I nodded.
She went inside. I kicked at a couple of light-colored stones appearing to float over the darker gravel. A light rain began to fall, but I remained outside the house, in the middle of the road. I blurred my vision and stared at the rocks on the road and found it looked like a Pollock. I heard the door open.
I turned to see the young woman step out with a man my age or slightly older behind her. He was wearing new jeans, stiff and rolled above his sneakers, and a plaid flannel shirt. I stared at the man’s face and he stared at mine. He walked to me, put his arms around me, and cried. I cried, also.
1979
There is a cruelty in abstraction. It cuts into flesh. It relies on our fear of mortality for its meaning. The way it disturbs, distresses is meant to undermine some illusion of duration, of time controlled, even simply perceived. My paintings were abstract and splashed with guilt as much as paint, scratched with shame as much as with the knife or spatula. Back in Philadelphia I discovered bad dreams and fitful sleep. I locked myself away to explore those abstractions. My isolation wore well as I was an artist and artists were supposed to be moody and at least occasionally reclusive. The paintings I made I could just barely look at. I drank. When I emerged from my bed, so to speak, and went to my studio and revealed my paintings at my review, no one said a word. My professors, one after another, quietly, privately gave me nods of approval, then backed away as if something was wrong with me. They had no idea.
Linda, during my down time, called several times a week. It was clear that I was hurting her, but I couldn’t bring myself to be near her, anyone. I lived with Richard and he knew what had happened and I barely saw him once every couple of days. He and Linda bonded over concern for me, though he never told her what happened in San Salvador. He told her about nearly everything, but not about the dead child or about the little man I had killed. Excuse me, murdered. I drank.
I wanted to be with her but I felt trapped inside myself. When she reached for me, I didn’t know how to reach back. But she persisted. She came to my review, joined me near the end of the show in front of the largest canvas.
“It’s amazing,” she said.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so, so—”
“It’s okay. You’ve been working. It’s good.”
“They’re shit,” I said. “I’ve been offered a show. They’re shit and I’ve been offered a show.”
“I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too. Want to grab a bite?”
“Please.”
We sat in a Japanese restaurant and ate sushi. I drank hot sake. She told me what she liked about the paintings. I cannot say that she was right or wrong or even whether what she was saying made sense, but it soothed me. She told me she didn’t like one of the canvases and I asked why.
“It’s a good thing that I don’t like it,” she said. “If it wasn’t working against something, some likeness or idea, I wouldn’t be able to find it difficult.”
“You know what I think?” I asked.
“What?”
“I think you’re a lot smarter than I am.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I’m just a dumb painter. I put color on canvas.”
We sat and ate some more.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked. “I was worried about you.”
“I’m better now. I’m glad we found Richard’s brother, but I didn’t want to see a war. Or an almost war.”
“You’re home now.”
Linda made me feel safe, normal. I wanted my life to be safe, normal. We ate together that night and every night for several months. We became a habit. Safe and normal. And I drank.
House
His name was Emberto Rodriguez. I had not had children that day in 1979 and so could not fully understand the depth of his grief. But now I did. We spoke only of the weather, of the rain that fell every day, of the changes in their country, about the mysterious public building. Betty translated.
A young man in his thirties came into the house with a woman, his wife. He was confused to find an American in his father’s home. I shook his hand and imagined I saw in him the four-year-old Luis. His name was Arturo. His wife’s name was Elsa and she seemed more distrustful than any of them.
Arturo was very quiet. He listened but did not join in the small talk. I kept looking at his eyes, wondering if he might remember the moment we shared, the hand, but I never had the sense that he did. I recalled how my children remembered so little from before the age of six. It could have been argued that what they did remember was there only because of familial repetition.
“Things are much better since the war,” Betty translated Emberto.
“I can see that,” I said. “Sadly, my country remains exactly the same.”
Betty translated and they all laughed, perhaps nervously, perhaps with no understanding of my joke.
“Betty tells me you’re trying to figure out how to use your new building,” I said.
Emberto shook his head. “The money they spend does not make sense.”
I nodded. “A doctor could use it as a clinic,” I said.
“That would be good,” Emberto said through Betty, it being clear that it was her answer also.
The sound of a sudden downpour quieted us for a moment. I looked out at the rain and remembered that day. I think Emberto did as well. If Arturo didn’t recall it, I believed he felt it.
I was invited to stay for dinner.
“No, I have to go,” I told them. I stood and shook Emberto’s hand. We shared a look, but didn’t hug again.
I nodded good-bye to Arturo and his wife.
“I will walk you back to your car,” Betty said.
Arturo followed us out. He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. I turned and reached out to shake. He said nothing, in Spanish or English.
Betty and I walked back along the wet gravel. Some yards away I looked to see that Arturo was still watching.
“Thank you for taking me there,” I said to Betty.
“The story of Emberto’s daughter is a terrible one. The village will always remember it.”
“What was her name?” I asked.
“Her name was Lavada.”
“That’s a beautiful name. I should have asked that thirty years ago. I should have asked it back at the house.”
“No, you did fine.”
I looked at Betty, but she was not looking at me. “Thank you,” I said.
Betty stopped walking. “Would you like to visit Lavada’s grave?”
This took me by surprise and it occurred to me that this was probably why I had come. “Yes, I would.”
“So, why were you here back then?” Betty asked. She led me left through the broken rails of a wooden fence and onto a dirt path.
“Stupid stuff,” I said. “My friend’s brother got into trouble and we came to find him.”
“You are a good friend,” she said.
“I don’t know about that. Who knows why I really came. I came to this country like it didn’t matter. I had no idea what was going on here and I didn’t care once I was here. It was a bad time. We just happened onto Emberto after, after—”
“Emberto is a good man. Arturo hardly ever speaks.”
“He was pretty young to see what he saw,” I said. “I have children. I can’t imagine if they had to see that sort of violence.”
“You’re right. It was a bad time.”
“What about Arturo’s mother?”
“She died before Lavada was killed. She was sick. That’s the story I heard.” She stopped us at a lone grave. There was a wrought iron fence around it. There was a nice headstone. The grave was between an old storage shed recently painted red and a new barn that was unpainted. I didn’t recognize the place at all.
“I helped dig this grave,” I said, more to myself than to Betty. I turned and tried to imagine the path in which I had found Lavada’s body but everything seemed turned around.
Betty sai
d nothing.
I looked around one more time. “Well, thank you,” I said.
“Do you want to say a prayer?” she asked.
“No, thank you.”
“You don’t believe in God?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t mind if you do, but I don’t.”
“Neither do I,” she said.
This surprised me. “Why did you ask me if I wanted to pray?”
“Usually people who do things like this are believers. You came all this way like you need to repent.”
“I guess that’s right,” I said. “It must seem odd.”
“A little. That’s not a bad thing.”
“Thanks for saying that,” I said.
Betty led me back to my Nissan Sentra.
House
I married Linda. She was happy. I was content. We set about life. Years passed and my arrested development stalled our having children. But all of us finally develop and I did too and so we did have children. I loved both my daughter and my son. I felt normal. I felt safe. But the dreams persisted. I drank too much on occasion but was always excused, disappeared on occasion but was forgiven.
House
The drive back to San Salvador was clearer, but it felt longer. I didn’t know what I had achieved by my visit, though for some reason I felt better. I arrived at my hotel at two in the morning. I was starving, but there was nothing to be done about that. I did not go up to my room, but sat in the deserted lobby. The night clerk asked me several times if I needed anything and then finally left me alone. At four, before any sign of morning showed, I left the hotel and walked the wet streets. I followed the Calle Poniente east until I came to the Catedral Metropolitana and remembered that I had been east and south of there. Everything continued to look completely different from what I thought I remembered. But as testimony to the unreliability of memory, I smelled a brewery and realized the breeze was coming from the north. In my mind I realized I was walking with Linda. I could hear her voice telling me that I was a good man. She did actually say that to me on occasion, out of the blue, at times when I was revisiting the event that made me question my goodness. She didn’t know, but she knew and I had always taken her for granted. I was broken and felt unworthy of love, oddly not of being loved, but of loving. To love seemed so special and how could I achieve that? I walked north, but found no brewery and then the odor was gone, just like that, as if it had never been in the air. I was standing in front of a Mister Donut shop when I looked up the street and saw the defunct tanks of a brewery. I remembered the tanks. I did not remember the street. The Mister Donut had just opened and its bright lights spilled out into the still nearly dark street. As if in concert, the sun came out and made everything daytime. As everything became daytime, my desire to find the spot of my crime evaporated. My Linda said to me that I was a good and decent man and I believed her. I did not need to relive that death. Fact was, I did not need to relive anything.
House
Linda was cleaning the kitchen when I walked into the house through the back door. It was late afternoon but still bright out.
“I’ll take care of that,” I said.
“You scared me,” she said, resting a hand on the sink.
“I’m sorry.”
“When did you land?”
“Just a few hours ago. Where are the guys?” I put my bag down, stepped closer to hug her.
“Both of them have sleepovers. How about that?”
“How are you?”
“I’m okay. I’ve just made tea.”
“That sounds perfect.”
We sat at the table and stared at the pot while the tea steeped. “So, did you find what you were looking for?
“I don’t know. I didn’t know what I was looking for.” Sitting there with her right then I realized that telling her the secret I should have told her so long ago was not going to bring us any closer and probably wouldn’t make sense anyway. All of that was in another world and another life. There were all sorts of things I could tell her, confess to, but why?
“I was so angry with you,” she said.
“I know.” I was pleased she had used the past tense. “I screwed up.”
“Not just about April,” she said. “I’ve been angry for years. You’ve just never been here.”
I listened. Before I might have become defensive, perhaps even hurt, but not now. She poured the tea. She was thirty years older than she was when we first met. She was slightly heavier. Her face was interestingly lined. Her hair was mostly gray. She had never been more beautiful than she was as she poured that tea. And I loved her. I understood that I had always loved her and I was so sad that I had never allowed her to feel that love.
I was about to say I was sorry, but I was done with apologies, pointless apologies, empty words. Instead I said, “I want you to see something.”
“Okay.”
“Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
I took Linda’s hand and walked her out the back door toward the shed. I could feel the muscles in her hand tense. I said nothing. I unlocked the door. “I should have let you in here a long time ago.” I opened the studio. I let her walk in in front of me and I switched on the lights. It was another world, the lights flooding everything inside, the covered windows keeping out everything else. Linda stood in front of the painting, moved slowly to the middle of it. I stood behind her.
“So much blue,” she said. “So much blue.”
“Now you know everything.”
“So much blue.”
PERCIVAL EVERETT is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of nearly thirty books, including I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Erasure, and Percival Everett by Virgil Russell.
The text of So Much Blue is set in Dante MT Pro. Design and composition by Bookmobile Design & Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free, 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.
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