by John Addiego
Following the local custom, Paul dropped to the floor of the little wooden chapel and crawled the distance to his seat in a pew. Angelo didn’t prostrate himself, but he crossed and genuflected. The healer spoke in a singsong Spanish, and people crawled up to him and offered their heads to his hands. He looked to be about thirty and well-fed. The puffiness around his eyes betrayed a habit of drinking. Angelo watched his brother receive the blessing of hands and crawl back to his pew. The smile on Paul’s face was like Saman-tha’s over a hot-fudge sundae.
Excuse me. Angelo had waded among the faithful to the pulpit. Many had left the chapel to make purchases, but he knew that Paul was still kneeling behind him among the most fervent visitors. He knelt before the stout man and studied his face. You’re not the Jesús we knew, I mean the Jesús from our family. I’m Angelo Verbicaro, and that’s my brother, Paul.
The healer raised his eyebrows. He placed his hands on Angelo’s head.
Ouch, hey, you don’t need to do that, Angelo said.
The man chanted something in Spanish. The only words Angelo understood were muchos años, or many years.
Some time later he waited for the bus to Cancún. He would see Jennifer and Samantha, and they might be a family again, or they might simply see how separate their lives must remain. Paul hugged him and sighed. His smile seemed unable to undo itself, and he kept saying, Wow.
I’m glad it was so good for you, Angelo said. Do you need a cigarette or something?
Did you feel it, Angie?
The sun was sinking into the trees.
I don’t think so. Did I feel it? I guess not. Actually, I felt some pain. Anyway, I’m sorry.
Don’t be sorry.
But we came all this way, and it wasn’t him.
Paul touched his face and turned it to him, as a child might to make sure you’re listening to everything he’s saying. It was him, Angie. We recognized each other. He recognized you.
Angelo started to respond, then shrugged and remained silent. The Jesús he’d known was as American as himself, a Chicano kid raised in California and the racist Rocky Mountain states of the USA. He was probably three inches taller than the Mexican shaman or con man they’d met today, and if he hadn’t been shot by a drunk in San Francisco he would be fifty years old by now, not thirty. An-gelo saw no sense in mentioning any of this to his brother, however. Instead he asked Paul to tell him what the man had said while his hands were on his scalp.
He said that after many years, wait, how did he say it? Something like, after many years you once again see the face of the beloved.
Angelo sat alone in the dark as the bus flew under the black branches, as the frilly plastic tassels and religious icons swished across the windshield to protect the driver and his passengers while they roared through the jungle. The face of his wife, after a matter of weeks, of months since the separation: Wasn’t this the face of his beloved? Perhaps it had been years since they had looked upon each other, had really looked into each other’s faces, with love.
It required more hours of waiting to catch a ferry from Puerto Juárez to the island. The slow boat to Isla Mujeres reminded him of a Mississippi steamboat, its striped awning charred by the smoke of its engine. The water was the green-blue of Jennifer’s eyes. He found them soon enough, and their beauty together, mother and daughter wading in the surf, made him feel weightless.
What’s with your hair? Samantha asked.
My hair?
Yes, Jennifer asked, what is with your hair? It reminds me of those old-fashioned flattops with wings.
You have white wings, Dad.
I don’t have enough hair for wings. What are you talking about?
So, how was Jesús?
Angelo sighed. His daughter had her arms wrapped around his neck, her hands probing the sides of his head. Well, he wasn’t Jesús, but Paulie thinks he was, so I didn’t want to burst his balloon.
You’ve got horns, too, Samantha said.
Hey! Angelo moved her hand and touched a bump on the side of his head. Feels like a big spider bite.
Where is your brother, Paulie?
He saw me off at the ferry. He got connected somehow with some guys on the mainland. He felt the other bump and laughed. Weird. Two bumps, like horns, all right. I don’t know, Paulie’s gone native or something, but he seemed more sane and relaxed than I’ve seen him in years. I think he’s working with a bunch of farmers and devotees on some kind of export deal with his hippie commune.
You look happy about it, Jennifer said. The wind lifted her hair, moved it slowly across her shoulder.
I guess I am, Angelo said.
Your hair looks like fingers, Samantha said. Not wings.
That afternoon Sam and Jennifer went to the market and an Internet café while Angelo swam. He swam past the rope border, among fishing and tourist boats, farther than he felt was reasonable, then farther than he felt was safe. The current took him north. He went under now and then and came up. He studied the rolling line of blue across his eyes. That sense of two worlds, of light and dark, and how easy it would be to let go and give in. Exhausted, he lay back and rocked on the deep.
A black shape floated high above him. It looked like a cross, but in a while he saw that it was a bird, a pelican come to observe him there, a fish too big for its beak. He peered at the distant shore and thought about his daughter, and how horrible it would be for her if he didn’t make it back. A boat full of scuba divers picked him up.
When he staggered onto the beach Jennifer was waiting for him with a towel. She told him that Sam was with a friend at the Internet café. They walked in their swimsuits through town to the little hotel room, his muscles feeling heavy from their work, and few words were exchanged before they made love on the bed in the leafy shadow of a bamboo and the racket of birds in the window. Afterward Angelo cried, and Jennifer stroked his head against her breast.
I’m so sorry, Angelo, she said, crying also. I’m so, so sorry. I made a horrible mistake.
What are we going to do?
Can we get back? I couldn’t live without Sam this summer.
We both need Sam. Sam needs us.
Her hand lingered on his hair. What does this mean?
I have no idea. He wiped his eyes. What does it mean? Are we back, or what?
Lift your head a minute. She gazed at him with large, moist eyes. They are like fingers, Sam’s right. Like white fingers painted onto your black hair.
He walked into the bathroom and saw a strange naked man with a stubbly, sunburned face framed by the white imprint of hands on the sides of his head, and he burst out laughing. I’ll be damned, he said. I look like Hawk Boy.
Come back to bed, Hawk Boy.
He went to the market for mangos and pastries, noticing the looks he got from the local people. He heard some of them say pelo, and some manos. He had the imprint of the healer’s hands on his hair, some trick the man had pulled on him, and it made him laugh aloud in public. He wondered how long it would last. He stood above the beach and watched the sun set over the fishing boats, trying to contain his laughter.
When he returned to the room, Jenn was asleep on the bed they’d made love in, and Samantha was reading a book about knights and ladies. She whispered to him that their friend Naomi wanted to see him at this bar on the beach in an hour.
What are you talking about, Monkey? he whispered back.
Mom and I have been getting to know your fairy godmother. Aunt Naomi’s here, Samantha said to his look of confusion. She is so cool. She said your story was a big deal to her, or something. Also, she said she needed an excuse to lie in the sun.
I’ll be damned. She’s here in Isla Mujeres.
Why does she make you mad?
Am I mad? I don’t know. Literary agents are hard to figure out.
Angelo held his daughter on the balcony and read to her, then put her to bed beside her mother. Jenn’s hair fanned back, and moonlight dappled her cheek and shoulder. Sam said she’d rather go with hi
m to see Aunt Naomi.
I’m afraid not. This is business I need to take care of.
Are you staying here tonight, Dad?
Yes.
Yay! She hugged his neck. You people are weird.
I know. He kissed the top of her head. But we love each other. No matter how weird, don’t forget that we all love each other. We have a lot of work to do.
There goes your laptop.
I’m afraid my lapper’s in California.
I hear it tinkling. No, it’s something else. Listen. It’s out there.
He knelt beside his daughter, in silence and deep happiness, and canted his head to one side, imitating her gesture. There was distant motor-scooter traffic, some kind of cricket or cicada, and something else. What is that? he whispered.
Shh. Sounds kind of like singing, and kind of like glass, she said. Like glass rubbing against the sky. Maybe it’s the moon.
A glass moon. Quien sabe?
He walked to the café, thinking of beauty and loss and the music of the moon, the music of the spheres. He thought of his wife and daughter, of their hearts being little bolsas, purses of beauty, filled with a kind of celestial light which he could never possess, but never entirely lose, either.
A lightning storm flashed and rumbled in the direction of the Cancún hotel skyline, and as it had in the town of Coatzalcoalcos, the electric power of Isla Mujeres snuffed after an explosive sound from somewhere south of town. A few people sighed or laughed, and a few candles were lit. He fumbled along La Avenida Hidalgo to the café and sat in darkness at a table overlooking the sea. These people are so accustomed to losing power, he thought.
He saw the figure of a woman approach.
That you, Angelo?
It isn’t Lazarus risen from the dead, he replied. Or even Lazaro Cara, for that matter, he said to himself. They hugged in the dark, then sat across the table from each other. His heart beat rapidly, and sweat dripped down his shirt. He could barely see her silhouette against the dim expanse of the sea.
Samantha is an absolute angel. So, where’s Paulie?
Angelo told her about Paul’s decision to stay on the peninsula a while to make a deal with a coffee co-op, and he briefly described their differing experiences at the shrine of the weeping palm.
So, Naomi said, you have a split decision on Jesús. One is based on cool logic, the other on passionate faith.
Why do I feel like you’re putting me down when you say that?
I’m not putting you down.
Never mind. So, tell me the story of Naomi Ginsburg-Menendez. Where does this odd ethnic mix come from?
She coughed. Naomi Ginsburg was born and raised in Pittsburgh, she said, speaking of herself in the third person, went to Carnegie Mellon to study art history, and flew to Mexico in the early ’70s seeking an experimental cure for terminal cancer. There she met a bunch of other expatriates and ne’er-do-wells from the States, political radicals and drug smugglers, fugitives, idealists, and dreamers. That was in San Miguel de Allende.
San Miguel de Allende, the little pueblo south of the border where you started la vida nueva.
Yes, I started a new life, Angelo. I married a Cuban Marxist and took on a new name. We moved to New York in the early ’80s, and I’ve been there ever since, first working in publications, then as a literary agent for a wonderful, understanding woman.
She must have been a very understanding woman when you made five or six bucks selling my story about Pelican Island to a magazine with thirty readers. That took some big balls.
Why are you . . . ? Her voice trailed off. They sat a moment in silence. Do you have any idea why I’m here?
I have been asking myself the same thing. Actually, I’ve been asking myself why I am here with you and my daughter and my estranged wife, in a place called “the island of women.”
Estranged? Her hand touched his wrist.
I don’t know. Quien sabe? He could hear distant thunder and a few women’s voices making bird-like exclamations. He thought of the feeling of Jenn’s hands on his shoulders that afternoon, and his daughter’s skinny arms around his neck, and now the pressure of this dry, small hand squeezing his in the dark. No, not estranged, he said. We’re going to make a go of it again.
Good, good.
But I ask myself all the time lately how it is we got where we are. Why did some little girl write a ransom note in Italy and have to run away to America, for instance?
Children are innocent, she said. Children deserve forgiveness.
It’s an old story, and my bet is she did it for love, Angelo said. There was a handsome crook she wanted to impress.
Is love why people do terrible things? She made a sound: a laugh, a cry? He couldn’t tell. Look, I have two kids who are grown now, a grandchild, and a husband who is supportive of almost everything except the decision I’ve recently made to make amends for something I did in my youth.
He squeezed her hand as if one or the other of them were about to slip over the edge of a cliff. Amends? he whispered. Amends?
I believed in something so strongly, she said in hushed tones, and hated our government so much for what it had done to my brother and to a young man and his cause, that I helped the man I was living with commit a serious crime.
Angelo felt light-headed. He felt as if the wing-like hairs on his head beat quietly and lifted him from the table. The tiny lights of two candles were moving toward him, a young man’s face floating dimly above their flames. He could remember the sensation of the shaman’s hands on his scalp. Somewhere in the faraway darkness of the beach women were singing in high, dolorous tones, keening in a language he couldn’t understand.
The night janitor, a retarded boy, so much like my sister, always left work before midnight, and we knew this, but that one night I guess he fell asleep in the office. Her voice caught before she went on: We burned him, along with the names and files in the draft board. We set fire to a building and killed this innocent boy, and I’ve struggled not to hate myself just long enough to raise my children. Now I’d like it if you and Paulie would help me turn myself in.
Whatever you need, he said helplessly, knowing that she was always the older and wiser one, he the eternal dumb kid.
The candles alighted on their table like small birds. In their glow Angelo saw her face, an old woman’s small face now, but familiar beyond the passage of years and beautiful beyond imagining. He took his glasses off and wiped his eyes. Whatever you need, we’ll work together.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, I want to thank my wife, Ellen and my daughter, Emily. They not only believed in my writing, they gave me the time and place to do it. Without their loving encouragement this book wouldn’t have been written.
Second, I owe so much to Greg Michalson for his stewardship in the creation of this book. I can’t say enough about his editorial insights. All of us who struggle with the muse are lucky to have him in this business.
I’d like to thank the editors at a few literary magazines for working with me and finding a place in their journals for some of the stories this book began with: Peter Stine, Kenneth Pellow, Gina Frangello and Theresa Berger. I’d also like to thank Oregon Literary Arts for an award early in the writing.
Some fine writers who happen to be dear friends have encouraged me as I worked on this manuscript, particularly Rick Borsten, John Witte, Deb Casey, and Bruce Campbell.
Most importantly, I can’t begin to thank my family enough for their tolerance and support, especially my wise and courageous father, Frank, my loving and talented mother, Sheila, my brilliant sister, Linda, and my hilarious brother, Frank. My lovely aunts, uncles and cousins, most of whom have passed on, are too numerous to list here. A more delightful and generous group of people is hard to find.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to my grandparents, Luisa and Vito Addiego, and raise a salute to Vito’s birthplace in Calabria, a hillside village called Verbicaro.
br /> John Addiego, The Islands of Divine Music