Manuel, Henry, and I waited just outside her room as the doctor disconnected the life support. We were told she could go at any time or it could take several hours. It didn’t matter. We knew we would be there for her, and for us.
I had placed all the beautiful flowers, from her garden, around her room, and we played a variety of her favorite songs that Henry had downloaded onto his iPod.
If I had to describe what it feels like to watch someone die, I’m sure I would not be able to. Although I have spent almost my entire adult life writing about people’s feelings and emotions and desires, I can’t possibly explain the intense pain that seared through my heart. I kept looking into the faces of my brother and Manuel. Henry had seen many people pass on, of course. Manuel had watched his wife die in childbirth. I had been with my father. But I couldn’t register anything unusual in their faces and I wondered if they could in mine.
Mother’s breathing was shallow and sporadic. The respirator had kept a constant rhythm forcing her lungs to take in the life force. Now she was on her own.
The breath. The ultimate gift. We take for granted how blessed we are to have it. A breath is the most important thing to happen to every human being. We celebrate the precious moment that a baby takes its first breath. Why do we forget breath’s importance until we are about to take our last breath? Watching my parent’s taking their own final breaths has only confirmed I must appreciate as many breaths of my own, as I can. Manuel held one of Mother’s hands and I the other. Henry sat at the foot of her bed. At exactly twelve noon, she stopped breathing. The song that was playing was Red Sails in the Sunset. It was a song that she and Manuel had their first dance to. I looked over at Manuel and through his tears, I detected a smile.
Her face finally looked at peace. Although I shed many tears, I felt a sense of relief. I hoped that maybe she would find Rachel. I hoped that maybe my father helped her cross over. Being the skeptic that I am, I knew that I might be fooling myself.
Henry and I let Manuel lay with her for a while. Henry and I stood outside her door and wept in each other’s arms.
• • •
Mother had asked for some of her ashes to be buried next to my father and Rachel, but she very much wanted to be close to the man she had loved for so long. As I entered Manuel’s splendid home, my eyes were immediately drawn to a painting above the mantelpiece, a painting I had thought my mother had destroyed many years before. Little angel Rachel stood before an adobe style chapel, her wings spread, her eyes looking toward heaven. The song “Play that funky music white boy” began in my head, and I was down for the count.
Fortunately, Manuel was aware of my disorder and calmly set me on one of the couches in the living room. Michael, once again, held a wet rag on my forehead. Déjà vu all over again. It took a while to get over the surge of powerful feelings spinning in my head.
“When did mother give you that painting?” I asked Manuel, pointing to it.
“I discovered it in the garage a couple of years ago,” he replied.
I explained that I thought she had burned it.
Manuel told me that when he discovered it, it had been damaged slightly. When he asked Mother about it, she told him she pulled it out of the fire almost as quickly as she had put it in. She burned other paintings that day, but changed her mind about this one.
“I don’t mean to be rude Manuel, but why would she give you a painting of a little girl you never knew?” I asked sitting up.
Manuel held out his hand to me. “I will show you something,” he said and took my hand. Michael followed close behind. We walked down a long corridor, passing the formal dining room. A large glass table top sat perched atop a wrought iron base in the shape of a tree. The room was teeming with light that poured in through the massive windows. The kitchen sparkled with industrial steel. A long marble topped island in the middle of the kitchen was surrounded by modern wooden bar stools. I coveted the six burner Wolf stove and copper hood. We stepped out of the back of the house through plantain shuttered French doors. The hills strewn with vineyards were heavy with bursting fruit.
“We are one of the finest wineries,” Michael explained.
We walked down one hill and then up several stairs. We climbed the crest, and there was the chapel. The one in my mother’s painting. Manuel explained that he had built the Chapel to be closer to God. It was beautiful. We walked up to the front of the church and stood before doors that were made of thick Vermont maple. They were heavy and hard to open. Inside rows of handmade pews, each one slightly different in size and color, filled the small church. The stained glass windows looked as though they were made by children. Innocent, busy, and bursting with too much color. The light streamed through them casting rainbows everywhere in the Chapel.
“Manuel . . . this is beautiful!”
“Si, Miss Sarah, it is home to me.”
We walked up to the altar where Manuel and Michael genuflected in front of a beautiful wooden cross. I hadn’t been in a church for eons, but I instinctively crossed myself, too. Manuel placed Mother’s urn in front of him as he kneeled in prayer. The emotion in his voice revealed a lifetime of love and devastating loss and the comfort of eternity. I had a deep understanding right then that I was an orphan. I hadn’t processed this yet. I had so many other things to tend to. A lump came up in my throat which I tried to suppress. I had cried privately a few times, and I intended to keep it that way.
We had previously planned to bury my mother’s urn in the tiny, family cemetery behind the chapel the next morning. Manuel’s mother, father and wife were already buried there. She would be resting next to his wife and a family she never knew. This is what she wanted.
I asked her about this while she was still responsive in the hospital. She replied, “Why is it odd? We all loved Manuel and he loved us!”
Hmmm . . . guess it made some sort of sense to me.
After we all had some private time in the chapel, Manuel mentioned he had planned an early supper. He assumed that I might like to go to my room and freshen up. I was feeling a little overwhelmed. His suggestion was very thoughtful. We walked back toward the house as the sun began to set.
I was introduced to an older woman, Rosa, who was to show me my room. We climbed the marbled staircase. I looked down and saw that Michael was watching me until I got to the landing. He gave me a little wave. I was shown to a large guest bedroom. The room was perfection. Shades of yellow and white splashed the room. Toile curtains hung in heavy cascades. An adobe style fireplace was already burning in the corner, filling the room with the scent of pine and cedar. Rosa had already laid my suitcase neatly on the bed. I thanked her as she excused herself.
I wandered into the bathroom. I am fairly sure that I made an audible noise as I gazed at the bathroom of my dreams, hell, anyone’s dreams! Blue slate floors and white porcelain fixtures. The bath tub took center stage in the middle of the room. I assumed what hung from the ceiling was the bath fixture as there were no regular taps on the tub. It perched directly over the center of the bath like a swan’s neck. I had never seen anything like it. I had to try it immediately. I turned on the taps, which were positioned on the wall behind the bath, and watched as the water cascaded from the spout like a waterfall. I stripped down. Just as I was about to become the mermaid I had imagined being as a kid, I heard a knock at the door. “Damn!” I pulled one of the oversized, pristine white towels off its rack and scooted back into the bedroom.
Michael was at the door. Seeing me wrapped in a towel, he blushed and apologized profusely. I was nonchalant about it. As I attempted to tuck a stray hair behind my ear my towel slipped, exposing one of my breasts. I re-wrapped myself immediately.
Michael turned his back to me completely mortified, “Miss Sarah, I only wanted to offer a walk before dinner . . . I thought you might like to see the rest of the house and property! I am so sorry to disturb you!”
“It’s quite alright, Michael. I was just going to take a bath . . . . Oh no! The bath!�
�� I had left it running . . . . I raced back into the bathroom in the nick of time. The water level had reached the brim. I called out that I would love to take a walk with him. I would meet him in about an hour downstairs.
“Good!” he said, closing the door behind him.
I slipped into the tub. “Awww . . . man! Luxury!”
The grounds were as extraordinary as everything else in Manuel’s home. Along the way, a number of various herbs, vegetables, and flowers lined the path. Michael walked me down to the pool where a grand gazebo sat like a sentry overlooking the pool. “This just gets better and better!” I said to Michael, taking it all in.
“Yes, my father is very proud of it all,” he replied just as the sky began to rumble.
“Is that thunder?” I asked.
“Yes . . . big storm coming.”
And as if on cue, large drops of rain pelted us. He grabbed my hand and we bolted for cover in the gazebo. Sheltered under the gazebo roof, we watched the deluge. There was no warning. We were stranded and quite far from the house.
“I will call the house, so they can bring us umbrellas,” Michael said, reading my mind. “It should only be a few minutes. The gazebo will keep us dry until then.”
“Ok, just don’t start singing, ‘I am sixteen going on seventeen.’”
He looked at me blankly. “I don’t know what you are referring to, Miss Sarah.”
“Never mind . . . it wasn’t that funny!”
Taking his coat off, Michael wrapped my shoulders with it, then he made the call to the house. It didn’t take long before the troops arrived, Manuel among them. Even with oversized umbrellas, we were still soaked by the time we got back inside the house.
I changed my clothes for the third time that day.
We were supposed to have dinner in the stately dining room, but I suggested it might be more intimate in the kitchen at the cozy banquette. As everything else about Vista Linda, the meal was flawless. Manuel was thoughtful as we enjoyed his famous tamales with Spanish rice and sangria. It seemed a good time to ask Manuel to tell the story of how he had actually met and fallen in love with Mother.
He took a deep breath before beginning. “I was running to catch the bus that was to take me to my parents’ hotel after school, because I was late. The driver stopped when he saw me, so I could board. My breath was heavy as I got on the bus. I felt like I could collapse. I heard the sounds of girls laughing. I found a seat next to an old lady.
“When I looked across the aisle I saw a young girl reading a book. There were a lot of girls on the bus, and they seemed to be together. The one across from me wasn’t paying attention to the others, so I thought maybe she wasn’t with them. She was very pretty.
“She had beautiful blonde hair and large eyes. I could tell even though she hadn’t looked up from her book. The next stop was mine, so I got up. The girls did too, except for the one reading. Someone called “Olivia, we have to get off now.” She put down her book, and I saw that she was with these girls. I let her go before me, and she thanked me. I looked into her eyes, and I wanted to talk to her, but she got off very fast.
All the girls walked down the street toward the market place. I was supposed to go the other way, but I wanted to talk to this girl, so I followed them. When we got to the market, all the girls went different places, except for Olivia who sat down on a bench to read her book. I watched her for long time. She must love this book, I thought.
“I finally went to her and sat with her. My English wasn’t that good, but I told her that I saw her on the bus. She didn’t want to talk. I asked why she didn’t go with her friends. She said that she didn’t like to do tourist things. She explained that they were on school trip. I suggested that I take her to places not for tourists. She was uncomfortable. I invited her to come see my parents at their hotel first. She agreed and told a friend she would be back at their hotel for dinner. We walked for a while and talked. I had never met so smart a young girl.”
He paused. He was fighting tears. Manuel went on to describe Mother meeting his parents. He took her to one of the beaches that the locals frequented. For the next three days, he showed her what she never would have experienced as a tourist. “In such a short time we felt things so fast.” He sighed.
I asked him if he could elaborate a bit more providing it wasn’t too difficult.
“How does one explain how the earth moves around the sun? How each star winks back at us when night falls. That each drop of rain is full of the ocean, and the ocean is full of the rain? I cannot explain in words how my heart was captured by this girl. Olivia said we had been together in another life, and we found each other in this life too late.”
It was clear to him that she had to go back home. She was already engaged to my father. Manuel was going to preach the word of God. Both had lives far away from the other and they were too young or maybe too scared to change their intended destinies.
As I learned in the journal, Mother had become pregnant at this time. I asked Manuel about that.
“I found out much later about that. We had one night together. Neither one of us had been with anyone before. But Olivia knew that she had to make everything right, so she proceeded to plan the wedding to your father. There was no other decision to be made in those years.”
They continued to write to one another. She decided to come back again the next summer . . . which she did. They formed an undying bond that summer that lasted for fifty years!
I was beginning to get tipsy. My glass of Sangria kept being topped off and I just kept drinking. The storm was relentless outside with huge thunder claps and piercingly bright lightning. I was so riveted by Manuel’s story I barely noticed.
Mother and Manuel were forever bonded by love and loss in their lives. He told me that Rachel and his wife had died around the same time. The losses had only made their hearts stronger.
When Manuel suggested we all retire, I began thinking about being alone, in a strange house, in a strange bed with my strangely vivid imagination. As I weaved my way up the stairs to my bedroom Michael asked if I would like some tea or if I required anything before he went to bed. I turned to see him looking up at me. “I could use some company, I think.” I surprised myself with such boldness. I wondered if it was taboo to sleep with your mother’s lover’s son?
The sangria had gone to my head. The thunder was growling outside and there would be a lovely fire burning in my bedroom. It was too tempting to resist.
We lay on large pillows in front of the fire sipping tea and talking. I asked him when he first learned of my mother. He said that his father had always spoken of a great love, but had always believed nothing would ever come of it as she was married and lived a long way away. It wasn’t until after my father had passed that Manuel told his kids he would go to the U.S. to be with this lady.
“We were very surprised,” Michael said, “but because he had spent so many years alone, and because we were grown, I supported him.”
“What about your sister? How did she feel?”
“At first she felt that our father was betraying our mother in some way. But our father had never sought out other female companionship, and eventually my sister, Clare, understood.”
I hadn’t really processed Clare’s side of things. After all, Olivia O’Malley had betrayed us too.
“Your mother lost a child and my father a wife. Family dynamics have to change, no?”
I agreed. I liked the way this man spoke. I liked how sympathetic and kind he seemed. Hat’s off to Manuel for being a terrific dad.
“We had always wanted our father to be happy. He was so dedicated to me and to Clare. It was harder for her, I think, being a girl and losing a mother so early. I never knew our mother, so it was different for me.”
“Where is your sister now?” I asked
“She arrived yesterday and will drive here in the morning to meet you. She lives in Los Angeles now with her husband and two children.”
“I see.”
I was dying to ask him about his personal life. Was he married? Was there a girl friend? A boyfriend?
“What about you, Michael?” I felt odd. Here we were lying so close to one another, and I didn’t really know anything about him.
“I am not married. I was engaged a couple of years ago to a sweet girl. I realized I wasn’t in love with her. Another lesson I learned from my father, I suppose. So I broke it off. It wasn’t fair to her . . . or to me!”
Secretly, I was relieved at his answer.
“Did your father know that my mother was ill when he went to her?” I brought the topic back around.
“Olivia had told him of her diagnosis when he arrived. It became even clearer to him that he needed to stay.”
We spent some time in silence, staring at the fire. Michael got up and put another log on.
I was scheduled to leave the next morning, but the unrelenting storm outside made it easy to decide that I should stay another day or two. Michael suggested that he would cancel my flight for me and arrange for another one. He grabbed the empty tea cups and wished me a better night’s sleep than the previous one.
I stood, and we faced one another. Until that point I hadn’t noticed that his eyes were actually bright green. Standing so close and looking deeply into them, I thought they were about the most beautiful set I’d seen. I could tell that he was looking deeply into mine as well.
“Thank you for making this day a little more bearable. It is hard enough burying my mother once, let alone twice.”
Michael nodded. He understood.
There was an awkward pause as I felt an impulse to kiss him. Instead, Michael bowed his head and bid me good night. I watched him close the door behind him.
Looking around this gorgeous room, I realized how incredibly tired I was. I pulled back the lush eiderdown covering the bed and thought I would just lie down for a bit. The bed was so welcoming. I sunk into it like a contented, well-fed puppy.
When Angels Cry Page 18