The Hour of Daydreams

by Renee Macalino Rutledge

  Her eighteenth birthday is in two days. She wants to do what Mama wants. She looks to her mother for assurance, wanting her to see that she is able, wanting her to make a choice for her knowing that she is able. She cannot explain her faith, her certainty that something in this life is hers and waiting, like an unborn child tucked safely in some hidden dimension.

  Mama only stares, the same as always. Then Tala sees she is telling her to look. Look, look. Mama is pointing at something outside. Tala sees nothing but a tree. It is skinny and weak, with just a few triumphant leaves reaching for the sun. It’s beautiful, Mama says, so beautiful.

  She reaches for a pouch beneath her pillow, removing a gold chain with a heart-shaped pendant. She places it in Tala’s palm then closes her hand into a fist. There are no clouds in Mama’s eyes when she looks at her, only clear skies. Now go, she says, run.

  7. The Inner Sanctum

  Leaning into his new walking stick, Manolo had watched the outline of his wife and the boy lose dimension. They did not look his way when they passed him in the market square, and before they were swallowed within the ever-changing shape of the throng, he resumed pursuit.

  After leaving the woman who twisted leaves on her dirty mat, his wife and the boy walked back toward the center of the square. They passed the busy courtyard and turned into a small alley, where Tala entered an albularyo’s booth. The albularyo looked about the same age if not younger than Tala, and he couldn’t take his eyes off them. The boy seemed to have disappeared, but Manolo realized that he had merely sunken to the ground against the heat, his belly relieved, no doubt, by the coolness of the earth. He imagined the knobby points of the boy’s dry elbows burrowing into the sand, his senses knowing only the perfect smoothness of marbles rolling and crackling one against the other like tiny, incompatible worlds.

  His wife leaned against the counter, not imagining for a moment that he was nearby with his dress shirt slung over his shoulder, his eyes shaded by the brim of his hat, and a silly new cane in his hand. He noticed the way she slumped into the heat, into the laziness of her own flesh as unguardedly as if she were in her own bedroom. Even Tala’s tongue seemed to roll untethered, without the restrictions of social formalities. He could only imagine what she could be saying. He envisioned her words floating just outside the curve of her mouth, languishing in the still air, the syllables breaking apart then losing themselves amid the commotion of other syllables before they could traverse the distance to his burning ear. His eyes burrowed into all the potions, the strange concoctions and bottled dreams, fearing that Tala sought some way of returning to the place where her lost wings no longer carried her.

  He untethered his fixation on Tala, only to meet the other woman’s eyes. This albularyo had seen him, for how long he couldn’t tell; but she watched him in a way that suggested she had always known him to be there.

  Her stare was direct and unapologetic, catching him unawares. She stood of medium height and generous build. She wore her short hair up with a yellow handkerchief wrapped around it, the ends of the knot brushing against her neck. He compared her pantsuit to a sack because it was shapeless, dingy brown, and looked coarse to the touch. Over it she wore a purple apron that redeemed for him all the softness and femininity the pantsuit was lacking. And then there were her eyes, strangely familiar, seeking him out and latching on for seconds at a time. These intermittent clutches made him nervous enough to consider leaving. But instead of alerting Tala of his presence, she extracted an object from the pocket of her apron, watching him as she did so, watching him even as she handed the object to his wife, a flash of red that defined itself before his eyes, changing from a quick blur to a box with precise edges and pointed corners. Such a peculiar feeling seized him then.

  He’d been observing the scene from a sidelong angle, through a narrow pocket of space that existed between the pole holding up the awning of a stall on the main path and a tub of live crabs propped on a table behind this same stall. It was the only angle from which he could spy the inner sanctum where Tala and the boy had gone. A single step to the left and he would only see the crab stall in front of him; a single step to the right and the women disappeared into the alley. Every now and then a crab leg extended into the air, its claw pinching, covering a portion of the scene he’d come to watch. At one point, it looked as if a crab had Tala’s face in its claw.

  The gravity accompanying the box coincided somehow with the woman’s stare. He’d sensed its pull from that initial shock of red, like the sound of an alarm that makes everything around it fall into the background. He could almost feel the weight of it, light enough to hold because all it contained was breath, yet requiring strength, because surely it was the breath of the world passing between the women’s hands. And then there was the woman’s look—the look that moments afterward produced the box, the look that latched on to him as she held it, as she offered it to his wife with knowing whispers. He knew that the look, the box, and its transfer concerned him. It concerned him and yet he was only in the background, an obscure piece of something larger and possibly infinite. He thought of two mirrors facing each other, the way an object between them multiplies endlessly in their reflections. He likened the pocket of space between pole and tub to a shard of glass reflecting back to the box, one among countless pockets of space, overlapping pockets that were really just shards. Mirrors facing mirrors reflecting infinite replicas of every person and thing, of the red box in between.

  “Crab legs, mister?” the man behind the stall asked. He offered a large crab, holding it by the belly with his silver tongs, its eight legs spreading, its claws snapping open and shut.

  Manolo refused. He felt like he was sleepwalking. It was the only way to explain the surreal shift the afternoon’s walk had taken. Even the sun’s rays felt different. He felt it then, the life of it burning in his blood. But the heat was commonplace enough. Manolo looked around and could’ve sworn he could see the sun, too. Everywhere. Illuminating faces, fruit, clothing, the white belly of a crab, silver tongs, eyes, looks, shards.

  His knees almost buckled, ready to collapse under the weight of time accumulating into a single moment in a single afternoon. But Tala changed its direction, kissing the woman at the stall and collecting herself to leave. She was heading home. He needed to get there first, to make believe he’d never followed her. Dropping the cane in his hand, he mustered the energy to run, escape the trickle of sand made of fine crushed glass that threatened to consume him.

  Afterward, he pretended not to notice the red box currently propped up on Tala’s dresser. He walked past it a few times each day, feeling the geometry of his motion across the room, made up of straight lines that connected him to the box at different angles. As he crossed the room he recalled the woman’s face at the market and the look she gave him when she handed the box to his wife. He imagined the wail of an alarm, a register so low you could see it more than hear it, the entire horizon shifting slightly to the left, perceptible only when the fragment of earth you stood on caught up in alignment.

  Before falling asleep at night he calculated possibilities. One night he pondered the hidden virtues or vices a box—any box—could contain. The most innocent facade, one decorated with flowers or smiling faces, could stow the vile remnants of a crime—the fine powder of a victim’s bones, a rich widow’s stolen jewelry. The possibilities only multiplied. He pictured something easily overlooked—a box made of cardboard, its edges thin with age or use, the corners torn. The kind of box you find in the trash bin, or one stored underneath the bed, containing forgotten greeting cards that will be thrown out in another year. But the same box could just as easily be the one preserving a lifetime of savings or harboring the letters from a friend no one knows about, the friend most cherished. Appearances, he realized, give no indication of what’s contained within.

  Because how could one tell from the outside, he pondered the next night, so absorbed in his questions he barely moved, and because his eyes were closed Tala probabl
y thought he’d fallen asleep long before she did. Whatever their shape or size, boxes shared one thing: a perfectly enclosed space, protected on all sides and shielded from view. The perfect place to keep a secret. He remembered his own secret, continually returned to that dark corner behind the closet wall. Tala’s wings removed, leaving the skin behind her shoulder blades bare and smooth. As she slept he touched her there, lightly so as not to wake her. He did not feel any scars or broken skin, just her softness and the bones beneath, fragile, like his own.

  A few nights later he remembered a client with an asthmatic son. Her home overlooked the ocean and smelled of sea mist and boiled lobster. She stood out in his memory then because of the boxes she collected. The smallest were pillboxes that adorned her shelves along with her books and vases. These varied from the size of a thumbnail to no bigger than the center of a woman’s palm. They were beautifully detailed, designed to give the illusion that swallowing medicine was enjoyable, even luxurious. Larger boxes were neatly arranged on top of the piano and above the fireplace, where they were stacked in twos and threes. On her bathroom counter, she had arranged straw boxes, each of them hand painted. On the coffee table, a box shaped like a treasure chest sat beside a glass tray filled with smooth white rocks. Beside the treasure chest was a wooden fish, its eyes, scales, and fin carved by hand. He didn’t know that the fish was also a box until his third or fourth visit, when he picked it up to examine it, inhaling its odor of salty wood. He’d found that the tail and the head separated upon contact, unlocking two different compartments.

  He tried to remember what the fish box contained. Most likely nothing, and the box itself captivated his memory because of the deception that was at once its virtue. He’d always enjoyed visiting the asthmatic boy because all the boxes under one roof lent the same effect as visiting a museum. He liked the variety in their craftsmanship. But in the aftermath of looks and alarms, the allure of that home overlooking the ocean began to expand. The boxes became like stars out of which he could form constellations. He’d always believed they were empty. Now he conjectured every one contained something unique. Or perhaps the full and the empty rotated, and the contents changed according to the day or week. How did the box collector keep track of the system? He attempted to categorize the organization of the boxes, first by size, then by the material with which they were made, but wood and silver, ceramic and glass mingled.

  As he twisted about, rumpling the sheets, he attempted to permeate this mystery, relying on a diaphanous film of memory. The home overlooking the sea grew more and more abstract. Like the wooden fish, everything in it was a container in disguise, one with multiple uses. He imagined the books on the shelf as locked cases, the pictures on the wall as openings to safes, the cushions on the sofa as soft, zippered purses. A countertop could open up to a hidden storage bin, perhaps to a staircase leading to an unseen chamber. The house itself, with its walls, roof, and floors, was one big box, its interior blocked by curtains or shutters, by a layer of paint, peeling to reveal a different color underneath, by the sprawling limbs of a tree, intentionally planted to guard the front lawn, all of it designed to keep the structure intact, preserving something essential, akin to sleep or sustenance, the necessity to breathe unseen, dream unseen, exist within the unguarded sphere of oneself, unseen. The fruit of this interior was inaccessible to a simple observer—it required breaking into.

  During the day, Manolo sulked in these long, reflective silences, and like a man with a grudge, he didn’t clue Tala in on his thoughts. He chose quiet over her company, and because his mood was contagious, she brooded along with him. He did not mean to punish her. He simply felt the distance between them and could not determine which one of them had put it there. He was no longer following her on the path, but somehow, he still felt like he was several paces behind her, struggling to catch up. Somehow, all of it was tied up in the business of the box.

  He pondered over it further the next night, until he could not stop tossing beneath the covers and squinting across the dark for some unknown beacon. He saw only shadows, and in his fatigue the darkness was soothing, becoming the beacon he sought, a blanket covering the world so he could finally rest. Since Tala had brought the box home less than a week before, his mind had been filled with static, bewitched with the idea that he’d grasped some alternate vision, and in the dark he likened himself to a blind insect walking through the world with antennae pressed to the ground, listening. He could not see in the dark or hear vibrations in the elements, but he imagined he saw lines and reflections jutting from every surface, connecting everything to everything else.

  By day, nothing within his sight appeared in isolation. Even the stones in the path were projections, moved by ordinary forces in constant interaction. They were kicked or picked up, thrown, and dropped, and each day the path looked different because of their movement. He got a peculiar notion that if he imagined their journey, the journey of the stones, he’d find answers to Tala’s secrets. Tala, who he’d spied with her sisters along the riverbed, who had friends on the outskirts of the barrio: a boy who held her hand as if she belonged to him, a tomboy albularyo in a market stall who gave away looks and boxes. And she hadn’t shared any of it with him. What more was she hiding? He prided himself in being a simple man, believed it should be in these details, the simplest of details, that a husband and wife could say with confidence, “I know all about it.” Manolo could not say that about Tala, not even close, and without that ability, he felt slighted as a husband, married to a foreign object. Were those nights at the river even real?

  Tala came forward on an afternoon when he felt too tired to work a full day, his mind preoccupied with a sense of defeat. The defeat took the form of a hole, of shapeless space, a threatening distance between him and Tala from which anything could spring to tear them apart. The chasm seemed to have grown over a distance of months, but in reality his slump had only lasted a matter of days.

  When he got home that afternoon, all he wanted to do was get undressed and drink something cold. His parents were still out for the day, visiting Little Roland, who lived in a province nearby. The first person he saw was Old Luchie, who lay slumped into the sofa, drooling in her sleep. He wondered if the maid had lifted a finger all day. He headed to the kitchen, poured himself some iced tea, and went straight into the bedroom to read the paper. That was when Tala approached him with the box.

  “Promise not to open it,” she said.

  It was the red of an organ, so close he could sense it pumping against her skin. Ancient symbols were carved around the perimeter, a patterned code, perhaps the very one he’d sensed, barely grazing with his fingertips along some outer edge, but never penetrating.

  “There’s a surprise in here for you,” she continued. “But it’s not ready yet. Promise you won’t spoil the surprise?”

  His attention jumped from the box to his wife. Her skin, so smooth it was luminous. Her hair, parted in the middle and dangling in soft waves over her cheeks. Then, the darks of her eyes; he saw in them two swirling pools where everything sank and disappeared—except for him. Two of him: identical twins outlined in light. He felt comforted by her physical closeness, and something in him lightened. Tala was perfection itself. She did not go to the albularyo for herbs and hokey medicine; she had no flaws that needed fixing. He knew somehow, the box was filled with some other magic. Something related to her wings and what he had seen at the river. She was finally including him in the mystery, unlocking some door to which the box was certainly a key. A part of him always believed she would, though it was a part of himself he regularly doubted.

  “Don’t bother me with surprises. I prefer to know what’s coming.” It was a gruff reply, he knew, though he said it jokingly. The alternative would have been to touch her, place his hand on the slimness of her wrist, pull her body toward his, kiss the corners of her lips before tasting their ripeness in full.

  He could not deny the joy at seeing his wife brighten at their exchange. She knew him
well enough to understand he was caving, that they had landed at the opening to reconciliation. Then came an unwelcome feeling, springing from a forgotten corner as if to intercept the onset of joy and propel it in another direction. He imagined her wings wilting behind the wall of the house, the feathers falling off in a heap, the slumped form like that of some dead carcass.

  “In any case, I’ll put the box on the living room shelf. No peeking. I’ll know if you do,” Tala said, seeming confident that the ice between them was broken.

  “When I get you presents, I let you pick them out yourself. Then I know for sure you’ll like them. I never understood surprises,” he said. In spite of the guilt he wanted to smile, rebel against the gravity of his own concealed crime.

  “This one you’ll like. Like a good wife, I know what you like even more than you do.” She seemed ready to go on talking about anything. He would not have been surprised if she’d begun a conversation about sewing, dancing, or the picturesque landscape of farms that enclosed their home. But he was not in the mood for talking. Not yet. He drew her to him by the small of her back.

  “If you say so.”

  He wanted to confess. But first, he would try to make her understand without words.

  8. Road to a Landslide

  From the highways that joined at the base of the Ogtong Mountains, the road was born, a wide tongue of cement strong enough to carry the moving parts of cities. The highways would continue to faster, more crowded places, leaving the road to rise with the mountain’s elevation, narrowing with the land’s shrinking passageways, widening again through fertile valleys, and along the cliff’s edges, leaving just enough space for the coming and the going to meet side by side.