This is where Richard is right now—her homeland, where buffer zones are in short supply. Alma starts punching in the airline’s 800number to hear that automated voice of comfort tell her the plane has landed, having successfully evaded the Scylla of mechanical failure and the Charybdis of terrorists. Dear Richard, her love, her only one, is going to help create a whole new space for her countrymen, a green center, where they can enjoy clean air and viable rivers and forests full of songbirds that summer in the United States. But Alma knows her countrymen. They’re going to want cell phones and sneakers for their kids with heels that light up when they take a step and houses with satellite dishes and cable TV. How will they react when they learn that’s not at all what Richard has come to deliver in the name of HI?
Alma feels a pang. A loved one moving through a world of people who do not love him, who would smash his skull for the cash in his money clip or blow up his plane for a God he doesn’t believe in. Even with her stepsons, Alma can’t bear to see them depart, thus the many good-byes, the walk to the door, the walk to their cars, with shopping bags of snack food they don’t really want. Alma wonders how Helen feels having her son drop off the face of the earth, Claudine’s description. Like watching the María Pita sail off that windy November day, past the Tower of Hercules, heading south and west, the crew working the ropes to get the sails angled just so, the ship becoming smaller and smaller, until it cleared the horizon, and was gone! What a gloomy evening that must have been, back at La Casa de Expósitos, Nati and the remaining boys trying not to notice the many empty spaces at the long table. In her own darkening house several blocks away, Doña Teresa might have wondered if she’d done the right thing, letting her boys go on this questionable expedition.
It’s enough to draw Alma upstairs to her study, wondering about all of them. But as she is going past the landing, she glances out, and her breath catches. A jolt of fear rivets her to the spot. The stranger is back, headed up the field this time, not stopping at the boulder to scope the lay of the land but coming straight toward the house! Somehow, Alma wrenches herself away, races downstairs just to be sure the doors are locked, first to the back door as that’s the direction he’s coming from—already locked! Then dashing to the side door—also locked! Finally, the front door—locked, thank God! Snatching up the portable, Alma races upstairs to her study, locks that door, her heart pounding like mad. She dials Tera, and the phone rings and rings. Damn! Why can’t Tera have a machine where in case of emergency, Alma can leave her best friend her last words? Next, she tries Claudine, and gets her machine, but Alma can’t leave Claudine her last words, because what if they’re not her last words, she’ll feel totally embarrassed next time she sees Claudine. So, Alma dials Helen, which is crazy, what’s Helen going to do—clomp up the field in her walker to rescue Alma? But Alma is not thinking straight, and the moment Helen answers, Alma blurts out, “Helen, I’m sorry. I don’t want to worry you, but there’s this weird guy coming up the back field to my house, he doesn’t look armed but—” Alma stops to catch her breath.
“Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. That’s Mickey,” Helen says, that croaky voice again. “My son. I sent him up there to check on you.”
“Your son?” Alma gasps. Why didn’t Helen tell her this morning her son was around?
“I couldn’t reach you all afternoon”—of course not: Alma has been driving around the county, avoiding her own house—“and seeing as you’re alone, I just wanted to be sure you were all right.”
Alma hears Mickey pounding on the door downstairs, a sound she mistakes at first for the pounding of her own heart. She hangs up. If she is not careful, she is going to end up with a heart attack in a locked-up house that the rescue squad has to break into.
“HALLO!” MICKEY SAYS WHEN Alma opens the door, trying to look composed. What’s the use? The minute he gets home, Helen’s going to tell him their neighbor mistook him for a murderer. “I’m to look and see you’re okay.”
“I know,” Alma says. Might as well fess up. “I just called your mom. I got spooked when I saw a stranger on our property.”
He looks over his shoulder as if Alma is talking about someone else, then gets it, crosses his arms in front of him, amused. He has his mother’s eyes, hazel but without the cloud cover, which makes Alma feel as if she should trust him even though she has never met him before.
“My imagination, I can get carried away.” Alma laughs at herself, inviting him to laugh at her, too. But he doesn’t, just that bemused look, as if he’s watching a little chicken peck herself out of a half shell he could easily reach over and remove.
“You’re an artist,” he finally says. Artist–imagination–getting carried away: Alma can sort of see how his mind works, but she has to connect all his dots. He actually looks like an artist himself, blond gray shaggy hair, not long enough for a ponytail but getting there. “Helen said you were an artist.”
Helen? Wonder why he doesn’t call his mother Mother? “Well, I don’t know about that.”
After a moment, he says, “Nice being an artist.” A man of few words. But from the few he’s said, Alma has noticed an occasional odd intonation, not quite an accent, a trace of an English from somewhere else. Maybe New Zealand or one of the English-speaking islands near where she comes from. Off the face of the earth, the phrase comes to mind.
“Anyhow, I’m fine.”
He nods, one deep nod. “I can see that.” His hands are at his hips as if he’s going to stick around a while and watch. He’s still wearing only a shirt, a worn plaid, and old jeans—a street-person look anywhere else, but here in rural Vermont it’s the outfit de rigueur of the wardrobe righteous—while Alma is shivering in her turtleneck and sweater, standing on the warm side of an open door.
“Thanks for stopping by. That was nice of your mom to worry about me. I worry about her sometimes, too. We call and check on each other from time to time.” Alma pauses. Come on, she thinks, put some money in the meter, say something to conclude. Maybe this man is a Buddhist. Alma heard from Tera how she invited a new adjunct in her department to dinner, a Buddhist, and he hardly said a word. So how does he lecture in class? Alma had wondered later. Alma keeps forgetting to ask Tera every time they talk. “So… anyhow, thanks.” Alma starts shutting the door, but the man’s still standing there on her front step, as if he’s not going anywhere. She can’t just be rude to Helen’s son and shut the door in his face. “Bye,” Alma says in warning; then, exasperated, she says straight out, “I’m going to shut the door now.”
He must think that’s funny because suddenly he’s grinning widely, his hazel eyes full of recognizable response. “I can see why Helen would worry about a woman like you all alone.” For some reason, Alma finds herself wishing Helen hadn’t told her son that she is alone. His comment makes her feel uneasy, as if men are out there on the prowl and she is going to need protection from their savage lustiness for the next five months Richard is away.
She catches herself. For heaven’s sake, she is fifty years old! Besides, didn’t this attitude go out with their generation? This guy has a weathered and leathery look, hard to guess his age, but he looks to be in his late forties. Maybe he’s harmless and nonverbal, and this is his clumsy way of delivering a compliment? “Helen sure has some attractive neighbors,” he goes on, shaking his head, downright talkative now. “There’s another one, hair a little lighter than yours.” Claudine. If he wants to be the gallant, he should know a compliment to a woman is best left in the singular. Though in this instance, let Claudine be the beauty. Claudine, who is about fifteen years younger and whose big, husky local husband should be getting home just about now.
“Don’t mean to keep you.” A Helen phrase. “But anything you need, you just let Helen know.”
Alma nods, the quiet one now.
“I’ll be staying on with Helen for a bit. I’ll come by, now and then, to check on you.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Alma tells him. Better stop this right at the st
art.
“I know,” he says, finally letting his arms drop to his side, a motion that might mean he’s leaving, might not.
Alma closes the door while he’s still standing there—hopefully, he’ll leave—then leans back on it and closes her eyes. Poor Helen. Alma sighs. No wonder she’s on Paxil.
• • •
ALMA FINALLY REACHES CLAUDINE later that night. She and Dwayne and the girls were at a neighborhood potluck. Alma feels a pang, as if she were back in high school, a neighborhood potluck and no one invited her. Who wants a sad, tofu-bearing woman with a near-empty dinner plate, announcing she’s vegetarian?
“I didn’t mean to sound so mysterious,” Claudine explains. She intended to talk to Alma this morning when she saw Alma’s car in the driveway, but she had to go home first and put her groceries away, ice cream, the girls go through a gallon in two days, both have a bad sweet tooth, she should talk, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but when she came back, there was no one in the house. Just wanting to fill Alma in. In case Alma has noticed how Helen hasn’t been herself for the last month.
Another pang. A whole month of Helen’s not being okay, and Alma just noticed this morning! But then, Alma hasn’t seen much of Helen these last few weeks before Richard’s departure. “Yes?” Alma says, bracing herself for that old weather report: The winds of time are about to blow hard. Batten down the hatches.
“Helen … well, she’s not doing so well.” Claudine is hesitating her way through words that might blow up in both their faces.
“I picked up some medication for her today,” Alma confesses. “I couldn’t help noticing it was Paxil.” Maybe Claudine doesn’t know what Paxil is. “An antidepressant,” Alma adds.
“That should help. But it’s … Alma, Helen’s got cancer, really bad, it’s in her liver, in her lungs, it’s everywhere.” Claudine’s voice goes shaky. “She didn’t want me to tell anyone, but I’d be upset if someone didn’t tell me.”
“I’m glad you told me,” Alma manages, her head spinning. Cancer everywhere. Why didn’t Helen tell her? Suddenly, it makes sense that Helen’s son is here. “I met her son. Is that why he came home?”
“Yes and no. Dwayne’s mom got a hold of Mickey through his wife’s family who were trying to get a hold of him, too.” It flashes through Alma’s head that the guy has no business being a gallant with a wife in the wings, not to mention his mother, whom he doesn’t even call Mother, dying of cancer. “Mickey was told to come home if he wanted to see his mother alive. He’s been around for the last month. His wife’s not doing well either, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know,” Alma says, feeling ashamed at how hastily and harshly she judged the guy a moment ago. He can’t be all that bad: he’s taking care of a sick wife and a dying mother. “How long does Helen have?” Does she really want to know? Wouldn’t it be better to just leave it like the old parental estimate for that childhood question, Are we almost there? Almost. An almost that can last a long time?
“They can never be sure,” Claudine sighs. “But the doctor said two, three months, at the most six.”
One down. At best, five more to go. Richard might not even get to see Helen again. But then Helen doesn’t mean as much to Richard. To him, she’s just a kindly old woman who reminds him of his mother. “Oh, Claudine,” Alma says, feeling suddenly bereft, as if they’re two kids stuck in a dark forest together, waiting for someone to lead them safely home. “Is there anything we can do? I mean, I’m not even supposed to know, right?”
“Well, Helen’s mad at me already for telling Dwayne’s mom to call Mickey, so she might as well be mad at me that I told you.” Claudine laughs, a sad laugh. “But like I told her: people don’t just belong to themselves, Helen, they belong to the people who love them.”
Alma loves this woman! Why hasn’t she noticed before how wise and good Claudine is? We belong to the people who love us. That’s the best advice going on getting a lost soul out of the dark wood, back to the human fold.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Claudine is saying.
“No, it’s a wake-up call,” Alma says, and is surprised to hear Claudine agree, “I know what you mean.”
“You take care,” Claudine concludes. Alma has noticed before how Claudine always personalizes the throwaway phrase, as if to let you know she really means it in your case. Today, Alma believes her. “Take care,” she says back.
Alma lays the receiver down carefully in its cradle as if everything in this world is suddenly too fragile; any abrupt move, and she’s likely to snag a thread or step on a bit of pulsing matter. Was it Richard who told her about some Far Eastern monks in a remote place, totally removed from what’d been happening in the world for the last century, who in addition to being strict vegetarians, could not harm any living thing, no matter how small or insignificant, so they had to watch where they stepped, check before they sat down, and so on. Can you imagine, Richard had said, if these monks found out about microscopic life? They’d be unable to move or breathe or be. What was Richard’s point? Something about the collateral damage of just being alive, how you can’t live with that kind of knowledge, how you just do the best you can.
So Alma fortifies herself now with arguments: Helen is an old woman, she has lived a long, good life, not without its bumps. Lots of people don’t even get to live this long. She’ll have decent medical care. Neighbors and friends and a son, who are going to be by her side. Alma feels like one of those devils in Paradise Lost, full of logical reasons why it’s okay that somebody else is going to die.
BY THE TIME ALMA talks to Richard that night, she has been on the phone with Helen with the excuse that she wanted to thank Helen for sending her son over, but no need to worry, Alma is fine, she’ll be by tomorrow, hope that’s okay. Helen is full of apologies all over again for scaring Alma, and as Alma listens to her old friend, she is hearing a new background sound, ticktock, ticktock. Next, Alma calls Tera back, and sure enough, Tera tries to talk Alma into spending part of their weekend together at a rally for wind power at the Sheraton where some energy summit is going on. Alma explains about Helen. Can’t they just have a quiet weekend together? Surprisingly, Tera agrees, though almost immediately she starts peppering Alma with questions: Is Helen in touch with Home Health? Does she know about its excellent hospice program? There’s this wonderful advocacy group fighting for death with dignity rights—Tera’ll dig up some info. Alma can hear Helen’s dying of cancer becoming Tera’s next cause. Oh, Tera. Alma should know by now. There’s no stopping people from being who they are.
And the nagging question through all these conversations is, Why hasn’t Richard called? Alma knows from the automated airline number that his flight landed about a half hour late, in the early afternoon, and it’s already eight at night. Several scenarios run through her artist mind, none of them nice.
When the phone rings, Alma promises Helen’s God—since she knows that the baffling, painful spirit of the Universe doesn’t make deals—that if it’s Richard, she will not let the first, second, or even third thing out of her mouth be Why haven’t you called? And, in fact, when she hears his dear voice, everything falls away, and she is flooded with pure and simple joy that he’s back in real time on the other end of the line.
“¡Hola! ¡Querida!” He’s already talking with exclamation marks. “¿Cómo estás?” For the last few weeks Richard has been dutifully listening to some State Department tapes from HI’s library. Alma hasn’t had the heart to remind him that no one in her homeland is going to talk Spanish that fancy.
“Honey!” Alma laughs. “It’s so good to hear your voice!” She almost asks—before she remembers her part of the deal—why he has waited to call her until eight o’clock at night.
“I’ve been trying you on and off since I landed,” he says, leaving Alma to wonder if she did ask her question out loud. “We kept stopping at every roadside phone. My calling card wouldn’t work, and the meanest operators, they wouldn’t let me l
eave a message. Where have you been?”
“Oh,” she says airily, as if she has been having an exciting life here in the backwoods of Vermont since he left. But who is she kidding? “I’ve been missing you too much,” she admits. “I didn’t want to come home and find you gone. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stand it.”
“I know,” he agrees. But a certain airiness in his voice, plus the fun-sounding background noise—music, laughter, is he at a bar?—tells Alma separation is not going to be as hard on him. The debit is on her side again. She is the one whose love is alloyed with need; his is the genuine article. “I’m calling you from this neat little hotel on the road—adobe-style, you’d love it. The owner’s so nice, there’s a fiesta going on.”
They haven’t been parted a full day yet, and already there are so many stories to exchange! Bienvenido, that’s the Dominican intern he’ll be working with, picked him up at the airport. “And I swear we stopped at every pay phone.” So that’s what the hang-ups on the answering machine were all about!
Rather than drive up the mountain in the dark, he and Bienvenido have decided to stop overnight on the road. “It’s good because it’s giving Bienvenido a chance to catch me up on some of what’s been going on.” The project has been off to a rocky start. “Remember the clinic I mentioned? Well, all these patients have been brought in from coastal towns near resort areas to be treated with experimental drugs. I guess there’s a lot of HIV in the country because of sexual tourism—and the locals aren’t too happy about this.”
AIDS? “But you must have known this AIDS clinic was there, Richard.” Richard, not honey. He knows what that means.
“Well, don’t go getting angry at me, or I’m not going to be able to tell you things!”
A threat. Tears fill Alma’s eyes. “I feel like you only told me part of the story. I would’ve come with you if I’d known there was going to be trouble.”
Saving the World Page 10
