Chasing the Sun: A Novel

by Natalia Sylvester

  “He said, ‘Scream and it’ll be your last. No one will help you.’ He was so confident. I actually thought that maybe people had seen him do this before, in this very spot, and they’d heard the screams and just walked right by, pretending not to see.

  “The car behind me, its tires hadn’t screeched at all, while the sound of mine could have woken up the whole neighborhood. I only noticed that later, looking back, and I realized it should have been a warning sign that the accident was planned.”

  Elena reaches for Andres, and he realizes that he’s been so afraid to move that his whole body hurts. His face feels like it’s made of plaster. He takes a deep breath and squeezes her hand, just once, silently reassuring her to go on.

  “So the man in the second car gets out and helps the guy who’s holding my head on the hood of the car. I can see him grabbing my purse and looking for my wallet. Then they trade, handing me off, and now I’m in the backseat of a four-door car, shoved down on the floor. I threw up the second I got in there. As the driver’s friend covered my head with a sack, he said, ‘Better hold it in this time, or you’ll be floating in your own vomit.’

  “That’s when I started counting. I thought I could gauge how far we were going, but I lost track around twenty-five hundred.

  “I swear, I’ve never had my heart beat so fast for so long before. By the time we arrived wherever they took me, I was close to passing out. They carried me out of the car like a cardboard package.”

  Andres wants to tell her that she doesn’t have to go on, but she looks so determined.

  “Then it was nighttime, and I didn’t see daylight again for five weeks. The first night, they just left me alone, and I worried about the silliest things. I worried that my parents would think I was mad at them because I never showed at their house for dinner. Or that someone would take my sewing machine from my car and I’d have to take it back to get fixed again. I think my mind was rejecting the truth. Of course I was scared, but it wasn’t the same kind of fear I felt once they came back the next morning. That was . . . unimaginable.

  “There were three men. At least, I only saw three men. Sometimes I thought I heard other voices but I couldn’t be sure if my mind was playing tricks on me. The first time they beat me, they ripped my clothes. I think they did it so they could show my bruises in the pictures. They had one of those instant cameras. I didn’t eat for days, until they said they’d beat me even harder if I didn’t. They had this one guy—a short, skinny young guy—bringing me food, and he’d beg me to eat, beg me to not make them hurt me again. You know what’s crazy? In that misery you cling to any semblance of kindness. Something that would normally make you spit in a person’s face gets magnified into a kind act. I trusted this guy, so I ate. After a week or two and beatings two or three times a day, they brought the pencil and paper, asked for names. I know I told you this part already. I just . . . it’s not that I didn’t believe them. It’s that I didn’t believe God could ever betray me so much. And you know I’ve never been that religious but . . . I thought, This doesn’t happen to people like me.

  “And then that short, skinny young guy was the first to take his turn with me. Even after I gave them a dozen names. I couldn’t believe I ever saw any trace of kindness in him. I felt like the world’s biggest fool.

  “When I got back, I asked about Marabela as much as I could without people wondering what I was up to. I asked after all the people whose names I gave up. I know you’ll say I should’ve warned you, and I don’t know why I didn’t.

  “I know I’ll never make it right. God, I wish I could. I try to tell myself Marabela is stronger than I am; but I thought I was stronger than this, too, and look what happened. She’s safe and she’s home but I know that’s not enough. What if she ends up like me, Andres? What if she just—”

  “She won’t. And you’re going to get better. Is that—is that why you did this? Because of Marabela?”

  But she’s too exhausted to answer. Elena’s head falls back on the pillow. He sees her mouth move, but no words come out. He holds a straw to her lips. Her mouth curls as she sips and her eyes stay on his face, unblinking. Even at her most vulnerable, Elena is beautiful, like a statue sculpted tenderly from stone.

  Finally, she shakes her head, full of sympathy. “I didn’t do it because of Marabela.”

  “Then why?”

  “It was the memories. Seeing you again. Realizing what I missed. There’s so much I’ll never get back.”

  “Don’t think like that. There’s still so much ahead,” Andres says. His eyes are starting to water.

  But Elena only shakes her head again. “I thought I’d rather be nothing than be so alone.”

  There’s nothing he can say that would be right. “There has to be something more,” he says, more to himself than to Elena.

  Now she’s the one who comforts him; she brings him back to this moment with her touch. “Do you know how they say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die?”

  There’s a tinge of excitement in her voice. He nods, defeated.

  “That’s not how it happens. You get one moment, relived. It’s not a moment that sums things up. It’s the one when you felt most alive. It’s cruel, if you think about it. ‘Here’s one last taste of what you’ll never again have.’ It’s small, too. It’s one you never thought you’d remember, but then you can’t imagine letting it go.”

  She brings her hand to his chin, tilts his face up so he’ll look at her.

  “Mine was of us,” she says. “It was that time we were seventeen, and we were walking back to the bungalow at the club. It was night and the wind blew away my scarf and we ran after it, past the gazebos and the pool lights, into the ocean. I was scared, and cold, and amazed. Nothing had happened to me yet, but anything could’ve. And if you suspend that moment, stretch it out just as we were, waiting . . . that’s what it was like when I was dying.”

  The room where Marabela waits with Lorena sitting across from her, both trying their best to pretend this isn’t an extraordinarily uncomfortable situation, is unlike any hospital waiting room she’s ever been in. There are tables piled high with magazines that nobody reaches for. The television is on but the volume is turned so low that all Marabela catches is an accusation here and there, shouted by an angry soap opera actor. Rows of thinly cushioned metal chairs are arranged one after the other, all facing a large window that overlooks a living area for the patients.

  Marabela stands up from her chair to get a closer look through the glass. It’s lined with thin metal wires that form small Xs across the entire surface, like a very delicate fence. On the other side, the people don’t look the way she expected they would. They’re not in wheelchairs, or wearing robes, or talking to themselves. They wear scrubs like the nurses do, except theirs are white, but even in uniform each finds a way to stand out. The middle-aged man who sits by the window with a deck of cards wears his pants rolled halfway up his calves. A woman, maybe ten years older than Marabela, turned her shirt into a tank top by tucking the sleeves under her bra straps. She tiptoes across the lounge, stopping every few tables to whisper something in another patient’s ear. Nobody pays attention.

  She hears Lorena give a deep, loud sigh behind her. “It makes you wonder if they were crazy before they got here or if being here drove them to it.” She makes no effort to keep her voice down. Marabela considers shushing her mother-in-law, but realizes there’s no one around to hear them.

  “That’s cruel,” she says, thankful that despite never getting along with her mother-in-law, they were at least always honest with each other. It’s strangely refreshing. When Marabela and Andres arrived at the hospital, there was little time for reintroduction. Andres gave his mother a quick kiss and asked if he could see Elena on his own. The two women took their seats, each facing the other, but neither looking straight ahead. Finally Lorena uncrossed her legs and said, “You look well, Marabela.”

  “Thank you.”

  Now Lorena jo
ins Marabela by the window. “I don’t say it to be cruel. But if it were me, I would hope my family would respect my madness enough not to put it on display. Better to hide it at home.”

  Feeling Lorena’s eyes on her, Marabela crosses her arms and keeps her gaze on the other side of the glass. She wishes she were wearing a sweater, because suddenly she feels exposed. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Hiding? Did Andres say something?”

  “You know he would never betray your privacy like that. But, if you were . . . nobody would blame you.”

  “And you?”

  “I said nobody would blame you.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “I suppose not, when you put it like that.” Lorena takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “I wouldn’t blame you. I would . . . I would feel very sorry for you.”

  “That’s worse,” Marabela scoffs.

  “Who can help it? In my old age I’ve learned two things: One, nothing is ever as it seems. And two, people are much more empathetic than we realize. Even a bitter two-faced witch like me.”

  Marabela winces at the mention of a name she called Lorena years ago.

  “People will feel for you what they think you feel for yourself. It’s that simple. Look at poor Elena.”

  Marabela tilts her head and closes one eye, focusing on the wire mesh in front of her. She can’t stop wondering which side of the glass she belongs on.

  13

  ANDRES GETS HOME early in the morning, just as the curfew is lifted. He stayed with Elena after Lorena offered him her car, saying that it was important for him to be with her and that she would get a ride home with Marabela. In their hushed corner of the waiting room, where people kept their voices low and braced themselves to see damaged loved ones, Marabela hadn’t felt right protesting. What if she, too, needed Andres’s support and attention? Was is not important for him to be at his wife’s side?

  Marabela hears the click of the lock in the front door and her husband tiptoeing through his own home like a bandit. When he comes into the room, she is lying on her side of the bed, facing the door, her eyelids fluttering even though they’re shut. She hears the closet creak and knows his back is to her, so she opens her eyes. She watches her husband undress with disinterest. His body has changed so much over the years. His muscles look softer and less defined, as if they’ve grown tired of holding him together. Andres takes off his pants and loses his balance, grasping at the bed to avoid falling. It shakes her, but she only twitches and turns around in a sleepy, clumsy motion to sell the lie that she’s not awake. She feels the sheets next to her being pulled over, the cold air brushing against her legs, and then the weight of his body, climbing into bed.

  “What are you doing?” Marabela sits up, holding the covers against her skin. Her sudden movement makes Andres jump back and hit his foot against the closet door. He holds his heel in one hand, grimacing from the pain.

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I heard you coming in.”

  “Oh. I just thought you’d be more comfortable if you weren’t alone.” He sits on the edge of the bed.

  Marabela still hasn’t moved. “You don’t have to do that. I’ve been fine when you slept on your own bed.” She tries not to look at the hurt expression on his face.

  “I thought we’d moved past this.”

  “Past what?” She hates it when he does that. He speaks about it like it’s forbidden, like it’s a superstition, or a curse.

  “Don’t be difficult, Mari. I’m just trying to get things back to how they used to be.”

  She lies back on the bed, diagonally. “How they used to be was that you slept on your bed, and I slept on mine. Don’t try cuddling with me all of a sudden just because you feel guilty.”

  He gets up and fluffs his pillow. Even in the silence, she can feel him gathering his thoughts.

  “I hoped you wouldn’t wake up when I got home,” he says, his voice resigned.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I hoped I wouldn’t have to face you. I wake up early every morning and take a walk, and I actually miss going to work, getting stuck in traffic, because it means I don’t have to see you like this.”

  He looks disappointed when she doesn’t respond, realizing he has no choice but to continue. “So I walk around, and I ask myself if it was my fault, and I play back the events of the day you were taken, and I wonder what I could have done differently if I was there, and nothing is ever good enough. I try to make myself feel better by focusing on the happy ending: you’re safe now, you’re home. But it’s like you’re not really here.”

  Tears build up in Marabela eyes, burn, then fall on the pillow. “You left me there longer than you had to,” she says. “I knew you wouldn’t want to part with your money, even if it meant getting me back.”

  “That’s not fair. Listen to what you’re saying, Mari. What man would want to be put in that position? What, did you expect me to be happy about it? To give up so easily like I had no other options? No, but I did it. I did what I had to do.”

  “Then what took you so long?” She stands up, pacing the room, shouting even though everyone in the house is sleeping. She has to take a moment to control herself to keep from waking the kids. “Did you need some time to build up the courage? Did you think those extra days you needed would pass as quickly for me as they did for you?”

  When Andres starts to cry, his tears are too late. She hates that this is who she’s become.

  “Tell me how to fix it, Mari. I’ll do it, I swear, I don’t care what it is.”

  “You keep saying that. You talk like you won’t hesitate to do what you have to do. I wish I trusted that were true.”

  “I just did what I was told. It was the best I could do. I know this is hard for you to believe, but not one second of this was easy for me. We all suffered with you.”

  Marabela climbs back into bed and turns away from him, pulling the covers over her shoulder as if she’s trying to flip the page of their conversation. “Yes, I’m sure that’s why you decided to go back to Elena. That must have been such a difficult decision for you.”

  He looks down and nods, a sad understanding finally sinking in at the mention of Elena’s name. She’s a wound that has never quite healed with them, freshly reopened. It is pointless now to try covering up the pain.

  14

  THE SUN ISN’T even a faded ink stain on the edge of the horizon when Andres wakes up Monday morning. He sits up and taps his feet blindly against the carpet, searching for his shoes. It’s going to be a long day, so he takes a quick shower and begins sifting through the closet for something to wear. The sound of metal against wood slices the morning’s silence as he pushes hangers from one side of the rod to the other.

  “Andres . . . the noise,” Marabela says, mumbling into her pillow.

  For a moment Andres forgets that he is in a hurry and stares at her. He remembers when they were first married, when they would make a large pot of hot chocolate and bring it with them to bed in their one-bedroom apartment. It was in the days before they had maids, and the tiny quarters were all they could afford, but what did square footage matter when they spent their days trying to push out the space between their bodies? After they were done, with the sunlight casting bars of shadows on the white sheets, they lay there talking about the future.

  A familiar guilt creeps into him as he ties his shoes. Had he stolen Marabela’s dreams, betrayed her even before she was kidnapped?

  Marabela lies in bed with her eyes clenched shut, forehead tense, annoyed that she’s been woken.

  “What time will you be home?” she says.

  “Late.” He grabs some papers scattered on the floor and places them in his briefcase.

  In the car, he scans the radio for a signal, a newscast, a song, anything to help drown out the silence. Nothing is clear today, least of all his past or his future. When he finally catches a song on an oldies station, it reminds him of Marabela, not because they
ever listened to it together, but because she is like that song: one he was infatuated with to the point that he could never get the tune out of his head. He’d memorized every word, not realizing that his tastes would evolve and one day he’d forget how to sing along.

  He changes the station and his thoughts turn to Elena—a song he never knew he remembered. He wishes he could go back to the hospital and tell her this, because she’s the only one who’d understand. But he has work to do, a job to find, and an unkind world to play along with.

  As he makes his first stop at an old client’s building, the phone rings.

  “You have impeccable timing lately, Mother.”

  “Are you done looking yet?”

  “You know I haven’t even started.”

  “Then you’ll have time to come by the house.”

  “I really don’t.”

  “It’s important, Andres. I need to talk to you before you make another terrible decision.”

  He fights the urge to ask what the previous ones were, but decides that would open a door he’d rather remained shut. Besides, he’s tired of arguing, and even more exhausted at the thought of begging old clients and business associates for job leads.

  “Have breakfast ready for me?” he asks, surprised by the whining that slips through his voice. As much as he hates to admit it, since Consuelo and Carla have been gone, he’s missed having a hot meal prepared for him, the table set when he gets home, as if by magic.

  Andres longs for the comfort of his childhood home and the dining room with its burnt-orange walls and rustic wooden furnishings. It was the only place in the house that never felt formal. Sometimes after dinner with the Duarezes, he and Elena would pretend to go camping underneath the table while their parents played cards. In the world he and Elena created under the tablecloth, the adults provided much-needed sound effects. Their laughter, interspersed with long moments of quiet suspense, was the thunder in their forest. The women’s whispers were the rain. When the men lit up their cigars and the room filled with smoke, the children pretended they were burning firewood, rubbing their hands and shoulders together for warmth.