Carry Me Like Water (44 page)

Eddie stepped into the room and stared at the man sitting on a chair. The man smiled at him. “I’m Tom,” he said, “I’m a friend of your brother.”

“And his doctor,” Lizzie added.

“I don’t know why that matters,” he said, “unless, of course, you feel ill.”

Eddie managed an awkward smile. “My name’s Eddie,” he said.

“The young man in the picture,” Tom said.

“The picture?”

“Yes, the picture.” He pointed at the piano.

Maria Elena picked it up and stared at it. He had changed a great deal—and yet he hadn’t. It was clearly her husband. She had memorized his eyes that were at once happy and sad, and she immediately recognized that familiar half-smile that sometimes made it so difficult to tell whether he was happy or angry or melancholy or aloof. She handed the photo to Eddie. Eddie stared at the boy. “I look sad,” he said. “I was sad.” He handed the photo back to his wife. He clenched his jaw shut as if by doing so he could prevent himself from feeling or remembering.

Eddie looked up, and across the room, he saw a man wearing jeans and a black sweater. He was standing in the entryway between the hall and the living room, standing and staring as if he were lost in a strange place. He might have been eighteen with his fine blond hair and muscular body, eighteen and on a football team and ready to carry a little boy of seven on his shoulders through a large house. The man’s gaze was steady and straight. Eddie wanted to pronounce the man’s name. It was him, it was true, but he couldn’t speak as if he were in one of his own dreams where he became paralyzed and couldn’t move or yell for help. Maria Elena watched her husband. She wanted to hold him, yet knew this was not a time for her to be with him. This was not her place, her moment—she would have to refrain from touching him. She moved closer to Lizzie and grabbed her arm as if it were the only thing that kept her from falling off the earth. Eddie clenched and unclenched his fists, then tried to smile, his lips quivering, and he thinking of nothing except
his brother’s name. And Tom watching Jake watch his brother. And Tom thinking: “I have never seen a face that was breaking with joy, and now I have seen it and seen it on the face of the angriest man I have ever known, and so this must be a miracle.” And Jake thinking of this boy whom he had wondered about for years, this boy who was no longer a boy, this boy who had become a man he could no longer carry on his shoulders, a man—twenty-three years, a lifetime, and he was standing in his house, and he did not know if his tears were for his grief or because suddenly there was no grief. And for a moment he hated his parents more than he had ever hated them because it was they who had prevented them from being brothers as if they could not stand any kind of love whatsoever because they were sick and envious and greedy and so they had to put a stop to the affection their sons shared. He hated them, and yet that hate, furious as it was, passed quickly and silently because the man in front of him demanded his attention and there was no room for that hate—not now, and so he let that hate fall away and he felt light and weighed no more than his hair. He felt his teeth chattering, and so he placed his hands over his mouth and he yelled into them, and then he breathed into them as if he could catch everything that was coming out of him. And Lizzie, thanking her brother for giving her a gift, a brother she, too, had been separated from because a man who masqueraded as a father had decided that only one of them was worthy of recognition and so banished the other. So she crushed her father and spoke her brother’s name with respect though he had died hated and alone and exiled, and she thanked him for giving these two men to each other, and feeling the iron grasp of Maria Elena’s fist, she put the baby down because he was sleeping and she held the woman whom she loved as much as she loved life itself. And Maria Elena knowing that life would never be the same. And all of them thinking that this was the end of the world, and all of them wondering if this silence could ever be surpassed or ever be broken. And Eddie thinking: “If only I can say his name, if only I can make myself speak it, if only—then I will know” And then finally taking a deep breath and saying that name: “Jacob.” And having spoken, he repeated it: “Jacob,” And he walked over to him and pulled his brother’s hands away from
his mouth and held them and said, “It’s me.” And Jacob falling into his younger and smaller brother’s arms and weeping and holding him closer than he had ever held all the anger and rage and sadness of his days, and Eddie holding him closer than he had ever held any man, and he kissed his brother’s head over and over and over, never tiring of his task.

12

I hereby bequeath everything I have to Jacob Lesley Marsh. It’s not much, but I just wanted to make sure everything was official. I know he hates religious icons of any sort, so I want him to find a good home for them. I won’t define a good home, but what I mean by that is that I don’t want him to throw away what belonged to my family. I have a life insurance policy worth $65,000, and Jake is the sole beneficiary. He is to use the money to pay a private detective to find his brother. I’ll rest better if I know he’s found Jonathan. I also ask that my ashes be spread over the desert of Casas Grandes. I have already spoken to Jake about these things, but I thought I’d speak from, the dead just to remind him. And Jake, remember, I want a Mass, damnit—and wear something nice out of respect for the dead.

Joaquin’s handwriting was simple, clear, without any affectation. Tom and Rick had witnessed and dated it two months before he had died. He stared at the paper, then handed it back to Tom. “He shouldn’t have left me that kind of money.”

“Why the hell not? It’s not exactly a fortune.”

“For us, it was a fortune. It makes me feel bad.”

“Because he wanted to leave you with something?”

“I don’t want anything.”

“He loved you.”

“I can’t take it.”

“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”

“Why don’t you just leave me alone, Tom?”

“I can’t. I’m trying, but I can’t.”

“What if you’re not wanted?”

Tom walked away from him.

“Come back here,” Jake said. Tom kept walking toward the kitchen. Jake followed him. “I was joking,” he said. He smiled at him. “It’s hard for me,” he said, “I won’t forget what you’ve done—what you did—for him—for me. I won’t.”

Tom nodded. “And will you promise not to be so cold with your brother—will you promise to be good to him?”

“Yes.”

“Are you really going to move in with him and his wife?”

“He insisted. They both insisted.”

“When?”

“Any time I want. I’m going to take care of stuff around here. Maybe a couple weeks.”

“You’re actually going to take something from someone?”

“He’s my brother.”

“There are lots of us,” Tom said.

Jake said nothing.

“Will I see you?”

“Of course you’ll see me—you’re my doctor.”

Tom poured himself a cup of coffee. “Lots of people at the funeral,” he said awkwardly. “People loved him.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “I just remembered—”

“What?”

Jake walked out of the room and returned with a jacket in his hand. “He wanted you to have this. He said he lent it to you once, and you looked good in it.”

Tom took it carefully. “Thanks.”

“Thank Joaquin.”

“I wish I could, Jake.” Tom finished his coffee without trying to say anything else.

13

A
T THE TOP
of the steps that went nowhere, Diego and Mundo sat among the powdered pile of bricks and drank their beer.

“What a strange day,” Diego wrote.

Mundo laughed. “Makes me feel good.”

“Not me,” Diego wrote, “if I had more days like this, they’d have to put me in a mental institution. My nerves are shattered.”

“Look, ese, you gotta learn to fight back. See that shit of a detective—he hates me. He hates me, but he respects me—just like your boss. They’d love to see me get blown away, but they hate you, too, Diego, got that? They hate you maybe even more than they hate me. They’ll never like us—so where the hell does that leave us? Screw ‘em, that’s what I say. All we can do is fight ‘em till they’re as worn down as we are. They want somethin’ from me, then they’re gonna have to fight me for it—the same way they make me fight for what I want from them.”

Diego stared at the expression of anger on Mundo’s face—but there was more than anger—something better than anger. “That was great,” he finally wrote, “what you did to my boss—it was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.” He broke out laughing.

Mundo laughed with him, laughed and stomped the ground. Chugging his beer, he opened up another one, and took a swig.
“We gotta let ‘em know,” he said. “You sure got a loud laugh for a deaf guy.”

Diego nodded. “Too bad I can’t hear it.” He finished his beer and Mundo handed him another. “You think he’ll fire me?”

Mundo shook his head. “That chickenshit won’t fire you. He won’t screw around with the gangs—he doesn’t have the balls to screw with us, you’ll see. I’ve met a lot of guys like him, talk big but their balls shrink real fast. Next Monday you’ll still have a job, you’ll see.”

“I hope so,” Diego wrote. “Who the hell’s gonna hire me?”

“Hell, lots of people would hire you.”

Diego nodded, but he didn’t believe him.

Mundo chugged his second beer and crushed it in his hands. He threw it down the steps and followed it with his eyes. He scratched at one of the bricks he was sitting near. “Look at this, Mr. Diego, they just fuckin’ fall apart when you touch ‘em.”

Diego reached over and touched one of the bricks. It crumbled in his hands. He played with the red dust and let it run through his fingers.

Mundo opened another beer. He crushed another brick.

Diego thought of Mary, her purple fingernails digging into his memory. The sun was setting, and the blue sky around the edge of the mountains was turning pink. He watched Mundo’s hands, his blue veins popping out. His hands were alive, Diego thought, so alive.

“Thanks,” Diego wrote. “Thanks for helping me out. Now, I owe
you
one.”

“Friends don’t owe,” he said. It seemed strange to Diego that Mundo’s eyes could turn so angry then be so soft. The eyes he looked at now seemed incapable of violence. “But don’t think about it too much, Diego. You think too much about things. I had a good time today—but I didn’t like seeing La Mary that way. It’s bad luck to see dead people like that, Dios la tenga en paz. My old lady always says things like that—I guess it sort of rubs off on us, huh?” He took another swig from his beer. “I should have bought more than just one six-pack.” He looked at Diego with his black eyes. “How come you gave Mary your last name? She’s a gringa—she ain’t no Ramirez.”

“I told you I didn’t think anybody should be buried without a last name.”

“Why yours?”

“I didn’t have anything else to give her. Besides, I told you: I liked her. She wasn’t really my girlfriend—she wasn’t a jaina or anything like that—I just liked her.”

“You shouldn’t go around liking too many people. Things happen—and then you’re fucked.”

Diego shook his head. “It’s good to have friends.”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t saying it ain’t good to have friends, but god-damnit you don’t have to pick all the fucking locos in the pinche world, do you?

“Well,” Diego wrote, “you going to tell me your friends aren’t crazy?”

“Just some of them,” he laughed.

“You’re crazy,” Diego wrote, “and I picked you, didn’t I?—picked you right out of a garbage can. Of course, I should talk, huh? Look at me, my only hobbies are walking the streets, reading in a library, and writing a suicide note.”

They both broke out laughing. “Yeah, I don’t care what you say, I don’t believe it—I ain’t no pinche loco. I’m just tryin’ to get by, that’s all. Different people play different games, and I like to play my games out on the streets. I ain’t crazy. You ain’t crazy, neither. You just think about things too much.”

“You would too if you were deaf,” he-wrote.

“Maybe,” he said, “but Mary—she was crazy. I mean she was really crazy as they come.”

“I don’t think Mary was that crazy. I think she was pretty smart.”

“She thought she was the Virgin Mary! You call that smart?”

“Sort of, I think.”

“Maybe you’re crazier than I thought.”

“Yeah,” Diego wrote, “I can’t explain it. I just think she was very smart—she knew lots of things.” “Like what?”

“She wasn’t afraid to touch me. She wasn’t afraid that my deafness would rub off on her.”

Mundo didn’t say anything after that. The sky was a bright pink;
the edges of the mountains grew red like the color of the bricks. “In a minute,” Diego wrote, “I won’t be able to see your lips.”

“Yeah, and I won’t be able to read your handwriting.” Mundo finished his beer. “Look, I’ll come by your place tomorrow.”

Diego nodded. “Will you come to Mary’s funeral?”

“Sure.”

“Can you bring some friends?”

“Yeah, I’ll bring some of the T-Birds.”

“Can you get some of them to be pallbearers?”

Mundo laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, I can handle that, no problem.” He turned around and walked down the steps. Mundo wished Diego could hear the sound of his walk. He stayed among the bricks and watched the red of twilight turn to deep blue then black. He walked back to his apartment.

He took out his suicide note and read it. He thought about his sister. She really wasn’t that stupid, Diego thought, but he hated her because she could talk—no, he hated her because she’d left him, left him alone, and never wrote back. The last letter he’d written had been returned with a note on the envelope:
NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS
. He wondered what she looked like now. He wondered what Luz looked like now, too. Maybe she looked different in Chicago, maybe she’d changed. And then Mary jumped into his head—Mary—she would have looked pretty in her white dress. Pretty Mary.

The pictures in Diego’s mind kept spinning around. He saw Luz laughing, throwing her head up toward the sky, and Mundo grinning. He asked himself if they had ever thought of suicide. He’d read somewhere that everyone had some kind of death wish—something in everyone wanted to die. He picked up his pad without thinking. He saw his fingers moving across the paper as if he were watching somebody else’s hands:
Do I want to be dead?
Other people were alive, at least it seemed that way to him—other people. Mundo and Luz and Crazy Eddie and Mary. Mary had been alive. His head pounded. He saw Mundo drinking a beer and crushing a brick; he saw Luz clapping her hands and Crazy Eddie pointing his finger toward God. He saw Mary’s bloody body and a white hat that never got to see the inside of a church. He tried to read his suicide note
again. Luz said everybody needed someone to fight with. “You have your letter.” But you can’t buy a hat for a letter—letters don’t wear hats. He shut his eyes and dreamed that he and Mary were sitting in a church. The light from the stained-glass windows made them look like figures in a coloring book. His mother watched them sitting there.