Absent a Miracle

by Christine Lehner

"Where is Boaca?" I ask.

  "North of Granada, north of the lake. Cowboy country. Not far from La Matilda's village, in case you need to know."

  He's crying again! And the soup has been removed. "It shouldn't be that hard to understand," Don Abelardo says. "But it's so very hard."

  "What is so hard?" asks Emilia. I haven't seen her husband in days. Nobody has mentioned anything. Would it be polite to show some interest in his whereabouts and his well-being?

  "The problem of Saint Tristána," says Don Abelardo.

  Back comes Lalo. He rubs the top of his head and musses his silken hair. No, he is pressing down on the top of his head, keeping it from taking off like a champagne cork. I want him to make eye contact with me, and when he finally does, he mouths, Hubert. Does he want to speak with me? I push my chair back to indicate my willingness. Lalo shakes his head and walks in, sits down.

  "That was Alice's friend Hubert the hagiographer," he announces.

  "He was your friend first."

  Carmen has a piece of speared meat on her upraised fork, and stops midair. "I doubted his existence until Ezra told me that, yes, he really does exist and he is deathly afraid of skunks."

  Don Abelardo says, "There are no skunks in Europe or Africa. They are native to the Americas. Like potatoes."

  Carmen says, "That's right, Papa. And Hubert is American."

  Lalo says, "Of course he exists. Someone at this table is completely sane. He read about La Matilda's corpse on the Internet."

  This seems a rather brave statement by someone who has wandered lonely as a cloud in a snowstorm in his Brooks Brothers pajamas, even if that is the someone I can't stop thinking about with lust and longing.

  His mother whispers, "Just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it true."

  "It said her grave opened in the mudslide and the body is incorrupt. He gets e-mails and links from all over about saints, or would-be saints. It's his job."

  "What else did it say?"

  "Gardenias. That it smells like gardenias. And that the people are trying to get there but the roads are impassable."

  "The gringo press always makes things sound worse than they really are," Carmen says dismissively.

  I say, "I thought the roads are impassable."

  "Some of the roads, some of the time," Olga says. Now the knives in front of her plate are arranged in crosses. Four crosses of knives; the juncture point is at the very base of the steel shaft, just above the silver handle.

  Into the quiet, Edward Flanz speaks. "I know, that is, I don't know who these people are, who they are. I know a Hubert, he has a garage, well, it's more of a filling station, and it's probably closed now, but I knew him, and I think that is another one, another Hubert, not yours. Also Matilda I don't know. But I know a song about Matilda, a song everyone knows, those are the only songs I know, everyone's."

  "Wrong Hubert," Lalo says to Edward Flanz. "He was concerned, which I thought very friendly of him. Thoughtful. 'Don't give up on Tata, incorruptibles are a dime a dozen,' that sort of thing."

  A dime a dozen. A dome a dizzy. A Rome a raisin. A mime a mazes. Where, oh, where is Waldo when my brain is conjuring up nonsense? But if Waldo walked in right now, I might choke on my palmito.

  "He must consider the situation to be dire," Carmen points out. "That he called at all."

  "Not that you care," Lalo says.

  George slips in and whispers something in Carmen's ear.

  She turns to me. "Did Ezra have pain behind his eyes?"

  "No. Not that he ever said. Behind the eyes?" She's asking me?

  "It's a delicacy," Don Abelardo says. "When I was in Patagonia I was given the fat behind the eye of the rhea, because that is the choicest part of the bird, and my friend there was most considerate of my taste buds."

  "Not the rhea, darling," whispers minuscule Doña Luisa.

  "We're talking about pain, Papa. Our guest Edith has pain behind her eyes."

  Emilia says, "She must have dengue fever."

  "Of course she has dengue fever!" says Carmen.

  "Would you mind coming up to see her?" George says. But he is not speaking to Carmen. It is to me.

  "To see Edith?"

  "If you wouldn't mind. She's terribly cold."

  "I don't think I can help."

  "If you wouldn't mind," he repeats. I grudgingly abandon the flan de coco, and follow George out of the room.

  Piled atop Edith's narrow body are more blankets that I can count. She and George both tell me how horrid is the pain behind her eyes. Exactly where? Behind the eyeballs. If we had a plastic model of the skull she could take a long pin—like a hatpin—and show us exactly where the pain is. Ezra never said a word about anything behind his eyes. George asks me if I am sure he had dengue, and the answer is no, I'm not sure. It's just a name for a set of symptoms, for pain and fever and chills. George reminds me that a mosquito is involved, that there is a vector. I can't help him with the pain behind the eyes.

  Edith says, "I think it's related to the chickens."

  "What chickens?"

  "I keep seeing chickens," she says.

  "It must be because of the rooster. They cock-a-doodle-doo at all hours. Is there something wrong with Nicaraguan roosters that they don't know when to crow?" George says.

  "Can she eat anything?" I ask.

  Edith groans. "God, no."

  "Is the pain better or worse?" George wants to know.

  "Worse. Worse. I'm not sure I can do this."

  "On a scale of ten to one, what is your pain?"

  "Which is worse, high or low?"

  "Ten is the worst pain ever," George says. The last time I heard that question asked I was in the Ginny O hospital with Lalo, but Lalo was not the one being asked to rate his pain. It was his roommate, Rubén. The nurse had asked Rubén several times, with Lalo translating, One to ten? First Rubén had asked the nurse what she thought was the correct number. And when she insisted on an answer, he'd said, One, maybe two. I'd averted my eyes from his bloody bandages.

  "Eleven and a half," Edith says.

  Why am I here? There is nothing I can do for them, for her. I don't want to see her, not even in pain. All those months when I craved to know what she looked like (Was she prettier than me? Skinnier? Chestier? Was her stomach flatter? Were her legs longer? How many times can those questions be asked? There is no limit, I learned), all those months when she was the toxic black cloud that threatened my marriage, my children, everything that mattered, and especially all the times I rubbed my wound raw by imagining exactly what sexual acts she might be performing at any given moment with Waldo—and now this. Is this the anticlimax?

  What does Lalo have to do with this?

  Everything.

  And nothing.

  Edith moans again. "I told George about Waldo and me," she says.

  My stomach grumbles ominously.

  "She told me everything," George asserts.

  "Are you sure there are no more blankets? An electric blanket? My toes are ice cubes."

  "That was your decision," I finally say. "But Ezra doesn't know."

  "Oh, don't worry!" George says. "It stays in this room. Between Edith and me there are no secrets. Otherwise we are silent as the grave. No one will know."

  "Frankly, I don't care who knows what," I say. "It's only Ezra that matters."

  "Don't mention graves." Edith moans.

  Like my room and Ezra's room, presumably like all the rooms along the loggia here at Las Brisas, this one is airy and sparsely furnished. A hammock swings limply from two ceiling beams. Over the door frame is a smallish crucifix, nothing garish or bloody. It is positively tasteful, even Protestant, compared to the ones we stared at open-mouthed in Abuela's Barcelona apartment. The Virgin is over the bed, in Mestizo Baroque style. Nothing is awry. To the naked eye.

  "We haven't even met Ezra yet," George says.

  "You probably won't," I say. I don't know if this is true. I want it to be true.

  Georg
e says, "The doctor says he doesn't need to come. That we should just go on as we are. Keep her hydrated, of course." He uplifts his hands theatrically. "I am beside myself! I don't know where to turn."

  "You can always pray," I suggest. "To the saint in the family—Tristána Llobet. It's her territory."

  "I've never heard of her. Or did you say something before?"

  "She's Nicaraguan." I don't add that she's not exactly a canonized saint and unlikely to ever be one, given her letters, given the unfortunate fact of her sexuality that—I must admit it—I am delighted she experienced. It would be true to say I am misleading George Glass. "She's the object of a local cultus."

  "Wow," he says. "I've never heard of a local cultus. Do you really think it would help? Praying to her?"

  Edith shivers beneath her mound of blankets, opens and closes her eyes with obvious pain.

  "It can't hurt."

  "I don't normally pray to saints," George tells me.

  "You're not normally in Nicaragua, and Edith doesn't normally have dengue."

  "You have a point. So what about this saint?"

  "She was a great beauty who forswore all her suitors and the world's pleasures. She lived in a small shack next to the church, and looked after the sick and dying. They say she knew when someone was going to die, and she would start walking to the house days before. Sometimes."

  "Wasn't it pretty creepy to have her show up?" Edith mutters something that sounds like water, and George holds the glass to her lips. Water dribbles down her chin. I stare at the Virgin: she has a tiny head and a huge tent of a gown.

  "Not necessarily. Everyone has to die sometime. She sang hymns at their funerals. Everyone loved her."

  "Kind of like Mother Teresa?"

  "Kind of. Except that she stayed in one place, and she was beautiful, and she wasn't a nun and didn't start a new order of nuns, and no one has ever heard of her outside of Nicaragua. Her scale of operations was small, you could say, but her impact on individuals was great."

  George says, "Why would she help Edith?"

  "Why not? If you pray to her. Ask for a favor, a miracle."

  Recovery from dengue would not qualify as a miracle, though. Even I know that. Ditto hiccups. The Vatican's standards are very high. They put would-be saints through rigorous background checks, and their miracles are subject to batteries of tests, panels of experts, and trials by fire. It is worse than applying for a job with the CIA. No, Tata Llobet still needs a major-league miracle. And Edith is not likely to be it. Back when, I had prayed for Waldo. For Waldo's undiluted love forever. Would that constitute a miracle? Be careful what you pray for.

  Tata needs a miracle of her own. Or not, by my lights. No, I like her much better when I consider her now, nestled in bed with Padre Oscar.

  George holds his hand over his mouth. "A miracle?" he spits out. "Is that what it will take? Oh, no, no, no." His sweaty face is awash in panic.

  "Whoa. Calm down. I didn't mean it like that. People get over dengue. It only kills the old, the young, and the weak. Look at Ezra. Edith is a healthy adult. She is, isn't she?"

  "I should never have brought her down here. It was my idea. You know—ahem—she feels so guilty about the thing with Waldo. I don't think that's helping her, feeling so terrible about what happened in the past, before she understood."

  "I don't want to talk about Waldo," I say. I don't want to talk about Waldo because I need to think about Lalo and that is a lot to think about.

  George goes on, "She told me it was like she was hypnotized."

  I say, "I don't want to hear about it. It has nothing to do with dengue."

  "I've never seen her sick before," he whines. "It's breaking my heart."

  "Just keep her hydrated."

  Edith moans from her pillow. "But the pain behind my eyes? Will that never go away?"

  "Tell her it will go away, George. She needs to hear it from you."

  "It will go away, Edith, darling. The Motrin will help."

  The volume has diminished. "I can't take this pain. Oh, George, I'm such a weakling, but I can't take it."

  George holds her hand but looks at me. "There must be something you can do," he says. "You speak the language. You know the people."

  "I'm not a doctor, and even the doctor can't do much. Just get through it," I say. "Think of it as a boulder field you have to get across, full of rocks and crevasses. When you get to the end, well, then you're past it." Where did that come from? I have never crossed a boulder field. Does a rocky beach on the coast of Maine count?

  George whispers to me, "That's easy for you to say. But I was a Christian Scientist before we saw the light and joined the Pentecostals. So I didn't do illness ever, back then. I'm at a loss."

  "You'll be fine." The rest of the house is quiet and still. It is the time after eating and drinking and before the racket of early-morning birds and insects, and of course the Nicaraguan rooster. I don't want to spend this time in this room.

  "I couldn't bear it if anything happened to Edith!" George ejaculates and lurches into my arms, weeping. He is larger than me. This is an awkward pose under the best of circumstances.

  "Nothing will happen to Edith," I say sternly.

  Through his sobs he utters, "Look at her. Hot—cold—cold—hot, and now this pain behind the eyes. What if it moves somewhere else? Somewhere worse?"

  "George! Get a hold of yourself. She will be fine—don't let her see you like this. Remember, she's the sick one, not you. Give her water. Pray to Tristána. It will do you some good."

  George bursts out weeping like a hysterical child, all runny nose and gasping intakes of air. He leans into my shoulder and sniffles onto my shirt. I can't step back because he might fall to the floor. "George! Cut it out! It's no good for Edith to see you like this. What will she think?"

  "She'll think I am the unworthy wretch that I am." He sniffles.

  "Take some deep breaths. Go splash cold water on your face."

  He brightens, runs into the bathroom, and turns on the tap full force. Henry would say that George runs like a girl. When did I last speak with him? I am sure the bedsore experiment is over. I should be asking if the bedsore experiment ever took place. Could it be an elaborate construct of Waldo's? Was Henry off somewhere he shouldn't be, a parachuting academy or the shooting range? Or, worse, was he hospitalized with West Nile fever or equine encephalitis or a rare antibiotic-resistant strain of tuberculosis? Fever, fever, everywhere, but only if I blink.

  "Why are those chickens bothering me?" Edith moans.

  "There are no chickens," I tell her. "It's just the fever. Try to sleep."

  "I won't eat meat anymore, if that's the problem," she says.

  "No one cares if you eat meat."

  George is still splashing his face. Such theatrics are not necessary.

  "He's too sweet for this world," she says. "That's why all the bugs love him."

  "You're the one with dengue fever."

  "He had a terrible childhood," Edith says. She closes her eyes and tosses her pale perspiring face back and forth upon her pillow. George needs to cease his ablutions and come back to wipe her brow.

  "He has you now," I point out cheerfully.

  "Both his parents died," she whispers hoarsely. "His aunt adopted him. But she was a Scientist and didn't believe in death."

  "Death exists whether you believe in it or not," I say. "George! Are you all right in there?"

  "She didn't really like him, was the problem. She had always wanted a girl, someone she could share clothes and hair products with. Not that George has ever complained to me."

  "Where is this aunt now?"

  "On the dementia floor." Edith moans. "Poor, poor George."

  "Edith needs you!" I shout. "And bring a facecloth."

  At last. He is not running. He marches slowly, as if bearing the weight of the Virgin in a Holy Week procession.

  "Just look at her," he says.

  Edith says stagily, "The chickens are here."
>
  "There are no chickens. Only we three."

  "Can you ever forgive me about Waldo?" Edith says. Her eyes are locked on George. I assume she is talking to George. He wipes her forehead. "Can you?"

  "Let's just not go there. Talk about it among yourselves, but not with me."

  "Behind the eyes! Press behind the eyes!"

  "I can't press any harder," George says. "I don't want to hurt you."

  "I already hurt so much."

  George is wild and panicked again.

  "We need a helicopter!" he says. "To fly her to the capital."

  I could tell him all the good reasons that is a bad idea—the mountainous terrain, the lack of a landing pad, the fact that all the helicopters in Nicaragua are Soviet army castoffs, the cost of fuel, the fact that she will be better soon—but I say nothing, because it is none of my business.

  "Where have you been?"

  George and Edith are serenely indifferent to his voice, but I whip around to see Lalo standing in the doorway. He is wearing a paisley silk bathrobe over his pajamas, and if I am not mistaken, they are a clone of the pale blue with dark blue piping Brooks Brothers pajamas he wore on the snow that morning in VerGroot. The men I know don't wear pajamas or silk bathrobes—such sartorial touches exist only in vintage movies. They are clothes for a fantasy. But now I know a man who does wear pajamas. And a bathrobe.

  "I'm right here."

  "How bad is she?" Lalo asks, from the doorway.

  "Alice told me to pray to your aunt. And I plan to do it as soon as Edith falls asleep. It will be a first for me, but desperate times call for..."

  "Desperate measures," Lalo completes.

  "Exactly."

  Lalo beckons me not with one finger but with his whole hand, with all the fingers together reaching toward me then arching back toward himself. I am drawn to that hand. Lalo's beckoning hand pulls me like the empty air past the edge of the cliff.

  "I'm going to check on Ezra." I back out of the room.

  Edith utters, "I hope to meet him one day."

  I close the door behind me. No, no, no! Never.

  Without a word Lalo kisses the top of my head, then pushes his hand down the back of my pants.

  "Ezra is fine," he says.

  "I thought so. I mean, I hoped so."