“Don’t look down,” Danilo advises as he nears me.
I look down. My black-and-white sneakers are planted firmly in the middle of the concrete. Somehow, seeing them helps. The gate has to be about six, maybe seven feet wide, but at that height, it feels more like six or seven inches. I slide one pointed toe forward, move my hand, then drop my heel. Danilo stops. Come on, I tell myself. I want to wipe my sweaty hand against my jeans but I don’t dare peel it off the railing. I move again, and again, until finally I’m walking at a halfway decent pace all the way to where Danilo is standing. I wait for him to make fun of me, but he just smiles and keeps on.
As soon as we’re safely on the other side, Danilo makes his way to the base of the tower. Hector Jaén is waiting there with the door propped open.
“What is it?” he asks.
Danilo claps him lightly on the shoulder and says, “Long time no see, friend. How have you been?”
“You don’t have clearance to come up. I have told you and I have told Hernán before,” Hector says.
“That’s why I’m down here. If I had clearance, I’d be up there already.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
I’m standing by, my body still pulsing with a hundred feverish vibrations, incredulous and optimistic.
“It’s important” is all Danilo says.
Hector Jaén rolls his eyes. Quickly, he scans the grounds around the tower, then motions us in.
The top of the tower is one large room, crowded by a replica of the canal and other miscellaneous equipment—reams of paper, binoculars, compasses, maps, tide tables, and at least five clocks mounted on the wall displaying various time zones. Two men sit at instrument panels directly in front of windows that look out over the canal.
I elbow Danilo. “See? I could work at a place like this.”
“What do you need?” Hector mutters. “You’re going to get me in trouble, Danilo.”
“Hernán says hello.” At this, a glimmer of a smile passes across Hector’s face. “This is Miraflores,” Danilo says.
“Again, the same joke?”
“I swear that’s her name.”
“Buenas,” Hector says, dutifully shaking my hand.
“Buenas.”
“Miraflores is visiting us from the United States. She’s looking for her father.”
Hector blanches. “Not me? It couldn’t be. I was not with that many women when I was young. I did not—” he stammers, until Danilo laughs.
“Relax. It’s not you. It’s someone by the name of Gatún Gallardo. He used to work here.”
“She’s Miraflores and he’s Gatún?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Gallardo,” Hector repeats thoughtfully.
I feel the electricity in my toes, the tingling of potential.
“It sounds familiar,” he says.
“Think hard,” Danilo urges.
“Years ago. In the seventies, no?”
“Yes, he worked here then,” I say, and in my voice there’s a mounting hope, like a kite skimming up through the air.
“He used to work here in the control tower, I think. If I am remembering the right person. He almost caused a big accident here. After that, he moved over to the maintenance crew.”
I wonder, for a fleeting second, about the accident, what that means exactly, but I don’t want to get off track. “Does he still work here?” I ask.
Hector shakes his head. “I haven’t heard about him in a while. I don’t know what happened to him. It was a long time ago. He had a small beard, yes?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Hector, is there any way to find out if he’s still here, or if not, where he went?”
“I have access to the employment records, I guess.”
Danilo claps his hands. “That’s what I’m talking about! Can we look?”
Hector eyes both of us. I can’t imagine what I look like then, how eagerly poised my body must be for anything that might come next.
“I’ll look and tell you,” he says.
For a moment, it appears as though Danilo is going to argue with him, but he takes a step back and raises his hands. “Whatever you want. We’ll wait here.”
When Hector returns minutes later, Danilo says, “So?”
“He quit in 1987.”
“Where is he now?” I ask.
Hector shakes his head lightly. “That was all it said. No forwarding information. He worked here, in a number of different divisions, but he quit in 1987.”
Nineteen eighty-seven. Three years after I was born.
“That’s all you know?” Danilo presses.
“I’m sorry,” Hector says. “That’s all I know.”
Hernán is at the hotel when we return. I detect a slight frown on his face when he first sees us, but when I look again he’s smiling brightly with his arms outstretched.
“Where have you been?” he asks.
“At the canal,” I say.
“To Miraflores, yes? Miraflores went to Miraflores.” He smiles giddily and watches us as if waiting to see whether he can laugh at his own joke. “And how did you like it?”
“Very impressive,” I say.
Without a word, Danilo has walked past us. I watch the slender curve of his back as he leans over to retrieve his flower bucket tucked under the steps.
“Do you know,” Hernán continues, stepping into my line of vision as soon as he notices me watching Danilo, “that I used to work at the canal?”
“You did? Danilo didn’t tell me that.”
“I’m not surprised. He has trouble expressing any pride in me.”
“When did you work there?”
“From 1977 to 1987. Ten years.”
My breath catches. “Until 1987?”
“Until December of that year, yes. I worked in the control tower at Miraflores, with a man named Hector Jaén, whom I would imagine is still there. He always took his job too seriously. He was the only Panamanian to hold a position of real authority back then, though, so he had a good reason. Mostly, it was the North Americans who ran the show.” Hernán shakes his head, remembering.
“Hernán,” I say, trying to remain poised, “did you know someone who worked there named Gatún Gallardo?”
“Gatún Gallardo! I haven’t heard that name in a long time. He used to bring his lunch every day in a brown paper bag and eat it on the ground next to the control tower. I used to look down and see him, eating by himself and then smoking a cigarette for a long time after. Sometimes he would lie back on the concrete and take a nap, even though that sort of thing was frowned upon. He never seemed to care much about the rules.”
My heart races wildly through the cave of my chest. “You knew him?”
“We were not friends. Nothing against him. But we said hello to each other from time to time. He always seemed pleasant enough.” Hernán narrows his eyes. “Is that who you were looking for? The other day, in Santa Ana?”
Danilo has plopped himself on the hotel stoop, his bucket between his legs. He’s pulling out stems one by one and rearranging them. It doesn’t appear that he’s listening to our conversation.
“He’s my father,” I say.
The color drains from Hernán’s face and he blinks a number of times in an exaggerated way. “Gatún Gallardo? Your father?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? I don’t understand how . . . But your name is not Gallardo.”
Blood is pounding in my chest, in my ears. “My mother met him when she lived here.”
“Your mother lived here? When? What is her name?”
“Catherine Reid.”
Hernán shakes his head, pale, bewildered. “An American?”
“Yes.”
“She must have lived in the Zone,” Hernán mutters. “And now you’re looking for him? Your father? Gatún Gallardo? Why? He and your mother didn’t marry?”
“No. I’ve never met him.”
He looks heartbroken, a series o
f pained expressions flashing across his face. “I see,” he says finally.
“But if you knew him, you could help me find him.”
“I didn’t really know him,” Hernán says carefully. “As I said.”
“What you just told me about him, about eating his lunch outside every day, that’s almost as much as everything I’ve ever known about him. Please, Hernán.”
He wipes his handkerchief across his forehead and cheeks.
“Danilo is helping you?”
“He’s trying. But he knows even less than me. I mean, he knows the city. But he doesn’t know anything about my father.”
“How long will you look for him?” Hernán asks.
“I have to go home in a few weeks. But I want to find him as soon as I can. I mean, if I found him tomorrow, I would still have some time to spend with him before I have to go back home.”
“And you are planning on staying here until you find him?” He gestures toward the hotel.
“I guess so.”
“No, Miraflores”—he says it in the same way as Danilo, delicately, liltingly—“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Oh, you don’t even know. In a lot of ways, it’s a terrible idea. There’s all this other stuff going on right now. But I have to look for him. It’s sort of now or never. I mean, it’s only going to get harder from now on. I don’t know when I would be able to come back.” I stop when I realize that Hernán has no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t feel like filling him in on everything at the moment. I just want his help.
Hernán coughs. He darts his eyes around like an animal that has suddenly realized it’s in a cage, trapped. He looks panicked. Then he takes a breath and says, “Of course. What I meant was the hotel. It’s so expensive to stay here. Maybe you want to come stay with us, in our apartment. It’s small, but that way you could save money, and I would feel better about it, and we could help you, Danilo and I.”
The invitation doesn’t startle me. Not that I expected it. It never crossed my mind that Hernán would offer to let me stay with him, but it’s not surprising somehow. I have a sense by now that Hernán has a decent heart and that, for some reason, that decent heart has a soft spot in it for me. There’s something about how he treats me that feels almost like family.
“I don’t know,” I say, stealing a glimpse at Danilo. He’s in a retiring pose on the steps now, his eyes closed against the warm rays of the sun, the shadow cast by a palm tree cutting jaggedly over his body, like feathery claws.
“It would save you money,” Hernán says again.
I look briefly at Danilo again and bite my lip.
“Do you have room?” I ask.
“We will make room.”
“You really don’t have to offer.”
“Of course not! But I want to. You can think about it,” he says, obviously pleased with himself and the fact that I haven’t yet turned him down.
I think he expects me to leave it at that and walk inside, but instead I look him in the eye. “Okay. If you’re sure you don’t mind.”
“You’ll stay with us?”
“If you’re sure.”
“Of course! Good!” He claps his hands together and beams. “We’ll clear a space for you. You can walk home with us tonight. You can check out of the hotel right now if you want, and then just tell them that you will collect your things later tonight.”
I smile in spite of the fact that part of me wonders why in the world I just agreed to this.
“Danilo!” Hernán cries, turning to his nephew on the steps. “Miraflores is coming to stay with us!”
Danilo sits up, puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
“She is going to stay with us while she is in Panamá.”
“Really?” Danilo says, a smile spreading across his face as slow as syrup. He looks at me. “Welcome.”
The apartment is on the second floor of a two-story building, above a laundromat and across the street from a bakery. Hernán points out the laundromat, closed for the night, and notes that I should consider taking my clothes there if I need them washed, because they do a good job. “Fifteen cents per pound. They will iron, too, if you want. And if you take your own hangers, they give a discount.”
Gallantly, he carries my suitcase up the stairs and heaves it through the front door when we arrive, placing it against a wall off to one side.
“This is it!” he announces. He hasn’t been able to stop grinning since I agreed to this arrangement.
It’s eleven o’clock—we waited until Hernán finished his shift—but even at night the space has a brightness to it, an airiness so acute that it barely feels like I’m inside at all. All the windows—single-paned, unadorned by curtains or blinds— are wide open, as are a set of louvered French doors, painted turquoise, that lead to a faux balcony. The front door opens directly into a sitting area with a couch, a wooden rocking chair with a printed yellow cushion, and an old television set resting on a cotton doily. The lamp shades are still wrapped in plastic. The sitting area funnels into a narrow hallway that has three plywood doors along one side. Across from the doors is the kitchen, outfitted with plain wooden cabinets, a gold refrigerator, a stove piled high with aluminum pots, and a small kitchen table. Every wall is painted sea-foam green, and on the one behind the television three diorama-like Panamanian houses, each roughly the size of a clock, hang in a row.
“Danilo’s room, my room, and the washroom,” Hernán says, pointing in succession to the doors lining the hallway.
Danilo is behind the two of us, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed over his chest.
“It’s really nice,” I say.
“Where you live is probably a mansion compared with this.”
“Not at all.”
Danilo snorts.
“What?” I ask, turning to face him, running my hand along my bag strap.
“You don’t have to be nice for our sake.”
“I’m not. This is a great house.”
“Are you surprised?”
“No. I’m just saying . . .”
“Leave her alone, Danilo.” Hernán clears his throat, then advances past me and flips on more lights. “Of course,” he continues, “you can sleep in my room, and I will take the couch.” He doubles back toward my bag, eager to get me situated.
Danilo, still behind me, says, “She can take my room.”
Hernán stops. “You don’t even let me into your room.”
Danilo scoots past us into the kitchen. He drags a plastic pitcher of water out of the refrigerator and fills a glass almost to the brim.
“Okay,” Hernán says, shuttling my suitcase into Danilo’s room. When he comes back out, he joins Danilo in the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?” he asks me.
“No, thank you,” I say. I feel stiff all of a sudden, unsure of what I’m doing here.
“You’re tired?” Hernán asks.
“Yes, I guess so. Yeah, I’m pretty tired.”
“Of course you are,” he says, though he looks vaguely disappointed at the idea of a premature end to the evening. “I’ll bring a fresh towel to your room for you to use in the morning. We don’t have hot water, but it gets warm enough and in this weather I doubt that you would want it hot anyway. I leave by eleven most days. Danilo makes us breakfast.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I hope I’m not going to be in your way too much.”
“We hope so, too,” Danilo says, and I gave him a sarcastically amused expression while Hernán swats his arm and scolds, “Oye.”
“Come on,” Hernán says, ushering me into Danilo’s room.
It’s small and surprisingly neat. There’s a standing fan next to a closet cordoned off by a hanging bedsheet, a simple dresser with nothing but a bowl of change on top, a twin bed with the sheet tucked tidily under the mattress, and a flat pillow slouched against the wall. It reeks of mothballs.
“It looks like he was expecting company,” I say.
“
He always keeps it like this,” Hernán says, brushing past me with my suitcase, which he lays on the floor next to the dresser. “This is okay?”
“The room? The room is great.”
“I know it doesn’t compare to the hotel—”
“It’s great. I promise. I really appreciate you letting me stay here.” I still feel strange about it, although I keep telling myself that I can stay just one night and see how it goes. If it doesn’t work out, I can always just go back to a hotel. A different one, probably, but there’s still that option.
Hernán appears pleased. Then he appears at a loss, standing uselessly in the middle of the room, his hands jammed in his pockets. He’s still wearing his hotel uniform, although he took his hat off as soon as he stepped out of the lobby, leaving a dent pressed into his dark, wavy hair. He sucks in a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, and gazes around once more. “You want to sleep.”
“Thank you again.”
He takes a step and, leaning forward awkwardly, kisses me quickly on the forehead, the way you would a puppy or a child. “Good night,” he says, and scuttles out as if in embarrassment, closing the door behind him.
I wonder sometimes how my father envisions me. Assuming that he thinks of me at all, which I believe he does. At least once in a while. I always believed that. Even when I thought he was the sort of person who would cast off his child and his child’s mother, I never thought he had entirely left us behind. For some reason I assumed that he must have thought about me from time to time. I think I assumed that, no matter how horrible a person you might be, it would be impossible to have a child, to have a piece of yourself walking around in the world, and not think about that child at least a few times in the course of your life.
I wonder what my father thinks I look like, or what he imagines I do with my days. I wonder whether he assumes that I am in every way like my mother, or whether he lies in bed at night thinking about how much of himself might have blossomed in me.
It’s a strange sort of mathematics. I know the ways I’m similar to my mother: we are both humble, determined, serious, resourceful, reserved, and hardworking. I’ve always thought that if you subtract those traits from the whole of me, everything that’s left over must be the ways I’m like my father. Which means that he gave me loyalty, benevolence, patience, an anger that’s slow to ignite and that extinguishes quickly, and a heart that, even though I try very hard to hide it, is easily wounded.
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