The Invention of Exile (29 page)

 • • • 

T
HROUGH
DENSE
GREEN
Leo
spots the ocean. It is a curved inlet, a bay of blue. Like a puddle of ink among mountains.

“The Pacific,” Leo says. He is sitting forward now, slows down the car, pulling it to the side of the road.

“Careful,” Vera says as branches tickle the hood of the car, threatening to poke through the back windows. Before he's even put the car in park, Leo has opened his door, jumping out. Pebbles crunch beneath his shoes. He cut the motor, but the radio is still playing, and he can hear it softly behind him, guitars strumming, the high-pitched voice of a female singer—something about remorse or resignation.

He is grateful to see the ocean, a half circle of turquoise, the horizon beyond a swath of white and a fine, deeper blue like an outline. The late-day sun causes the water to flicker white, scalloped as if by white wings. He looks out upon the place where the very circle of his life began, or straight path, or whatever geometry it would come to be, and he casts himself back to here—to Mazatlán—hoping to have some sense of recognition. One should know, he'd always felt, become intimately acquainted with, the place of one's birth. He tries to recall a memory, any memories of this place.

He picks a leaf from the bushes and drops it into his pocket. Later, he'll place it in his notebook and he'll write out beneath it, “First sighting of the Pacific in Mazatlán, Mexico. 1948.”

 • • • 

T
HEY
DECIDE
TO
STOP
for food and a chance to stretch limbs. They will spend one night here, waking early to continue toward the border. Like all sea towns, the town itself, at midday, is deserted. It is lonely driving through the silent streets. Vera feels an eagerness to abandon all the metal and glass of the car for the salt air. As if he'd precipitated her thoughts, Leo veers off the back street, sidling up along the crumbling sidewalk.

Vera adapts. She can already see how this town works—its rhythm and colors. While on first impression the old city seems empty, devoid of motion, the activity of the town takes place in the shade, making it difficult to discern. Is a store open or closed? Is a restaurant serving food or does it sit abandoned? Has it been inoperative for one year or ten? But slowly, nearly imperceptibly, movement begins. In fact, it had always been there, and now, readjusting her focus she can see, in the shaded areas—beneath awnings that line the square forming strips of gray, blue—a dog's tail wagging, a white-aproned waiter removing glasses from a just-vacated table, the flutter of a green parakeet's anxious wings. A long line of old men sit against the ochre-colored façade of a tobacco shop. They are like a daisy chain of paper dolls, every third one with a cane. The old men stare at the three newcomers. It is perhaps the most excitement they have witnessed in some time, Vera imagines. She smiles at them. One responds with a nod of his head. The others sit motionless, save for a yawn, a hand swept thoughtlessly across a brow, canes tapping in a waltz rhythm—just because.

They are walking across the plaza. Leo falls behind.

“Are we idiots?” he yells out.

“What?”

“Only Englishmen and mad dogs—”

“It's better than being in that car.”

Nearing the ocean, Vera hears the crashing waves. She walks slower here. Gone are the furious, furtive steps of her Mexico City self.

The real life of the town takes place on a meandering strip of boardwalk, the
malecón
, which, like the sand, rocks, and waves, traces the curves of the coastline. By noon the fishermen's day is long over. Their boats strewn like the used crayons of reckless children—spent and worn wood of primary colors. Red, blue. The fish is now in the stalls—bull fish, shrimp. Gruff fishermen sit hunched over the work of mending—reweaving the frayed and broken ropes of their fishing nets. Vera likes the names of the fishing boats. Some are women's names—
Ibari
. There are other names:
El Faro del Sur
,
Vamanos
,
Sal Marina
,
Sand
,
Pearl
.

 • • • 

A
USTIN
,
V
ERA
,
AND
L
EO
eat sandwiches they purchased from a stall on the sidewalk. They eat in silence. Austin knew the lighthouse was down the
malecón
and up the hill. Within walking distance. They'd pass right by it. But he didn't want to bring attention to this fact, didn't want to tell them. The scent of the salt and sea air is like a burning. A trace of sulfur too makes him think of grief, thick and briny. He feels like a ghost here on this coast, looking upon a fragment of his life that should no longer be disturbed. Like a sleeping lion. Julia's presence like sunlight. One couldn't get away from it. He had dragged her across half the world, for what? The few years of peace in that lighthouse? Perhaps that was all they were meant to have? He shouldn't be here. He'll never return, he knows.

To hear the waves hit the shore in their constant, unrelenting pulse reminds him of the drive ahead. He wonders how he will sleep, knowing what awaits him the next day. Could it really be that he need only step across? Step across and simply return and all the inventions, struggles, patent letters, trips to the embassy, post office, walks in parks—all of it, the years of separation spent in effort to return, all the empty years, one strung to the next in a chain of worn-out hours, a solitude abated by a simple triangle of boardinghouse, post office, embassy, drafting papers and designs, lines drawn and erased, tequila downed and bottles discarded—all of it could end? He wonders at that: end. He feels as if he's peering deep, looking at some image hidden within one of the cards that doctor had shown him, and suddenly, here stood, here emerged, the thing, the truth, and he fights to hold it clear in front of him, examining it, turning it over, before it goes back down and hides within the rest of the ink blot—there, there. Without
it
, without that fight to rail against something, what would fill his days, who would he be, what purpose would his life have served?

He wonders if his clothes might still hang in the closet. He'd imagined them one hundred times or more. Was the image to Julia like a dead man's clothes? On narrow hangers. Had she kept them? One shirt, maybe? In his imaginings, when he does dare to think of standing before her once again, he can only see himself seated at a table with a single glass of water placed before him, Julia standing in the doorway watching. The wood is dark, walnut wood. A strip of lace cuts the table in two. And there are, he imagines, candles. Beeswax yellow. They are lit and dripping wax onto the lace, on what might be, he thinks, a quiet, cold Sunday at 4
P.M
. The soft sound of cars beyond the window, the sun reflecting off a windshield might cause a ripple of light across the table or ceiling corner. They watch it come and then fade as if someone else had walked into the room and turned the corner down the hallway. A glass of water. That's what he envisions. She would set the glass of water before him and stand in the doorway, watching him perform a simple enough act, drinking a glass of water. No ice. And he sees himself sitting before it, watching the way the glass and water distort the tablecloth and table and, when he holds it, his fingertips. And perhaps the glass is of fake, cut crystal so that the water reflects colors like a prism and he would drink the water and set the glass down, and she would fill the empty glass and return it and they would repeat this until one of them said a word, except the problem was that he could not think of what either would say to the other.

Tears had rolled down his cheeks, a steady stream. He had not even known he was crying.

 • • • 

I
N
THE
EARLY
MORNING
as they drive from the state of Sinaloa to Sonora, they pass a sign that reads, “Why leave? You'll come back.” They pass it in silence.

If it works, he'd complete the circle. In this final arc—one that would cut through Sonora, Arizona, New Mexico, the upper part of Texas, onward, to meet what was now the tip of the crescent, or sickle. Life's geometries. These patterns that can shape one's experience, that are perhaps set into place long before we have a chance to redraw our own boundaries, life lines, engineer, assemble, invent our own geometries.

The car moves beneath him, and he likes the steady hum of the motor, the breeze mild, gentle warmth along his eyelids, with his forearm out the window in the sun. The anticipation of what is to come still far distant, even if only one mile, two as they near the state of Sonora.

 • • • 

N
OGALES
.

“Has the place changed?” Leo asks. “It's been what, over ten years since you've been back here?”

“Nothing was here,” Austin says. “Nothing.”

Cantina Nogales.

The main street is bustling, but it is a leisurely, relaxed pace. His father is anything but, though one wouldn't know it. Leo realizes that he is the kind who gets still, silent when nervous, holds it inside, his heartbeat racing, his body seemingly calmed, though gripped, he can tell. If Leo were to touch him—an accidental brush of arm against arm, a mistaken nudge of shoulder—he'd jump as if licked by fire.

The car is moving more slowly. The images flicker past. Buildings of white, blue, yellow. There are new storefronts. Windows, porches filled with copperware—pots, bowls—punched tin stars, serapes, hats, paper flowers in red, pink, orange, and yellow. Men stand slumped under shaded awnings. Some are seated on the short two steps leading to a store entrance. Others lean against a banister, a support beam. Most wear cowboy hats, white or brown. Other faces are shaded by wide-lipped sombreros. He can spot the Americans, the Mexicans. The Indios though—they are in the sun, their market wares spread out on hand-woven tapestries and cloths. Heads turn as they drive slowly past the buildings.

“There she is. U.S.-Mexican border,” Leo says, pointing. He watches as his father follows his hand. It is the first sign noting the border. A small bronze plaque, the words and images in bas-relief. A line divides the sign in half, two arrows point toward each other symbolizing the two countries, the boundaries or
límite
.

Silence. Leo can hear the radio turned low, a man's deep voice, the rhythm imperceptible. He hears thwacking too and sees a woman beating a rug—red, yellow stripes draped over the banister; clouds of dust billow and sparkle in the sun.

“I don't know about anyone else here, but I sure as hell need a drink,” he says.

 • • • 

C
ANTINA
N
OGAL
ES
. 2:00
P.M
.

“There was a carnival they used to have in Cananea,” Austin says to Leo after they've been seated, drinking. Vera, after one drink, decides to go to the market, and, in her absence, Austin begins to talk, share his thoughts—an idea, impression, something he's trying to articulate.

“Really?” Leo says.

“Do you remember?”

“No.”

“I don't expect you to,” Austin says. “We used to take you every night when it was in town. You'd never seen so many lights.” He shakes his head. He looks up to Leo who takes a sip of his beer, looks down and away. “We thought you might be scared, all the lights and music, but no.”

Austin understands now that Julia was right. How would they all have survived? But still they could've gone then, just kept walking out into that darkness until they'd seen some lights, a town in Arizona.

“Should've crossed then,” Austin says out loud.

“What are you saying?”

“Just remembering.”

“You can cross now,” Leo says. “That's what we're here for. Listen, Father. They'll think we're just American tourists coming back over the border after some rolls of the dice, you know? A night out on the other side—that's all. We can look like that. Hell, we can smell like that. Or we can just claim we're renewing our tourist visas. It's half true.
Mesero
,” Leo calls over his shoulder, “
cerveza
.”

Austin looks at his son, a young man now. A veteran who'd seen the war. His youngest sitting before him, now twenty-one years old. He shakes his head. The waiter sets down two beers. They sit in silence. Somberness descends, or, and this is more true, it dominates—all this talk suddenly seemed a way to feign normalcy. Beer bottles move to lips and fall to the table with a solid click. He wonders what he could offer them all now, almost sixty. What would become of him when he went back? They were no longer children, had managed well enough on their own, at an age when they wanted to, should be able to, strike out, away from their family. He knew it well. He'd crossed an ocean to do it.

And he'd realized it on the drive here. Some of those views just break one's heart—such a lovely drive, even the desert, how he'd hated it so in Cananea, but he sees its beauty now. It holds so many of his memories. (One has to love that geography, or at least it should have a significance—not indifference; never that.) And he thinks of the feeling that can come over one when traveling, when one is really speeding onward—eyes closed, half dreaming—and you know, you are certain, that you are moving forward, but somehow the monotony of moving, the velocity, speed, all of it, the slight pressure in the chest, can make you feel like you're going in the other direction, as if some force were pushing you lightly, gently backward. And you wake up suddenly, disoriented to see that no, you are moving forward, the road rushing alongside of the car at a shockingly fast pace. And it occurred to him somewhere between Hermosillo and Nogales: when he thought of them or of Julia, he saw them as children, two, six, and eight and Julia as twenty-five. He'd never thought of the actuality, of what it would mean to go back. It was not a reclaiming of those years, was it? The ones they'd lived here, that was it. They are not children. And he is no longer thirty years old.