Like Son

by Felicia Luna Lemus

  I lit even more candles and added the following to the table: a box of Wheaties, a can of chili beans, stalks of green onion, pints of coffee yogurt, cranberry and grape juice, three scoops of rocky road ice cream in our best jadeite bowl … the favorite foods my father’s cancer belly hadn’t allowed as his final meal.

  As I sat admiring the altar, Nathalie went to the closet and came back with what appeared to be a fragment of concrete and a few shards of tinted window glass. With a very delicate and reverent touch, she placed these items on the altar.

  “What’s that?” I asked, even though I was sure I knew the answer.

  “They’re from South Broadway. Out front of St. Paul’s.”

  The broken glass caught candlelight and bounced tiny white prisms of radiant matter throughout the room like shooting stars. Part of me wished Nathalie and I could be under actual stars that night, that we could go to a cemetery with armfuls of bright orange marigolds wrapped in newspaper cones to lay on gravestones, to picnic and drink and play music in distracted celebration of the dead. But, clearly, that was not likely to happen in Manhattan. So Nathalie and I sat on the floor in front of our apartment altar, listened to music on the radio, and ate a Thai takeout dinner.

  “This is really nice, Frank,” she said.

  I agreed.

  But sometimes even when you’ve put forth a great deal of effort to pay your respects and move on, grief sticks with you. I took my sleeping pills before we went to bed. Nathalie woke screaming. I stumbled to the kitchen for glasses of water. I handed Nathalie valerian, and I took more prescription pills.

  Two mornings after we’d set up the altar, I awoke a total zombie from the pink sedative I could still feel coursing through my veins. I took a cold shower to try to come back to the land of the living. I was moving so slow that by the time I got dressed, I was already late for work. I grabbed a pear from the altar’s fruit plate to take with me so I wouldn’t starve before lunch. A quick stab of guilt hit, and I felt like maybe I should light the altar’s candles—if for no other reason, then as payment for the pear. I took a match from the box we’d left on the altar, and as I struck it, sulfur spiraled up. My nose stung. My eyes watered.

  Through my induced tears, I could practically see the candlelight licking the wall. The whole building would go up in flames before the fire department could respond. And all doped up on hippie sleep-inducers like she was, Nathalie would die in the fire. She wouldn’t even realize she was inhaling smoke. She’d sleep right through flames consuming the bed and turning it all charred box-frame and blackened metal springs. I’d spend the rest of my life in mourning, refusing to love again, refusing to sleep, refusing ever to eat another pear.

  Okay, maybe I really was Mexican after all.

  Mental note made to give Nat a call when I got to work, to ask her to blow out the candles before she went anywhere, I tiptoed back to our bed. Clumsy puppy paw hands, I pulled the covers up around Nat’s shoulders as gently as I knew how. I leaned over and kissed her forehead. The crease between her brows—a deep ridge that had etched itself into the permanent composition of her face the day the sky fell and had deepened progressively ever since—relaxed. Nathalie, still sound asleep, sighed, shifted slightly, and dug her head deeper into her pillow. And then her frown returned. She nearly scowled as she continued dreaming. I plumped my pillow and wedged it behind her back so she’d have something to lean on even though I wasn’t there. I did these things, but if I’d realized what would unfold later that same morning, I would have done more. I would have climbed back in bed with Nathalie, and I would have wrapped my arms around her. Tight. As tight as I could without hurting her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  That night, I stopped at the bodega on Avenue A between 6th and 7th, the one with the really nice flowers, to get a fancy bouquet for Nathalie. Actually, I ended up buying a dozen cheapie marigolds, but those deep orange flowers were absolute pristine perfection. I knew Nathalie would love them and, bonus, she could even add them to the altar if she wanted.

  To be honest, I wasn’t sure if it was disrespectful to add stuff to the altar two days after the Day of the Dead—I mean, was it rude somehow, like you’re emotionally manipulating the dead into hanging around when they just want to rest in peace again after partying so hard? I figured Nat would know. In our nearly seven years of being together, I’d come to realize she knew pretty much everything a person would ever want to know. And if she didn’t already know something, she knew how to find out. So I’d just ask her. She’d be home; she always got home from work before me, and she’d probably be in the midst of cooking some fabulous meal for dinner, looking beautiful as always. Flowers in hand, I opened the door to our apartment.

  “Nat, is it okay to put stuff …”

  Are you familiar with the confusion and embarrassment that accompanies speaking aloud and then finding that nobody is there to hear you? That feeling, a warm and tingling sensation along the neck and ears, flirted at me as I realized the apartment was too quiet. The room was empty. And dark. I flipped on the light switch closest to the front door. A silver envelope on the kitchen table, propped up against the plate of fruit in the midst of the altar, caught the overhead light and glimmered. I closed the door behind me, walked over to the table, put the cellophane-wrapped marigolds down on top of the altar’s unlit votives, and picked up the silver envelope. It contained a note, written on matching silvertinted cardstock.

  Sweetness,

  I need to go. Don’t know for how long exactly.

  Please, please forgive me.

  I’ll call soon. I love you. Endlessly.

  Your girl,

  N.

  Maybe I’m hopelessly dense, but at first I couldn’t comprehend the note. I mean, who ever comes home prepared to find a Dear John “I’m leaving you—well, at least for a while” letter? I really just figured Nathalie meant she needed to run some errands or something. Like she wasn’t sure if she’d make it back by the time we usually ate dinner. But three hours later, no call to ask if I needed anything on the way home, no keys jangling at the front door, reality sunk in. Snap to, knucklehead. Your girl is gone. Like gone gone.

  And I thought:

  So, Dad, it’s like this, is it?

  I stood alone, Nathalie’s heliotrope perfumed letter in hand, holding what felt to be the final remaining brick of our fantasy fort. I had no clue where she might have gone, but the urge to search for her was maddening. Out of what I suddenly considered a totally lame and misguided neo-Luddite rebel stance, she’d—same as me—always refused to own a cell phone. There was absolutely no fucking way for me to reach her. Frustration, sadness, anger, longing, fear, and loneliness crashed against my skin from the inside. No fucking way was I going to sit alone in that murky mess of emotions. I pulled on a jacket, and I walked.

  The night sky was crisp and clear, evidence of winter knocking on the door but not quite at the party yet. Cold air pinking my face, I walked at a frantic pace with no clear destination in mind. Clammy sweat bunched my socks and slicked my skin. My shins felt like they might splinter into shards, and my heels ached from how hard I hit the pavement with each step. The constantly changing sidewalk landscape became heaven-sent preoccupation—watch out for that dog shit, avoid the puddle, there’s a piece of gum, extinguish the cigarette that jerk who’s been walking in front of you for five blocks just flicked back toward you. I headed west and eventually up toward Union Square.

  Winded from speed-walking block after block, I stopped at the rolling bookshelves outside the Strand Bookstore to catch my breath. The Strand. It was a place I knew very well. The first time I’d been there was on a bookstore date with Nat early in our relationship. She had suggested we go to the Strand, and I replied: “A bookstore on a Friday night? Ha-ha. So, really, where do you want to go?” Somewhere they sold vinyl, an old movie house—those places made sense to me. But a bookstore? Lame.

  “Have you ever been to the Strand?” she asked.

  “
You’re serious?”

  “The Strand is super cool. Trust me.”

  And so I’d gone with her. Reluctantly. At worst, I figured it’d be a super-sized mall-style store with a café, and at best it would be a boring little place stocked with antique books. Instead, as Nat walked me through floor after floor of warehouse-tall stacks, the store’s motto promising miles and miles of books ceased seeming like pumped-up hype. The place was like a fucking labyrinth of books in endless categories: Literature, Film, Science, Architecture, Religion, Americana, and on and on. So, yeah, the selection was impressive, and I guess arguably “cool,” as Nathalie had promised, but it wasn’t until we went to the furthest southeast corner of the basement that I found what was truly awesome about the Strand.

  Yes, the less-than-a-dollar pre-publication book galleys they kept there were pretty great, but what I dug was how desolate that dimly lit and slightly musty corner of the bookstore was. It was like finding an old bomb shelter in your neighbor’s backyard. Better yet, it was like finding the bomb shelter with your foxy neighbor girl in tow. Nat and I made out in that basement corner for a very long time. Every now and then a weirdo book-freak with duct-taped glasses or really greasy hair would wander back there and try to ignore us as he scanned whichever shelves we weren’t leaned up against and knocking askew with our fun. But other than that, nobody bothered us or told us to stop or really seemed to mind our bookstore recreation. The smell of old books has been a turn-on for me ever since.

  Clearly, I was converted. Now I fucking loved bookstores. Over the years the Strand became a habit for us, a favorite place to go on a date. Lately, we’d started heading over to the pommes frites place on Second Avenue afterward, and Nat would order a huge paper cone of thick fries and we’d sprinkle vinegar over them and eat them as we walked home.

  So, considering the Strand was one of our places, stopping there the night Nathalie took off probably wasn’t the best idea. The crap pulp novels and science textbooks on the discounted shelves outside the store cleared my head for a few minutes, but too quickly my hurt and confusion caught up with me and swelled in huge giant waves and crested bigger and bigger in my chest, pushing up against my lungs, compressing my breath, making my heart pump too much blood. I thought about Nathalie and how she was gone and fuck, I was so goddamned pissed at her, how could she just up and leave like that … Total contradiction, I practically ran inside our bookstore in search of distraction.

  For a good hour I walked the towering stacks—up and down one aisle after another, from the west wall to the east and then up and down aisles back to the west wall again, my fingers dragging along the shelves—just to keep moving. I felt totally catatonic, undead really. I was just about to go off in search of a pretty little virgin whose blood I could suck to stay alive—a legal and willing virgin, of course; I wasn’t some sort of monster, for God’s sake—but then I remembered that one scene in Warhol’s flick Blood for Dracula where the Count hooks up with that hottie chick who swears she’s a virgin but then, when Dracula sinks his teeth into her neck, he heaves like he’s shot up some crazy-bad junk. Obviously she wasn’t a virgin. I mean, that movie took place in the 1970s, what was he thinking? But still, poor dude. Sad and scared that I too might be love-hungry for all eternity to come, craving the strange funk cryptlike comfort of dank, dusty, recycled air, I went down to the basement. I leaned in the southeast corner, our corner, and willed tears to come, but fuck if anything could go the way I wanted. So I stood there mopey-faced and bummed and hurting and totally dry-eyed.

  Eventually, I walked up two flights of stairs to the art section. If I couldn’t have Nat or some yum-blood virgin, maybe at least Nahui would be seen in public with me. I was looking for a Weston monograph, scanning rows of oversized books with my fingertip, eyes focused on titles, when I stepped on a small hard book. A hot pain shot up my leg to my lower back. My spine ached momentarily. That may have been one of the first times I cognitively realized I wasn’t a kid anymore. I mean, it used to be that I could stay up and party and do whatever the fuck I wanted all night long and wake after barely any sleep, and I wouldn’t feel pain, not then, not the next day, not ever. Now, simply pounding pavement hard for twenty minutes—just fast walking, really—had left my body sore.

  The book. I still stood on the book. Strand protocol allowed that I should have ignored it or maybe paused momentarily to push it under a bookshelf with my foot. But the concentrated dense pressure of the small rectangular book under my left foot was the closest I would get to receiving a comforting hug that night. So I stayed standing on it. I shifted my weight back and forth. And switched feet. The binding wiggled and cracked under my weight.

  After a few moments of this pathetic solo dance, I picked up the book and opened it at random. I read:

  The only hero able to cut off Medusa’s head is Perseus, who flies with winged sandals; Perseus, who does not turn his gaze upon the face of the Gorgon … supports himself on the very lightest of things, the winds and the clouds, and fixes his gaze upon what can be revealed only by indirect vision, an image caught in a mirror …

  Italo Calvino. “Lightness.” Six Memos for the Next Millennium. I hadn’t located a book of Edward Weston’s photographs. I hadn’t found his portrait of Nahui. But with Calvino’s misplaced book in hand, I couldn’t help but think Nahui had found me, that she’d managed to send me a gift. To keep me company. To help explain, maybe.

  Nathalie was lucky. She had the gift of flight. And, vain girl that she was, never without a mirror, maybe she was in her own indirect way facing demons. Maybe she’d explain when she called …

  Oh shit. She’d said in the note that she’d call soon. What if she’d already tried to reach me? She would have expected I’d be home. My Perseus flown away, all I could do was run.

  I sprinted up the stairwell, scurried into the apartment, and ran to the answering machine. The light wasn’t blinking. Damnit, maybe Nathalie had called but hadn’t left a message? Okay, breathe, breathe, she’ll call back soon.

  Unable to sit still, I paced the apartment as I waited for the phone to ring. My aimless pacing quickly turned into a detective’s hunt. If Nathalie had packed anything, it hadn’t been much. The apartment seemed pragmatically unchanged. I studied the closet. I knew Nathalie had a red dress, but there was no red dress in the closet. She must have packed it. Or maybe I was remembering wrong and the dress I was thinking of was actually the pink one still hanging next to the gray evening gown? And didn’t we have two umbrellas? There was only one in the closet. Wait, had we lost one of them? I remembered walking home from a movie with Nathalie the last time it had rained—I’d shared my umbrella with her, but it was totally possible we’d had two umbrellas that night and that she’d simply tucked hers in her purse. Was she going somewhere it rained? Fuck. It was useless. I was no good for this sort of work.

  Sentimental fool, I continued searching in all the places she might remain. The girly fragrant lotions she’d left at the bathroom sink failed to conjure her. Her fennel toothpaste was only pungent chalkiness, not her full lower lip and teasing bites. The fancy slab of honey and oatmeal soap she’d bought at a SoHo boutique sat in a slight milk puddle of its own dilution and probably offered her DNA to be retrieved by those with the proper tools, but not by me. If only I’d held onto the recreational junior scientist kit I’d owned as a geeky kid: thin-walled glass vials and semi-combustible powders in flip-lid squat containers, a miniature Bunsen burner, flimsy tin clamp-teethed prongs, and a length of frayed wick. I’d never known what to make of the wick. A wick? To craft explosions? To create a candle? For what? Really, why was there a wick in a junior scientist kit? I remember one day a friend came over after school to play mad scientist. She saw the wick and seemed as confounded as I was. And then, pretty much out of the blue, she told me that she lit candles to Saint Jude.

  “Why?”

  “For faith,” she’d said.

  As I stood in the bathroom, sniffing Nathalie’s fancy lavende
r soap like some hunting dog desperate to pick up a scent, resisting the urge to bite into the soap, it occurred to me that I had no guarantee that Nathalie would find her way home, or that she really wanted to, for that matter. I needed to do something about that. And so I went to the kitchen and filled a mason jar with water. I took the bouquet of marigolds I’d left on our Day of the Dead altar, transferred them to the jar, and put them back on the altar next to the framed retablo of Nahui. Then I lit all the votives. Whining pleas to Saint Jude, I begged for Nathalie to call, for her to love me still, for her to come home.

  Hours later, I forced myself to try to get some sleep. A glass of water from the kitchen and two pink pills swallowed, I got in bed. It was the first night since I’d met Nathalie that I was in bed without her at my side. And it fucking sucked. I tried to close my eyes, but they just wouldn’t cooperate. As I lay on my side of the bed, exhausted but sleepless, I stared at the altar. Candlelight bounced off the glass of the framed retablo, and Nahui’s silver eyes seemed to glimmer as she stared in my direction. Maybe I just needed glasses; I know I needed sleep, but I swear it looked like Nahui was weeping. Shimmering sepia tears trickled down her face. She felt my pain. She took my pain. Soothed, I watched the candles die down and extinguish themselves. And as I fell asleep, I promised myself that first thing in the morning I’d collect the burned-out wicks and keep them in my pocket for good measure.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  8 November 2002.

  The phone rattled on the kitchen table. Telephone wires outside the window unfurled from their post and wrapped themselves thorny binding around my chest. Another ring. I wanted to pretend I didn’t know who it was. I wanted to screen the call and not answer. But even though it’d taken Nathalie nearly a week of being gone to finally fucking call, and even though I was beyond pissed, I still wanted to talk to her. I missed her. Horribly. And so, on the fourth ring, the machine about to pick up, I pushed myself out of bed, turned off the stupid afternoon talk show I’d been sort of watching on television, and made quick of the ten steps it took to cross the apartment to the phone.