Stripped Down
Page 16
I guess you could say getting married was colliding with my life with the speed and subtlety of a Mack truck. Between dress shopping, RSVPs, showers, fittings, and flowers, I was already exhausted and I still had two months to go. My latest duty was to send thank-you notes to the people who had already sent us wedding gifts, a pretty mundane task—and yet one gift we received would change everything.
In a plain, brown-wrapped package that had come from an aunt of Abel’s was a retablo from Mexico. I’d seen retablos before—folk paintings that commemorate a blessing or an event in a person’s life—but this one was particularly beautiful. It depicted a beach scene in the foreground, and a young woman with shoulder-length black hair, whom no one seemed to notice was being swept away to sea. Her eyes were pointed at an image of the Virgin Mary in the corner of the sky. There was writing in Spanish—probably telling the story of the near-drowning and how the woman was saved—but I couldn’t read it.
I’m not sure why the retablo captivated me so much. There was something in the young woman’s vulnerability—and her being swept out to sea with no one to save her—that seemed more and more like my own situation. I had the sense that I had known her. I’m not much of a detective, but I wanted to find out more—about the artist, about the drowning woman—anything that might help explain the feelings the retablo raised in me.
A few days went by—work, family, heat—before I was able to find out anything more about the retablo. That weekend, Abel’s family threw an engagement party for us. My parents were long dead, and I hadn’t lived in the Southwest very long, so most of the guests were Abel’s friends and family. In spite of my doubts and preoccupation, I snapped to attention when Abel mentioned that his Aunt Consuelo, the one who had sent us the retablo, would be there.
“Sera, there’s Consuelo—she’s the one you wanted to meet.” Abel smiled and pointed to an older woman. “She’s my nina, my godmother. I’ll introduce you.”
We made our way through a crowd of cousins to where Consuelo was standing. “Nina, I’d like to introduce you to my fiancé, Sera. She was so impressed by the retablo you sent, she wanted to thank you in person.”
Consuelo smiled and hugged me. “It’s so nice to meet you,” I said, trying to hide my curiosity. “I wanted to ask you where you found our wedding gift. I’ve never seen a retablo like it.”
“Oh, just on eBay. There’s an artist in Mexico City…Aixa Avilar, I think her name is…she paints them. They’re not real, you know. I mean, I think she makes the stories up.” Consuelo had barely finished her sentence when she was called away into the kitchen.
It was after midnight when I got back to my apartment. Abel walked me to the door and kissed me on the neck. His hands were insistent, and I knew he wanted to stay over. If I let him, though, I’d have to wait another day to search for Aixa. I made up an excuse and sent him home.
With the door locked, I switched my computer monitor on and typed in Aixa’s name. In a few seconds, I had a hit: she had her own website. I started breathing a little faster. As the pictures on Aixa’s site slowly downloaded, I saw that it was her face in the retablo: she was the drowning woman. In the sole picture of the artist, Aixa sat in a window seat with her knees drawn up under her chin. Her head was bent forward, and she was looking past the camera. Her hair was long, wavy, and black and her eyes were a startling green against her tan skin. She wore a simple turquoise and silver crucifix around her neck and red cowboy boots. I was transfixed.
For the next hour or two, I searched for all the information I could find about Aixa, which wasn’t a lot. She was twenty-six and lived in Mexico City. She had about forty of her paintings online, but none were self-portraits like the retablo I had, and none were as piercing. My retablo was unique, and I was convinced there was some reason I had received it. I had to find out why.
A week passed and I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I desperately needed to get in touch with her, maybe even meet her. After five days of no sleep or bad sleep, I decided to email her. I had to find out why I was so taken with this woman I had never met.
After two glasses of pinot grigio, I finally worked up enough courage to email Aixa. “This is it,” I said out loud, even though no one else was there. Trying desperately not to sound like a stalker or worse, I told her about my retablo and asked if she could tell me more about it. I held my breath and hit Send.
Waiting for Aixa’s response was worse than a thousand bridal showers. I was distracted at work, distracted with Abel, and practically attached to my computer. When she finally wrote back, three days later, I was almost too nervous to read her message.
“Dear Sera,” Aixa wrote, “I’m glad you liked the retablo. I painted it three years ago, after I almost drowned in a lake near where I grew up. As the water pulled me deeper and deeper in, I saw the color of the sun through the water, and I heard the voices of children playing on the beach. No one saw me, and I was convinced I was going to die. I never paint anything about my life—I guess it’s corny—but I painted this right after. It was too personal to sell, so I kept it until now. I wanted to move on, so I sold it. Thank you for giving it a home.”
I had walked to the kitchen to look at the retablo again when my instant messenger dinged. I thought it was probably Abel IMing me. I’d been avoiding him. I checked the monitor: it wasn’t Abel IMing me, it was someone I didn’t know—La Vaquera. Intrigued, I sat down and read the message.
I scrunched my forehead a little bit.
I waited, watching my own message blink back at me. Finally, she wrote:
I exhaled. My fingers could barely type as quickly as I was thinking.
We typed back and forth for hours. She told me about her painting and I told her about my childhood. I felt as if I had always known her—as if I were speaking to her face-to-face despite the computer between us. I was so taken by our conversation that I didn’t even notice the faint line of sunlight through my window.
Being sleep deprived makes time slow and fast. It was all I could do, drinking espresso all day, to make it home to talk to Aixa again at six. I poured myself a glass of wine and logged on. Aixa was already waiting.
My heart beat faster, and I read her message again. She had dreamed of me? A typist who wrote her like some silly groupie?
I wondered if Aixa knew how much she was turning me on.
She was right.
I plunged my fingers deep inside myself, trying to keep up with Aixa, but I almost couldn’t.
I was desperate for her to go on.
Aixa had finally given me the okay, so I didn’t hold back anymore. I touched myself hard and fast until I came so hard it amazed me and froze me to my chair. Stunned, I sat in a stupor for a few seconds. This was the biggest climax I’d ever had on my own or with anyone else. Aixa had done this to me and she wasn’t even in the same room—or country for that matter. I was engaged, and there was Abel. I couldn’t think of anything to write Aixa.
Suddenly, an abrupt message came on the screen.
I shut my computer off without writing back and went to bed, exhausted, happy, but confused.
I woke up the next morning, then the next, and the next—determined to avoid Aixa and what had happened between us. I felt so guilty about betraying Abel that I went out and bought him expensive gifts and cooked him elaborate meals. At that moment, I would’ve done anything to erase Aixa.
Every day and every hour, Aixa emailed me; then, having discovered my phone number, she began calling. One morning at 3:30, Abel picked up the phone and, hearing yet another silence, slammed it down. Order after order of flowers—all calla lilies, beautiful and scentless—came to my house. Abel was already so suspicious that I threw them all out. Every time I turned on my computer, at work or at home, Aixa was there, IMing me only the question, “Why?” I recklessly pushed ahead the wedding by a month, surprising Abel who confessed he had thought I was having second thoughts and that he was about to lose me.
When three weeks had passed, I felt a certain calm come over things; perhaps everything would be fine. On the Saturday before the wedding, my doorbell rang early; it was the UPS man with a package for me. The package was slender and the handwriting on the address was a woman’s. Before I even opened the package or saw the postmark from Mexico City, I knew it was from Aixa. The package was a retablo , with a dark-haired woman looking out her window. The woman’s eyes were sad and turned down; you could see the faint glow of a computer screen in the corner of the painting coming from inside the woman’s house. The retablo’s dedication was in English: This woman gives thanks to the Virgin of Guadalupe for revealing to her Sera, with whom she shared much passion and amistad. She asks the Virgin to send her lover back to her, before it is too late. With thanks, Aixa Avila, May 6, 2004.
My hands were trembling as I held the retablo, causing the smallest flecks of paint to flutter off the tin. I couldn’t look at Aixa’s portrait of herself. I had begun to cry when I felt a heavy piece of paper taped to the back of the retablo. When I turned it over, I saw that the paper was a plane ticket for a flight from Phoenix to Mexico City. My heart seemed to stop. I pulled the ticket out of the Aero Mexico sleeve: the flight left that day, at two o’clock. The ticket was round-trip.
I remained there in my hallway for twenty minutes or more. I sat down and put my head in my hands. What was I doing with a plane ticket from a woman I’d never met, but to whom my whole body felt connected? My fiancé, who would be my husband in six days, was sleeping in the next room, unaware of everything that was unfolding in my head. As silently as I could, I pulled my smallest suitcase out of the closet and packed: a long dress, a nightgown, a hairbrush, and a bottle of perfume. I looked at my ticket again and suddenly understood how well Aixa knew me: if she had bought a one-way ticket, I would never have gone. As I closed the last dresser drawer, Abel’s eyes flickered and he stirred, but did not wake up. He was a good man and I had no right to hurt him, but I did not love him. He deserved someone who would move the earth to be with him: we all do.
I drove my car to the airport and parked it in a long-term lot. I half thought, Leave the keys in the car and leave the car unlocked. You won’t be coming back, but I didn’t trust the part of myself that said that. I checked in, bought a bottle of water, and sat down. Everyone around me—mothers, businesspeople with best-sellers and cell phones, old married couples—seemed so alien. I barely heard the gate attendant announce the boarding for my flight. When I got on the plane, I found that I had a window seat: Aixa must have known how motion sick I get, or she must have thought how lonely this flight would be, or how I’d like to watch one life disappear into another.
The plane took me from a place I had been familiar with to another climate and to a lover I had never met. In a few short hours, the landscape changed from tan to green. When the plane finally stopped, I was half frozen. What would be waiting for me at the other end of this terminal? I thought of Abel, who’d woken up hours ago and by now knew I was gone. I hadn’t even left him a note or an explanation. I pushed these thoughts down in my mind as I grabbed my bag and headed off the plane.
The airport was disorienting and the announcements and signs in Spanish seemed to swallow me. I stood in one place and looked around. Was this a joke? Aixa’s revenge for ignoring her for so long? I felt someone touch my shoulder from behind, and I knew it was Aixa. I didn’t need to turn around to know it was her, but I did. We stood there, silent, simply looking at each other for the longest time. She was shorter than I imagined, just a
few inches shy of my height of five foot ten. I had memorized her face from her retablos and her photo, but neither did her justice. Aixa’s eyes were almond shaped and green, as she had painted them, with flecks of silver and gold. Her dark hair was between black and brown, with wild waves that framed her face perfectly. Her cheekbones were strong and defined and her lips were the color of coral. Aixa’s skin was mocha and gold.
“So, you made it.” Aixa’s comment was not a question or a declaration: simply an observation. I could tell she was still guarded toward me, but happy that I was there. Neither of us made any movement toward the other: we did not touch, which seemed so strange after how intimate we had become. Without another word, Aixa picked up the bag from where I had put it down and motioned for me to follow.
When the sliding doors of the airport slid shut behind us, the humidity was suffocating. I had never felt the weight of a place so heavily. Aixa hailed us a cab and we drove in silence. Finally, she said, “We’re going to my home, in case you’re wondering…like the dream, but with no mojito.”
I was impressed by her grace, her self-possession, and her singular confidence. After twenty minutes, Aixa motioned for the cabbie to stop, thanked him in Spanish, and handed him a few bills. She took my bag and my hand: I felt her touch jolt all the way up my arm. I followed her over a small gravel path: her house was modest, but it suited her.
When we got inside, Aixa put my bag down on the floor. I almost expected us to rip each other’s clothes off in shreds right then and there. Aixa looked me in the eyes as if she saw this, gave a half laugh, and walked to the small kitchen, where she set a kettle of water on the stove. We sat at her table and drank coffee when it was ready. She was as brave as I had thought she would be. No matter how conflicted I was and how many people I had hurt—Aixa and Abel both—I was with Aixa: the beautiful drowning woman in the retablo , the painting that had brought me to her. As we continued to stare at each other in silence and silence only, not with hostility or even apprehension, I realized that if Aixa and I were to be anything to each other again I would have to make the first move. In her country and face-to-face, I didn’t feel like I could use any words. I would have to show her.