"But isn't it a huge effort?" I applauded myself for not saying pain in the ass. "A huge struggle to get someone canonized? Isn't it the sort of thing that can swallow your life up and spit it out?"
"It is. It is," Abelardo said. Yet his agreement did not sound like it came from the voice of one whose life was being swallowed up.
"Does Dandy seem awfully quiet to you?" I said. "He is just way too still. I need to check his gums." I pulled back the upper lip of the sleeping dog and saw that his gums and inner cheeks were indeed very pale, not quite gray but certainly not pink. It was always so hard to tell. "Does this look pink to you? Or gray? What do you think?"
Abelardo's eyebrows elevated far up his forehead and, as much as was possible, he retreated deeper into his chair. "I don't even look in the mouths of horses," he said.
I released Dandy's pale lip. He didn't budge. Was it too soon to start panicking? When is a good time to panic? "Explain to me, please," I said. "Why exactly does your country need a saint?"
"It is no secret that Nicaragua has a host of political and economic troubles. With the exception of the lovely Violeta, we have been cursed with some of the most corrupt, venal, and vengeful leaders in the hemisphere. Not an insignificant claim. While a saint will not cure these things, it would be excellent for our morale. It could improve Nicaragua's image in the eyes of the world."
This time he pulled on both his earlobes. He went on. "I can't pretend I don't have my own bugbear, hobbyhorse, bee in my bonnet, as you say. A saint could counteract the inroads of the Mormons, the Pentecostals, the Seventh-day Adventists, the Latter-day Angels, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Sabbatharians, and the Snake Speakers. These Bible thumpers have had many converts because—and I will admit this—they are diligent; they have taken many weak souls away from the church and from the sacraments. I find this upsetting. They tend to be anti-Marianista, and that is not the Nicaraguan way.
"Practically speaking, Nicaragua needs an infusion of foreign capital if it is ever to build a decent infrastructure, and yet without a decent infrastructure most foreign investors are leery of sinking money into a poor and politically unstable country. It is an insidious circle. However. However." Abelardo let go of his ears and reconnected his fingertips in their dome position. "However, a Saint Tristána Catalina Llobet could inject a fresh perspective into the situation. I do not think it is outrageous to suggest that a newly canonized native saint—a virgin of a good family—could be an enticement to new investors. A saint will be the imprimatur."
On a small low table between us there was a mud-colored ceramic bowl that Ezra had made in kindergarten. Inside Ezra's bowl were several chocolates wrapped in colored tinfoil. Bogumila, our neighbor up the road, went back to Poland every summer to see her ancient parents. And every year at Christmas she gave us these chocolates she had carried back from Poland. Poland is not a country known for its chocolates. My boys loved Bogumila and had already promised to go with her to her family home just outside Kraków as soon as they were old enough. She actually made the boys swear on the heads of Flirt and Dandy that they would not fail to make this pilgrimage to Kraków.
"Please don't misunderstand, dear Alice. I don't seek her canonization for personal or financial reasons. God forbid!"
Abelardo let his fingers slowly separate, and then he reached out to take a chocolate from the bowl. He unwrapped it, neatly put the chocolate orb into his mouth, neatly folded the tinfoil, and neatly put it back onto the table.
I had watched all too eagerly. I picked up the used tinfoil. I unfolded it and smoothed it on the top of my thigh. I was anxious lest the tinfoil was ripped. But I should have trusted to Abelardo's delicacy. Smoothing it out, I saw the tinfoil was a perfect colored square. I could exhale.
When I was a girl in Santa Barbara, each year at Christmas a large straw box filled with dried figs wrapped in colored tinfoil mysteriously arrived at our door and then lived on the counter in the pantry. It was an annual Christmas gift from Pop's Turkish business colleague, also a mysterious figure.
We ate the figs, then Mami showed us how to take each colored tinfoil wrapper and smooth out all the wrinkles with a thumbnail. Using the index finger of one hand as a mold, she showed us how to roll it into a tube. She showed us how to twist it at one end to create the stem of the wineglass. And finally we learned how to splay the end of the twisted tinfoil to make the base of the glass.
Every year at Christmas, by the time we had eaten all the Turkish figs, we had sculpted dozens of tiny colored wineglasses made of foil.
And they functioned.
We would fill them with tiny amounts of water and spoonfuls of wine and hold the tinfoil stems between our little fingers and sip.
In those days Mami also pretended to sew her fingers together, to amuse us.
I made a wineglass from the tinfoil, in the old way, and set it gently on the table. Abelardo said, "Waldo is a lucky man. I see that now."
I said, "Waldo is the funniest man I know."
"I was not referring to his comedic side, developed though it may be."
Flirt lifted her head and barked. Dandy's head sank farther into their pillow.
"It's a complicated process to become a saint," I said. "And does anyone really care these days?"
"I care. We care," Abelardo said. Then he jumped from his chair and went over to the front window. Yes, it was still snowing.
"This has to stop soon," he said. "I have to get to the Hagiographers Club. I foolishly thought this would be an excellent time of year because the cosecha is winding down at Las Brisas. Foolish, foolish. But I must get on with my research because the de la Rosas think they have a saint in their family. She was nothing like Tata. It is disturbing how helpless we are with this snow. Is there really nothing you can do?"
"Nothing," I said. Was he kidding? I briefly wondered if there was some snow antidote that I had neglected to mention or avail myself of. Nope. Nothing came to mind.
"There was nothing like this when we were at Harvard," he said.
Well, you're not at Harvard now. You're here with me. But I didn't say that. I still expected the phone to ring momentarily, and I wanted Abelardo to tell Waldo what a lovely time we were having, and I wanted Waldo to appreciate just how friendly I was being to his roommate and how for not one but two evenings I was forgoing the anticipated pleasures of tinned oysters and Jeopardy! Hell, I would happily let the dogs in our bed, put the Weather Channel on mute, and reread the diaries of Robert Falcon Scott. I would not mention the allure of Abelardo's earlobes, as I looked forward to inhabiting the moral high ground in our marriage for a while. Was there anything so terribly wrong with that?
First he had to call.
Abelardo hung on to the painted wooden windowsill as if to the gunwale of a lifeboat. His knuckles were paler than Dandy's gums.
"At least when it is raining you know it. You can hear the rain beating on the roof. I would say that rain is more honest. It doesn't sneak up on you. There is nothing sneaky about the rain."
I said, "I would hardly call three feet of snow sneaky."
"If I had known about this snow, I would never have come."
"But we didn't know," I said. There was a twinge—just a twinge—of dismay that he didn't find my scintillating company sufficient compensation for the misery of the snow. I squashed the twinge.
Of course Waldo had left me a phone number or the name of the hotel. How could he not? He definitely would have done that. So where was it? I went into the kitchen to look at the refrigerator door anew. But there was nothing new, nothing that hadn't been there that morning, or the night before, or the previous morning. Only the plastic magnetic letters that the boys used to make up their words, funny words, invented words, and sometimes dirty words when they wanted to test me. No message from Waldo.
I examined every Post-it note on the desk in the corner of the living room, and found the long-lost number for the chimney cleaner, but nothing about their hotel near the caves in New Mexi
co.
I didn't want Abelardo to see me pathetically ransacking my own house for information I should have had in the first place. He might think that he was in less than competent hands.
"So, tell me again, what do you hope to learn at this Hagiographers Club?" I asked him.
"Don't you have any snowplows here? Why are you not plowed?"
"I'm sure the plows are on the roads. But our driveway we do ourselves. We just can't right now because it's still coming down so hard. But we will, don't worry, we will," I said. "But about your aunt?"
He was right to be anxious about the plowing. It was going to take us hours to shovel out. Usually all four of us did it, with frequent breaks for snowballs and snow angels. Waldo did most of the work. A few times after snowfalls, two or three young Hispanic men came up the driveway with snow shovels slung over their shoulders and offered to shovel us out for what seemed to me a very reasonable fee. I assumed they were terribly homesick for their tropical homeland, where it was warm and colorful. Once I suggested we hire them, and Waldo was horrified that I would even consider paying people to shovel for us. We had one of our East versus West, Maine versus California, Stiff-Upper-Lip versus Laid-Back confrontations, neither the first nor the last. Waldo prevailed.
It seemed highly unlikely that anyone at all would trudge up our driveway in the midst of this storm, which meant that soon, tomorrow, Abelardo and I would be shoveling. Occasionally, if there wasn't too much snow, I could toss a couple of sandbags in the back of my car and drive it up and down the driveway a few times and compact the snow enough so that we could get traction. It was all about traction.
"My aunt? There is a great tradition of virgin saints who oppose the wishes of their fathers to marry and choose Christ as their bridegroom. A very great tradition, and my Aunt Tristána falls directly into it."
"I know something about that. But mere spinsterhood hardly makes for sainthood."
"There are also the miracles."
"You were joking about the hiccups."
"I never joke. You can ask Waldo. I used to say things in jest, about the Fairweather inventors, for instance. Waldo said I was too literal-minded to ever get a joke. Or make one."
"That wasn't very nice of him," I said.
"On the contrary. He tried to teach me. He wrote jokes on index cards for me to use in tense situations, but they never worked as planned. Things always became tenser. Here is one I remember: There is feebly growing down on your chin."
"That's a joke?"
"Not a joke. A play on words. It depends on whether you think of one word as a noun or an adverb. It could never happen in Spanish. Waldo will explain it to you."
"I certainly hope so," I said. Did he know that my mother was Spanish? Surely I'd told him, and if not me, then Waldo.
The phone rang. The ring sounded different than usual: shriller, twangier.
I lifted the receiver slowly, because if it was not Waldo then I wanted to postpone that disappointment as long as possible.
"Finally!" Waldo said to me.
I sank into a chair. I could have wept for joy. That was my word he had just usurped, that was my relief. I said, "Where are you guys?"
"In New Mexico. Where else? What's going on? I've been trying to reach you since yesterday and there's been no answer."
"That's not possible," I said. "I've been waiting and waiting to talk to you, and I couldn't find your number, and—"
"Well, I'm not inventing it."
"But we've been here the whole time. Except when I picked up Abelardo at the train. Oh, and when I went back to the station, but there were no trains."
"What do you mean, no trains?"
I said, "There were no trains. The station was closed. The tracks were covered."
"They never do that."
"Well, they did this time, Wals. Metro-North had to wait until you were out of the state. Ask your pal."
It sounded like he wasn't speaking directly into the mouthpiece. Perhaps he was eating. Waldo liked to have things in his mouth. He said, "Is he there now?"
"That he is," I said, because he was right beside me. He couldn't have been any closer unless we'd embraced. An odd thought.
"So how are things going? I gather there's a snowstorm."
"Not just a snowstorm. It's a rather big snowstorm." Then I looked at Abelardo and bit my tongue.
Waldo asked me, "Is he standing right there?"
"Yes," I said.
"And how is he liking the snow?"
"He's been telling me about his Aunt Tristana, who will be a saint. Or will be once he gets to his club in the city."
"Now I remember how much he hated the snow in Cambridge. We could never convince him of its merits."
I said, "We were just discussing the snowplow."
"Are you plowed out yet?"
"Are you kidding? Watch the Weather Channel, please."
"The boys are watching The Simpsons."
I imagined them in their pajamas, Ezra's patterned with dinosaurs, Henry's with spaceships, seated Indian-style on the floor at the foot of some oversize hotel bed, staring with rapt fascination at the television fitted snugly inside the wooden cabinet. They loved Lisa Simpson and frequently quoted her. They would have loved her as a sister. In the shared hotel room, the television would be inside a cabinet under which would be the minibar. They would both have examined the contents of the minibar and discussed at length the pros and cons of eating the peanuts or the candy, computing how much those items cost relative to the nearby 7-Eleven. Of course they cost more from the minibar, so the question was, was it worth it? They would already have watched Waldo remove tiny bottles of gin and tonic and make himself a drink. (Yes, the same Waldo who would never pay anyone else to shovel his driveway.) He would say: Live a little, guys. Or something like that. But they would need more coaxing.
"At this hour? They must be reruns. Shouldn't they be in bed?"
"They are in bed. Watching TV. This is a hotel room. They're on vacation."
"Waldo?"
"What?"
"Intuit, please," I said. What I meant was "Read my mind. Don't make me say it. Please help me."
"Oh. You mean about Abelardo. Is there really a problem?"
"Very likely," I said. I shouldn't have to tell him, I thought. He should know this already. If there ever was a moment for a mind meld, this was it.
"I think the best thing is to get him back to the city as soon as possible. You've more than done your duty."
"I'm speechless," I said. This wasn't exactly true. What I meant was "What the hell do you think I would like to do? And why can't you solve this for me?"
"I don't know what I can do from out here. Would he like a plastic model of the caves?" he said. "Oh, never mind. How's Dandy doing? The boys want to know."
"I think he's okay. A little lethargic, but it could be the snow."
"Have you checked his gums?"
"Of course I checked his gums. I am intimate with his gums."
"And?"
"They're not all I could wish for. But I think they're fine," I said. I don't know why I lied about that particular thing. Normally I would have gone into great detail about his symptoms, as well as my anxiety. It must have been because Abelardo was still standing right there, pulling on both his earlobes. "Let me talk to the boys."
"They're asleep."
"Two seconds ago they were watching The Simpsons."
"That's what I thought," Waldo said. "But now their eyes are shut. They had a busy day."
"You haven't even told me about the caves."
"You should wait until the boys can tell you. Besides, they retain more than me. Henry may have found his true calling."
"Which is?"
"A geologist. A speleologist. He says he likes being under the earth—actually he's really only beneath the crust—and seeing how it's all put together."
I hissed, "So what am I going to do?"
"Is it that bad?"
"Yes."
"It's difficult, being out here."
"Thanks. Your mother called. She wants to know what you want for your birthday," I said.
"You told her nothing, I hope."
"I told her you loved that sweater she gave you last time," I said.
"Holy Christ."
"Wouldn't you like to speak with your friend Abelardo? He's right here."
I smiled and handed the telephone to Abelardo. He had to let go of his earlobes, which struck me as a good thing.
This is what I heard, in my snowbound living room: "Mi amigo Waldito! Mmm...Es un barbaridad...no ... no...que lástima...The snow is unsupportable, you might have told me ... do I understand? No ... I think you met her that summer after our freshman year ... yes, she was the one with the braids. What a good memoria you have...Entonces, vaya con Dios!"
I stretched out my hand, but he returned the phone to its cradle.
"You hung up?" I said. It was all I could do not to wring his neck.
"Waldo did. He said he was exhausted, looking after the boys."
"He's exhausted?" Bite your tongue, Alice. Now is neither the time nor the place. "I think it is time for us to retire as well. Don't you think?"
I was seething about Waldo hanging up. If this were a movie of a certain type, not a very good movie, then we in the audience would all know, as surely as we knew our menstrual history, that something was amiss. But this wasn't a movie. It was my life, our life. And what could possibly be amiss? They are having fun in caves, and I am stuck in a snowstorm with the grandnephew of a putative saint who thinks snow is the devil's work. I am taking care of the dogs, making sure that nothing is amiss.
A miss is as good as a mile. Who said that?
7
Nothing but Mystery
IT WAS DEATHLY QUIET in the morning. Dandy was breathing, but just barely. His gums were like the sky right before it snows.
The snow had stopped. All around was an unimaginable thickness of white, a monochromatic world that was beautiful and dazzling to the eye. It was suddenly a day for sunglasses. What had Thomas Hardy said—"a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution"? It didn't exactly apply. Everything was more than just itself. Every aspect of the landscape, of the weather, every nose, eyebrow, or ankle.
Absent a Miracle Page 7