“I really appreciate your offer, but something’s come up and I can’t go after all.”
Mr. Maldonado looked crestfallen. I thanked him again for the record and sprinted from the building, arriving at Thomson with two minutes to spare. When I returned to my room later that afternoon, I took the record out of the bag; with a black marking pen, Mr. Maldonado had written on the cover “to Catarina from Corrado – a belated Merry Christmas, January 1957.”
Around ten o’clock in the morning, three days after my encounter with Mr. Maldonado, I was in my room typing David’s work when the phone rang. It was raining, as it always seemed to be in Seattle when bad things happened, and I remember looking out the window just before picking up the receiver and seeing raindrops running down the pane, like tears down a cheek. I recognized Norma’s voice, but she was sobbing so convulsively that I couldn’t understand what she was saying.
Finally, I made out a few words: “Corrado …. found him last night … hanged himself …”
“Oh, my God, Norma …”
“I’m in my office. Can you come over?”
I threw on a raincoat and ran to Denny Annex, where the Romance language teaching assistants had their offices. The place was in an uproar; everyone was stunned by the violent death of a man they’d all talked to only days before. Several of Maldonado’s students were in the corridor trying to find out what had happened and many others were crying.
Gradually, as Norma calmed down, she told me the story. Wednesday morning Mr. Maldonado missed his Spanish 102 class and hadn’t called the department office to give an explanation. When he failed to attend a meeting in the afternoon, the chairman of the department, Dr. Nelson, phoned Maldonado’s apartment and no one answered. Thursday morning he was absent again, and by then the staff was getting worried. Later the same day Maldonado’s landlady let the police into his apartment and they found him; Maldonado had thrown a rope over a beam in the ceiling of his living room, stood on a chair, kicked it away, and hanged himself. He left a note concerning funeral arrangements, but nothing else.
I was numb, speechless. “But why?”
Norma shook her head. “Everyone has a different theory; you wouldn’t believe the rumors I’ve heard. I’m quite sure I know the reason, but I’ll never be certain.”
“If David’s free can I ask him to join us? This may not be related to Maldonado’s death, but there’s something we need to tell you.”
Norma agreed and I phoned David. He must have guessed why I was calling from the tone of my voice because he said immediately, “I know. I saw the story in the paper this morning.”
Fifteen minutes later David arrived; he hugged Norma and he hugged me.
“Why don’t we go to Commons and talk,” he suggested; “it’s too noisy here and too depressing.”
David held his umbrella over our heads and we crossed Denny Yard to Commons, a cafeteria in Raitt Hall. David brought three cups of coffee to the table; we told Norma about the postcards and I recounted my meeting with Maldonado three days previously.
I dried my eyes and wiped my nose. “I can’t help holding myself responsible for his death in some way. What if he hadn’t noticed me and David at Mannings or I hadn’t given him the grade card, or he hadn’t seen us together at the HUB? What if I’d agreed to go to your party with him? What if being disappointed with me tipped him over the edge? Regardless of whether he had any romantic notions about me, I feel like I let him down.”
“Everyone’s saying the same thing. We all feel guilty. Just before you arrived, I was talking to one of his students, a Spanish major. She said they’d had a discussion – more like an argument – in class a few days ago. They were talking about a novel – right now I’m so distraught I can’t even remember its name– but the point is Nélida told him there was no reason to get emotional about the characters’ motivations because it was fiction, and Corrado got upset because to him fiction was every bit as important as reality. He certainly didn’t commit suicide because a student disagreed with him about literature, but this is one example of what I’ve been hearing all morning”.
“What else are they saying?”
“That he was homosexual and his lover broke up with him.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“Honestly, I don’t have any idea. I didn’t think he was … but you never know. The rate of homosexuality in any Romance language department is certainly high, but Corrado… how can you reconcile his being homosexual with your conversation on Tuesday and everything else that happened before? Did he offer you a ride because he thought of it as sort of a date – or was it only a ride? In a way, his remark about hoping you’d play the record and think of Spanish 304 – by which he certainly meant himself – sounds like a foreshadowing of his death.”
David had been largely silent until then. “Norma, you said you have an idea why he killed himself. What is it?”
“I haven’t mentioned this to anyone else because it seems disrespectful to his memory but … I had a long talk with Corrado Monday afternoon. He’d just come from a meeting with Dr. Nelson and Nelson told him he was out after this quarter. He was totally devastated.”
“Out! You mean fired?” I exclaimed, “But why?”
“Corrado came here in 1953. The department hired him at the rank of Instructor with the understanding he’d be promoted to Assistant Professor once he completed his dissertation and got his Ph.D; that was four years ago. You can’t take four years to write your dissertation. I’m amazed he lasted as long as he did. From what he told me, I gathered he wasn’t making any progress, either. You mentioned feeling guilty – well, I feel guilty myself. It’s not that I wasn’t sympathetic, but maybe there’s something more I could have said or done. It never crossed my mind he was considering suicide.”
Maldonado’s father arrived from the Midwest and took his son’s body home for burial. A couple of junior faculty members volunteered to clean out Maldonado’s apartment, and when the landlady admitted them, they discovered he’d made a list bequeathing many of his possessions to his friends. To Norma he left a beautiful Florentine box with leaves embedded in the cover and to me another record, Germaine Montero singing Folk Songs of Spain.
Maldonado must have expected his funeral would be held in Seattle, for he requested they play one of the songs on the record at the church. By the time his gifts were discovered however, Maldonado’s remains had already been taken home, so his friends decided to play the song at his memorial service, held a week later at a nearby Methodist chapel.
I went with Norma and David. Friends and colleagues spoke about his scholarship, his sense of humor, his kindness. Dr. Nelson said how much he would miss an inspired teacher. Norma had been asked to say a few words, but she declined, knowing she couldn’t talk about Maldonado without breaking down. Mr. Mazzello, from the Italian department, mentioned Maldonado had requested a certain Spanish folk song at his funeral, and he put on the record – my record now – of Montero singing the haunting "Ya se van los pastores."
Ya se van los pastores a la Extremadura,
ya se van los pastores a la Extremadura,
ya se queda la sierra triste y oscura
ya se queda la sierra triste y oscura.
Ya se van los pastores ya se van marchando
ya se van los pastores ya se van marchando
más de cuatro zagalas quedan llorando
más de cuatro zagalas quedan llorando.
Ya se van los pastores hacia la majada
ya se van los pastores hacia la majada
ya se queda la sierra triste y callada
ya se queda la sierra triste y callada.
(The shepherds are going away to Extremadura, leaving the mountains sad and dark. The shepherds are going away; they’re going away, leaving more than four shepherd girls crying. The shepherds are going away to the flocks, leaving the mountains sad and silent).
Norma and I burst into tears.
Chapter 14
&nbs
p; Blaine Hall, Room B102
University of Washington, Seattle
March 4, 1957
Dear Mother and Daddy,
Do you remember what Daddy always says about Seattle – that
it’s either raining, has just rained, or is just about to rain? These past
few months have confirmed his judgment and I’m looking forward
to the sunny skies of Mexico.
Winter quarter will be over in less than three weeks; not much
going on except studying like mad. My employer, Dr. Rosenau,
is speaking at this year’s American Association for the Advancement
of Science meeting here in Seattle; his accent's pretty strong, so I’ve
been giving him diction lessons…
January wept into February and February into March, the winter bringing weeks of gray skies and unremitting drizzle that turned the campus into one huge quagmire. Across the “quad,” a grassy esplanade between the principal liberal arts buildings, the rain’s ceaseless assault eroded a network of dirt shortcuts into rivers of mud.
The wind buffeted my corner room in Blaine Hall from two directions and I sat shivering at my desk every night, wrapped in a blanket, because the radiator stubbornly refused to raise the temperature above 60 degrees, even when turned on full. At least my room was dry. After a hard winter rain, the roof over Norma’s apartment began to leak; it leaked selectively, first in one spot, then in another and Norma was perpetually rearranging her furniture to avoid the drips. Because Norma’s landlord was away when the problem started, David spent an entire Saturday afternoon on the roof, making patches; his repairs were partially successful, but as Norma observed philosophically when she moved her couch for the sixth time, the humidity seemed to be good for her Boston ferns.
Shortly after the start of winter quarter, I received an invitation to the annual Honors Banquet. I went with a group of residence hall students, and at dinner happened to sit next to a freshman from Blaine whom I didn’t know, a girl named Rosemary Hughes. When the meal was over and the servers had cleared away the dessert dishes, the speeches and presentations began. One by one the honorees were called up to receive their awards, until the moderator came to the climax of the evening, the Phi Beta Kappa prize for the most outstanding entering freshman. It goes without saying the young woman being honored had a perfect high school record; in addition she had placed first in a state-wide piano competition, won the grand prize at the Washington State Science Fair, and was the recipient of a four-year General Motors scholarship – and these were just a few of the highlights. As I listened in awe to her catalog of achievements, I happened to glance at Rosemary, who was sitting bolt upright in her chair with her eyes closed and an expression on her face half way between astonishment and terror. When they announced her name as the winner, I don’t know who was more amazed, the girls from Blaine Hall, who knew her as just another freshman, or Rosie herself. It’s not surprising we were unaware of her accomplishments for Rosemary was, without question, the most unassuming person I’ve ever met, and few people guessed that behind the twinkling blue eyes and the infectious laugh lay a mind that dealt as easily with differential equations as with the music of Chopin.
Rosemary and I became close friends after the banquet, and she helped fill the void I felt when Norma moved out. Rosemary was of Welsh descent, with black hair, blue eyes, and the porcelain complexion common in people of Celtic origin. She was slightly plump, forever on a diet, and a short waist gave her a slightly boxy appearance. Although not beautiful, Rosemary exuded an unselfconscious charm that endeared her to everyone she met.
Rosemary was majoring in mathematics after a painful struggle with both her conscience and her music teacher, who told her flatly if she didn’t pursue a career as a concert pianist she was spitting in the eye of God. At my insistence, Rosie played for me one night after dinner. She chose Debussy’s Reflets dans l'eau, and when she struck the final notes, there was a hush in the living room, followed by a spontaneous burst of applause from everyone present. She had the power to make you cry with her fingers.
Rosemary often stopped to chat late at night when she returned from a date. I’d put on the tea kettle and we’d sit for hours discussing boys, sex, our parents, our futures, all the things that concerned college girls in those innocent times, before the Pill, before Roe v. Wade, before no-fault divorce. We weren’t women’s libbers then – the term hadn’t been invented – and we unthinkingly accepted our destinies as wives and mothers. Rosie, in particular, saw herself working for a few years after graduation, marrying a wonderful young man, and then retiring to a house and children. I wasn’t so sure about my own future; I had too much ego to subordinate my identity to the caprices of others – except David, of course – and too little ambition for anything else.
I introduced David to Rosemary as my employer and she accepted his role without question. Many times I was on the verge of confessing the truth to her, but how could I tell a girl who agonized over kissing a boy on the first date – even Rosie – that I was having an affair with a married man?
When David learned of Rosemary’s interest in music he made a point of inviting her to some of the concerts we attended, and she accepted enthusiastically. Rosemary captivated David, as she did everyone, and he shared my desire to keep our relationship a secret from her; unlike his behavior in Frank’s presence, when David almost flaunted his sexuality, with Rosemary he scrupulously avoided any word or gesture that would have betrayed our real feelings.
Although extremely near-sighted, Rosemary refused to wear glasses except under the most unusual circumstances, and she jokingly attributed her amazing memory for musical scores to her aversion to playing from sheet music with the aid of glasses. Her vanity often had amusing consequences. Once at a concert by the pianist Byron Janis, Rosemary offered us some candies during the intermission. I was sitting between her and David, and when she passed a small box in front of me, I declined, barely looking at it. David nudged my ribs and I followed his gaze to the candies.
“Rosie!” I exclaimed, “Those are chocolate flavored laxatives!”
She snatched the box back and peered at it closely. “Oh my gosh, you’re right; I thought they were Necco wafers!”
On another occasion, David took us to dinner at a small Italian restaurant in the university district; all three of us ordered lasagna, and when our dishes arrived, Rosemary seized a glass shaker from the table and started pouring the contents liberally on top of the tomato sauce. David watched her for a moment with a puzzled expression on his face.
“Rosie, what are you doing?”
She looked up, all innocence. “I’m sprinkling parmesan cheese on my lasagna.”
“But, that’s sugar.”
Rosie glanced down at her plate in surprise. “I thought it was odd how the cheese kept sinking in.” Then she exploded in a peal of laughter, for no one was more amused at her antics than Rosie herself. As David said when he met her, “the sun was shining on the day Rosemary was born.”
David and I were constantly together throughout that dreary winter quarter. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I had no afternoon classes, David closed his office early and we’d sneak away like children playing hooky, running down the back stairs of the Health Sciences Building to his car before anyone had a chance to interrupt us. We rented bicycles and rode through Woodland Park; we attended concerts and went to movies; we sailed and ate dinner at Sam’s. There was a joy in simply being together, and the most ordinary activities took on a new meaning because we shared them.
One rainy day we spent in Tacoma is etched forever in my memory. We didn’t go to Tacoma for a reason; David had just started driving south, and when we were a few miles from the city, he suggested we visit the aquarium. The building was deserted that afternoon, and we wandered undisturbed for hours through its narrow corridors in a world of perpetual night, like the sea itself. Fluorescent tubes above the tanks provided the only illumination, and as
the light filtered through layers of flowing water, it cast eerie, rippling shadows on the walls and on our faces. The fish inspected us briefly, twitched their fins, and swam silently away. Only the creaking floorboards and the sound of bubbling water ruffled the atmosphere of total calm.
All the fish were blennies. My recollection must be faulty; surely there were groupers and bass, eels and flounder, the standard fare of aquariums everywhere, but all I remember is tank after tank of blennies. Big blennies, small blennies, each fish more grotesque than the one before. We stood hand-in-hand studying displays explaining the differences between cartilaginous and bony fishes, we looked at an exhibit of salmon migration, and tried to pretend an interest in ichthyology when we had something else on our minds.
David drew me to him, ran his hand along the curve of my back, and leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Do you want to go to the boat afterwards?”
“Can we wait that long?” The look on David’s face was answer enough.
There was something titillating in the atmosphere. Perhaps it was the velvet dark, or the solitude or the sinuous movements of the fish. We stood in front of the tanks kissing and caressing until the tension became unbearable, and then we moved on, letting the emotion drain away, only to begin again.
Facing a large community tank was a wooden bench placed so visitors could sit and look at the fish. Sitting down in silence, we watched the marine creatures gliding behind the glass, and then we kissed languorously like divers overcome by rapture of the deep. I felt as though I should hold my breath, as though at any instant we had to break apart and swim for the surface. We made love there on the bench, in the dark, twenty fathoms beneath the sea.
Letters To My Mother Page 19