She raises three fingers and makes a circle with her thumb and forefinger: thirty minutes. Andres lets out an exasperated breath and Marabela stirs awake.
“What happened? Where’s Carla?”
“She’s fine. She got rid of a good-for-nothing boyfriend today,” Andres says.
“So he did do it?” There’s disappointment in her voice, as if she’d been hoping none of this was true.
Carla steps in front of Andres and sits on the floor next to her. “I’m so sorry, señora. I had no idea. To think I put you in danger after everything you’ve done for us . . . I’ll never forgive myself.”
“You’ll never have to because none of this is your fault,” Marabela says.
He wonders: if it’s not Carla’s fault, then whose is it? Andres steps back, feeling like he’s fading into the background, while Carla recounts the events of the day with his wife. The excitement in her voice angers him. This was his victory, his story to tell. He tries to read Marabela’s face when Carla gets to the part about them recovering most of the ransom, but she looks neither surprised nor relieved. The way she’s listening to Carla, looking in her direction but not at her, reminds him of when Marabela watches television just to pass the time.
Outside, the garage door rumbles open and Guillermo calls to the ladies from the kitchen. “It’s getting late. I should take you home.”
“Yes. Good night,” Andres says, almost too quickly.
When they’re gone, he sits next to Marabela on the couch. She tucks her feet away from him and asks him to turn on the lamp at his side. The sun has started to set, and though the house is not dark yet, it will soon sneak up on them gradually.
“I thought you would be happier that I got the money and the jewelry back,” he says.
“I’m not unhappy. I’m just . . . disappointed that you and Carla had to go through that.”
“It’s my own damn fault. I should’ve known better. It was too quick, too easy. I was stupid to fall for it.” Andres shakes his head, rubbing his thighs with his palms to wipe off their sweat.
She puts her hand on top of his and he holds still. “You only believed him because you wanted it to be true. You can’t blame yourself.”
Hearing Marabela say this, after wanting it so long, brings surprisingly little relief. Just because she says the words doesn’t make them true; he knows that.
“I’ll make things right, Mari. I know things weren’t right with us before. We can move forward. Start over. I believe that.”
She considers this. Her eyes shift to the yellow container on the table in front of them. “Would you be saying this if you hadn’t recovered the money?”
He hadn’t thought of it like that. He’d only thought about getting the ransom back, not so much for the money but because he’d needed to reclaim something, take back at least a part of what was taken from him. Now he’s not so sure it was enough. He feels unsettled and unsatisfied. The money will let them keep the kids in their schools, maybe get them out of having to sell the house, but alone it won’t be enough to save them. It’ll only buy them time, and what will they do when their time has run out?
“Show me. Show me the life you want instead, and I’ll do what I can to give it to you,” he says.
She only nods and covers her face with her hand, letting her fingers stretch from her cheeks to her forehead and, finally, over her hair. Because she hasn’t said no, Andres takes this as a yes. They will start over. There is life after the kidnapping, and they will go searching for it together.
11
MARABELA IS TRYING. Not in a way that anyone would notice, like holding Andres’s hand at the dinner table (she never did that, even when they were happy) or starting a conversation with him spontaneously. But in her own way she is making an effort to cover up the flaws in their relationship. Yesterday Andres made lunch, and instead of complaining that he overseasoned the meat, Marabela asked for another scoop of rice, which was bland and could use a little spice. She didn’t tell him to stop looking at her when he’d finished his meal and had nothing better to do as she caught up. At night, while he washes up before bed, Marabela fluffs his pillow. She’s not ready to let him into bed with her (some nights she wishes he would sleep in another room altogether), but making sure he’s comfortable seems like the kind of thing good wives do. She thinks she at least deserves credit for trying to play the part.
She’s not entirely convinced that a new start will solve things, but she’s willing to entertain the idea. It feels like an attempt to erase the past and she’s not sure how far back would be enough. Should they pretend she was never kidnapped? That she never tried to leave Andres? That ordeal was only a few months ago, but her reasons spanned further than that. When did she start doubting that she loved him? Somewhere along the way she realized that they were supposed to make a life together, and his had soared while Marabela felt she’d been left to wilt in the darkroom. She hated her own resentment of his success. He’d once been such a gentleman, so concerned with her happiness and well-being that he’d do almost anything to please her. Now, though the effort is still there, his ability to listen is gone. For their anniversary when he got her the darkroom, he was excited about Marabela staying home, yet not nearly as concerned with how she felt about her profession turning into a hobby. Still, she’d thought it cavalier that he’d turned her inability to find a job into an opportunity to indulge her passion for photography. He was always going out of his way for her . . . how could she have known he’d take it too far?
It got to be too much. She just needed to get away from him, decide what came next for her. But in the four days she was gone, Marabela realized she cared too much about him to hurt him. Maybe that was the problem, she’d thought the day she returned. They both cared too much, and it drove them to betray each other in ways they’d never imagined.
Marabela studies herself in the mirror as she waits for the water to warm, knowing that she’ll never again take this kind of small moment for granted. There was no running water available to her in captivity; what little water she got, she drank. It was always too warm, as if it’d been left in the sun for hours. Every once in a while, she’d use the last drops to rinse her hands of dirt and her own filth—she had little more than a roll of paper and an odd box with a hole in it to relieve herself. In those moments she’d learned that the deepest form of humiliation isn’t experienced in the eyes of others, but in the lonely desperation of oneself.
She tries concentrating on the shiny faucet knobs, the careful art of adjusting them just so. Control of the water temperature is a luxury; the bathroom, with its privacy, is a gift. Even when she closes her eyes, she can see the whiteness of the sunlight puncturing her eyelids, unable to block it out completely. She is thankful she will never be in such darkness again, but still her thoughts sneak back there sometimes, seeking the truths she got close to in silence. In a cold, dark room that she thought she’d never leave, she let herself be honest. She saw herself and her life for everything it’d become, and it was terrifying to find that kind of liberation in captivity.
Of course, she thought a lot about her children. She daydreamed about helping Cynthia with her homework in the afternoons. She longed for her drives with Ignacio (those quiet stretches of road on the way to the movies or a friend’s house), because even though she usually does most of the talking, every once in a while he says just the right few words to let her know he’s been listening.
But those were happy, easy thoughts, and her mind was like a child that needed a puzzle to pass the time. She and Andres were more than a puzzle; they were a giant knot that grew more complex at each tug. Always, at the end of the day, she turned to this.
Sometimes she tried convincing herself that there was one moment, one action, that destroyed their marriage. It was easier to blame Andres when she let herself feel the pain and anger brought by his actions, but even then, she knew it was anchored by years of truths and lies they couldn’t face. In the months before her kidn
apping, Marabela didn’t just wake up one morning and think she wanted to leave; she simply realized the time had finally arrived. Their marriage didn’t change from night to day; there were sunrises, and sunsets, and times when the sky was neither dark nor light, when the dawns and the dusks became indistinguishable from the constant fog they tried to ignore.
Being back a second time poses some familiar challenges. It’s like they’re living two separate lives under one roof. They’ve stood on the same ground without noticing a shift gradually pulling them apart. Now when Marabela rests her head at night, she tries to forget how small she feels when she looks at the ocean that swallowed them. She knows she won’t survive without hope in her life, so she holds her breath and gets ready to swim.
It doesn’t help that she no longer feels beautiful. Marabela has never thought of herself as vain, but beauty was a constant in her life, something she took for granted. When she can stand to look long enough in the mirror, she pulls at the skin on her face, surprised by how uneven it looks. She runs her fingers over her eyebrows, which are slowly reclaiming their natural shape, one uninvited hair at a time.
“These eyebrows need to be tamed,” she jokes on a morning she’s feeling surprisingly chipper. “That’s two—plural, for now. If I’m not careful they’ll grow into one.”
“You’ll still be beautiful,” Andres says.
“I bet Diego Rivera said that to Frida Kahlo and lived to regret it,” she says.
Andres laughs before going downstairs to prepare breakfast. Once in her robe, Marabela takes a pair of tweezers to the children’s bathroom. The light is better here, and if she leaves the door open, it shines in through the windows in the hallway. Bending over the counter with her elbow resting against it, she starts plucking her brows. It stings more than she remembers. Her eyes water; lone tears fall down her cheeks.
She’s almost done shaping her right eyebrow into a perfect arch when she catches Guillermo’s reflection in the mirror as he walks down the hall. It’s a small moment. If either of them had blinked, they would’ve missed it. But their eyes meet in the reflection. They see each other; then they look away. And then he’s walked on, out of the frame, and it seems that he’s picked up the pace a little, from one step to the next. It’s like they’ve seen something they weren’t supposed to.
Marabela wipes her right eyebrow with a tissue and starts on the left, pulling harder this time, relishing the tiny shocks of pain. Underneath her the floor reverberates with the steady rhythm of Andres making his way up the stairs. In an instant he’s at the bathroom door, his cheek and hand pressed against the threshold. He looks so eager and young.
“Did you want one piece of toast or two?” he asks.
She can’t help but smile. It’d be nice to join him in this innocence, to anticipate the start of a new day. How many years did she long for this simple kind of attention from him? Rather than dwell on the price they paid for this moment, she decides to embrace it.
“Maybe two,” she says, setting down her tweezers and tightening her robe. “Maybe later.”
For a moment Andres looks confused, but then Marabela takes his hand and walks him to their bedroom. She closes the door behind them and right away sees his breath catch. She can’t tell if he’s nervous or excited, then realizes she doesn’t know what she is, either. As she sits, Marabela pulls down on his hand. She lowers him to the edge of the bed, next to her. Still he keeps his distance.
“It’s okay,” she says, following his eyes to the window over their bed. The sunlight fills the room, but instead of closing the blinds she lies down. Holding on to his hand, she pulls Andres’s arm over her as if his body were a blanket.
He starts with small caresses along her arms and down to her hips, like he used to when they were young and still discovering each other’s body. She lets him chase the skin of her belly with his lips as it moves up and away from him with each quick breath. Exposed and cold, she revels in the warmth of his body against hers. Their love is quiet, maybe even desperate because of this, and it takes every inch of her by surprise. It’s been so long, it’s like embracing a stranger. She pulls at his hair, which feels finer than she remembers, and he silences his moans into the pillow beneath her, his breath warm and moist. He quickly forgets how careful he’s been with her, folding her legs over one side of her body, twisting her limbs to create new forms of entanglement, gripping at her hips for leverage. He moves as if trying to find something they’ve both been missing. Neither of them holds back.
When they’re done Marabela relaxes and slips into a new kind of ecstasy. Her body is finally free of tension and her mind free of thoughts. For moments she forgets herself, forgets where she’s been, forgets even the body lying next to her, sharing her bliss.
Today will be the first time she’s left the house in the sixteen days since she went to see the doctor. Andres doesn’t put it like that; he suggested an outing rather nonchalantly, a quick trip to the market to pick up some fresh produce for dinner. But Marabela recognizes this as a maiden voyage. She’s testing the world again, and she’s terrified of what might happen if it fails her. Andres looks so excited, humming as he pulls on his shoes with his plastic tortoiseshell shoehorn. It’s a pleasure to him—just another day. Marabela doesn’t want to ruin his good mood.
They leave as soon as Guillermo comes back from dropping the kids off at school, and Andres opens the driver’s-side door, announcing that he wants to take the wheel. Guillermo looks uncomfortable, not sure where he should sit if he’s not driving. Taking the backseat would make it appear he’s a guest, while taking the passenger seat would be presumptuous.
“I’ll go in the back,” Marabela says.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Andres says as they pull out of the driveway. The streets of their neighborhood have that midmorning emptiness; everyone is either at work or at school, and whoever else is out and about seems to be on a casual stroll. She envies these people the most because there is nothing casual about her life right now: her purpose today is simply not to die, not to panic, not to be taken.
“Isn’t it?” Andres says when Marabela doesn’t answer.
“Mm-hmm.” It was just as sunny the day she was kidnapped. She remembers when she felt the man push her against the wall at Andres’s office, how she’d been thinking she’d need a sweater soon, anticipating colder days ahead.
As they pass familiar sights like the park in the center of town, bright with freshly planted flowers, or the multicolored tents strewn across the market up ahead, Marabela sighs at how much it’s all changed. The outward features are the same, but she’s seeing it with different eyes. She sits back in her seat, pulling a shade over her window, dreading the moment when the car stops and she’ll have to step outside.
“I’ll drop you both off here while I find parking,” Andres says, stopping on a busy curb where people quickly start honking if a car stays motionless too long. This gives Guillermo and Marabela little time to protest. They jump out of the car as if it’s on fire, and Andres idles away, relieved to have this one moment to himself.
He meanders through the crowded parking lot and passes a couple of empty spots before realizing he missed them. His mind is simply elsewhere. Part of him feels like a teenager again, expecting the world to be different after sex, but the other part knows better. This morning was only a small step. It’s why Andres suggested they go to the market. He needs to keep pushing, needs to nudge things forward now that there’s a little momentum.
Recovering the first ransom has brought surprisingly very little relief. Ignacio keeps asking when he’ll hire Consuelo and Carla back. Cynthia wonders why her mother no longer takes her to the park in the afternoon. It’s like they’re waiting for the day when someone flips a switch and things are back to normal, but Andres can’t seem to find the switch.
He has tried being everything Consuelo and Carla were to Marabela, so she doesn’t have to lift a finger while she recovers. These are not easy tasks—he is learning and
fumbling through them as he goes. He has tried being a mother to Cynthia and a sympathetic ear to Ignacio, but all they have to do is glance in the direction of their parents’ bedroom, where Marabela spends most of her time, to know that his children are not fooled by imitations.
This morning was a sign that Marabela is ready to step outside of her comfort zone. After they made love he decided to seize her good mood, show her what life can be like with a little effort. It is a desperate attempt to get something out of her—a reaction, a smile, a tear—anything to tell him she’s willing to try living again. Because if she never leaves the house again, how is that freedom?
On Monday Andres will do something he’s never had to do before: he’ll begin searching for a job, for someone who will employ him. He tries to push the thought out of his mind and focus on the challenge at hand. Several yards ahead, a car backs out of a spot, and Andres flicks on his turn signal with an air of triumph. As he inches closer to it, the phone rings, startling him. He had almost forgotten about it altogether.
“Hello?”
“Oh, thank heavens I caught you,” Lorena says in one quick breath. Her voice makes him feel like he’s swallowed a rock.
“What is it? Did something happen to the kids at school? Are they all right?”
“I’m sure they’re fine. It’s Elena, dear. She tried to take her own life last night.”
Andres’s foot slams on the brake, bringing his idling car to a jolt. He’s in the middle of the road, unable to move, and already a car coming in the other direction has taken the spot he’d been eyeing.
“How could this happen? Weren’t they watching her? Wasn’t that the whole point of her being there?”
“I don’t know details, Andres. What’s important is that she didn’t manage it. But she’s not well.”
Chasing the Sun: A Novel Page 24
