by Samuel Park
“No, I didn’t lay a finger on her. I didn’t need to. She was very eager to find some way to profit from her information. And I was eager to put the information to use.” A shadow fell over my face. “Your mother . . . if she hadn’t helped me, the loss of the prisoners would’ve been a huge embarrassment. Instead, I destroyed them. I got promoted. She made my career.” His fixed stare made him look as if he could see all this unfolding in front of him, as if he had box seats for a screening of his life. “I was able to buy this house because of her.”
He spoke so plainly, as if talking about an office job, which perhaps, to him, was what it had been. A job that someone else would do if he didn’t want to. That this house, this life, was a hard-earned promotion.
I couldn’t stop shaking my head. “You’re a liar. I don’t believe you. You’re pretending you were not a torturer—”
“I was a torturer!” exclaimed Lima, widening his cloudy eyes. “And I would’ve tortured your mother, make no mistake. But I didn’t need to. She did my job for me!” Lima let out a small chuckle. “And at the time, I didn’t feel bad about stiffing her, but a man can change. And I was glad I was able to settle that old account. She deserved every penny.”
I shook my head. “But why would she lie? Why would she make those claims?”
“I don’t know. Because I’m an easy target?”
“Why would she pretend that she was tortured when she wasn’t?”
Lima shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe to get attention? Maybe to throw the rebels off the scent, so they wouldn’t suspect what she did? If the survivors had found out what she did, they would probably have killed her.” He kept unpeeling my mother’s story, down to the innermost pith. “But she didn’t need to worry. Those leftist groups, they would all have been captured anyway. They were always taking too many risks.”
“My mother would never have sent those men to their deaths.”
“No, she thought we were just going to arrest them. And we would have, if they hadn’t tried to escape.”
“That’s not my mother. The woman you’re describing, that’s not my mother,” I said, searching for a lie somewhere on Lima’s face. “She wasn’t an activist. She was an actress.”
“That’s how they recruited her, I remember,” he said, almost fondly. “They wanted her to play the part of a janitor who had overheard sensitive information. They wanted her to recite a little play with neither head nor toes. They didn’t count on your mother having her own goals. She did not want to be a part of their mission. She didn’t think prisoners should be able to escape just like that. Ana was on the side of the police. On the side of the dictatorship. On the right side.”
“Stop. Please stop,” I begged. “You have no credibility. You’re a known torturer.” I considered these facts, as if for the first time, and simply said, “I don’t believe you.”
“I am,” he said, nodding vigorously, “a torturer. That was my job and is now my reputation. But I didn’t torture your mother. She helped me, and I helped her. She collaborated with me. She was a collaborator.”
“You’re lying!” I screamed.
I ran, leaving Lima in the shade of his gazebo, Lazarus lingering by the gate. The driveway once struck me as a mile long, but I saw now it wasn’t much more than a few steps, the pebbles shifting under my feet. I could hear Lazarus calling out for me, but I ignored him, careening out on to the street. The rain puddles reflected a blinding sun, a blur of white blinding me as I raced away to the bear of my throbbing heart. I couldn’t slow all the feelings coursing through the city inside of me—the alleys, the avenues, the geography of my past. I joined the throngs of men and women marching along the busy boardwalk, my steps mingling with theirs, my body only one of so many in the late afternoon crowd—this crowd that absorbed me and made me both anonymous and whole. The ficus groves. The carpet of almond leaves. The heart-shaped leaves of a low hibiscus bough shimmying to some song whispered by the wind.
Before I knew it, I was at the beach, and I took my shoes off so I could walk on the white sand, the grains gluing like talcum to my callused feet. Dusk folded the last vestiges of sunlight in a neat peach-colored blanket. The air dry, electric, ripe for brushfires. I kept walking among the seaweed, the algae fronds manacling my ankles, my toes.
The high-rises of Rio de Janeiro loomed behind me, lit and fueled, born out of the dreams of people like my mother, and I wept for my loss.
Ahead of me, the sands stretched out for miles, undulating dunes, speckles of gold everywhere. The ocean water glistened in shades of emerald green, shiny as Mylar, the sun setting dramatically—an explosion of red and orange, the whole sky a dream, an abstract painting. In a short while, everyone at the beach would stop what they were doing to gather and clap for the sun as it dove into the water.
A torturer. A collaborator.
I sat by myself on one of the smooth black rocks by the cove and let the waves lullaby my crescent moon sorrow. I watched skiffs and boats pepper the pier in the distance. The booming voices of leather-skinned men echo, their shirts open, their ebb and flow matching the waves. The breeze tickled me like an old friend, my arms, my legs, my ankles, grazing against the fabric of my clothes.
I had the waning light. I had the perfumed air. I had the songs of the howler monkeys from the canopied trees. I had myself.
Bel Air, California
The early 1990s
Mara, age twenty-six
chapter ten
IN THE EVENING OF KATHRYN’S last day of radiation therapy, as if to mark the occasion, celebratory music drifted in from the tacky château across the street. I heard it from the kitchen, the whiplash of treble from the live band, the microphone echo.
I knocked on Kathryn’s open door, as a courtesy, and stepped in.
“The noise, is it bothering you?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe, both my arms and legs crossed. “Should I go over there and ask them to keep it down?”
Kathryn smiled and shook her head. “No. It’s a wedding. I mean, it’s a wedding reception.”
“Oh.”
“And it doesn’t bother me. I’m glad they’re having a good time.”
“That explains all the cars.”
“I was invited to it,” said Kathryn, a bit wistfully.
I sat down on the chair across from her. She was wearing a faded cream shirt with a black asymmetrical button line. She’d rolled up the sleeves. She looked ready for a meeting at a hip coffee shop instead of convalescing at home.
“Do you want to go?” I asked.
Kathryn gave me a look of surprise. “A second ago you were ready to shut down the party.”
“That’s before I knew you had been invited. I can see in your eyes that you want to go.”
“I’m too weak,” said Kathryn, her smile betraying her.
I leaned forward on the chair. “It’s just across the street. And you don’t have to dance or drink. You can sit around and listen to the music.”
“Do you think they’ll mind?”
I furrowed my brows. “You were invited, yes?”
“I was. But the Kathryn Weatherly they invited was a different person. If I show up like this, will they think I’m a fraud?”
“You’re being ridiculous,” I said, leaning my head to the side, as though looking at a crooked painting. “Everyone’s rooting for you.”
She looked at me unhappily. “Times like this I wish Nelson were here. He was good at parties. It was nice to have him by my side,” Kathryn said, noticing the sympathy on my face. “Sometimes when I’m honest with myself, I admit that it’s not really him that I miss. It’s love that I miss. Love with a capital L. I’ve never craved love more than I do now.”
She made her hand into a fist and pressed it lightly against her lips. “People think that when you’re sick, you want pity. But it’s not pity, it’s love. It’s the only thing that makes it more bearable. I wish people didn’t say, ‘I’m sorry,’ or ‘Oh, what a tragedy, I can’t imagine
what you’re going through.’ That just makes me feel bad for you, actually, that you have to deal with my sickness.” She looked out the window where more people were parking cars, arriving to celebrate. “I wish people would say instead, I care about you, or I love you. That way, I get something to hang on to, something in return.”
“Maybe someone will say that at this party,” I said. “I’ll come with you, if you’d like. You don’t have to go by yourself.”
Kathryn beamed. “Would you? You know, you’ve already won the Caregiver of the Year Award.”
I shrugged my shoulders and helped Kathryn get up from her chair.
“You don’t really want that award, do you? Do you by any chance not like being a caregiver?” asked Kathryn, looking at me with curiosity. “Because what a peculiar conundrum that would be, if you were so good at something you didn’t want to do.”
“It’s not that I don’t like it,” I said, helping Kathryn stand on her own two feet. “I just feel like I never got to choose.”
The neighbor’s estate was far larger than Kathryn’s, and had a pool and a tennis court he had transformed into a flower garden, with elaborate arrangements of roses and orchids adorning the tables, the entrances to the tents, and the trellised walls. The guests gossiped gauchely about the cost of everything; the budget of items seemed like public knowledge. They had spent ten thousand dollars on the flowers alone. We had missed dinner, but saw that they were served mushrooms as the appetizers and rack of lamb as the main entrée.
Kathryn sat down at the table we’d been hastily assigned to, with the other delinquents who hadn’t RSVP’d properly. We were seated quite far from the wedding party’s family, with a bunch of mismatched people, many of them there by themselves. Kathryn did not tell anyone about being sick, and no one asked. She looked thin, yes, but not dangerously so.
Soon after we arrived, a woman in a silk muumuu to the left of me took an interest in us and asked how the two of us met. She’d been a radio producer years ago and described herself as a “collector of stories.”
“She’s my adopted daughter,” Kathryn explained almost lightheartedly. “I figured, I didn’t want to raise a child, but I wanted one to take care of me in my old age.”
“You consider yourself old? You look like you’re in your forties,” the woman asked, slowly and clearly, as if talking into a microphone.
“I’m not her daughter,” I said, having to speak up a bit so I could be heard above the music. Kathryn watched us, and I made sure I directed a smile her way to take any sting out of my words. “I’m her caregiver.”
“She’s going through a rebellious period. Trying to get me to disown her,” said Kathryn.
The woman let out a hearty laugh, getting the joke at last. “How long have you two known each other?”
“About four months, but it feels like a lot longer,” I said.
I let Kathryn and the woman continue chatting. I felt a sudden warmth toward Americans as I watched them eat and drink. Americans were kind toward each other, trusted one another, did not have to worry about being cheated or lied to all day, every day. Their spirits were allowed to soar, unbound by the rapacity and hypocrisy of oppression. This party, filled with joy and celebration, was the very embodiment of the fruits of democracy—everyone free, smiling, unaware of how good they had it. How lucky I felt to be a part of it.
It turned out to be one of those evenings that had no end. As if night were a tall bottle of wine and because no one could find a cork, it kept spilling and spilling. The band gave way to a popular singer who’d been famous a decade ago and seemed overly excited and happy for the wedded couple. The party spread to the pool, the actual house, the endless slingshot-shaped gardens, transmitted by bodies contagious with curiosity and desire. Colored lights one-upped nature. I thought about my mother, what she would think of this party. She’d probably stuff her purse with chocolate truffles, down one glass of champagne after another. I could see her standing next to the staff area, so she could get first crack at the hors d’oeuvres.
Kathryn had not been out this late since her diagnosis. I looked around at all that she’d given up—festivity, merriment, the smiles of strangers. I could see the joys of life beckoning her back. She’d been sick in bed for so long, she’d forgotten all the things that she could do.
Like observe. Or take things for granted. Or waste time and space. Or walk around in the dark, arm in arm with her thoughts.
I wondered if anyone else at the party was like her—sick, but hiding it. Mistaken for healthy. I wondered if one of the people I’d recently honked at in traffic and given the finger to and cursed at had been a sick person like her. I wondered how many times I had stood in line at the grocery store next to a woman who only had a couple of years left in her.
What a pleasure it must be for Kathryn, to convene amidst the healthy, to pass herself off with the guile of a spy, to pretend with everyone else that they were immortal. It occurred to me that it cost her nothing to think like that, whereas being conscious of her impending mortality cost her, well, everything. What if, I wondered, Kathryn believed herself immortal until the very last minute, the minute right before it all came to an end? What if she saved her sorrows and her grief and her turmoil until then?
I could tell how much Kathryn wanted to stay at the party, how she had wanted to come, desperately, all along. She wasn’t really doing much—not dancing, not drinking—just standing by the pool watching inebriated people, letting me take surreptitious trips to nearby tables for champagne and tuna tartare. But I could tell her mind was flush with the busyness of life.
Life is a party. I’d seen the cliché before, in a card sold in the knickknacks and novelties section of a clothing store, the words imprinted in a silly font, or maybe in the eleven o’clock number of some spirited Broadway musical. A party.
Some people had to leave in the beginning. Some people left in the middle. Some people got to stay until the end. But everyone got to be in it, at least for a part of it, and wasn’t that what mattered? And maybe getting to stay to the very end, blissfully hungover, was a luxury rather than a right, a quirk of stamina and genetics and luck. Yes, it would be lovely to stay until the end, but even if you didn’t, you got a chance to taste its flavors, to mingle with its strange creatures, to try out new tricks.
It wasn’t that big of a deal. No need to cry, no reason to be mad. It was just a party that some were asked to leave early. My mother, Kathryn—they had been tapped on the shoulder, singled out for some unknown reason. We would linger, watching them go.
I brought Kathryn some tuna tartare as she rested on a leather cube by the pool, her eyes glazed. I sat next to her, following her gaze—the ripples in the water, the tiki torches, the colored lights reflecting purple and red.
“I don’t want to die,” said Kathryn, watching the light flicker across the pool’s surface.
“I know,” I said.
“I want to be here next year, and the year after, and the year after that.”
“You will,” I said. “I’m a witch. Didn’t I already tell you that? I can see the future and I can see you in it. I see you alive. And healthy. And happy.”
“Do you?” asked Kathryn, turning to me. She had spilled a pink dot on her cream shirt and her lips looked painted red from too much wine.
“I do. You’re going to be fine, Kathryn.”
“I don’t want to go. I don’t want to die,” she kept muttering, on the brink of tears. I drew her closer to me and, for the first time since we’d known each other, I let her head lean against my shoulder. The physical proximity of comfort. She let her tears stream down her face, contour the curve of her chin, and fall onto the concrete in intermittent drops, oblivious to the party around us.
I ran my hand up and down her arm. “You’re going to be okay.”
“It’s not because I’m still hoping to climb Mt. Everest,” she murmured wistfully. “Or because I want to win Miss Universe. It’s not because I love to dan
ce, or because I’ll miss the music of Bono, or because I haven’t been to Vienna yet. It’s not because I’ll miss my favorite flavor of ice cream.” She dipped her hand into the pool. “There’s no why I want to stay. I just do.”
Even near the end, even during the worst days of her disease, my mother and I never spoke like this. But of course she must’ve ruminated on what it would’ve meant for her to stay alive. I thought now of all she did to keep herself—to keep us—alive, her nearly primal desire to survive.
“You don’t have to have a reason,” I said softly. “No one wants to die. And no one your age should ever have to think about it.”
“I’m glad I’m still considered too young to die,” said Kathryn, wiping her tears, and half hiccupping, half chuckling.
Then she got up, and, without excusing herself to me, faced the pool. She wasn’t wearing a swimsuit, of course, just a cream charmeuse shirt she’d rolled up to her elbows, and a brown skirt. She put a foot in. Then another. She let the expanse of blue reach up to her ankles, then up to her knees. Finally, as people nearby started to notice her, she allowed the pool to wet her skirt, soaking from the waist down. I suspected she liked the feeling of wading through water, fighting its pull. All around her there were guests and none seemed to mind sharing the moon and the water with her. She didn’t care about her low white blood cell count, or the risk of infection, or how it would take hours to warm herself up. It was so simple, to just let the water push firmly against her.
The next day, I watched as Kathryn sat on the edge of her chair, surprised by how hungrily—how suddenly—she clung to existence.
All of life’s routines now felt precious to her. Like looking out the window and seeing the manzanita and snowberry trees brightly illuminated by the sun, feeling its warmth.
All she wanted was to be in a room, in a comfy chair, and able to breathe. That was enough. That was life. Those were riches. What could be more wonderful than to sit in a chair and say, I am alive, I am here.
