The Invention of Exile (22 page)

And now these fingerprints. He hadn't even considered those. Perhaps all these years no one ever looked at his designs because they were such a mess of smudges and blotches. Or had some shrewd patent clerk, seeing the unimpressive presentation of Austin's ideas, seen a way to take advantage, to polish up these very drafts, passing them off as his own? These damn men in power, with positions, he thought, raising up his foot and stamping it down, muttering under his breath. My God, what if Vera was right about the fingerprints? He felt a fool, a deep shame. How had he not been more careful?

He was still standing in front of the post office, clasping his satchel in one arm, his other hand stuffed into his pocket. He'd said good-bye to Vera and she had promised she would return the next day. Vera. His own daughter. Dropped into his life in an instant. He watched her leave. She kept turning around. A reassurance. There was a knot in his stomach, wondering how he could be sure of her promise. He walked across the street, deciding on the long way back to the boardinghouse, feeling somehow more vacant now that she had gone. He'd begun to feel joy while with her at Sanborns and to now be back in the city—alone—returned him to his usual state. It seemed all the more unbearable now knowing he'd had a rightful connection to someone here. He now meant something to someone—his own child. Her sudden presence made the years rush at him. He thought of all the time he'd been in the city, and wondered if it would simply amount to one of many stories of this country—one enfolded into its highways,
colonias
, ruins, parks, waters, the cantinas and
pulquerías
, the markets and storefronts—or was it his story? He found that he really was unable to separate the two. True, he had tried to preserve himself, to attune his body, which had its own memory, to seasons left behind, but he soon learned the futility of such a practice. The city had worked over and through him—its vastness as indifferent as the ocean. We are defined by our surroundings as much as by our pasts, the way a river stone is worn smooth by currents. Mexico City had left its mark, indelible.

He continued walking. His antidote to solitude. He walked as the old walk. Miles a day. He walked to occupy the hours, to evade loneliness, to practice patience. And he was still walking on this day to deflect the sharper sting of loneliness that pervaded his every footstep, walking to reach the next day when she would come back to him again and take him for a proper meal as she'd said. He walked through three
colonias
—Centro, Zona Rosa, to La Condesa. He was now passing stores selling tawdry rubbish and bric-a-brac. Windows piled high with bags, beads, feathers, dried eucalyptus, branches, packs of cards, baskets, clay pots. He stopped in front of one storefront. His face in the glass. The gauntness of it. High cheekbones even more defined. A sadness in the corner of a blue eye. His thoughts thrust up against the store window, his mind holding a history that suddenly seemed to merge with the storefront wares on gaudy display—the bright green garden hoses, yellow wire bird feeders, spools of copper, pinwheels, baby dolls, coffee cans.

What if she was able to help him? Bring him back? He gave in to the idea, lingered for a moment on that possibility. A kind of ideal he sees suddenly as a shining triangle, a certain, clear shape of something that had been vague and shadowed, but then another stream of thought came to him like a cloudburst; it shook him, caused a shudder. What if he would die in Mexico City? He sat with this, the discomfort of it palpable in the tightening between the shoulder blades, at his neck. A gentle wind swept some marigolds off a rooftop. From a shrine, he thought. The golden, oblong petals falling looked like they were disintegrating and happy with their descent. He smiled, the release visceral. Don't let your mind get into brooding, he scolded himself, thinking of the world he'd built up around him here. He knew that it was not quite a bad life, even if he'd never forget the life that now lay back in a distant past, nearly imaginary, though he could see the street still, the house and those windows, and now Vera was here. His own Vera. His baby girl now a young lady. Something lodged deep within loosened. He kept walking, unmoored, lightened, the petals continuing to fall from the rooftop in an orange cascade behind him—a falling he could no longer see.

 • • • 

H
E
STOOD
NOW
AT
the corner of his street, could see that someone sat in the alcove of the window, legs crossed as he has often sat. He took a few steps, waiting to focus his gaze. Were they Jack's polished shoes? No. He recognized the leather sandals, the curve of those calves.

“Austin.” Anarose walked toward him now. “There you are. Why are you closed?”

“Please, come inside,” he said, opening the grate. She shook her head no, remaining out on the sidewalk. Then she leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. She was pouting.

“I need to speak with you.”

“I saw you,” she began. “On my way here. Standing at the post office with some
gringa
woman.”

“I can explain.”

“I feel I have a right to—”

“No. You must listen to what I need to tell you.” She did not look him in the eye. He walked into the shop, she followed and he turned to her.

“She's my daughter.”

“Your daughter?” Her arms fell to her sides, palms open, released. Her eyebrows arched.

“Yes.”

“I thought your family died.”

“
Die?
Who told you they died?”

“They were killed,
no
?”

“By who I'd like to know!”

“I hear from the women in the neighborhood. They all say you lost a family, well, I just assumed.”

“No. They're alive. They are in the U.S.”

“And you. Here,” she said. “So you will make your fortune, yes, and you will go to your family too. It's as I said, right? Leave Mexico.”

“It's not as simple as that. I'm not allowed into the country.”

“Tell me, why don't you cross the border?”

“I must go legally.”

“It's quite simple if one knows the areas.”

“You don't understand.”

“You know something—you are a man with loss of your own making,” she says, backing out the door. He watches her leave, her footsteps slow and certain, her back rigid and arched as she walks away in what he interprets as impatience.

 • • • 

H
E
JUS
T
TOOK
NOTICE
,
hardly realized, but there before him was Chapultepec, some of the locals already filtering out to venture home while the Americans were still in the park, playing ball. He'd no idea how many of them were down here—actors, screenwriters. He strolled closer, could hear their banter, the jokes of others gathered nearer to the attempt at a field.

A solid crack of the bat against ball like a firecracker. He shielded his eyes, trying to follow the flight of the ball. It had been struck far back to one of the men in the field. He could smell the clean scent of grass as he continued walking.

He thought more about Anarose. He had not wanted to hurt her, hardly knew himself what his intentions were except that she was a soothing balm to a long struggle. He didn't expect her to understand, but her words lingered with him—a loss of his own making. He was looking at his life in reverse, wondering if she was right.

An hour passed. He'd found he had traversed nearly the entire park, wandering back the way he'd come in, by the ballplayers, watching the last of their game.

“They do this every evening,” Austin heard a voice behind him. “In Cuernavaca too. Poor guy. That would've been a home run.”

The men were running in from the field, all drawn together like beads on a string, and the others ran out to take their places, forming the outer and inner half circle. Austin turned to see Jack approaching, stepping up behind him.

“But it's good for them, I guess. A little diversion, a little leisure.” Jack shrugged his shoulders and then kept talking. “Fear of blacklisting just about destroyed some of these men.” He shakes his head in reflection. “I admit, I do feel a bit sorry for them. Can't even do the work they love in their rightful country. Just hanging out, ‘waiting out the political climate, waiting out the climate,'” he said. “They've been here not even a year yet, some of them. But you, Austin. How have you done it?

“Work,” Jack said, answering his own question. “I mean you work all the time. Can't tear you away from it, those damn drafting papers and always on the lookout for more. Your inventions and letters. It's like building a fortress only to realize you aren't protecting yourself from anything, you've simply locked yourself inside.” Shouting and laughter came from the field and they both looked up. Cheers erupted among the players.

“Someone just ran into home,” Jack said. He grew silent and continued watching the game, then sighed. “Not sure what's got into me, thinking about all of this. Suppose watching them all this time, and you too, not knowing if you're coming or going, or staying, and meanwhile the years truck on by, and before you know it—” He broke off.

“Oh, God, I've made you upset and I didn't mean to.”

Silence. They watched the game. The light continued to fade and the men were now mere dusky outlines on the field. Austin could make out the white ball, could hear the sound of the bat as it hit the ball—sometimes a solid, full sound like splitting wood, other times more of a light snap.

When the game was over Austin, without a word, turned away from Jack and began walking toward the park's exit.

“By the way, we know your daughter is here,” Jack called after him.

“What? What did you say?” Austin said, circling back.

“Your daughter. We know she's here. Vera.”

“And?”

“She's involved in your goings-on, I have to watch her.”

“She's not involved in anything. You leave her alone.”

“Orders. I don't have a choice. We know she's going to try to help you, work on your behalf to get you reinstated, but it won't do any good.”

“You don't know that. She's an American. She's my daughter.”

“Doesn't matter. We both know it will be a waste of time,” Jack said, hands in his pockets as he turned on his heel and began walking away from Austin, past the players who were gathered in small groups, talking, laughing, the sun now down, the evening rising so that as Austin stood there he saw Jack, a faint trace of blackness in the growing dark.

 • • • 

S
HE
COULD
HEAR
THEM
all filtering in through the front foyer, voices echoing against the red flagstones. The click of all those heels. Everyone, she could tell, was talking at once. Greetings. Kisses. Slaps on the back. Clapping hands. Laughter. Trilling voices. Shrill. Combined, it was a distant din that traveled to the back of the house, gliding down the dark, shadowed hallways and swirling around her like a threatening gale.

The Zaragoza family and their guests continued to gather. Some, she could tell, had filtered through the dining room to the back garden—their voices coming to her through the window. The mariachi band started to play. Its chords and refrains adding a layer to the laughter and talk, the cries of recognition and embraces. She started for the door then stopped, her hand falling away from the doorknob. She stepped backward and sank to the floor, lying down, first on her side, head nestled to her arm, and then on her back. She needed just a moment.

Her body relaxed into the wood floors. She could feel the night air through the windows, the smell of something burning. Voices continued under the drums and horns. Out the window the garden's ivy clung to the walls, the leaves large and sinister, like winged creatures.
If you'd sent my designs to the patent agents, she'd have a house, a garden
. His words angered her. She felt guilt too. He'd lost the ability to know what it meant to have a house and garden.

She knew where to find him now. He'd given her the address of his boardinghouse, his shop, and she had planned to meet him again, though she had to admit she was spent by only their first meeting. Why had she come here again? She had to remind herself—out of obligation to her mother, to her father too. But she'd try to help him in some way. All her life she'd felt pulled backward, toward Mexico—a thread tied her to it while another self pressed forward, trying, striving to build up her own life. She could see the sky purpled like a molding above the adjacent homes' rear façades, doors and windows, walls and landings, these shadowed, silent witnesses to her determination, which she'd keep secret from all of them. She would get her father back into the United States.

Vera stood up and clicked on the lamp near the window. She bent to tug at the hem of her dress, smoothing out the wrinkles. Vera had changed into her faux silk dress and watched now as it changed from burgundy to an iridescent pale green, to copper in the full glow of the lamplight. With a firm hand, she worked on the back of her skirt. She liked the sound of the pleated silk, like billowing, starched sheets—
thrash, thrash, thrash
.

Vera wondered what her father would be doing now, if he would be okay without her. She'd promised she would come the next day and he nodded his head and frowned again and then pinched her on the nose and she said oh, but he just laughed and reminded her he used to do that when she was a little girl. Yes, she remembered, she'd told him, though she didn't. She didn't have the heart to tell him that she'd forgotten. He clung to such shards of memory so fiercely. Why not allow him to have at least that?

“I'll see you tomorrow. We'll have a proper meal,” she'd said, and she turned away and began walking, looking back after him as he stood on the post office steps watching her walk away.
In his own world
, she thought. But she shook off the tears she felt brimming, fixed herself a bit in the mirror, refastened her hair, and was ready to join the other guests.