Have You Seen Marie? (4 page)

The neighbor Luli walked by with her pets following behind her in single file like a parade—a cat, a Chihuahua, and a dog as fat as a brown bear. Luli has witnessed too much grief for one lifetime and has a teardrop etched near her left eye to prove it, but, no, she hadn’t seen Marie.

“Isn’t it a shame to lose the one you love?”

Luli asked.

“Yes it is,” I agreed, and

when I said it,

my heart felt as if someone

squeezed it.

The day grew hot. The top of our heads felt soft as tar. On San Arturo Street a grandmother watering her thirsty roses told us, no, she hadn’t seen Marie.

“Would you mind watering us please?” We pointed to our heads.

She did, laughing as she sent a lazy jump rope of water toward us.

At a lacy Victorian on Barrera Street, we stopped to chat with a woman pretty as a mermaid. She was swinging on a porch swing knitting something purple.

I thought about my mother and how she used to knit ugly scarves no one wanted to wear.

Now I wish I had one of those ugly scarves, and my nose started to tingle.

Under the shadow of the Hemisfair tower, at a wooden house off Refugio and Matagorda, a nice couple dining on their porch invited us to look into their bamboo. There was a family of wild cats living there, but the cats wouldn’t answer when we asked about Marie, except for a fat gray one with eyes like hubcaps who curled its tail into a question mark. We left with paper plates of brisket, beans, potato salad, and cups of iced tea.

Outside the doors of the Torres Taco Haven, we caught up with John the mailman, who knows everything about everything in the neighborhood. John let his mailbag slide off his shoulder, readjusted his cap, and then announced, “Nope. Can’t say I’ve seen any black-and-white cat … But I know a lady over on Beauregard whose cat just had kittens.”

“Have you seen Marie?”

Anne the artist lives next door to the gas station. We found her planting paperwhites in her front yard in memory of her mother. We didn’t say much to each other, but that said everything.

“Marie, Marie!”

We called up to trees. We crawled on our hands and knees and peered under parked cars. We walked behind houses and into scratchy, deserted gardens.

But there was no Marie to be found.

At a tiny house on Claudia Street with a Virgen de Guadalupe
nicho
in the front yard, silver women in their silver years laughed like bells.

I felt better for a little while.