Rust (30 page)

R
ICO
HAD
remained at his mother’s
casita
for a long time. Her dramatic comment—“Now I can die in peace”—had shocked him, and, holding her in his arms and feeling how fragile she was, he had suddenly been consumed with dread. Was Elena ready to depart this world? Was his visit to Fernando’s grave the last nail in her coffin, as she seemed to imply? The act that set her free to die? He wanted to ask her to take those words back. This idea of life without her scared him that much.

But instead, they talked about Fernando. This time, when Elena started in with “He was a good boy until he was about twelve,” Rico actually listened. He had heard it so many times that he had begun to hear that sentence as a signal to shut himself down, to become a man who nodded and grunted but set his mind elsewhere. Now he felt her confusion and pain, felt the way in which she searched for clues about what had gone wrong, and how she felt responsible and helpless and guilt-ridden, even now, after so many years.

“It was probably the testosterone,” Rico said, echoing Margaret’s words from just yesterday. “It was like poison to him for some reason.”

“You think that was it?” Elena asked. “Can that happen?”

“We’ll have to ask Ana,” Rico said. He could just see the light in his daughter’s eyes and hear her say, “Let me research it.”

Elena segued into older memories, how handsome Fernando was as a baby, how proud she was to be a mother. He was one of those unusual babies who talked before he walked. He had a sweet tooth. No boy was ever happier to have a new brother than Fernando was when Rico came along. He liked arithmetic and music and hated English and history. He made his first Holy Communion wearing a little black suit that Elena had made on her old pedal sewing machine. On and on she went, up through the years, but when she arrived at twelve, Rico said, “It’s late, Elena, let’s call it a night,” and she agreed.

“Lock up behind me,” he said as he left. He heard the lock click into place as he walked along the path to his own house. It was five to eleven, but Rosalita was still up, sitting in the same spot on the couch where she’d been when he left.

“Is everything okay with Elena?” she asked.

“I guess so,” Rico responded.

“With you, everything is always a guess. Why is that, Rico?” Rosalita said, but she said it with a chuckle.

Rico did not take up her question. “She’s on a Fernando jag,” he said instead.

“What’s new?” asked Rosalita, who had long ago grown tired of what she called Elena’s hit tune, “What Happened to Fernando?”

Rico sat down in the middle of the sofa. “We’re lucky, you know, Rosalita? That we never had any trouble like that with any of the girls.”

“Well, there was that moment when Lucy got pregnant,” Rosalita said.

Rico dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “It’s not the same thing,” he said.

“I know,” Rosalita said. “I’m just saying we’ve had our hard times.”

Perhaps because Rico had been listening to Elena in a new way, he felt calm, as if listening in that particular way soothed both mind and spirit. He turned to Rosalita, saying, “In case you’re wondering, I haven’t slept with Margaret. I haven’t even kissed her.”

“But you want to,” she said in a matter of fact tone.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Rico said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. She’s said no, for one thing.”

“So you asked her?”

“Not exactly, but it came up.”

In this moment, late at night, calmly sitting on the sofa admitting feelings which are forbidden, which are rarely talked about calmly with one’s own spouse, Rico felt unusually strong. It had to do with Elena, he thought, with her comment that she could now die in peace. She must have wanted to give up at times, and what she got in the end was so minimal—just a spontaneous visit to the cemetery by a brother who didn’t even know why he was doing it. But it was enough to set her free. Even if Rico did not want her to be free enough to die on him, he was still inspired by her determination to claim some respect for her older son, no matter how long it took.

He reached toward Rosalita and covered her hand with his. She did not turn toward him, but she did not move her hand away from his either. “I’m so sorry about how lonely you’ve been for the last few years,” he said.

Now she turned to face him. He could see tears in her eyes, silver crescents. “I’m sorry, too,” she whispered. “I’m sorry you were lonely, Rico.” And right then, as if the words “I’m sorry” had the power of a tidal wave, they were swept toward each other; and right there, in the living room where any of the girls could show up at any moment on their way to the bathroom, they made love.

When it was over, after they had collected their clothes from the floor, after they had moved into the bedroom and Rosalita had fallen asleep, Rico remained wide awake. He felt content and peaceful, lying there with his wife’s head resting on his chest, and hearing the plaintive quality in the voices of the coyotes howling far away down the river.

A heightened awareness filled Rico with such awe that he kept his breathing as quiet as possible so as not to disturb the experience. He had his wife in his arms again, and suddenly their relationship seemed new. He had inadvertently given his mother the gift she had been waiting for. At the bottom of it all was Margaret, who had shown up in his shop and started an uproar.

He would not see her for several days, and that idea was unbearable. Rico already knew that he would concoct a reason to drop by her house. Did she feel the same way, he wondered. Was she over there in her little rented house dreaming of him? Perhaps plotting a way to see him long before Monday came? It did not seem at all contradictory to Rico that he was deeply happy that he and Rosalita were back on track, while he still had a desperate longing for Margaret.

That rooster that drove Elena mad had already started to crow before Rico finally drifted off. When he woke up, Rosalita was gone and he had just enough time to join Jessica and Lucy at the breakfast table and then head off to work himself. The events of the past few days, they were all good, he thought, but he was happy that he would be busy at the garage all day—too busy to think.

1991

T
HE
PLANE
approaches the city just before dawn. Vincent is tired. He has been on his way home for half his life, waiting to land. He peers out the window into the darkness, which ends at a wall of lights, even at this late hour.

It is August.

Vincent wears sandals, and he is grateful that, however it happened, he is returning when the city is hot, when his clothing is suitable to the weather and he does not have to worry about freezing on the street.

He knows New York well, or at least he used to.

By the time he passes through Customs and Immigration, it is light outside. He steps through the revolving door, and it smells like pavement. There is a line of waiting taxis, but he finds his way to a local bus stop. The bus will take him to a subway station. The subway will take him into Manhattan. He will change trains as needed and finally emerge from underground on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Fiftieth Street.

He will walk to Donny’s apartment.

Ring the bell.

Wait.

A
S
HE
opened the hood on a mint 1957 Thunderbird, one that he had personally kept alive against all odds for the past twenty years, it occurred to Rico that, while he had talked to Rosalita about Margaret, he had never talked to Margaret about Rosalita. He had admitted the truth about his infatuation to his wife as if she were a friend to whom he could say anything, rather than a spouse—and a jealous one, at least she had been in the past. She didn’t show many signs of jealousy now. She seemed instead to have put on blinders and retreated into a more solid part of herself, as if hunkering down to wait out this tornado was the smart position to take. And maybe it was.

He wondered, as he tested the spark plugs and adjusted the carburetor, how he would have handled the news of Rosalita’s big crush on whomever-it-was four years ago if she had admitted it when she was in its grip. Would he have flown into a rage? Clamped down on her, questioning where she was at all times, like most of the other Chicano guys he knew? Gone after the guy? He didn’t know. He couldn’t know, because Rosalita, unlike Rico, had never owned up to her secret yearning, her great temptation, her sudden desire for a new life that did not include him.

Of course, things were different, very different, four years ago when she had come to her fork in the road. He tried to think back. They had been together nineteen years at that point, no small amount of time. It was the year before Lucy got pregnant, a year after Ana’s
quinceañera
, the year Maribel entered Rio Grande High. Rosalita was thirty-five, and he was thirty-nine. He didn’t remember suspecting that there was another man anywhere on the horizon. He thought, as Rosalita withdrew, that it was a temporary state that lingered, brought on by the routine of so many years together coupled with the approach of middle age and all the adjustments women had to go through.

From that moment in the high school parking lot when Rosalita had finally told him the truth, Rico had fought the urge to press her for more information. He knew he was better off turning away from the details—both the identity of the man and knowing exactly how far it progressed. Knowledge of these things would eat at him. Because he was in the grip of his powerful lust for Margaret, because he had this idea in his mind that they shared a destiny, he had managed to remain somewhat detached, as if he were on a hilltop far away from this chaos.

But now, he realized that he wanted to talk to Rosalita about it. It seemed important, probably because they had started to fuck again, which was more or less the same thing as oiling the gears on this Thunderbird. It kept it going, and that was that. So when he arrived home that night, after dinner was done and Elena was safely delivered back to her
casita
, Rico stepped into the living room and said, “Come outside, Rosalita. It’s a beautiful night. Come and see the stars.” All the girls were there in the living room, and Rico knew instinctively that she would not want to reject such an invitation in front of them.

“Are there mosquitoes?” she asked halfheartedly, but before she even finished the question, she had gotten to her feet and slipped on her summer flats. She carried her glass of iced tea with her.

“No, not many,” he answered. “Anyway, I’ll light the citronella candles.”

When she stepped out the door, he took her hand and led her to the back patio where, years ago, he had placed the flagstones, one by one, in the dirt, and then filled the cracks with fine sand that had set over time like cement. They had placed a round, glass-topped table with an umbrella in the middle of the patio, along with six chairs with waterproof cushions. Rico ignited the citronella, and soon the air was heavy with the scent of lemons. He lowered the umbrella, so they could have an unobstructed view of the sky, which was bursting with tiny white stars. It had cooled off to perhaps seventy degrees, and the night was unusually languid. Even the thousand South Valley dogs were quiet.

Rosalita took a long sip of her iced tea and then shook the glass so the ice cubes clinked against the sides. “I have the feeling that something bad is coming,” she said with an attempt at a smile.

“Why did we stop talking to each other, Rosalita?” he asked with urgency. He could see that she was wary of him, and he wanted to reassure her. “I’m just looking back, trying to figure it out.”

“I don’t know if you can figure it out, Rico. Some things just happen.”

“But we let it happen.”

“We couldn’t stop it.”

Rico sat back in the chair and stared at the dark sky for a long moment. “I’m trying to talk to you, and I feel like I’m hitting a wall.”

“I’m talking back,” replied Rosalita. “You just don’t like what I’m saying.”

That was true. He wanted an opening, a place to slip inside and begin to explore, but he felt Rosalita was closing doors as fast as he pried them open.

“Whatever we would say, we’d probably only hurt each other,” Rosalita said.

“You think so?” Rico paused to search for words. “We’re so out of touch, Rosalita. I don’t feel like I know you anymore.”

Now Rosalita pushed back from the table. “Oh Rico, in fifteen minutes, you’ll know me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re just in a mood.”

“Okay,” he said. “Forget I asked.”

“That’s predictable,” said Rosalita with a sigh. “You might not know me, but I know you. I knew you would say that.”

Rico felt trapped and helpless. Whatever he said, Rosalita reduced it, turned it into a dead end. He remembered this feeling, a cellular memory that surfaced strongly in this moment. Over those four years, there were suddenly dead ends everywhere, and after a while they stopped trying, both of them.

“Something has to change between us,” Rico finally said.