Walking Heartbreak

by Sunniva Dee

Nadia flies from my arms and into Mrs. Bancroft’s. She hugs her tight, tight, pleading with her, “Ruthie, you didn’t know. How could you know that this time was different? Right now, I swear to you, he must be up there, looking down at us from Heaven and saying, ‘I created that mess.’”

  The two women, one older, one younger, hold on to each other, consoling and easing guilts, soothing pain and losing blame. I meet Mr. Bancroft’s stare over their heads. In the older man’s gaze I find ever-cloudy skies. I see stagnant grief and resignation.

  How they have suffered. I hope by God they find an exit from their hell. All I know is that I’m going to ensure my girl’s happiness.

  “Help us rectify one thing,” Mrs. Bancroft finally says. “Help us fulfill Jude’s biggest wish. Daughter: please go to college. Become a veterinarian. For yourself and for all of us, give up the waitressing and move on.

  “Take a good look at yourself, Nadia,” she continues. “The book of your life has spread open on a shiny new page. You’re traveling—you’ll see your family again with Bo at your side. Please, Nadia, it would mean the world to us if you let us be a part of this; allow our small contribution. It’s just money.”

  “Ruth, I’ll take it from here,” Mr. Bancroft murmurs. “Nadia, these funds will not be touched unless you accept them. As our daughter-in-law, you’re not just in Jude’s will. You’re in ours as well. It’s only a matter of time before they are yours. You might as well accept them now while you need them for college. Make Jude happy. Make us happy. You’ve atoned for sins you never committed for too long.”

  While they insist, Nadia shrinks back into my embrace. Like a small child, she hides her face against my throat and drives air out slowly through her nose. It fills me with a tenderness that’s too big for my chest. I love this girl so hard I want to walk with her through Hell so I can bring her to Heaven when she’s done.

  “We sued the hospital over it, Nadia,” Mr. Bancroft says, his trump card. “They paid up without as much as a hearing because all evidence, the recordings of Ruth’s 911 call and the paramedics’ conversation with Jude, pointed at how they had misjudged the situation.

  “Even though Ruth explained Jude’s history of refusing treatment, they trusted his words over hers. They should have broken down the door when he didn’t open, and their lapse in judgment left Jude to die.

  “The money has now been released to your trust fund. Nothing, Nadia, no money could be more yours than this.”

  NADIA

  We’re escorted from the airport by the director of the venue. We’re late, and we’re exhausted from layovers in Brazil and Chile, one of which was unexpected. The director, Salvador Battoni, gesticulates, mingling Italian-laden Spanish with English as he rushes us to Luna Park, New-York-taxi style and on two wheels most of the time.

  “No, no, no. No time for hotel!” the director insists as if the band has suggested such a thing. Troll surveys all of us from the front passenger seat, ending it with a playful wink at me. “No. No check-in first. Luna Park it is, Mr. Battoni.”

  “Salvatore!” our guide corrects him. “Salvatore, like la mia nonna called me!” Bo sends me a curious look, and I whisper, “His grandma called him ‘Salvatore.’ Italian version of the Spanish name ‘Salvador.’”

  “People from Buenos Aires like to chatter, huh?” Bo says, and I nod, smiling. Mi gente, I think, because they are.

  It’s dark outside. I don’t get the full view, but I smell my city and my country. Memories and love for this place glide through me, and as Salvador fans a hand behind Emil, hurrying him in the back door to the concert hall and muttering stuff even I don’t understand, that small smile I’ve worn since we passed through customs spreads into a full-blown grin.

  “Is my girl happy?” Bo asks, heaving me off the floor in a playful, one-armed hug with the hand that doesn’t hold his guitar. A little something—a joyous little something—bobs in my throat at his question.

  “Maybe.” I purse my smile low. He sees though and winks at me. Sucks a kiss to my lips before staff swarms us. Their serious faces boast glittering blue eyes, cat-green eyes, and amber eyes concocted in the crazy melting pot of races that is Buenos Aires.

  Fast and efficient, the stagehands unload the truck, and I think that they could be my next-door neighbors in La Boca all grown up. That joyous something bobbing in my throat grows and fizzes and makes me let out a giggle.

  A different déjà vu hits me in the dressing room. There he is, my baby. Bo with dark bangs spiking over a fine-boned, pale face as he hunches in over his guitar, tapping on strings, finding peace in his music before he goes on stage to be wooed as a symbol of rock, sex, whatever.

  I’m where he wants me, in this dressing room so he can lean on my faith in him. His faraway gaze remains on me while he plays. He’s here for me too—the whole band is—by accepting this single South American gig for me.

  It wasn’t easy to commit to coming here: the anxiety of having to retell my story to my mother’s family; the overwhelming love I’d feel at the hearth of my family; the sadness over the years I had missed in their midst. I wasn’t sure I could do it.

  But while I have Bo’s back when he walks out there on stage, he’ll have mine when we go to my Tía Rosa’s tonight.

  This moment is so big I could cry.

  “So much going on in my head right now.” My tone is unsteady.

  “All good stuff, right?” Bo’s irises shimmer already, knowing. This man. How could I be so lucky? How is one person afforded two deep loves in one lifetime? What did I do to deserve this?

  He leans in, hair that’s not black anymore but taking back its original ash-blond shade tickling my face. In an attempt to hide how moved I am, I scrunch up my nose, acting like the feather-soft caresses of his hair bother me.

  “You’re about to cry. Good-cry,” he teases, silky voice vibrating against my skin. “My little Nadia can’t take all the pleasures I bring her.”

  “My little Bo is full of himself,” I tease back.

  “Hmm, I’ll be happy to share. I’ll fill you up too.”

  I’m dimwitted and overwhelmed and don’t understand until his hands start roaming. Feeling, trailing down my ribs, my thighs, and working to hike my skirt up.

  “Baby,” he moans, playful and so delicious. “I can’t believe you didn’t want to play mile-high-club with me. Thanks to you, I’ll be too uncomfortable to go on stage. Unless you give me—”

  The door flies open the way it always does in dressing rooms during Clown Irruption concerts. First in comes Emil. He’s long-distance-fighting with Zoe on the phone, brows drawn and trying to explain that he has been in the air or in airports all this time. Next, comes Troll, rumbling out, “Ready? We’re going straight from sound-check to doors.”

  Emil scoffs, covering his ear against the tour manager. “Zee. I told you I wanted you to come along, and no, I’m not going to sleep with all of Nadia’s cousins.”

  Bo snickers.

  “What?” Emil presses the phone against his ear. “Of course I didn’t manage on the first try—I was chasing a moving target. You have to stay still. You can’t wiggle your butt when I’m trying to get in, Zoay.”

  “TMI?” Bo suggests. I nod, feeling a blush spreading at their typical indiscretion.

  “Okay, next time I’ll just buy some rope and shit,” Emil says, “and just bondage you all up. That way you can’t wiggle away. Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  “Geez,” Elias mutters. “Everyone, get a room. Romance so thick in here I’m about to puke.”

  Emil stuffs a finger in his ear. “No, it won’t help if you tie me down. And no, I’m pretty sure you tried to break my wiener. That’d ruin all the fun, now, wouldn’t it? Really? You don’t think so?”

  “This was our room,” Bo replies to Elias. “Why didn’t you stay next door?”

  “Because Emil was in there
fighting with Zoe.”

  “But now he’s here.”

  “Yeah, there’s no peace anywhere.”

  Troll pops a piece of cheese in his mouth and hands Elias a bottle of water. “Here. Now, head in the game. Grab your instruments and get out there. Sound. Check.”

  NADIA

  White and blue spotlights flash over the audience in sync with Elias’ bass and Troy’s drums. Slow yet insistent, the beat thunders out, and the crowd’s attention locks on the guys as the first song picks up speed and the volume steadily increases.

  Troll has me by the shoulder. Nods at me through the wall of music, telling me to follow. Uniformed policemen focus on Troll’s explanation first, then on my face. One of them squints, bobs his head, and aids me the few steps down from the stage to the floor.

  The standing area in front of the stage is chock-full of people younger than me. They’re bouncing to the rhythm, dancing, hands in the air and ready for more. We move along the wall. I send a nervous glance in Troll’s direction and find him surveying me from the steps and giving me a thumbs-up before he returns to his post backstage.

  Down here, half forgotten scents reach me full force. Perfumes. Detergents and fabric softeners of my childhood. Whiffs of cheerful memories. The scents mingle with my excitement while the police make way for me to row three. The youngest of them turns, badge glinting from his jacket as he waves for me to pass the girls on the first chairs.

  I obey. I pass them, nerves and happiness sparring as I watch six young men and women rise in their seats, mouthing something. Smiling. Eyes glistening with unshed tears. A hand stretches out, clamps around my arm. It’s not in a handshake, no—it’s to draw me in against a neck. Wet smooches move over both my cheeks, soundless against the loud music, and return for a repeat on my left.

  I’m breathless, processing the enormity of this. I gasp while they pass me among each other for more kisses, more sobs, saying amor, saying, te echamos de menos—tanto, tanto!, saying años y años sin verte, Nadia, saying, no lo puedo creer—

  And I do speak Castellano still, I assure them. I do speak Spanish. I can talk with my cousins. Hug them. Love them back with the same fervor they show me because I’m like them. I’m from here too. We are blood and family, all so much thicker than water, and in this moment I can’t believe I have survived all these years without them.

  “Sit between us,” Mariana shouts over the music, pushing Diego to the side. “Do you recognize the twins, Adriana and Andrés? They look the same, no?” she laughs. They don’t look the same. They were babies when I left.

  “No, but I recognize your eyes,” I say in Spanish to them. “They were yellow back then too.”

  All six of my cousins slap shoulders and laugh as they repeat among themselves what I said. Adriana leans in, screaming to the others and assuring that they back her up before she tells me, “You have to stay at our house. Grandma can’t wait to hold you in her arms again, and she lives with Mamá now. She said to tell you, te amo mucho.”

  And I’m overcome with the love. With the shouting of words in my mother tongue over music created by the new love of my life. As I think it, Diego’s gaze goes to the stage, a chin-pump indicating the band that’s seamlessly shifting into the next song.

  “Who’s your husband?” he asks.

  He doesn’t know—I haven’t revealed much to them in the few weeks since I found Mariana on Facebook. My heart doesn’t hurt at Diego’s question. It doesn’t ruin the moment. So I smile back at him and say, “He’s not my husband, but my boyfriend is the one on guitar.”

  BO

  Backstage Luna Park is a riot in the literal sense of the word. I’m drenched with sweat after three encores, two of them containing Fuck You. We generally don’t do encores of a song from the set list, but the vehemence of our Argentinian fans is persuasive. Our host and venue director, Salvador/Salvatore, even appeared backstage, nodding furiously while explaining to Troll that we’d have anarchy on our hands if we didn’t heed their wishes.

  “Mariana!” A girl with long, smooth, black hair and violet eyes introduces herself, smiling big. Without invitation, she proceeds to triple-kiss my face before she steps back into my girlfriend’s side, hugging her close. “I’m her best cousin!” she explains, a small hand gesture underlining the validity of her statement.

  Mariana swings and yells something in Spanish to a group behind her, pivots back to me, and translates, “I told them that you are beautiful. So beautiful a man. But skinny like rock star. Is my other cousins. There.” Her hand flutters behind her in the general direction of the others.

  “Warm, yes?” observes a teenaged boy with amber cat eyes. He points and continues. “You’re… hmm. What is called?”

  I wipe my brow and smile. “Sweaty?”

  “Yes, I would say ‘sweaty,’” replies the female replica of Cat-Eyes Cousin behind him. “And I. Am Adriana.” She lifts her chin, proud, before she lunges past her brother and straight at my neck for her own version of a triple French cheek-smooch. I try to dodge the boy when he follows suit, but I am too slow.

  “Andrés,” he says. “I am Andrés. And you are Bo. My cousin’s boyfriend. And you will sleep at my Tía Rosa’s house tonight because is not possible to sleep in hotel.”

  I send Nadia a puzzled look. She bites her smile and shrugs. “I think we have no choice but to spend the night at my family’s. They want the entire band there too, but at least us.”

  “At least you,” says a tall guy Nadia’s age. He’s close enough to push through lightning fast for another full-on set of loud kisses. “Diego,” he says. “Not Maradona! Just Diego Garcia. I’m also very, very good in the football.”

  “Soccer,” another cousin specifies in case I thought they played American football in Argentina. The new cousin lifts a hand, pinching her fingers together like she’s grabbing a small fruit. “Soccer!” she repeats.

  “Ah yes. Sí-sí-sí. Soccer.”

  The fans flood into the small reception area backstage. In the beginning, everyone is polite, sweet, swooning over autographs above belly buttons and on CDs. But when the crowd thickens and shoves to get to us, I loosen Mariana’s hold on Nadia and tuck my girl under my arm; there’s no way I’ll allow frenzied fans close enough to put her in danger.

  In a repeat from a show in the US, the scuffle starts at the door. Only the pushing is more violent. Fans shout to get in, and it’s not venue staff guarding the door—it’s police with guns and batons on their hips. A stagehand translates when I ask what’s going on. “Someone has reproduced backstage passes and sold them on the black market. There are at least a hundred of them out there, waiting to come in. The fans thought they bought real passes, and they’re very upset.”

  “Troll!” I yell over Nadia’s head. He’s onto the situation and already speaking with the venue director. At my call, he makes his way over to us, bushy brows drawn with concern. It flashes through me how lucky we are to have him; he’ll do anything to keep us comfortable.

  “Bo, we’ve got a situation on our hands,” he begins.

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  “Okay, we’ll have an escape van ready at the emergency exit in five.”

  “No, let’s make Buenos Aires happy,” I say and feel Nadia’s gaze on me. “Here’s what we’ll do. Is everyone out of the main venue yet?”

  “Well, except for the hundred or so with fake backstage passes.”

  “All right. Let’s move this party back out.”

  Troll gets it and instantly runs with my idea. “Okay. I’ll keep you guys on stage. The fans can come up and meet you one by one—doesn’t matter that the stagehands are working around you—and we’ll bring the leftover drinks out so they have something to hold onto while they wait their turn.”

  “Perfect,” I say. Salvador arrives in time to catch Troll’s logistical input.

  “Perfecto!�
� he chimes in.

  “Ah you are sooo lucky!” a blonde teenager with black eyes exclaims to Nadia, beaming. “He wrote that song about youuuu?”

  Nadia has that pink tint to her cheeks, the one I love to make crawl down her chest. She fidgets, unsure of where to keep her hands, so I take one of them and pull it to my mouth for a kiss. “Sí,” I say in Spanish, making the girl giggle. “She’s my inspiration for everything.”

  “No-no-no, not the sad song?” the girl asks, jutting out a pouty-lip.

  “True, not the sad song.”

  “I hope you never, never write sad songs about her!”

  “I won’t let him,” my shy girl pipes up, adding in her mother tongue, “Nunca,” and I think I know what it means.

  “I will tell you what love is in Spanish,” the small blonde declares. “Te amo.”

  “Te amo?” I say to be sure I pronounce it correctly.

  “Sí!” She claps her hands together and holds them there expectantly. Her gaze flicks from me to Nadia and then back to me.

  I turn to my sweetheart and say, “Te amo,” and somehow that’s bigger for her than all the times I’ve said it in English and Swedish. Nadia’s eyes well with liquid emotion, and her cheeks take on a darker shade of pink.

  “Siempre?” Nadia whispers, and I look to the girl for help. She squees and claps her hands in small flutters, dragonfly-style.

  “She ask you if always! Will you always love her?” Then she holds her breath on Nadia’s behalf.

  “Sí,” I say. “Siempre. Te amo siempre.”

  “Siempre te amaré,” the girl specifies, but she nods so she must be okay with my version too. Nadia nudges a bashful kiss to my shoulder, but I lift her chin so the second kiss lands on my mouth. Exactly where I like it.

  BO

  My love, she nibbles on two fingernails, a rapid blink of dark eyes revealing how worried she is. Hired help shoves furniture into a moving truck, while two others upend her couch and push it through the doorway.