Carry Me Like Water

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“Eddie, I lived in the projects.”

  He was quiet. “You never told me you lived in the projects.”

  “Now you know. It’s not past houses I’m interested in—let’s talk about future houses.” She had a curious smile.

  “We’re not finished with past houses.”

  “I told you—no houses in my past.”

  “I still own an old one.”

  “What?”

  “My parents’ house—I still own it.” He looked at Jake, who was looking at him as if he were crazy.

  “The house we grew up in?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “What other house would I be talking about? I had a dream once that I burned it to the ground.”

  “Great dream,” Jake said.

  “Awful dream,” Nena said.

  “Great dream,” Eddie said. “The flames were beautiful.”

  Jake pictured his parents’ huge mansion going up in an apocalyptic flame. “You still have that place? You still own it? Really, Eddie?” His voice was suddenly loud and animated.

  “I pay someone to stay in the chauffeur’s house just to watch the place.”

  “Why didn’t you get rid of it?”

  “I don’t know, I couldn’t decide anything about that house—so I just kept it. And I didn’t need the money so I kind of just forgot about it. I didn’t want to think about it. I never touch it, just like I never touch their money—which reminds me, Jake, do you want it? The money, I mean?”

  “How much is it?”

  “Funny you should ask. I just talked to my lawyer today—”

  “The nice man I ran into with Lizzie at Salvador’s funeral?”

  “The very one. He said, by the way, that you were lovely. And he also said I was worth about thirty-eight million dollars.”

  “Thirty-eight million dollars!”

  “And change.”

  “And change?”

  “You want it, Jake?”

  He stared at his younger brother in disbelief. “I’d be homeless a million lifetimes before I touched that money.”

  Eddie stared at his brother’s face, contorted in anger at the mention of his parent’s money. “Maybe we should burn it along with the house.”

  “With all the hungry people in the world, you would burn that money? What are you, nuts, Eddie?” Maria Elena asked.

  “I thought you didn’t care about the money.”

  “I don’t, I mean, I don’t want it—but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t do something responsible with it.”

  “It’s dirty money—really dirty.”

  “Oh, and the money we live on now is so clean? Life happens to be a little dirty, Eddie. Wouldn’t it be lovely to live so purely?” There was something bitter in her tone and Eddie could taste it. “Since the subject is houses, how many houses could you build for people who have nothing?”

  “We can’t save the world—not even with thirty-eight million dollars.”

  “Saving the world?—is that it, Eddie? Oh that’s damned arrogant.” She picked the baby off the floor, and put him back in the basket. “He’s getting too big for this. He’ll be walking in no time.” He fell asleep as soon as she put him down. “This kid will sleep through anything—except the night.” She laughed, then looked at Eddie again. “I don’t understand you sometimes, I really don’t, Jonathan Edward Marsh. You and your left-leaning ideas—oh, they’re all very welt and good, and admirable—but since you can’t save the whole goddamned world, then you won’t save any of it. That’s such California horseshit.”

  He nodded, and looked down at the floor.

  Jake watched his brother.

  “How come you guys are always looking at the floor? What the hell is down there?” She heard the tone in her voice and caught herself. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “It’s none of my business—”

  “No,” Eddie said, “you’re right.”

  She smiled at him. “And in the meantime, that money could get us into a big house.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “and Lizzie and I have discussed it.”

  “Oh, you and Lizzie have discussed it?”

  “Yes, we have. We want to buy a house.”

  “Oh? Is that why the subject is houses.”

  She nodded.

  “You have something in mind?”

  “Not the house—just the city.”

  “I bet I can guess.”

  “El Paso, Eddie.”

  “El Paso? You’re moving to El Paso?”

  She nodded.

  “You gonna take the husband and the baby with you?”

  “Of course, I am. And the brother-in-law, too.” She looked at Jake trying to read his reaction. “You like the desert, Jake?”

  “Never been there.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly a gay mecca—but it is near Casas Grandes. And the town is full of Latino men.” She winked at him.

  He smiled at his sister-in-law. She was kind and funny and passionate and he wondered for an instant what it would be like to love her.

  “But what about our lives here?” Eddie said.

  “Eddie, you hate it here.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, “I forgot.” He laughed. “Can we leave tomorrow?”

  “You’re a very goofy man, sometimes, you know that, Eddie? And how come you didn’t tell me you quit your job.” “You didn’t ask.”

  “I knew you were going to say that—and it’s a completely unacceptable answer.”

  “Who told you I quit?”

  “Your boss called. I took the call. He wanted to know if you’d changed your mind. I told him fat chance in hell.”

  He laughed. “Good girl.”

  “Don’t good girl me, Eddie. When were you planning to tell me?”

  “Today. Right now. I was going to tell you right now.” He moved up to her and kissed her. “You want to find Diego, don’t you?”

  She looked into her husband’s eyes. Today they looked green and not so dark. “He’s going to need someone who’ll understand.” She looked at her son. “You have a very persuasive way of changing the subject. Next time just tell me, OK?—yes, I want to find him. I had a dream about him. I woke up with his name in my mouth, and I had to say it over and over: Diego, Diego, Diego—and all of a sudden I felt I was in the middle of the desert.”

  “We could hire someone to find him, Nena.”

  “Why are we always hiring someone to do our dirty work?”

  “OK,” he said. “It was just a suggestion.”

  She made a face at him, then laughed.

  “El Paso,” he said.

  “But, Eddie, I have to tell you that El Paso’s not Palo Alto, and it’s not Berkeley and it’s not San Francisco. No coffee shops filled with yuppies in formal attire, no bookstores—no bookstores, Eddie! You won’t like that, and it’s hot, and there aren’t any art flick movie houses, and no tulip trees, and no bicycle lanes. It’s not like anything you’ve ever known. And you’ll trip over the poor. You’ll look across the river and see Juarez, and you’ll see wealth in El Paso, and you’ll see businesses, and you’ll live next door to a poverty on a scale you’ve never seen. Rough edges, Eddie, a lot of rough edges. And you won’t like the pollution.”

  “I could go,” he said. “At least we won’t be living like this.” His arms Mew over his head in circles. “I hate how we live. We make everything so neat, overconstruct everything: nice lawn, porch, dogs—”

  “We don’t have a dog, Eddie.”

  “Sorry. You gel the picture. We’re so smug here. When was the last time you were in East Palo Alto? Shit, that’s poverty, too—and it’s awful, but we don’t want to see it. Remember the riots, Lizzie? When the students from Stanford were marching on the streets, a woman said to me, ‘Oh my God, they’re coming.’ It just fell out of her mouth—just like that. She didn’t know it was the students—she thought it was the people from East Palo Alto, and she finally voiced what everyone here fears—that
all those people were coming into our nice neighborhoods to take away what we worked so hard to get.” He laughed and looked at his wife. “I could leave all this behind in a second—Italian bakeries, bookstores, everything.” He looked at his brother. “Will you go, Jake?”

  “I could go,” he said. “I’m done here in this part of the world. It’s a place, a beautiful place with beautiful men and beautiful places to eat—and I’m done with it. It was only home because Joaquin was here. I haven’t been feeling so hot, you know? El Paso doesn’t sound like it’s a bad place to die. From the sound of things it’s already a bit of a cemetery.”

  Nena laughed. “Welt, it isn’t that bad.”

  “We’ll go then,” Eddie said.

  “We’ll all go.” There was a smile in Maria Elena’s eyes as she spoke.

  “But first,” Eddie said as if the thought had just occurred to him, “Jake and I are going back to say good-bye to a bad memory.”

  “The house, you mean?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “You’re not really going to burn that place down, are you?”

  Eddie bit his lip.

  “I know you, Eddie,” she said. “I can read you like—

  “A journal.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Jake smiled.

  “There isn’t any breeze tonight,” Eddie said, rubbing Maria Elena’s back. “I love the feel of your back when it’s damp with your sweat.”

  She laughed softly. “I know.”

  “Are you sorry you married a gringo?”

  “What in the hell makes you ask that, Jonathan?”

  “Jonathan? You never call me Jonathan.”

  “Well, you’re acting like a Jonathan.”

  “What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means your question is ridiculous.”

  “Maybe you should have married one of your own.”

  “One of my own? Oh, Eddie, you are my own.”

  “But I’m not, Nena. I’m this rich—”

  She placed her hand over his mouth. “Be quiet. Go to sleep. This conversation is too silly to have.” She didn’t let him say another word, just kept her hand over his mouth until she could tell he would be quiet. “Listen to me,” she said, “I married the right man.” She rose from the bed, and lit a candle in front of Joaquin’s santos.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I lit a candle.”

  “What for?”

  “So you and Jake would come back safely from your trip to La Jolla.” She got back into bed and turned her back to her husband.

  “I guess Joaquin’s statues found a good home.”

  “They’re not statues—they’re santos.”

  “Santos,” he repeated. “Do they hear?”

  “About as well as anybody else.”

  “Will they put gas in my car?”

  “Eddie?”

  “What.”

  “Put a sock in it.”

  He kissed her back softly, “I’m just teasing,” he said. A sudden breeze blew softly through the room. The light of the candle swayed softly back and forth and the light in the room flickered gently. The shadows on the walls and the ceiling reminded Maria Elena of her childhood. She used to pray for her father to stop drinking. But the candle in the room kept the darkness away, kept it from swallowing her and her house and her mother.

  “Eddie, you’re not really going to burn that place down, are you?”

  Neither Jake nor Eddie spoke as they drove up the hill. The Southern California sky was calm and clear, and though it was still winter, it might have been spring. As they drove through the neighborhood where he had spent the first eighteen years of life, all Jake could think of was the day he was arrested. Are you Jacob Marsh? … You ‘re under arrest far assault … I should have killed them … Jake, has Dad ever touched? … I swear if you ever touch him again I’ll cut your balls off and stuff them down your … Jake looked at his brother, who was driving the car. He seemed so unscarred, almost innocent—like the sky. He wondered how some people managed the virtue of serenity as if cruelty and violence had no power over them. Jake felt nervous, scared, edgy—he’d felt this way every time he had approached his home when his parents had lived there, when he had lived there with them. His palms were sweating. They’re dead. Can I say good-bye to him? No. We can take care of … They can’t hurt me anymore.

  “Are you all right, Jake?”

  He nodded. “It’s spring again. It’s hard to believe that after this winter, there could ever be another spring.” He laughed. “Anyway, in La Jolla, there was never a winter—not really.”

  “Mom,” Eddie said, “Mom was winter.”

  “She was, wasn’t she?”

  “Why do you suppose she was so cold, Jake?”

  “She must have come from a long line of sick people.”

  Eddie nodded. “Maybe, But how do you account for us?”

  Jake laughed. “Geez, sport, we’re on our way to burn our childhood home—we’re as sick as they come.”

  “Guess so,” Eddie said, laughing as hard as his brother. “You know, Jake, Mom was really a freak about her family history. She had all kinds of picture albums and things—they’re still in the house. Dad had some, too. Should we save them—from the fire I mean?”

  “No. Let the whole goddamned family tree die.”

  Eddie turned into the driveway. The house looked empty and sad, but the lawns were still well kept. “The guy who lives in the chauffeur’s house keeps up the lawns—it’s pan of his job. The neighbors don’t like weeds.” He stopped at the gates, took out a set of keys from his pocket. He looked at his older brother. “Here,” he said, handing him the keys, “You do the honors.”

  Jake took the keys, jumped out of the car, unlocked the gates, and waved Eddie to drive in. He jumped back in the car without shutting the gates behind him. He looked at his brother and smiled awkwardly. “Are you nervous?”

  Eddie nodded. “Why are we doing this?”

  “We have to.”

  He stopped the car in the circular driveway in front of the house. They both walked around the grounds in silence, afraid to enter the house. “It looks like Frankenstein’s castle,” Jake said.

  “Are we going in?”

  “Guess so.”

  Jake looked through one of the windows. “Jesus, the furniture’s still there.”

  “I didn’t get rid of anything. It’s all just been sitting here.”

  “There’s gotta be an inch of dust everywhere.”

  “We can write our names on everything.”

  Jake laughed. “When you were little you would have said something just like that.”

  “Nobody changes completely—not even you.”

  “Wouldn’t it be great if we could?”

  “No. No, it wouldn’t, Jake.” They walked around to the front of the house. “Open it,” Eddie said.

  Jake stared at the door. I swear if you ever touch him again … One more step. Dad—just one more step. I’ll kill you—I swear I will… Pederast! I looked it up in the dictionary when I was nine. You’re a goddamned monster, Dad … We found all those magazines underneath your mattress… And I’m taking Jon-Jon with me …We can take care of everything … There’s one thing I always wanted to do, Mom. He placed the key in the keyhole and turned it. The knob turned in his hand. The door opened. Eddie watched his brother walk through the door. He saw himself running up the stairs, the house so quiet. He saw himself staring at the blood and the two corpses, and thinking they were no more and no less ugly than they had been when they had been breathing. He saw himself picking up the phone and calling the police. “Come and get them,” he had wanted to say, “come and lake them to a place where no one will see them,” He felt his knees shaking, he couldn’t move, he wanted to get in the car and drive away. He felt confused, his heart thumping in his chest like a fist hitting a wall. He had felt this way when his father was on top of him. He couldn’t breathe. He felt
his whole body tremble—then felt his brother’s hand on his arm. “It’s OK,” he said. “They’re not here, Eddie.” He felt his brother’s hand wipe his tears from his face. He heard his voice: “They’re not here, Jon, they can’t hurt us anymore.” It was a good voice. He felt he could walk. He reached for his older brother’s hand—he held it tight. They walked inside together and stood in the entryway, two little boys holding hands, overwhelmed by the enormity of a long journey. Having arrived at this place, their eyes did not ask, “Have I come home again?” but asked instead, “Now can I rest? Now have I earned my rest?” And Jake thinking that good things could not be born in houses like this because they were not meant to house people but things, and Eddie thinking that he would never forget this moment because he had just seen the past, and his future would not look like this—not like this—never like this—his future would look like a house where people lived and breathed and fed each other food.

  They walked around the house saying nothing, going from room to room. It was like a museum where the retired arms of war were kept. They examined everything asking themselves if it had been real—were we here? Did we fight this war? Remember this battle—remember that one? They looked at each thing in the house distantly, curiously. Yes, it was nothing more than a museum—and like most museums the artifacts seemed out of place, valuable in a strange and removed and unnecessary way—and so, not valuable at all precisely because they were no longer necessary, no longer a part of the daily lives they led. What was valuable now was the hand that each brother held, the life that each brother had led, but this house was not valuable, this house was good kindling since the civilization it housed was long dead and not worth preserving in the memories of the living.

  “I used to give you rides on my back,” Jake said quietly.

  “I remember.”

  “You wanted me to carry you everywhere. ‘Carry me,’ you used to yell, ‘Carry me, Jake,’ and I would have carried you until my back broke.” He picked up an oil painting from one of the walls and tossed it as if it were a ball. The frame shattered as it hit the floor. “I wanted to take you with me.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m too old to carry you, now.”

  “It was bound to happen, old man,” Eddie laughed—they both laughed.