Carry Me Like Water (26 page)

“I’m only staying the weekend,” she said. They walked into the kitchen holding each other, Eddie reappeared with a drink in his hand. “Here,” he said handing the glass to Lizzie, “I’m going to bed.”

“Stay,” Helen pleaded.

Eddie shook his head, “Really, I have to go to bed.” He looked straight into Lizzie’s eyes. “You look a little beat up.” He looked at his wife. “You guys need to—”

Helen looked at her husband and pleaded. He looked back at her with a look that said “I
don
7
want to get into this—you do it.”
“Eddie,” she said half-begging, half-demanding that he stay.

“I’m tired,” he said firmly, “really tired.”

Maria Elena nodded reluctantly. She wanted him to stay, wanted him to be a part of the conversation—and yet she understood that he did not want to repeat the story of his father to another human being. “You tell her,” he’d said, “I don’t mind—just let me be out of the room. Let me be absent.” She placed her hand on his cheek.

Lizzie watched them and wondered why nobody had ever loved her like Eddie loved Helen. Sometimes she wanted to hate them for what they had. And yet she loved them and wanted to always love them. “Eddie,” she said as Helen pulled her hand away, “pour yourself a drink. You might as well hear this.”

“Hear what?” Maria Elena asked.

Lizzie hesitated, “Helen, something’s happening.”

“Her name’s not Helen.” Eddie covered his mouth as soon as the words came out. He shrugged his shoulders and looked at his wife. “It just came out—I’m sorr—see, honey, I should just let you two guys—”

“It’s OK, Eddie.”

“But you should have been—”

“Does it matter?”

“What the hell are you two talking about?” Lizzie asked. She looked at Maria Elena suspiciously. “If your name isn’t Helen, then who the hell are you?” She volleyed her gaze back and forth from Eddie to Maria Elena. “Is that why you keep calling her Maria Elena?”

Eddie nodded. He tried to pretend he was invisible. He wanted to leave the room as graciously as possible. “
Do you love your father?” “Of course I love my father.” “And your mother?” “Yes, I love my mother.”
The business of revealing the truth was as impossible as keeping secrets. “
They hurt me, they hurt…”

Maria Elena popped her knuckles.

“You only do that when you’re nervous,” Lizzie said.

“Do I?”

“Helen, will you tell me what the hell’s going on!”

“Maria Elena,” she said, “my name’s Maria Elena Ramirez.” Her voice cracked. As she articulated her name to her friend—her closest friend—she was completely embarrassed by the charade she and her husband had been playing. She felt stupid and awkward and self-conscious—the same way she’d felt the first time she’d been to a high school dance. But she wasn’t a girl anymore. She was sitting in front of a woman she loved, a woman she respected, a woman she’d hidden from. “
Hide-and-seek at thirty-four. Shit.”

Lizzie’s response was slow in coming. “What?”

“I’m not who I said I was.” She stared at Lizzie’s drink. She imagined how the bourbon would taste in her dry throat.

Lizzie sipped on her bourbon, then crossed her arms. Maria Elena and Eddie waited for her to say something. “It would be nice to have a cigarette,” she said finally.

Maria Elena nodded.

“It makes sense,” Lizzie said. “Your past was so vague. I was the one who had a million stories about growing up, and you, you never had any. It was as though your life began when you went to college.”

“In some ways, it did,” She squeezed her husband’s arm. “In some ways I didn’t lie, Lizzie. Life began with Eddie—it really did. Do you hate me for lying?” she whispered.

“It’s too late to hate you,” she said. She took another sip from her bourbon, then laughed. “And here I thought you were anything but a woman with a past.” She laughed again. Maria Elena’s back relaxed as she heard Lizzie’s familiar laughter. It would be fine, it would all be fine. “I should have known,” Lizzie yelled, “I knew you weren’t Italian. Somehow I just knew—I just knew.”

“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?”