Yo!

by Julia Alvarez

  Come die with me and be my love and we shall all the horrors prove.

  It was the autumn of Matthews’s dying—the long, slow, chilling days of his departing. This thou perceivest which makes thy love more strong, to love that well which thou must leave ere long. At long last, Garfield let his heart go, tending to the vanishing young man. All that could be said was said. Matthews died in his arms as Garfield read Auden out loud, and Matthews mouthed his favorite lines.

  Lay your sleeping head, my love, human on my faithless arm.

  By the time it was over, Garfield felt numb, unresponsive to the world around him. The box of ashes in his study was all that was left of the luminous presence in his heart—propped there between Piers Plowman and Pamela. Matthews would not like that fit, at all. Come summer, Garfield would put the ashbox out for a spell in the garden, as if it were a cage, and the little bird of Matthews might be enticed to sing in the fresh air.

  Of what is past, or passing, or to come . . .

  One handful of ashes Garfield had already thrown into the Pacific Ocean when he went out to vacate Matthews’s condo. “Put some of me in the Atlantic, too,” Matthews had requested. He had grown petulant and spoiled on his deathbed. When the worst of the winter weather was over, Garfield drove to Provincetown and hurled a stinting handful into the Atlantic.

  As for the rest of Matthews. “Just throw me all over this place, okay?” he had said. But Garfield could not bear to dispose of the full contents of the box—even on his own property, not just yet. It was as if Matthews were still with him as long as Garfield kept hold of what was left of him.

  Somehow, Garfield muddled through that long winter of his discontent, running his classes like clockwork with his bowtie still perky under his chin. He was “on automatic,” as he confessed to Thompson. But some things had changed. He was talking openly to Thompson, for one thing. And then, how does it happen? He began to feel again. To worry over a student’s absences, a colleague’s persistent cough, the collapse of the stanza in contemporary poetry “as we know it.” He took an interest in his sons, those young, intriguing strangers who called weekly and came by every few months.

  Who would have thought my shriveled heart could have recovered greenness, the poet sayeth. Garfield’s swan song, as he called the lecture he would deliver on the occasion of his retirement a year from May would be a personal meditation on Herbert’s poem “The Flower.” He knew the poem by heart. All winter it had kept him going. I once more smell the dew and rain, and relish versing.

  Spring was coming again to the far reaches and dim outposts of Garfield’s heart.

  A full revolution of the year and already it is the first anniversary of Matthews’s dying. This is Garfield’s last year of full-time teaching, and he has begun untying the little knots that bind him to his routines and students. Several weeks ago, in his office, he almost threw out the Yolanda García file. It’s a good thing he didn’t for here again is this request for a graduate school recommendation. Of course, he will write a fresh letter, but these past drafts help. He sits in his study at home watching a fall sunset of such passionate reds that, for a moment, he is convinced there must be an afterlife. Who but Matthews would be so garish with a New England sky? Matthews, who loved opera and elaborate cakes and Mardi Gras bands and Wagner and the purple poetry of D. H. Lawrence. My manhood is cast down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

  The address on Miss García’s envelope is a small town north of Boston, only a couple of hours away. She has been teaching at a private school for a year now, not a minute to herself. That’s why she’s finally going to take his advice and get that Ph.D. Otherwise, she’ll never land a college teaching job that might allow her time for her writing. I know, I know, Mr. Garfield, you told me so thirteen years ago.

  Yes, indeed, he told her so. But not before your own life takes you somewhere can you really go there. He should know. The letter should be easy enough to compose, what with so many previous drafts to go on. And yet he cannot seem to get past that first sentence, Once in a career, there comes a student.

  He rereads her letter for more clues, something to convince him that he is indeed doing the right thing by her. I’ve been too embarrassed to call—it’s been so long. I feel like I only get in touch when I need you.

  What else are old mentors for, he wants to tell her. In fact, he has already told her, Don’t thank me, pass it on. But then once in a career, there comes a student who keeps coming back for more.

  Can I come and see you some weekend? I’m only a few hours away. I’d love to talk over the future. Really, I’d love to see you!

  He rereads the letter one more time, musing. And slowly, like the cold knowledge that Matthews is no longer with him, Garfield understands he has failed her. The successful student learns to destroy the teacher. (Who said that?) Miss García should be in full flight by now. Either he has held on too long or she has held on too long. At any rate, he must not allow this situation to continue! Fiercely and finally, he pens the letter of recommendation, as if to dismiss her, and stuffs it in its envelope. She must get on with it, finish her Ph.D., be happy at long last. At any rate she is not to come back for more. He must be firm and tell her so.

  He picks up the phone and dials the number she has written at the bottom of the letter by her name. But kindness overtakes him mid-conversation, and instead of telling her that this is it, he arranges for a get-together lunch at his place next Saturday. He has the letter for her to hand-carry back and some last words of advice. “Ay, Mr. Garfield, it’s been so long,” she says. “We have so much to talk about. But I’m doing it this time, I am.” He hears the resignation in her voice.

  Then, the self-doubt, “Well, what do you think, Mr. Garfield?”

  He takes her through the garden as if to show her the origin of the ingredients of their luncheon. “Gee, Mr. Garfield, I didn’t know you had these talents,” she notes, lifting a stalk and cradling the Bella Donna tomato in her hand. The rows seem laid out with a ruler; sturdy posts hold back the raspberry canes; stones define the small herbal plot at the edge of the lettuce row. Only one tomato plant sprawls messily without a cage. “The chip on the knee of Michelangelo’s David, eh?”

  She seems thinner, sadder than the lively young woman who could outdo Milton’s Satan on double entendres. Over the course of their lunch, it has become quite clear that this graduate school decision is the bitter pill she believes she must swallow in order to get what she wants.

  “Nothing else has worked out, Mr. Garfield. It’s like I’ve been living the wrong life or something. Can’t seem to get where I want to go. Always get waylaid, you know?”

  He knows. Has the life experience to prove it, as a matter of fact, but why burden her with his sorrows. He is her mentor, after all. His job is to push her out of the nest. But where will she go?

  “So, anyhow, with that doctorate, some place’ll hire me, don’t you think? Like you said, I need something substantial. Then I can get back to the writing. It’s the only thing I really want. I mean, besides true love and fame and fortune, you know?”

  They laugh, and Garfield looks at his watch, his old tic returning involuntarily. He has enjoyed the leisurely lunch, the ground swell of affection that has carried them through the fleeting hours. Now it is time for her to go. The drive is more like three hours, not two. But it is he who has been delaying her departure, insisting she take this last tour of his garden. At the end of her visit, the long night of missing Matthews awaits him, the endless ache of Sunday, the waning light of another autumn.

  As she rounds the last row, she kicks the ashbox Garfield has rested against a small rock and knocks it out to the middle of the path. “Whoops!” she cries, recoiling. “Ay, I thought it was alive or something.”

  It is my golden bird, Garfield feels like saying. I have kept it out all through the glorious summer so that it will sing to me. But he says nothing.

  “What is this, Mr. Garfield?” She bend
s down as if to examine the contents. Quickly, Garfield lodges the box back in place and takes her hand. “Come with me, Miss García. I have something for you.”

  He escorts her through the sliding glass door back into his study. There on his desk is her file he almost threw out a few weeks ago. Inside, in addition to copies of his past letters of recommendation are the many poems and stories she has sent him over the years. He had been rereading them before she arrived late this morning.

  “I wanted to give these back to you,” he says, handing her the thick file. “They’re your work,” he explains when she gives him a puzzled look.

  “But I sent them to you—for you to keep.” She opens the folder and makes a face. “God, you should burn this stuff!”

  “No, I should not. In fact, I have an assignment for you, Miss García.” Garfield pauses a moment, enjoying the bafflement on her face. Until the tour of the garden he did not know he would present her with this evidence.

  “What?” she says. That old, intense look has come into her eyes.

  “First, I want you to give me back that letter I wrote.”

  “You mean this?” She lifts the envelope out of the deep pocket of her Guatemalan jacket.

  He nods and takes the letter in his hand, and then in three quick jerks, he has ripped the letter into pieces. The irony is not lost on him—the men in Miss García’s life always seem to be tearing up her papers. But the look on her face spells, not disgust or fear, but relief. She does not even ask for the explanation he gives her.

  “You were right all along, Miss García. You don’t belong in a doctoral program. I was wrong to keep pushing you in that direction.” He waves away her defense of him. “At any rate, the past is over. And the future is before you.”

  They both look out the picture window as if the view outside were the panorama his words were unfolding. Matthews is outdoing himself tonight with splashes of gaudy red and orange—an extravaganza, a signaling to Garfield on this late fall afternoon that it is time.

  “So what’s the assignment?” she says, breaking the spell of his daydreaming.

  He turns back to her, trying to remember where he left off.

  “You said you had an assignment for me?” she reminds him.

  “Indeed I have. You’ve got enough material there for a book, two books. That’s your assignment, Miss García. Call me when you are ready for me to look at your final drafts.”

  She hesitates, the intent look on her face has been replaced by a look of pure terror. “I don’t know, Mr. Garfield. I mean, I should really get something practical under my belt. . . . Most places aren’t even hiring writers unless they have Ph.D.s. . . . I haven’t written anything in over a year. . . .” Her excuses fade before the stern look on his face. “I don’t know if I can do it,” she says at last. “I really don’t.”

  “You don’t have a choice.” He opens the sliding door and lets her out.

  When she drives away, he watches her car go down the long driveway, until with a farewell honk, the blue Tercel disappears past a bend on the road. Then, he walks to the end of the garden and picks up the box from its rocky nest. Lifting the lid, he scoops a hand in and lets the wind take the ashes, hither and yon, until Matthews, too, is gone.

  The stranger

  epistle

  The old woman Consuelo, what a dream she had last night! She tossed and turned this way and that as if the dream were a large fish she were trying to haul in—without success. Finally she gave a great roll to one side and her little granddaughter Wendy let out a yelp that woke Consuelo up. ¡Dios santo! She ran her hand over her face, wiping off sleep, and maybe it was in doing so that she lost a part of the dream which all the next day she was trying to recall.

  In the dream Consuelo was counseling her daughter Ruth about her predicament. Consuelo had not seen her daughter since five years ago when Ruth had come by the village with the surprise of a baby she had given birth to in the capital. Along with the infant, the daughter had brought an envelope of money. She counted out over two thousand pesos to leave with the grandmother. The rest was for a plan that Ruth would not tell the old woman about. “You’ll just worry, Mamá,” she had said, and then, throwing her arms around the old woman, she added, “Ay, Mamá, our lives are going to be so much better, you’ll see.”

  And everything that had actually happened was also so in the dream. Ruth had made it to Puerto Rico on a rowboat, then on to Nueva York where she worked at a restaurant at night and at a private home as a maid during the day. Every month, Ruth sent home money along with a letter someone in the village read to Consuelo. Every few months the Codetel man came running through town, “International call!” Consuelo would be out of breath by the time she arrived at the telephone trailer to hear her daughter’s small voice trapped in the wires. “How are you, Mamá? And my baby Wendy?” Consuelo would curse herself later, for she would fall into that mute bashfulness she always suffered in the presence of important people and their machines. Words to her were like the fine china at the big houses she had worked in, something she felt better if the mistress were handling.

  Then, just as with her own Ruth, the dream Ruth had gotten married. It was not a true marriage, she had explained in a letter, but one of convenience in order to get her residency. Consuelo prayed every night to el Gran Poder de Dios and la Virgencita to turn this mock marriage into a true one for her daughter’s sake. He is a good man, the daughter had admitted. A Puerto Rican who wants to help a woman of a neighbor island. Hmmm. Then the letter that occasioned the dream had arrived. Even though she could not read the words, Consuelo studied the dark angry marks that were so different from the smoother roll of her daughter’s usual handwriting. The man—it turned out—would not give Ruth a divorce. He was saying he was in love with her. If she tried to leave him, he was going to turn her in to the immigration police. What should she do? ¡Ay, Mamá, aconséjame! It was the first time Consuelo’s daughter had asked for her advice.

  How she wished she could sit her daughter down and tell her what to do. Use your head, she would say. Here is a good man who says he loves you, mi’ja, why even hesitate? You can have a fine life! It is within your grasp! Next time her daughter called, Consuelo would have her advice all prepared. For days as she washed or swept or cooked, Consuelo practiced saying the words, the little granddaughter looking up surprised to hear the taciturn old woman speaking to herself.

  Then the shock of last night’s dream! It was as if her daughter were by her side listening. But what Consuelo was saying was not what she had planned to say—that much she remembered. Her daughter was nodding her head, for Consuelo was speaking wonderful words that flowed out of her mouth as if language were a stream filled with silver fish flashing in the water. Everything she said was so wise that Consuelo wept in her own dream to hear herself speak such true words.

  But the devil take her for forgetting what it was that she was saying! When she had run her hand over her face, she had wiped the words away. All morning, she tried to recall what it was she had said to her daughter in the dream . . . and once or twice . . . as she swept out the house . . . as she braided the child’s hair into its three pigtails . . . as she pounded the coffee beans and the green smell of the mountains wafted up to her, why there it was, the tail of it, quick! grab it! But no, it inched just out of her reach.

  And then, she could almost hear it, a far-off voice. She crossed the yard to María’s house after it. Almost a year ago, María’s youngest boy had drowned in Don Mundín’s swimming pool. María had stopped working in the big house, and even after the period of mourning, she continued to dress in black and to hold on to her grief as if it were the boy himself she were clutching to her side.

  “I have had such a dream,” Consuelo began. María had placed a cane chair under the samán tree for the old woman. She sat by, cleaning the noon rice in a hollow board on her lap. The child, accustomed only to the company of the old woman, hid her face in her grandmother’s lap when María’s boys
beckoned to her to come look at the leaping lizard they had caught. “In the dream I was speaking to my Ruth. But this one woke me, and I cleaned my face before remembering, and there went the words.” The old woman made the same gesture as María, flinging the rice chaff out beyond the shade of the samán tree.

  “My Ruth has written for my advice,” Consuelo went on. Among her own people and out of the sight and presence of the rich and their machines, the old woman found it much easier to speak her mind. “In the dream, the words came to me. But I have forgotten what it was I said to her.”

  María combed her fingers through the pile of rice as if the lost words could be found there. “You must go down to the river early in the morning,” she began. With her long, sad face and her sure words, she was like the priest when he came up the mountain once a month to preach to the campesinos how to live their lives.

  “You must wash your face three times, making a sign of the cross after each washing.”

  The old woman was listening carefully, her hands folded as if she were praying. The child at her side looked up at the old woman and then folded her small hands.

  “And the words will come to you, and then immediately you must go to the Codetel and call your daughter—”

  Just the thought of speaking into that black funnel stopped the words in Consuelo’s throat. She took a deep breath and made the sign of the cross and the words blurted out. “I do not have a number for my daughter. She is always the one who calls.”

  María stood up and shook out her skirt. She called the child to her side and asked again how old the child was and whether she was going to school to learn her letters. The child shook her head and held up five fingers but then thought better of it and held up another five. Consuelo watched the playful conversation. A tender look had come on the grieving woman’s face. It was as if she had forgotten the dream altogether.