Absent a Miracle

by Christine Lehner

  "What about the American woman? Edith Dilly?" I say. I slowly pronounce the syllables, because I know that naming things can take away their power. So I am naming Edith. Distinctly.

  Carmen turns her face away from Ezra and whispers, "Waldo's former paramour, I gather. I hope she is attractive. I would hate to think he showed bad taste."

  "I can't hear you," Ezra says.

  Carmen smiles. "Perhaps she will die a painful death. But—oh, dear—I don't believe there is anything like justice in the world. And God forbid she should die here. What a nightmare. All the paperwork. A Canadian aid worker once had a heart attack in the village and we filled out forms for months. If that ever happens again I'll drive the body down the mountain and arrange it on a park bench in Leon, reading a newspaper."

  I am undone. Should I be gleeful? Carmen knows about Edith, and Carmen is my ally. Carmen actually said that? About a painful death? How can she say aloud what I cannot express? Though what I wished for Edith were heartbreak and misery.

  I had been so terribly jealous. Everywhere I'd looked (everywhere except sleeping Henry) spoke of Waldo's betrayal and my loss. Of course I had been melodramatic. Waldo was fucking Edith and I was leaking all over my flannel pajamas. Over and over, as I'd nursed Henry, as I'd inadvertently squirted milk all over his tender head, I'd muttered: "Here I am and Waldo is fucking Edith the fucking tennis champion. Or Edith the fucking sailing champion." I'd imagined Edith's head smashed by the boom at a yacht club regatta. I'd imagined Edith impaled on a tennis racket, a difficult thing to accomplish in the best of circumstances. I'd imagined Edith swathed and mummified inside endless yards of pink and green Lilly Pulitzer fabric, showing only the tips of her Pappagallos. Then I'd hated myself for thinking such thoughts as I cradled Henry. What anguish and future traumas were seeping into his psyche along with my milk? Was he doomed to spend years dissecting his dreams of mayhem as he reclined in a shrink's office? One of my early Bad Mother Moments.

  It was all because I could not wish ill upon Waldo. Oh, no. I could not picture Waldo in any place except with us, in any attitude except as husband and father. That would have jinxed it, jinxed us. I'd wanted and needed Waldo back at his rightful place at the dinner table, constructing limericks and instructing Ezra about the arachnid life cycle and the many possible uses for bungee cords. I could not wish justifiable revenge upon Waldo because I'd wanted him back, loving me. So instead I'd imagined horrors for Edith Dilly.

  Ezra has finished it all.

  "Want some more ginger ale, Ez? Are you hungry?"

  "Carmen's going to bring me some fruit."

  She smiles at him. If there was ever a time when Waldo had weighed the relative attractions of Carmen and Edith Dilly, I certainly hope he went for Carmen. I have not seen Edith yet, but of this I am sure.

  "Melon soaked in ginger syrup. There is nothing better for fevers, providing you can keep it down. Our young Ezra is ready for it now."

  "Do you know where Edith Dilly is staying?"

  "The room at the far end." She points toward the end of the upper loggia I have never visited.

  "I want to see what she looks like," I say. Knowing Carmen is with me, knowing Carmen is with us, this must be what gives me the new courage to face Edith.

  "Be my guest," Carmen says. "But remember that dengue is not flattering. Not even in our beloved Ezra."

  "What do I care about flattering?"

  "I'm just warning you." She smiles beatifically, a mother superior smile.

  "Knock, knock."

  Something falls to the floor. Thud.

  "Knock, knock."

  "Come in. Por favor."

  She is nothing like what I expected. I couldn't tell you what I expected.

  "You must be Alice," she says. "George told me he met you."

  "He did. How are you feeling?"

  "Terrible all over. George says I have a fever." She raises or rolls her eyes, as if she might be able to see the reddish tinge of her forehead. Edith Dilly has a round face. Her watery blue eyes are unanchored in the face. In better times her hair is probably straight and blond, as befits her kind, but today it is damp and splayed across the pillow.

  "Has he spoken with the doctor?"

  "I don't know," she says. "It's dengue fever. There's nothing to do for dengue fever."

  "I know that. My son had it. Has it. But he's much better now."

  I have always imagined her taller, closer in altitude to Waldo. But now it's impossible to tell. There is the length of her along the bed, but I can't gauge her height. If only I'd paid attention in trigonometry!

  We are silent. I am silent and Edith Dilly breathes audibly.

  "I can ask Graciela to bring you ginger ale, if you want." I back away from the bedside.

  "Don't go, Alice," she says.

  I stop walking but a new thought occurs to me: What if she has something contagious, something airborne rather than mosquito borne? Do I bolt? No, I succumb to my personal version of tropical lassitude.

  "George and I have only been married for two years," she says.

  "Congratulations," I say. "A local fellow?"

  "Not at all." She props herself up in her bed and reaches over to a glass of water. There is no wedding band on her ring finger. She sips, and I wait to see if she too will vomit up everything. She doesn't. "He's from Indiana, but I met him in Texas. I had never been to Texas before and I went to see my high school roommate because she had a new baby. A baby at last. A boy named Simon. He was born with six fingers on both hands and I wanted to be there for her while they removed them. She'd been trying for years to get pregnant, so this was a very big deal. A miracle, in fact."

  "Why did they remove them? I would have waited."

  "That wasn't for me to say. I was there to provide comfort. Then I met George in the waiting room. One of his colleagues had lost a thumb to a beer bottle."

  "You were in the finger ward?" I say incredulously. How did we get to damaged digits in the state of Texas? How could she possibly know about my former student Angela Sitwell, she of the missing sixth? Stop, Alice! But Ezra knows about Angela Sitwell. Now that I think about it, before Carmen, Ezra was very fond of Angela Sitwell at Precious Blood.

  "Of course not." Her eyes are watering. "George was in Texas doing training for his work with the church."

  "The Pentecostal Conceptionalists?" I say.

  "I don't expect people like you to understand."

  "People like me?" I say. I should remember that she is sick in bed. With a dreaded tropical disease.

  "People from Maine. People who go to the club."

  "I'm not from Maine," I say. "You are. Your people go to the club. My people get bitten by sharks."

  "I'm sorry," she says. "I just wanted you to understand about George."

  "About George?"

  "George changed my life. He helped me to see everything in a new light. George only wants to do good in this world. He doesn't have a cynical bone in his body."

  Did she really say that? "What kind of good?" I say, because, yes, I have several cynical bones in my body.

  "He wants to bring the light. He wants others to know the peace he has found accepting Jesus as his personal savior. But don't worry—he's not here just for that. He's here to build houses. He's a wonderful carpenter, you know."

  "I see."

  "George has barely been to Catamunk or Slow Island. He knows who the Fairweathers are, in case you are wondering. But he's never met any of you. He's never met Waldo."

  "I see."

  "He and Waldo would be worlds apart, I'm pretty sure."

  "Waldo has his good qualities," I say.

  "I didn't mean it like that."

  "How did you mean it?"

  "Just that, just that," Edith repeats, and rolls her head back and forth on her pillow. "Just that Waldo is funny and George wouldn't get his jokes."

  "Because he doesn't have a cynical bone in his body? Or just no funny bone?"

  "The truth is, Geo
rge is a saint."

  "We don't bandy that word about lightly around here," I say. "Or don't you know?"

  "Know what?"

  "The Llobets feel strongly about saints. They have one of their own."

  "I didn't know," Edith Dilly says.

  "No reason you should," I say. "Especially since your own husband is a saint. So you say."

  "What I mean is, he is very, very good."

  "And that he doesn't know Waldo," I say. "And doesn't know about Waldo."

  What I want to say is: Waldo is mine, mine, mine. Even if I go straight to Lalo from your bedside, Waldo is mine.

  But I don't know if that is true anymore. Either the intensity or the possession.

  "It wasn't my idea to come here," she says.

  "To this house or to Nicaragua?"

  "Both. But I meant this house. I certainly had no idea you would be here. You must admit that it's pretty unlikely."

  "That depends. It's more unlikely that you would be here. Because Waldo knows Lalo. Has known him for years, and so for us to be here is not entirely a stretch. Although someone might say it's more likely that Waldo would be here. In which case..."

  "That was a really long time ago," Edith Dilly says. Tears dribble from her already liquid blue eyes. It probably has to do with the dengue fever, but it looks a lot like she is crying.

  "I know."

  "I always felt terrible about it. Not at the time, I admit. But afterward."

  "I really don't want to hear this," I say. "I didn't come here for that."

  "Is she telling you sad stories?" George Glass, the new and unfunny husband, is standing in the doorway. Because the light is behind him, his face is in darkness and I cannot make out his expression. "Edith has such a tender heart."

  "I have to go," I say. "I promised Lalo." Then I flee. Now I flee. Behind me is the lava flow, the mudslide, the quaking earth.

  35

  The Decline of the Epistolary Art

  There is, in fact, practically nothing known certainly about him.

  —Alban Butler, "St Disibod," Butler's Lives of the Saints

  THE LOGICAL THING would have been to put the letters anywhere else. Somewhere high above ground, like the church belfry. Someplace secure, like a bank vault in Managua or Miami. Someplace dry, like the Atacama Desert. Even more logical would have been to throw away the ones that upset the apple cart. You have to wonder.

  "What a mess. What a disaster," Lalo says. "¡Que barbaridad!"

  "Is it true you've never read them before?"

  "True."

  "That is the most illogical thing I've heard all day."

  "I never claimed to be logical. What does logic have to do with it?"

  I say, "I just assumed."

  Lalo and I are sitting side by side on the largest LV trunk in the room, a steamer trunk with hinges of surpassing loveliness and delicacy. Two small adults could easily fit inside. Lalo and I could not fit easily, because of his wide shoulders, his long feet, and, of course, his regally erect penis. I must stop thinking like this: the occupants of locked trunks, Lalo and I in locked embrace. Like all the other pieces of luggage in this low-lying room, the trunk was soaked in the hurricane. But unlike the others, it stayed shut, and for all we know whatever is inside is Saharan dry. We don't know because it is locked, and the keys are lost, mislaid, or hidden.

  "What a pleasure it is to do this with you," Lalo says.

  "Sorting out wet love letters?"

  "Anything, so long as it's with you."

  "You don't know me. I'm a disaster."

  "The hurricane was a disaster. You're beloved."

  The edge of his thigh is touching the edge of my thigh. Given how wet the floor is, does that put us at risk for electrocution?

  "Read to me, Lalo, please. I love being read to," I say.

  "'Querida Sor Tristána,'" he reads.

  "But she wasn't a sister."

  "Only to her dissolute brothers," Lalo says. "'Today is the Feast of Santa Julia of Corsica. Like you, she had beautiful hair. It is raining again and I can count five different places where my roof is leaking. No, six. I would do anything to keep you dry. You are the castle I want to live in.'" Lalo stops. "The next part is smudged. Would you like to try?"

  "No, thank you."

  "Something something, 'when Doña Rosita came to my door I had to turn quickly. She brought me a chicken. She is so fond of her chickens. I had a chicken named Blue when I was a boy. He was killed by a jaguar that came in from the jungle one night, and my father beat me because I deprived us all of a fine meal. I was supposed to keep Blue safe, and I did not.' "

  "Try another one," I say. He reads another, written on the Feast of Santa Eulalia, and then another sympathizing with Tristána because she has a fever and is spitting up phlegm of assorted colors, which Padre Oscar felt compelled to enumerate.

  "I thought they lived close by each other. Why all the letters?"

  "He was very shy?" Lalo says. "He was a writer manqué?"

  "Please don't say something about the lost art of letter-writing," I whine.

  Lalo strokes my head. "Tender, tender Alice," he says. What did I do to deserve this? "I imagine Padre Oscar was more comfortable expressing his feelings in writing. And he may have been awed by Tristána. Or struck dumb in her presence. What do you think, Alice? Will you be shocked when I cannot speak in your presence?"

  "Shocked? I think my shock quota has been fulfilled. I am now officially unflappable."

  "That sounds like Waldo," Lalo says.

  Okay. That was not what I expected. Not what I had in mind.

  "Sometimes written words express the otherwise inexpressible," Lalo says.

  "Should we be inferring they were in love?" I ask. "That they...?"

  "Consummated their love?" The very word—consummated—agitates me. Lalo is as calm as the après storm. "I have no reason to think they did. A consummation devoutly to be desired ... who said that?"

  "Hamlet. Referring to death."

  "This one was not. Desired."

  "Desired by whom? Perhaps Oscar desired consummation."

  "By me. By one who sees the larger picture." Lalo smiles.

  "Can she still be a saint if they had sex? Extramarital sex? I love the implication of extra." What I love is talking about hypothetical sex.

  "It all depends on the context," Lalo says.

  "Whoa! That's a mighty situational answer. For a Catholic. Where are the absolutes when we need them?"

  He stops my mouth with his mouth. His lips perfectly encircle mine and I could melt into the warmth of his mucous membranes. But I don't melt. I ignite. His tongue slides in like an animal in the night and scopes out the nether regions of my molars. His tongue lays claim to it all. My own tongue would happily reciprocate but his tongue rules, rules over the kingdom of melded mouths.

  This is insanity. Moisture is everywhere. (And Ezra is sick upstairs with Carmen, happily with Carmen.) We are supposed to be drying out. But I don't stop. Not myself, not Lalo. (Ezra is better, and Carmen dresses always in white. Edith is upstairs, feverish and powerless.) Lalo's kissing is a miracle of pressure and motion and heat. It is a natural law unto itself, like gravity or thermodynamics. Or something like that. Lalo's kisses are dangerous and confusing.

  Kisses from a man who wants to create a saint? Aren't there some very creepy kiss motifs in the Bible?

  Lalo wipes his brow and leaves behind ink stains. "The Vatican is sending someone to check out La Matilda's corpse," he says glumly. "They don't do that lightly. So I need to be prepared. I need to find something here to help our case."

  "Were you thinking about that while you kissed me? Honestly?"

  He says, "Not entirely."

  "Just read to me, Lalo, and I will listen."

  He takes another sheet of thin paper and smoothes it upon his thigh, then pats it to absorb any moisture. The old letter leaves ink smudges on his khaki pants, stains that resemble remnants of a meal eaten long ago. "It's f
rom Padre Oscar, but you know that. 'Some celebrate the Feast of Saint Peter today, but I am praying to Margaret of Cortona. Of course you know her. Tristána, can we not live as Elizabeth and Louis of Hungary, wedded and ministering to our flock? Or Clotilda and Clovis. Loving each other and loving God as well? Or Adelaide and Otto? Besides, inevitably, I will die first and you can continue in sanctified widowhood. Notice that I do not mention Blessed Delphina and Saint Elzéar—they made a choice I could never make. Do I have a choice? I know these saints do not interest you—I know you think their stories are fanciful — I know you think they are a distraction from any real work. And also young Diego Sanchez is extremely ill with marks upon his body. His mother is hopeless, I am afraid. She tears her clothes in grief, and he's not dead yet.' Then something I can't read. 'The altar linens are in terrible shape. Perhaps you could speak to some of your family. Your devoted servant, etc.' And here's another one: 'Beloved, esteemed sister in Christ, Today my whole body leans toward you like a sunflower toward the sun. Some things cannot be controlled and I cannot control this feeling I have for you.'"

  "I hate to say this," I say.

  "Say it, say it."

  "I didn't think someone else's love letters could be so boring."

  "Boring? I thought you were going to say something quite different."

  "Please tell me you think they are too. Please tell me we live by the same boredom-o-meter."

  "You have no idea, do you?" Lalo says.

  "I don't mean to be insulting. It has nothing to do with her. She didn't write the letters. It's a generic response to other people's love letters. Mine would be riveting. Humorous and tender, with a soupçon of porn for titillation. Short and sweet."

  "Yours will never leave my breast pocket," he says and pats his chest. "But these letters? These letters could be either very good or very bad for our case. Padre Oscar presents a problem."

  "Because he was a horny fellow?"

  "Because he was a priest, you blasphemous creature," Lalo says sweetly.

  The whitewashed walls of the room are mottled with patterns in mold, with damp spots that resemble continents and inner organs. I can make out an enlarged appendix, and nearby a uterus. High up in the corner a calendar is tacked to the wall. It is too high to be useful to anyone but a giant. The year is 1944, the month November. Nothing of significance happened that year, that I know of, in Nicaragua. In the rest of the world everything significant was happening, and it was almost all bad.