by Mira T. Lee
And then, as if she sensed his confusion: “Are you sure?”
“I think so. But I’m not sure.” He felt a rush of relief, to share this burden with her. He had never told anyone about Lucia’s illness, not even Mami.
“If she’s not right, you can tell.”
He nodded into the phone, but he wasn’t sure, and he felt stupid, as he often did, speaking to Lucia’s sister.
Only later, much later, would he understand. Later, in hindsight, they would come together on this: to wonder when it had become impossible to distinguish which parts of Lucia fell under her own jurisdiction and which belonged to her illness.
“Is she seeing a doctor?”
“In the city, maybe. She doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“If she isn’t right, she needs to see a doctor. Do you have psychiatrists there?”
He felt suddenly heavy. Tired. He set down the phone quickly. He wished he had not made the call. It stirred up worry, that was all.
• • •
He tried not to think about the conversation as he walked through town. He bought soup bones from the carnicero, a bag of candy corn. Lucia would be leaving soon. They would have a break, it would be good for him. He could call on Fabiana or Luna or Guadalupe. Or see if a couple of his primos would be interested in taking a trip. He’d enjoy a couple of days on the beach. They could hit the bars and discos, go fishing, check out the tourists on the malecón. He enjoyed losing himself in all he might do, all the freedoms a man might take while his wife and child were away. Though they were never officially married, and this bothered no one but Mami; it no longer occurred to him to have that conversation.
Or, he thought, suddenly—he could try to find Susi in Esmeraldas. Susi Hernandez, who had disappeared one day from the Vargas house, that cold rainy afternoon he could still see so clearly in his mind. The sleet, the ice, the traffic on Main Street, the policeman shining a flashlight in his eyes. And then Mrs. Gutierrez waving her broom, dressed in robe and sunglasses as she called from her stoop: Susi, taken by migras.
Following the news, he had lived in a stupor for days, maybe weeks. It dawned on him: Susi had been his sole ally. She had shared his burden, knowing the truth. And one night the sirens screamed down the street and without thinking, he’d grabbed Esperanza and run out into the cold. His legs carried him to Main Street, past the familiar shops and restaurants, until he found himself sitting on the steps of the town’s police station. He knew only that he was cold, and tired, and that he was sick of being so cold and tired and afraid all the time, and he wanted it to end. So he’d risen to his feet, reached for the metal door handle with his near-frozen hand. And that’s when Susi’s phone—which he’d carried in his pocket every day since she’d disappeared—had buzzed. As if on cue. Lucia’s sister. “Lucia is still in the hospital,” she said. “I’d like to come by to speak with you.” He’d hunched back down on those icy steps, head hot and spinning, baby strapped to his chest. It had been weeks since the sister had promised to call him with news. He’d assumed Lucia was gone. Like the Mexicano Jimmy Prieto. Like Susi. Disappeared from his life. Because what else could he have thought back then?
He had been to America, but he had never been to the city of Esmeraldas, a mere six hundred kilometers to the north. It had a rough reputation—Colombian drug rings, brothels, though it was also home to several of the national footballers. At first, it seemed a crazy idea, but then he found a bus schedule, planned an itinerary: the early morning bus to Quito, a night with an old schoolmate, then out to Esmeraldas the next morning. Though how would he find her, by navigating his way to the barrio, calling her name in the streets?
Still—he was curious. And colored by an illusive nostalgia, he fantasized a life with Susi the way he’d once fantasized a life with Lucia, with half a dozen children and hot meals around a large table. But Lucia was woven into his reality now, and it struck him that even if he wanted to leave—the casita, his tías, the eternal blue-gray sky—there was no place for him to go. It would be good to have a break.
But Lucia didn’t end up going to Switzerland. Three days before she was scheduled to leave, she called from Cuenca, left a message at the main house with Mami. The casita still had no phone.
“What do you mean, she’s not coming back today?” he asked.
“That’s what she said,” said Mami. She sat on her low stool, peeling potatoes.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, hijo,” said Mami. “She didn’t say.”
“What did she say?”
“Only that she was delayed in Cuenca. Had some things to do.”
“Did she sound all right?”
Mami looked at him from her low stool. “I don’t know, hijo. She didn’t say much. Why, is something wrong?”
“That one,” said Tía Camila. “Going here, going there, never standing still. That kind of woman is never right.” She fanned her face with a dish towel. Tía Camila did not pretend to like Lucia. She didn’t see the point.
Mami stood, set out a slice of honey cake and motioned for him to eat. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, kissed him on top of his head as she had done when he was a child. “Hijo, you are a good man,” she said. “I am glad that you are home.”
Three days later, Lucia came trudging up the winding dirt path, muddy from the rains. He was drinking a beer on the front stoop. He hadn’t expected her. It was dark, already night.
“I’m not going,” she said, deep moons under her eyes.
“What do you mean you’re not going?”
“Not going to Switzerland.”
“Why not?” he said.
“It’s complicated.” Her voice tight and strange.
“What happened?”
“You wouldn’t understand. I don’t want to go anymore. I don’t want to talk about it.”
She went inside, slipped into bed. He was baffled, bewildered, disappointed, relieved. A short while later, he went to check on her. She was already asleep—both arms wrapped around Essy, the two of them one big ball curled up tight.
The next day it occurred to him, he had not brought the orange bottle on the high shelf to the farmacia in a while. It must be running low. He rummaged through the spices. It was there behind the paprika. Lucia must’ve gone to the pharmacy herself, because it was all the way full.
On Monday morning, she asked him to drive her to town, where she boarded the chicken bus to the city as usual. But she returned that same evening, wheeling her large, red plaid suitcase behind her.
“Mama!” said Essy. She leapt into her mother’s arms, begged to ride on the suitcase as though it were some exotic horse.
“I’m back,” she said.
“What’s up?” he said.
She would no longer stay in the apartment in Cuenca.
“Why not?” he asked, genuinely surprised.
She said, “It’s full of spiders.”
She seemed different. But not in that erratic way she had been for months. This was something more fragile, more volatile. He found the best strategy was to feign lighthearted approval. Is that a new dress? I haven’t seen it before. Have you noticed your fava beans growing? On eggshells, he checked his words. She ignored him, mostly, though she lavished attention on their daughter, playing blocks or stuffed bunny tea party or pirate ship adventures. But before bed each night, when Essy called, Mama, come! Mama, read a book! Lucia walked away, as if she did not hear, and when Essy ran to tug at her arm, she looked through her daughter as though she were not there.
She worked in their garden. Digging and weeding and sowing and pruning, always on her knees, looking down. Mami noticed the change. Mami rarely came to the casita, but one day he saw her walk up the path, woolen shawl drawn around her shoulders.
“Essy is in school,” he said.
“This is for Lucia,” said Mami. S
he had brought a pot of locro de papa, potato soup. She set it down, joined them on the stoop. “Lucita, is something bothering you?”
Lucia stared up at the sky, pointed at the clouds changing shape. “They’re whispering about me all the time,” she said.
She sounded so far away.
Mami kissed her cheek gently, reached for her hand. Lucia sat, her gaze still fixed on the clouds. “Ma?” she said.
He walked away. He went to Fabiana that afternoon.
It was true. They whispered. At Tía Camila’s birthday party, at cousin Estela’s quince, on Día de los Difuntos and New Year’s Eve, at baby Alberto’s christening. They had always whispered: What kind of woman leaves her husband and child? She goes to Cuenca, alone. Why Cuenca? In America the women do it. America! But this is not America. Tía Camila. Tía Alba. Tía Paula. The neighbor, Roberto. His cousins on the futbol fields. Tío Remy, who asked after Lucia’s health as he winked and nudged: The Chinitas have the softest hands. Even Ricky and Juan asked, “Manny, what’s up with Lucia?” “She’s been tired,” he said. At least this was the truth.
Some days she was up at the crack of dawn, frying eggs, making pancakes. Some days she slept all afternoon. Some days she picked up Essy early from school. One morning they left the campo but did not go to school at all, and when he came home midmorning he found them outside, sailing paper boats down a trench they’d dug with Essy’s toy shovels and filled with the hose. “Shouldn’t she be at school?” he asked. “What?” “School,” he said. “Oh, Manny,” she said, breezily. “School is so silly. This is Mommy-Essy time. We’re bonding.” He swallowed. He knew he should say something, assert himself, admonish her—but the vacancy in her eyes made him cower.
One day he came home to find the bright yellow pot unattended on the stove, sizzling, boiling over, lapped by orange-blue flames. “Lucia?” he called. “Lucia!” Angry. He found them in the bedroom, on the floor, playing My Little Pony—Lucia on her knees, Essy with a brand-new butterfly barrette in her hair. “Please, you need to be more careful,” he said. “You could have burned the whole house down.”
“But Manny, you wouldn’t let that happen. See? You came.”
“Lucia, this behavior, it’s dangerous.” He gritted his teeth, lowered his voice. “I’m worried.”
“Wor-ried, wor-ried, Man-ny’s worried.”
He did not use the word: sick. She hated that word.
“You don’t seem well.”
“How would you know? Are you inside my body?”
“Are you . . .”
“I’m fine. It’s none of your business.” Her clavicles tensed.
“I’m just asking.”
“Stop asking.”
“Maybe we should go to the doctor.”
“We? NO,” she shouted. “YOU go to the doctor. LEAVE ME ALONE.”
He took his daughter outside. He felt clammy, hot and cold.
“Why is Mama so mad?” said Essy.
“Go to Abuela,” he said. “Go on, mi amor, go stay at the house.”
He began to spend his nights on the hammock outside. One night he dreamed of a woman with Fabiana’s face, Luna’s legs, Guadalupe’s stubbly pepa. But when he rode her, he was riding Susi’s heart-shaped ass. Dawn brought a sore back, sore jaw, a crick in his neck, skin riddled with fresh mosquito bites.
One evening he came home later than usual, found the screen door wide open, the house dark and empty. He figured they were at Mami’s, watching TV or playing cards. But Mami’s house was quiet, too. “What is it, hijo?” she said. “Nothing,” he mumbled. He plodded back home. The motorbike was still there. They could not have gone far. He checked the garden, the shed, the groves behind the casita. Down by the river, he saw their clothes, laid out in the grass to dry: his T-shirts and jeans, Lucia’s bras, Essy’s sundresses and Dora the Explorer underwear. Lucia? he called. The only sounds, the gurgling water, the crickets, the bark of a dog. The sunlight was fading. The water, dark. For a moment he panicked, envisioning the worst. Essy! Lucia! He kicked off his boots, waded in. The mud sludgy, warm, squishy between his toes. Small fish nipping at his ankles. “Shit,” he said. He was being ridiculous. Wasn’t he? They could be at Tía Paula’s. The neighbor’s. Anywhere. He sprinted back to the casita. Lucia? Essy?
Finally, he heard a whimper from the direction of their bright purple outhouse. He ran to it, yanked at the door, the flimsy hook flying into the grass. They were there. The two of them. Squatted on top of the toilet seat, his daughter’s eyes clenched shut, pinching her nose with her fingers. “Essy!” “Papi?” Her eyes sprang open, her lips quivered. “We were hiding from the spies,” she said. She began to cry. She threw her skinny arms around his neck. “Papi, Papi, I was scared. Please don’t let them find us, Papi.” She clung to him with gasping sobs, her entire body shaking uncontrollably. “Hija, I’m here now. I’m here.” He kissed her wet cheeks, smoothed her hair. “Hija, it’s okay, you don’t have to be scared.” But his chest filled with rage. He glared at Lucia. “Are you crazy?” he hissed. “What?” she said. “We were playing a game. Essy, come on, silly, it was just a game.” He wanted to hit her, slap her, smash that ridiculous smirk off her vile face. “Don’t you ever dare do this again,” he said. He carried his daughter back to the casita, lay beside her as she slept in their bed. Lucia did not come in.
• • •
He did not see her the next morning either. He didn’t care. He brought Essy to school. “Abuela will come pick you up today,” he said. The rest of the morning was spent lugging heavy hoses up the hillside. Around lunchtime he stopped at Mami’s, drenched in sweat. Tía Camila sat on the low stool, peeling potatoes.
“Where is Mami?” he asked.
“She is not here,” his tía answered.
“Where is she?”
Tía Camila set down the peeler, stood, washed her hands in the sink. “Your Papi took Sylvia to the doctor.”
“The doctor?”
“Sí.”
“Why?”
“Ay, sobrino.” His tía vented a lofty sigh. “Your mother is worrying about you all the time. Worrying about your Chinita. Worrying about your child. Worrying so much she makes herself sick.”
Mami? Sick? It sent his gut roiling, lit a fire from his chest to his face. But Mami was strong, like an ox. He could not recall her ever being sick; she rarely even went to the doctor.
Tía Camila shook her head. “You don’t know what it’s like for a mother, to see her own son this way. A man who cannot control his own wife. Ay, qué vergüenza.” Disgrace.
• • •
He blistered with humiliation, boiled all day. Dug holes, flung dirt, pounded wooden posts with a sledgehammer. His throat was dry. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He felt dizzy and had to sit down. That evening, he returned to the casita, exhausted.
Lucia was there, wearing her pink apron, standing in front of the stove, the yellow enamel pot once again at full boil. Every surface of their kitchen was covered in vegetables: zucchini, eggplants, yuca, radishes, cabbage, beets, carrots, potatoes, all diced into one-inch cubes, laid out in colorful matrices of varying sizes, six by eight, four by twelve, twenty-four by two.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he said.
She turned to him. “What does it look like?” she said. “I’m cooking. What are YOU doing?”
He punched the wall with his fist. Pain shot through his arm. The gold-framed picture of Jesus Christ clattered to the floor. “Basta,” he said. “Enough of this shit. You’re sick. You’re crazy. You need to take your pills. I need to call your sister.”
“What?”
“I’m going to call your sister.”
“My sister?” said Lucia.
She grabbed the bright yellow pot full of boiling water, hurled it at his face.
7
Miranda
&n
bsp; It missed, he said, but only because he jumped out of the way. It was full of boiling water, he said. It crashed by his feet, scalded his left ankle. Made mud where the water pooled on the floor.
“Jesus Christ. Are you hurt?” said Miranda. She nearly dropped her phone. “She’s angry. Scared. She’s lashing out.”
“Angry about what?” said Manny.
Stefan lay reading a book in bed, so she slipped out to the back porch. She stood by her wicker rocking chair but did not sit down. “Everything,” she said.
“But I’m trying to help her,” he said. His voice sounded clear, as though he were somewhere close, in the starry night, in the blackness of the Stöcktalersee, in the looming silhouettes of the Alps.
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.” What else could she say?
And when he’d returned, several hours later, he found Lucia sitting alone. All the vegetables were gone. The floor was clean. Her eyes glittered. And when she stood, he braced himself, ready to run, noted the cleaver in the drying rack. But then she walked to the stove. Are you hungry? she said. “As if nothing had happened. She handed me a bowl of soup.”
“Oh God, Manny.” Oh God. Oh God. Her brain in high gear, trying to fathom the progression of Lucia’s thoughts.
“I’m scared,” he said. “For Essy. For me. I don’t know what to do. I can’t talk to her. I can’t control her. One minute she won’t speak, the next minute she is screaming and throwing things. She’s like a monster. It’s really bad.”
“Does she have the pills?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“Is she taking them?”
“I don’t know.”
“She needs to take them.”
“But I can’t make her. Here there are no police, no hospitals, no emergency rooms. It’s not like America. Please, Miranda, come help.”