I remember that Daniel Goodrich’s phlegmatic psychiatrist’s veneer slipped when I told him this part of my story, back in May. How have I been able to live without him for such an eternity? Daniel listened to me openmouthed, and from his expression I guessed that nothing as exciting as my adventures in Las Vegas had ever happened to him. He told me that when he got back to the United States he’d get in touch with my Nini and Snow White, but he hasn’t yet. “Your grandma sounds like a riot, Maya. She and Alfons Zaleski would make a good pair,” he commented.
“Now you know why I’m living here, Daniel. It’s no touristic whim, as you might have imagined. My Nini and O’Kelly decided to send me as far away as possible until the situation I’m embroiled in settles down a bit. Joe Martin and Chino are after the money, because they don’t know it’s counterfeit; the police want to arrest Adam Trevor, and he wants to recover his plates before the FBI gets hold of them. I am the link, and when they find out, I’m going to have them all on my heels.”
“Laura Barron is the link,” Daniel reminded me.
“The police must have figured out I’m her. My fingerprints are all over the place—in the lockers at the gym, at Brandon Leeman’s building—and if they grabbed Freddy and made him talk, heaven forbid, they’d even find them in Olympia Pettiford’s house.”
“You didn’t mention Arana.”
“He’s a good guy. He’s working with the FBI, but when he could have arrested me, he didn’t, although he was suspicious of me. He protected me. He’s only interested in dismantling the counterfeit operation and arresting Adam Trevor. They’d give him a medal for that.”
Daniel agreed with the plan of keeping me isolated for a while, but he didn’t think it would be dangerous for us to write to each other—no need to overplay the persecution complex. I opened an e-mail account in the name of
[email protected]. No one would suspect the relationship between Daniel Goodrich in Seattle and a little kid from Chiloé, one of many friends made on a trip with whom he keeps in touch regularly. Since Daniel left, I’ve used the account daily. Manuel does not approve of the idea. He believes the FBI spies and their computer hackers are like God, omnipresent and all-seeing.
Juanito Corrales is the little brother I always wished I had, like Freddy was too. “Take him with you back to your country, gringuita, he’s no use to me, the little brat,” Eduvigis said to me once, as a joke, and Juanito took it so seriously that he’s making plans to live with me in Berkeley. He’s the only person in the world who admires me. “When I grow up, I’m going to marry you, Auntie Gringa,” he tells me. We’re into the third volume of Harry Potter, and he dreams of going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and having his own flying broom. He’s proud to have lent me his name for an e-mail account.
Naturally, Daniel thought it was crazy of us to burn the money in the desert, where we could have easily been caught by the highway patrol, because Interstate 15 has a lot of heavy goods traffic and is policed by land and helicopters. Before making that decision, Snow White and my Nini weighed up different options, including dissolving the bills in Drano, like they once did with a pound of pork chops, but they all presented risks, and none was as definitive and theatrical as fire. In a few years, when they can tell the story without being arrested, a bonfire in the Mojave Desert sounds better than a liquid that unclogs sinks.
Before meeting Daniel, I hadn’t ever thought about the male body or ever stopped to contemplate one, except for that unforgettable vision in Florence of David: seventeen feet of perfection in marble, but quite a small penis for his size. The boys I used to sleep with never resembled that David at all; they were clumsy, smelly, hairy, and covered in acne. I went through adolescence with crushes on movie actors whose names I don’t even remember, only because Sarah and Debbie or some girls at the academy in Oregon did too, but they were as incorporeal as my grandma’s saints. It was easy to doubt whether they were actually mortal, so white were their teeth and so smooth their waxed and bronzed torsos. I would never see them up close, much less touch them; they’d been created for the screen, not for the delicious handling of love. None of them figured in my erotic fantasies. When I was little, my Popo gave me a delicate cardboard theater with cutout characters in paper costumes to illustrate the complicated storylines of operas. My imaginary lovers, like those cardboard figures, were actors without identities of their own who I moved around on a stage. Now they’ve all been replaced by Daniel, who occupies my nights and my days. I think and dream only of him. He went away too soon, before we managed to get anything really established.
Intimacy needs time to mature—a shared history, tears shed, obstacles overcome, photographs in an album. It’s a slow-growing plant. Daniel and I are suspended in a virtual space, and this separation could destroy our love. He stayed in Chiloé several days more than he’d planned to. He didn’t get as far as Patagonia. He flew to Brazil and from there to Seattle, where he’s now working at his father’s clinic. Meanwhile I should be finishing my exile on this island, and when the time comes, I suppose we’ll decide where we should get together. Seattle is a nice place, and it rains less than in Chiloé, but I’d like us to live here. I don’t want to have to leave Manuel, Blanca, Juanito, and Fahkeen.
I don’t know if there would be work for Daniel in Chiloé. According to Manuel, psychiatrists go hungry in this country, although there are more neurotics than in Hollywood, because happiness seems kitsch to Chileans. They’re very reluctant to spend money to get over their unhappiness. Manuel’s a good example himself, it seems to me; if he wasn’t Chilean, he would have explored his traumas with a professional and could be living a bit more happily. And it’s not that I’m a fan of psychotherapy—how could I be after my experience in Oregon?—but sometimes it helps, as in my Nini’s case, when she was widowed. Maybe Daniel could work at something else. I know an Oxford academic, one of those with leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket, who fell in love with a Chilean woman, stayed on Isla Grande, and now runs a tourism company. And what about the Austrian woman with the backside of epic proportions and the apple strudel? She was a dentist in Innsbruck, and now she has a guesthouse. Daniel and I could bake cookies—there’s a future there, as Manuel says—or we could raise vicuñas, as I’d planned to do in Oregon.
On May 29 I said farewell to Daniel with feigned serenity; there were a few busybodies on the dock—our relationship has been gossiped about more than the soap opera—and I didn’t want to give those tongue-wagging Chilotes a spectacle. But alone at home with Manuel I cried and cried till neither of us could stand it anymore. Daniel was traveling without a laptop, but as soon as he got back to Seattle and found fifty messages from me, he wrote back—nothing too romantic, but he must have been exhausted. Since then we’ve been in constant communication, avoiding saying anything that could identify me. We have a code for talking about love, which he uses with too much restraint, as befits his character, and I abuse shamelessly, in accordance with mine.
My past is not long and should be clear in my head, but I don’t trust my capricious memory. I should write it down before I begin to change or censor it. On TV they said that some American scientists have developed a new drug to erase memories that they’re thinking of using in the treatment of psychological traumas, especially for soldiers who come back crazed from war. This drug is still at the experimental stage. They need to refine it to make sure it doesn’t eliminate all memories. If I had access to such a thing, what would I choose to forget? Nothing. The bad things in the past are lessons for the future, and the worst thing that ever happened to me, my Popo’s death, I want to remember forever.
On the hill, near La Pincoya’s cave, I saw my Popo. He was standing on the edge of the cliff looking toward the horizon, wearing his Italian hat and his travel clothes and with his suitcase in his hand, as if he’d come from far away and was wondering whether to stay or leave. He was there for too short a time, while I stood stock-still, not daring to take a breath in case I scared
him away, calling him silently; then some screeching seagulls flew by, and he vanished. I haven’t told anybody, to avoid unconvincing explanations, though here they might believe me. If souls in penance howl in Cucao, if a ship with a crew of ghosts sails the Gulf of Ancud, and if brujos are transformed into dogs in Quicaví, the apparition of a dead astronomer at La Pincoya’s cave is perfectly plausible. He might have been not a ghost but my imagination, which materialized him in the atmosphere like a cinematic projection. Chiloé is a good place for the ectoplasm of a grandpa and the imagination of a granddaughter.
I talked to Daniel a lot about my Popo when we were alone and telling each other about our lives. I described my childhood, spent with joy in that architectural monstrosity in Berkeley. The memory of those years and of my grandparents’ fierce love sustained me through the most terrible times. My dad didn’t have a lot of influence over me; his job as a pilot kept him up in the air for longer than he spent on solid ground. Before he got married he lived in the same house with us, in two rooms on the second floor, with an independent entrance up a narrow outside staircase. We didn’t see much of him, because if he wasn’t flying he might be in the arms of one of his girlfriends, who phoned at all hours and whom he never mentioned. His schedule changed every two weeks, and our family got used to not expecting him or asking questions. My grandparents raised me, went to parent-teacher meetings at school, took me to the dentist, helped me with my homework, taught me to tie my shoelaces, ride a bike, and use a computer, dried my tears, laughed with me. I don’t remember a single moment of my first fifteen years when my Nini and my Popo weren’t present, and now, when my Popo is dead, I feel him closer than ever. He’s fulfilled his promise that he’d be with me forever.
Two months have gone by since Daniel’s departure, two months without seeing him, two months with my heart tied up in knots, two months writing in this notebook when I should have been talking with him. I miss him so much! This is agony, a fatal illness. In May, when Manuel came back from Santiago, he pretended not to notice that the whole house smelled of kisses, and Fahkeen was nervous because I wasn’t paying attention to him and he had to take himself out for walks, like all the other mutts in this country. Not long ago he was a street mongrel, and now he thinks he’s a lap dog. Manuel put down his suitcase and announced that he had to sort out certain matters with Blanca Schnake and since it looked like rain, he’d sleep over at her house. Here you know it’s going to rain when the dolphins dance and when there are “rods of light,” as they call the sunbeams that shine down between the clouds. As far as I know, Manuel had never slept over at Blanca’s house before. Thank you, thank you, thank you, I whispered in his ear during one of those long hugs he hates. He gave me the gift of another night with Daniel, who at that moment was stoking up the fire in the woodstove to cook chicken with mustard and bacon, a recipe invented by his sister Frances, who’s never cooked a thing in her life but collects cookbooks and has turned herself into a theoretical chef. I was trying to keep myself from looking at the ship’s clock on the wall, which was quickly swallowing the time I had left with him.
In our brief honeymoon I told Daniel about the rehab clinic in San Francisco, where I spent almost a month and which must be quite similar to his father’s in Seattle.
During the 570-mile trip from Las Vegas to Berkeley, my grandmother and Mike O’Kelly hatched a plan to make me vanish off the face of the earth before the authorities or the criminals got their paws on me. I hadn’t seen my father for a year, and I hadn’t missed him. I blamed him for my misfortunes, but my resentment evaporated the instant we arrived home in the red van and he was waiting for us at the door. My father, like my Nini, was thinner and shrunken; in those months of my absence he’d aged, and he was no longer the seductive charmer with a movie star’s good looks that I remembered. He hugged me tight, saying my name over and over again with a tenderness I’d never sensed. “I thought we’d lost you, sweetheart.” I’d never seen my father overwhelmed with emotion before. Andy Vidal had been the very image of composure, handsome in his pilot’s uniform, untouched by the bitterness of existence, desired by the most beautiful women, well traveled, cultured, contented, and healthy. “Bless you, bless you, sweetheart,” he kept saying. We arrived at night, but he’d made us breakfast instead of dinner: chocolate milkshakes and French toast with bananas and whipped cream, my favorite meal.
While we were having breakfast, Mike O’Kelly mentioned the rehab program Olympia Pettiford had spoken about and reiterated that it was the best way known to manage addiction. My dad and my Nini shuddered as if they’d received an electric shock every time he pronounced one of those terrifying words, drug addict or alcoholic, but I’d already incorporated them into my reality thanks to the Widows for Jesus, whose vast experience in such matters allowed them to be very frank with me. Mike said that addiction is an astute and patient beast, with infinite resources, always lying in wait, whose strongest argument is persuading you to tell yourself you’re not really an addict. He listed the options available to us, from the rehab center he ran, which was free and very modest, to a clinic in San Francisco, which cost a thousand dollars a day and I ruled out from the start; there was nowhere to get that kind of money. My dad listened with his fists and teeth clenched, pale as a ghost, and finally announced that he’d use his pension savings for my treatment. There was no talking him out of it, even though according to Mike the program was similar to his; the only differences were the facilities and the sea view.
I spent the month of December in the clinic. Its Japanese architecture invited peace and meditation: wood, big windows and terraces, lots of light, gardens with discreet paths, benches to sit on all bundled up and watch the fog, and a heated swimming pool. The panorama of water and woods was worth the thousand dollars a day. I was the youngest resident there; the others were friendly men and women from thirty to sixty years of age, who said hello to me in the hallways or invited me to play Scrabble and Ping-Pong, as if we were on vacation. Apart from their compulsive consumption of cigarettes and coffee, they seemed normal. No one would imagine they were addicts.
The program was similar to the one at the academy in Oregon, with talks, courses, group sessions, the same psychological jargon and advice that I knew too well, plus the Twelve Steps—abstinence, recuperation, and sobriety. It took me a week before I started to mix with the other residents and conquer the constant temptation to leave, since the door was always open and being there was voluntary. “This place isn’t for me,” was my mantra during that first week, but the fact that my father had invested his life savings in those twenty-eight days, paid for in advance, held me back. I couldn’t let him down again.
My roommate was Loretta, an attractive thirty-six-year-old woman, married, mother of three, real estate agent, and alcoholic. “This is my last chance. My husband told me if I don’t stop drinking, he’s going to divorce me and take my children away,” she told me. On visiting days her husband would arrive with the kids, bringing her drawings, flowers, and chocolates. They seemed like a happy family. Loretta showed me her photo albums over and over again: “When my oldest son, Patrick, was born, I was only drinking beer and wine; on vacation in Hawaii, daiquiris and martinis; Christmas 2002, champagne and gin; wedding anniversary 2005, had my stomach pumped and went into rehab; Fourth of July picnic, first whiskey after eleven months sober; my birthday in 2006, beer, tequila, rum, amaretto.” She knew the four weeks of the program weren’t enough. She should stay for two or three months before returning to her family.
As well as the talks to lift our spirits, they educated us about addiction and its consequences, and there were private sessions with the counselors. The thousand dollars a day gave us the right to use the pool and the gym, to go for walks in nearby parks, to have massages, relaxation, and beauty treatments, as well as yoga, Pilates, meditation, gardening, and art classes. But no matter how many activities there were, each of us carried our problem around like a dead horse on our shoulders, impossible to ign
ore. My dead horse was the pressing desire to flee as far away as possible—flee from that place, from California, from the world, from myself. Life was too much work. It wasn’t worth the effort of getting up in the morning and watching the hours drag by without a purpose. To rest. To die. To be or not to be, like Hamlet. “Don’t think, Maya, try to keep busy. This negative stage is normal and will soon be over,” was Mike O’Kelly’s advice.
To keep myself busy I dyed my hair several times, to Loretta’s astonishment. There were only dark gray traces left at the ends from the black Freddy had applied in September. I entertained myself by applying highlights in tones normally seen on flags. My counselor described it as self-aggression, a way of punishing myself; I thought the same of her matronly bun.
Twice a week there were women’s meetings with a psychologist who resembled Olympia Pettiford in her volume and her compassion. We sat on the floor in a room by candlelight, and each of us contributed something to set up an altar: a cross, a Buddha, photos of children, a teddy bear, an urn containing a loved one’s ashes, a wedding ring.
In the half-light, in that feminine environment, it was easier to talk. The women told how addiction was destroying their lives. They were full of doubts, having been abandoned by friends, family, husbands, or partners. They were tormented by guilt for having hit someone when driving drunk or for leaving a sick child to go in search of drugs. Some also told of the degradation they’d stooped to, the humiliations, thefts, prostitution, and I listened with my soul, because I had gone through the same thing. Many had relapsed and didn’t have a trace of self-confidence, because they knew how elusive and ephemeral sobriety could be. Faith helped for those who could put themselves in the hands of God or a superior power, but we don’t all have that capacity. That circle of addicts, with their sadness, was the opposite to the lovely witches of Chiloé. In the ruca nobody is ashamed; all is abundance and life.