A Scarcity of Condors

by Suanne Laqueur

  Desperation lined her face. She needed this to be the truth.

  “It may be you never have a satisfying answer to this,” Dr. Mezeritz said. “You probably won’t have a Hollywood resolution moment. The proverbial Perry Mason courtroom gasp.”

  The most the Tholets could hope for was a satisfying truth built out of the pieces.

  A truth that could never be verified, but a truth they still could believe in.

  We’ll never know, Jude thought. We will never, never know what happened.

  But from everything we do know… It seems to be what happened.

  I can believe this is what happened.

  The Kings of Death switched me and my mother’s stillborn baby.

  They were two young, terrified lonely people. They were trying to make a sad song better.

  Ysidro shortened Juleón to Jude and chiseled it into a scrap of pink granite. Not as a memorial, but as a gift. A private joke between him and Penny. A love letter. A thank you note. One of the million bits and pieces left behind when thousands of lifetimes disappeared.

  He made it as a birth gift, Jude thought. But it ended up being a gravestone after all.

  “It can’t be,” he said again. “No. Come on. It’s just fucking impossible.”

  He stared at his parents, who looked helplessly back.

  They all believed in this truth.

  “Is there somebody we should call?” Pedro finally asked.

  Calls were made. To the police. The authorities. Isabella Eberhoff. All the correct bureaucrats alerted to the possible presence of an infant buried in the Espositos’ yard. But it wasn’t a Law & Order hard cut to the forensic team thrusting a spade into the ground. These things took time. Statements given, affidavits made, reports filed. There was nothing to do but go home and wait.

  “Love each other and see what happens,” Alex said. He and Jude hugged a long time in the Santiago airport, holding each other’s heads.

  “I’ll see you soon,” Jude said gruffly.

  “I’ll see you everywhere.”

  “This trip is in the top five things that ever happened to me.”

  Alex laughed, drew back and ran a forearm across his face. “For sure.”

  The families boarded their respective flights with their strange souvenirs. A piece of floorboard. Some marble chips. A gravestone rubbing. A pink granite headstone.

  They went home. Back to work. Back to life. Jude printed out pictures of the trip and hung them on his walls. He kept a framed shot of him and Alex on his desk. He added names and dates to his family tree and started making cautious, tentative contact with some of the distant cousins. Piecing together the other side of his family history. Accepting it as one of his truths.

  It was late October when the forensic team in Santiago began to dig, and nearing Thanksgiving when Jude got the news.

  “They didn’t find anything,” he said to Alex on the phone.

  “What?”

  “No bones underneath the tree. Only dirt.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh my God. I don’t believe it.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Are you okay? You sound crushed, man.”

  “I’m devastated. I mean, it’s nuts. I had no idea how much I had invested in this being the answer to everything.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We were so sure.”

  “So was I. It made so much sense.”

  “My mother is a wreck. It really hit her hard and I’m worried… I mean, it’s like…” His voice gave out and Jude pushed the heel of his hand into his eyes.

  “It’s all right,” Alex said.

  “She just keeps taking it and taking it and…”

  “I know. She doesn’t deserve this. How’s your dad doing with it?”

  “He’s not an emotional man by design. His meds keep him from being devoured by ghosts. But he’s walking around blank-eyed and stunned. He looks like a refugee.”

  “Oh man. Jude, I feel terrible.”

  “They look old. For the first time, I can’t deny their age. They’ve always been so hale and lively. Now they look frail to me and everything feels so fucking tenuous and unfair.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Jude gave a tremendous exhale that did nothing to alleviate the pressure in his throat and chest. “Anyway. That’s the news. And I miss you.”

  Alex gave a short, surprised laugh. “I miss you, too.”

  “You know, Deane texts me. All the time.”

  “She does?”

  “Yeah. Just to say hi. She tells me little things going on. She’ll FaceTime me and introduce me to her friends. And I love it. Suddenly being an uncle makes me so happy. I love making this little relationship with her. I want her to meet my sister, I think they’d get along great.”

  “I love it too,” Alex said. “I’m a huge believer in what Val calls ‘the second circle.’ When the shit goes down, you have your first phone calls, sure. But who’s your second line of defense? And the third and fourth? Growing up, Uncle Felipe was my legal guardian but I always had the Larks as backup. When I became a father, I never wanted to hoard Deane and imply Val and I were the only ones she could count on. I wanted her to build concentric rings of community and have a ton of numbers in her phone. Different people she can take different problems to. Knowing you can be one of those phone calls now? Both you and Tej? It’s…”

  “It’s a gift,” Jude said.

  “Yeah. And the world needs more gifts like it.”

  “We’ll get together again real soon. I don’t want years to go by between visits, you know?”

  “I know. And news of your life—you, Tej, your parents, your sister and brother—I want to know that stuff, know what’s going on. I want to know you had a dentist appointment. Share all the boring everyday things, I’ll tell you when it’s too much information.”

  “What are you wearing right now?”

  “Jeans and a… Shut the fuck up.”

  “Talk slower.”

  “Get out of my face.”

  Jude laughed, finally feeling a little better. “All right, I gotta go. I’ll call you soon.”

  “Vale, hueón. Say hi to Tej.”

  “I will. Hug Val for me.”

  “Love you. Adiós.”

  “Te quiero. Ciao.”

  Jude’s thirty-seventh birthday was on Thanksgiving Day. Penny was still depressed and ambivalent to holiday celebrations. She didn’t want to cook, didn’t want to go anywhere. They came to her and Tej cooked everything, including his tangerine cake for Jude.

  They sat in the living room with coffee and dessert. A fire crackled. Displayed on the mantlepiece was the pink granite stone, still a little green around the edges from decades in the earth. Penny and Cleon loved its memory and hated its mystery.

  It was all they had.

  “Have you named him?” Tej asked carefully. “I mean, do you privately call him something now?”

  “Funny you ask,” Cleon said. “We only just decided on Luis Felice Tholet.”

  “Named for grandfather and grand-uncle,” Penny said.

  “The botanist and the sculptor,” Jude said.

  “Does Luis have a diminutive?” Tej asked.

  “Lucho, I suppose,” Cleon said. “The little light. Which shouldn’t be buried under a bushel but shine on to yadda yadda yadda. My New Testament is rusty.”

  Tej smiled. “Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.”

  “Dig you spewing the scripture,” Jude said.

  “Don’t throw a Bible gauntlet at a Maronite Christian.”

  “Challenge accepted.”

  “Play something, Jude,” Serena sai
d. She was curled up against Giosué on the couch, pregnant like a strawberry.

  Jude was still working on his plate of tangerine cake, but with his free hand, he slowly played the opening line of “Eleanor Rigby.” The C-major progression—Ah, look at all the—shifting into E-minor for the last four notes. Lonely people.

  He picked out the verse melody. McCartney was such a freaking genius. He wrote in Dorian mode, a minor scale with a natural sixth degree. It showed in the mournful C-sharp as Eleanor first picked up the rice in the church, then again when she died there.

  And was buried along with her name.

  “Nobody came,” Jude sang softly.

  “Oh my fucking God,” Serena said, rocking and rolling up from the couch.

  “What?” Cleon said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She went to the mantle, pointing at the pink stone. “Oh my God, we missed it.”

  “Missed what?” Tej said.

  “Buried with his name. Mami. It’s right here.”

  “What’s right here?” Penny said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Buried along with his name. His name is Tholet.”

  “Of course it is. And?”

  Serena turned back, revelation in her eyes, her belly burgeoning with the next generation. “He’s buried with Uncle Louis.”

  There had never been a pair of greedier, more jealous grandparents. During the hospital visits, Penny and Cleon glared at anyone daring to hold Giulia longer than ten minutes. They glared at each other, calculating intervals of cuddling down to the microsecond. Shameless martyrs, they suffered the indignity of Serena nursing the infant, then snatched her back.

  Gimme. Mine. My turn.

  “You are ridiculous,” Serena said from her bed.

  “You’re goddamn right,” Cleon said, hovering over Penny’s shoulder. She sat in the sunshine, arms and eyes brimming. Her finger caught in the baby’s tight fist, which she held against her lips.

  “Stand by the bed,” Giosué said. “I want a picture of three generations.”

  Serena moved over. “Get in here, Mami. Take to the bed.”

  Penny carefully squeezed beside, rested her head on her daughter’s and smiled for the camera. The forgotten taste of joy was sweet in her mouth. Her heart sighed, finally soothed and restful for the first time since they returned from Chile.

  Tej and Jude arrived, bearing gifts. Chocolates for Serena. A bag of McDonald’s hash browns for Giosué.

  “Oh man,” he said, digging into the greasy sack. “Jude, you know how to make me eat out of your hand.”

  For Giulia, there were picture books and onesies.

  “Cleon, check it out,” Tej said, shaking one of the tiny garments loose and showing its silkscreened seahorses. “It matches yours.”

  Cleon reached to hitch up his right trouser leg, revealing the magnificent seahorse airbrushed on his prosthetic calf.

  “Can I hold her?” Jude asked Penny.

  “No.”

  “All righty then.”

  “You’ll get a chance,” Serena said, winking at her brother. “Mami has to pee at some point, right?”

  “The baby comes with me,” Penny said. “Girls always go to the bathroom together.”

  Cleon cleared his throat, glancing meaningfully at his watch.

  “You hold your seahorses,” she said.

  Jude sat in one of the armchairs. “I have some news.”

  Penny gasped and blurted, “You’re engaged.”

  An embarrassed beat of silence, broken by a snort of stifled laughter from Tej. “Um, no,” he said.

  “Not yet,” Jude said.

  “Forgive the abuela, boys,” Serena said. “She has no filter when she’s this happy.”

  “Wait, what do you mean yet?” Tej said.

  “Oh Christ,” Giosué muttered through a mouthful of hash browns.

  “I have some news,” Jude said loudly. “I got the call yesterday, but it was Serena’s day so I waited.”

  “What call?” Cleon said.

  “From Detective Arendt.”

  The residual laughter died off. The family drew close. Penny got off the bed and moved to sit by Cleon. “We’ll hold her together for this,” she said.

  Arranging an exhumation had been a longer, more complicated and more bureaucratic operation than digging up the yard in La Reina. The Tholets needed to hire both an attorney and a rabbi to facilitate the process, which stretched out over the winter to the point where it went invisible.

  “Two sets of bones were inside Uncle Louis’s grave,” Jude said. He drew from his inside pocket a printed copy of the forensic report and passed it around. “One set was confirmed to be an adult male. The other was a complete, almost intact skeleton of an infant.”

  The woven cradle of Penny and Cleon’s arms tightened.

  Jude went on. Forensic examination concluded no abnormal fractures or blunt-force trauma to the baby’s chest or skull. Examining the latter, analyzing spatial geometry and suture boundaries, the coroner was confident the infant was either stillborn or died shortly after birth, but the cause was undetermined. He was slightly less confident the baby was male. DNA analysis would confirm, if they could get the bones to talk.

  “They’ve sent fragments to the Medical-Legal Institute,” Jude said. “From both sets of bones, so they can compare to Papi and Aiden. If it was a boy, they’d all have the same Y-chromosome.”

  “And what then?” Giosué said. “What becomes of the remains?”

  “It’s up to us,” Jude said. “They can be reinterred in the Jewish Cemetery. Or, if it’s time and it’s what we want, they can come home. We could have Louis’s gravestone shipped if we wanted.” He got up and crouched in front of Penny and Cleon. He picked up one of Giulia’s tiny fists and kissed it. “We can do anything. This is our family.”

  They’d wait and see. Hope the DNA within the tiny skeleton would wake up and speak to them. Recognize and claim them.

  They held their breath and waited on the truth in the bones, knowing at the end of the day, the bones never lied.

  Your hospital room is so clean.

  They’ve shaved you to the skin, getting rid of the lice and fleas and caked filth. The sheets are cool and soft against your bald pate. Nurses and orderlies have gotten all the dirt out of you, with soap and water, carbolic, alcohol and saline. They clean under your fingernails and behind your ears, as if you’re a child. Tubes whisk away all your waste, you don’t even have to look at it.

  So clean. Everything is so clean again.

  As soon as you can sit up, the baby is put in your arms. Out of the ceiling light and into the crook of your elbow, Lucy’s brightest diamond. A marshmallow fist closed around your finger. His kaleidoscope eyes are shut tight. You put your nose against his crown and inhale tangerines.

  Juleón. Clean and whole in your arms. Heavy and warm on your chest. His smooth, hairless face up against yours, whispers of sweet breath on your skin.

  Juleón.

  You hold him for hours, your legs encased in plaster and porcupined with steel rods. When he’s out of your arms, the pain rises up, the memories come out to play, the dirt creeps back in.

  You’re in bad shape, yet you make few requests of the hospital staff. Bring the baby. Let me hold my son. Give my son to me.

  And no chocolate, please.

  It appears on your lunch tray, foul and disgusting. Mocking your clean world and reaching filthy fingers toward Juleón’s perfection. You keep the arm holding him composed while the other hand seizes the offensive dessert and throws it against the wall.

  “No chocolate, please,” you say. A world of threat within the polite tone. These people have no fucking idea who they’re dealing with. You’ve seen things that would make them go mad. You’ve learned ways to break people and they’d be foo
ls to believe you won’t use them.

  They have no idea the lengths you will go to keep this child safe.

  They cannot imagine what you will do to protect your family.

  The baby yawns against your angry heart. Your palm smooths his head of wispy, dark hair, running it this way and that. You kiss him. Smell him. Swear by him.

  Juleón.

  You are in his blood and bones. Yours is the back half of his name. It doesn’t matter if you ever stand on your legs again. You will stand behind this boy and never let him out of your sight.

  Imagínate.

  Your eyes are drooping.

  Picture yourself, on a boat on a river.

  Your hand on Jude’s shoulder as he sails past tangerine trees.

  Your other fingers curl and tap against your palm.

  …

  …

  …

  And you’re gone.

  Santiago’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights accepted Cleon’s donation of his Lucy installation, sight unseen. They sent a curator to Seattle to supervise the dismantling of the ceiling and the diorama. Cleon was brisk and unsentimental as the light went out in Lucy’s pregnant belly and the screws spiraled out of the sky panels. It was time. He wanted it gone. This room was going to be for his grandchildren to play in. He would come in here to shape the future, not the past.

  Every piece was carefully wrapped and placed in shipping crates. Every drawing unpinned from the walls and smoothed flat in art portfolios. Once the rooms were empty, Cleon called in his children to spackle, patch and paint.

  “Your daughter has made Papi into a tyrant,” Jude said to Serena. “I hope you’re satisfied.”

  “You and Tej better get a move on,” she said. “I can’t build this family tree all by myself, you know.”

  He glared cross-eyed at her, then glanced at Tej, who was plugged into his earbuds and methodically painting the window sashes.

  “You guys would make some beautiful babies,” she said. “I am just saying.”

  “Well I’m trying my damnedest every night but I just can’t get him pregnant. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”