“Holy shit,” Alex said under his breath. They all stopped and stared up at number 42, a pale yellow stuccoed building with white trim and red railings.
“It’s the same colors as our house,” Alex said.
“I know,” Val said.
Jav went a few paces away, taking pictures.
“Do you remember?” he heard Val say.
Alex nodded. He went up on the stoop, turned and faced the street. Came down the steps again. Closed his eyes and opened them. He looked up at the building facade and pointed, lips moving as if counting. “Third floor, second window in,” he said. “That was my parents’ bedroom.”
He walked a few paces down the sidewalk, looked up at the window again. He moved closer to the front of the building. His foot scraped over the sidewalk, then he crouched down, a hand against the bricks. The other hand at his brow.
Val hunkered down next to him. “Here?” she said. “It was here?”
Alex nodded.
Jav watched, his eyes growing wet. He couldn’t imagine what happened here and didn’t want to. Whatever it was, it could still bring Alex to his knees thirty years later.
Jav couldn’t look away. His heart rumbled in his chest, like an earthquake stirring in his soul. Waking up. Lurching to life. Grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him, Don’t you see? Don’t you see?
Alex got up, wiping his eyes. But he was smiling, even laughing a little. “Jesus.”
He and Val posed on the steps and Jav took a picture. His phone pinged an email then, with the picture Ari took in Alex’s study. They headed back to the Plaza San Margarita. Alex held up the phone with the photograph of his father. Enough of the fountain was in the shot that he could line himself up. He lowered the phone and stared straight ahead. Jav followed his gaze to a cafe with bright blue stucco walls.
“Is that it?” he asked.
“No. I mean, clearly it was right there,” Alex said, looking down to the phone and up again. “But it’s not the same building.”
They walked closer to be sure. Jav stopped a policeman to ask if he remembered a book shop on this corner. The officer apologized, saying he wasn’t from Santiago. Undeterred, Jav asked an elderly gentleman sitting on a bench in the plaza, throwing bits of bread to the pigeons and dogs.
“Libreria?” the old man said. “Se quemó. Setenta y tres.”
It burned down in seventy-three.
“The whole building?” Jav asked. “Todo quemado?”
“No, no,” the man said. “Just the shop. During the coup. They tore the building down in eighty-four, eighty-five.”
“I see.”
The old man eyed him a long moment. “Los Desaparecidos?”
“Not me,” Jav said. “My friend. He was a child during the coup. They got him out but he never saw his family again.”
The man threw a handful of bread crumbs. “My sons as well,” he said. “And my brother.”
“Disculpa, señor.”
“Bring your friend over here.”
The old man introduced himself as Espinoza, without a first name. He shook all their hands but then shooed Val and Jav off. They got an outdoor table at the cafe, ordered coffee and watched the two men communing.
“What happened outside his building?” Jav asked. “What was that about?”
Val opened her mouth as if to answer, then closed it and shook her head. “It’s his story to tell, Jav.”
“I understand.”
She put her hand on top of his. “I have a feeling he’ll tell you someday.”
Her gaze went back across the plaza but their hands stayed linked, and Jav kept looking at her. The sun in her hair. The firm clear line of her jaw and the fine lines etched by her eyes.
“She wanted you,” Jav said.
Val blinked at him. “Who?”
“Deane. She cried for you.”
Val’s fingers went tight in his. “What?” she whispered.
“The whole time I was with her,” Jav said. “She was crying, I want my mother. Please get my mother, I need her. Even when she slept, she mumbled Mommy under her breath.”
“She did?” Val said, her eyes brimming. Her fingertips touched her collarbones, as if this was a gift when it wasn’t her birthday.
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“I… She usually goes to Alex. She and I haven’t… I mean, it’s been…” Val was crying now. “She wanted me?”
Jav yanked some napkins from the table dispenser. “Jesus, Val,” he said, wiping her face. “Of course she wanted you. You’re the strongest person she knows. You’re the strongest person I know.”
She cried and laughed, mopping her face.
“I really need to start carrying a handkerchief,” he said. “It’s so much more classy.”
Her damp eyes rolled but her smile turned up wide. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”
“This is a good story,” he said. He was so suffused with love and affection, his well-being feeling so well-done, he’d never be able to tell it properly.
He brought her fingers up and rested his mouth against them.
It’s so good right now. It’s excellent.
Finally Alex stood up from the bench and extended a handshake, but Espinoza heaved himself to his feet and embraced Alex instead. Dogs and pigeons circled their feet.
Alex crossed the street and came over to the table. “Don’t ask me yet,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll tell you later.”
“You want a drink?” Jav said.
“No. If you’re done, I want to go one more place.”
They found the old U.S. embassy, which was now part of the chamber of commerce.
“Wow,” Alex said. “Now this is vivid.”
“You remember?” Jav said.
“Oh yeah. This was the entrance. A little hut was here for the guards. The gates were shut. Different gates but right here.” He stood, centered in the gateway, pointing to the ground. “Right here I saw my father for the last time. The guards pulled me in. The gates shut. Like prison, you know? Clang. And I held onto the bars and turned my head sideways to watch him.” He pointed down the sidewalk. “No trees back then. Or they were smaller. It was much more open. I could see all the way down to the end. He waved. Right there. Right on that corner…”
Jav watched Alex walk down the sidewalk, following his memory’s trail of breadcrumbs to the corner. He stopped and stood still, hands on hips. His feet turned in a slow circle, his gaze swept the sidewalk all around. Then slowly he came back to the gate.
He looks good to me, Jav thought. A smooth feeling in his mind, like something from a remembered dream.
“Weird,” Alex said. “It’s so ordinary. You know? Like I’m looking for a plaque in the wall or a marker on the sidewalk. Something that memorializes it. Eduardo Penda, last seen here.”
Jav reached and put an arm around him. Alex moved closer under its drape. His leather jacket was warm from the sun. The wind picked up the edges of his hair. His hand rested on Jav’s back, his other arm curved around Val.
“What did the old man say?” she asked.
“Basically that it’s a life,” Alex said. “And not everyone gets one.”
“Second chances are given or made,” Jav said.
“This was good,” Alex said, his smile an open beautiful thing. “I’m glad we did this.” His voice dissolved. Then his head slumped and his shoulders trembled. His eyes squeezed as he rolled his smile in and bit down. Jav and Val folded in like a closing book, taking him in between their four arms. Alex laid his head on Val’s shoulder. Jav laid his cheek on Alex’s head.
“He’s glad you did, too,” Jav said. “He sees you. He’s on the corner and he sees you…”
Deane spent ten days in the Santiago hospital and came home the first week in July. On a private jet, which Jav’s mysterious friend arranged.
It was ridiculous. Deane had visions of suffering in a coach seat for ten hours, trussed in her support brace and going out of he
r mind. Instead, she lay on a couch, reading and watching movies while her parents reclined in cushy leather seats.
“I’m on a couch in the sky,” she kept saying.
“I’m ruined,” Val said.
“And look at you, Dad. I believe you’re actually enjoying the flight.”
Alex smiled behind closed eyes. “Private jet and Xanax. This is the only way to do it.”
“Who is this friend of Jav’s?” Deane asked. “Can she be my friend too?”
“You can’t afford her,” Alex said and Val kicked his leg, laughing.
Deane was still suffering headaches and nausea. Her vision split when she was tired, doubling the world. And tiny bits of her long-term memory had gone numb.
She knew her house, but stared at one or two possessions, their provenance vanished. This is mine? She admired a picture on the wall and was puzzled when Val said Deane herself had drawn it. I did? She looked at the gorgeous formal dress hanging in her closet and had zero recollection of wearing it. When?
“To prom,” Stella said. “I was your date, remember? We went stag because men are assholes?”
“Of course,” Deane said, not remembering.
Casey came to see her. Stella said he flipped out when he first heard about her crash. A dozen other students concurred he really flipped out. It all made for a rather pleasant eyewitness account.
“Oh man, it was bad.”
“I’ve never seen him like that.”
“He was in tears. Dude, it was crazy.”
“He made me come to church with him and light a candle.”
What wasn’t pleasant was the small void in her memory regarding Casey. They’d broken up, but the reason seemed to have escaped her.
She remembered Casey, she knew who he was. She remembered their relationship, remembered dates, remembered sex and she could put him in context. When he came to the house with roses and seven bars of her favorite chocolate, she recognized his concern was laced with something else. Regret or remorse. Or both. She vaguely recalled being mad at him. Did they have a fight? About what? She felt stupid asking Stella. She couldn’t construct the question in a way that didn’t make her sound like a soap opera heroine emerging from a coma.
Do I know you? Where am I?
She didn’t want to ask her mother either: bad enough Val got all teary when Deane didn’t recognize shit around the house. Why upset her more? And how important could it be anyway? Casey was here now. He sat on the floor by the side of the couch and laid his head by Deane’s hip. One hand held hers, the other ran in long strokes down her legs.
“You got so thin,” he said.
She pushed her fingers through his hair and let them trace over the lines of his face. He held still, his eyes closed.
“I missed you so much,” he said. “And I’m so sorry. I was an idiot.”
She went on caressing him. If he was sorry, she’d let him be sorry.
“This time we’ve been apart,” he said. “It’s made me see a lot of things.”
“Like?”
His mouth opened and closed a few times. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try,” she said. “I won’t laugh at you.”
“I don’t know, I just…I just love you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have a reason. Isn’t that what love is?”
He rolled up on his knees and put his head on her good shoulder.
“I love you,” he said. “And I want you back.”
She was young. Holes dotted her memory. She was vulnerable in her injuries and a sucker for a cute boy’s earnest penitence and attention. It soothed her.
She ate it up like cake.
“I want you back, Deane.”
She let his hair sift through her fingers. “I know.”
August 2006
It made Ari crazy.
Crazy.
“T, if you love me, kill me,” he said, half-slumped on the coffee bar at Celeste’s.
“Don’t kill him in the apartment,” Trelawney said to Jav. “I have to disclose it if I ever try to sell the place.”
“I’ll kill him in the parking lot,” Jav said, not looking up from his laptop.
“Hurry,” Ari said, groaning in misery. He couldn’t escape it. Every time he stepped outside, he saw Casey driving Deane to physical therapy appointments. Casey loping up the porch steps at Tulip Street. Casey picking Deane up at the animal shelter. Casey and Deane having coffee at the bookstore.
Wanting Deane felt like dying. This crushing disappointment felt like not dying when you were terminally ill.
What the fucking fuck?
How about we talk more about this when I get back?
Her exact words. Now she was back and acting like this never happened.
“No rush,” Ari mumbled. “Whenever you want to disengage your face from Casey’s, I’ll be glad to have a chat.”
He was wounded to the core. A victim of emotional assault who couldn’t press charges. He had absolutely no leg to stand on. Deane had a horrendous crash in Chile. She could’ve been permanently injured. Hell, she could’ve died. She was expected to make a full recovery but she wouldn’t be playing sports for a while. That had to suck. Obviously the whole ordeal had made her think twice about Casey. She had a thing with him for nearly two years. What was Ari going to do—lodge a complaint based on a kind-of kiss and a rain check? He’d look like a whiny bitch. He had some pride.
And he had a permanent scar across his tongue from biting it in Deane’s presence. His entire body felt like one giant toothache. The only thing that gave him a shred of comfort was she was still wearing the St. Bernard’s medal. That had to mean something.
Didn’t it?
Only Jav and Trelawney knew of the almost-kiss up in Deane’s bedroom. Ari told a lot of things to Trelawney. She was one of those people whose ear was a funnel for shit. A good listener and pretty much un-shockable.
After a few weeks of enduring Ari’s pissy moods, Trelawney laid a cool hand on his forearm. “You know, I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“What?”
“I talk to Deane and I notice she’s forgotten things. Little things she’s told me or done with me. She’s lost memories.”
Ari stared at the luminous face. Trelawney looked so much like an elf out of Lord of the Rings. Full of some centuries-old, enlightened wisdom he’d never attain.
“She had a bad head injury,” she said. “She bled into her brain. So maybe tuck it in the back of your mind that she doesn’t remember she kissed you.” She squeezed his arm. “All right?”
He nodded, feeling chastised and stupid. The theory didn’t ring one hundred percent true. After all, Deane remembered he’d given her the St. Bernard medal, which was right before the kiss. Still, if the snub was beyond everyone’s control, it helped take some of the sting out of his sunburned feelings.
He threw all his energy and focus into working out. All summer, he ate six meals a day and went with Jav to the gym every morning. At first, he just gained weight and got chunky. Then, around the middle of August, the chunk started to streamline into muscle. He’d always be slim, but the leanness was defined in a way that made him loiter in front of the bathroom mirror, pleased. He had shoulders now, and something to put in the seat of his pants besides air.
One day he picked up Jav’s hat, a short-brimmed, dark grey cap with a little feather in its black band. Jav often wore it when he was writing and, interestingly, he didn’t look good in it. Something about the hat’s size and shape made Ari’s drop-dead gorgeous uncle look dorky.
Ari put it on and glanced at the mirror. He looked good.
“This a fedora?” he asked Jav.
“Pork pie,” Jav said, giving it a tilt. “Also known as a stingy brim.”
“Can I wear it?”
Jav gave him a skeptical look. “It’s my lucky hat.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“It belonged to someone I knew.”
For a mom
ent, all the skin of Jav’s face seemed to yank sideways and a flicker of pain shot across his eyes.
“Who?” Ari asked.
Jav’s eyes softened and his face pulled itself together again. “You can wear it. But take good care of it. Lose it and I’ll kill you.”
“Don’t kill me in the apartment,” Ari said. “Trelawney won’t be able to sell it.”
He started wearing the hat to work. Then to school. He took care of it the way he was taking care of his body. When the senior class made a trip to Bard Rock for Homecoming, Ari could feel appreciative female eyes on his new physique. Girls were flirting with him. Play-fighting for a turn to wear his hat. Hyper-aware of his uncle’s trust, he kept it out of their hands and on his head.
“Wow, look at you,” Deane said, touching his sculpted arm as she passed by.
“Look at me,” he said.
She gave the brim of his hat a little flick with her finger. “Nice lid.”
The sun went down and the kids built a bonfire. The air was full of guitar and songs and pot smoke, overlaid with the sweet sadness of summer’s true end. Deane was with her girlfriends, singing and roasting marshmallows. The flames turned her hair to amber and glinted off Bernie at her neck. Ari was drunk and horny and he wanted her.
He went for a walk down the beach instead. Kicking at the sand, chucking rocks into the river and mumbling to himself.
He came upon a lifeguard chair turned on its side, bedded down for the night.
It was rocking back and forth slightly.
A girl was on her knees with her forearms on one of the trusses, her skirt up around her waist. A boy knelt behind her, holding her hips and fucking the living shit out of her. Little cries and yelps rose up over the night. Harder. Oh yeah. Do it. Yeah. Give it to me.
Ari’s eyes widened, then squinted. A corner of his mouth smiled. His chest released a chuckled grunt of judgment. He turned around and loped back to the party.
Deane was coming toward him, looking around. “You seen Casey?” she asked.
Ari flipped his thumb over his shoulder. “I think I saw him down that way.”
“Were you sleeping?” Deane said. “Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”
“No, I was awake,” Alex said, “I was reading. What’s wrong?”
An Exaltation of Larks Page 28