Still Life with Plums (6 page)

Today you tiptoe to the closet to select just the right ensemble. The cashmere sweater your wife bought you that brings out the green in your eyes. The brown slacks and argyle socks and polished shoes. You spot a scuff on the toe and pull the shoe polish kit from the bathroom closet and sit on the closed toilet seat to buff it out. Perfect, but now your hands are stained and you wash them thoroughly in the sink, dry them completely before applying more Keri. Your hands have to be soft, for Jenny. Not Brenda anymore, who graduated years ago. Not Nancy or Linda or Dawn. All gone off to college with scholarships in hand thanks to you. Your tutoring, your encouragement, your praise because you have it down. Your initial shyness as you ascertain her demeanor because she has to be just right. As innocent as a peach. And by now you know the signs. If she hides behind long hair or baggy clothes. If she can’t at first look directly at you. If her voice is as soft as an echo so she won’t draw attention, and when she finally looks into your eyes, and you squint into hers, your heart thunks when you spot the elusive shadow, the vulnerability and fear. And then you know. You can begin using a cooing voice the first few weeks. Hand pats after that when she doesn’t stumble so much over elaborate words, jumbled syllables. Then your arm around her shoulder with a
Job well done
. Which
deserves a reward. A milkshake at Sonic Drive-In so you can sit in your car with such a small space between you, just like your courting days with Connie at Twilight’s before they tore it down. You angle the rearview mirror up sharply to block out brutal reminders. You can pretend once again you are a swift running back with the grace of a panther, such a perfect specimen.

Weeks later, if it’s warm, you’ll drive to North End Park where nobody goes. You will find a bench under a shady, shadowy tree and tell her how special she is, your best pupil by far. And she will believe you. How she’ll ache to believe you.
Such deep thoughts
, you will say.
Such maturity for one so young
. She will feel chosen, and she is, so now you can slip your hand around her waist and pull her to you. Your hip against hers as you sit closer and closer. She’ll whiff the sweet blend of Old Spice and Keri. But that’s enough for one day. You slide your fingers through her hair as a parting good-bye. A fleeting kiss on the cheek. The next week you will brush your lips briefly against hers, an uncle, a brother, a mentor. But of course you are much more than that, and she knows it. A morsel that makes her flush with pride.

After that the best week of all, the intervening days when the anticipation puts a lift in your step. A chirp in your voice. A warm ball in your chest flooding you with light. You are not impatient because the adrenaline is as exquisite as bursting out of a blazing house to deliver a rescued toddler into the arms of her mother. Such sweet salvation.

Which brings you to today. The soft sweater. Soft hands. Your wife sleeping after re-cradling the phone, eyelids fluttering as her mind whips her patients’ pasts into a distorted carnival. You do not disturb her. She can have it all.

Because Jenny waits like a wispy field of unplowed wheat, all beige and silky. Her mouth a plump nectarine, perfectly ripe, and today
you will press your lips against hers and hold it. Just hold it. Her initial alarm buckling under the trust you have built, such a sturdy, painstaking façade. Worth every hour, every week, every month because there is nothing better than the instant you slide your tongue between her lips and the magic happens. The delectable moment when she gives it all over and you hold her tragic secret in your mouth like a precious, glowing gem.

As soon as I rounded the corner I knew, sweet Jesus, someone was free!

Uncle Paolo was bent under the old Buick’s hood.

“Who is it?” I said, running up the gravel driveway spraying stones. “Who is out?”

Uncle Paolo straightened, wiped his hands on a greasy rag, and slammed the hood down. “Load the valises, Ana. I am getting too old for this.”

Three suitcases sat beside the opened trunk: Uncle Paolo’s, Uncle Eliseo’s, and Uncle Luis’s. I hoisted them inside with a grunt and turned back to Paolo, who was clomping up the front porch steps toward the screen door.

Air in the house was thick with anticipation. The three children sat in a fidgety row on the sofa, a chocolate-dipped banana in each hand to keep them quiet. Pocked María knelt before them with two fingers poised for horns as she told them the story of Ramon the bull.

She turned when I entered behind Uncle Paolo and I mouthed the word, “Who?” María scrunched up her face and shrugged before charging the children who squealed in mock terror.

In the yellow-tiled kitchen Fat Carmelita stacked bean and avocado tortillas for the uncles to eat on the trip.

“Who?” I said before putting down my purse or peeling off my cleaning smock from work.

She looked at me with both onion and happy tears in her eyes. “Hector,” she said. “He is free!”

I crossed myself and kissed my thumb up to heaven.

“Ave María,” I said. Hector. My dead husband’s cousin. He stayed with me after they stole my Felipe, and once again the other time, the even worse time.

Fat Carmelita went back to her beans.

“How?” I asked.

“How should I know? The uncles never tell us anything.” She slapped down a spoonful of beans. “But we got a call today from Guatemala City.”

“Guatemala City!”

Carmelita looked over her shoulder at me and pointed her spoon. “You know. I think it was that Emilio Vega. I’ll never forget how beautiful he was.”

“Yes,” I said. “Very beautiful. But not as pretty as my Felipe.”

“Oh no,” she said, not to be out-mourned. “Not nearly as handsome as my Manuel.”

Soon we loaded the uncles down with lunch bags and root beer and the special jar because of Uncle Luis’s weak bladder. They left after kissing our cheeks and patting each child’s head.

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” Uncle Paolo yelled from the car. “Find a place for Hector to sleep.”

Sleep. Ah. Where would our dear Hector sleep? He would be number ten in our household of threes. Three men. Three women. Three children. I always felt especially blest in our trinity house. As if we had a unique bond with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Carmelita
called us a family of mismatched socks. No sister had a brother. No father had a daughter. No child had a parent.

And now we had to squeeze in one more. We women paraded through the house, followed by a tangle of children, and Gringa, the little white dog. We measured closets and corners, window seats and floor space, but nothing would do. Finally I stopped in front of the one door behind which I knew there was plenty of room. I flung the door open wide. The candles inside wavered, and the children sucked in their breath at the blasphemy.

I scanned the alcove with the candelabras and crosses, holy water fonts just inside the door. Along one wall sat the burgundy sofa with the propped-up left leg. On the opposite wall above the flickering candles were thumbtacked pictures of those who had been disappeared for saying
No!
or saying nothing at all. Our fathers, mothers, husbands, wives. Even our children. We knew the fates of some, but not all. On the highest row, the one nearest God, were the faces of those we knew to be dead. In the middle of this row, between the two tiny photos that for the longest time I could not bear to look at, was my husband Felipe with his beautiful white-toothed grin.

Ah, that grin. On our wedding night I told Felipe the only reason I married him was because of his teeth. It is true. Good teeth, good bones. I wanted sturdy children from this man. Before he turned out the light he leaned close to my ear and whispered, “You’ll get more than that from me, Sweetness.”

And he was right. But so was I. We did make beautiful babies.

“No-No-No!” Carmelita said, jolting me out of my reverie. “To use this room would be a sacrilege. This is where we pray for our lost souls.”

“Ana,” Pocked María whispered, “This is God’s room.”

“God doesn’t need his own room,” I said. “And even if he does, I’m sure he would share it with Hector.”

The children looked from one of us to the other until Carmelita said, “Well, there is a perfectly good sofa if we throw on a blanket.”

Pocked María said, “Maybe a hook or two in the wall for his clothes?”

So it was settled.

The next morning Carmelita began filling every bowl in her kitchen with her most special recipes. The ones she wouldn’t give to anyone, not even Mrs. Fina, who owned the best taqueria in town.

Pocked María scrubbed the children so hard they cried. No sharing bath water this time either. Each got a fresh tub and a warm pan dulce from Carmelita’s kitchen if they promised to stay clean.

Me, I went shopping with my money from work. It’s just dusting and vacuuming at Widow Greenbaum’s gallery, but you would have thought I wanted to join the priesthood the way the uncles fussed.

“Why do you need to work, Ana?” Luis said. “There’s plenty of cleaning to be done at home.” He turned to Eliseo. “Aye. She is becoming like these American women. Too independent.”

Paolo snapped his grimy, red suspenders. “Wouldn’t you prefer to marry again, Ana? It has been seven years since Felipe. Mango on the corner has expressed interest, and you are not too old to bear.”

To bear! He thought this would entice me? To bear? I no longer had the optimism for such things. I already had my husband, my children, that part of my life. What else was I to do if not work? Besides, I had already asked Felipe’s permission, and he nodded assent, though I dared not bring this up to the uncles.

You see, though I was born with the strength of the Martinez women, when I first found out Felipe was dead my courage climbed into a deep hole. It was dark and cold and I swear my breath came out in white puffs. I often sat shivering on the burgundy sofa burrowing deeper into that pit.

Then I had the vision, and no it wasn’t because I hadn’t slept for
six days as the uncles liked to believe. I was crying in the alcove, eyes locked shut, when I heard “Ana.” I opened my eyes and there was Felipe, leaning out of his picture as if it were a window frame. He held out a black and white hand.

“I am here,” he said, pulling my hand to his lips for a kiss that was as soft as I remembered. “Do not worry. I am watching,” he said, and a spray of childish giggles erupted. I stole a peek at first one twin, then the other, and shut my eyes fast.

So I still had my family, and I would busy my days with cycles of work and sleep. Work and sleep, until the day I would finally join them.

But how could I explain this to the uncles?

“The children need new shoes,” I said to them. “You want the neighbors thinking we are only backward farmers who cannot afford to buy our children shoes?” I knew this appeal to their machismo would work. And so five days a week I donned a blue apron and trotted off to the gallery. My only endurance was passing Mango’s nursery. Whenever he saw me he tipped his straw hat and waved his fertilizer-encrusted hand. “You put my tulips to shame,” he would say, or carnations, daffodils, whatever he happened to be tending. Though I liked the compliment, something inside made me quicken my pace and gather my smock in front to hide my ovaries. I knew Felipe would scowl at this attention, but who can deny a husband’s jealousy?

Still, it was worth it to have my own money so I could buy the personal items Hector would need: comb, razor, toothbrush, scapula for protection. I slid into the alcove clutching the crinkled Wal-Mart bag. A soft afghan covered the couch, and a TV tray stood against one wall. A hand mirror hung above it from a nail. I laid Hector’s toiletries in a neat row on the tray and sat on the sofa to search the walls for Hector’s face. There he was, third row from the bottom, next to
Patricia, his wife. “Today one of you is coming to life,” I said, rising to take down his image. “This will give you courage,” I said, examining the creamy rectangle behind Hector’s picture that had been hiding from the candles’ sooty flames. “Maybe you can push through these walls too,” I said to the faces. To Elena, Alberto, José. I stood on tiptoes to hold Hector’s picture up to Felipe. “Look who is coming home today.” I kissed my finger and touched it to my husband’s lips, and quickly did it twice more for the twins.

Then Hector came.

Two faces peered from each window after Pocked María yelled, “Here they are!” The Buick eased carefully into the driveway, as if Uncle Paolo suddenly remembered a carton of eggs he’d left up on top. When they stopped, three doors popped open, and the uncles disembarked to scurry to the fourth. Uncle Eliseo got there first, opened the door, and reached his hands deep inside. Uncle Luis grabbed Eliseo’s hips from behind to add strength, but he needn’t have bothered, because the form Eliseo withdrew was so thin and brittle. Fat Carmelita said, “Sweet Jesus, Ana. He walks like an old-old man. Like Don Migalito with his popping knees.”

We gathered in the living room prepared with smiles and embraces. María warned the children, but we were still afraid they would rush and cling to Hector begging sweets. But when he finally came into the house, so stooped and narrow, the brightness slid from the children’s faces. They ran to the kitchen to hide behind Fat Carmelita, who remembered just in time about the flan before it burned.

I wanted to hide behind her apron, too, but I made myself stay and look at Hector though it hurt my eyes to do it. To see so many scars like shiny purple worms crawling out of his collar and up his neck. Half of his right ear was missing, and the eye on that side roamed freely, unseeing, disconnected from the left.

Hector would not meet our gaze with his. We weren’t even sure
if he was aware of our presence. At one time each of us had stood in Hector’s shoes, the one getting out, and we knew that, for Hector, none of this was quite real. Still, we tried to hug him, welcome him. But no warmth emitted from his skin to say, I accept your kindness. I am happy to be here.

We stood shuffling feet, clearing throats, saying things like, “Well,” and “How was the trip,” and “Yes, those armadillos are muy estupidos!” All the while Hector stared at the floor, slumped forward, like the fluid that once stretched his skin taut had been drained. Finally Uncle Paolo had the wisdom to say, “This is no time for a fiesta. What Hector needs is sleep.”