So Much Blue

by Percival Everett

  He walked the key over to me. “Why do you say that?”

  “You are very kind to me,” I told him.

  Pierre shrugged. The phone rang. I had a feeling as he walked across the room that the call was for me. I stood and walked toward the stairs. He answered the phone and turned to me and nodded.

  “Just a moment. I will ring his room,” he said and gestured for me to run upstairs.

  I took the stairs two at a time, unlocked my door, and actually lay on my bed before the phone had a chance to ring. I feigned grogginess as I answered.

  “Did I wake you?” Linda asked.

  “It’s okay. I had to get up anyway to answer the phone,” I said and listened to her soft laugh. That relaxed me. “I wasn’t sleeping well anyway.”

  “I’m sorry to call so early.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Will has a fever.”

  “How much of a fever?”

  “One-oh-two. He looks tired and says he feels bad.”

  “Sore throat?”

  Linda asked Will how his throat felt. “He says it burns.”

  “What is it, seven there?”

  “Yeah. I gave him Tylenol thirty minutes ago. The fever just came on so suddenly. He came and sat on my lap and I could feel how hot he was.”

  “I’m going to try to change my ticket. I can probably be there in the morning.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said.

  “I’ll check on it, okay?”

  “All right.”

  “Well, no school tomorrow,” I said.

  “That’s for sure.”

  “Let me talk to Will.”

  She put Will on the phone.

  “Hey, little buddy,” I said.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “You feel pretty bad, eh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Try to get some sleep, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, buddy?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, what?”

  “Wally Reynolds got a hamster.”

  “He did? What’s the hamster’s name?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Is it cute?”

  “Kinda.”

  “Would you like to have one?”

  “No. A turtle.”

  “We’ll talk about it when I get home, okay?”

  “I miss you.” His voice trailed off a bit.

  “I miss you, too.”

  House

  I felt an urge to return to El Salvador. I needed to find that lost piece of myself, whatever that meant. That was how I talked to myself, being accustomed, as I was, to making no sense. I sat in my studio and stared at the painting. I recalled the previous night. Well into the morning I could not sleep because of a pain in my left calf. I thought I had pulled a muscle, but I could not figure how or when. It ached and caused me to sleep fitfully. It was a familiar pain and then I remembered the injury from El Salvador. The pain was the same pain from thirty years earlier, but when I finally pulled myself from bed and walked to the shower, the pain was gone. All that was left was the memory of the revisiting of the pain, of the hurt. I was spooked by the ghost of the pain, its having felt so real. I studied the painting.

  Plato would have me believe that my painting was an imitation of something. In fact my perceptions of the concrete things were tenebrous representations of some ideal. So I, the painter, was imitating an imitation, making a simulacrum of a simulacrum. Fuck Plato, I thought, the painting in front of me was not an imitation, not a representation, but the concrete ideal. My perception of it might well have been a representation, but the painting, well, it was the painting.

  I locked up the shed and walked into the house to find Linda in the kitchen. I spoke without any throat clearing, vocal or gestural. “I know that you’re angry with me. I get it. I think that you will get over it. I just want you to know that what I am going to say has nothing to do with any of this.”

  She looked at me and I could see that she was a little afraid.

  “I’m going to take a little trip.”

  She sat in the chair nearest her.

  “I am not leaving you. I would never leave you. I just have to take this trip. I need to go to El Salvador and I can’t really explain why.”

  She didn’t speak.

  “I don’t mean to scare you, but this is something I have to do.”

  She nodded almost as if she understood something.

  “I always knew something happened down there,” she said. “I asked Richard, but he wouldn’t say anything.”

  I looked at her face. I had kept the secret to myself at first because I didn’t want her to think of me as a bad man, because I didn’t want to think of myself as a bad man. It was too scary for me to talk about it. Then, slowly, it became a secret that I kept because it belonged to me and finally I didn’t know whether it was fear or selfishness that had me guarding it. You keep a secret long enough and it simply cannot be told or will not be told.

  “But you won’t tell me what it is,” she said.

  “I will tell you. But I cannot tell you now because I do not want to eclipse what is in the air regarding April. I was wrong. I was stupid. I do not resent your anger, but understand it. April’s anger is more confusing to me, but it is what it is.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want to leave pretty soon.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry to leave you with the kids,” I said.

  “We’ll be all right.”

  “I know that. You’re so capable. That’s one of the things I like about you.” It must have occurred to her that I had not used the word love. I would tell her about the girl and the boy and the hand. I would tell her about the little soldier in the light-blue socks. But I would not tell her the real secret. I would not tell her that I had married her without love. As I thought about that I wondered why I was going to El Salvador at all.

  1979

  I think Richard and I were astonished by how easy it was for us to board the plane. Tad of course took it all in stride. Given the trouble just miles away, we were also surprised at how empty the flight was. We settled into our seats. I didn’t look at Richard. I didn’t look at anyone. I closed my eyes and I was asleep before we took off. I dreamed about being locked in something the doctor called a sleep cabinet and fighting the urge to dream. The doctor kept coming in and taking my temperature with a thermometer shoved up into my armpit. The doctor would laugh wildly and tell me I was lucky, then say sweet dreams before leaving. I could hear him though I was unable to wake, but I fought dreaming.

  I awoke still buckled into my seat, thinking, rather hoping, that I had managed to sleep through the seven-hour flight, but only about forty minutes had elapsed. Richard was asleep and snoring beside me. Tad was across the aisle, staring through the window at the morning sky. I opened the shade to look out my own window, but the sun made me shut it again. Still, I was pleased to have my own window. The flight attendant came by and I asked for a beer and she smiled a smile that was not judgmental about my drinking so early. When she delivered it I thanked her for the beer and her smile.

  I thumbed through a Time magazine that had an article about the so-called situation in El Salvador. I was saddened by the fact that I had been right there and had no idea whether what I was reading was true. But I read it all and at the end knew nothing more. I apologized to Richard as I stepped over him on my way to the toilet.

  I had to wait in the aisle behind a handsome man who flirted with the handsome flight attendant. He said something that caused her to blush when she saw me. She stepped back into the galley and the man turned to face me.

  “Heading home?” he asked. He studied my dirty clothes, my overall ragged appearance.

  “Yes.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Philadelphia,” I said.

  “It’s a mess back there,” he said.
r />   “Philadelphia?” I asked.

  “No, El Salvador,” he said. “What were you doing there?”

  “Vacation,” I said. “You?”

  He gave me an incredulous look. “Journalist.”

  It seemed odd to me that a journalist would be leaving just when so much was happening. “Why leave now?”

  “They don’t pay me that well,” he said. A woman came out of the washroom and we let her pass. The man didn’t enter. Instead, he continued our conversation. “What kind of vacation?”

  “Just a vacation.” I pointed at the washroom door. “Are you going in?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  I sat on the arm of an empty seat in the last row and waited. In short order he was out again. “All yours,” he said.

  I closed and locked the door and looked over at my face in the mirror while I peed. I looked so much rougher than I had before the trip. In addition I was extremely filthy. I hadn’t realized just how much dirt was on me, on my clothes, on my face, in my hair. I looked like I had been in a firefight and I understood the interest taken in me by the journalist. He was again chatting with the attendant when I came out.

  “My name is Ben,” he said. He reached out to shake my hand.

  “Hello, Ben.” I didn’t offer my name, but started up toward my seat.

  He followed me. “I’d like to talk to you,” he said.

  “I’m tired,” I told him without looking back. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

  “Just a minute of your time,” he said.

  I turned to face him just a couple of rows shy of Tad and Richard. I was angry and confused and being confused made me angrier. I caught his eyes and held them. “Listen, I’m in no mood to talk to you. I’m not going to talk to you. Please don’t bother me. I might do something you won’t like.”

  The man held up his hands and backed away.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Richard got up to let me back into my seat. “Who’s that guy?” he asked.

  “Reporter.” That was all I said.

  Now Tad was asleep, his feet up in the empty seat next to him, his back to the window.

  “So, are you going to tell me what happened while we were grabbing my passport?”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “Kevin.”

  I looked around. The seats behind us were empty. “This is between us, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m not fucking kidding around,” I told him. “You can never repeat this. Do you understand?”

  “Okay.”

  “A soldier came up to me while I was trying to burn Carlos’s book.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I didn’t see him and he shot at me.”

  “The fuck,” he said. “At you?”

  “I turned around and I was holding the pistol.” I stopped and looked over at sleeping Tad and behind us again. “I shot him.”

  Richard didn’t say anything. I wasn’t looking at him so I don’t know if he was looking at me.

  “I shot him,” I repeated. “I don’t know if I meant to do it, but somehow the gun went off.”

  “In the leg, right? You shot him in the leg,” Richard said.

  “He’s dead,” I whispered. I looked at Richard’s hollow expression. “I killed him.”

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Well, no.”

  “He shot at you. What were supposed to do?”

  “You can’t make this any better,” I said.

  “It was self-defense.”

  “Don’t talk.”

  “What were you supposed to do?”

  “I was supposed to be in Philadelphia.”

  Richard stopped talking.

  Paris

  Victoire surprised me at my hotel the afternoon before my departure that night. I had called her to tell her of my plans to leave. My son was sick and I had get home as soon as possible.

  The clerk called me. “There is a young lady here to see you,” he said. “Would you like me to send her up?”

  “Please.”

  I opened the door and waited for Victoire to step out of the elevator. I greeted her with a long hug. She kissed me and I kissed her back, but then moved away.

  “I’m sorry I have to leave in such a hurry,” I said.

  “I understand,” she said. “You are a good father.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I should be there now.”

  She sat on the bed and watched me pack.

  “Je t’aime,” she said.

  “I know. I love you, too. I hope you know that.”

  “I do,” she said. “I also know that I will not see you again.”

  I looked to see if she was crying. She was not. “I’d like to think that’s not true,” I said.

  “We both know it is.”

  “I suppose.”

  “If I came to the U.S., would you find a way to see me?” she asked. She reached up, put her hand on my arm, and gently pulled me to sitting next to her.

  “That would be difficult,” I said.

  “I could come live near you and you could hire me to teach French to your children.”

  “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  “I guess not.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “When do you have to leave for the airport?”

  “In a couple of hours.”

  “Then you have time to make love to me,” she said.

  “I don’t think I can. I think I’m too sad.”

  “Then we can be naked and hold each other.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want me to go to the airport with you?” she asked.

  “No.”

  House

  The flight was faster and smoother than my last flights to and from San Salvador. In 1979 I had flown through Miami. This time I was routed through Dallas, with a layover long enough for me to decide against a variety of fried airport fare. I shared the plane to San Salvador with families and couples, all wholesome, on their way to a vacation destination. There might have been some business types traveling solo forward in first and business class, but back in economy I was the singular loner. The plane was wider than the one in 1979, two rows of seats three deep instead of two. The perky Pan Am stewardesses were replaced with a sturdy-looking effeminate man and an even sturdier-looking nunnish woman with a Southern accent. Their competence was a comfort, as I had no doubt that either of them could open the emergency door upside down under water. The level of comfort was incongruous with my slowly growing fear. I was cold to my center as I realized that I would soon be landing in a country in which I was guilty of a capital crime. I entertained the notion that I was going there to be caught, that I would be required to pay for my crime. Nothing could have been less true. Still, I wasn’t sure why I was going.

  I sat by a window, a young couple between me and the aisle. The woman smiled at me and I smiled back.

  “Are you on vacation?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We’re finally going on our honeymoon,” she said. “Honeymoon, I hate that word.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “That you’re going on your honeymoon, not that you hate the word.”

  She must have noticed my ring. “Is your wife on the flight?”

  “No.”

  “Is she waiting for you there?”

  The husband cleared his throat, a signal that she was talking too much.

  “My wife is dead,” I told her.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  I perhaps should have experienced a bit of guilt for that lie, but I didn’t. The lie actually felt good. It hung in the air like a kind of thin curtain between us. The lie felt good because I had taken control of the narrative around me.

  The husband put his hand on the wife’s forearm, I assumed to stop her if she thought to speak again.

  I looked out my window at the blue nothing. I felt freer, lighter.

  “She di
ed suddenly,” I said without turning to her. “No one knows why. Just fell down dead.”

  “Oh my,” she said. “I’m so so sorry.”

  I turned to her. “She looked a little like you,” I said.

  The woman offered a weak smile, then grabbed the SkyMall catalog.

  Ilopango Airport could have been any airport. The carousels were the same, the chairs were the same, the customs agents wore the same bored faces. Except for the man facing me. My mustachioed officer gave me a long look that I wouldn’t have called hard as much as strangely curious, perhaps ironic.

  “What brings you to El Salvador?” he asked in perfect English.

  “The climate,” I said.

  He nodded. “Planning to visit Lake Ilopango?”

  The question caught me off guard and I realized I was paranoid. “Why, should I?”

  “It’s a beautiful place. But there are many beautiful places.” He adjusted his desk light and studied my passport.

  “I’ll probably get there. I’m going to drive around, I think. I like driving in the mountains.”

  “You’ve been here before?” he asked.

  “No.” I was three passports into the future and I was certain he had no way of knowing I had been there before.

  “Hablas español?”

  “I understand a little. Hablo un poco.”

  He nodded. “Phrase book?” He smiled.

  “Pretty much.”

  “It took me a long time to learn English,” he said. “It was very difficult.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” I said.

  He turned my passport over and over.

  “I’m an artist,” I said. I didn’t know why I told him that. “A painter.”

  “Will you make any paintings here?”

  “No, just looking.”

  He gave my passport one more long study, looked again at my face, and stamped the passport. “Have a nice stay.”

  Paris

  I landed at Logan early in the morning. Whatever snow there had been was mostly slush now. Everything was dirty and messy. I caught the bus to Providence and a taxi to my house. All was quiet, dark. I paid the driver and entered the house. I worried that I might startle Linda so I whispered her name from across the room. She stirred slightly.