She sat on the floor and scattered a set of candles across the altar, lighting a new match for each one. She was so dazed from the lack of sleep, that by the sixth candle she performed the task mindlessly.
“You know, some fathers also like cars and poker.” Omar’s voice didn’t startle her this time; it slipped into the silence as if it were thoughts.
“How did you do that?”
He smiled; the edges of his lips and the corners of his eyes stretched toward each other, squeezing everything in between. “I’m not really sure. Did you ever have pet fish as a child?”
“A couple. Why?”
“When you bring one home from the store, you’re supposed to leave the fish in its bag when you place it in the tank until it’s acclimated to the new temperature. Remember?”
She nodded.
“That’s the best I can describe it. You listen and you wait. You feel out the water until the moment feels right. Until you can jump in without the shock of impact.”
“It’s always a shock to see you,” Isabel said.
“I’d say the same thing about you, dear.” He tilted his head at her as if lifting an invisible hat. She returned the gesture.
“You didn’t have to go through all the trouble.” He waved his hand at the altar, taking in the forty square feet of space around them. “Or maybe you went through just enough.”
“It wasn’t easy. If Martin found out about any of this . . .” she said.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t joke. It’s kind. Very kind. I’m honored you would rest my memory alongside that of your father.” Omar sat down next to her, leveling his eyes with hers, and she could tell he was being sincere.
“The two of you would’ve gotten along. It makes sense.”
“Ah.” He put his hands in his pockets, taking in the contents of the altar. “How long ago was it? When he passed?”
“Fourteen years,” she said, without having to count. She had been keeping time since the day he’d gone.
“He was young then, when he died. And you, too.”
She wanted to say the same thing about him, but she wasn’t ready to change the subject.
“He was sick. I spent months trying to care for him, but he still—”
“You spent months. That’s all that matters. You spent months knowing. If more people knew when a moment was a last—a last breakfast, a last kiss—we’d leave with less regret.”
The problem was there had been too much knowing. Each time she would hold her father’s hand, she would wonder if it would be the last time she felt his pulse against hers. They had compressed a lifetime of conversations and confessions into weeks: every bit of fatherly advice, every apology she could think of. When she had told him she still regretted once lying to him about going to the movies with a boy, he had only shrugged and said, “That wasn’t you. That was youth.”
Until he was gone, she had never known it was possible to feel too young and like she had aged a lifetime all at once.
“You’d hoped he would be here,” Omar said. “And you got me instead.”
“It’s not that.”
“It’s not a bad thing. It means he’s found peace, and that is so fragile. We have to let it rest when we get it. I’m sorry you’re stuck with me, though.”
“I’m happy to see you. I’m just baffled, by all of this.” She gestured at the altar, trying to hide her disappointment.
“You, too? I thought between us, you were the smarter one.”
“You’re funny.”
“Not enough to make you laugh. Last year, my jokes were faring much better.”
“A lot has changed since then.” Isabel reached for one of the candles, which had burned out, and struck a match to relight it.
“So it has.”
“When were you going to tell me about him?”
“When was there time?”
She shot him a knowing look. “I was all ears. You’re the one who didn’t talk.”
“I’d hoped he had already made it, last year. But when he didn’t, I was afraid to assume anything.”
“But you gave him our information. You could’ve warned us, at least.”
“Sabrina gave him your number, not me. And I didn’t realize family required warning.”
“You know what I mean. We could’ve been more prepared.”
“I don’t believe in being prepared.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Outside the thin walls of the toolshed, the wind bellowed. It sounded like a storm, like south-Texas breezes always do—bigger than they are.
“How is he doing?” Omar asked.
“I have no idea.” It was a truth she hadn’t admitted until now. “I’d like to think he’s better off than before, but . . .”
“He is. He might not see it, but it’s true.”
“I don’t even know what that means. Sometimes I look at him and it’s like staring at the ocean. I can’t trust the surface.”
“He’s a good boy.”
“Is that thanks to you? All those years you spent raising him?”
“Instead of Martin and Claudita?”
She sighed. “I didn’t say that.”
“I did. I spent half my life wishing I could change things. But why would they take me back? They won’t even talk to me now that I’m dead. Or will they?”
She didn’t have the heart to tell him things were probably worse than before. “Eduardo always has you in his thoughts.” No sooner had she said the words, it dawned on her. “He looked for you for months, after you got separated. Does he not know?”
Omar shook his head. “It’s not that simple. I told him if we ever got separated, we’d meet at the border. If he knew I was dead, would he have kept going?”
“You’re right.” She rubbed her eyes, trying to fight off the sleep that was finally taking over. Eduardo usually slept in on weekends, but Martin would be wondering why she hadn’t crawled into bed yet. Lately, those few hours when their sleep schedules overlapped were becoming scarcer.
“Just wait here,” she said, and she blew out the candles.
But when she walked into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, she found Omar. He stood by the refrigerator, reading the grocery list stuck to its side.
“Please don’t do this. You’ll wake Martin and—”
“You said so yourself: he won’t see me.”
“It’s not just that.” She could hear her husband getting out bed, pushing hangers around the closet. Through the walls of Eduardo’s room, she thought she heard the low bounce of voices. Had he gotten a new radio?
“You should give Eduardo some space today,” Omar said. “He’ll want some time alone with his mother.”
“Sabrina?” She was only half listening as she began pulling cereal and spices for eggs out of the pantry.
“Yes. Seeing her for the first time will be difficult.”
Isabel stopped, and her breath quickened. When she closed her eyes and focused in the direction of Eduardo’s room, the noises became clearer. They were not just any voices, they were two: one calm, the other crying.
“What do I do?”
Omar shook his head, but then his eyes landed on the space behind her and lit up with pride. “My son.”
But he had been right. Martin didn’t see him or hear him. He looked only at Isabel, with the sweet nostalgia of reliving a moment that, at only two years old, seemed ages ago. He kissed her, and just for this moment, she wished Omar would leave. She searched the kitchen for him, and he was gone.
“Happy anniversary,” Martin said, leading her back to their bedroom.
“Right now? But Eduardo—”
He shushed her and ran his fingers gently over her eyes. “Put your hands out.”
There was the sound of tissue paper crinkling, and then a small container landed in her palms. Cold and grainy, it felt like a ceramic pot, no bigger than a tea kettle.
“Open your eyes,” Martin said.
A single dark brown twi
g stemmed from black soil, with three white buds sprouting like miniature clouds. “Cotton flowers? They’re beautiful.”
“Second anniversary is cotton. I thought it’d be nicer than a T-shirt.”
“I hope they’ll grow here.”
“I’m sure they’ll thrive under your care.” He gave her a long, soft kiss.
“Thank you.” Her hands cupped the space below his ears and around his neck. If she just held on to him, she wouldn’t have to face her father-in-law or the mourning child hiding a few walls down. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Wait here, okay?”
They had planned to spend the day together; it was the first Sunday Isabel had gotten off in weeks. After she rested, they’d have an afternoon picnic at the park and go to an improv comedy show that evening. Martin had said they were both in need of a good laugh.
She stepped out of the bedroom, making sure to close the door quietly. Omar was lying face up on their couch, his hands placed on his abdomen.
“Omar . . . this just isn’t the right time.”
He stood. “I know. I’m sorry. But it’s the only time I have.”
“I know. But I’m so tired. And I can’t just drop everything, not today. Either tell me what it is you need, or go. Please.”
He thought about it. She could tell because he twisted his bottom lip between his fingers as he stared into the yard and considered. Just like Martin.
“Can we go somewhere else?”
It’d been nearly twenty hours since she had last slept, and her joints pulsed, begging for rest. But her curiosity pulled harder. She went back to the bedroom and told Martin she’d forgotten something at the hospital. She made it sound mysterious and like a surprise, even though his gift was hidden in her car.
“Can’t you go later?”
“I’m up now. Might as well go before my energy crashes.” It crushed her, how easily he believed it.
She gathered her keys and purse in the living room.
“Don’t feel bad, mija. You did it out of love,” Omar said. “And love is never simple.”
She pretended not to hear this. “Where to?”
“Wherever you’d like. I’m tethered to you, remember?”
There was only one place that made sense today. On their way to the garage, out of instinct, Isabel headed toward Eduardo’s room first.
“Give him his space,” Omar said. She felt a warm numbness spread over her arm as he held on to her, holding her back.
The cemetery was teeming with life. She circled it twice before pulling into an empty stretch of curb by the main gate. Isabel was struck by how jumbled the gravesites looked—not perfect rows, as she had remembered, but scattered plots blooming like wildflowers with altars. Children flew kites and chased each other while women passed out small plates of food. Others held still and knitted or read a paper, as if life were going on as usual.
She looked down the long, palm tree-lined road that led straight to the airport. An airplane soared just above them, and she thought of Claudia driving to and from work, passing the graves of her grandparents every week, probably without even a prayer.
“Do you come here often?” Omar asked.
She shook her head. “For a while, I thought of looking for you here. But then Eduardo told me what happened, and I realized you were probably buried in Mexico.”
She didn’t know why she had brought them here, and she noticed he didn’t ask. The last time Isabel had been to a funeral it was her father’s. She had been fourteen, and just a few days before, she and Claudia had gone to the mall to meet a couple of boys from school. They had tried on beer-bong hats at the gag store and joked about getting their ears pierced at Claire’s.
“My dad would kill me,” she’d said. The doctors had put her father into a coma four days earlier, and it was the first time she had left his side. Her mother had arranged for Elda to take her and Claudia to the mall, insisting that her father would want her to be happy if he were awake.
Isabel had pulled a neon necklace from the piercing display and turned the long plastic tube up and down. She shook it, expecting the lime-colored liquid inside to move, but it seemed to be frozen solid.
“He’d totally freak,” Claudia had said.
She thought of her father and the tubes connected to the backs of his hands. It’d felt satisfying to watch the liquid drip and rush through the clear plastic, but Isabel always panicked as the droplets floated closer to his skin. She had wished he were see-through. She had wished they all were, so their bodies could have nothing to hide from anyone.
As the girls pretended to debate which body part they would pierce and the boys pretended they found any exposed piece of flesh hotter than any other, Isabel’s dad had already died.
At the funeral, she sat next to her mom, trying to make out Claudia’s and Elda’s faces from among those of her relatives. She could barely see the polished wood of his coffin through the crowd of people gathered to see his body.
“My dad asked to be cremated,” she said now to Omar. “He said a body is too heavy to carry.”
“He was probably right, though I wouldn’t know. I never got a chance to bury my parents.” After a moment, an air of optimism came over him. “Maybe they’re here.”
They got out of the car and wandered through the cemetery at a steady, unhurried pace. Dry, brown leaves covered the ground but made no sound as Omar walked over them. Every once in a while, he stopped at a grave and studied it, like it was a painting in a museum. She tried to see what he saw, wondering if every grave was connected somehow, if they all existed on a plane that the earth could never fathom.
“Someone you knew?” she asked. He lingered longer than usual on a stone the size of a book.
“It’s just the years,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “This one had so few.”
Seventeen, Isabel realized. The boy who lay here had died before Eduardo was even born. Omar walked for several more rows until he found his parents. He ran his fingers over their names in the stone, and Isabel looked away, wanting to give him some privacy.
“You haven’t seen them? Where you are?” she finally said.
“I haven’t seen anyone. It’s not that simple, you know. Here and there. Them and us.” He jutted his chin at the families celebrating. “I envy their dead, their peace.”
They got back into the car, but she didn’t start it. “What’s it like over there? The rest of the days?”
For the first time since they had met, he seemed afraid, unable to look her in the eyes. “I don’t know where I am. I’m just drifting. I think I’m here because I have nowhere else to go.”
They didn’t speak the rest of the way home. They got a red light at every traffic signal, and she felt the minutes stretch, wasted like rubber bands sent flying through the air. He sat staring at the dashboard, looking both embarrassed and disheartened. It wasn’t until they were a couple of houses from home that she noticed the red car parked in her driveway. Isabel slammed on the brakes, startling Omar out of his muddled state.
“What happened?”
But it was too late. Omar grasped Isabel’s arm at the sight of Elda, and she felt him reverberate against her skin like a pulse, so powerful it made it hard to breathe.
“Omar, please.” He let go, and she saw that he had vanished. She found him outside the car, standing several yards in front of her, immobile.
Elda looked past him and waved, hiking a paper grocery bag up her hip. The sun danced with her hair as she stepped through the grass to meet Isabel.
“Oh, thank goodness. I was beginning to worry. Martin said Eduardo wasn’t feeling well, so I stopped by to check on him. I thought you’d be sleeping.”
“I’ve . . . been trying to.” She worried Elda would hear her heart beating when they embraced, but it was like they had splintered into two worlds—Elda stepping inside the house, whispering so as to not disturb Eduardo, and Isabel following behind, watching Omar’s image flicker on and off in her peripheral vi
sion.
“Tell her I’m here. Tell her you see me,” he said as they watched her unpack the groceries. “Isabel. Please.”
But she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t bear how much the words would hurt Elda, how much her silence would hurt him. She could see clearly now that she had been wrong; it was not death that made him vulnerable; it was this love that had been his life.
Isabel’s eyes stung as they filled with tears. “I’m so sorry, it’s just too much.” The day’s exhaustion took over in an instant. She felt herself collapse and heard voices rush to her side. She couldn’t tell them apart, couldn’t make out Omar from Elda from Eduardo. When she finally woke, only Martin lay next her, and all the rest had gone.
CHAPTER 14
MARCH 1981
Of all the moments for the baby to kick.
Maybe the baby, too, felt he was suffocating. Maybe like her, he was no longer feeling protected, but trapped.
“My love?” she whispered. When Omar didn’t respond she called for him again, this time using his favorite pet name. “Mi vida.” My life.
“Yes?” Right away she felt his hand back on her shoulder. The warmth of his breath, once so comforting against her skin, felt damp and heavy. She had never thought it possible for their bodies to be pressed too close—how many nights had they intertwined as if they were one?—but she felt they were baking, expanding in this heat, and soon they might explode.
But again the baby kicked.
Ignore this, she thought. She reached back for Omar’s arm, draping it over her side. Before they had left, on an afternoon they had watched the sun set from a hill on the edge of town, he had made her promise to tell him when the baby moved. “I want to feel him, too.”
Now Elda placed her hand over his and pushed down on his fingers. “You might have to dig a little.” She felt him hesitate. “It’s okay.” She was used to this. Before she had gotten pregnant she had looked at other women’s expanding bellies and thought they were delicate as balloons. Now that she could feel her child growing inside her, she knew it was strong, but malleable. Sometimes at night when the baby moved, she would push down on her stomach with one finger, poking him back.
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