The World in Half

by Cristina Henriquez

  “So you don’t have plans. So you could make plans.”

  He’s trying to be funny, I know, to impart some levity, but it’s only annoying. I sigh again, this time louder.

  “I’m just saying, how hard can it be to make a decision? Think about what you want. Come on, Miraflores!” Unexpectedly, he stomps his foot. Loose particles of dirt fly up in the air. “See, that’s the problem with you. Since I met you, that’s been the problem with you. I mean, you like geology and geography and you look at all these fucking maps all the time, and that’s cool, but you’re not going to get directions for your life from a fucking map.”

  “I know that!” It’s strange to hear myself scream out, into the air, into nothing, and then to hear the scream recede again into silence.

  Danilo spits in the dirt. “Whatever, Miraflores.”

  He walks away.

  Nine

  Crystallization

  There are at least fifteen hundred active volcanoes in the world. There are dozens of variations: shield volcanoes, composite volcanoes, ice volcanoes, mud volcanoes, submarine volcanoes, subglacial volcanoes, supervolcanoes, and on and on. Some geologists dedicate their entire lives to studying them—how they form, how they behave, the chemical makeup of what they spew, what they signify about the shape of the earth as it was before and the shape of the earth to come. But for the average citizen, the most interesting thing about a volcano is in the story of its eruption. People are fascinated by the idea of a fiery swell building underneath the surface of the earth for millions of years only to one day tear through the crust, flaring it open like a bullet shot through the skin of a peach. They imagine the restless lava disgorged into the air like a heavy and tired geyser, globs of superheated rock and ash rising upward and upward as if all the fury and energy amassed within the earth can’t be stopped. And they imagine it dropping back down, slugging against the slope of the mountain until gradually, very slowly, it begins to cool.

  I was never as interested in volcanoes as other geologists seem to be. But there is something about the process of a volcanic eruption that always strikes me as both beautiful and sad. It’s the pain of the earth bubbling up through the surface and ripping it apart. It’s the earth’s ineluctable heartbreak.

  I lie in bed in the morning listening to the frustrated gurgle of the coffeemaker percolating in the kitchen. Chair legs scrape against the floor. A drawer opens—there’s the rustle of silverware—and closes.

  I have to force myself to go out there. I’m going to tell him that I’ll call the airline today. I’ll change my reservation. I was only supposed to be here a few more days anyway, but I’ll leave now as early as I can. I know he doesn’t want to see me, that I’ve disappointed him, angered him, frustrated him, whatever. But I’ll just tell him, You won’t have to see me anymore, and then slink back into my room. It’s so stupid, really. I got too optimistic—about him, about this trip. Two days ago we were on an island, looking for my father. It all feels hopeless now, though, as if the ruse has come to a close. The curtain has dropped.

  Danilo is bent over a cup of coffee, his head in his hands, when I walk out. There’s a second mug on the table. I sit and brace myself for whatever he might say. Danilo gets up and walks to the counter, where half a pineapple, already cored, lies on a cutting board. He starts cutting it into chunks.

  I’m about to tell him about contacting the airline when, with his back to me, he says, “You know, I called her.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The Gallardo woman. I talked to her on the phone.”

  “You did? When?”

  “Last night.”

  “When last night? I didn’t hear anything.”

  He turns and holds up a hand. “Okay, wait a second. That isn’t what I wanted to say first.” He takes a deep breath. “First, I wanted to say I’m sorry about yesterday. You know, how I talked to you.”

  “I didn’t mean to get you so mad at me.”

  “I wasn’t mad at you. Well, maybe I was. But I’m not now. I just . . . Listen, I hope you know that I’ve never exactly been friends with a girl. Not once that I can remember. Girls are usually something else to me. But I feel like I can talk to you, or like you understand me or something.”

  I have a sinking feeling undulating down through my chest and into my stomach.

  “I think that’s why I got so pissed off yesterday,” he goes on. “Now that I know what it’s like to have you in my life, I don’t want you to, like, step right back out of it again. I wanted you to tell me that it was like that for you, too, I guess, and that we’ll still see each other or at least talk to each other sometimes even after you leave.”

  The sinking feeling bobs back up and is replaced by something else. Joy. Gratification. Wonder.

  Danilo butts his hand against his chin and pushes his head from one side to the other. He looks unusually nervous.

  “It’s like that for me, too,” I say.

  Danilo looks at me. Surprise registers on his face, but he only says, “Good. That’s good. Now we don’t have to get in idiotic fights again.”

  “Yeah,” I say, aware of a vague sadness somewhere inside me that whatever I hoped might happen between Danilo and me won’t. But it feels light and far away and almost precious compared with the elation of knowing I’m apparently more to him than that. Things don’t need to happen between us. Nothing needs to be rearranged or activated. Everything between us is already in its right place.

  “But the woman . . .” he starts again.

  I’m in a bit of a daze, but I try to focus.

  “Just so you know, I tried calling her when we got back from Taboga. I went to the hotel that night and looked her up in the phone book.”

  “I thought the phone books at the hotel were old.”

  “The ones in the rooms are. But they keep a current one at the front desk. Anyway, when I called, she didn’t answer. I was going to let it go. I mean, I thought if we were supposed to talk to her, she would’ve answered.”

  “But you tried her again?”

  “Yeah, last night. I just . . . fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know why I did it.”

  “What did she say? How did she sound? Did she sound weird to you?”

  I readjust myself on the chair, tucking both legs underneath so that I’m sitting on my heels.

  “Miraflores, I don’t want you to get too excited.”

  “I know. I’m just asking. How did she sound?”

  “She sounded a little off. I mean, yeah, she sounded fucked up.”

  He looks like he’s going to say more, but he turns back to the counter to continue slicing blocks of pineapple and dropping them one by one into a ceramic bowl.

  “What did she say?” I ask again.

  Danilo holds the knife still against the cutting board. I watch the angles of his shoulder blades through the back of his thin T-shirt, today a heathered blue. They don’t move.

  “What?” I ask.

  “She has a box.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She told me she has a box of his things.”

  “My father?”

  Danilo nods silently toward the counter.

  “What kinds of things?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How did she get it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think she knows him?”

  Danilo spins around. “Miraflores, I don’t know. I’m telling you, she’s an old lady and it sounded a little like her head was cracked.”

  I don’t know what to say. I stand up, and then I sit back down. I can’t stop smiling, and yet I can feel my natural defenses trying to rein me back. “We should go see her.”

  “I thought you would say that.”

  “Well, don’t you think so?”

  “I told her we would come later today, sometime after lunch. She lives in Costa del Este, which should take us about thirty minutes to get to with traffic, but I asked Nardo and he’s pretty sure
there’s a bus that will get us there.”

  “We’re going there today?”

  “Don’t start freaking out. Let’s just see what happens when we meet her.”

  “She’ll know something,” I say. “She has to.”

  Danilo sighs. “Yeah, we’ll see.”

  Her house is a wide, two-story structure faced with vanilla-colored stucco in a gated neighborhood filled with wide, two-story structures faced with vanilla-colored stucco. A black iron fence runs around the perimeter of her property. There’s professional, exuberant landscaping—a crowd of bushes and trees and a freckling of aloe plants—and a large, imposing front door made of riveted dark wood. The windows are covered with the sort of horizontal frosted-glass blinds that open and close like gills on a fish.

  “Nice place,” Danilo says as we approach.

  “Is she rich?” I whisper.

  “Everyone in this neighborhood is rich.”

  We don’t even have a chance to knock when the door opens, just a crack. A woman with stylishly done short hair and heavy makeup thrusts out her face. “You’re the boy?” she asks. The scent of her perfume floods out the door.

  “Danilo Pittí.”

  “And where is the girl?”

  Danilo nudges me into the woman’s line of vision.

  She gasps and throws a hand to her mouth. She has on a set of gold bangles that slide down her arm and tinkle as she does. Then she composes herself and, with her fingertips clinging to her chin, asks, “Your name?”

  “Miraflores,” I say.

  “May we come in?” Danilo asks, laying his hand on the door as if he has every intention of pushing it open even if she says no.

  Slowly, though, she opens the door wide enough for us to pass.

  Inside, the house is dark, filled with black lacquer furniture and heavy drapes. The sun cuts in at harsh angles through the slits where the drapes fall away from each other or don’t quite reach all the way around the sides of the windows. The air smells strongly of onions and of the woman’s perfume. I pinch Danilo’s arm, but he ignores me. He won’t acknowledge how bizarre this is, like I want him to. The woman shuts the door behind us and, without a word, points to a cardboard box on the floor next to an empty silver birdcage with newspaper lining the bottom and an old stereo.

  “That’s the box?” I ask.

  “You speak Spanish?” She looks surprised.

  “A little bit.”

  “No, not a little bit,” Danilo says. “She’s good.”

  “Who taught you Spanish?” the woman asks. She has a hooked nose and, even under all her makeup, a smattering of dark beauty spots on her cheeks and along her hairline. Her lips are drawn like pleats. She’s wearing a black dress that grazes the tops of her calves.

  “I learned it in school. And from my mother.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She always liked Spanish. She wanted me to know it.”

  The woman turns from me, crossing her arms. I glance at Danilo, as if to say, What’s going on with this woman? He widens his eyes and shakes his head so slightly it almost looks like a shiver.

  “Do you mind if I look inside the box?” I ask.

  “I’ve had it for years,” she says. “I haven’t shown it to anyone.”

  I don’t know if that means I can or can’t look at it. Is she saying she hasn’t shown it to anyone and doesn’t want to start now, or that she hasn’t shown it to anyone but is ready to break with tradition? And why hasn’t she shown it to anyone? Does she know what’s inside?

  Danilo hands me his house key. “I think it’s okay,” he says. “Go ahead.”

  I kneel and put my bag down next to me. Tape stretches across the seam of the box flaps. There’s no writing anywhere on the cardboard.

  “Where did you get it?” I ask, gazing up at the woman, who is hovering over me, twisting her bracelets around her wrist.

  “I found it.”

  “Where?”

  Danilo coughs.

  The woman frowns. “I guess I don’t remember.”

  There’s something going on between them, some sort of silent communication that I’m not privy to.

  “Danilo?” I say.

  “Go ahead,” he urges.

  I tuck my hair behind my ears. “Do you remember when you found it?” I ask the woman.

  She rests her eyes on Danilo, then on me. “No.”

  Something is definitely going on. “You’re sure?” I press.

  The woman nods unconvincingly. “You should just take it if you want it. Take it and go.”

  But earlier, when Danilo told me he talked to her, he said that she had a box of my father’s things. He said that specifically. How did she know what was inside if she never opened it? Did my father give it to her? Did someone else, upon handing it to her, tell her, This is a box that belongs to Gatún Gallardo?

  I stand and look the woman in the eye. Her face is cast in the shadows thrown by the drapes. “Did you know my father?” I ask. “Did you know someone named Gatún Gallardo?”

  She blinks several times in rapid succession. Then she cranes her head around me and looks at Danilo, who is still on the floor. “What do you want me to say?” she asks him.

  He won’t meet my gaze. And suddenly, I understand that he knows. He knows something, and has known whatever that something is since before we stepped foot in this house.

  Then, to my back, the woman says, “Yes.”

  I whip my head around. “Yes, you know him?”

  She sighs. “I’m his sister.”

  Ilsa Gallardo. At one time Ilsa Gallardo de Toro, but when she was widowed she dropped the de Toro. She instructs Danilo and me to sit on the couch, a small tight-backed piece of furniture upholstered in the kind of black velvet that makes it seem as though it belongs in a room called a parlor. She sits in a wooden chair she pulls from the dining table and places in front of us. Stiffly, she offers us both sodas, but she does it only as a matter of civility. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she doesn’t even have any soda in the house. Danilo waves off the offer. He’s uncharacteristically quiet, though I can tell by the way he keeps angling his head that he wants me to look at him. I refuse. I can’t deal with him right now. There will be time later to think about him and why he brought me here and what he knew and how complicit he was in this setup and to what extent he orchestrated it. Right now, though, I need to concentrate on Ilsa.

  “We weren’t always close,” Ilsa explains. “I’m his half sister, to tell the truth. Our father had an affair, and from the affair had me. It was very painful for Gatún to be around me for a long time. I was a reminder of something he didn’t want to know about. Even after his mother learned of the affair, she stayed with our father. When I look at the whole situation now, she should have left him. If a person cheats you that way, they’re telling you they don’t want you. But Gatún’s mother was the sort of old-fashioned Catholic who believed that marriage meant staying no matter what. She lived unhappily with our father for the rest of her life. Gatún and I only became close after our father died.” She speaks gently and with a measured cadence. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m going on.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell her.

  “I always wondered what you looked like,” she says.

  “You knew about me?”

  “Of course. Gatún told me. He wondered, too.”

  “What I looked like? He never saw a picture of me?”

  “When you were a baby, your mother sent one. But after that, no.” She draws her lips tight, the pleats deepening. “It would have been nice.”

  “I never saw a picture of him, either.”

  “No?”

  “I came here to find him,” I say. “I have an old address and I went there, but I guess he doesn’t live there anymore. Does he still live in Panama City? Or did he move? Do you have his phone number?”

  “No.”

  “Do you still talk to him?”

  “No.”

  “Do
you know how I can find him? Please, I’m running out of time. I’m not going to ask him for anything. I just want to see him, have him see me. If he never wants to meet again after that, it’s okay. Please, you have to help me.”

  Danilo pushes his hand through the top of his hair and grips it, hard.

  “I’m sorry,” Ilsa says. “He’s dead. He died ten years ago.”

  The back of my neck tenses like someone is squeezing it. My lungs drain. I shift my eyes to various points in the room before, through a doorway, they lock on a gas knob on the stove.

  Ilsa says, “I didn’t know that it was you on the phone that day. The boy told me when I talked to him that you had tried to call. I thought perhaps it was your mother. She called once before. But as soon as she gave her name, I hung up the phone. I was”—her voice quiets—“very angry with her.”

  Everything and everyone in the room is perfectly still. It’s a symphony of the most immaculate silence. Around the black gas knob, rust spreads like a disease along the stove’s porcelain veneer. The surface of the knob is dull, though not worn. It’s oblong with a slim fingerhold running vertically down the middle. Like a cat’s eye.

  “Miraflores,” Danilo says. He prods my leg with the tops of his fingers.

  I blink and close my mouth purposefully. My lips are dry.

  “I’m sorry,” Ilsa says.

  “Is he really dead?” I whisper.

  “I got what’s in the box when I went to his house to clean out his things. I didn’t keep much. But when the boy said it was you, I told him what I had. I put it in a box and taped it shut for you. I hoped perhaps you would simply come here and take it. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you.”

  The word “ eclipse” comes from the ancient Greek verb ekleipein, which is generally taken to mean “to omit,” or “to fail.” The earth falls into the shadow of a total solar eclipse only once every few years. I know that. The next one isn’t due for months. And yet, as I sit there taking everything in, it’s as though the moon has made an unscheduled move into the path of the sun. For a moment, the world feels lost in darkness.