Reef Dance

by John Decure

  “He’ll be back soon.”

  We ate our hamburgers outside at the picnic table with chips and a green salad I’d made while Carmen was turning the patties. Albert sat and stared at the burger on his plate. “Eat your food, m’ijo,” Carmen said, but he continued to sulk.

  “Don’t worry about Jackie,” I told him. “He always turns up where there’s food.” Albert didn’t crack a smile.

  We ate in relative silence until Albert asked Carmen to be excused. “You haven’t eaten three bites,” she protested.

  “I’ll cover it,” I said, taking his plate. “We’ll heat it up later.”

  Albert went inside, leaving me alone again with Carmen. “He really likes Jackie,” I said.

  She sipped her ice tea, eyeing the house. “I wish he wouldn’t get his hopes up. Albert forms attachments too easily.”

  “Jackie’s not the kind of guy who’ll let anyone get too attached to him,” I said. “He craves an audience, but he’s basically a loner.”

  She put down her drink. “What about you, J.?”

  I’d never thought of myself as a loner. Twenty-nine, no family, only a few close friends, a best friend I didn’t trust. Wisecracking my way through a burnout job, surrounded by lawyers I often don’t respect and clients I can’t relate to. I was closer to being a loner than I wanted Carmen Manriquez to know.

  “I’m not like Jackie,” I told her.

  Albert came to the kitchen door. “Is he back yet?” His eyes searched the yard for a sign of any kind.

  I shrugged. “Not yet, buddy. He’ll be along.” Albert hung his head and went inside again. “Wow,” I said to Carmen, “what are you going to do when he discovers girls?”

  Carmen watched him waddle back to the living room. “Pobrecito,” she said.

  “You and Albert are really close,” I said. “It’s like you’re his guardian angel.”

  “He needs one.”

  “What are you protecting him from?”

  “I don’t know. People—sometimes the world.” She stared back at me. “What kind of question is that?”

  I’d overstepped an invisible line. “Sorry, none of my business.”

  Carmen rubbed her forehead. “No, it’s not you.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  Carmen was silent, as if deciding whether I was to be trusted. “My father—our father—he left us, when Albert was very young.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not like that. He was very macho, like many Latinos are. When I was born he was so disappointed.”

  “How come?”

  She closed her eyes as if weighed down by the memory. “I was a girl. I couldn’t carry on the family name. You probably know, this is a very typical, stupid problem in our culture.” She sipped her tea. “And the day Albert was born was the happiest day of his life. But Albert was always . . . different. You’ve seen him. He didn’t walk until he was two, couldn’t talk like a normal baby. My father took it as a slap in the face from God. His only son, and he was ashamed of him. Pendejo.”

  “Why did your father leave?”

  “One day when Albert had just turned four, my father was drunk again, feeling sorry for himself. He told Albert to speak up and flicked a burning cigarette butt at his head. It caught Albert under the eye and he cried, hard. Papi went into a rage and yelled at him to shut up. Albert just kept screaming.”

  “There was a fight?”

  “A terrible one.”

  “Your parents?”

  She shook her head no. “My mom was at work. She was the only one with a job back then, so it was just Albert and me. But she knew how Papi could get. I was supposed to watch out for Albert until she got home.”

  “What did you do?”

  “His cheek was burned and he wouldn’t stop crying. I got between them but Papi hit him, kept hitting him. Albert fell, hit his head on the coffee table. We both went to the hospital that night.” All the life had gone out of her face. “I didn’t protect him.”

  “You were a little girl,” I said.

  “Pobrecito,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll never let him be hurt again.”

  Max had walked over and snuggled his head onto Carmen’s lap. She stroked his big, black nose, rubbing the short hair between his eyes.

  “You think your father might still hurt Albert?” I asked.

  “I just know my brother needs to be safe.”

  I reached for Max and rubbed the area behind his ears. “Is that why you live at home?”

  “Yes.” She sighed, reconsidering. “I don’t know.” She looked away.

  I wanted to take her in my arms and hold her, to say something pithy about everything being all right, but I couldn’t summon the nerve. “You’re a good sister,” I managed. “But you can’t stay with him forever.”

  “I know, but Mami can’t protect him. She’s too old now.”

  “I could talk to your father,” I said. “Feel him out.”

  “No. Thank you, but no. I can handle it.”

  The bundle of letters from Aunt Miluca to my mother sat there between us like a purple elephant neither of us was ready to acknowledge. In my work, I had long ago become expert at avoiding eye contact, at looking away from certain harsh realities in order to focus on the motions, the evidence, the objections that lay in my path. Hell, this was my primary game plan for getting through the calendar each day. I’d pushed Marielena Shepard out onto the shadowy margins as well, and left her there permanently. That was a mistake, I knew now. But it was easier to talk about Carmen’s father.

  “Maybe if I see him, just talk to him,” I said, “I can get an indication of some kind. At least you would know. That’s a good thing.”

  Carmen regarded me seriously. “Is it?”

  The letters stared up at me from the picnic table. In the fewest words possible, I took something of a stand on the issue. “It is.”

  “Thank you for offering to help,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

  I was fresh out of diversions. Before she started in, Carmen asked me about my family, “for purposes of context.” I told her it was all right for her to ask. I told her about my father meeting my mother, his shaping skills and big wave exploits; her singing with the church choir, her initial solo journey from Chile, the accounting work. My father’s bad heart, his early death. September of ’79, my mother’s disappearance. My surreal senior year at Christianitos High, an early introduction to Gilbride’s manual. The filing cabinet in the attic, these letters and the Sea Pointe brochures. I tried to go slowly, but my tone seemed reaching and overanxious, like when I’d spoken to Baumann, the town historian. Carmen rolled with me with her sublime, social worker’s patience.

  “Let me read you the letters now,” she said when I’d stopped.

  The first ten letters revealed nothing unusual: anecdotal asides about child rearing and the high cost of living, recipes, gardening tips, a cold snap in Chile. The last two, written in the summer of ’79, were more serious and philosophical. Aunt Miluca was instructing Marielena on love, loyalty, the church and its teachings, and sin.

  “Sin?” I said, sitting up straighter.

  “Your mother was facing a personal dilemma,” Carmen said. “Let me translate this passage to you from the very last letter. ‘Marielena, the Lord bestows the gift of life upon us, a gift so profound and holy, one has only to accept it. It is not wise for you to question this gift, this mystery of life. Pray. Open your heart to God and let his gifts flow over you and make you whole. No mother can deny her own child’s place in her life.’ ”

  A child’s rightful place in his mother’s life. I had my answer to the central question of my mother’s disappearance. “She left me.”

  “J., no, wait,” Carmen said, placing her hand on mine. “I don’t think this is about you.” She shifted the pile of pages in front of her. “Here, listen to what Miluca says in the second-to-last letter: ‘Only a witch would give holy counsel outside the church, m’ija. T
he comadrona is a witch.’ ”

  My mother’s superstitions again. “You think she was talking to a witch?” I asked.

  “Not exactly. A comadrona is a midwife.”

  “I don’t follow. Holy counsel from a midwife who Aunt Miluca thought was a witch?”

  Carmen put down the final letter. “I think your mother was pregnant.”

  “Pregnant? No, she . . . how? She never had anyone . . . a boyfriend . . . or lover, not a lover, not . . . since my father died. I lived here with her, right across the hall.” I picked up the last letter from which Carmen had read and inspected it. “No. That can’t be right.”

  Carmen said nothing. She’d read the letters, though. She was simply too diplomatic to push her point with me. I was acting like a fool.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what to make of this yet.”

  She nodded in support. I thought of the leather portfolio I’d found in the attic, the one embossed with my mother’s initials. The gold pen and pencil set. Gifts from an admirer—or perhaps, a suitor.

  “I guess anything’s possible,” I said. “But why would she want to see a midwife?”

  “In Mexico, midwives deliver babies. Some of them perform abortions.”

  “My mother was Catholic. She wouldn’t have had an abortion.”

  It sounded all wrong. Marielena Shepard had lived a life too quiet, too studied for all this mess. “We don’t even have midwives here,” I added, but Carmen was hardly in need of convincing. She’d never known the woman. I was arguing with myself.

  Cool it, boy, just cool it. “What else do the letters tell you?” I asked more evenly.

  She put the last two down without reading from them. “That’s really all there is.”

  I buried my face in my palms.

  “I’m sorry, J.,” Carmen said. “I wrote the translations out in light pencil above the words. Maybe later you’ll want to re-read them.”

  I thanked her and folded the letters in their creases again. For the second time today, I was at a near total loss for words. Carmen instinctively reached for Max and cajoled him to stem the silence.

  “You have fun surfing today?” I said. It was the best I could do.

  “I did.” Her teeth were a flawless white. “You’re a good teacher.”

  I returned Carmen’s smile, then looked away.

  “You know what I liked even more than riding my first wave?” Carmen said a moment later. “Standing on the beach later. Talking with your friends.”

  “That was good, wasn’t it?”

  “I think you’re lucky, J.”

  My insides warmed. Just then, I think I would have sold my pitiful soul to find the words to say something upbeat and witty, to make her hopeful about her prospects with me. A feather-light endearment or two, a brief rhapsody on the beach life—anything halfway intelligent would have done. But my mind was as dull as tar. The moment died.

  Saturday at five I went to mass at Saint Ann’s, still mulling over the letters from Aunt Miluca. The services were sparsely attended, a westerly sea breeze flickering through the open panels of stained glass. The church’s interior was calming, the lengthy nave cast in serene, blue shadows and diffused light among the rows of pillars and stones. I sat on the right near an alcove that held a small shrine to the Virgin Mary.

  The old pastor, Father Ashton, was sermonizing in a familiar vein. Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me. I gazed at the statue of the Virgin and tried to say a prayer for guidance. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee, blessed art Thou . . . blessed . . . I lost my place and had to start again.

  I’d always thought my father was the love of my mother’s life, which was probably just my own, kid’s fantasy. But Marielena didn’t have any real boyfriends that I could recall. She was a lovely, graceful woman who turned heads simply by walking into a room, so the phone rang for her often enough, yet her standards were probably pretty high because few men came calling over the years, and even fewer had a lasting impact. A kindly grocer who wrote his own pop songs for her—not exactly Beatlesque stuff. A well-to-do hotel owner who got the brush when he booked a trip for two to Paris for them without her knowledge. A local grade school principal who fell so hard he proposed on the fifth—and last—date. Nice guys, but not much in the romance department, and none to compare favorably with my old man. But how could I be sure? She could have loved someone and kept it from me, not knowing how I might react. It would have been like her to wait for just the right time to tell me. She was careful like that, respectful.

  But what was careful about Marielena being pregnant, with no man on the horizon? Nothing. And, though we’d never openly discussed the topic, she would not have aborted. I felt reasonably certain of that much.

  Thirteen years ago, in ’79, midwives may still have been popular in Chile for all I knew. But in America women had their babies—and their abortions—in hospitals, under the care of doctors. My mother took care of herself. She knew what she was doing.

  Then again, she had her nutball superstitions. An absolute prohibition against leaving a hat on a bed. The garlic beneath the mattress to ward off spirits while she slept. The crazy way she’d suddenly ask me to pick a number at random. “Seven,” I’d say. She’d count up the alphabet until she stopped on the letter of the person who was currently speaking ill of her. “Seven. A, b, c, d, e, f, g. G . . .” she’d say, her eyes narrowing as she strained to decipher a secret message. “I had a trim from a girl named Greta this afternoon. Hmm—did I forget to tip her?”

  She’d also kept to her daily ritual of visiting the Twelfth Street shorebreak, the place where my father had drowned, and casting a few rose petals. Every day for ten years.

  I tried to pray again, mouthing words drilled into me as a child by the Saint Ann’s nuns. Bargain-seeking, solicitous words they were, spoken from the lips of the unbelieving. I called off the exercise in shame.

  After mass, I walked to the side altar and pondered lighting a candle. The church seemed to have shrunk a little with each year I’d been away.

  “You take communion?” Father Ashton was at my shoulder, which gave me a start. His wrinkles were much more apparent up close. He seemed to have shrunk with age.

  We hadn’t spoken in a dozen years, since the night he came to the house to talk about doing some kind of memorial service for my mother. I was instantly pissed, pointing out that she might be just gone, not dead; and if so, why honor her memory? Besides, my father died and didn’t even get a Catholic burial because he was cremated, I said—and what was with that bullshit? The conversation rapidly overheated, Father Ashton defending the Church, adamant that it was my father’s choice to do that, and that he was here to talk about my mother, anyway. I remember suggesting that Father go ask God what happened to her, and not to come back with any hot ideas about any special services until he had an answer.

  I tried to smile. He knew I hadn’t received communion, so I ignored his question. “Nice sermon, Father. You’ve still got the gift.”

  “Devil always gets their attention,” he said. “I think Catholics prefer a touch of fear in the proceedings.”

  He’d grown thinner and his dark hair gave way to more scalp than ever. His face had lost its handsome dash and his hands were deeply blotched with purple age spots. I noticed a small bandage beneath his left ear and failed to look away in time.

  “Oh, this?” he said. “A reminder of my own mortality, you could say.”

  Someone in back cut the overhead lights up on the altar. Father turned to regard the crucifix that now hung in darkness.

  “Is it serious?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Cancerous. It comes off Thursday. They think they caught it in time.”

  “Thank God,” I said without irony.

  He crossed himself. “Done.”

  An old lady with a massive purse and a black veil on her head emerged from the front pew, bowed and said good day to the Father. We surveyed the rows of fl
ickering red candles before us.

  “I should go,” I said. “Good luck on Thursday.”

  Across the blacktop near my car, some teenaged kids were playing half-court basketball. I drifted over, stopping briefly to watch. There was something liberating about the way they moved, darting and reaching and leaping at once for a rebound, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings.

  Father Ashton walked over and stood next to me, his eyes following the movement of the ball. “So, what brings you here? Is that reporter, Holly Dupree, giving you fits?”

  “You know about Holly Dupree?”

  “I keep tabs on all my former altar boys.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “I comforted a client. Holly turned it into a love affair.”

  “I figured as much.” He looked back at the church as if he didn’t quite know why he’d walked out here to meet me.

  He was right to wonder why. I’d come to mass seeking counsel from a God with whom I was seriously out of step, my feeble prayers coming up short. But Holly Dupree? No, the Randall case was not the thing. I was here because of those letters.

  I didn’t trust Father, not since that day at my house. Still, I needed answers.

  “You know how my mother . . . disappeared a long time ago.”

  “Marielena was a beloved member of the parish. Very sad.”

  “I’m trying to figure out what actually happened, what became of her, but I’m not getting anywhere. Maybe I shouldn’t press it, but, these letters I found . . . she may have seen a witch—I mean, a midwife.” I was babbling. “Sorry. I’m not making any sense.”

  He put his hands behind his back, trying his best to act casual. “Take your time.”

  We watched a pair of gulls float over the playground and turn into the wind. “You knew her, Father.”

  “I did.”

  I hesitated. When it comes to big issues, you never know when a priest will resort to spouting the party line and clap the mighty hand of the Church down on you like the weight of the world. It was the way I’d been indoctrinated. Every kid who attended Catholic school in the sixties was dealt the Official Word, and it made a lasting impression. I was a fatalist by the second grade, shitting bricks that I’d committed a mortal sin and was already damned. Of course, I didn’t actually know what a mortal sin was, as Sister Clementissima hadn’t bothered to give examples—too salacious. We weren’t ready to comprehend such wickedness, she explained. Yet I was all too ready to suffer for it.