They continued down the aisle together. Yessica shopped quickly, picking cans of vegetables or loaves of bread off the shelf and marking items off her list. Elda worried she wouldn’t be able to keep up and they would have to part. She started reaching for the same items her friend did.
“You don’t want that one,” Yessica said when they got to the canned milk. “It’s nearly twice the price for no reason. I get it because Mrs. Daniels insists it’s the brand she likes, but here.” She bent to reach the very bottom shelf and picked up two cans of the store’s generic brand. “I promise you there’s no difference.”
They paid and said their goodbyes in the parking lot, but not before exchanging apartment numbers. The temperature had gone from warm to scorching in just under an hour, and as Elda pulled Martin’s stroller from underneath the shopping cart and began hanging the plastic grocery bags from her arms, she could already feel her elbows sweating.
“You’re taking the bus home?”
Elda nodded.
Yessica checked her watch. “The last one came by not even ten minutes ago. It’ll take you at least an hour now.”
“I’ll wait. I don’t have to be at work until eight.”
“But it’s so damn hot,” Yessica said. She pulled a set of keys out of her purse. “Ugh. I’d offer to take you . . . Mrs. Daniels is not too strict, but I don’t want her thinking I’m driving my friends around while I’m at work, you know?”
Elda smiled. She had been called a friend. “It’s really fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Yessica hugged her tight. The last time she’d been held like this, Elda had said goodbye to her mother.
“You know where to find me if you need anything at all.” Yessica bent over Martin’s stroller and kissed him on the forehead. “Angelito. He reminds me of my son at that age. Agustín was tranquilito, just like Martin.”
“Really? How old is he? Maybe they can play together sometime.”
“He’s ten now,” Yessica said as she stood up and straightened out her linen dress. “But he’s in Honduras with his grandmother.” She pulled a worn picture out of her wallet, of a little boy in navy blue shorts and a button-up white shirt. He had a red lunch box with cartoon figures on it strapped over his chest. “I sent him those shoes and that lunch box for his first day of school.”
“He looks like a happy, healthy boy.” It was the kindest thing Elda could think to say, the only thing she imagined really mattered.
CHAPTER 31
It was true, then, what they said about medical professionals not treating family. Perspective was only possible from a distance; up close, where eccentricities were mistaken for personality traits and suspicions felt like betrayals, Isabel had missed everything.
Now, the signs all clicked together, and she could no longer ignore them. The problem was, she didn’t know what to make of them, either. Memory loss was a symptom; the diagnosis could be anything. There were days when Isabel convinced herself it would be best to let Elda tell them in her own time. There were days when Isabel worried they would be out of time if she waited.
She asked Martin if he had noticed his mother acting strangely, and he smirked as if this were always the case.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “Forgetting things. Or not being as quick lately.”
“She is getting older . . .”
“Middle age is not older, Martin.”
“Maybe it’s menopause. That’s probably it. You should talk to her.”
“Me? You’re her son.”
“But you’re a woman. And a nurse. It’d be better coming from you.”
So she began looking for a window, stopping by Elda’s house as often as she could without it seeming strange. Eduardo always offered to drive, though he, too, had ulterior motives: he wanted to prove he could be trusted with the car.
There was no licensing test he could pass or fail, just an agreement that they would let him drive alone once she and Martin felt he was ready. Isabel couldn’t remember the last errand she had run on her own. The first few rides were anxiety-ridden; Isabel insisted he take the less-crowded back roads, which took twice as long.
But Eduardo was a fast learner, and more importantly, a calm one. She graduated him to main roads with traffic lights and on-ramps to the highway. Even when they got stuck in traffic, it was nice. They would sit next to each other, both with their gazes fixed on the road, and talk.
She told him about the time she nearly ran over her mother during her first driving lesson. It was an innocent mistake: her mother went to get something out of the trunk, and Isabel, thinking she was in park when she was actually still in reverse, let go of the brake.
When Eduardo spoke about home, friends, or school, she would gently prod him to tell her more, but she could never bring herself to take that last step. Always, hidden behind every question and intention, was Isabel’s curiosity about Omar. There were times it would have been so easy. Eduardo pointed out the odd angle of his right thumb, the result of a soccer injury a few years ago that didn’t heal right. He lamented his mother having him work at the restaurant, because that was when all the trouble had started.
Isabel could’ve asked, “Was Omar there?” or “Couldn’t Omar have helped?” but she let him talk instead. His stories drifted to other places, to more detailed versions of anecdotes she had already heard: how most of the friends he played soccer with had either moved, had their lives threatened, or had simply disappeared. How the gangs had coerced his mother for a cut of her profits every month, until she had to close the restaurant.
Eventually, Sabrina chose to trade her own safety for her son’s. That was how Eduardo put it the day they picked up Elda for a doctor’s appointment. He pulled up to the driveway effortlessly, his hand stretched over the back of the passenger’s seat as he straightened out in reverse and said, “My mother was convinced they’d never stop, even if they killed her.”
“That’s why she sent you here?” Isabel said. “With Omar?”
Eduardo nodded and looked toward Elda’s front door. “Do you want me to go get her?”
The last time they’d come, Elda had told them to just honk the horn when they arrived. She didn’t want to be fussed over. It was bad enough they were acting like she couldn’t drive herself to a simple routine appointment. But Isabel couldn’t bring herself to do something so crass. She decided to call the house instead.
“She said she’ll be right out. So what were you saying? About your mom?”
Sometimes, when they got interrupted, Eduardo would lose his train of thought, or perhaps pretend to, and Isabel would be left with no choice but to play along.
“Just that she didn’t see much of a way out,” he said, keeping his eyes on Elda’s front door.
“You must really miss her.”
He nibbled on a loose piece of skin on the side of his thumb. “When I left, she hugged me goodbye, but I didn’t hug her back. I wanted her to come with us. I took it out on Omar for weeks. I still don’t know why he put up with me as long as he did.”
“Maybe because he’d made a promise.”
“That’s what Diana says. That as long as I’m here, they didn’t die for nothing.”
At the mention of Diana, everything made more sense. She pictured Eduardo telling his girlfriend all the things Isabel would never know, and Diana asking all the questions she would never dare, as they parked in darkened lots on the edge of town or strolled through the mall having ice cream. Perhaps they wallowed, and cried, and comforted one another, in the way only teenagers could do.
He dug into his pocket for his phone and glanced at the screen. “She’s late a lot, isn’t she?”
“Who?”
“Elda. Didn’t she say she’d be right out?”
“You’re right.” Nearly ten minutes had passed. “Maybe she decided to change, or maybe she’s in the bathroom. But I wouldn’t say she’s late all the time.”
Eduardo raised an eyebrow and smiled. “I don’t know.
Ever since I met her she’s been distraída, you know? I mean, even that day we went to get burgers, like what, two years ago? Damn. Yeah, almost two years ago,” he said, as if it were a lifetime. Teen years don’t pass the same as the others, Isabel thought. They shed like dead skin, discarded as they’re outgrown.
“I thought you said she just took a while. To get the food?”
“Right, because what did I know? But trust me, me and my friends eat there all the time, and the food never takes that long. Elda’s just out of it sometimes. I mean, I get it. Every time I’m in bio lab my mind’s somewhere else, too, you know? I can go get her.”
“No, I’ll go. Just wait here,” Isabel said. The wind blasted tiny particles of dirt onto her cheeks as she walked the path to Elda’s front door. She rang the bell once, then again not a few seconds later. On the third ring, she finally heard footsteps, slow and calm like a person who wasn’t expecting company at all.
“Isabel!” Elda’s eyes traveled right away to the car still running in the driveway, and her smile wavered a bit at the edges. “Come! I was just getting my purse together. You know how it is when you switch bags. Lipstick in one, wallet in the other, glasses in the pocket you always forget to check.” She pulled out a light sweater from the closet in the hall and kissed Isabel hello as they stepped outside and locked the door. “It’s ridiculous, these purses. You start to feel scattered all over the place.”
It dawned on her that it would never be the right time to ask Elda what was wrong. She placed her hand on the doorknob.
“What is it really?”
“What’s what, dear?”
“You can trust me. Memory loss is nothing to be embarrassed of. It could just be your body trying to tell you something.”
The beginnings of a smile spread across Elda’s face, but then it fell, and exhaustion settled in its place.
“Well, shit then,” Elda said. She put her hands in the air, irritated. “This is exactly why I wanted to drive to the doctor’s alone. I’m just going in to get some test results, that’s all. No point in jumping to conclusions.”
Isabel nodded but said nothing.
At the hospital, she waited by the gift shop with Eduardo while Elda took the elevator to the third-floor offices. “Get Well Soon” balloons drifted alongside giant pink and blue bears, and she could taste in the back of her throat the sugary scent of flowers on the verge of wilting.
“That was fast,” Eduardo said when Elda returned, not twenty minutes later.
“It really was, wasn’t it?” Elda replied.
Later, when they all gathered at her house with Martin and Claudia and Damian, Elda said the doctors had given her two dates: one for a surgery scheduled next Friday, and another for an expected prognosis.
She said it hadn’t been a big deal at first. Just moments when she forgot herself, moments when she stepped into a room and had no idea why. When the headaches and nausea had started, she figured it was menopause. By the time she went to the doctor, she knew deep down it was something else.
“The body knows these things. The brain is just stubborn, that’s all. The doctors say the tumor cells are shaped like stars,” she said with a strange tenderness. “Hard to catch once they’re shooting out in all these different directions.”
CHAPTER 32
JUNE 1983
There were things in this life Marisol was proud of, and things she wished she could forget. The problem was keeping them from getting mixed up, since her biggest triumphs often stemmed from her deepest regrets.
How then could she explain to Josselyn when she asked why all her classmates had fathers who came to Parent Night, that being away from her father was one of their lives’ greatest blessings? That it had nearly cost Marisol her life to get away from him, and that it would certainly have killed her if she’d stayed?
She had worked seven different jobs since they had gotten here. She had cleaned houses and tailored clothes and waited tables and answered phones at a beauty salon, often taking two or more of those positions at once. It had gotten them a place of their own, out of the maid’s quarters in her boss’s home.
Months after that they moved to a safer neighborhood, with better schools for Josselyn. Her latest efforts had been for a car; Marisol could finally arrive on time to her daughter’s recitals and spelling bees.
It was exhausting, but the barometer for a better life always moved one step ahead of her. “As long as you’re pursuing a goal, you haven’t lost the race,” she often told Josselyn. For the most part, this kept her little girl content, until the day came (and it always did) when the school planned a field trip that Marisol couldn’t afford, or when the teachers had her make Father’s Day cards.
Her heart ached, knowing what would happen next. They would assign Josselyn to another classroom for the day, doing busy work in the back. Or they told her to make a card for her mother instead, and Marisol would tuck the pieces of blue construction paper with drawings of a family that looked nothing like their own into her nightstand drawer, next to the Mother’s Day notes.
She had to remind herself constantly: One day, none of this will matter. One day, she’ll understand and she’ll thank me.
In many ways that Josselyn was too young to realize, she was already repaying her mother’s sacrifices. She was bright and motivated. At night when she did her homework, Josselyn read her books and compositions out loud, pointing out each word and pretending she needed her mother’s help when it was really the other way around. When other parents complained about the latest assignment being too difficult, or how they had to get on their child’s case about schoolwork, Marisol remained quiet.
“Josselyn is a very self-motivated child,” she once made the mistake of saying. It was the end of the grading term, and the school was celebrating with a day-long activity festival.
“How nice for you,” one of the mothers said, in a tone that wasn’t very nice at all. Marisol had only been repeating the notes the teacher left on Josselyn’s report card. She said as much, then asked if the bike shop was nearby.
“The bike shop?” the woman repeated.
“Yes. It says here that they award students a free bicycle bell?” She pointed at the coupon attached to the bottom of Josselyn’s report card.
“Oh. Well, the address is right there. You can find that, can’t you?” the woman said, holding the card in her hands. She took a moment to study it. “You must be so proud of her. All A’s, even in English. Who would’ve thought?”
Marisol couldn’t help it. She laughed in the woman’s face, so hard that she nearly cried and ended up fanning herself with the group of papers the teacher had given her. She tried to calm down, and it was only after the woman excused herself that Marisol realized what she held in her hands. On top of a memo about resurfacing the school parking lot was a bright red bumper sticker: “Proud Parent of a Rio Grande Valley Elementary School Honor Student.” She thought of how nice it would look on her new car and smiled.
CHAPTER 33
Elda hadn’t heard the doorbell ring because of the vacuum. She shouted this to Isabel when she finally opened the door, not bothering to turn off the machine. With each stroke, it painted over the beige fiber, turning it a shade lighter as she pushed it forward, then back to normal when she pulled it back.
“Do you need help?” Isabel yelled.
Elda shook her head. With all the corners she’d turned and pieces of furniture she’d circled, the cord now wrapped itself around one of her ankles, and the vacuum hose serpentined between her feet as she moved.
“How about I finish up while you get ready?” Isabel placed her hand on top of Elda’s. Again, her mother-in-law said nothing but simply turned her away.
In half an hour, Claudia and Yessica would be arriving for an early supper. “It’d be nice to get all my girls together,” Elda had said last week. Her surgery to remove the brain tumor was scheduled for the day after tomorrow, but she was adamant that life go on as usual in the meantime.
Just between us, Claudia told her, my heart’s no longer in any of this planning shit.
When was it ever? Isabel thought, but instead she reminded her that it’d be a welcome distraction, for all of them. Except there would be no more talk of the wedding date, which they’d had to move up by five months. Claudia and Damian blamed the change on the venue double-booking them. No one complained.
Elda shut off the vacuum and put it away. She raced to the garage and came back with a mop and a small red bucket, which she left filling with water in the kitchen sink while she sprayed the cabinets and countertops.
“Elda, let me help you with something, please.”
But her mother-in-law showed no signs of stopping. She looked like she was racing someone, and each second that passed had to be spent three different ways.
“I’m almost done. Just give me two minutes,” she said. Her chest heaved as she took a moment to stand by the entrance and inspect the house. She turned her head slowly, then stopped as something in the dining area caught her eye.
“No mires, Isabel. How embarrassing for you to see all my dust.” From behind the refrigerator, she pulled out a white metal stepladder. It clanged as she opened it with one foot. Isabel stopped her before she could go any further.
“I’ll get the chandelier.” Isabel climbed up two steps and began wiping at the glass. Illuminated by the sunlight, the pieces trembled, excited by her touch.
“No, it’s filthy,” Elda said, as if this were a most shameful thing. “All of it. Everything. You shouldn’t have come early. I hate for you to see me like this.” She dusted off her clothes, looking disgusted with herself.
“Your house is spotless. On its worst day it still looks perfect compared to ours. You keep it beautifully.”
Keep. She had never used the word this way, and it felt mismatched, borrowed from a story she couldn’t place. Elda’s face turned calm, and she took a seat at the dining table, looking up at Isabel cleaning. The chandelier chimed, splashing its reflections against the pale green wall, and as Isabel admired the catches of light, she remembered a story Martin once told her about the night before his eighth birthday. It was just a after his father had left, and they’d moved, temporarily, into his grandparents’ apartment upstairs. The place was like a mirror of their own home, except flipped and furnished differently. The bedrooms smelled like old books and cigarettes, and in the living room there was a giant credenza filled with mismatched silverware, dish sets, and glass sculptures his grandfather had bought at the flea market.
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