Chasing the Sun: A Novel

by Natalia Sylvester

  Consuelo walks by quietly with his drink, on her way to his office, then takes a few steps back toward the bedroom. She hesitates to come in.

  “What is it?” Andres says.

  “Your drink. And dinner is ready. Would you prefer I wait—”

  “No, no. I’m sure the kids are hungry by now. Marabela will probably just have coffee and toast later this evening.” He pictures his wife dipping her folded slice of buttered bread into her coffee with milk, as she’d done when they were newlyweds. Back then, they’d had a smaller kitchen and sat so close together her elbows would gently jab at him if she so much as stirred her drink. These days, he mostly watches Marabela from across the head of the table, marveling at how she holds the cup as if it weighs nothing at all. Watches how she wipes both corners of her mouth every few bites, how she turns away on the rare occasion that she accidentally slurps.

  Andres glances at the clock and feels his nerves settling into his stomach. He hears the soft clatter of serving dishes downstairs as Carla brings the food to the table, and he pictures Marabela’s chair empty, like a jacket missing a button.

  “How was school today?” he asks when he reaches the table. The kids are still in their uniforms—Cynthia in a navy-blue jumper with a white collared shirt underneath, and Ignacio in gray pants and a black sweater that displays his school emblem on the right side of his chest—so it seems like an appropriate way to start a dinner conversation. It’s the kind of question he’s heard Marabela ask for years, except she usually adds specifics like teachers’ names and homework assignments.

  Both the kids have a mouthful of food, and they know better than to answer immediately. Andres begins answering his own question to fill the silence. “Well, Ignacio and I had a great meeting with a new client today. He finally got a chance to see what it is your father does,” he tells Cynthia. He sometimes wonders if she understands his work at all, or if at eight, she’s still too young to grasp it. “Maybe next time you can come with me. I was just about your age when I started visiting my father at work.”

  “Will I get a sticker?”

  “A sticker?”

  “Mom says you make stickers,” Cynthia says, pointing to the Inca Kola on the table, its yellow-and-blue label wrapping neatly around the bottle of golden soda.

  Andres laughs. “It’s something like that. ‘Stickers’ is a very simple way of putting it, though. Son, why don’t you explain to your sister what we do? Tell her about today?”

  Ignacio chews his food slowly, staring at his father with a hint of suspicion in his eyes. “He’s going to create labels for cans of peas and corn, or something like that. Mom can explain more to you later. Where is she?” he says, turning to his father at the last question.

  “She had too much to take care of downtown. She called to say she’ll be home late tonight.”

  Ignacio sits up. “But before ten, right?”

  “Of course,” Andres says, his mind already racing for an excuse in case Marabela doesn’t come home before curfew. It’s the third time in six years that the government has implemented a citywide curfew, but Andres knows his son was too young to remember the first two. This time, Ignacio’s well aware. He’s taken an interest in scanning the papers for any mentions of the Shining Path, pounding his fists and mumbling obscenities under his breath when he learns of another car bomb or fire that the guerrilla group has unleashed. When President Fujimori declared no traffic would be allowed between ten at night and five in the morning, Ignacio yelled, “¡Bien hecho!” at the television screen, as if he’d just seen his favorite soccer team score a goal. Andres isn’t so worried about the bombs—they’re always happening to other people, to police stations in slums and near government buildings—as he is about knowing his son will stay up, head glued to the window, waiting for Marabela’s car to show. The boy is more like his father than he’d care to admit.

  “You know how busy she gets when these charity galas are approaching. She mentioned that if she didn’t get done in time, she’d stay overnight at one of the committee members’ houses so they can work through the night.” He tries to make it sound like this is the most normal thing in the world, like Marabela’s done this countless times before. His son looks like he’s about to protest until Andres glances at Cynthia and back in a silent plea.

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” Ignacio says, with a light sarcasm only Andres catches.

  DAY 2

  In the morning, Andres’s instinct is to roll onto Marabela’s side of the bed and search for her with his touch. Even after months of sleeping in separate beds, it’s a habit he hasn’t been able to break in this half-awake, half-asleep state. She has always been the anchor that bridged his dreams with his reality, and it’s not until he opens his eyes and focuses on the folded bed against the wall, still untouched since yesterday, that he gets reacquainted with the present. She didn’t even call, he thinks, though he’s unsure it would’ve made this less painful. Again, he tries to think of what he’ll say to the children when they ask for their mother. Again, he imagines they won’t believe him.

  Andres tries to get up, but he’s not ready to face this day. He has little hope left, but even a shred of optimism is enough in this quiet moment before the day starts, so he lies still and listens for the sound of Marabela’s car in the driveway. Minutes pass in silence, and he resigns himself to the nagging suspicion that he’s always had her on borrowed time. The clues seem obvious in retrospect. From the beginning, he and Marabela have never even looked like they belonged together. She is all contrasts: her lips soft but her cheekbones sharp, her height negligible but her presence difficult to ignore. Lush, dark lashes frame her gaze, giving it a piercing intensity.

  When Andres looks at his children, all he sees is Marabela. Her features are so prominent they easily overpower his. Hints of Andres—Cynthia’s upper lip, thin as a crescent moon; Ignacio’s freckles, only noticeable in the summer—are quickly glazed over as strangers swoon over Cynthia’s long, curly lashes and Ignacio’s heavy brows. They pause to look at Marabela, as if comparing a photo to its painting, and then they look blankly at Andres, shocked to learn that he is their father.

  Andres knows he is not an unattractive man; enough women have tried (and failed) over the years to prove it to him. But there are moments when he wonders if his appeal is only an illusion created by wealth and confidence. Maybe he’s like a piece of furniture that arrives in boxes, nothing but unimpressive parts until someone puts them together. So he tries to look put-together. A buttoned-up suit hides his growing waist. A well-groomed beard traces his chin and connects to his mustache, hiding the round edges along his neck.

  There has never been any hiding from Marabela. He may have been younger and his body much firmer when they first met at the university, but even then Andres knew she saw through him—every insecurity and white lie to impress her exposed. He often joked that he had to become a better man to win her over, something he used to thank her for regularly. But it’s been years since either of them cracked a smile at this quip, and Marabela always says that things are funniest when they have hints of truth to them. Perhaps, he thinks, they’re also saddest when that truth has faded.

  Enough putting off the inevitable. Andres puts on a robe and heads to the kitchen. As he walks down the stairs, he decides he’ll catch up on work from home today. He’ll wait by the phone like a teenager, and when Marabela calls, he’ll promise to do it right this time, go anywhere she wants on vacation, just the two of them. He can already hear the pleading in his voice, useless. If Marabela’s made up her mind, there’s little he can do to change it.

  “Where’s Mami?” Cynthia asks the instant she sees him. Andres merely kisses her on the forehead and squeezes Ignacio’s shoulder with one hand. His son leans over a bowl of cereal, reading a paperback sci-fi novel that is so thick he can’t hold it up with one hand. He mumbles good morning without even looking up.

  “How did you sleep?” Andres asks them. If he’s to pretend this
is just another morning, better to keep the conversation small and meaningless.

  Ignacio shrugs.

  “Where’s Mami?” Cynthia asks again.

  “Your mother had an early appointment this morning. She told me to give you a kiss and make sure you ate all your breakfast.”

  This seems to satisfy Cynthia, who crams such a large spoonful of cereal into her mouth that pieces of it fall out as she chews.

  “Cuidado,” Andres says. He wipes her mouth, once on each corner of her lips, and tells her to take smaller bites. When she barely scoops two flakes and a raisin onto her spoon, Andres can’t help but laugh. This must be what Marabela meant when she told him, not even three nights ago, that Cynthia’s been taking things to a literal extreme as of late.

  “I told her to stop running in the house and she practically slowed to a crawl,” Marabela said. She was rubbing lotion onto her arms and elbows, part of her evening ritual before bed. “If I tell her not to slouch, she stands up rigid as a board. The other day I reminded her it’s rude to sing at the dinner table, and the next day I caught her telling the same thing to her dolls as she served them tea. It’s the weirdest kind of quiet rebellion. I can’t tell if she’s mocking me or trying to make me happy.”

  “From the smile on your face, I’m guessing it’s the latter,” Andres said.

  “She gets smarter and sharper every day.”

  They’d left it at that and gone to bed their separate ways, Andres trying hard not to move much in the foldout bed (the temporary bed, as he called it) because it made too much noise. Despite their new living arrangement, the one thing that hasn’t changed is their late-night talks about the children, and for that, Andres is grateful. He can’t imagine feeling like much of a father without Marabela.

  “What’s so funny?” Cynthia says now, her spoon still hanging in the air.

  “Nothing. It’s just . . . you’ll never finish your breakfast like that.”

  “Apúrate, Cynthi,” Ignacio says. “We’ll be late for school. Jorge’s already outside.”

  Andres leans back in his chair and looks through the kitchen. The door to the garage is open and through it he can see Jorge wiping the car down and checking the tire pressure, keeping busy as he waits for them.

  “Brush your teeth first,” Andres says, trying his best to channel Marabela’s authority and confidence without sounding like he’s imitating her. For a moment he swears he sees a flicker of confusion on Cynthia’s face, as if he were speaking to her in a foreign language, but then Ignacio taps her on the back and she seems to understand again. They return a few minutes later to kiss him good-bye, their breath cold with mint. The kiss is a habit, a quick check for keys on one’s way out the door, but Andres finds himself already missing them as they go.

  After breakfast and back at his desk, he notices the mail has arrived early. At the very top of the pile is a blank envelope with only his first name, written in all capital letters on the back. It looks odd and bare next to the other envelopes that have been stamped and scribbled on. He opens it, thinking it’s probably a note from a neighbor complaining about noise or wanting to borrow some tools, but before he’s even unfolded the thin sheet of paper, he recognizes Marabela’s penmanship. The hurried curves of the letters are hers, but there is something different about them, as if she wrote them on a train or a bus. The note is short:

  Querido Andres,

  I’m being held by three men who say they’ll keep me safe as long as you cooperate. They say that means no cops and no media. They say they’ll call when they’re ready to talk to you. Kiss our children for me and tell them not to worry. Keep me in your thoughts as I will be keeping you in mine.

  Marabela

  Andres reads the letter three, four times, until he realizes that what he sees in her handwriting is fear, the trembling of the pen. He reads it until he can hear her whispering the words in his mind, in that same low voice she used when she told him they’d become the most disappointing versions of themselves, just before her last disappearance. He memorizes the letter. Suddenly, he wishes Marabela had actually left him instead of being taken.

  He thinks again of the last words he said to her, turned into a promise.

  I’ll do everything I can.

  Andres has never dreaded something and hoped for it at the same time. If the phone rings, and Marabela really has been kidnapped, he will know that this is real. In this moment when he has never felt more incapable and ill equipped, her life depends entirely on his careful handling of this phone call.

  All he knows is that he has to do something. He rushes to the stairs and calls down to the maids. There is some commotion in the kitchen, followed by the sound of their heels tapping against the living room tile as they rush to the bottom of the stairs. Consuelo wipes her hands on a washcloth that hangs by her waist as she looks up at him. Carla looks to Consuelo.

  “No one answers the phone today. Under any circumstances. I’ll pick it up when it rings, got it?”

  They both nod. Curiosity spreads across their faces but they don’t dare ask for an explanation.

  “Please bring me a drink in my office,” Andres says to Consuelo. She nods but keeps her eyes on him just a second too long, as if trying to search his face for clues about Marabela. He’s not comfortable enough with Consuelo to try communicating without words, with some silent language she and Marabela seem to share. Ever since Andres can remember, the maids were thought of as employees, not confidantes. Since Marabela never grew up with maids, she was ignorant to the natural hierarchy; they share an odd bond, developed over the seventeen years Consuelo’s worked for them, that he’s never fully understood. Only Marabela can tell the girls the food is too salty in one breath and ask about their families in the next. He knows she collects Ignacio’s old clothes in plastic bags and sends them home with Consuelo for her grandson. She also listens to their stories—how Consuelo once owned a restaurant with her husband, how the great earthquake of 1970 shook its walls so hard they were left with nothing but dust—and retells them to Andres at night. Marabela is the one who asks how the maids are doing and genuinely wants to know. He catches himself envying them sometimes, how they can hold her full attention, even if just for a few seconds, while he’ll often talk to her for minutes and wonder if she’s listening. Two days ago, when Carla mentioned she had a toothache, Marabela ordered her medication from the pharmacy. She was supposed to pick it up after her quick stop at Andres’s office yesterday. She was planning on taking Carla to the dentist next week.

  He keeps himself busy reading reports and contracts from work, rereading entire paragraphs three or four times because his mind is elsewhere. An hour goes by before the phone rings. Until now, Andres has never noticed how the sound disrupts the entire house. His fingers rest on the receiver while he lets it ring once more, and it sends a vibration up his arm. When he speaks, the words scrape against his throat.

  “Hello,” he says, with an exaggerated authority in his voice.

  “You were expecting us by now, Señor Jimenez. This is a good start.” The man sounds chipper, excited even; his words are light but Andres can feel their meaning in his chest. Gripping the phone, he brings his forehead to the edge of the desk, staring at the ground like a drunkard who’s trying to keep balanced.

  “I want to talk to her,” Andres says.

  “I didn’t call to take your demands.”

  “You can’t possibly expect to make any if you can’t prove that she’s safe,” Andres says, each word confirming a new fear as he speaks. He’s surprised by the steadiness of his voice, his ability to reason with such madness. Perhaps the panic will come later, but for now he tries to stay strong.

  The man chuckles, and then it sounds like he dropped the phone or like he stuck it in a dryer, because for seconds all Andres hears is rustling and faraway voices. He hears a faint noise, a weak version of Marabela’s voice. It takes a moment for the recognition to sink in.

  “Andres?” Marabela repeats his na
me for the third time.

  “Mi amor.” He hasn’t called her that in years. “How are you?” A stupid question, followed by silence. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” He can hear her tears, her fear, her anger, and her desperation all mixed into that one word. Her breath trembles through the phone line like static. “I’m not, but—”

  “That’s enough,” the man says. He is so confident and calm. “This can all be very simple if you want it to be. That means keep quiet. No police or media. We’ll need your cooperation, Señor Jimenez, ¿entiendes?”

  “Está bien,” he says, though things are far from fine. “What do you want?”

  The man speaks slowly and clearly to get his point across. He is not even done saying the number before Andres knows it is more than he has, more than he can imagine making in a year, especially in American dollars.

  “You must have the wrong impression of me. I don’t have a million dollars. I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Then you better start thinking of ways to get it.”

  “There must be another way,” Andres says, tossing numbers around in his head. He tries to think of one that is close and in the least bit feasible, but it’s only a fraction of what the man is asking. He tries to tell the man that the sum is impossible, but the line has already gone dead, monotone. The last thing the man said is that he’ll call again.

  It takes Andres a few moments to hang up the phone, and when he does he hears the clink of an ice cube in a glass. Consuelo stands at the threshold of his office, her foot in the air as she tries to step backward. He signals for her to come in with one hand, watches as she lowers the glass and sets it on a coaster, how the gold liquid trembles in her grasp.

  “How long were you there?” he asks.