The Memory of Light

by Francisco X. Stork

  “Take them off!” he shouts and keeps running.

  I take off my flip-flops and run. The earth is hard and warm and smooth under my feet. My legs feel weak and unused, and by the time I reach the first clump of trees, I’m panting. I make my way through red, dusty rocks that look like they’ve been left over from some prehistoric volcano. Then, around a bend, there is an opening, and I almost fall into the river.

  The water moves slowly on the banks, but I can tell that the current is stronger in the middle of the stream, where there are rapids. Gabriel is standing in a small clearing a few yards away with a rubber raft, a couple of kayaks and oars, and some kind of storage shed. Thunder cracks the sky, and rain begins to pelt us. There aren’t even a few drops of warning — just thunder followed immediately by buckets of rain. “We have time, huh?” I bump his shoulder.

  Gabriel tilts his head back as far as it will go, shuts his eyes, opens his mouth wide, and extends his arms to the heavens. He’s like a child who’s spent his life locked up in some dark room and is feeling the wetness and coolness of rain for the first time. How does he do that? See newness everywhere? I hate the dark space where I live, but I’m too afraid to step out.

  There’s a flash of lightning and another clap of thunder. I tug his arm. “Shouldn’t we head back?” I yell so he can hear me.

  “Not while there’s lightning,” he says. He pulls me away from the edge of the river. Then he lets go of me and motions for me to help him turn over the rubber raft. He props it up with one of the oars, and we duck under the shelter it provides.

  We lie on our backs side by side. The rain hitting the raft makes a hollow sound, as if we’re inside a drum being played by a maniac. There’s something exhilarating about listening to the thunder and rain with only a rubber lining for protection. I turn briefly to glimpse Gabriel’s face, and the smile I see there makes me smile as well.

  A thunderbolt explodes almost on top of us, and Gabriel shudders, pretending he’s terrified. I laugh. I remember how I felt when Becca and I shared a room and we crawled into the same bed and covered our heads with the quilt at the sound of thunder. There was a time when I was not alone, before something invisible and hard came between me and others. But here, next to Gabriel, there’s no wall.

  I say, “One time you said, I guess it was in one of our group meetings, that you knew about depression. Why did you say that?”

  His face turns serious again. “I’ve had it.”

  “What was it like for you? I mean, what did it feel like?”

  “I don’t know. The image that always came to mind was of a basketball with not enough air. You try to bounce it and it just sticks in the ground with a thud.”

  I smile. I’ve been a basketball with not enough air. “And you’re okay now?”

  “I moved on to bigger things,” he says with a grin. “The depression went away.”

  “When?” I ask.

  “When I started hearing the voice.” I can see his mind working, chewing on some new realization.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask.

  “I was wondering what would happen if I stopped hearing my voice. Would I go back to being depressed?”

  “But when you were depressed, you kept on going, working, mowing lawns.”

  “Yes, I kept on mowing the lawns. I had no choice. Plus moving around and having something to do helped me.”

  “I asked E.M. when we were out digging holes how he managed to work at construction day after day. He said it was easier if you had to do it or else you and your family didn’t eat. He also learned some tricks not to get bored, like concentrating on what you’re doing.”

  “That’s hard to do when you’re depressed. But medication helps with concentration.”

  “Were you on medication?”

  “Yes, for about three months.”

  “What was that like?”

  “There are no ‘happy’ pills. All the things that are hard in your life remain. All the things you don’t like to do, you still don’t like. But at least you’ll have the energy to do them.”

  “Dr. Desai wants to wait a while, see how I do when I get back home before I start taking antidepressants.”

  “She would have already put you on medication if she thought you weren’t getting better or you were still suicidal. Dr. Desai is very slow to put people on medication, if it’s not urgent. Depression is bad, but it can teach us some things.”

  “Like what?” I say.

  “There’s things you see when you’re depressed that you don’t see otherwise. You see how silly the world is sometimes and the craziness around you. You see all the things that people strive for, like money and success and popularity, and you realize that those things don’t make us happy.”

  The image of my father and Barbara and myself sitting at the dinner table comes to me. The conversation always seemed to center in some form or another around making money or not losing it. But they didn’t look happy. They seemed anxious and worried, as if they were afraid that money would run out before they got their share. “You almost make it sound as if it’s good to be depressed,” I say.

  “No. Depression’s bad, and you have to do all you can to get out of it. But I learned how to persist when I was depressed, how to go out and mow the daily lawns even when I didn’t want to or thought I couldn’t.”

  We remain silent for a long time. I’m thinking about the days following my mother’s death. My father had the special hospital bed, the oxygen tanks, and all her medicines removed the day after we placed her ashes in a cemetery vault. He went back to work the following day, and Becca and I returned to school. A few days later someone from the Salvation Army came to take all of my mother’s clothes. My father wanted us to get back on the horse of daily routine, get on with life. “The best medicine for grief is to keep busy,” he said.

  I wish my father would have let me feel sad, really sad, as sad as I could get for as long as it took. Then maybe there could have been a new beginning for me. And what would have happened if he too had let himself feel sad? Would he be different now?

  Lying here next to Gabriel, I feel sad again, for my mother’s death, for her absence in my life. Only there’s something about this sadness that is moist and cool, like a summer rainstorm. It’s a sadness that has been knocking at my door for a long time, and I finally let it in.

  We stay like that until the rain stops. Afterward, we put the raft on the ground and walk back toward the house. The rain has given the earth, the trees, the rocks a shimmer of newness. Cleo suddenly joins us out of nowhere, completely dry and happy.

  When the corral with the prancing bay horse is in view, Gabriel says: “Mules are cool. They’re patient like a donkey, strong like a horse. They work hard. They carry loads, pull plows, wagons, do whatever needs to be done. They don’t want to be racehorses. They’re happy being mules.”

  I think I understand why Gabriel is telling me this, but I still say, “You’re going to have to translate that into regular English for me.”

  “If Vicky is a mule and not a racehorse, then so what? She’s still needed.”

  In the distance we hear the dinner bell.

  “Come on,” he says. “Let’s run.”

  We run.

  On Saturday morning, we get ready for our outing to Fredericksburg. Mona is digging in her green canvas duffel bag when I hear something rattle.

  Her medication, I think. When we were at Lakeview, a nurse would bring Mona her medication every morning and every night and stand around until she saw Mona swallow the pills. Here at the ranch, Dr. Desai gave Mona two opaque orange vials and told her she would be responsible for taking her medicine. Could she trust her? Mona said yes, and I saw her take the pills the first morning and the first night, but not since then.

  “Why haven’t you been taking your medication?” I ask. The anger I just felt at myself for not noticing comes out in the way I ask the question.

  She keeps sifting through her bag, and I can tell
she’s deciding whether to lie to me. She holds up a wrinkled white T-shirt with a picture of a puppy and a kitten kissing. “You like? My Lucy loved this shirt. We bought it at an arts fair in downtown Austin. I tried to find one just like it for her, but they didn’t have any her size. But I used to let her wear this one to sleep. You know, like a nightgown.” She puts the shirt back in her bag. “The lithium makes me draggy and sleepy and the Lamictal is basically useless anyway. I just wanted to go off the stuff for a while. I need the energy. Every once in a while it’s good to have a little oomph, know what I mean? It feels good. Have I been edgy?”

  “Yes,” I say. She’s been acting strange all week long. I thought it was Rudy and the possibility of finding Lucy that had unsettled her, but it was clearly more than that.

  “But only you’ve noticed because I let my guard down with you. That’s a compliment, by the way. I control myself at the GTH and when I talk to Dr. Desai. You’re not going to tell her, are you?” She puts her shirt on.

  “Yes, I am,” I say firmly. “You’ve told me — you’ve told all of us what happens to you when you’re manic.”

  “Yeah, but the trick is not to get fully manic, which is what I plan to avoid by just going off the medication for a week or two. I need to feel alive, Vicky. Rudy’s finally on track again with finding Lucy. This guy he knows that works with Welfare, he wanted a thousand dollars to help us find her, and Rudy came up with the money on his own. For me. He’s doing it for me. I’m excited. Do you know what it’s like to be full of hope after not having it for so long? I don’t want that to be dulled by some medicine. I just want to enjoy it for a few days. Look, tell you what, tomorrow night I’ll start with the lithium.”

  “And the other one? The one you take in the morning?”

  “Okay, I’ll take that right now. But let’s just settle down about all this, all right?” She goes into her bag and comes up with one of the plastic bottles. She uncaps the bottle, takes out one white pill, holds it in front of me like a magician about to make it disappear, and then pops it into her mouth.

  “You usually take two of those,” I say.

  “Ughhh!” She groans and repeats the same procedure with another pill. “Happy?” There’s a honk outside. “Oh, we gotta go.”

  “Mona,” I say, “what will you do if Rudy finds Lucy?”

  She’s lifting the quilt on her bed, looking for something. “Have you seen my phone? I have to buy a charger for it. It went dead three days ago and it’s driving me nuts. Here you are, you little devil. I don’t know, Vicky,” she says, opening the door to our cabin. “I’ll have to cross that bridge when I get to it. Try to sneak a peek at her, for starters.”

  She rushes ahead of me toward the waiting van. I can see Gabriel and E.M. in the backseat. Pepe is in the driver’s seat. Fritz is holding on to Cleo, keeping her from jumping into the van. Dr. Desai stands on the porch in a light-yellow sari, her arms crossed, smiling.

  When we get to the van, Fritz hands first Mona and then me three fifty-dollar bills.

  “Awesome,” says Mona. “What’s this for?”

  “I believe in paying people something for their work, even if it’s not as much as they deserve. I figured if I paid you ten dollars an hour times five days of work, that makes one hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “I like the way you do math,” Mona says.

  “You do more than three hours a day when you count the morning chores and whatnot. It’s just a little something.”

  “He doesn’t want the authorities to accuse him of slave labor,” Dr. Desai pipes up from the porch.

  “That’s true, that’s true,” Fritz acknowledges. “Now go. And if you can, have lunch at one of the German restaurants. I recommend the knockwurst and sauerkraut with a nice tall glass of Beck’s.”

  “Fritz!” Dr. Desai admonishes.

  “Beg your pardon. I meant to say lemonade. It was a Freudian slip,” Fritz says, winking at us.

  I sit in the middle seat by myself and Mona sits up front with Pepe. As we are pulling away, Mona says, “No offense, but I’m glad we’re going to some civilization for a change. I’m tired of sitting under a cow pulling and squeezing those rubbery things.”

  “They’re called udders,” E.M. says from the back.

  Mona turns around. “Listen to you! Put you on a farm for a few days and you’re speaking cowboy.”

  “It’s a ranch, not a farm,” E.M. corrects her. Before Mona can respond, he asks, “Hey, Pepe, do you know if there’s a bookstore in town?”

  There’s a moment of stunned silence, and then everyone except Pepe twists around to see if those words really came out of E.M’s mouth.

  “What?” E.M. says before nonchalantly glancing out the window.

  I’m waiting for Mona to make some comment, but she seems to be deep in thought, as if trying to figure out what E.M. could possibly want with a book. Pepe says, “I know they sell comics at the drugstore. You want real books?”

  “Yeah, the real kind, with no pictures,” E.M. replies.

  “Let’s see. They got to have one. You can find anything in Fredericksburg.”

  “How about cell phone chargers?” Mona asks.

  “Walmart probably has those. Come to think of it, I’ve seen books there too.”

  “Oh, oh, oh,” Mona says, excited, turning to E.M. “I figured it out. I know why you want to go to a bookstore.”

  “What you talking about now?” E.M. says.

  “I seem to remember overhearing a conversation not too long ago at a certain birthday party where a certain someone found out that the person he was drooling over liked to read.”

  “That’s why you were asking for my address this morning,” Gabriel says. “You want to send Margarita a book?”

  We all observe E.M.’s face turning a very dark shade of red.

  “I … ah …” he stammers.

  “Pretend to be brave!” Mona shouts. “Think of Huichi-whatever.”

  “Leave him alone, you,” I say, poking Mona in the back. “You’re embarrassing him.”

  “Big macho man like him, he’s not afraid of a pretty girl, is he?”

  “That’s a great idea, giving her a book,” Gabriel tells E.M. “That will really impress her.”

  “It’s very thoughtful,” I add.

  “Yeah, E.M.,” Mona says, half-mocking, half-serious. “It’s very thoughtful. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “You’re just jealous,” E.M. tells her.

  “Pff!” Mona waves him off. But I can tell that maybe she is just a tiny bit jealous.

  Pepe says, “I’ll drop you off on Main Street; there’s gotta be a bookstore there. Then I’ll take the rest of you to Walmart.”

  “I think E.M. might need a little help picking the right book,” Gabriel says to me.

  “Me? You’re the one who knows what Margarita likes to read.”

  “Pepe and I need to keep an eye on Mona. Protect the male population of Fredericksburg and all that.”

  “Oh, please,” Mona says, “as if there’s anything here that would interest me.”

  Pepe drops E.M. and me on Main Street to look for a bookstore, while he, Gabriel, and Mona go to find a cell phone charger. We agree to meet in front of the post office in two hours to go to lunch together.

  “What kind of book do you want to get?” I ask E.M. as we walk down Main Street.

  “I don’t know,” he says, rubbing the black bristles on his head. “What kinds of books do girls like?”

  “They like every kind. Why don’t we get her a book you like, so she’ll get to know you better?”

  “A book about the Aztecs?”

  “Mmm. Let’s see. Why do you want to give her a book?”

  “She said back when we were doing the dishes together that she liked to read.”

  “She didn’t say what?”

  He shakes his head, discouraged. “Maybe the book thing is not a good idea. What do I know about books? I read two my whole life. One of them
was mostly pictures.”

  “You feeling sorry for yourself now?” I tease.

  E.M. stares at me like he’s considering whether to let me live. He reminds me of what lion tamers say of the lions in their circus act: It’s always good to remember that they can bite your head off at any moment. Still, it’s hard to pass up the opportunity to turn the tables on E.M.

  E.M. steps in front of a man with pointy boots and a black cowboy hat. I watch the man’s Adam’s apple go up and down rapidly. “There a place around here where they sell books?” E.M. asks.

  “There’s a bookstore at the end of Main Street,” the cowboy says, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

  “And a post office?” My tone is a few notches friendlier than E.M.’s.

  “At the other end,” he says, nodding in the direction he’s walking.

  “Thank you,” I say. Then, when he walks away, I say to E.M., “You scared him.”

  E.M. shrugs. “What kind of book would you like to get if and when someone gave you a book?” he asks.

  “Me?”

  “Like if you got the book you’d think, ‘This guy likes me but respects me also,’ you know?”

  I consider the question. “Well, for me, a book of poetry would make me think that about the person who sent it. It would have to be written by a good poet and it would have serious poems, not just silly love poems. That would be corny.”

  “Yeah,” E.M. says. “I don’t want corny.”

  “But that’s me, because I like poetry. So getting a book of poetry from someone would mean the person is accepting me as I am, in a way.” I gather from the somber expression that comes over E.M.’s face that this is probably not what he wanted to hear. Then I remember the story Gabriel told me about how hard it was for him to lend Margarita one of his books — a life of St. Francis of Assisi. “I think I know what kind of book to get her.”

  E.M.’s face brightens. “How?”

  “Something Gabriel told me.”

  The bookstore turns out to be at the very end of Main Street, but we don’t mind the long walk. It’s in an old, ordinary-looking house with a bookcase on the porch. Inside the house, there are rooms filled with carefully organized shelves of books and colorful sofas and leather chairs inviting us to sit and read. I leave E.M. alone in front of the religion and spirituality shelves. I’m pretty sure Margarita would appreciate any book from there. “Pick a title you like,” I tell him.