Absent a Miracle

by Christine Lehner

  Olga says, "Lalo said we had some Fairweathers staying here already, and one of them said, Fairweathers of Maine?"

  "Where's Lalo now?"

  "You really should consider wearing a hat. It would suit you. It would keep you dry."

  "It's stopped raining."

  "That was a metaphor."

  "I am so confused," I say.

  What am I so scared of? That some people who probably have never been to Maine in their lives will convict me of allowing Ezra to contract a tropical disease? While I was next door. With Lalo.

  Exactly that.

  "There is nothing wrong with being confused. It is often the holiest condition of all," Olga says. Her lovely long index finger strokes my forearm.

  Waldo told me about Hindu yogis who create a layer of protective sweat that allows them to rest comfortably upon a bed of hot coals. I can feel Olga's finger incising a line along the inside of my arm. I am not unscathed.

  Hubert told me about Saint Cunegund. Though chaste as the driven snow, she was accused by evil gossips of being unfaithful to her husband. She demanded the trial by fire in order to prove her innocence. She walked unscathed over the hot coals, and her virtue was made manifest for all to see.

  It could be that a perfectly clean conscience allows one to perform great feats of endurance. Like sleep.

  Ezra has not upchucked the most recent glass of water. This is progress.

  In my room I examine the tiny lines of perplexity around my eyes. I watch myself say How do you do? Pleased to make your acquaintance for the first time, in English and Spanish. I tuck my shirt into a fresh pair of khakis, ironed by Nicaraguan hands, as they never are in VerGroot.

  Once more I touch Ezra's forehead.

  At the bottom of the stairs, standing next to a wooden San Antonio, Don Abelardo and the tiny Doña Luisa are standing almost as still as the statue.

  "I miss you, amorcito," she says.

  "I used to know you," he says.

  "I can't bear this."

  "Tell me again who you are," he says.

  She whispers, weepily, "I'm Lulu, your beloved wife."

  He grins. "I knew that!" His gaze is transfixed by a distant object. The grin recedes. "Keep telling me. Please. Who you are."

  I asked Carmen why they removed the stuffed monkeys and kept the vicuña and guanaco. She said that vicuñas and guanacos were wild camelids.

  Lalo and his gringos have not gotten very far beyond the front door. The gringos comprise two men in shorts. Their calves are spotted with dried mud.

  The oldest man stands a bit apart from the others. He is craggy and sunburned, with washed-out blue eyes. His hands stay inside his pants' pockets except when his right hand emerges to pat down his pale blond hair. He has pronounced buttocks. This I can't help but notice. According to Three, New Englanders have no butts. He said that to me once, on the porch in Catamunk, while Waldo and Dick played Jenga with enormous concentration. "It has never been properly explained," Three had said. "The buttlessness of New England men. But it is worth study, don't you agree?" I'd nodded. I was going to marry this man's son. An uneasy silence descended over us. Since that time—naturalmente—I involuntarily examine the butts of men, and assess them. I can't stop myself.

  So when this man, this gringo with pronounced buttocks, tells me he is from New England, I will be very suspicious.

  But first I whisper, "Lalo, I think your father has forgotten your mother."

  His face changes color and his eyes shutter. Did this need to be said? Now? How obvious is my desire to lay claim to Lalo?

  "May I present our guest Alice Fairweather? Alice, these people have come on a mission to find the bodies. But now this man's wife is ill, and I have said we can put her up."

  "I'm sorry to hear that," I say.

  "Please tell me again your names," Abelardo says. They introduce themselves: Edward Flanz and George Glass. The absent, ill wife of George is Edith Dilly-Glass.

  "We know the Fairweathers in Camden; are you one of them?" George says. "Edith's family have known them for ages."

  I cannot look at him. There are embers inside my skull. I say, "Edith Dilly?"

  "Yes! So you do know her!"

  "I am married to Waldo Fairweather," I say. It would be perfectly fine if the rain started again. Now. This instant.

  "Waldo. I've heard so much about him, but I've never had the pleasure," George says. "We had a small wedding, and then we've been doing mission work ever since. Edith is a saint."

  Abelardo bristles and scratches his head. I want to gag. Not figuratively. No, nothing figurative about it. I am literally overwhelmed with nausea.

  George still grins expectantly. Finally, with acute slowness, Lalo says, "They have a dog named Sam who goes with them around the world, sniffing out corpses. Have you ever heard of this?"

  "Of Sam?"

  The older man, Edward Flanz, says, "There was a piece about him in the Times last year."

  "I must have missed it," I say.

  George Glass says, "What a fabulous coincidence this is. Wait until I tell Edith. To meet people from home in godforsaken Nicaragua. Oh, sorry! I know she'll want to tell her mother. She's in Maine, you know."

  "Oh." I have found the one completely blank spot on the wall, a spot with no cracks, no shadows of long-dead insects, no cartographic remnants of leaks and drips, and there I focus.

  Abelardo, my friend, Waldo's friend, my mystery lover, appears ridiculously cheerful. He has recovered from the unfortunate saint remark. He invites the gringos to sit down. He directs Sam, the corpse-sniffing dog, to the kitchen, where Doña Odilia will feed him. Sam walks off in the correct direction. Abelardo asks where they are from, when they landed in Nicaragua, and how they made it to Las Brisas. They are from Delaware, Connecticut, and formerly Maine. Edward Flanz is the one with a shapely butt and he is the one from Delaware, state of no income tax, so I guess Three's dictum is holding fast. Edward Flanz and Sam arrived in Nicaragua only yesterday. He would have come sooner, he says, but he had to raise the money for his airfare. He raises all the money he needs from speaking engagements at churches and animal shelters, and he never takes a penny in payment for the work that he and Sam do. People are so very generous. The Glasses have been in the country for almost three weeks, on an outreach mission from their church. What kind of church? Pentecostal Congregationalists. Abelardo says softly, "This is a Catholic country." But even that does not dampen his cheerful demeanor.

  They drove from Managua to León in their four-wheel-drive vehicle. In León the mayor directed them to the village of Santa Eulalia, on the slopes of the volcano, because that's where the worst flooding was, where the worst mudslides were, where a corpse-sniffing dog and two Pentecostal Confrontationalists would be greeted with gratitude. That is where poor Edith came down with dengue fever.

  "What about—? That village Carmen was talking about? The village that disappeared?"

  "That's near Granada," Lalo says. "In the other direction."

  "Isn't that where they should be sniffing for corpses?"

  "The damnificados are everywhere," Lalo says.

  The stricken look on George's face is too perfect for my taste. "Poor Edith."

  "She'll recover," Lalo says. "Since there is no cure for dengue, we have to pray."

  "Carmen thinks Ezra has dengue," I say, and immediately regret it.

  Suddenly Olga is there. "You probably want to know about Ezra."

  "Always. I always want to know about him."

  "Carmen is with him," she says. She rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet.

  "What I don't understand is how they could get here but the doctor cannot."

  "Our vehicle has very big wheels," says George Glass. "We were lucky to get it. We didn't make it all the way. We walked the last two or three miles. Even with dengue. There was no choice. Poor Edith."

  Oh, yes, you had a choice. There is always a choice. Don't we always have a choice, especially when we don't recogn
ize it? Isn't that what I said to Waldo? Back when he was choosing Edith Dilly over me? Back when he was screwing her front and back? Back before she joined the Pentagonal Confirmationalists and came south to behave in such a saintly way?

  Olga addresses Lalo. "Do we know who these people are? Because the beneficio is a disaster."

  "They came to find corpses. They have a dog that sniffs for corpses. Quite a famous dog."

  "That's revolting," Olga says.

  Abelardo shrugs. "Someone has to do it." Never before have I seen him shrug.

  "We're on an errand of mercy," says George Glass. "Which makes it all the sadder about Edith getting bitten. By an infected mosquito."

  Olga rolls her eyes clockwise and rocks on her feet counterclockwise.

  Olga says, "Who are you?"

  I answer, "They're Penitential Conformists."

  Lalo says, "His wife is ill and I said they could stay here. I told Graciela to put her in the old box room." To me, "That's on the other side of the upstairs."

  I was spared Edith Dilly at Sydney Sweet's wedding because she was in some Third-World country doing mission work for a cult. Posey calls it a cult and she says the other Dillys are mortified. They should have been mortified years ago, when she seduced my Waldo. I was spared her at the wedding so that she could come here.

  Is this the Edith Dilly who kept me awake nights, weeping? Death by earth, fire, wind, or water was too good for the Edith Dilly who alienated my Waldo's affections. What I wanted for Edith Dilly was a husband of her own who would betray her, break her heart, crush her tender emotions, and trample her affections beneath his indifferent hobnailed boots.

  George Glass starts to speak, then changes his mind.

  I still don't know what she looks like.

  Abelardo was right, is right. There are no coincidences.

  Dear Saint Tristána Llobet, hear my prayers. Grant me this miracle. Make Waldo love me and only me, forever and ever. Amen. And make Ezra better. Take away whatever fever it is that inhabits him. Is that too much to ask? Waldo and Ezra? And keep an eye on Henry. Henry is capable of doing anything, and he will do anything, and he doesn't know what he is capable of. Please keep a close eye on Henry. That's all. Just those three. Amen. And P.S., dear Tristána, put Ezra first. First of all I pray to make Ezra healthy again. Forgive me.

  Nothing about Lalo. I don't know how to pray for Lalo.

  I take the long way back upstairs. I take the route that goes past the kitchen. Don Abelardo and Carmen are watching the battery-powered television along with Doña Odilia and the others.

  Carmen says, "It's worse than we imagined."

  Graciela is weeping silently. "I knew it. I knew it."

  "The death toll. The damnificados."

  The image on the screen was shot from the air. It is awash in brown. At first. Then the image focuses and we see mud, streams and rivers of mud. There are tree trunks lying every which way, every way but upright, and there is debris. Lots of debris. They are filming the side of a volcano where mudslides washed away everything, every structure, every natural barrier, everything but the raw, gritty, slimy earth that remains. The engine's whir muffles the voiceover. Again and again, the damnificados. The damned. The damned ones. What did they do to be damned? To have attained damnation? Or damnification? Millones des damnificados. Un montón de damnificados.

  Don Abelardo pulls out one of the wobbly wooden stools around the big central table, and alights.

  Graciela chants names. "Pedro, Analuisa, Fabio, Rafa, Pedro, Analuisa, Fabio, Rafa, Pedro..."

  Carmen says, "Erosion is a terrible thing."

  I can't take it anymore. "Why do they keep calling them damned? Isn't it bad enough to be homeless, or dead, or washed away?"

  "That is exactly what they are," Carmen says, and pushes her beautiful black hair back from her beautiful white forehead. "Graciela, you don't know anything yet. You always assume the worst. Calmate! The damnificados are not here. That is Tipitapa."

  "We had chickens in Tipitapa," says Don Abelardo. "The chickens are drowning in mud now. My mother has special chickens. She keeps them near the house and feeds them plátanos and pejibaye and palmito. She will never recover."

  "Papa! The chickens are fine and your mother is dead. Remember? She died twenty years ago, on Christmas Day. You must try and remember."

  Ezra told me that Don Abelardo had a stroke two weeks before we landed in Managua. He told me that Carmen found her father sitting on the ground in the courtyard, touching his nose with the tip of his index finger and whispering to himself. His blood is too thick, Ezra told me.

  "You keep telling me she's dead. I believe you, but I don't remember it," Don Abelardo says.

  On the small television screen a woman in a short white skirt and décolleté red blouse is standing next to a large wooden box. Because of the angle, it isn't immediately clear that this is a coffin. Then it is. The lid is half off. The woman with cleavage and high heels speaks into her microphone with one hand on her left hip.

  Carmen turns to me. "You know who this is, don't you?"

  "Who?"

  "It's La Matilda."

  "I thought she was dead."

  "She is dead. That is her coffin."

  "I thought you meant the newscaster."

  Don Abelardo smiles. "That's Maria de Torre. She has the most beautiful breasts in Nicaragua."

  "Maria de Torre was her mother," Carmen tells me.

  "Her breasts even smell beautiful." Don Abelardo holds his fingertips to his nose and sniffs.

  "Stop it, Papa!"

  This is my first time inside this kitchen. I can count exactly five fruits or vegetables I don't recognize. Which—in this small world/global economy of ours—seems rather a lot. They have lumps, protrusions, bristles, and hairs. They tend to tertiary colors. I have probably eaten them.

  From the television comes the uniform newscaster's voice: "Local authorities are seeking help from the national government as people are flocking here from all over the country. There are no facilities to house or feed visitors, but still, the people want to see for themselves what is already being declared a miracle, the incorrupt body of Matilda Vargas de la Rosa, better known to all Nicaragüenses as La Matilda. As the whole country, and now the whole world, knows, Hurricane Alice's tragic mudslides of the past three days destroyed several villages along the slopes of the Mombacho and Santa Eulalia volcanoes, including Tecacilpa, the small village where Matilda Vargas has lain buried for these past twenty-four years. But now this mudslide that has wiped out the houses and the historic church of Santa Eulalia has created a different kind of havoc. The force of nature that destroyed structures also unearthed coffins, and one coffin in particular."

  Maria de Torre of the magnificent bosom gestures operatically toward the mud-stained coffin with its lid knocked off.

  "Here lies La Matilda. In deference to the sensibilities of our viewers, and also because the bishop has asked us not to, not yet, we are not showing footage of the actual body. But we are telling the Nicaraguan people and the world that something remarkable has happened here, because the body of La Matilda is as fresh as the day she was buried. Perhaps more so. According to several sources—and we cannot deny it—there is the unmistakable scent of gardenia emanating from inside the coffin. This is especially remarkable because of the blight of fungi isthmii that has lately attacked gardenias all over the country and seriously affected the cut-flower industry. Later today we will have an interview with Monsignor Roberto Ovadia, pastor of the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Managua and an expert in the miracle of the incorrupt body."

  Carmen flips her hair back vehemently. "I know Roberto. Keep Ezra away from him. He likes little boys."

  Don Abelardo ejaculates, "Pshaw! Everything he knows about incorrupt bodies he learned from Sister Maria Christina."

  Graciela crosses herself.

  Doña Odilia lights the gas stove underneath a large pot of black beans.

  I have to go
see Ezra. I am going to see Ezra. Abelardo is entertaining the gringos somewhere. How many damnificados has this hurricane created? Couldn't Edith be one of them? No, that's not what I wish for her. I want nothing for her. And Waldo all for me.

  Ezra is awake. I open the casement window and breathe. I don't smell gardenias. I smell moisture.

  "Ez, you're not going to believe what happened. I have a feeling it will change everything."

  "I already know."

  "You do?"

  "Yup. Matilda's body smells like flowers."

  "How could you possibly know that?"

  "I just know. Maybe I dreamed it?"

  "Carmen must have told you. Doesn't she tell you everything?" Oh, my sweet Ezra. He has such soft skin, and after three days in bed it's even softer. Softer than is safe in this world.

  "I have a dream for you," Ezra says.

  "First let me take your temperature."

  "Are you okay, Mom?"

  "I'm fine. Why?"

  "You always want to hear my dreams. Before anything."

  "I'm just trying to stay focused. To be vigilant." But he's right.

  His temp is down to 100.5. Where are all the old mercury thermometers? No one shakes them down anymore. Here is what Waldo should create: a Museum of Lost Gestures. Shaking a thermometer. Dialing a rotary phone. Delicately placing the needle into the groove of a vinyl record at exactly the song you want to hear, again and again, "Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands." Cranking open a car window.

  "You're not so hot," I say. "Are you hungry?"

  "I had soup and Jell-O with Carmen."

  "With Carmen? Oh." This is news. "Have you thrown up yet?"

  "Nope! Isn't that great?"

  "That is truly great, Ez. Tell me your dream."

  "We can wait and I can tell Carmen too when she comes back," he says.

  "If you want."

  "Do you think I'll be better tomorrow?"

  "I hope so, Ez. I really hope so."

  "Carmen said there are some new people here. Gringos, she said. Have you seen them?"

  "Some of them," I say. "They'll be gone soon."

  I lie down next to Ezra. Whatever happens, I don't want him to see Edith Dilly. I cannot even wish for her prolonged ill health and misery, because what I really want is for her to be gone. Gone from this house, this farm, this country.