break.”
Lizzie took her friend’s hand and kissed it. “I know,” she said, “especially when those nasty habits helped you to survive.” She kissed Maria Elena’s hand again. “It’s like smoking cigarettes: The more you smoke them, the more they become a part of you. And pretty soon you need them.”
Maria Elena inhaled loudly, held her breath, then exhaled. She shook her head in disgust. “I’m glad you’re so pushy. Never stop being pushy. Did you dream anything else?”
“I dreamed about his birth. He grew into a young man right in front of us. There we all were in the delivery room—you still recovering and your son already grown up, but when I spoke to him, he just looked at me and shrugged. And your brother was in the dream.”
“Diego? Diego was in the dream?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure.”
“I’m sure. Dark eyes, slender body, lips—”
“He’s alive, then?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“What else? What else?” She squeezed Lizzie’s hands.
“That’s it.”
“That’s it? I wish we were there already.”
“Let’s pack then, Nena.” But as she spoke the words, she began traveling to another place, a place Maria Elena could not follow. She stared into her cup of coffee as if she were searching for something crucial, urgent, a key to a door she had to open. In that instant Maria Elena recognized something very sad in the way her friend was holding herself Lizzie was tired. She was paying a heavy price for her gift—and something else.
“What is it, Lizzie?” Maybe she didn’t want to move with them to the desert. The thought of leaving her behind seemed unimaginable, and yet her distance seemed more real than the cup of the coffee she was holding. “Tell me you’re no! changing your mind.” She was afraid to ask, afraid she would say she wasn’t going. “You don’t have to go, you know? I thought that’s what you wanted—a new life, a new place—that’s what you said. A new life because you’d shed the old one. ‘New wineskins for new wine,’ you said. But maybe—not everyone belongs in the desert.”
“I’ve been having dreams, Nena.”
“Tell me.” She felt her lower lip quiver.
“About the desert—they’re mostly about the desert.” Maria Elena felt calm as soon as Lizzie said the word “desert,” felt as though she were stepping on sand and smelting a chamizo and squeezing that desert bush’s olive leaves between her fingers, the smell of the rain exploding onto her hands. Lizzie’s voice was becoming a dry breeze blowing across the draughted sand. Maria Elena could almost feel the grains blowing across her body. This woman who was speaking to her had become the drought, but she had also become the rain. “And we are all there in my dreams—all of us—you and the baby and Diego and a dark woman dressed in simple clothes who has the worn look of a woman who has worked all her life and is tired because she was expected to carry too big a piece of the earth, but that dark woman is smiling and kneeling on the ground. She’s praying. I can almost hear her Spanish—even now. Eddie is holding Jake in his arms and Joaquin is bathing naked in the river, perfect again and at peace—like a boy—and from the river he is calling Jake to come: ‘Come,’ he whispers. And Eddie finally lets him go, his tears as clear as the waters of the river. I’m standing next to Diego—but someone else is there, and I can’t see who she is—but I know it’s a she.” She looked at Maria Elena and trembled. “I have to go with you and Eddie to that border. I know I have to go—and I want to go. Already, it’s a part of me. I can sometimes taste it when I wake. I mean, Maria Elena, look at me. Who the hell am I? I’m sometimes a body, and sometimes I’m not a body, I’m a Mexican and I’m not a Mexican. I’m a middle-class WASP, and I’m not. I’m a twin, but my twin is missing.” Maria Elena stared at Lizzie completely mesmerized by her voice. “Ever since Salvador gave me this gift, I catch myself repealing: ‘My name is Salvador.’” She looked at Nena and tried to smile. “I never used to ask myself why I was born. No
w, I ask it all the time.”
“Why does that make you so sad?”
“Something’s very wrong,” she said. “I feel as if something is wrong.”
“Are you seeing something or is it just nerves? Maybe it’s Jake. Maybe you sense his illness. In the dream, he’s going away from us—is that it?”
“No, it’s not just nerves—and it isn’t about Jake. It’s something else.” Lizzie shrugged. “I’m a very bad psychic.” She laughed and gulped down her coffee. “Let’s get to work. We have a lot of packing to do.” She stood up and stretched toward the ceiling and yawned. “I’ve got to get more sleep. Which way to the first closet?” Her face turned as white as her hair as soon as she’d finished speaking. “No,” she whispered. Her eyes became distant and cloudy.
Maria Elena reached for her arm. She was cold and trembling. “Are you leaving?” she asked. “Lizzie?”
“No,” she said again.
“What?”
“How did you get in here?”
“Lizzie?”
“No, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Who are you? What are you—”
“What’s happening, Lizzie?”
“Don’t hurt me. Please don’t—”
“Lizzie!” Maria Elena tried to keep her from shaking. “Lizzie?”
She froze in Maria Elena’s arms. She trembled as if she were coatless in a freezing rain. “No! Please, no! Take anything you want. I can’t—don’t hurt—How did—please—”
Maria Elena tried to hold Lizzie up as she fell to the floor on her knees. “Lizzie, what’s happening? Lizzie!”
Then she was calm again. Lizzie knelt on the floor and was perfectly still. Maria Elena knelt next to her and placed her head on her lap. “Lizzie?”
She opened her eyes. “Mama,” she said. “Mama! No. We have to go and help her.”
“What?”
“Just take me, Nena!”
“You just had a seizure, Lizzie! You need a doctor.”
“That was no seizure. That was my mother!”
“What?”
“My mother, Nena! My mother!”
Lizzie ran toward the door the second Maria Elena’s car stopped in front of her parents’ house. She banged on the door. “Open the door—open the goddamned door! Open this door goddamn—” Somehow, in her panic, she remembered she had a key. She reached for her purse. It wasn’t there. “Damn! No!” She banged on the door again, oblivious to the fact her fist was throbbing from hitting the door again and again and again. As she leaned into the door, she felt it open slowly. She saw her mother, bent and crooked, lean against the doorway and sway. She looked as if she had been broken by a wind, her bones no longer able to hold her up. Her clothes were washed in sweat. The old woman strained to make out who was standing in her doorway, her hands groping in front of her, groping, reaching—trembling and reaching. “My glasses—”