Grace, too, gives me hope. She is still so beautiful. She shaved her head, and I can see the sun there.
When I was on the stand, I felt alive. It was strange and sad and wonderful, and I was talking. I remembered that I had always felt like I was someone’s secret. And I knew that I had never stopped feeling like that. But I wasn’t Mando’s secret anymore. I wasn’t Yolie’s secret. I wasn’t Homero’s or William Hart’s secret.
I was Andrés Segovia. I was a boy who wanted to go to school and ride a bike. I wasn’t anybody’s goddamned secret.
Timing and Order in the Universe
This is the way the story ends. With a man named Dave Duncan who is stretching out on his patio, his shirt off. He is thinking of what happened yesterday afternoon in the courtroom. He is playing the whole scene over in his head. Ten months, he had lived for that verdict. He is still savoring the moment. He will lock that moment away in his memory and remember it in times of darkness. He smiles, then laughs. It is a perfect day. He does not want to be alone. He picks up the phone. He is calling the only woman he has ever loved. “Your heart is too busy and restless. It has no room for me.” That is what she said when she walked away. He knew the truth of her words. But he has decided to make himself worthy of all she has to give. This is what he is telling himself as he hears the phone ring. When she answers the phone, he will say, “Do you want to know what is in my heart?”
Andrés Segovia is whispering the word emancipated over and over again. He is in love with that word. He is walking toward Mrs. Fernandez’s front door. He trembles slightly, but pays no attention to the trembling. He has paid too much homage to his internal fears. He vows to stop worshiping at that altar.
He rings the bell and waits. No one comes to the door. He rings the bell again, then waits. The seconds are cruel and interminable. Finally, Mrs. Fernandez answers the door. She looks into his face as if she is looking into a deep well. He had expected her to look older, but she is not nearly as old as he thought she would be. He watches her as she scrutinizes everything about him.
He cannot stand all this silence, so he decides to speak. “You don’t know who I am.” He shrugs, and thinks to himself that this is just another one of his missteps. What did he think he would accomplish with this visit?
“I knew you would come,” she whispers.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “for what we did to you.” For the first time in his life, he is not ashamed of the tears. He is free now, to ask forgiveness. That is why he has come. “Forgive me.”
He feels her hands wiping away his tears.
He does not flinch at her touch.
“Hijito de mi vida, you were a boy.” She takes him in her arms. He does not think he will ever stop sobbing. “Shhhhh,” she says, “No more. No more, hijito.” She smiles into his face.
He does not know what to say next. “I’ve begun looking for Ileana.”
“You’ll find her. I know you will.”
He nods.
She leads him to the garage and shows him what she has been keeping all these many years. “I pay the boys in the neighborhood to keep it in shape.”
“My bike! My bike!” He laughs. And what a laugh. He is hopping on a bike in the same neighborhood where he grew up, in the same neighborhood where Sam Delgado once told a girl named Grace that she was beauty itself.
This is the way the story ends: with Andrés Segovia riding a bike, a man becoming a boy again.
Grace is in Richard Garza’s waiting room. She is teaching Liz an old nursery rhyme in Spanish. Vicente repeats everything she says. He talks now, talks and talks. He laughs and tries to escape their reach. Liz places him on her lap. He reaches for her face, his small hands searching. Phototactic—Grace smiles at the memory—and then she hears her name on the receptionist’s lips.
She feels a rush of blood run through her heart. Liz nods, her eyes as hopeful as anything she has ever seen. She thinks of Mister and Sam.
She respects the floor as she walks down the hall toward Richard Garza’s inner sanctum. She is remembering her dream, how she always stood apart from the love Sam and Mister shared—as if they had never loved her. She is trying to forgive herself for her blindness. And then she remembers telling Liz that the time comes when they have to send away the dead.
She sees Richard Garza at the end of the hall. He is holding the door open for her. He is holding her charts. Grace is looking into his eyes, and he is smiling. And then she knows the answer to the question she has been holding in her heart.
The story ends with Grace.
Acknowledgments
There are times when the endeavor of writing a novel is overwhelmingly solitary. But no one writes a novel alone, certainly not me.
I would like to thank my students, who give me new words every day—and who continually teach me that hope is more than just a mere abstraction. I see that word written on their faces week after week, semester after semester.
Jaime Esparza explained some necessary details in the criminal justice system. He also provided me with an invaluable tour of the El Paso County Jail. I thank him for his friendship and generosity.
Always, when I needed to remind myself that the world I lived in was far larger than my imagination, I turned to Ray Caballero and to Enrique Moreno. My life and my work are all the better for their decency, their true friendship, and their intellectual honesty.
I am grateful to Richard Green, who has been my agent for more than ten years. He read and reread several versions of this manuscript. I treasure his mind, his heart, and his loyalty.
I am eternally grateful to Patty Moosbrugger, who stepped in as my literary agent with unflinching faith, and equally unflinching professionalism.
Rene Alegria at Rayo/HarperCollins is everything a writer could want in an editor—he is self-possessed, intelligent, and articulate. He also happens to be a tireless advocate. No writer could ask for more.
My wife, Patricia, knows better than anyone the cost of living with a writer. She willingly pays that price with uncommon and extraordinary grace. Love is never truly earned—but that is no reason to be ungrateful for the beauty of the gift.
I am surrounded by good and admirable people. I am the luckiest of men.
About the Author
Winner of the American Book Award for his poetry collection Calendar of Dust, BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ is the author of Names on a Map, Carry Me Like Water, and The House of Forgetting.
www.BenjaminAlireSaenz.com
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Praise for In Perfect Light
“[Sáenz’s] attention to the rhythms and tones of language always evinces the care of a serious craftsman. Every sentence is carefully calibrated. His paragraphs have no wrinkles. [He] assembles an enormous cast of richly detailed characters.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Dignified…heart wrenching…Sáenz has plotted In Perfect Light impeccably.”
—Texas Monthly
“Sáenz’s luminous prose shines.”
—Houston Chronicle
“A vivid story about a community of scarred, deeply human souls within a callous, indifferent America.”
—Kirkus Reviews, One of the Best Books of 2005
“Ben Sáenz’s vivid imagination captures all that is beautiful, agonizing, and redemptive in the crossings we make through borders of geography and culture…. But it is in the interior journeys of the psyche and the soul that we must find salvation; Sáenz’s brilliant prose penetrates to that core and he finds and exposes that truth.”
—Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country and The Tennis Partner
“Only Benjamin Alire Sáenz…can capture, with his acrobatic skill of voice, character, and theme, the darkness, the hidden life of betrayal, and the nascent, eternal, always hopeful redemption to be found in the heat and dust of our misunderstood land.”
—Denise Chávez, American Book Award–winnin
g author of Face of an Angel and Loving Pedro Infante
“Sáenz captures what we all do every day, really, to find peace for ourselves.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“Lyrical.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“A former priest and award-winning poet thoughtfully shares his meditations on multiculturalism and familial love—especially the struggle to survive its loss.”
—Booklist
“Visceral impact…this story is universal. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
Also by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
FICTION
Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood
The House of Forgetting
Carry Me Like Water
Flowers for the Broken
POETRY
Elegies in Blue
Dark and Perfect Angels
Calendar of Dust
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
A Gift from Papá Diego
Grandma Fina and her Wonderful Umbrellas
Credits
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph © Maleonn/Arcangel Images
Copyright
IN PERFECT LIGHT. Copyright © 2005 by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition OCTOBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061981074
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