Chasing the Sun: A Novel

by Natalia Sylvester

  Andres drives through the gate, pulls up to the house, and rings the doorbell. The maid who answers the door must be new; he doesn’t recognize her, but she greets him by name, and he realizes she’s probably polished silver frames containing his picture.

  The stillness of the house, which he once described to Marabela as cold and unwelcoming, now feels peaceful. Lorena takes his face in both hands and kisses him on each cheek. The motion doesn’t come naturally, but the effort is there, and for now that’s all that counts.

  They sit perpendicular to each other, she at the head of the table and Andres to her left, while the maid brings eggs, toast, and a pot of freshly brewed coffee with milk. Andres looks down at his plate and laughs.

  “You still have these plates,” he says, surprised that his mother didn’t replace his favorite wooden set with delicate china as soon as he moved out.

  “They remind me of a set I used to have for my dolls when I was a child. And one should always have unbreakable dinner plates in case of rowdy guests, or if you’re expecting an argument. It’s easier to clean up,” she says, smiling as he’s rarely seen her smile, with a subtle wink punctuating the lift of her cheeks.

  “It’s nice to see you so happy, considering the circumstances.”

  “I’m just trying, Andres. I know you might not believe this, but I don’t like to be the worst part of a bad situation. Grudges fade quickly when you’re faced with losing the ones you love.”

  “I never thought I’d hear you talk about Marabela like that.”

  She smiles sheepishly. “I meant you, dear. And Elena. I’d never wish any harm on Marabela, but I care for her only because she’s the one your heart’s attached to. Although . . . I feel like that’s not as true as it used to be.” She sets her cup down and takes a moment to study his face, and suddenly Andres is very much aware of every muscle in his forehead, his cheeks, his lips. He holds them still and finally relaxes them, his face dropping down with a sigh.

  “We’ve been having problems. All I wanted was to have her back, but it hasn’t been enough to bring us together. She says we’ve changed too much.”

  “Well, of course you have. Look at us, even. If us sitting here talking about your marriage isn’t proof enough that these last few weeks have changed everything . . . well, I don’t know what is.”

  They both laugh under their breaths, polite and deflated.

  “All you can really do—if you don’t plan on staying miserable, that is—is take what little good has come out of it all, and run with it,” she says.

  “What little good, Mother? My company’s gone, my marriage is irreparable, my best friend is finally back in my life and she tries to kill herself, and somehow I’m supposed to pick up the pieces and build a life from them. I don’t think I can do it.”

  “So then don’t.” She sips the last of her coffee. “Pick up the old pieces. The ones that were waiting for you years ago.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You once told me you couldn’t wait for you and Elena to run your fathers’ newspaper together. You had a place there. Just because you didn’t take it doesn’t mean it’s gone.”

  “Dad sold his shares before he died.”

  “He sold the shares that would’ve been yours. His, he left to me.”

  “You already had shares.”

  “Exactly. He wanted me to have more. Your father always said I was the foundation for his success. He was never cheap when it came to giving people credit where it was due. In the end, he went above and beyond with me. He said he could never take care of me the way I took care of him, but me having control of the company would be a start.”

  A breath he didn’t realize he was holding in escapes him. “Why are you telling me this now? Why not before?”

  “Now you see, all the time we wasted not speaking?” She takes a small sip of her coffee. “But now it’s about more than the money. It’s about you finding your place again and finally being honest with yourself. And I don’t think you could have done that if it hadn’t been for Elena being back in your life.”

  Knowing this is true, but unwilling to admit it, Andres simply thanks Lorena and asks her what the next step will be. She sets down her teacup, so delicately it makes no sound against the saucer, and rests her elbow on the table, bringing her thumb to her chin. “Well, what plans do you have tomorrow?” she suggests.

  “That should be fine.”

  “So we’ll meet at the office. At this time.”

  He tries to imagine the newspaper’s offices, realizing the only reference he has is outdated, from a time long gone with his father. Housed in an old Spanish-style building, it had arched doorways and white plaster columns, but the walls were lined with gray metal filing cabinets.

  “Will I even recognize anyone?”

  “Except for Saul, probably not,” she says, looking down at her coffee. “Nothing’s been the same since your father died. Saul’s tried, but it’s like the memory of Rolando is gone from the place. I think this is what he would’ve wanted.” She places her hand on his, a sad smile stretching across her face. “He never let go of the hope that you’d come back to the paper one day. It’s the only reason I was able to convince him to offer Marabela the job after you two eloped.”

  “That was you?”

  She presses her lips together but says nothing. Andres wonders how many more secrets are sealed behind his mother’s familiar smile.

  “Promise me one thing,” Lorena says later when she walks him to the door. “You’ll help Elena pick up the pieces, too?”

  “I’ll try, Mother. I’ve already promised her, and now I promise you. I’ll try twice as hard since you asked.”

  As he drives home, Andres takes a quick detour through the Plaza de Armas. He’s not looking forward to telling Marabela about the plans he’s made with his mother. At the mention of the newspaper, he’s afraid she’ll chastise him for going back, or, even worse, expect that he’ll reinstate her as a photographer. The thought seems absurd, considering that she can barely leave the house, but Andres knows better than to underestimate Marabela. He parks the car next to a bus stop and rolls down the windows, letting the breeze wrap around him. The plaza is busy as usual, looking like a replica of when he saw it last. But today he feels distant, like he’s no longer a part of it. It amazes him, how different the same places can look when a person has been through what he has.

  That same morning, Marabela finds herself in the last place she ever would have expected to be—and by choice. She’s rattled by nerves and anticipation, unable to even focus on the congested road ahead of them.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” Guillermo asks. They’ve been in the car for nearly half an hour in silence, and the question strikes Marabela as ridiculous, considering it’s his car they’re driving.

  “Of course not. Please,” she says. He keeps one hand on the wheel while he pulls a pack out of his pocket and holds it out to her, offering a cigarette. She smiles and takes one for each of them so he won’t have to fumble with the box as he drives. Though she’s never been much of a smoker, his small offer of kindness does much to soothe her. She admires Guillermo’s unconscious chivalry. In his company, Marabela feels protected but not weak, considered but not scrutinized.

  Marabela hands Guillermo his lit cigarette and emulates him when he rolls down his window to let the smoke out as he dangles it outside the car. When she first stepped into his vehicle, she’d been surprised by how well kept it was. Sitting by the curb in front of her house, it’d always looked beat-up and hostile, much like her first impression of him. Now it’s obvious to her that he minds the small details, and she supposes this makes sense for a man in his profession. He isn’t one to overlook dust on his car panel any more than he would a threatening stranger.

  “You seem to know your way pretty well,” Marabela says as they get off the highway. This morning after Andres left and she informed Guillermo where she planned on going, he had only nodded with a worri
ed look on his face. She’d taken care getting ready, unsure what to wear for the occasion, but she’d figured it’d give Guillermo time to come up with directions. Now she suspects he never really needed them. “Have you visited her before?” she asks.

  Guillermo starts to nod but tilts his head to the side, as if he’s changed his mind. “I went to see her once, but I didn’t let her see me. It was just to check up on her.”

  “Why didn’t you let her know you were there?”

  “I doubt I would’ve been any comfort to her. She didn’t know me. I’m just a stranger she found in her house on the day she came back from the worst experience of her life. It’s not a good association to have with a person.”

  Marabela can’t argue with him. It was only a short couple of weeks ago that she tried to make Andres send Guillermo home. “Do you usually visit your . . . clients?”

  He shakes his head, scratching his jaw with his right hand, suddenly looking uncomfortable. Still, Marabela has to ask. “So why Elena?” She tries to push aside a familiar jealousy that’s creeping up on her.

  “It was a personal favor for your mother-in-law. After Elena came home, Señora Jimenez was worried about her. She often called me to ask how it normally works with my clients, how long it takes them to get better.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “There is no normal, señora. That’s what I tried to tell her, but when Elena’s parents sent her away, Lorena asked me to check in.”

  Marabela finds it odd that Guillermo would refer to Lorena in such a casual manner, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed his slip of the tongue. “So you still keep in touch with my mother-in-law?”

  “She’s the reason I’m still here,” he says with a mixture of gratitude and admiration.

  “What do you mean?” Marabela remembers the first time she ever saw Guillermo, how he seemed so eager to leave.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  He doesn’t bother hesitating. They both know there’s no point in keeping it from her now. “Señora Jimenez agreed to handle payment for my services. And to extend them, that’s all.”

  “Oh.” The word escapes her, more of a sound, really. She understands now. When she’d heard him say he was doing this as a favor for Señora Jimenez, he’d meant Lorena.

  As they pull up to the hospital Marabela wonders if this was a good idea after all. It’s been nearly six years since she last saw Elena, and enough has happened to change them both for a lifetime.

  “Do you think she’s crazy?” Marabela asks.

  He considers her question carefully, as if the thought only now occurred to him. “By definition madness lacks logic. We think people are insane when they have no reason to act the way they do. But with everything she’s been through, Elena’s more than justified. She’s not crazy; she’s traumatized. I believe there’s a difference.”

  He gets out of the car and opens the door for her, and as they walk across the parking lot dark clouds roll overhead, almost as if nature is warning them to stay away. The last time Marabela was here, she was too caught up in her own desperation to notice how isolated the building is, surrounded by little else than barren plains and nearly naked trees. It’s the kind of place no one would find unless they were looking for it.

  Once inside, Guillermo makes a request with the receptionist on Marabela’s behalf. She rubs her moist palms against her jeans and takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly through her nose. Within seconds Guillermo is holding open the door to the hallway, where a nurse waits to show her the way.

  “I’ll be right here,” he reassures her as she steps through.

  She nods as she looks back at him, then forces herself to turn away.

  When they first met, Marabela and Elena bonded over an exam they were both terrified of taking. She remembers sitting in the library, close to tears, when she recognized the same book and the same desperate expression in the young woman across from her. After venting in loud whispers, they went to a late-night café to quiz each other on the material, drinking one cup of coffee after another until they were giddy with caffeine and exhaustion.

  Now, Marabela follows the nurse down the cold, dark hall, longing to go back to a time when the only things that mattered were what you wrote on a blank sheet of paper.

  “Here she is,” the nurse says, opening a door with a small square window.

  It occurs to Marabela as she steps through that she shouldn’t have come empty-handed, but within a second of taking in her surroundings she realizes a bouquet of flowers or a card would have made things awkward. She walks toward the bed, where Elena is lying on her side with her back to the door, clearly awake but not interested enough to turn her head to see who’s arrived. Now faced with the task of announcing herself, Marabela has to push back tears. She walks around the bed, entering Elena’s line of sight, waiting for the recognition to sink into her face. What she sees instead is horror.

  “You’re not really here,” Elena says, more to herself than to Marabela. She shakes her head and repeats it over and over. “You’re not really here. You’re not really here.”

  “I know,” Marabela says, wanting to acknowledge Elena’s words but not fully understanding their meaning. “I can’t believe it took me this long to come, either.”

  “Did Andres send you?”

  “He doesn’t know I’m here.” She tries to get closer but Elena keeps inching away, her body practically hanging off the edge of the bed. None of this makes sense to her—she was expecting to see anger, maybe sadness.

  “I didn’t come to fight. We both know that talk about putting the past behind us is just talk. But I think we’re bigger than that. At least, the fact that I still care about you is bigger than all that.”

  The room is so quiet Marabela can hear the tiny bones cracking in her fingers as she tries to do something with her hands. She opens and closes them, fighting the urge to take her friend’s hands in her own. She’s reminded of the days, ages ago, when Ignacio had his first fever, how she would’ve done anything to make his pain go away. Never in her life had she felt so helpless, until now.

  Elena is crying and is so still that Marabela wonders where her mind has gone. There must be a reason she came here, but she can’t think of it now. All she can think of is the last time Elena, Andres, and Marabela were in the same room together, on the night that Elena called them from Andres’s parents’ home and demanded they come over right away, without giving an explanation.

  When they arrived, Elena was standing behind Rolando’s chair, her hand resting on his shoulder with an intimacy completely beyond Marabela. The day’s paper—not the families’, but one of the bigger dailies—was stretched over the table before them, and Lorena sat at the very end, tapping her fingers over the pages’ edges.

  The front-page image was that of a woman taking cover with her child as an explosion lunged from the nearby horizon. Knowing she’d been caught, but too proud of her hard work to care, Marabela smirked.

  “What’s this?” Andres asked. He was the only one in the room who didn’t know yet. When Marabela had sold the picture, she’d asked the editor to use a different name for the credit. Even so, word traveled fast in their industry, and despite their rivalry the paper’s editors loved Elena. Marabela had been naive to think she wouldn’t find out, or that Elena would waste time asking for an explanation—she brought it straight to Andres’s parents the morning it was printed.

  “It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” Lorena said, her eyes fixed on the photo. “You just never know where the threats are coming from anymore.”

  “What did you expect me to do?” Marabela said. “A picture like that, the chances of me being there in just that moment. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime image and he refused to print it.”

  “It’s my company. It’s not your place to tell me how to run it or what to print,” Rolando said.

  The five of them argued for what seemed like hours, each attacking
the other for being too entitled, for being too much of a coward, or for being too selfish. Andres chastised Marabela for her betrayal but defended her from the others’ harsh words. Lorena called her ungrateful and sensationalist, while Elena only shook her head and asked, “What were you thinking?” Rolando was quiet until they were on their way out the door.

  “I always knew you weren’t good enough for this family. You’ve done nothing but tear us apart since you came into our lives.”

  For once, she was speechless, but Andres took her by surprise. “If that’s how you really feel, then we won’t bother coming back to try to change your mind,” he said, and left.

  In the car, Marabela reached for Andres’s hand, but he pulled away from her and shook his head in disgust. “There are journalists getting killed out there and you’d rather spend your days among them than at home, with a family that loves you.”

  She could’ve called him on his hypocrisy, could’ve told him that he was never home, either, but she knew it wouldn’t have mattered. He’d once fallen in love with her courageousness, and now his fear had betrayed them both. All he saw when he looked at her work was terror, but she knew her photography was more than that. The only way to find hope in these stories was to let them be told. “This is what I do, Andres. It’s what I love. Don’t ask me to stop just because you’re afraid.”

  So he didn’t, but he didn’t have to. In the weeks that followed, Marabela failed to find work at another paper, even with the one that had printed her picture. Andres tried consoling her and even apologized for not realizing how much it all meant to her. When he promised her the darkroom, he said it was for her artistic freedom. She saw it only as a trick to lock away her passions, but years later, she learned how far he’d gone to turn the key.