Say Her Name

by Francisco Goldman

  But Valentina could also be so callous in what she said that I’d wondered if she suffered from some form of autism. Why can’t you just go back to being the way you were before you met Aura? she said to me during one of those nights when we had met up in a wine bar. Her tactlessness seemed to suggest other laxities, and I found myself fantasizing and wondering more and more about whether or not I might be able to fuck her. Valentina aroused me in a confusing way. It was as if I preferred to be misunderstood or ignored than to be sympathized with. I’d discovered that I almost never liked it when people tried to be sensitive to me.

  It also annoyed me that Valentina thought she knew certain things about Aura and me that were probably not so great—I didn’t know what those things were, but I had some reason for believing that they weren’t necessarily true. I wanted to know, and didn’t want to know, what she thought she knew.

  One evening Aura had come home from hanging out with Valentina and, standing penitently before me—penitently but also playing it up, comically theatrical in her distress—she’d pressed her forehead to my chest, remorsefully shaken her head back and forth, and blurted: I said some bad things about our marriage to Valentina that aren’t true but I only said them because she’s so unhappy with Jim and I wanted to make her feel better. I won’t do it again, I promise! Frank, am I horrible?

  I thought that must be what lay behind some of Valentina’s occasionally mocking attitude. She liked to remind me that she knew sides of Aura that I didn’t, but also that no one has the right to claim an authoritative knowledge of anybody else anyway—this was a huge theme of Valentina’s—that there was even something fascistic in such presumption. When Aura’s friends and I ended up in conversations about this, ephemeral alliances would form: Wendy glaring coolly at Valentina while she extemporized, and then indulging me in the most old-fashioned of widower-coddling ways, with lamp-eyed affection and douceur, stroking my hand while I quietly/exaggeratedly fumed, blinked my eyes, and said, Of course I knew Aura, you can’t tell me I didn’t know Aura. (la douceur—the revolutionary nineteenth-century technique of treating the mad with “gentleness,” picked up in my research into l’histoire de la psychanalyse for Aura’s novel.)

  When I told Valentina what Aura had said about making things up about us just to make her feel better during one of their bad marriage conversations, Valentina left the bar, indignant and humiliated. It was cruel of me to have told her that. Juliana was with us that night and I expected Juliana to hurry after her, but she didn’t, she stayed behind in the bar. She downed her glass of wine in a few gulps and ordered another. A silent nervous melancholy descended on us. We’d never been alone together before. I was drinking bourbon. Oh, Francisco, Valentina misses Aura so much, Juliana blurted with a soft moan. I know nobody misses her as much as you do, she said, but this isn’t a competition, Francisco, we all miss Aura, but Valentina really really misses her. I wasn’t Valentina’s best friend, Aura was, and sometimes I feel that she wants me to be like Aura was, and I just can’t. Juliana had brown fox eyes with long, curling lashes, and dark-reddish hair that fell around her thin pretty face, neck, and shoulders in a viny way that I found incredibly attractive. On the cab ride back across the Brooklyn Bridge, I remembered how Aura used to like to gaze out the window at the bridge and the view, often exclaiming over it. I remembered one night in particular, when she’d twisted herself around in a taxi to look out the window, her leg hooked behind her on the seat, her dress riding up a bit to unveil the supple underside of her dancer’s thigh, her naked heel coming out of her shoe, the lights of the bridge and the skyline illuminating her like lightning, and how all that had made me almost crazy with joyous lust. The next instant, I was kissing Juliana in the backseat of the taxi. We went back to her place in Park Slope and fucked deep into the night, and again in the morning, as if this was going to mean something. The wedding rings on the silver chain around my neck jingled and bounced in her face; I watched her flinching beneath them. She didn’t smell like Aura, her skin, her lips, her saliva; neither had the Berlin girl’s, but with her it had not been a turnoff. I already knew before we got out of bed that morning that we were never going to do this again. Why did this happen? Juliana asked just before I left, and I replied, lamely, Because we felt lonely and we both miss Aura.

  Later that same day I waited for Valentina in the small West Village park across the street from where I knew she went twice weekly for harp lessons, from three-thirty to five in the afternoon. As soon as she came out, wearing dark glasses, her mid-thigh, orange coat with fur-lined hood, and black leggings and ankle boots, I called out to her. She crossed the street and didn’t seem much surprised. I apologized for what I’d said in the bar. I held her beautifully manicured long fingers that were learning to play the harp and kissed them, one by one, then her lips. We began to say things, as if each of us had been storing it all up, waiting for just this moment. It was crazy. We decided that we’d run off to Mexico to live together, but not yet, in a few months, when a year had passed since Aura’s death, when it wouldn’t look so bad. Yes, when it won’t look so bad. We parted, madly kissing, uttering little exclamations between breaths, is this really happening? She headed west, like a spy after a rendezvous. There was an A train stop just blocks away, and I headed back to Brooklyn, and I kept imagining her lying in her million-dollar bed, her shapely thighs apart, slowly masturbating herself with those painted, pliant harpist’s fingers while I watched. The next day I wrote her an e-mail telling her that, aside from my apology, I hadn’t meant a word of what I’d said. Later we had an argument about whose idea it had been to run off to Mexico, and who had actually first said the words, “after a year is up, when it won’t look so bad.” Why had any of this happened?

  We were all trying to find Aura in each other, I guess, though I don’t think we recognized it. We were lonely, still in shock, frightened. It was deeply frightening for each of those young women to have lost a beloved friend in such a sudden and horrifying way. Everybody was unhinged. Of course they reached out for the embrace of someone who understood, who was also frightened. Maybe I was trying to find my still-recent former self, the husband, using women and their bodies to try to connect, as through a medium, with the lover who was accustomed to giving and receiving love every day. Now, fifteen months after Aura’s death, none of us were even speaking to each other. But Valentina was finally pregnant with Old Man Sex Pistol’s child, their marriage was saved. The second year of death was going to be lonelier than the first.

  One afternoon soon after I returned from Mexico that second summer, in the supermarket around the corner from our apartment, the chubby, bespectacled Ecuadorian checkout girl said, Oh, you’re so tanned señor, have you been to the beach?

  I answered, No.

  And how’s your wife, señor?

  Oh, she’s good, I said. Tú sabes, back in school, studying, really busy.

  But she was scrutinizing my face the way a concerned physician might as you lie about your symptoms, and then she said, But I haven’t seen her in so long.

  You haven’t seen her in more than fifteen months, I thought. Did I just imagine that she was looking at me as if she could tell I was lying? There was another supermarket on Smith Street, across the street from Café le Roy, about a ten-minute walk. I’ll start going there, I decided.

  Mexican workers in New York restaurants were especially drawn to Aura, often pausing in whatever they were doing to have a conversation with her. Aura looked like a classic Mexican girl-next-door, sunshine in her friendly black eyes, hair worn in two black pigtails over her shoulders—though she only sometimes wore her hair like that, and looked so utterly lovely whenever she did. She was like Mexico’s sweetheart in a contemporary equivalent of a Mexican Word War II movie, visiting the soldier boys overseas. Often, even in the fanciest restaurants, not just busboys but even the kitchen workers in their splattered whites would come out and stand around our table, just to talk to her. She’d ask them where they were fro
m in Mexico, and they’d tell her little stories about themselves, and ask her questions, too. There was something so genuine about those encounters that I never saw a restaurant manager get annoyed at the workers, or hurry them back to work. Sometimes they’d ask for her phone number, too, but she wouldn’t give it to them, of course. Once, very early on, in an idiotic excess of enthusiasm, I gave one of those guys our number, and he phoned every few days for weeks. It was almost always me who picked up the phone when he called. He had a rustic accent, always asked to speak “con la paisana,” and I would say she wasn’t home and, finally, that she’d gone back to Mexico.

  Café le Roy, our regular weekend brunch spot, was the only place on Smith Street that had Mexican waiters, not just busboys and kitchen workers. There was an exceedingly pretty waitress who looked like a young Nefertiti, with eyes like long dark gems, and a satiny hollow between delicate collarbones that it was hard to keep my gaze from. She was from Puebla, like most of her coworkers, and was studying for her teaching degree at one of the city’s community colleges. When this waitress, whose name was Ana Eva, confided to Aura that she was in peril of failing her literature course and that if she did she would be expelled, Aura met with her in the neighborhood on two separate weekends to help her. Ana Eva had to write a final paper about any twentieth-century poetry movement that she chose, and Aura decided that she should write about the Mexican poets known as Los Contemporáneos. She helped her with her research and corrected her first draft and, in the end, Ana Eva pulled an A-minus. I hadn’t been back to Café le Roy since Aura’s death. I wondered if Ana Eva even worked there anymore.

  Then one afternoon, when I was in the New York Public Library doing some reading (Freud’s essay “Mourning and Melancholia”—mourning’s “function is to detach the survivor’s memories and hopes from the dead.” You’re supposed to accept that and work at it. Freud believed the process should take between one and two years. But I didn’t want to detach or accept, I did not want to, why did I have to want to be “cured”?), I felt a soft touch on my shoulder and I turned my head and it was her, the waitress from Café le Roy, saying, Hola, Francisco … I didn’t even remember her name at that moment and my flustered smile gave that away; she said, Soy Ana Eva, la mesera del le Roy … Her Egyptian eyes, chiseled cheeks, perfectly arched lips, dark-reddish lip gloss. I’d never seen her when she wasn’t in her prim waitress uniform of white collared blouse and black slacks. Now she was wearing a loose gray sweater that might have been a boy’s, a blue cotton skirt, hem well beneath her knees, red Converse high-tops with black ankle socks peeking out, her long, thin, smooth, brown shins. A college student. The top of her black-haired head at the level of my chin, a couple of inches shorter than Aura. I groped for something to say.

  You’re still in school?

  I’ve wanted to talk with you, Francisco, to tell you how sorry and sad I am for you and Aura, she said. But I didn’t know how to reach you.

  We went outside, into Bryant Park. I bought some coffees at the corner kiosk, and we sat at one of the green metal tables. It was early November, not too cold. She wore a denim jacket and a black velvety scarf. It was an overcast day, the grass still green, the leaves mottled brown and pale green; I thought of Paris, and the runaway French queens. Ana Eva said that she’d found out about Aura when she’d seen a little notice in the weekly Latino section of the Daily News about a memorial ceremony and reading organized by Aura’s classmates. She was in a regular city college now, at Baruch, in her last year there, and working at a restaurant near the college, but she still lived in Brooklyn, in Kensington. Her beauty and gentleness lifted me into a heightened alertness that I hadn’t experienced in a long time, as if I’d woken up from a lower state of wakefulness that was perhaps a form of sleep. I remembered some of the thoughts I’d had when Ana Eva would lean over refilling my coffee, and Aura’s occasional chiding after she’d moved off: Oh, you like her? Aura sometimes used to like to make herself jealous. There was never any real justification for it, but she’d make herself feel jealous anyway. She used to tease me that I would have been happy to fall in love with any mexicanita who’d come along, and that I’d just been incredibly lucky that the mexicanita who’d come along had turned out to be her. I’d laugh, but now, as I found myself gazing a little too intensely at Ana Eva’s young face, I heard Aura saying Cualquiera mexicanita, ¿verdad? and I must even have laughed a little, because Ana Eva, smiling quizzically, asked, ¿Qué pasó? And I said, Oh, nothing, perdón, I was just remembering how much we liked going to Café le Roy for brunch. It’s a good thing you did, said Ana Eva, because if you hadn’t, I might not be in college now. When Aura helped me with my paper, she saved me. Nobody else in my life has ever done such a generous thing for me, Francisco. I didn’t know what I could do for her in return, or give to her that would show how grateful I was and how much I admired her. I always thought that someday I would find a way to thank her … Ana Eva hoisted her narrow shoulders, for a moment looked like she was about to cry, then she sighed and her shoulders dropped. I thought about how young Ana Eva was, and began preparing an excuse to be on my way. Ana Eva said, Sometimes I feel Aura inside me. Her spirit visits me, I’m sure of it. Just a few days ago I heard her voice inside of me, asking me to take care of you, Francisco. But I didn’t know where to find you, or what to do. At the restaurant they told me you don’t come there anymore. Then today I run into you in the library, as if Aura wanted me to find you.

  I’d given a lot of thought, of course, over the preceding year and several months, to the question of where Aura’s spirit could be. I’d wonder, What would she want me to be doing now, supposing that she’s been able to think about me, or even watch me (but not watch me, I hope). I believed either that Aura’s spirit had faded into nonbeing, into pure energy, after the forty-ninth day of her death, as the Buddhists believe, or else that her spirit had never left Mexico. She’s probably taking care of her mother, I’d thought. So when Ana Eva told me about Aura’s spirit visiting her, I believed that she believed it, which is probably the essence of the matter anyway, since who could prove her wrong? Maybe she’d really had such a conversation with Aura in a dream. I guess that’s where it started with Ana Eva Pérez, with my deciding to believe her, or to behave as if I did.

  Look after me how? I asked.

  She looked down. I don’t know, she said, with a slight embarrassed laugh.

  Cook for me, maybe? Do you know how to make turkey meat loaf? Aura used to make that for me three different ways. Also, on some Sunday mornings she’d make chilaquiles con salsa verde for breakfast, yum, my favorite, except it always took her so long it would practically be dinnertime before they were ready. She’d be in the kitchen for hours, unless she bought the salsa verde in the supermarket.

  I can make chilaquiles, said Ana Eva, smiling. Do you cook?

  I used to, I said, when I was married. Maybe you should let me cook for you first. Then, if you like the way I cook, you can make chilaquiles for me.

  That was somewhat nonsensical, but it’s what I said, and she agreed. We traded telephone numbers. When I phoned her a few days later I felt a nervous fluttering in my stomach—butterflies!—and even panic when she didn’t answer and I had to decide whether or not to leave a message, and then I did, cringing over my affected casualness. I hadn’t felt like this since phoning Aura back when she lived with the Korean botanist. Was it a sign that I was ready to try for a relationship? I’d begun to think about when, if ever, I’d be ready for another one; or if I’d even be able to find a woman who would love me and who I could also love. The first time I’d had to think about it was at the funeral, when, in front of the other people grouped around us, Aura’s mother had suddenly said to me,

  You’ll still have another chance, but I’ll never have another daughter.

  I hadn’t known how to respond to that. Juanita had lost her daughter, her only child, and would never have another. Should I simply affirm that? Was there also an accusation in her w
ords that I should respond to? Looking straight at her, I said, Yes, I know. Inside, I vowed, No, I won’t. Your loss isn’t greater than mine. But was it greater than mine? Was there a way to measure? What if it was greater? What did it mean about my grief, or about me? Should I vow never to fall in love again and make a pact with Juanita to show her how much I loved her daughter? Was that what she wanted? No, she didn’t want that.

  I’d never loved anyone in my life as much as I’d loved Aura, not even close, not any parent or sibling or any previous lover, and not my first wife; maybe I’d never really loved anyone before Aura. I believed that I loved Aura as a husband is meant to love his wife, in the most sacred conjugal manner, and much more.

  But Juanita was right.

  The grief and bereavement literature, all the scientific studies of widows and widowers that I’d sought out in libraries and online, were confusing on this matter. Often, in these studies, widows and especially widowers remarried quickly, because this is what they knew how to do, they knew how to love and to assume the responsibilities of a marriage; to compound grief with a collapse into a barren existence of daily meaninglessness was too much, and they fought back by finding a new partner as fast as they could. One psychiatrist even wrote that remarrying quickly following the loss of a beloved spouse should be considered a living tribute to that spouse and the quality of the marriage. But the studies also showed that most of those quick remarriages didn’t work out, leading to quick divorces. Bereaved spouses who’d had happy marriages were much more vulnerable to what the grief specialists called pathological mourning—“extreme emotional loneliness and severe depressive symptoms”—than people who’d been in unhappy marriages, and that this was especially so if they were widowers of around my age. Widows and widowers from happy marriages had more health problems than the survivors of unhappy ones. If your spouse was what they called an “attachment figure”—someone who you considered the source of your happiness, and of your own identity as a responsibly functioning and reasonably happy man in the world—then you were especially fucked. The studies found that strong support groups of family (which I didn’t have) and friends (which at times I did have) made no difference. If on top of everything else, the death of the beloved was sudden, unexpected, or violent—Aura’s death was all three—then you were particularly “predisposed to a pathological reaction,” including post-traumatic stress disorder, like a combat vet. Traumatic grief, I read, made you more prone to cancer, heart disease, increased consumption of alcohol (¡sí, señor!), sleep disturbances, unhealthy eating, and “suicidal ideation.” All in all, widowers of beloved wives lost ten years off their life expectancies; happily married guys widowed in their fifties were on average dead by the time they were sixty-three, unless they’d managed to remarry successfully. And what if the dead wife was heartbreakingly young, beautiful, brilliant, loving, good, on the brink of realizing her promise and most ardent dreams (writing, motherhood), and her family blamed the surviving husband for her death—blame that he was more than disposed to accept, though not at all in the terms or by the means that they expressed it? I found no studies with widower cohorts like that.