Absent a Miracle

by Christine Lehner

  "As a matador."

  "A matador?" He gives his napkin a verónica flourish.

  Lalo says, "She agreed to pose if she could dress as a matador. In those distant times, there were of course no female matadors."

  "So there you are. It was Sorolla's masterpiece: Portrait of Señorita T. upon the Plaza de Toros. He fell in love painting it. He returned to Spain a richer but sadder man."

  "I think it's cruel to kill bulls like that," says Ezra.

  "You are young, and centuries of ritualized death are not flowing in your veins."

  I am not going to mention Mami's side of the family, the Llovets of Barcelona. Not just now.

  Ezra says, "There are cockfights in East VerGroot, but we've never been. They won't let strangers in because they're illegal."

  How does Ezra know of such things? With each tiny hint of his hidden cache of secret knowledge, I am newly awash in anxiety. And then pride.

  "But Tristána. The very next season her parents took her to visit Spain and there she saw a bullfight for the first, and only, time. Like you, Ezra, she was disturbed by the deaths. When she returned to Las Brisas, before she even took off her traveling clothes, she climbed a ladder, took the painting down, and turned it to face the wall. It stayed that way as long as she was alive, but now we have turned it back around, because it is a masterpiece."

  Between profound inhalations, Don Abelardo says, "We kept it in Miami during the war, but the insurance was ridiculous."

  I am listening carefully.

  But how can I hear all that is said?

  I am listening carefully.

  I hear the shuffling of air molecules in the vicinity of my right thigh, a particularly sensitive area. Not unlike my left thigh in that regard. But tonight it is my right thigh that is closest to Lalo's left side, and that seems to be what matters.

  I am discovering that Lalo is left-handed.

  "Must we always speak of Tía Tata?" Olga addresses her plate and the geography of salt.

  Her neck is sleek and narrow, like a heron's. How can something so delicate hold up her head, which, according to Henry, is the heaviest part of the body, weighing in at eight pounds?

  "What would you have us speak of?" Her mother, their mother, is just so tiny; it is all I can do not to think of a stunted creature from a fairy tale.

  "How was your flight?" whispers Emilia. She is the middle sister, like me.

  Ezra replies, "We sat next to a claustrophobic man. I don't think he was so terribly claustrophobic. I told him about our vet's wife—she's agoraphobic."

  Doña Luisa says, "What a smart boy this is to know all the phobias."

  "His name wasn't Rodolfo Godoy by any chance?" says Carmen.

  "It was. How did you know?"

  "This is a small country. Is he still so large and round?"

  "We thought so."

  Carmen's eyes descend to half-mast and fix on Ezra. If she looked at me like that I would swoon. "Before this Saint Tía Tata stuff, we were a normal family, with normal hopes and dreams."

  Emilia coughs and coughs. At first it seems a commentary cough, but she continues hacking and her face reddens. Something is wrong. No one pays the slightest attention. I pat her back, and she shoos me away.

  Carmen just goes on. "Lalo was making great progress with the new pruning system for the coffee but now we have an infestation of nematodes in the Santa Rosa sections, we have dieback in the upper Teresita sections, and last season we couldn't get enough pickers."

  "Everyone is having trouble getting pickers," Lalo says.

  "My dad says that normal is in the eye of the abnormal."

  Again those drooping eyes as Carmen says, simply, "Waldo."

  Something crashes in another room.

  With the soupspoon halfway to his lips Don Abelardo says ominously, "The weather report is not good." The soup's warm meniscus barely quivers.

  Carmen says, "Are you watching CNN again, Papa? Natural disasters are their bread and butter."

  "He is thinking only about the coffee."

  "Did you know that coffee is a delicate plant?" Olga asks me. She's still rubbing the salt in circles. "Like me."

  "Alice is gathering strength in the mar Caribe and heading westward," says Don Abelardo. "Of course I do not refer to you, my dear, but to the tropical storm that shares your name. A lovely name. What are your thoughts on blueberry pruning?"

  "Papa, she's not a blueberry farmer," Lalo says.

  "Of course she is."

  "It's too early in the season," Carmen says. She whispers to Olga, "Stop that. Desist!" As she turns away her sleeve brushes against her sister's plate and knocks off the tidy pyramid of salt.

  Ezra speaks directly to Carmen. "Does Abelardo mind hurricanes as much as snowstorms?"

  But Lalo answers (and while he speaks Olga spoons more salt onto the rim of her plate), "Absolutely not. It is a matter of color and temperature. I am very sensitive to color."

  "Abelardo used to be quite normal," Carmen says. "Even when he went to seminary he was normal."

  Olga whispers, "You already said that."

  "White is the absence of all color," Ezra says. He does not say that he rarely sees anything truly white, and that he sees colors that others do not see. He does not mention that a room of happy people will look pink to him, but if someone miserable enters, or if an argument starts, a blue tinge will seep into the room and turn the atmosphere purple. Like Abelardo, my Ezra is very sensitive to color.

  "Exactly."

  "But if you look at a snowfield, or just a photograph of one, you'll see that it's full of color."

  "My eyesight isn't what it used to be."

  "Ezra and his brother love the snow. They especially love snow days."

  Complete darkness has overtaken the courtyard and all of Las Brisas. Lights twinkle down the hill in the village, but they will soon be extinguished. And finally, late at night, only the beneficio, the mill where the coffee is brought in and dumped into enormous squared-off concrete wells, and separated into floaters and sinkers, and then sent along watery courses, separated again and again and shaken to remove its thick red skin and then its finer parchment, and sent at last to the huge batch dryers or out to the patio to be dried by the sun, only this living, breathing beneficio will still be illuminated.

  Olga stops impressing the circles of salt on her forearm and leans across the table. She whispers to me, "In the Yucatán the women don't get hot flashes. Never. They don't even know what hot flashes are."

  "I didn't know that."

  "It's true. I think hot flashes account for all sorts of things. Music, for one. And the way flowers smell."

  Carmen says, "Alice is too young to be getting hot flashes."

  Olga says, "I've always wondered about Tía Tata and hot flashes."

  (Olga is only thirty-one but because of her medication she is already experiencing those inflammatory invasions of her body.)

  Doña Luisa rasps, "Not in front of Ezra!"

  Emilia rings a small bell next to her wineglass. She says, "Did Rodolfo Godoy tell you about his sister?"

  Involuntarily, Olga laughs. It is meant to be a laugh but because her mouth is shut it sounds like she is choking. The specter of choking, or hiccups, is never far from the Llobet family.

  "Surely not," Carmen says.

  Ezra says, "He was pretty nice. We talked about our dogs. But he needs to get exercise."

  Doña Luisa says huskily, "Exercise is a very modern idea."

  Lalo says, "His parents are thin as rails. They were originally a Swiss family."

  "What about his sister?" I ask.

  "Some people believe she was miraculously cured through the intervention of Tristána. You may find it interesting, whether it was a miracle or not. But I don't know if I should tell the story in front of Ezra. He is so young and impressionable."

  "I won't listen," says Ezra, who is devouring his passion fruit.

  "I'm sure it will be educational," I say. Either L
alo is generating static electricity at an alarming rate or I am succumbing to the one and only tropical danger Posey failed to warn us about.

  Lalo sips his demitasse. "Grace was a lovely young woman. Then sometime in the seventies—she was more than twenty years older than Rodolfo—"

  Emilia whispers into her napkin, "People say it started with the earthquake."

  "Whenever it started, Grace began to imagine things about men."

  His mother interjects, "I will explain. Grace imagined things. She told her parents about men making improper advances, mostly married men. The parents prayed she would get married, and soon. One day after mass, Grace went straight up to Doña Margarita Hernandez—a timid, gentle person, who loved her lace more than anything—and Grace told her that Don Jaime—he was her husband—was in love with her, Grace, because Doña Margarita was frigid. And Grace's voice could be quite loud. It got worse. Once in the parking lot of the country club she banged on the outside of Floridita Cabrera's car and said horrid things that I cannot repeat. The chauffeur was right there, but Doña Floridita told him to stay still and wait—she was a nice woman and by then it was pretty clear that Grace was deranged. But, oh dear, all the chauffeurs were there waiting in their cars. By afternoon everyone in the country knew that Grace Godoy was a hysterical madwoman in the grip of sexual frustration. There is a word for it, but I have forgotten. No, I never knew it."

  Her offspring nod in disjointed unison. Not one utters the word in question.

  Carmen says, "Young Ezra must be very tired, after his travels."

  His eyes pop open. "I'm fresh as a daisy," he says. "My mother can tell you that sleep is not always my friend."

  I will tell you no such thing.

  "In the tropics you will sleep well," says Don Abelardo.

  "Just finish what you started," Carmen says to her mother.xsplit "Yes, please finish," I say.

  "During Semana Santa, Grace came with her mother to wish me a good birthday. They brought Swiss chocolates. She remembered my birthday every year. I never remember anyone's. Perhaps it has something to do with being Swiss."

  "They haven't been Swiss in a hundred years," Emilia says.

  "As soon as they were inside Grace Godoy was taken ill. She excused herself and went off to the bathroom. Or so we thought."

  She flutters her tiny delicate hand in the general direction of the front door. I notice the emerald ring surrounded by small diamonds. To the right are two doors close together. One leads to a lavatory of antique venerability. The other leads to the room where Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida's portrait of Tristána Catalina dressed as a matador hangs on the eastern wall. And that is the room entered mistakenly by Grace Godoy during that birthday visit.

  Don Abelardo, who is able to smoke and drink his coffee simultaneously, a talent that will enthrall Ezra for days to come, says, "We will show you the portrait, but not tonight."

  "Neither Señora Godoy nor I knew that Grace had gone into the wrong room, and then Olga thought someone should make sure she wasn't ill. The bathroom was empty. She found Grace on her knees before the portrait of Tía Tata. Grace stood up, as calm as could be. Then they made their farewells and never again did Grace accost another woman about her husband." Doña Luisa causes her crystal goblet to peal as she flicks her fingernail against the rim. "Thus was Grace cured of her intemperate lust and the imagined lust of others. It was miraculous."

  All the Llobets suddenly look at me, which feels awkward, because I am thinking about food, about cuitlacoche and passion fruit and how they will affect our dreams. I need to focus. "As in a miracle?"

  "By June she was married to Don Ignacio Gurdián, a widower with monastic leanings. They appear to be completely happy."

  In a small silver bowl in the center of the table are almonds, each covered with chocolate and a thin pastel mint shell. Carmen places a lilac mint on the flattened end of her coffee spoon and very slowly she depresses the bowl of the spoon, testing her catapult.

  This is very, very familiar. I have seen this a thousand times at our pockmarked table in VerGroot.

  Carmen says, "Even if you believe in miracles—which I do not—according to your beloved Catholic Church, for a miracle to count it has to be prayed for. And verifiable."

  Ezra appears to be asleep upright. It is time. This day started ages ago, certainly days or weeks ago.

  Lalo readjusts his shoulders. "It is merely an anecdote. An anecdote that may prove to be more than an anecdote when she is canonized."

  "If she is canonized," says Carmen. "There is absolutely no evidence that Grace ever prayed to Tía Tata."

  "She was on her knees, for Christ's sake," Olga says.

  "She could have been searching for a contact lens," says Carmen.

  "That's disingenuous."

  "If you find me disingenuous, wait until you start talking with the Vatican. They chew up people like us every day, and spit them out after breakfast."

  "Carmencita!" interjects Doña Luisa, but so throatily it is hard to believe she doesn't have bronchitis.

  "I'm very serious. It is of course lovely to have Alice and Ezra here in time for the hurricane season, but I hope they were not enticed here by the false promise of a miracle." Carmen returns her concentration to the lilac mint at the end of her spoon.

  When I go into the room next door to kiss Ezra good night, he is hunched over the bedside table, balancing a mint on the end of a spoon and levering the bowl back in order to catapult it across the room. There is nothing to say. I kiss the top of his head, his sweetly smelling head. Ez says, "I think I am going to like the tropics."

  The rain is beating on the tile roof.

  28

  Ringing Carillon

  The passio of St Quintinus is a worthless recital of tortures and marvels.

  —Alban Butler, "St Quentin," Butler's Lives of the Saints

  IN THE UPSTAIRS HALLWAY Lalo startles me. There is a faded photograph of pickers dumping their baskets of coffee berries into the back of an ox cart. Two women and a young man look oddly familiar. A dark dog sits in the lower right corner of the photograph. I hope Lalo did not see me testing the upper frame for dust—there was none. This is unlike home in so many ways.

  He says, "Do you remember Rubén Zamora?"

  "Of course I do."

  "His sister is very ill. She was. She had an inoperable brain tumor. But she prayed to Tía Tata—her whole family prayed to her and to no one else and now the sister is better. She's gone back to the doctors and they've done tests, and the tumor is gone. Disappeared like the dinosaurs."

  "You're sure she had it to begin with? This tumor? I've heard of much stranger mistakes. Hairballs, hysterical pregnancies. That sort of thing."

  "As sure as I can be. The documentation is under way now. It will naturally take a long time, because everything takes a long time, and in the Vatican things take a thousand and one times a long time."

  "Why are you telling me this? Before coffee?"

  "Because it's good news. Because I want you to think about it as I think about it."

  "You mean at the same time, or in the same way?"

  "We're in this together, Alice dear."

  "Oh, no, Lalo. No, no, no."

  "How no?"

  "I'm not like you. I don't believe, not in that. Not like you."

  "I'll settle for your company," Lalo says.

  Breakfast is almost over. I do not like having breakfast with people to whom I am not related. Breakfast is about caffeine, and listening to the rustling and crinkling of old papers inside my skull. Breakfast is about long silences that disappear into subterranean caves. Breakfast is not about the webs of emotions.

  Ezra sees it differently. Ezra has been methodically eating gallo pinto. He is separating the red beans from the grains of rice, placing the beans on the left side of his plate and the rice on the right side. The only problem is that the whole point of gallo pinto is the rice and beans are mixed together. He finishes chewing, and then mouths something
to me.

  I shrug, and nod.

  I say to Carmen and Emilia, "Ezra would like to tell you all his dream."

  Emilia's eyes drill into Ezra and then me. She is wearing large round diamond earrings, and either the diamonds are very big or her earlobes are very small.

  Ezra begins. It is known by all, and especially by me, that most people are uninterested in the dreams of others. Only Freud, Jung, and me. Well, Gordie, at WBLT, sometimes, and now these Llobet sisters. Something strange has happened and some seismic shift (perhaps the infamous Cocos plate) has rearranged the arrangements inside my head. In just two days in the tropics. No question that the weather has something to do with it. No question that I am susceptible to heat and humidity. Ezra finishes his dream and I didn't hear a word.

  I had not seen Lalo standing at the far end of the dining room. He says, "That's all?"

  Carmen says, "If I ever have a son, he will be just like you."

  "He'll be a lot younger than me," Ezra points out.

  Lalo says, "I told Mama that we will all stay here. That it will be safer here than in León. She wanted to go back for her ladies' book club because they are reading something by a handsome young Chilean writer. But it is out of the question. Alice is now a full-blown hurricane on its way in this direction."

  "She hates all the ladies in that book club. She says they are ignorant and badly educated," Carmen says. "What was the name of the writer?"

  "I have no idea."

  "Roberto Bolaño," Emilia says. "He's already dead. At a young age. It is tragic."

  Olga says, "I hate it when people die too young."

  Carmen says, "We all do."

  "No. Not like that. I hate it rather differently, because I will die young myself."

  Emilia gets up from the table. "That's it. I can't listen to this anymore." She tugs on her earlobes, and the large diamonds send refracted light all over the room. "You'd think she was the only mentally ill person in this family."

  "Clearly not," Carmen says.

  I look at Ezra because I am thinking that he might prefer to be elsewhere. I might prefer he were elsewhere and not listening to this.