Carry Me Like Water

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  “You did not,” Maria Elena objected.

  “Never mind,” Lizzie laughed, “Let’s not argue. I want to hear—I want to hear everything.” She became a little girl in the presence of her friend’s revelation. It was as if she was waiting for her friend to sing her a favorite song. She played with the sweating glass of bourbon and rubbed the water into her palms. “And don’t skip anything,” she said, “I want it to taste as good as this drink.”

  Maria Elena smiled, and nudged her husband who was now sitting next to her and stirring his own drink with his finger. She slapped his wrist. “Eddie, you tell it.”

  “No way. I’m not telling my part again. You tell your part—she’s your friend.”

  “Thanks a lot, Eddie.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Lizzie—it’s just it’s—it’s hard—you know? And you two are much closer, and you know how to talk to each other pretty well from what I can tell—so you don’t need me for this. And anyway, I’ve always been a third wheel—”

  “Isn’t that a crock of shit,” Lizzie laughed.

  “I’ll just slip into my room and read a good book, and you two can have a good talk.”

  “Coward.” His wife stared at him.

  “Ultimately, they’re all the same,” Lizzie said.

  “I’m familiar with these tactics—and they’re not working.”

  Maria Elena looked at him. His emotional reluctance was written everywhere on his face, in the way he was sitting. She wanted to tell him it was fine, that everything was fine, but she also sensed her words would sound hollow and condescending. She sometimes wanted to treat him like a little boy, but she was beginning to understand how much he had overcome to become the man he was. He had earned the right to say what he wanted, to speak about his life to whomever he chose. It occurred to her that some parts of his life would always be inaccessible to her. She tried to picture him telling Lizzie about his past, about his father. There was something wrong with the picture. “Tell her anything you want. Just let me be absent.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Go to bed,” she said. She could see his face relax as if he had just been given a reprieve from some command he could not carry out, “Lizzie and I have a lot to talk about.”

  He kissed them both on the cheek. As he climbed the stairs, he could hear their voices. He was happy to let the women talk, happy that they were friends, grateful that he could be alone. “I’ll finish my book,” he said to himself, but when he got into bed, he fell asleep after reading only a page.

  “It’s a goddamn fairy tale,” Lizzie said looking at Maria Elena. “You married a nice-looking man who treats you nice and who turns out to be rich. It’s a goddamn Victorian novel.”

  “It’s not like a Victorian novel at alt. Those things end with a marriage—our novel begins with one.”

  “A modern fairy tale, then? Even better.”

  “When you hear the rest you won’t think so,” she said, her voice almost dropping to a whisper. “How’s this for a fairy tale? Eddie’s very rich, Episcopalian Republican father sexually abuses his two sons. He turns around one day and kicks the oldest one out for being a homosexual. He keeps the younger one around for you can imagine what. How do you like that for a start?” Lizzie sat motionless. “I’m sorry,” Maria Elena whispered, “I’m being glib.”

  “Be glib if you want,” Lizzie said, “you’re entitled—”

  “You keep things in and all those things you have inside you—well, they kill you.” The sound in her voice was no less angry because she could control it. She smiled. Lizzie was moved by her awkwardness, by the sound of the hurt in her voice. “My poor Eddie.” She reached over and took a sip from Lizzie’s drink. “One sip won’t hurt at this point.” She felt the cool bourbon on her tongue. “So,” she continued, trying to smile, “my Eddie had this really shitty childhood with a mother who was emotionally abusive and a father who was sexually abusive.” Her voice grew less clear, less defined. “Sounds like they were a helluva tag team, no, Lizzie? They kicked his oldest brother out when Eddie was seven. He hasn’t seen him since. Eddie says his older brother beat them up before he left and they had him arrested.” She stopped. “You know, I don’t think they ever saw him—his parents, I mean. They had this wonderful child—and they couldn’t see him. I think somehow he was always invisible.”

  “Until you,” Lizzie said.

  Maria Elena smiled. “Don’t give me so much credit.”

  They sat in the quiet of the kitchen, Lizzie stirring her drink with her finger. “So, they died and left him all that money?”

  “Oh, much better than that. These people never did things the easy way. Eddie got all the money when his loving mother decided to off his dad and then point the gun at herself. He was eighteen by then. I don’t think he could ever deal with them, what they were, what they did, what they turned him into—so he just decided to lock them up in his memory forever. And then one day he met Maria Elena Ramirez, a.k.a. Helen Rosalie La Greca, and she was as eager not to have a past as he was. So we played a game: I won’t show you mine, if you won’t show me yours. And we still managed to have sex—”

  Lizzie laughed.

  “It’s so stupid really. I feel so stupid, like an idiot. Anyway, it’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the basic story line.”

  Lizzie leaned over the table and kissed her hand. Neither of them spoke for a long time.

  “I wish I could have a drink,” Maria Elena said, breaking the silence. “I haven’t had a drink in seven months.”

  “Soon,” Lizzie said, “very soon. I’m going to buy you a bottle of champagne.”

  “An unpretentious white wine will do,” she said.

  Lizzie polished off her drink. “Bartender, I’ll have another.”

  Maria Elena poured her a generous shot. “Eddie said that when he was a kid, he used to watch his mother drink her bourbon. He said something strange: He said he wanted her to be as beautiful as the drink in her hand. I think he wanted her to hold him as carefully as she held her glass of bourbon.”

  Lizzie squeezed her hand. The room was silent again. Lizzie stared at the woman in front of her. She had always sensed something about them—about Maria Elena and Eddie—something about them didn’t quite fit in this neat, polished neighborhood. They were like the golf courses she had seen in the desert—they simply didn’t belong. She felt tears on her face. She felt Maria Elena’s warm hands absorbing the salt that came from her body.

  “Are you OK?” Maria Elena asked.

  She smiled. “I’m not sad,” she said, “just a little off center. She tugged at her earring, then took it off and placed it on the table. “Everybody has a story, huh? I have one, too—only slightly more outrageous than yours.”

  Maria Elena laughed. “I would expect nothing less.”

  “My name isn’t really Elizabeth Edwards—that is, I didn’t start off life with that name …” Maria Elena listened carefully to the story Lizzie narrated, not moving a muscle as Lizzie spoke about the incident at the hospital. She stared at Lizzie’s throat as if she could listen closer by staring at the physical place where Lizzie’s words were formed. “… so I had a brother,” she said as she finished her story, “a real brother.”

  “But how do you know?” Maria Elena interrupted. “How could he be your brother? What about your other brother? How many brothers do you have?”

  “Is there a limit?” They both laughed. “Haven’t you ever wondered why my brother and I did not even remotely resemble each other?”

  “It happens,” Maria Elena said.

  “Yes, it happens. But in this case we’re both adopted—both of us from different families.”

  “It could be just a coincidence, Lizzie. This doesn’t prove you’re his sister. Even if you are adopted, it still doesn’t prove you’re related to Salvador.”

  “I asked my mother,” Lizzie said.

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said my real name was Maria de Lourdes
. She gave me this.” She took a letter from her purse and unwrapped it from the tissue paper she had placed around it to protect it. She handed the letter to Maria Elena who read it quietly.

  “Incredible,” Maria Elena said. “So if you’re Salvador’s sister, and he gave you his gift, then can you read what I’m thinking?”

  “You don’t believe me.” She wanted to tell her about the silence and her baby—but she thought it was something she should keep to herself. It frightened her. She thought it would frighten Maria Elena, too. Always, there would be a secret that had to be kept out of necessity. She looked at Maria Elena. “I know something about Eddie,” she said. “Do you want to know?”

  “We’re both named Maria.”

  “Yes.”

  “I like that.”

  Lizzie smiled. “Me too.”

  “Should I call you Maria or Lourdes?”

  “I still feel like a Lizzie.”

  “Good.” Maria Elena said, “Lizzie’s fine.” She shook her black hair forward, then backward again as if she needed to stretch herself. “So what do you know about Eddie?”

  “Your husband keeps a journal. It’s big—maybe notebook size—and thick. It’s bound in black leather, and I think he usually writes in it during his lunch hour?”

  Maria Elena nodded and smiled. “How did you know that?”

  “When Eddie answered the door I saw him sitting on a bench outside in the sun—and he was writing in a black book, but he brought me back before I could see who he addressed his journal to. He addresses it to someone—a man. I couldn’t quite see the name. But he looked very sad, your Eddie.”

  “His brother. He address his journal to his brother.”

  Lizzie nodded.

  “And you?” Maria Elena asked.

  “What?”

  “Who do you address your journal to?”

  “No one. I think it’s weird that he talks to his brother in his journal. Damn weird.” She couldn’t keep a straight face. She broke out laughing.

  “You’re mean, Elizabeth Edwards. And you’ve had one too many drinks. Am I going to have to carry you to bed—a woman in my condition?”

  “You sound like my mother, Helen.”

  “Helen who?”

  “I forgot. If I call you Helen sometimes, then you’ll have to deal with it, sugar.” She laughed. “It’s a small price to pay for deceiving your best friend.”

  Maria Elena laughed. “I’m going to bed—I’m tired.”

  “Not yet,” she said, “I haven’t even told you the best part. Did you know I could fly?”

  “What?”

  “I can fly.”

  Lizzie, Maria Elena, and Eddie spent most of the weekend talking. And talking and talking. There were awkward silences in between the words, and each still kept quiet about things they found necessary to keep only for themselves, Eddie cooked for the two women on Saturday, cooked because he loved to, cooked because it was his way of spending time alone—but also his way of communicating gratitude. He had always wanted a warm kitchen where people gathered. He had never known a warm kitchen in the house where he was raised, but he had visited the maid’s house once, and he had found her kitchen to be a fine place to live. He had been six years old at the time, and he had asked her if he could live with her. He had always remembered that kitchen, remembered how that place had made him feel—like belonging. It felt like belonging. Standing over the stove, Eddie laughed at himself as he thought about how he and Maria Elena always fought over who would cook.

  Saturday night, Eddie baked bread, and they rented old videos and argued over which were the best scenes. They laughed, and the laughter felt real and necessary and urgent. It was as if these three people were learning how to enjoy their new selves, getting used to new identities, new skins that were exposed to the air for the first time as if they had emerged from cocoons. They kept looking at each other to see if they had physically changed and were surprised that their bodies resembled their old shells. They often glanced at each other wondering at the strangeness of their lives, and each one, separately and together, was in awe of the lives each had led, in awe of this thing they were living, and each one was struggling desperately, if awkwardly, to respect the losses they had suffered.

  Sunday morning, as Eddie was about to go out for a run, Maria Elena announced she was going to Mass.

  “What?” Eddie asked.

  “Mass,” she repeated.

  “Do you even know where there’s a Catholic church?” Eddie asked.

  “Of course I know.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “To pray.”

  “To pray,” Eddie repeated. “Sometimes, I don’t know you.”

  “I go to Mass, sometimes, you know? Not usually on Sunday, but I go sometimes during the week. You don’t have to keep a journal in secret anymore—and I don’t have to be a closet Catholic.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “I didn’t know you prayed.”

  “You didn’t even know my name until recently.” She placed her hand on her belly. “I want to go and pray.”

  “Want me to go with you?”

  “Not really, Eddie.” She smiled at him. “And anyway, you don’t want to go. What would you do there?”

  “Sit next to you.”

  “You can sit next to me when we watch television. This doesn’t have to be a group thing.” She noticed his look of relief.

  “Just one more question, Nena.”

  “Anything.”

  “Are you going to raise our child Catholic?”

  “I want to baptize him,” she said, “the rest is negotiable. You don’t want that, do you?”

  “I’m not objecting, honey.”

  “I know that look,” she said, “and you always call me honey when you disapprove of something I’m doing.”

  “She knows that look,” Lizzie said—then started laughing, “and you always call her honey when—”

  “Who hired you?” Eddie asked.

  “I’m the sidekick.”

  “Oh—and what does the sidekick think of all this?”

  “The sidekick thinks it might not be such a bad idea. I mean I was raised as a nothing. What’s so special about that? Besides, the kid might learn something about prayer.”

  “Prayer? You’ve done much of it, have you, Lizzie?”

  “Smart-ass. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Well, I just want to know on what basis you judge prayer as being something necessary. I mean, you obviously didn’t arrive at that conclusion via the vehicle of experience.”

  “Via the vehicle of experience?” Lizzie asked.

  “He talks that way sometimes,” Maria Elena said.

  “You know what I mean. Tell me why prayer is good.”

  “Because you empty yourself out,” Lizzie said.

  “Then is it the same thing as an out-of-body experience?”

  “In a way.”

  “In a way?”

  “Prayer is a centering.”

  “Why do we need to be centered?”

  “Because if you don’t feel centered, then you always feel like a wreck.”

  “How can you center yourself and empty yourself out at the same time?”

  “I’m not good at theological debates,” Lizzie said.

  “I don’t think this conversation qualifies as a theological debate.” “I hate to break up this discussion, but I’m going to be late for Mass,” Maria Elena announced. “I better get dressed.”

  “I want to go,” Lizzie said. “I want to go with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because tomorrow I’m going to a Mass—a Mass for Salvador. I forgot to tell you. And I won’t feel so nervous if I’ve done it before.” The thought of walking into Mission Dolores Church suddenly filled her with dread.

  “Done what before?”

  “Gone to a Mass.”

  “You’re being ridiculous, Elizabeth,” Eddie said. “It’s not like a piano recital—you don’t need
to practice.”

  “But Catholic churches are so scary,” Lizzie said.

  “They’re not going to bite off your valuables,” Eddie smiled.

  Maria Elena was amused by her husband’s uneasiness. “Are you coming, Lizzie?”

  “Lend me something to wear?” she said.

  They headed for the stairs. “I’m going for a run,” Eddie said. “Don’t forget to pray for the mass of perdition—and for the homeless—and pray for a revolution—and pray that all polluters be punished for their sins—and—”

  “If you have that many intentions, then I think you better say your own damn prayers,” Maria Elena said as she walked up the stairs. She knew this was the beginning of a new battle. An old disagreement died, another was born. As Maria Elena dressed for Mass, she thought of her mother. She wished her mother had lived long enough to see her grandchild. Maria Elena wondered why she had omitted telling Eddie about how they had run away one night from their father as if that incident was a minor detail.

  Eddie stood silently in the doorway and listened to them laugh as they changed in the bedroom upstairs. He remembered his parents had made him go to Mass every Sunday. He also remembered his mother had killed his father and herself on Sunday. After Communion, they went to Communion, and then she came home and blew their bodies away. Good, religious, conservative people. “Get dressed, Jonathan Edward, God requires…” He stood in the doorway cursing his father.

  No one spoke about prayer or Mass when Nena and Lizzie walked back into the house that afternoon.

  Lizzie cooked her favorite Sunday dinner, a roast with carrots, onions, garlic, and potatoes. Maria Elena baked an apple pie, and the kitchen was full of the odors and warmth and Maria Elena’s body. Eddie was happy just sitting in the room all afternoon, writing and thinking and half-listening to Nena and Lizzie speak of small things—old songs, bracelets, movies they had loved in that time of life when they were becoming women.

  Eddie read them a poem from a book he was reading and they listened to his voice. Maria Elena was not listening to what the poem said, she just listened to the fact of her husband’s voice—it was soft and warm and she did not remember hearing anything as unthreatening as the sound that came from his body. She looked at Lizzie—she was very beautiful. Maria Elena set the table when it was time to eat, and she lit candles all around the dining room. Sometime between the salad and dessert, Lizzie had convinced Maria Elena to go with her to her brother’s memorial Mass.