by Maria Duenas
She said yes with a simple nod. She hadn’t spoken to me about him since the day we loaded her car with the chairs for my party; I had assumed Paul had disappeared out of her life for good. But everything indicated that I was mistaken.
“Perhaps because . . .”
“If you mean a reconciliation, the answer is no.”
“Then?”
“Well . . . because life always ends up taking unexpected turns, Blanca. Because sometimes we believe that we’ve got it all clear and we suddenly realize that nothing is as firm as we’d thought. What I want now is for him to be able to see his kids again.”
“But I thought you’d lost touch with him, that—”
“At the beginning he’d call us once in a while and tried seeing the kids twice a year. But they were never able to understand his shifting attitude: adoring them one minute, neglecting them the next.”
“So they slowly distanced themselves,” I suggested.
“Yes. The distance grew in every way and it got to a point that we preferred not having any news from him.”
“I imagine he didn’t live nearby.”
“He never quite settled down permanently: he changed universities a bunch of times, and although he had a few relationships, as far as I know, none lasted. Meanwhile, the children grew up and set out on their own lives. But now I want to bring them all together again.”
“But why, Rebecca, after such a long time?”
“So that they can say good-bye. It’s very likely that it will be the last time they’ll see each other.”
She took off her glasses and closed her eyes, and with her fingers massaged the place at the top of her nose where the frames of her glasses had left two faint marks. I thought she must have a headache. Or perhaps she just wanted to protect herself before answering the question she knew I would ask.
“They still don’t know that he’s coming, right?”
She shook her head.
“Paul has been living in California for the past three years, confined to a nursing home in Oakland. I go see him once in a while. He’s got Alzheimer’s.”
• • •
The day finally came, the fourth Thursday of November. Just as Zarate had forewarned me, the university became deserted as the majority of students flew back to their family nests, the dorms and shared apartments emptied out, caps, bicycles, and backpacks were no longer visible, laughter and voices fell silent in classrooms and corridors. And the solitary expatriates like me were fortunately welcomed by friends.
It took a while for me to decide what to wear that day. I had no idea about the degree of formality with which Rebecca’s family celebrated the date, nor what the atmosphere would be like given Rebecca’s decision to invite her ex-husband without letting her children know. Perhaps they would accept it readily, understanding their mother’s feelings. Or perhaps they’d take it like a kick in the stomach and be incapable of understanding her desire to close the vital circle of a fractured family. Fractured but real.
I chose a burgundy velvet suit and a pair of long silver earrings that had captivated me the previous spring on a trip to Istanbul with Alberto and his brothers. The earrings I never got to wear, saving them for the summer, for those relaxed nights by the sea, for those dinners replete with the smell of salt and the sounds of friends and laughter. For those everyday evenings that never did come. In those months of heat and bile there had been no dinners beneath the stars nor laughter nor friends. Only anger and perplexity, which had driven me to change my life. But all that was part of the past. Now it was time to look forward, and in homage to that future unfolding before me I decided to put on my old yet new silver earrings.
At five o’clock in the afternoon, an odd dinner hour for a Spanish stomach, I knocked on the door of Rebecca’s house with a bottle of Viña Tondonia purchased at the price of a ransom and a box of chocolates for the kids. The door was opened by a couple of lively blond girls no older than six who demanded that I answer a series of questions and conditions before letting me through. “What’s your name? Where are you from? Who are those chocolates for? How many kids do you have? Show us your shoes. Bend down. Show us your earrings. Will you lend them to us later?” Then they sped away like bullets, headed for the garden. Only then did I perceive the presence of Daniel nearby. With his long body leaning again the doorframe, he had been watching the scene in amusement. He had on a gray jacket and a blue shirt and tie, and was holding a glass.
“Test passed,” he said, smiling as he came up to greet me.
“Don’t think it’s easy: kids are unforgiving, and if you don’t get on their good side from the start, you’re lost. The tie looks good on you, but it’s crooked.”
“Those two little devils tried taking it off. They’re very dangerous.”
“Let me see.” I handed him the wine and the box to free my hands and straightened his knot. “Now perfect.”
The house seemed unusually quiet for the preamble to a great family dinner. However, behind the sliding doors that separated the entrance from the living room, the muffled sound of a conversation could be heard.
“How are things?” I asked while he led me to the kitchen.
“I have no idea; I arrived just ten minutes ago. Rebecca is talking to her children now, I imagine explaining the situation. Undoubtedly, they must be somewhat bewildered on seeing their father here. He was brought a while ago; he’s in the garden with the nurse who accompanies him. The grandkids are also out there horsing around and looking at their grandfather as if he were an oddity.”
“They hadn’t met him before?”
“They didn’t even know of his existence.”
My eyes panned across the kitchen while he poured me a glass of wine. Everything was impeccably organized for the dinner. Platters and salad bowls, bread baskets, pumpkin pies. The oven gave off a mouthwatering smell as we sat on a couple of high stools beneath the hanging pans.
“Paul was a friend of yours, right?”
“A great friend, many years back.” He took a sip while his gaze rested on an indefinite point beyond the window. “In a complicated period of my life, he was my greatest support. Later on, fate took us in different directions and we lost contact. He left his family—I think you already know that part of the story—and I roamed around different places until, in time, I ended up settling in Santa Barbara. Throughout the years, however, I kept up my friendship with Rebecca. And she’s kept me abreast of what she learned about his life. His comings and goings, his squalid affairs, his wandering throughout the country from one university to the next, always with greater misfortune. That’s how I learned about his mental instability and professional decline. And, finally, of his illness.”
“And you hadn’t seen him until today?”
My question made him shift his gaze back to me. He spoke calmly, without melancholy.
“When he was committed, a couple of years back, Rebecca told me about it and I went to see him in Oakland, close to here, in the Bay Area. I owed him at least a visit to his particular hell, just as he’d once acted so honorably in witnessing mine.” He took another sip and again looked outside. “These are stories from long ago, old stories, practically forgotten. Of when I left Santa Cecilia, some . . . how many years did I tell you the other day had gone by? Thirty?”
The kitchen was still quiet. Rebecca and her children remained locked in the living room, where once in a while a voice could be heard above the others, and the children’s laughter could be heard coming from the garden.
“When I saw him again after all that time, I did not find the person I was expecting,” he went on. “The live wire that my friend had been was no longer there, that philosophy professor just a bit older than I, smart as a fox and incredibly fun, whom I’d met when I first arrived at this university. In Paul Cullen’s place I found only a shadow. But since I know that shadows also appreciate compa
ny in their own way, once in a while, every two or three months, I go visit him.”
“Does he talk to you? Or does he understand, at least?”
“He neither talks nor understands. At the beginning he was still able to get by, although he’d forget words and was easily disoriented. Little by little, however, his vocabulary became more limited, until his memory completely deteriorated. On the first visit he only recognized me for fleeting moments; it was painful but touching. The last time we had seen each other was under difficult circumstances, so that first meeting was particularly special. The second time, he treated me affectionately, but I think that he was never quite able to tell who I was or what I was doing there. From the third visit onward, we were unable to keep up even a simple conversation.”
“But you continue to visit him . . .”
“I spend the afternoon with him and recount things, nonsense. I speak to him about books and movies, about trips, politics. About the NBA, about the nurses’ butts. Whatever comes to mind.” He drained his glass. “Come meet him. I’ve also spoken to him about you lately.”
Almost without realizing it, I was dragged to the garden turned zoo, full of strange human creatures who were supposedly being watched over by a Japanese au pair. A five-year-old Terminator had just finished ripping his pants with a torn branch and a pair of twins were fighting like tigers over a yellow plastic truck while their keeper stubbornly defied a Game Boy. The two dangerous blondes who’d received me upon my arrival—Natalie and Nina—were subjecting their Uncle Jimmy’s girlfriend to a cosmetics session. Lying in a hammock, the poor thing stoically bore the makeover as the two sisters wrung her hair into impossible buns and painted her nails a raging green. Out back, next to the pool, a pinkish chubby nurse turned the pages of People magazine and commented on the latest intimacies of Hollywood’s celebrities to a man seated in a wheelchair.
“Betty, this is our friend Blanca,” said Daniel. “She wants to meet Paul and you.”
Daniel’s presentation left no doubt of the importance of Betty in Paul’s life: she was the conduit to him.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, dear,” she said. “We’re having a lovely afternoon. I was just telling Paul that I don’t like JLo’s new look, what do you guys think?”
“And this, Blanca, is Paul.”
He’d gotten behind his friend’s chair and placed his hands on his shoulders, massaging them. Paul didn’t seem to notice.
My only image of Paul was from former times: that photo pinned on the bulletin board in the basement of that house that had been his, of the young man with wild dark hair, a ribbon across his forehead, and a beer in his hand. Nothing to do with the small being with thin hair and eyes lost in infinity to whom Daniel spoke as if his mind were there in the garden with us.
“Do you recall I recently spoke to you about Blanca, Paul? She is working on Fontana’s legacy, you know. You remember Andres Fontana, right? Do you remember how much you both argued about Thomas Aquinas at my place? My Spanish friend was tough, eh?”
Rebecca’s voice calling us from the kitchen door suddenly replaced Paul’s eternal silence before his old friend’s questions. The children flooded into the house and the rest of us followed. Daniel pushed Paul’s chair while Betty resumed chattering about the latest gossip in the world of entertainment. Until Rebecca, bless her heart, rescued me.
“I love your earrings. Thanks for the wine and chocolates. I hope the kids have treated you well.”
She smiled, but her eyes bore a residue of sadness.
The house had suddenly filled up with voices and noise. The little ones washed their hands in a nearby bathroom and slowly settled in the dining room. Sounds could be heard on the stairs: conversations among adults, children’s laughter. Rebecca meanwhile spoke without looking at me, gliding across the kitchen from one place to another nonstop, organizing what was missing to take to the table.
“I’ll introduce you to my children now. Forgive me for not being with you earlier: we’ve had a long conversation.”
“Don’t worry in the least. I’ve been with Daniel and have met Paul. Tell me, how can I help you?”
“Let’s see . . . First, I think we should carve the turkey and set out the side dishes.”
Before long we were all seated around a large rectangular table, outfitted with a russet tablecloth and white porcelain dishes. Five children and twelve adults. The family, their partners, and their children. Plus a friend from the old days, the female Japanese au pair, Paul’s nurse, and myself. Sixteen active minds and one absent. Annie, Jimmy, and Laura, Rebecca’s children, friendly like their mother, had greeted me warmly before we took our seats. Paul sat between Betty and Daniel and the next spot had a card with my name. A centerpiece with autumn fruits rose in the middle of the table. One of the young blondes, Natalie, seated opposite me, didn’t stop squinting while darting monstrous faces at me. I returned a few.
Daniel leaned toward me.
“Rebecca wants me to say a few words. Here I go, without a safety net.”
He then asked for everyone’s attention by tapping his fork against his glass.
“Dear Cullen family, dear friends. Rebecca has asked me to say a few words for this Thanksgiving dinner, and since I’ve never been able to deny anything to this woman, not even in a hundred lives, here I am, in the capacity of the family’s oldest friend, ready to act as master of ceremonies. But before that, before giving thanks, I’d like to take the liberty of telling you a few things that have been on my mind for some time now—ever since Rebecca told me about her decision to bring us all together here today.
“When I exited your life, you, Annie, Jimmy, and Laura, were still very young, so most likely you hardly have any old memories left.” He then turned his attention toward the children. “Did you know, Natalie and Nina, that when your mother was your age, she baked a cake in the kitchen of my house and we almost all caught fire?” A theatrical gesture simulating an explosion caused a burst of laughter from the kids and made Annie cover her face with her hands. “And you, Jimmy: when I carried you on my shoulders, you’d say that you could almost touch the clouds. And you, Laura, you were so little that you still fell sometimes when you tried to walk. And once, with your dad’s help,” he said, placing a hand on Paul’s shoulder, “I built you a house out of wood and cardboard in the garden. It stood for nearly three days before it came crashing down on a stormy night.
“A long time has elapsed since then, but even though I haven’t seen you in all these years, through your mother I’ve been able to follow your lives: your careers, your loves and progress, the birth of your kids, these handsome boys and girls who are seated among us at this table, eager to sink their teeth into the turkey. Rebecca and I don’t get to see each other as much as we’d like to, but our late-night phone conversations can last for hours, so I am kept up-to-date. Did you know, kids,” he said, addressing the youngest, “that your grandmother is like an owl and doesn’t sleep at night? When the entire world goes to bed, she revives and starts doing things: she gets on the Internet, cooks strange recipes, swims in the pool, calls someone up. Until the wee hours. Sometimes, I receive those calls of hers.
“This is why, Annie, Jimmy, and Laura, I know about what you’ve lived through, what you’ve suffered, and the wonderful people you’ve turned out to be. I know that the three of you are conscious that all of this would have been impossible without the encouragement of this great woman who has prepared the dinner we are all about to share. And this is why I want to ask you that, for her, even if it is only for her, you accept things the way they are today. That we are all here this evening, gathered around this table.
“Getting older when you’re a grown-up is not as much fun as when you’re a kid. No one gives you interesting presents, only books, records, ties, and nonsense like that. But to reach a certain age has its positive side. You lose a few things along the way, but you al
so gain others. You learn to see the world from a different perspective, for instance, and you develop strange feelings, such as compassion. Which is nothing other than wanting to see others free of suffering, regardless of the previous suffering they might have caused us. Without holding anyone accountable or looking back. Today we don’t know if Paul suffers or not: we are unable to probe his brain. Perhaps being here today may not make him any more or less happy, although it is thought that people like him don’t lose affective memory or the feeling of pleasure and that, in their own way, they’re grateful for a simple affectionate word, a spoonful of ice cream, or a caress.
“It is said that compassion is a sign of emotional maturity. It’s not a moral obligation or a feeling that springs from reflection. It’s simply something that, when it comes, it comes. Wanting to have Paul among us today is not a betrayal or a sign of weakness on the part of Rebecca. It’s simply, I think, an example of her enormous generosity. For me, Paul was a great friend, my best friend during a certain period. He did things for me that I wish no one would ever have to do. Did you know, kids, that he once had to cut my toenails? Clip, clip, clip, with an enormous pair of old scissors that someone lent him. He was a great friend to me, but that is only one aspect of him.
“I am aware that he was not always a good inspiration as a father or as a partner, and that it’s hard to forgive and forget. His presence today won’t overcome the past or compensate for the years of absence. But Rebecca has so wished it and I ask that we respect her decision. Paul may not have been a good father, but I know, because he told me so himself, that in spite of how disordered his life was and in his own way, he loved you all a lot, very much. Until the last minute that there was a spark of light in his mind.
“I don’t want to go on any longer because that turkey is waiting for us to eat it. Today is Thanksgiving and I believe all of us present here, regardless of how the past has made us suffer, have lots of things to be thankful for. What I’m not quite sure about is to whom we must be thankful, because that is a matter of personal choice. But, thinking about whom we could all thank today, an old song has come to mind that Rebecca liked in the old days: a song that is on a big black record that I know she sometimes plays on that piece of junk she’s got in the basement. Because in her strange nights, in case you didn’t know, kids, your grandmother also sings and dances around the house, with the music at full blast and in her nightgown. Yes, yes, don’t laugh: spy on her late at night, you’ll see. That song I’m telling you about was sung ages ago by another grandmother also a bit crazy by the name of Joan Baez, who in turn borrowed it from another mad grandmother by the name of Violeta Parra. The song’s lyrics are in Spanish and it’s called ‘Gracias a la vida.’ It gives thanks to everything that helps us be happy on a daily basis. The eyes to see the stars, the alphabet to compose beautiful words, the feet to roam through cities and puddles, and all those daily activities that some no longer have, and those of us who do should feel immensely grateful for. Because sometimes, even if the going gets tough, in the end we always have those small things. So let’s all give this Thanksgiving Day a loud, strong ‘Here’s to life’ in Spanish and English: ¡Gracias a la vida! Here’s to life!”