In the Absence of You (30 page)

Shandor opens the door to the car. He clenches the handle like he thinks I need help, but I smile, showing him I’m nothing but content and know how to close doors.

As we exit the unkempt beach lot, I swing to study the ocean. It swims with an iridescence only the morning sun can bring. The waves ripple, slow and discordant. They kiss the beach, embrace rocky sand and seaweed, as beautiful and untrustworthy as life.

Feet planted wide at the water’s edge stands my tour mate, he who braved each bump in the road with me, until he didn’t. Calmly, he watches us leave.

I lower the window to see him one last time. Already he’s too far away for me to distinguish his features, but distance won’t hamper my memory. Our past is laced with compassion, tinted with smiles—

Stained with the ultimate betrayal.

I remember safari greens, bright against the deep copper of his skin. I remember how they glittered with amusement, with tenderness… and with heat.

Yes. I remember it all.

Dear Reader,

If you struggle with depression, don’t let yourself become Emil.

Accept help, because—

You’re not the only one. There is help to be had.

Things might look dark, but—

It is never darker than in that last moment before the sun rises.

In the words of The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline:

With Help Comes Hope.

Contact them:

Suicidepreventionlifeline.org

1-800-273-TALK

And get well.

NADIA

“B
aby,” I croak before I open my eyes.
I stretch beneath our sheets, writhing at the sound of the alarm clock. Awakened from dreams colored by our past, my first thought goes to my husband. “Turn it off, babe? Please,” I say.

The alarm keeps beeping,
beep-beep-beeping
. It’s annoying and chased by my customary just-awake confusion. “Jude, you know how much I hate that sound.”

I’m at home in our apartment in St. Aimo, Los Angeles. Slowly, it registers that the alarm is for me, not him. I turn to face him, whine softly, but he doesn’t give me the response I crave: a chuckle and a kiss while he playfully commiserates with me.

“Oh sweetie,” he usually murmurs. “I’m sorry you have to leave for school. Maybe you should play hooky and stay in bed for a rubdown? I’ll rub… all the way down.”

I always crack a smirk then, reading between the lines. He would leave us mumbling heated words and gasping for air if I surrendered.

Deep in my belly, something contracts. Something bittersweet and beautiful that hurts, because today, again, he doesn’t react.

I slide from the covers and sit on the edge of the bed. My head feels heavy. It needs support, and for a second, I’m struck by how alive my hand is when I cup my cheek with it.

Soon, I find the courage to rise.

The bathroom door is closed, but I go to it anyway. “Do you remember when you first came to our church?” My words stutter, sleep-exhausted. I exhale and lean my forehead against the door. “Your eyes were bright with fear as you entered the Heavenly Harbor between your parents. You were lanky, a gangly fourteen-year-old, a little boy big enough to have gotten yourself into trouble.”

My throat produces hard lumps so easily these days. This one I muscle down. I control the sadness accompanying it and let a small smile filter out instead. “Oh Jude baby. We didn’t know then, of all the adventures to come.

“I remember sitting in the pews between Mother and Father, head twisted at the creak of the door. You entered on a lull between psalms.

“I didn’t know. We didn’t know.”

I sniff, an attempt at stanching the tears.

The wood of the doorframe cools my cheek. Presses into it as my memories brighten. “Your skin,” I mumble. He’s quiet behind the panel. The shower has stopped—in our bathroom or in the one above us, I’m not sure. If he’s moving, he’s not making a sound. Perhaps he’s listening to me.

“Fine veins shone blue at your temple beneath your too-long hair.” I snort out a wet laugh. “And the sun reached you through the stained-glass window, spilling the rainbow over your face.”

I roll my forehead to the side against the door. “Funny how your parents picked our church because ‘Heavenly Harbor’ sounded like the right kind of place. They wanted the best haven for you.”

Not long ago, my Jude would have grinned at this. He’d pull me in, golden bangs falling over me and tickling me while he ran his nose up mine. He’d croon, “Oh and weren’t they right. I found my haven—in you.”

I’d push him good-naturedly, not allowing fear of the future to ruin our love. “But you’d be safe at home with your parents if they hadn’t crushed on the name of our church.”

He’d kiss my nose, groan, and say, “Right, and I wouldn’t have a beautiful wife.”

“A child bride,” I teased once.

“Nineteen is a fine age. Get them early.” He winked, knowing well he only held two months on me.

We were young. Married. And so on the run.

I was born
to modest parents in Buenos Aires. Until I was seven, life tore along like a flawless football game. Love abounded, and unlike some of my classmates, I never went hungry.

On weeknights, friends knocked, asking me out to play, and on the weekends, my big, close-knit family on Mom’s side worshipped my cousins and me. I remember laughter. Heartfelt, lingering hugs. Daylong meals and sleepovers with hose-downs in my grandparents’ backyard when we became rowdy from the summer heat. I remember wet smooches from aunts and uncles, my
t
í
as
and
t
í
os
. Secrets shared with cousins, fights when Diego, Mariana, and I disagreed, and smacks from our mothers when the disputes escalated.

We played in tree houses we built and rebuilt in the city park while the public grill simmered, the aroma from our family
parrilla
the only thing able to draw us away.

My parents struggled to make ends meet but didn’t involve me in their adult concerns. With dedication and modesty, my father paid rent on our home, month after painstaking month. My friends and I all grew up in studio apartments within rundown, wooden buildings on the water, but even the colors of our houses—bright blues, reds, yellows, and greens—hinted at nothing but abundance.

Never did I identify the Vidal family’s poverty. Such a concept, such gloom, exists only when compared to outlandish cornucopias I didn’t encounter in La Boca.

I was an only child for longer than most in my neighborhood and rejoiced when Mom’s belly began growing. To touch it, to see my brother swell into an eight-month piece of art made my child heart inflate with bliss. He ballooned my mother’s shape and caused happy grins on my father’s face. Yes, life was good in La Boca. Life was good.

My parents did not drive a car recklessly to get themselves killed. They took a chance on a quarter-mile crosswalk on an
avenida
in Barrio Norte, en route for the zoo. The Lord knows why I was not with them. Onlookers said a Coca-Cola truck sped up at the sight of them braving such a busy road. The driver’s plan had been to scare them, but instead it hit... hit—

Grief roars as loudly in seven-year-olds as in adults. I cried for my parents. For Ariel, the baby brother I’d never meet. I sobbed over dress-up games I’d never force him to play, and my tears became the Sin Flood as my grandparents on my father’s side moved me into their house.

Life comes with expenses, the cost sometimes steeper than the reward. I lost my parents and my brother. Then my neighborhood, the contact with Mom’s family—cousins, aunts, uncles, and my grandparents.

Soon, I’d lose my country.

I jump when
knuckles rap on the front door.

“I’ll get it,” I breathe to Jude. Silence walls me from the bathroom as I walk into our tiny den. There’s still seventies-style, deep red carpet under my toes. We own our creep-in; Jude bought it outright before his parents cut him off and popped the savings they’d set up for him in a trust fund. “Misuse,” they called it. “Hasty teenagers.

“As much as we love Nadia,” they added.

The carpet stays for now—we can’t afford to replace it. Instead, I’ve painted the walls a matching, faded red and the window frames a warm mahogany. Jude accepted it because “it’s Nadia.”

“I love everything
you
,” he said back then.

I hear Zoe like she’s inside already. Paper-thin walls and ceilings strip privacy away, leaving only the most laid-back tenants to renew their contracts in the leased apartments.

“Come on, Nadia!” she shouts.

Out of habit, I let my gaze scan our place before I go to open: the bathroom, teetering between the sleeping alcove and the den; the nonexistent hallway; the front door swinging straight into our tiny living room. It’s tidy. Presentable. Just that one sock of Jude’s collecting dust on the bathroom floor. The distance is short between where I stand and the entrance. It takes me seconds to crook my fingers around the chain link. I unhook it and allow her to enter.

Blue eyes dim at the sight of me. “Get dressed,” she says.

My eyes go to the wristwatch I rarely pay attention to. “It’s four thirty in the afternoon—it’s not the morning, and I’m not supposed to go to work.”

“Yeah, sweetie,” she whispers, like she feels bad for me, causing a lump to ferment in my throat.

“Don’t do the pity thing,” I say.

Zoe. When I started working at Scott’s Diner, she quickly became my friend. In the beginning, I was her awkward, inexperienced acquaintance, but we grew close, and she has since picked up the pieces of my sanity in more ways than I could have imagined.

Zoe. She’s always here for me. Sometimes, I wonder about her patience. She’s not a saint, and yet her patience is saintly. Sometimes, I want her to just go away. Like now.

“I’m not coming wherever it is,” I tell her, but she brushes my bed-hair away from my face and nods.

“Yeah, you are. Concert, remember? We’re going to see Luminessence tonight, and even better, the hot Swedish guys in their opening band, Clown Irruption.”

I feel my head move from side to side, rejecting our former agreement. Zoe stops it with both hands, holding my face still, and I close my eyes.

“No, you’re not backing out of this. The tickets are already paid for.”

“We’ve seen both bands before.”

“Precisely.”

I’m not following her logic. Been there, done that is my take on this.

“Plus, you promised,” she says. “It’s in the freaking
arena,
and they’ll be selling beer and wine.”

“We sell beer and wine at Scott’s.”

“—
and
work there. And it’s not a concert. Nadia, Nadia,” she
tsks
.

The sigh sieving out of my lungs depletes me of energy. I want to go back to bed. I shoot a longing gaze behind me to crumpled sheets and indentations in pillows. See the sweet depression in Jude’s where his head should be next to mine right now.

“No, don’t even think about it. Let’s. Get. Dressed.”

“Who says that?” I mutter, trotting back to the bedroom. “Preschool teacher much? No need to include yourself in the ‘getting dressed’ part.”

I shoot her a onceover that reveals studiously straightened, shiny, blonde lengths surrounding her doll face. Nose pointy but small, still powdered to perfection in the blazing L.A. afternoon heat. Pink miniskirt, silk top with ruffles accentuates her boobs in the front, and her stilettos are so tall only Zoe can pull them off. Today, they’re a bright, Melrose Place gold.

“Yay, she’s being testy. Now, we’re talkin’,” Zoe says. We rifle through the small closet I share with Jude. My clothes outweigh his, but neither of us has a lot. I don’t want to think about how beautifully folded his are. My heart drops, recalling how they’ve become fewer, month by month. I make a mental note to keep that from happening.

Jude.

In the end, Zoe and I settle on an outfit she thinks is too dark and I think has a too-deep neckline. My husband bought it for me. I’ve worn it a couple of times, but it’s not me.

“Shut up,” Zoe says. “Your waist is crazy narrow, and this dress really shows off your curves.” Her critical eye scours my backside before she scales to my head. “Okay, so those long, chocolate locks of yours will need a twirling. Hmm.”

I don’t like the look on her face. Zoe pinches her mouth with two fingers and blows air into her hand, getting ready to shoot me The Truth.

“I’m done watching you get thinner. And thinner and thinner. Something has to be done. You don’t have a butt anymore either, and guys love a good butt.”

“Guys? I’m married,” I say.

Zoe’s head snaps up from the shoes she’s holding, and blue eyes ten shades lighter than Jude’s ignite with fury. “But he’s not doing it for you now, is he?”