In Perfect Light

“Who wouldn’t?”

  “I’m not about to let you stay in here.” Dave looked at his watch. “Look, I have a hearing. I’ve arranged for you to see Grace this afternoon.”

  “What?”

  Order and Timing in the Universe

  Mister has spent the day hiking in the desert. He has been hiking for more than five hours. He has brought plenty of water and a hat and the right clothes. He has hiked through the desert many times and has learned to respect the sun and the landscape. As he walks, he is thinking of Grace. He remembers how she used to watch him when he was a boy. That is how he knew she loved him. Often, when she looked at him, he felt as though he was the most startling and beautiful creature in the world. He understood her looks to be the way she touched. The thought suddenly occurs to him that she’d looked a little thin, and much more vulnerable than she had ever appeared. He keeps running her image over in his mind. Something is wrong. He cannot let go of that thought. Something is wrong with Grace.

  He is glad to be spending the morning in the desert. He loves the sand, the plants that fight each day to live. He loves the light.

  Grace is sitting in a jury room in the courthouse. A judge has lent her the room for the afternoon—to have a session with Andrés. As she sits in the small room, she smiles at the thought of Dave. He has managed to put the session together. She knows it was not an easy thing to accomplish. She admires people who do not understand the word no. She looks at her watch, then gets up from where she is sitting and looks out the window. She has a perfect view of Juárez and the pale blue summer sky. She cannot remember a time when she did not feel small in the presence of the sky.

  Rosemary Hart Benson buried her brother today in Lafayette, Louisiana. The funeral was small: herself and her husband, two frail aunts, and her next-door neighbor. He’d had no friends. The priest kept the mass simple and short. Her eulogy was two sentences long: “He was a sinner in need of salvation. Let us pray that God is even more generous than the most generous of us can dare imagine.” She did not call her children. She did not want them to attend her brother’s funeral. Though she did not fully understand how her brother came to be killed in El Paso, Texas, she did not doubt that he had a hand in his own murder. She does not hate him—but neither does she forgive him for his crimes. She has always been aware of his proclivities, and when her twin sons were born, she never allowed him near them. Once, when they were nine, he showed up and offered to take them to an afternoon movie. “Of course,” she said. “We’ll all go.” She was relieved when he moved to Texas.

  She is in her kitchen, recounting all these memories. She is cooking a small dinner for her aunts. She feels numb and relieved. She does not understand why life is like this. She breaks down and sobs. Her husband finds her in the kitchen and holds her.

  Dave is sitting in his office. He is thinking of William Hart. He decides he will send an investigator to talk to his sister in Louisiana. Or perhaps he will call her himself. He knows William Hart was a sick man. He is looking at his criminal record. The whole thing turns his stomach. He decides, yet again, that in his profession, he must take the low road to morality. I will put the victim on trial. That is what I’ll do. What I have to do.

  Andrés is walking down a tunnel. The tunnel leads from the basement of the jail into the courthouse. As he walks down the tunnel, he feels the shackles on his ankles. They have spared him the handcuffs. “We just don’t want you to run, that’s all.” The officer smiles. Not a bad sort. He is doing his job. He walks down the tunnel, and it seems to go deeper and deeper into the earth as he walks. Maybe he is walking toward hell.

  There Might Have Been Thunder

  I don’t remember very much about the funeral. But I could conjure some details. I could write the scene and make the whole story sound convincing as hell. I could. Sure. Why not? It was windy and threatening to rain. There might have been thunder. And I was wearing a white shirt.”

  “A white shirt?” Grace’s voice was casually challenging. Not really impatient. Just a hint of This isn’t necessary. Just a hint of Let’s not waste time.

  “But I was wearing a white shirt.”

  “Okay.”

  He liked that little hint of challenge in her voice. He had decided he liked her. Still, he had to test her. An easy test. He wanted her to pass. Because she was beautiful. Because there was lightning in her eyes. Because he was tired of being careful, and tired of his dreams and tired of everything about his life. And maybe there was still a chance for him. That’s what Dave told him. There’s still a chance, buddy, so don’t fuck it up. And there she was, sitting in front of him, in this jury room in the county courthouse, a jailer just outside the room. Dave had gone to a lot of trouble.

  “Why skip a session?”

  “Because I killed someone, Dave.”

  “Grace will see you—there’s an empty jury room a judge has lent us. She’ll see you.”

  “I don’t want to talk about what happened.”

  “Then don’t. Talk about something else. Something else. Start from the beginning”

  “From the fucking beginning?”

  There she was—unafraid. Completely in charge—as if this were her office. She was different. When the jailer told her he had to be in the room, she had not argued with him. She had merely looked at him with an authority that made him shrink. “No,” she said. “That won’t be necessary.” He did not even bother to argue with her. None of the others had looked like her or acted like her—or talked like her. Not the foster mothers, not the social workers, not the counselors who always wanted him to talk. Not that she tried to be different, and not that she tried to be beautiful. That was the thing. She didn’t paint her nails, and her makeup was barely visible, and there was only a hint of perfume. “Well, it wasn’t threatening to rain. But it was windy. My dad liked white shirts.” That was the truth. And he had probably worn a white shirt at the funeral. Certainly Mando had worn one. That, he did remember.

  “Is it important, that your dad liked white shirts?”

  “No. Probably not. My mother bought them for him. No, it’s not important. It’s just something I remember.”

  “What else do you remember?”

  “My sisters took turns crying. I could hear them. I think that’s all I really heard, the sounds of their tears. They stayed in their room. They didn’t want to come out. They howled like one of those winds that won’t quit, those winds that make you afraid. But I thought that maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, because they were washing themselves. They were trying to get rid of the hurt. That’s what I thought—but still, I just couldn’t stand it. All day. And in the night, too. I couldn’t stand it, all that crying. I couldn’t. And Mando couldn’t stand it, either. He would go into their room, talk to them, talk and talk. And listening to his voice, they would stop. But when he would leave the room, they would start again. And Mando, he would stomp out the door, hells and damns and fucks on his lips….”

  Santo Niño de Atocha Catholic Church was full. Mostly families from the neighborhood. Women dressed in black or gray. Women he knew because they’d been to visit his mother in their house. Women they’d seen every Sunday in the same church. Women who looked like they’d been crying, and he wondered about their tears because, really, they were strangers. And little girls, clean and dressed up in dark blue dresses. Little girls who had been instructed not to giggle, who had been lectured that this was a sad and sober and serious business. Little boys wearing pressed shirts and wearing looks of curiosity. Andrés could see that. He wondered what kind of look he had on his own face as he studied the whole scene.

  He recognized some of the men—the pallbearers, an uncle he didn’t know, his dad’s friends from the neighborhood or from work or from the garage where he and his friends liked to go to have a beer and get away from the chores that were waiting for them at home. His dad had referred to them as his compas. Compa Johnny and compa Joe, who was a real compa because he was Andrés’s godfather, and compa Chepo and
compa Lazaro. And compa Henry. He knew them. They’d spent hours and hours in his front yard and backyard, smoking and drinking beer and laughing and making jokes about their wives or about their bosses. He recognized them. Today, they weren’t making jokes.

  He was sitting next to Mrs. Fernandez, his mother’s best friend. They were always talking on the phone. “We went to school together.” That was his mother’s explanation for their friendship. “Since first grade.” She was a nice lady, Mrs. Fernandez. Pretty—though not as pretty as his mother had been. But she had the kindest voice in the world. And she never seemed to be in a bad mood. She didn’t have any children of her own. The other women in the neighborhood whispered about that, the tragedy of it, as if she wasn’t as good as the other women, the women who’d been able to have children. Women who had children, they were real. More real than Mrs. Fernandez.

  She’d always been good to them, Mrs. Fernandez. Even before the accident. But since that night, she’d practically moved in with them. Taking care of things, funeral arrangements, making sure they had everything they needed, feeding them. She was good to Ileana. Yolie didn’t like her. But Yolie could be hard on people. She could be just like Mando.

  Mrs. Fernandez would take them in. Maybe she would love them. That’s what Andrés was thinking. He got mad at himself. He was only thinking of himself. He was supposed to be thinking of his mom and dad. He was supposed to be praying that they would find their way to heaven. That’s what his friend, Nico, had told him, that when you died, some kind of angel put you in front of these roads. And you had to choose. And you had to take one of those roads and hope that it was the one that would lead to heaven. And if you had been good, then the angel gave you a light so you could see better, so you could choose wisely, so he shut his eyes and prayed for his mom and dad. He knew that an angel would give his mother a light, because she’d been good. And she would share the light with his father. Because that’s the way she was.

  He was praying so hard that he was shaking. He felt Mrs. Fernandez’s hand on his shoulder as he knelt. He shut his eyes. Finally, he opened them. He didn’t want to cry in front of anyone. Mando said it was okay if he cried. “But don’t let them see,” he said. “Don’t let anyone see.” So every day he would take a ride on his bike and cry as he rode around the neighborhood. He couldn’t even see where he was going, didn’t care either. He just rode and cried and rode and cried. He’d done that every day since that night. He would fall asleep, his legs aching almost as much as his heart.

  He felt Ileana taking his hand and leaning into him. “They’re in heaven, right, Andy?”

  He didn’t want to tell her what he’d heard about the roads. And the long walk his parents were taking right now. It would scare her, and she didn’t need to know about the angel who gave people lights, either. “Yes. They’re in heaven.”

  Yolie didn’t say anything. She didn’t cling to him like Ileana—but Yolie was older. She was dressed in black, and he’d heard someone whisper “Ya se hizo mujer,” so maybe Yolie was a woman, now. And if Yolie was a woman, then Mando was a man. And only he and Ileana were still kids. Only he and Ileana needed taking care of. Maybe that was it. Maybe if he had been older, he would have been mad, too. Mad like Yolie and Mando. But he wasn’t. He was sad. And he was scared. And Ileana, too. But not Yolie. Maybe, when you were older, you got scared and sad in a different way. He knew that Yolie cried at night, when everyone was gone. Just like him and Ileana. But in the daytime, she was mostly mad.

  Yolie knelt in front of their dad’s casket first, to look at him for the last time. Andrés, too. He knelt next to Yolie. Ileana didn’t kneel. She wanted to see, so she just stood and leaned into her brother and peeked inside the casket. He could feel his little sister’s clean breath. “Andy, does it hurt to be dead?”

  “No,” he whispered. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  She nodded. He could tell Yolie was crying. Soft. She made the sign of the cross—then she reached toward her father. At first, Andrés didn’t know what she was doing. And then he understood. She was trying to take off his wedding ring. She wasn’t afraid. To take it. At first it seemed like she would break his finger—but then it just slid off. She handed it to him. “Here.”

  Andrés just stared at the ring his older sister had thrust into his hand.

  “Maybe you should give it to Mando.”

  “No. He wouldn’t care about it. We’ll give him all of Dad’s shirts. He likes them.” She sounded so sure. Like she knew exactly what to do. Like she’d thought about all these things. Not like she was lost. Not like that. She rose and kissed her father on the forehead, then made the sign of the cross again. It seemed like she knew everything. It was true, what people were saying. She was a woman. She walked slowly to her mother’s casket. Andrés and Ileana made the sign of the cross and followed her.

  This was too hard for Andrés—to kneel in front of his dead mother. He didn’t want to cry. But he did. And Ileana cried, too. And Yolie put her arm around him. “You were her favorite,” she said. “She loved you.”

  “I wasn’t. I wasn’t,” Andrés said softly. He didn’t like the accusation. He wanted to ask her why she was saying those awful things.

  “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “She loved everyone.”

  “Yes. All of us. She loved all of us. But you were her favorite.”

  She reached for her mother’s wedding band and slipped it off. She clutched it in her hand. Andrés could tell she was about to cry. But Yolie wrapped her hand tight around her mother’s ring, and refused to cry. They knelt there, the three of them, for a long time. And then, all of a sudden, Mando was beside them. He smelled of cologne and cigarettes. “Let’s all say a prayer,” he said. He seemed different. He was like Yolie. Not lost. A man. Andrés could tell. And he’d been crying. Even though he was wearing sunglasses, Andrés could tell by the sound of his voice that he’d been crying. Maybe that was okay, to be a man and to cry. Especially if your mother and father were dead. Mando took Yolie’s hand, and then she took Andrés’s hand, and Andrés took Ileana’s hand, and they all clung to each other and whispered: “Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou…” Their mother’s favorite prayer. And when they finished they made the sign of the cross, and Yolie and Mando started to walk back to their seats.

  But Andrés refused to move. He just stayed there and began howling like a hurt dog. He didn’t have any control, now, over his body, over the awful sounds that were coming out of him. And he felt Mando’s arms around him, and his arms were soft and kind and good. Mando had never placed his arms around him, not like that, not ever. And he kissed him on the top of his head and he said, “You have to be strong, now, Andrés. You have to be.” And Andrés stopped crying. And nodded his head.

  And when they lowered his mother and father into the ground, he didn’t cry.

  The house was full of people all afternoon. All the Compas and their wives and their kids, the whole neighborhood. Mando smoked cigarettes in the backyard with all the men. And they let him have a beer, just one—but it wasn’t the first time he’d ever had a beer, Andrés knew that. Maybe the men knew it, too, but they knew the women were watching, and so they let him have only one.

  The women had filled the house with food: borracho beans and beans cooked in ham hocks, and refried beans and calabasitas con chile y queso and enchiladas and brisket and bolillos and tortillas and tamales and chile colorado con carne and tacos and chiles rellenos and more than a few buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and homemade potato salad and macaroni salad with jalapeños and cilantro. And everyone just made themselves at home, and Mrs. Fernandez oversaw everything in the kitchen and Yolie helped her and Ileana ate and ate because she was hungry—but after she finished eating, she fell asleep. She looked so little. And Mando carried her into the bedroom she shared with Yolie, and it suddenly occurred to Andrés that they had no money, and how were they going to pay for the house? But he shook
his head and prayed for his mother and father’s journey, the one they were taking that very minute, and so he went into his room and prayed. He prayed in Spanish, too, just to make sure. And when he finished praying, he took out his bike and went for a ride—but he told Mrs. Fernandez so she wouldn’t worry, because the day before, when he’d gone out, he’d forgotten to tell her and she had all the neighbors looking for him. “Just half an hour,” she said.

  He didn’t have a watch, but he nodded. Half an hour. So he rode around for a long time. Maybe it was an hour, he didn’t know. He thought of his mother and father and he wanted to remember them, and never forget, so he just pictured them, and tried to paste that picture to the walls he had in his mind. So he’d never forget.

  And then he went back home with his tired legs and his tired heart and his tired mind, tired from trying to picture his parents. So he wouldn’t forget. When he walked back inside his house, people were beginning to leave, and they all hugged him as they left, and the women put their hands on his face and told him he was a beautiful boy and they said it in English and in Spanish, que muchacho tan bonito. And by the end of it all, he was tired of being touched and talked to and he just wanted to sleep.

  And finally, when it got dark, all the people had gone home—except the uncle he didn’t know very well and whom his mother didn’t like—him and Mr. and Mrs. Fernandez. They were the only ones left. Mrs. Fernandez was cleaning up the kitchen and putting the leftover food away and Mando and Mr. Fernandez were cleaning up the backyard and Yolie was holding Ileana and sitting on the couch and they were both more asleep than awake—and Andrés just watched them.

  And then his uncle said it was time for him to go. And so he gave them all a halfhearted hug, and then Andrés knew why his mother hadn’t liked him. He didn’t care. Not about any of them.