“There is a more immediate solution.” I reminded Don Ángel of how he and Don Francisco had discovered cowpox in the valleys near Durango and Valladolid. “Don’t you think we could find the cowpox again there?”
“We?” My former colleague regarded me with a playful look. “Your eyes must be as bad as mine, Doña Isabel. Can’t you see, I am an old man?”
“But perhaps we can get some young ones to help us.” Our boys from La Coruña were grown men by now. And out in the provinces we could enlist our former carriers who had traveled to the Philippines. No doubt they would want to ensure their sacrifice had not been in vain.
“You are still living in a dream world.” Don Ángel was shaking his head.
“No, Don Ángel, I am living in this very real, distressing world, and I am having desperately to dream in order to go on living.”
“That is the truth.” Don Ángel nodded. His wife hesitated and then nodded as well.
Don Ángel agreed that such an expedition was worth a try. But trying to enlist Dr. Gutiérrez would be a mistake. “Even the mention of the word expedition turns that man the color of that clay pot.” He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know why Don Francisco turned on his old friend. As if we didn’t have enough enemies already.”
We were quiet a moment, thinking of our old leader.
But if not Dr. Gutiérrez, who else could we apply to here in this capital city? Don Ángel’s lined brow grew even more furrowed. My dear friend had gotten old! His shoulders were stooped; his hand shook stirring sugar in his coffee; his white hair was so thin that his scalp was plainly visible. But those kind eyes were still familiar, two orbs of now cloudy light. Soon, too soon we would be leaving this world, a world we had meant to improve before putting into the hands of the young who had already replaced us.
“I have it!” Don Ángel’s exclamation made us all jump.
“Ángel!” his wife scolded him, her hand above her heart. “You frightened our guests,” she added, unable to complain on her own behalf.
“I have a plan, I have a plan!” Don Ángel announced in that same voice of discovery as our sailors when they sighted land. “Ladies, please ready yourselves for an outing.”
But it was already late afternoon, his wife fretted. Benito and I must be tired after all our traveling. She was not dressed for visiting. At the very least she needed to know if she must wear a bonnet or a veil, slippers or boots for walking down the Alameda paseo.
My old friend refused to disclose where we were going. It would be a surprise. Old as he was, he might have known that such kinds of surprises take their toll on an aged heart! Mine was beating away, as if it belonged inside a much younger woman.
Don Ángel hired a carriage, consulting quietly with the driver as to where he was to take us. We drove by the old viceroy palace, recalling that late-night arrival over two decades ago with nineteen weary boys. Oh my, but the viceroy’s wife had looked apoplectic at hearing these were all her husband’s charges! The Royal Hospicio was still standing, grim-looking and noisy with new orphans; across the street, the newer Escuela Patriótica was becoming shabby itself. Don Ángel would not stop to inquire about my boys. He was as intent on his mission as our director had once been about his expedition. Tomorrow there would be plenty of time to go visiting.
We drove as far as our first house in the city, now no longer in the outskirts, but part of the city itself. The old tanning factories were gone; handsome, white houses now lined the wide street, giving the impression of suspicion with iron grilles at the windows and liveried guards at the gates.
“Here!” Don Ángel called out to our coachman.
We had stopped in front of a house as elegant as its neighbors. A servant came to the gate. “Please tell Don Francisco that he has some visitors. Don Ángel Crespo, he knows who I am.”
Don Francisco! Could it be that the report of Don Francisco’s death had been an error, and our director was living in our midst, a prosperous old man?
“Perhaps we should wait in the coach, Mamá,” Benito suggested. So many surprises might be too much for me. But my weak heart was going strong.
Before I had made it to the door on my son’s arm, a gentleman was bounding down the stairs, two steps at a time.
“Doña Isabel!” He seemed to know me. He was tall and stout, the buttons straining on his satin waistcoat. When I went to give him my hand, he threw his arms around me, then dared me to guess whom he might be.
My bully Francisco!
“You will be burned as a witch if word gets out, Doña Isabel!” He laughed. The future I had foretold had come to be, with some slight differences. He was not a prosperous merchant, but he had studied hard, gone to the university, become a lawyer, been appointed to the city council, signed his name to city ordinances.
“Love?” A honey-skinned, pleasant-looking woman had followed him down the stairs.
“Come meet these old friends.” Francisco reached out a hand possessively to her. “This lovely lady, my Estela, deigned to marry a poor Gachupín bastard—”
“What language for a son of King Carlos IV! That is what the document says,” she explained, smiling at us. “The document we showed my father before Francisco asked for my hand in marriage.” That must have been some years back, for down the stairs came as many sons as might compete with Dr. Romay’s family! We must stay for a refreshment. We must stay for dinner. We must let their carriage take us home. Francisco bullied us into visiting.
Benito seemed to have grown even more bashful before his old com panion. Next to the plump and prosperous lawyer, he looked shabby in his dusty, brown robes and patched sandals. Perhaps he felt that he had failed to live up to being royal progeny. But my son soon regained his self-possession. His presence was in demand, as the little boys tugged at his hands to come see the outdoor chapel that was filling with roosting doves at this hour.
Don Ángel lost no time in asking our Francisco if he could have a word with him. The two men went off to the library—my Francisco had a library! I had owned only two books in my life, both given to me by Don Francisco. One was still in my possession in my old sea chest at home in Chilpancingo; the other lay at the bottom of the sea somewhere off the coast of Puerto Rico. What worry had led me to take such a drastic measure? Some desire to protect Don Francisco’s reputation by destroying any evidence to the contrary? Or a desire to protect myself from painful memories that the years would kindly erase but that paper would remember forever? Who could tell? It all now seemed so long ago.
While Don Ángel and Francisco conferred and Benito visited the cooing chapel, we ladies chatted in a parlor that recalled Doña Teresa’s old receiving room in the orphanage in La Coruña. The chairs here, however, were quite comfortable.
When the two men returned, I did not have to ask what agreement they had come to. Don Ángel winked at me. Our Francisco was grinning, his chest puffed out as if readying itself for some future medal.
“My dear, meet the new deliverer of Mexico!” Francisco laughed at the baffled look on his wife’s face. “We are going to find cowpox in the provinces! I myself will accompany the expedition!” His wife was full of questions, which he promised to answer later. “Anything to repay your kindnesses,” he said, smiling fondly at me.
I shook my head at the undeserved praise. If only this man knew how hard I had struggled to love the boy he had once been.
We returned late to Don Ángel’s house, after quite a struggle to extricate ourselves from Don Francisco and Doña Estela’s insistent hospitality. Couldn’t we stay longer? Shouldn’t we spend the night? They had plenty of rooms. The streets were full of thieves and scoundrels at this hour. But we arrived back in the small, cozy house, without incident, our guardian Francisco having accompanied us himself in his very own carriage. The long day was finally done. Never did sleep come as easily as that night.
It was early morning, the light seeping in through the unglazed window. I awoke with that familiar pain in my chest as if one o
f my boys’ arrows that had once struck the steward had hit its mark. The steward! What had become of that unpleasant man? Someone no doubt had loved him, wed him, borne him children.
And my lieutenant? Had he perished on a burning ship, routed by the British? Had he survived to enlist in fighting the French invader? Or perhaps he was back, bounding down the stairs in a vest that was getting to be too tight for his well-fed belly?
I saw his tall figure so clearly, that for a moment, I thought, I was back on the María Pita. Faces and memories flooded into my mind. We were all together again, dressed in our elegant uniforms, the boys and I, boys who were now men. Soon, soon, we would set out for the north. I imagined the reunions with my Mexican boys, the discovery of cowpox in the valleys, the new juntas we would set up. It was not so much that I was believing this story, as I was running as fast as I could from the doubts pursuing me. And as I ran, I realized that I, too, was a carrier, along with my boys, carry ing this story, which would surely die, unless it took hold in a future life.
This Summer on Snake Mountain
It has to be the hottest day of the summer. There are so many mosquitoes. Impossible to have the requisite mourning attitude with these dive-bombing pests flying around. Luckily, Emerson thought of bringing Off!, which he lavishes on anyone who offers himself or herself up to his spray can. He has already endured Tera’s lecture on aero sols. And Tera has endured dozens of righteous bites, as if she isn’t already red-faced enough with the climb. It would just be Alma’s luck to lose her best friend before the double service is out.
Double service because she can’t make everyone climb Snake Mountain twice. And except for Mickey and Hannah, everyone who is mourning Helen would come with Alma when she scatters some of Richard’s ashes on this mountaintop. It was one of his favorite places. On a clear day, you can get a God’s-eye view of the whole Champlain valley. Hello? he’d call up, hand at his mouth. Are you there, God? “He’s out,” Richard would conclude after several echoes back. “Busy with the trouble spots.”
It’s taken a lot of talking to get Mickey and Hannah released for the day. The judge questioned why there couldn’t be a service in the state hospital chapel, after which Helen’s ashes could be dispersed by friends. But finally, permission was granted, thanks to hospice and Emerson, who, Alma is discovering, treats Vermont like a third-world country whose laws can be got around if you know how to bargain. More likely, the judge, an old-timer who knew Helen, doesn’t want to disappoint her even posthumously. So Helen’s last wish is granted, a summer scattering of her ashes on Snake Mountain.
Mickey and Hannah come from Waterbury, looking for all the world like an old hippie couple hiking a muggy trail. They are both wearing rolled-up bandannas around their foreheads as sweatbands and carrying water bottles with their names printed in Magic Marker on the sides. A hint of institutional provenance.
When she first saw them climbing out of the van, Alma felt a pang. Your man for mine, both in our arms, unharmed. Unlucky Hannah got to be the lucky one.
Accompanying them are two overweight, puffing deputy sheriffs in plainclothes with little firearms tucked in holsters. They have picked up the two inmates at the state hospital and will drive them back once this cockamamie ceremony is over.
David and Ben and Sam are here. This time, they have all brought their partners, as they call their girlfriends. Sam and Soraya will drive up to Quebec tomorrow in Alma’s car for four days, leaving her Richard’s pickup to use while they’re gone. David and Jess, Ben and Molly will hang around for a week, seeing childhood friends, sorting through boxes of their father’s things, which Alma has piled up in the basement, making little dashes downstairs with another box of heartbreak whenever she feels brave enough. And then David and Ben will disappear from Alma’s life, until she next hears from them, calls announcing their weddings, David’s to Jess, and Ben’s to Franny, two girlfriends down from Molly. But for now they are here, an indulgence to Alma, as she well knows.
All three boys and Alma had a ceremony last December on the property. They scattered Richard’s ashes in the back field, near the spot where Alma once buried her antidepressants. Just this morning, they went out there again and placed the simple granite stone that has taken the stonecutter far too long to finish, a rectangle, the size of a shoe box, flat on the ground. The marker seems terse, but given Richard’s message-machine habits, it suits him: RICHARD HUEBNER, his dates, then BELOVED. When she sells the house at the end of the summer and rents a condo closer to Tera, Alma will take the stone and the tiny satchel of Richard’s ashes that will be scattered with hers when the time comes. She will place the stone on her desk, disrespectfully using it as a trivet for her coffee cup, a place to set a vase of flowers, a worry-bead-type object whose letters she will absently trace when she sits at her desk writing down the story of Isabel, with whom she will not lose faith.
Alma has also gone ahead and ordered a stone for Helen, and she has asked the hospice team to ask Mickey where they might place it. Helen’s local church already had a service for her in January, and today the young minister, Reverend Don, and his wife, Linda, are along on the hike. Alma supposes there will be at least a Lord’s Prayer at some point during the informal service. She will bow her head and feel wistful. Helen’s God is with Helen now. She will miss him.
Most nights when she wakes up in the middle of the night, Alma strains, listening for any whisper, any dim communication from the other side. Hello? Are you there, Richard? Nothing. Just the eyes that look out at her in the dark and that Alma is learning to close with promises and with Ambien. She has to get sleep, she has to get strong. She is going back to the mountain project once the story of Isabel is done. We will come back; we will infect them with our questions.
“How’s Bolo?” she asks Emerson, who comes by regularly to see her. “How’re the patients?”
“The patients are okay. That doctora Heidi is terrific.”
Hmm. Alma wonders if Emerson is hitting on la doctora. He has gone down several times a month to check in on the Centro, which Bienvenido is now directing. The clinic has been moved to the capital and the vaccine trial is still continuing. Bolo is awaiting trial. Emerson is helping by paying a good lawyer.
“You’re a good guy, Emerson,” she tells him the night before the hike to Snake Mountain. They’ve gone up to Burlington together to pick up Sam and Soraya at the airport, catching a bite at a nearby cafe. David and Ben and girlfriends will probably be at the house by the time they get back, having driven up from the city in a rented car.
Emerson looks down at his dish, a vegetable soup Alma talked him into ordering. The cafe does mostly soups, sandwiches, no booze. He feels responsible, Alma knows he does, though she has told him that he’s not to blame and is only as responsible as any of them are at how desperate so many people in the world are. She is grateful for his help, coming at critical moments. She remembers the time he showed up at her door, her first day back full time at her house. She’d been down in the basement trying to hook up the water softener, using her little spiral notebook of instructions. She’d messed up, and there was water softener salt all over the basement. She’d sat down on the spare sack of softener and wept, self-indulgently wishing there was an entry in the spiral notebook for doing yourself in. Upstairs, she heard steps on the porch, pounding at the door. Oh no, Mickey! she had thought, wondering where to hide herself. That’s when she realized: even without Richard, she wants to live, to write a book, to fall in love again, to learn to work the water softener.
“You don’t have to finish it,” she tells Emerson about the soup. A pall has come over them. Any moment now, Alma will burst into tears and Emerson, who specializes in trouble spots around the world, will not know what to say to her.
He checks his watch now, lifts a hand for the waitress to bring the check. He is afraid of her grief, most everyone is, except Helen, when she was alive, and Tera. Her stepsons have heard her blubbering on the phone so many times, including this tim
e about the Snake Mountain plans. They cough and clear their throats, and soon most of their communications with Alma are through e-mails.
But here they are together on the mountaintop one last time. One advantage of climbing Snake Mountain on this tropical day: they’ve got the place to themselves. Alma’s leg has healed, a faint purple scar she calls her fault line. Some days she feels a jab of pain at the spot, as she does now, maybe from the long hike, maybe from the imminence of a good-bye she is still not yet ready to say.
David and Claudine thank everyone for coming, then outline the service. Anyone who wants can say something about Helen or Richard, read a poem, tell an anecdote. The gathering will conclude with a prayer from Reverend Don, then the scattering of ashes.
David kicks off the stories. A funny memory, about his dad climbing Snake Mountain, calling out Hello! So the act preceded Alma, the details a little cleaned up, either because Richard might not have wanted to sound disturbingly disbelieving in front of his young boys or because one of those kids, now grown up, knows a minister is in their midst and he better keep his story passably Christian.
Stories abound. Claudine has several funny Helen escapades. Mickey in a kind of slow drawl—Alma wonders what medication he might be on—tells about the time Helen came to visit him when he was living in Guam. Alma had no idea. Helen in Guam! Except she got on the wrong plane. Ended up in Manila. Is he making this up? Alma looks over at him, and for a moment their eyes lock. They are Helen’s eyes in his face, just as from Sam’s face Richard’s eyes stare back at her.
It’s disconcerting seeing these vague traces of the people she loves in the people she fears or feels unsure about. How will Mickey turn out? she wonders, remembering how much Helen worried about what would become of her troubled son. Those last weeks in which Helen outlived Richard, Alma came down every day from Tera’s to visit her. Alma still could not stand being in her own house, deluged with memories. Helen could tell something was wrong, and so Alma had told her. Helen’s eyes had filled with tears. “Come here by me,” she had said, patting a spot beside her on the hospital bed. And Alma had come and bowed her head into the old woman’s shoulder, and together they had wept.
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