They Could Have Named Her Anything

by Jimenez, Stephanie

  Rocky hadn’t seemed to hear Maria’s question.

  “Now, the only plays the school puts on are Shakespeare,” Rocky said. “Which is just as gay as whatever you just recited.”

  The roar of the mattress inflating stopped. Gay would be another battle—just like Hispanic—and Maria didn’t know whether it would be worth trying to correct Rocky Albrecht. The more she thought about it, the more she came to think they weren’t wrong in the same ways, either—what made Hispanic unsettling was its nonspecificity, and gay was only a bad one to use when it came out of the mouth like a slur. What Rocky meant to say is that she didn’t like poetry, and she didn’t memorize lines of it like Maria did. She should have known this. But Maria had expanded her vocabulary so drastically since attending Bell Seminary that maybe sharing the poem was an exercise in showing off what she’d just learned. Maybe it was only a gift she wanted to share with Rocky, the benefit of learning new words and understanding, more fully, how to use the ones she already knew.

  “Still,” Maria said, settling onto the air mattress. “You should be acting.”

  “Not at Bell Seminary,” Rocky said. “Audrey Hepburn never played Juliet in high school.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Rocky laughed into the darkness, the sound taking on a weight of its own. “Audrey Hepburn? Who’s Audrey Hepburn? Or did you mean Juliet?”

  “I know her,” Maria lied, and of course, she didn’t mean Juliet. After A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet was her favorite Shakespeare play.

  But Rocky still hadn’t stopped laughing, and the sound became heavy, unable to be ignored, like another body in the room. For the first time that day, Maria wondered what she might look like from Rocky’s perspective. Maybe it looked like there was nothing inside that was bothering Maria. Or maybe it looked like Maria was only a shell of a person, and there was nothing inside her at all.

  Maria was only asleep for a few minutes before she woke up to what she thought was the sound of someone whispering her name. “Rocky?” she asked, into the dark. But Rocky didn’t answer. In her sleep, Maria had been adding up and dividing numbers in her calculator, the way the tutor had taught them only hours earlier. She woke up confused and exhausted, her brain jumbled from the arithmetic, and too revved up to fall back asleep. On her phone, a message was waiting. The room became bright. Maria pulled the screen close to her chest to mask the glare.

  OK mami, her mother had written. TQM. I love you. Good night.

  Maria was fully awake now, getting up noisily from the inflatable mattress and walking toward the living room to call Andres. He had seen Maria walk by one Tuesday night when she had come home late after school. Since then, Maria and Andres had been dating, but Maria always had the creeping suspicion that there was someone else in Andres’s life, some public school girl that she’d never meet, who knew how to do all kinds of things that she didn’t, like cook perfect pots of rice or dance a flawless bachata. At Maria’s old middle school before Bell Seminary, she thought she could remember girls like that.

  “Hey, baby,” Maria said from Rocky’s living room couch. “Did I wake you up?” She scratched at her weeks-old home manicure, scattering little red flecks on the ivory-colored carpet. From where she was contorted, she could see the front door to the apartment.

  Andres sounded far away on the phone, as if he had the receiver partially covered. Maria thought she heard the sound of laughter in the background. “No. I was awake.”

  “What are you doing?” Maria heard a giggle again. She was sure she already knew the answer; he must be watching TV.

  “Homework.”

  Maria laughed. “You never do homework!”

  “Only you do, right?” Maria felt an insult coming on, and her fist balled up on the couch. Andres used to write letters to her that professed his love. She didn’t know when things changed, only that his insults were usually iterations of the same nonfact: You are such a white girl.

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “Is somebody with you?”

  Andres laughed. “I’m just fucking with you. I was smoking a blunt.”

  Andres’s voice became suddenly clear, and Maria had the impression she’d just been taken off speakerphone. He was probably at a friend’s house, whichever one out of the dozens, and this friend had probably started laughing as soon as he’d heard Maria refer to Andres as baby.

  “You know what’s crazy?”

  Maria grated her teeth. “What?”

  “I wasn’t smoking a blunt.”

  “How is that crazy?”

  “Because you always think I am! I’m hanging up, Maria.”

  Maria was so mad when he hung up that she hurled the phone across the carpet so she wouldn’t be tempted to call him again. Sometimes, she didn’t understand why she bothered with Andres. Over spring break, and just after her father told her that she might need to hold off on college, the Bell Seminary juniors were taken to Vassar on a prospective-student trip. She had imagined college would be just like high school, but as she glanced around, in the classes, on the lawns, she realized that nobody looked like they’d come out of Bell Seminary. Hardly any of the girls were wearing makeup and some boys even had arm tattoos, and most shocking of all, they weren’t even all white, and even the ones who weren’t white were smiling. On the bus back to the city, Maria was melancholy, and every time they hit a pothole, she let her head bang on the window. She didn’t want to go back to Bell Seminary, she didn’t want to go back to her bedroom in Queens, and she didn’t want to stay trapped with Andres forever. Maria feared that something horrible would happen if she couldn’t manage to escape.

  Recalling that trip now filled her with a longing so acute it made her gasp. She sat upright, and once she was sure it had passed, she lay on her back again. Love is a sham, Rocky said. Maria placed her hands on her stomach and folded them this time as if saying grace, as if praying to whatever was out there that nothing, not love and not anything like it, had taken root inside of her.

  All at once the room came into focus: the starchy fabric couch, the oil painting on the wall of two girls playing piano, the built-in bookcase with so few books they were like teeth in the mouth of a baby—and she recognized Rocky’s living room. At first she didn’t know where she was when she heard the front door slam, much less how long she’d been lying there, but now she clearly saw his shape at the door. He looked at her from the entryway, not moving any closer, as if he’d just stumbled upon a rare bird that could be easily frightened away.

  “That doesn’t seem like the most comfortable place to sleep.”

  “Sorry,” Maria blurted out. She scrambled to an upright position, not knowing if she should stand. Earlier that night, she had changed into a collared pajama shirt that Rocky had handed to her to sleep in. At home, she only slept in extralarge T-shirts with various logos splattered across the chest, and when she saw herself in the mirror earlier, she’d loved how she looked in the soft button-down. But now, she realized she wasn’t wearing a bra. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest.

  It wasn’t her chest he was looking at, though. His eyes were resting upon her face, as if the most wonderful poem were written there.

  “‘Beauty is God’s handwriting,’” he said, slowly. His voice was soft and sweet, a dish of caramel flan. “Someone smarter than me said that.”

  Maria covered her mouth, then uncovered it.

  “That’s Emerson . . . isn’t it?”

  He started to take off his jacket. Even from across the room, Maria could tell it was beautifully made. She knew her father would go to his grave never having tried on a jacket like that. He draped it across a chair upholstered in a smoother fabric than anything in her mother’s closet. “Emerson,” he said, nodding slowly. He brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose and squeezed, as if he had a headache. When he brought them away, his face was smooth again.

  “How young are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “I
’m Charlie. What’s your name, Seventeen?”

  “I’m Maria,” she said, and no sooner had she said it than she remembered watching West Side Story, the one and only time that she did. She could never forget how horrified she was, the singing and lunging and terrible hair, and worst of all, the accented English. Not English the way she learned it in school—the English of all the classic poets and great novelists. Remembering now the Ah-meh-dikas, Maria spoke with haste. She didn’t usually tell anyone she was Maria Anís, the Anís coming from her mother, Ana Lisette, who changed her name to Analise once she got her citizenship, and then shortened it further for Maria’s sake. People already tripped over saying Maria the way she wanted it said—even with white people, she sometimes had to insist that the English pronunciation was what she preferred.

  “You can call me Annie, mister.”

  He fanned his hand in the air, correcting her. “Charlie,” he said. “Your brain must be an interesting place. What else is in there? Got any more poetry for me?”

  Maria stammered. No one had talked to her like this—ever. All she could think of was the mantra that had one day popped into her head when she first started attending Bell Seminary.

  “Strange is the place / all strangers begin / Through darkness and light / like planets they spin.”

  “It’s settled, Seventeen. You can stay. But from now on, you sleep in a bed.” He smiled. “Pick a bed, any bed. We have six or seven bedrooms. Eight? I don’t know. I lost count years ago.”

  Maria’s eyes finally adjusted. She saw he was due for a shave, but with his tie, he looked important—as glamorous as Rocky did in her pastel nail polish. In his suit, he looked like someone she’d try to make room for if they were both walking down the same side of the street. The slight bags under his eyes, she saw, made him look sophisticated. Rocky’s dad was fascinating, and somehow Maria had impressed him, and she wanted to continue impressing him. She found herself trying with her whole body, her back straightened so tall that it hurt.

  When he turned away, Maria stood and followed. His bedroom wasn’t far down the hall. He walked through the open door, but she stalled, not crossing into the heart of the bedroom, where only a slightly larger bed than Rocky’s hid in the shadows. She leaned against the dresser at the entrance of the room.

  “The best view of the city is here,” he said, gesturing at the window. He began taking off his cuff links.

  Outside, there were clouded lights everywhere, and rivers that saddled the island on either side. It was Emerson, too—Emerson gawking at the skies, gawking like Rocky’s father did now at the buildings below—who said: we are made immortal through the contemplation of beauty. On some nights, right before the breaking of dawn, she and Andres and his gaggle of friends would wait on the elevated train platform in Queens, and as she looked across the river at the skyscrapers, at the moment before everyone would wake up and go about their everyday lives, she would fill up with a very strange feeling and know she’d beheld the sublime. Something about those moments really did feel immortal, even though they were gone as soon as the next train arrived and Andres and his group clambered on board, loud and stomping, hooting and howling like animals.

  Now, Maria was silent. The man she had followed was the reason the Albrechts appeared every year in the school’s donor catalog. She stole a glance at him, imagining the gold lining on the pages, and as if he had sensed she had taken something from him, he looked at her with such a look that Maria instantly recognized it. It was the same look Andres had given her the day she first walked by him on the boulevard, the pleats of her skirt dancing around the back of her bare legs. It was a look she knew because her mother taught her to be wary of it: See how that boy looks at you? Rocky’s father’s wasn’t a boy, but the look was identical.

  “Emerson said—” Again, Maria stammered. She knew the exact lines, why wasn’t she getting it right? But Charlie didn’t rush her, so Maria cleared her throat. “He said we’re made immortal through contemplating beauty.”

  “Of course,” he said, smiling. “I could live forever just by looking at you.”

  A window flew open, exposing her chest. It floated up her throat like a hiccup, involuntary. It came out unthinkably: her giggle.

  She had been complimented before—but only by the brawny twentysomething-year-olds outside of mechanic shops, guys that made her anticipate growing up. It was one thing to hear those things on the street, where she knew she was to never make eye contact and walk on. Neither her uncle nor brother—men who had repeatedly warned her about the evils of other men—had ever instructed her on what to do if she found herself in a dimly lit bedroom, on the fifteenth floor of a high-rise apartment, with a compliment so wonderful, so real, it felt as if she could hold it in her palms.

  “You’re so smart,” Charlie said, coming toward her. He took her hand, gently parting her fingers. Into her palm he dropped his cuff links, smooth and golden. “I can see you being a professor, one day.”

  Maria had never seen anything like them before. She bounced them in her hand. She wanted to ask if she could keep them.

  Suddenly, her phone started buzzing frantically.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “But next time I see you, I hope you’ll recite me something else.”

  Maria bent at the knees, her head lowered, and spread her fingers out as if positioning for a handstand. Onto the floor, the cuff links fell, making the sound of two heavy marbles hitting each other head-on. She dashed out of the room, but when she picked up the phone, she didn’t hear anything. “Hello,” she kept saying, over and over again, but Andres must’ve only called her by accident.

  She looked down the hall where she came from, her heart racing. It only took a moment for her to decide. She couldn’t go back, at least not yet. First, she would need to decide on a poem.

  In the room, Maria was startled to see that Rocky was awake in her bed. The light in the bathroom was on.

  “What’d you find?” Rocky said. She was lying on her side, with her head propped up on two pillows.

  “What?”

  “You were wandering.” Her voice was monotonous, cool. Maria tried searching Rocky’s face, but she didn’t know which signs to look for. No one person, she suddenly realized, looks exactly the same when they’re angry.

  “I was on the phone with Andres,” Maria said, cautiously.

  “You sure it wasn’t your mom?”

  Maria was silent.

  “I’m kidding, Shelly. I’m teasing you.”

  The comforter rustled as Rocky pulled it up to her chin. Outside, it was dark, but there were already signs of morning. Violet spilled over the horizon like a shade of watercolor paint.

  “Poor thing.” Rocky yawned. “On the phone with Andres. Remind me tomorrow to teach you about sex, okay?”

  As if to dismiss her, Rocky closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER 2

  Charlie could never recall hearing coughing or sniffling, so he never anticipated the days when Khil would call in sick. He wouldn’t know until after he’d step out of the elevator, until he avoided looking at the mirror that hung above two Tuscan urns overflowing with a delicate lace of green leaves, until he was close enough to see if his hair was standing up. From there to the lobby, he had to descend a flight of stairs, walk past a few tables, more planters, more flowers, a marble tube that housed a fleet of tall, black umbrellas, and then past a less forgiving mirror where he would forget to look down, and in which he would see, framed between curly gold spirals, just how exhausted he looked. The doorman would open the front door, then walk quickly ahead of him to open the door of the idling black car, and only then would Charlie know that Khil was sick, that the company had sent a substitute to drive him the half-hour ride to the office.

  In the elevator, Charlie held on to his briefcase and watched as the numbers dinged. When he first bought the apartment, Veronica hadn’t been able to stop telling her parents, who still lived in their old neighborhood in Westchester, about how odd it was,
how when she first walked in, she thought they had walked past the gates of El Dorado because everything was lined in different shades of gold, and as they went down the hallway, each shade became deeper than the last. That was when Rachelle was still only two years old, and Nick not even a prospect, and Charlie had laughed and said she ought to stop saying that, that there really was another building in the city called Eldorado and that it wasn’t to be confused with their building, which was newer, less stuffy, and better located, anyway, and if she could believe it, even pricier.

  She had rolled her eyes, but later, on the first night in their new apartment, Veronica confessed how excited she was. She said she felt like a teenager who had snuck out of her bedroom and made it to the front road, the smell of grass all around her. He knew in that moment how lucky he was to have married someone who understood his life so completely. The two of them were from the same hometown, so it made sense that they’d shared similar experiences. The earthy smell of the ground beneath his feet, his adolescent heart pumping with adrenaline—it was as if she had plucked the memory directly from his heart.

  That was then, years ago. Charlie couldn’t remember the last time his wife said anything that made him feel like a teenager.

  As the doorman held the door open for Charlie to step into the black Crown Victoria, Charlie was surprised to learn Khil was sick. He heard Alan before he saw him.

  “Hey, Mr. Albrecht!”

  Charlie shuddered. He deeply disliked Alan. Alan was loud and boisterous and was incessant with questions. Khil, on the other hand, always seemed to be in perfect sync with Charlie’s moods—some mornings, feeling jubilant, they talked the entire way to Charlie’s office in the financial district, and on others they sat in silence as they kept their pensive gazes out the window. Khil also liked art and literature, and he put on the most wonderful jazz, music that bubbled and soothed like champagne. He introduced Charlie to a tabla player named Zakir Hussain, who had apparently once toured with Bob Dylan and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Khil even told Charlie when Hussain was playing in New York City at Lincoln Center. Charlie was out of town that weekend, but he appreciated the gesture. Alan, on the other hand, didn’t have taste like Khil did. He was lardy and rough, all working-class bravado. Charlie found it hard not to roll his eyes whenever Alan said something.