* * *
At Aura’s funeral Mass, in the chapel of the funeral home, Katia stepped firmly into the sister role, at least for me. We practically clung to each other; or rather she let me cling to her. While the priest at the flower-heaped white coffin was rotely telling us how at peace and happy Aura was now that “her suffering has ended and she is finally at the side of the Lord,” Katia stood beside me, her arm hooked tightly into mine. She led me into the line of people waiting to take communion and I knelt, opened my mouth, and let the priest drop the tasteless, airy wafer onto my tongue for the first time in decades. Later, I felt foolish about that, but it had hardly been an act of volition; I was led, had wanted to be led, could easily have been led off a cliff. When my mother, on the phone, also said that Aura was at peace and happy at the side of the Lord, it made me so angry I didn’t speak to her again for months.
Two years before, after my mother had broken her hip, my sisters had sold the house in Namoset and my mother had moved to an assisted living residence in Florida, where she had her own little apartment. When we visited, my mother would rake her frail hand through Aura’s mane—this was when she’d grown it long—and say, But why don’t you ever comb your hair, Aura? Why do you like having it in your eyes? Here, give me a hairbrush. And my mother would make Aura lower her head, and with a look of almost baffled concentration and exertion would slowly pull the brush through Aura’s hair. After a few strokes, she’d give up, as if exhausted, and hand the brush back to Aura and say, with a titter, Well, you can brush it, can’t you? Or my mother would say, But why do you dress like that, Aura? Who has ever heard of wearing blue jeans under a dress?
Later, Aura would say, Ay, Francisco, your mother, she’s not the dainty little dama everyone makes her out to be. Ohhh, she likes to joder!—screw around with me, more or less. Aura always called my mother “Señora.” I’d tell her not to, that it made it sound like my mother was her boss. I don’t call your mother Señora, do I? Call my mother Yolanda, or Yoly. Aura would promise to, but the next time she spoke to my mother, she’d go right back to “Señora.”
When was Aura’s hair long? When was it short? Why can’t I remember this? That’s something I ought to be able to track in my memory the way I can follow Aura’s travels by looking through her passport at the stamps: June 2005, short; February 2007, long …
My plan was to be in Mazunte on the first anniversary and then, that same afternoon of the twenty-fourth, fly back to Mexico City. I’d paid for a memorial Mass to be said the next morning at a church in the Condesa. When Juanita and Leopoldo had begun to threaten me with lawyers right after Aura’s death, some of my friends had set me up with a lawyer as well. His name was Saúl Libnic, and he had a practice, with another partner, near the U.S. embassy. They usually handled white-collar criminal cases, but also specialized in U.S. clients with legal problems in Mexico. For this summer of the first anniversary, I’d subletted a studio apartment in the Condesa. Libnic lived in the neighborhood, too, and whenever he wanted to talk to me, we’d meet for an early breakfast at a juice bar on Amsterdam. He was in his early thirties, about my height, trim, with a shaved head and earnest, watery eyes. That morning Libnic explained that as a case had been opened and I was going to the coast anyway, I should make an appointment to see the district prosecutor in Puerto Ángel. The case had originated in Mexico City, he said, but had then been sent to Puerto Ángel. What did that actually mean, I asked, that a case had been opened? It meant, he said, that it had fallen to the district prosecutor in Puerto Ángel to open an investigation into Aura’s death. We could assume, of course, that no evidence had turned up against me. There was no outstanding warrant. As a formality, though, I should testify, because I never had. I did testify, I reminded him, it just wasn’t accepted because I didn’t have my passport. Yes, he said, but in order to get the case closed, I should testify. Taking into account the prior behavior of Aura’s uncle and mother, said Libnic, I should want to get it closed. He recommended that he come with me to Puerto Ángel. I would have to pay all the expenses, along with the legal fees. When he told me how much that would cost, I asked if it was absolutely necessary that he come, and he said, No, not absolutely. I said that I couldn’t afford to bring him. Libnic said he’d make the appointment for me and sound out the district prosecutor about where the case stood. Also, he needed to be paid for his work so far, in cash. Of course, I said. Saúl, I asked, do you think there’s any chance of my falling into a trap? Oaxaca State was governed by the PRI. Through the influence of Aura’s uncle or those university lawyers Juanita had mentioned, might the district prosecutor be ordered or bribed to arrest me? Could they plant false witnesses? Libnic said that he doubted that would happen, though taking into account the reality of Mexican justice, it wasn’t impossible; that was why he’d suggested that he come with me, as a precaution. I’ll think it over, I said, but I really can’t afford that. He said that I shouldn’t worry about it too much; it did seem like the worst had blown over. I suppose I could have afforded to bring him, but I didn’t want a lawyer with me in Mazunte on the first anniversary of Aura’s death.
Fabis’s parents arranged a dinner in their home and invited both Rodrigo and I. We hadn’t seen each other since the funeral though we’d been in contact a bit by e-mail. We went into Fabis’s father’s study to talk in private. Yes, Rodrigo told me, Juanita was still blaming me for Aura’s death. But, he said, she wasn’t suggesting that I’d committed a direct crime anymore. According to Juanita, said Rodrigo, I’d failed to protect Aura from her own impulsiveness. What she was accusing me of now was of a fatal irresponsibility.
I just nodded. I knew that Rodrigo didn’t want to debate with me whether or not that was true. Anyway, I thought, there’s no way to say that I did protect her. I certainly did not protect her. All of Aura’s life, her mother had worried about, had tried to protect Aura from her impulsiveness. Had I ever thought of Aura as especially impulsive? Would I ever have described her as impulsive?
Juanita was no longer in touch with the tías or Vicky. The reason, Vicky had told me in an e-mail, was that Juanita had cut off communication with anybody who did not agree that I was to blame for Aura’s death, or who dared to suggest, as Vicky put it, that I had been “the love of Aura’s life.” But Juanita, I thought, surely needs to regard our marriage as an insignificant episode in Aura’s life; something like a back door carelessly left open, through which her killer entered. Juanita had more than twenty years of memories of Aura in which they’d been at the center of each other’s lives. What was that compared to my and Aura’s four years? I’d heard from an old friend of Aura’s who was still at the UNAM that Juanita was now going around saying that Aura—rather her ghost or spirit I presume—was living with her in her apartment. There was nothing odd about that. For a few weeks, at least, I’d been convinced that Aura was in the tree at the end of our block, and ever since I hadn’t been able to walk past that tree without feeling guilty, as if I’d betrayed Aura by not trying hard enough to keep that belief alive, and by no longer stopping to kiss the trunk, or even to whisper to it.
Juanita hadn’t done anything with Aura’s ashes yet, as far as Rodrigo knew.
I told him that if he ever thought my speaking to Juanita could in any way be of help to her, I would do it.
He said that he was sure Juanita did not want to speak to me. If I had a need to speak to her, then I could send her an e-mail and ask her, he suggested. He gave me Juanita’s new e-mail address: it was Aura’s name, with numbers. I was using a new e-mail address, too, AUFRA, with some numbers. How alike we are, I thought; in some ways, totally, pathetically alike.
I have no need to speak to Juanita, I said. If it would help her for me to speak with her, I will, that’s all, because Aura would want me to.
But what would I say if I did speak to her? I didn’t kill your daughter. She doesn’t even want to hear that. I did kill your daughter, I’m sorry. I’m to blame. You were right to accuse me. Would that l
ighten her suffering?
Is there anything I can say to you, Juanita, that will free you from having to think of me, and from your consuming blame, assuming that is what you do and that it is consuming, and that you do want to be freed from it? Maybe you don’t. Some people need somebody else to blame, as if that’s their one key to sanity, or an incitement to stay alive. But likewise, Juanita, is there anything that I can say that will free me from always having to think about you, that will stop you and your blame from getting between me and Aura, from invading every corner of my mourning?
Every night I go to bed hoping that this will be one of the nights when I dream about Aura, but sometimes I have nightmares about Juanita instead.
At dinner, Rodrigo let us pass around his cell phone so that we could see pictures of his new girlfriend. She was blonde, maybe a dyed blonde, and looked quite a bit younger than him; in one shot she was entwined in bedsheets, her shoulder bare. He watched us pass his phone around with an expression of priestly solemnity. Good for him, I thought. It’s what a man should be doing after a divorce. He’d scanned and downloaded a few photographs of Aura as a little girl onto his telephone, too, and the next day he e-mailed them to me.
For three summers in a row, Aura and I had given a weekend barbecue on our patio for family and friends. About a hundred burgers each time, plus sausages, ribs, and hot dogs for kids. I did the barbecuing, and Aura and Fabis made everything else, the salads and the fideo seco. Three summers in a row—enough to have established a family tradition of our own, I think. Now, this summer, I would do it on Fabis’s patio, after the memorial service. I invited Rodrigo and Katia. I actually told him to invite Juanita, too, knowing that there was no chance that she would come. He told me that Leopoldo was taking Juanita out of the city for those days.
At the memorial service, Fabis, her mother, and I sat in a pew behind Rodrigo, Katia, her husband, and their three children. The ponytailed baby girl kept leaving her mother’s side to crawl along the back of the pew and climb onto Rodrigo’s lap where she would grab his cheeks with her little hands. He beamed with the pride of a youthful grandfather. Katia’s husband kept reaching out to take Katia’s hand, and he snuck her quick pecks on the cheek. She looked beautiful. Though I rarely see Katia, I thought, whenever I do, I feel more fondness for her. She moves me. People do change, they grow, and it also helps to have a good-guy husband who adores you.
27
The summer before the last one, Aura and I had stayed with Jaime and Isabel and their little children for a few days at San Agustinillo, the beach adjacent to Mazunte. They, along with another couple—a poetry professor and his wife—and some friends from Madrid, had rented a row of bungalows on the beach. Aura had taken a few classes with the professor at the UNAM. He had a meek yet gallant demeanor. I guess it was no secret that he’d had a crush on Aura when she was his student ten years before—Aura had known it. I saw him squinting at her with a lingering, slightly befuddled expression, and knew he was thinking something like, Seems like just yesterday. Later, when we’d fallen silent listening to the surf, the professor spoke about his friend the poet Manuel Ulacia, who’d drowned one night, elsewhere on the Pacific coast, a few years before.
Down the beach, boulders and rocks jutted and hooked sharply into the ocean, barricading the waves in a way that, close to shore, created a shallow swathe that children could play in.
But out at the steep, jagged end of the promontory, currents swirled. That’s where, the next day, the professor was swimming when we heard his panicked yelps for help, Auxilio, auxilio! Jaime and I scrambled along the rocks and clumsily plunged-flopped into the water, too far from the professor to help him, but Aura darted to the top of a high boulder and launched herself into the air and landed like a ray from the sky alongside the professor and swam him to safety, her arm around his chest. That the professor hadn’t been in any danger of being pulled out to sea and had just lost his nerve in the current’s pull and was very sheepish afterward didn’t diminish Aura’s heroism. Aura saved my life, the professor kept repeating, looking bewildered, as if he wanted to make light of it but couldn’t. Aura saved your life! we all clamored. Mi amor, what were you thinking? I heard him shouting for help, she said, and I just reacted! Impulsive, yes, with no time for fantasy or reflection. The fast fearless impulsiveness of a superior human, is what I honestly thought. My Aura! What a mother she’s going to be! We had hearty laughs, too, at my and Jaime’s expense, how the professor would have drowned if saving him had been up to us. I was disappointed when everybody, within hours, after lunch and their siestas, no longer wanted to talk about how Aura had saved the professor’s life, as if now it was more important to protect the professor’s feelings, or maybe his wife and children’s feelings, by not referring to the incident anymore.
But what if it really had been a riptide and it had swept the professor and Aura out into the ocean and drowned them both? What would we be saying about Aura’s impulsiveness now?
Impulsiveness: an ungovernable excess bubbling up from within.
Originally we were going to go to Mexico in late May or June, but then Aura decided to teach a summer-semester Spanish class at Columbia. She was taking care of her CV again, the extra money would come in handy, and she was in no hurry to get to Mexico. Our apartment in Mexico needed some work, though, so it was agreed that I’d go down in early June for a week or so to get things ready. Aura made me a to-do list: I was to find a carpenter to build bookshelves; install some needed extra lighting; we needed stuff for the kitchen; she needed a desk. I was looking forward to being in Mexico on my own like in the old days. But a few reprobate nights in the cantinas and terrible hangovers later, I felt baffled by myself. What had I actually been hoping for? I missed Aura; she missed me. We were running up a huge bill with our cell phone calls and I complained about it in an e-mail. She wrote back, This is why we work and earn salaries, Francisco. I bought her a table-desk, with a dark reddish finish. I tracked down the carpenter who seemed the most esteemed, to build bookshelves, and flew home.
* * *
On July 3, 2007, at about half past two in the afternoon, Aura went out the door of our Brooklyn apartment for the last time, and I brought our luggage down to the waiting car. Her new multicolored quilt had been left behind, folded in the closet; her unseated bicycle was double-locked to the iron fence. By four, we were in the airline’s lounge at Newark, having received one free upgrade thanks to my frequent flier status after decades of hoarding miles. I told Aura she could go first class, of course; I’d ride in economy. We drank champagne and toasted the summer.
By the end of our first week back in Mexico, Aura began to feel freer and to enjoy herself. We went out, saw our friends. She was reading Juan Carlos Onetti’s novel La Vida Breve. She’d been devouring Onetti’s writing all spring. The short story she was writing, in Spanish, was about a young man who drops out of a U.S. doctoral program to take a teaching job at a secondary school in a remote part of Mexico; the school and the faculty seem imagined by a Mexican Kafka—a reviewer later wrote precisely that, after it was published—as does the main character’s fraught nighttime telephone conversations with his father in Mexico City. That story’s title is “La vida está en otra parte.” She worked at her new desk downstairs, by the slid-open glass door to the patio. She loved her apartment. She was sure now that sometime in the near future we’d be spending more than just summers and school vacations here, and that was fine with me. If her writing career was primarily going to be in Spanish, as Aura had now decided it was going to be, it would make sense to live in Mexico for a while, and if we were going to have a baby, she wanted to be near her mother.
Just around the corner from where we lived, a brand-new shopping mall had opened on Patriotismo. Our neighborhood was about a half hour walk from the Condesa, and before it hadn’t even had a convenience store or anywhere close by to eat except for a few small, very humble comida corrida places and sidewalk stands, but no place to get a decent cup
of coffee. Now we had a Starbucks, a Sanborns, an Italianni’s, and some of those other chain restaurants that Aura had childhood nostalgia for, all beneath one roof, along with the usual mall stores. A few times for lunch we went and rode the escalator up to the food court and, one time, stayed to watch some of the martial arts movie playing on the giant wall of video panels, starring the late Brandon Lee. One evening Aura bought a tube of Chinese pick-up sticks in Sanborns and we took it into the mall’s T.G.I. Friday’s where, over tequilas and beers, we played. It was surprisingly absorbing, requiring a pickpocket’s deftness and steadiness of touch. Aura won every game, by a wide margin. That cardboard tube of pick-up sticks is on the altar now. But when I poured the sticks out onto the dining table, instead of the numinous glow that I seem to have expected to emerge from the uncapped tube, some surviving glimmer of that sweet hour or trace of Aura’s featherlight touch and laughter, it brought back nothing. I was alone with a pile of plastic sticks.
Maybe memory is overrated. Maybe forgetting is better. (Show me the Proust of forgetting, and I’ll read him tomorrow.) Sometimes it’s like juggling a hundred thousand crystal balls in the air all at once, trying to keep all these memories going. Every time one falls to the floor and shatters into dust, another crevice cracks open inside me, through which another chunk of who we were disappears forever. I wouldn’t sell that tube of sticks for a thousand dollars.
In Starbucks, Aura stopped at the shelves where retail goods were displayed, held up a turquoise coffee press, and gave me that smile, eyebrows entreatingly raised, that she’d use whenever she wanted me to buy something not very sensible. She already had a coffee press back in the apartment except it was black. I asked how much it cost. She told me. Now we were supposed to spend forty dollars just to bring this splash of shiny turquoise into our kitchen?
Say Her Name Page 30
