“Well, hooray for Osama. How come you didn’t try to fix it before he came along?”
I just shook my head. I couldn’t face going into what happened at the sessions in Jackson Hole. I wasn’t even sure what had happened in them myself. Just that a poisonous issue had been brought out, laid on the table between us, and left unresolved, assuming that there was any way to resolve it. Plus it wasn’t really an issue. It was our mother.
Kate opened up a Vanity Fair she’d bought at the airport and riffled through the pages without taking her dark glasses off. “Tell me more about your sister, will you?”
“Take off those glasses and I will. Do you want to make yourself blind?”
“I wish I was blind. Anyway, they’re my new disguise. I’m traveling incognito.”
“Why?”
“I’ve seen too much.” She was camping now. In a noir flick. On stage. “I know too much. People want me dead.”
“What … ah … what have you seen?”
She took off the glasses and stared at me out of eyes that definitely did look like they’d seen too much—the old thousand-yard stare. “I’ll never tell. But they don’t know that.” Her laugh was like a small explosion. “Okay, the glasses are off. Now tell me about your precious sister.” Picking at a feathery patch of the flesh beside her thumbnail.
It was important to say exactly the right thing. Keep it intellectual? “Well … her favorite philosopher is Kierkegaard.”
“Kierkegaard? Nobody reads him anymore.”
“Wendy does.”
“Her name is Wendy? Peter and Wendy, that’s pretty poignant, all right.”
“Our mother’s idea. She was an incurable romantic, as I told you.”
“Or maybe she just wanted to keep you from growing up.” Kate tore a glossy bathing suit ad out of the Vanity Fair and threw it under her seat.
“Ah. You’re very perceptive.”
“You bet I am. Maybe what I need is a lobotomy.”
I turned my laugh into a cough. “Please stop picking your thumb. Look, now it’s bleeding.” When I put my hand over them, her fingers felt like ice. I squeezed gently and, I hoped, reassuringly. It was my job to warm them up.
“So, what did your sister see in Kierkegaard?” she asked after a while.
“Let’s see if I can remember the quote she liked. Something like ‘The point of life is to make yourself weary of living.’”
“Actually, what he wrote was, ‘Life’s destiny is to be brought to the highest degree of weariness with life.’ My father had a copy of it lying around.”
“And you read it? How old were you?”
“About twelve. I’d read anything back in those days.”
Back in those days. About four years ago, to be exact. I realized I was still holding her hand and took my own hand back.
“Of course I do.”
“Can she fly?”
“Only in my dreams.”
“What if you saw her jump from a burning building and hit the ground right in front of you? Do you think she’d bounce? Or just kind of go splat?”
“I don’t know,” I said softly.
She stared at me for a few beats, then put her glasses back on and opened the Vanity Fair to a piece about David Bowie. “Do you think you’d try to catch her?” she asked after a while.
My old college roommate was waiting for us wanly at the exit of the disembarkation ramp (allowed, I guessed, since Kate was a minor—I’d had to get both parents’ signed permission for all her flights). She tried to walk past him, but he bundled her into his arms and stared at me over the top of her head. I hadn’t seen him since we graduated, but he looked almost exactly the same.
“Christ, I’m sorry, Dwight,” I told him.
“Well, we know who to blame.” He tried a grin. “At least she’s here now. At least you both got out okay.”
Kate wriggled out of his arms. “Daddy, can you get me a Snickers? They didn’t serve any food on the plane.”
We headed to a news shop, and she peeled the wrapper off the candy bar and ate it with both hands, like a child. “I guess we better head down to the baggage claim,” her father said nervously. “Peter, I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done.”
“Don’t thank me. Kate’s got the talent. She was the star of the shop.” Shooting a shit-eating grin Kate’s way. “By the way, golden boy said to tell you you’ll be welcome back next summer, and he’ll give you a glowing college recommendation. Where are you thinking of applying? Stanford, like your dad?”
She wiped her nose. “College is a bit redundant, don’t you think?”
“Come on, Kate,” her father said. “Your bag will be the last one left. Give Peter a kiss good-bye.”
She didn’t raise her face to me, so I kissed the top of her head and gave her an awkward pat on the back. “So … see you next summer, okay?” My voice echoed as if through an empty theater.
“Good luck with your sister.” She cut her eyes up suddenly. “I’d believe your story, whatever it is. For all that’s worth.”
Thin Air
After she’d called Claire for the third time, Wendy decided she needed a long swim. So far, her record was forty-five minutes. She was going to beat that now. Ocean swimming was her new sport. Lying on a surfboard was beginning to feel strange. Not uncomfortable exactly, just not centered. She’d started to take her camera out to the break—next best thing to doing it herself. She was shooting in black and white, which gave an intriguing edge to the wipeouts.
The Mercedes still wasn’t finished, though almost a month had passed since the parts arrived. Marco made surly excuses that she had no way of verifying. Time had turned funny. It didn’t seem to move anymore, like in a dream. If she really tried, she could calculate that it was early September. But she’d almost rather not.
Last week Isabel had taken her to a bruja who lived in the Barrio Las Flores, back in the valley, a neighborhood of old-timers. The bruja’s small house was almost engulfed by a huge bougainvillea, and she herself was under five feet, with large, slightly bulging deep gold eyes like a lemur. She lived alone, although Isabel said there was sometimes a little black dog around. “You never see them together, her and her dog. You know why?” Wendy said she didn’t. “Because she is the dog. You never see her in town, but you see the dog watching and listening. The dog can go anywhere, and it sees things that a person cannot.”
“The dog’s about this high, sharp ears, short tail, curly hair?”
“Precisamente.”
“It goes through my garbage a couple of times a week.”
“Holy shit. People must be terrified of this woman.”
“No, no. She’s … de la gente. Sometimes they go to her for help, advice, like that. Like visiting the little father. She doesn’t do bad things. But, for example, if someone put a curse on you, she can take it off.”
Everything was very calm in the bruja’s house; that was what struck her. Nothing unexpected. Of course she was pregnant, no sense in denying it any longer. “What should I do, doña?” she asked.
It was early evening and the room was lit by one kerosene lantern. She felt the bruja’s tiny hand on her arm. “When the time comes, you will know that too.”
So she was waiting for a sign when Isabel came running up the road with news from New York. Then Isabel’s arms were around her, wild hair tickling her face, Isabel’s strong musky smell, the solid width of her back. Wendy buried her face in the warm curve of neck and shoulder under the hair, closed her eyes, and wondered if she was going to faint.
She knew from Claire that her brother was living downtown. Without being asked, Claire had also supplied his address and phone number.
“Oh God,” she whispered into Isabel’s hair. “Let him be all right.” They were kids again, driving the Hu
sky to Mexico, her giggling at the way he looked behind the wheel in his new blue wool Sears Roebuck dress. Him tossing his head, lifting his left hand from the wheel to settle his red beret, and turning to grin at her.
What had happened since then? Well, he’d betrayed her. Hadn’t their mother confirmed this on her last visit to Briarcliffe? What was it she’d said exactly: Never trust your brother? Oddly, this was the sole piece of motherly advice she’d ever taken seriously.
Never trust your brother. Her mother had showed her teeth when she’d said that, and her face had been red. She’d been sitting opposite Wendy in one of the blue velvet armchairs in the Briarcliffe parlor—so like the ones in their house in Philadelphia—and had leaned forward to touch Wendy’s knee, but her daughter had shrunk away as if from a branding iron.
In the Jackson Hole shrink’s office her mother had reappeared. Teeth. Red face. She tried to tell her brother what she’d said, but it was no use. He couldn’t hear. He wouldn’t believe her. He quite obviously thought she was nuts.
Isabel held her hand on the walk across the valley to the phone office. Like two schoolgirls. The office was packed with gringos, trying to call their loved ones, and one of them reported that the lines to New York were clogged and nonfunctional. Was it a sign? So Wendy called Claire instead and never mentioned that she’d been trying to call her brother. At the time, Claire herself had no news. It took two more calls for Wendy to find out how he was.
Her swim didn’t turn out as she’d planned. Afterward, alone in the house with a bottle of wine, she decided she’d write it up in her journal as a letter to her brother—next best thing to talking to him. Isabel was out to dinner, and she hadn’t felt like joining her. Evenings tended to be queasy. Her belly popped and roiled, and sometimes she knelt at the toilet waiting but nothing ever seemed to come up. She ate galletas and drank mineral water and felt kind of surrounded from inside.
Dear Peter—
On the evening in question (I spent most of the day in the telephone office trying to get news from your city), the waves were hypnotically big. A chubasco coming in, or something. I sat and watched them for a while and noticed that they came more or less in sets of twelve. The ninth wave was usually the biggest. Then they tapered off, and between sets for a few minutes it was pretty calm. If I timed it perfectly and swam as hard as I could, I could make it out beyond the break before the next set began.
Well, I could either sit there and stew about New York or give it a shot, correcto? The first wave of the next set was beginning to feather up when I got there, but I decided to swim over instead of ducking under. Felt like I was never going to stop rising, and when I got to the top with that last little push as it almost grabbed me and threw me back onto the sand, I positively howled with glee.
Way up in the air, I looked back to watch the monster crash on the beach, and guess what? There beside my little pile of clothes was this postcard Mexican in a baggy white campesino outfit like the ones you see in Diego Rivera murals from the thirties, a straw cowboy hat, and huaraches.
This man was not unknown to me. Not long after I arrived in this place, I had the incredible experience of waltzing with him. After the music stopped, he bowed and I kissed his hand in front of all the village! He can waltz like a knight of olde, and in fact his nickname here is Felipe Reyes, after a kind of Mexican Lone Ranger. But there’s a quixotic twist…. This man wants to do good deeds, save damsels in distress etc., but nothing ever works out the way he plans. A veray parfait gentle knight erroring. Take me, for example (please take me). He wants me to be his Dulcinea, but instead … Would you say I’m pure as the driven snow? No? Well, he thinks I’m perfect in every way. It’s kind of gratifying. You might even say he worships me. Your sinful, nutty sister! It gives me something to live up to.
Never one to discourage worshippers, I waved and shouted again out there in the waves. Big mistake. He thought I was drowning and needed rescue (not farfetched: no Mexican ever swims off this beach).
Luckily, it was a small set, and by the time he’d made the decision to keep his clothes on during the rescue (this took a minute or two), it was calm enough for him to get out through the waves like I had. And I’ll have to admit that in this clear water I worried about my own lack of clothing.
“I’m all right,” I called before he got too close. “I’m all right. Don’t worry.”
I could see his mouth open to answer, a little wave wash into it, him coughing, thrashing. And I suddenly realized that he could barely swim!
By the time I got to where he was, he’d gone down. The water was so clear I could see him easily, hanging there about ten feet above the bottom. I dove down, grabbed him across the chest (tip o’ the hat to Joe McQuillen’s lifesaving lessons at the Bar Harbor Club), and got him back to the surface where, thank God, he started to cough.
“Don’t move,” I said. “I have you. Just stay calm. It’s all right.”
I did have him. His back was pressed against my breasts, my arm was across his chest, and my hand was hooked in his armpit. Every once in a while our thighs would brush. We had to wait out there for quite a while for exactly the right moment between sets, rising and falling and rocking back and forth in that warm, silky water. Then we started in, using McQuillen’s patented scissor kick and sidestroke.
The beach was only about fifteen feet away when a big one began to make up out beyond the break, first obscuring the horizon, then rising up into the sky with a kind of breathing sound until you could see silver Sierra mackerel chasing schools of silver minnows in it, backlit by the peach-colored sun.
There was no chance anymore of making it out onto the beach. “We have to go under this wave,” I told him. It feathered up to about fifteen feet and began very, very slowly to curl. I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed down, but his feet were planted firmly on the sand. So I put my arms around him instead and we watched that breathtakingly beautiful lip come floating down toward us.
Luckily, it fell just short, and instead of smashing us into the bottom, the recoil bounced us up and we were flying through the air in a cloud of spray, enjoying the arc (at least I was) like Toad after the car crash in the Wind in the Willows, beginning to think it could go on forever when we landed on the sand, him underneath me. The flying water covered us, rolled us up the beach and left us high and dry.
I remembered I was without clothing at about the same time he came fully to his senses. He struggled to sit up, ripped off his soaking shirt, and held it out to me with his head turned away. I put it on and thanked him for saving my life.
“It was nothing,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“Oh yes. I’m fine.”
“Well then … good-bye.”
Before I could think of anything else to say, he’d gotten to his feet. The air was full of peach-colored spume, and the sun was just a finger or so above the horizon. Everything was glowing very numinously. As I watched him walk (rather unsteadily, but nude from the waist up) away into that huge perspective, I found myself thinking thoughts I don’t think I’ve ever had before. Maybe I should add that I’m a wee bit pregnant and trying to decide what to do.
Yes, pregnant! What do you think our mother would say? What words of motherly advice? Was she ever pregnant with us? Did she actually want us? Or did she just stumble over us in the garden?
Just kidding. Of course she wanted you, at least.
You know what? Felipe is going to cure me of these kinds of thoughts. Have you ever been worshipped? It’s a nice feeling, and I’m going to try not to let it turn me on too much in spite of my raging hormones.
She was writing this on her cot in the tiny spare room, the bottle of mineral water and carton of galletas on the floor within reach, when she heard the front door quietly open and close. “Isabel?”
No answer. She felt the hair on the nape of her neck begin to rise. Her window was high and almost too small to squeeze through, but it might be possible. She was on her feet, hands on the sash, wh
en Marco’s chuckle sounded from the hall. “Isabel’s at the Zaguan, having caldo de pulpo with Anna. I just passed them.”
She could see from his face, when it appeared in the doorway, that he had found some blow. Not surprising. Blow was all over town these days since a 727 full of it had gotten stuck in the mud of the dry lake north of town where they’d been offloading for years. Just small prop planes up to now, but then they’d gotten greedy and tried the Air France 727. It was just too heavy. After transferring the blow into state police trucks, they’d started cutting up the mired jet with police arc welders and burying the remains with police earth movers, but someone had tipped off the press. A week later, the entire local contingent of judiciales had been transferred to another part of the country.
“Anyway”—Marco’s eyes were glittery and his smile was crooked—“I heard you spent the whole day at the phone office. Thought I’d drop by and see if everything’s okay.” He licked his lips, sniffled, and wiped his nose. “I’d say I was sorry about what happened in New York, but I’m really not. The fucking gringos finally got what they deserved.”
Wendy crossed her arms.
“They’ve been asking for it for years, you know. And now they finally got it. Hope your brother’s okay, though.”
“He is,” Wendy said carefully. “Thank you for coming by. It was very thoughtful of you.”
Marco went to the bottle of wine and picked it up. “Caláfia. I thought you’d be drinking Chilean.”
“Well, things are a little tight. I’ve got an engine rebuild to pay for. It must be just about finished, isn’t it? I would have come by today, but …”
He took a long, gurgling swallow. “Every time I get close, something else comes up. It’s the pissiest job I ever took on.”