The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (25 page)

Chapter 28

I
n case you've wondered, people don't change just because they've died. And if my early experiences connecting people with dead loved ones are any indication, this is especially true of men.

Two whole days had passed since I'd discovered the secret of Henry's paternity. Or at least, the pieces of evidence that pointed to the fact, since what I'd found fell rather short of being the equivalent of a smoking DNA gun.

Still, Hector refused to show his face, or whatever it was he'd been showing during our post-death conversations, which, to me, was proof enough.

“Hector, this isn't the way it works. You can't just show up when you feel like it, and then refuse to come when I call you. Hector? Hector!”

Nothing, and I'd tried it all. I'd held objects of his, mostly books like the copy of
Chiquita
that he'd given me that last time at the St. Michel. I'd filled the bathtub and sat on the toilet clinking my Tibetan bells, thinking of specific moments of our time together and trying to connect with him through shared memories. I'd chanted repetitively for him to make his presence known to me, substituting legitimate chants with funny words like
knock-knock, mango,
and
guavaberry
(my cell phone's alias) and singing them in the most ceremonious tone I could manage, trying to make it impossible for him to refrain from a snarky comment. Exasperated, I'd read positive newspaper stories about the Miami Book Fair, cofounded by his mortal enemy, Mitchell Kaplan, thinking his jealous ego wouldn't be able to resist, and had finished by further provoking him: “Now there's someone who knows how to sell a book, I tell you.” But not even a snort.

Finally, I'd tried talking to him, promising not to judge or say a word about what I was sure I knew, to understand anything, no matter how horrible. But no Hector. Trust a man to disappear when you need him most.

The police had been by a few times. But the plainclothes officers had gone right past my door and up to Olivia's apartment. If she'd ever had to accompany them as I had, I didn't see it.

Still, no Hector.

Knowing him, I'd considered the possibility he might be jealous of how quickly my “boyfriend” and I seemed to have fallen back into a hybrid courtship/rekindled friendship since that evening in Abril's apartment.

And then, weeks later, after I'd almost convinced myself I'd lost my abilities again, he came back.

It was 5:55 a.m. on a Miami winter's Monday, according to my microwave's digital readout, and narrow, pinkish mango slivers of light had begun to sneak in through the slats of the wooden blind covering the little window that took up the upper half of my kitchen door.

“You want me on my knees?” Hector had asked after a while.

Before I could explain to him how little that would solve in his present state, he'd slid toward the floor, a mass mostly made up of a crumpled khaki trench coat and slacks, barely held together by my memory of his tanned skin and dignified manner. This stance, so proud and self-assured even now, was Hector's version of kneeling.

When he “hit” the floor, we'd already been at this for almost an hour: him begging me to protect Olivia from danger he had not been able to articulate in any way I could understand. Me, seated at the kitchen table, leaning forward with knees pressed together and arms crossed in front of my chest, as much because I was feeling the evening's misty cold giving way to the peaceful quiet of morning in Coffee Park as because I wanted to create a bit of a barrier against the intensity of his dead energy.

I'd walked into the dark kitchen for a glass of water and found him sitting at the kitchen table, moaning softly and sitting in the same chair of the dream that warned me of his death weeks before, only, this time, there was no cigar and no newspaper.

“Please, Merry Ella. I'm begging you!” he demanded again now, his eyes, usually mischievous in life, now frantic, piercing, and haunted.

“Okay, again: How do you even know Olivia's in danger? Or is it that you think the police are coming after her?” I asked, thinking of how he'd known when they were coming to fetch me for interrogation.

“I don't know! I
sink
she wants to hurt herself. You have to tell her. Tell her is not her fault. Tell her I'm sorry, please, tell her I'm sorry,” he said.

“Hector, I told you: Olivia knows about you and me. She doesn't want my help.”

“I know she's in trouble, I knooooow . . . I know . . . whooooooo . . . whooooooo . . . who-whoooo-whoooo . . .”

He'd finally broken down, defeated, crying his futile tears like the ghost he was having a hard time understanding he was. It was like watching a junkie agonize. But don't think of a strange junkie, a junkie you don't know. Think about a junkie who's your brother, or the son or daughter born out of your womb, a junkie you care about. It was like watching that junkie thrash and tremble, sweat and sob, and it was unbearable.

“Please don't cry, Hector. I promise I'll figure something out.”

I'd told him I knew all about Henry the minute I'd seen him sitting there in my kitchen after so many silent days. I'd asked him how he could have done something so terrible to his own son. But he'd just grown even more frenetic, refusing to talk about Abril or Henry and insisting I go to Olivia that minute.

“Sorry, Hector. Not until you tell me the truth about them. I mean, don't you care about Henry? How can you be so coldhearted?”

That's what had brought on all the kneeling and begging and sobbing: All my chanting and calling him forth since finding out about Henry had forced him to remember. He'd remembered that somehow Olivia knew about Henry and Abril. He was sure that's why her last look had been one of hate, effectively handcuffing him to this world. That was the reason for all of this, he said, wailing his pain with “wooohooohooos” again and again, until I could no longer stand it.

“Enough! If you can't tell me what happened, then I don't want to keep talking to you.”

“It's, it's . . . I can't, I . . . I can't,” he managed, stressing the sounds, wanting me to understand every word.

And then I saw. It was regret! Regret had paralyzed him. He couldn't move in any significant way because the pain was blinding him so, making him heavy, unable to see, just like me.

I began to say words, synonyms of
light
and
love
to try to calm him down, as I'd read from the family journal I'd almost memorized in a matter of weeks.

“Love, mercy, light, good, beauty, friendship, soul, whole, good,” I repeated again and again until I no longer felt him wailing.

“Hector, I can't help you if I don't know what happened to you, and I can't put it all together without what you know about what happened that night.”

“I just said!
Somesing
bad.”

“You mean like evil?”

“Eh,” he said sadly, shaking his head wistfully like an old Jewish grandma, as if I were close, but not quite, and trying to explain it to me were of no use.

“Okay. Something bad. Maybe like shame? Or blame?” I said, feeling strongly that I was on the right track.

“Woo-hoo-hooooo!” wailed Hector again, sections of him appearing and disappearing before my eyes.

“It hurts? Painful? Remorse? Guilt? Is it guilt?” I kept tossing out options at him like a game show contestant racing against a thirty-second clock.

I knew when I'd gotten it right because the second I said guilt, his wailing got louder and he covered his ears, out of habit I guess, as they were no more really there than his trench coat.

“Okay, okay. Stop it. I get it. It hurts. But it's too late now. There's nothing either one of us can do. You'll have to take the guilt with you. It will go away in time, I promise.”

“How can you of all people say that to meeee, Merry Ella? Don't you know I can't go . . . like this?” he wanted to know.

He was right. How could I? I knew all about guilt. I'd been carrying it with me like a favorite purse all my life. I'd made a decision born of guilt and suffering over my mother's death when I was eighteen, and then been too stubborn and too blind to the fact that I didn't have all the facts, and refused to change it, denying myself the memory of my mother's love until just a few weeks ago, when Hector's death had cracked me open. The result was an entire life shaped by that one decision, by that one absence of self-love. So many opportunities to create my own happiness wasted.

So I got it now. That's why Hector was still here. Guilt and regret, two sides of the same coin. Guilt of the kind so painful and powerful it springs at you from around every corner, keeping you from sleeping, from resting, even from dying. I understood now. But understanding it didn't mean I had the remedy for it.

“You have to help Olivia,” he said again.

“Tell me about Henry.”

“I need you to help Olivia,” he said, standing his ground. “I don't want her to pay for this. I owe her.”

“Tell me about Henry and Abril, or I'm going back to sleep,” I said, ignoring the fact that he'd basically conceded Olivia was behind his death, the pain involved in accepting this one fact probably the reason he'd stayed away after I'd mentioned that belladonna had killed him. Of course he'd known then. He must've known immediately.

But even though I could feel bad for what he was going through, the truth is I was really angry with him just then. Here he was, back from the dead, going on and on about Olivia and the supposed danger she was in, while apparently not caring one bit about a child who hadn't asked to be brought into this world.

“Start talking, or I'm walking right back to bed and getting under those covers, and don't even think of getting in there with me because I swear I'll start chanting the rosary if I have to.”

“I'm not perfect, Merry Ella.”

“Don't you give me that, Hector Ferro. Who the hell asked you to be perfect?”

“Please don't say hell,” he said quietly.

“What kind of man doesn't care about a child? His child!” I insisted.

He was very quiet for a few seconds, as if weighing his options, then got up, or that's what it looked like to me, and “sat” on the chair across from me again.

“She wanted me to be a father. I told her to break up with her boyfriend,” he said, relenting at last.

“You mean, Abril? Oh, Hector! How could you do such a thing?”

“I'm baaaad,” he said, shaking his head again.

“Forget you. How could you do this to Henry?”

Then he told me how he'd been giving Abril cash for Henry after a detective contacted him threatening with proofs of paternity. How he'd thought he was doing the right thing by protecting Olivia, while giving Abril what he could honestly give. He really hadn't seen how telling Henry that he was his father could do anybody any good. He'd told Abril that he'd continue to help her secretly, but she insisted that her son had a right to be loved by his father.

“He does,” I said.

“He's a good boy, Merry Ella. I could take responsibility, but she say that was not enough. She wanted me to love him, spend time with him. But I never wanted to be a father!”

“You should've thought of that before sleeping with her. And you told Olivia you did!”

“I did no such
sing!
”

“You didn't say you wanted a child?”

“I did not say it to make her feel
anysing
.”

“Yes, you did, you horrible, horrible man. You shamed her all these years, lied to her, made her feel worthless,” I insisted, not caring that I was making him writhe with every word. And when he didn't answer, I kept right on going, as if I knew anything about his marriage.

“Say something, damn it!” I said finally, pounding the table with my fist.

“So I deserve this, then?” he asked, unruly brows vibrating like pond water, his words feeling as if the table had punched me back.

“Okay. So what happened? What really happened?” I asked, yielding.

“She wanted me to tell Olivia
everysing
. That it was the reason I sold the house, put the money in Olivia's name.”

“Was it? In case she came back demanding child support ?”

“I told her she had to break up with her boyfriend if she wanted meeee to destroy my marriage,” he said, ignoring my question.

“Oh, Hector.”

“How to know she was going to do it?”

“Right, you just wanted to sleep with her. And when she showed you she was willing to do anything to get you to do the right thing, you decided to go for it, have your little fling again. That's why you were in such a rush to break up with me, wasn't it?” I said, seeing it all as if I were reading it right out of my grandmother's journal.

He was silent again.

“Come on, admit it. You couldn't wait to toss me like last month's paper, just so you could, what? Prove to yourself how irresistible you were?”

“I said: I was baaad.”

“And for what?” I continued, on a roll. “Olivia would have forgiven you. I would've gotten over it. Instead you hurt me, you hurt Gustavo too, you hurt Abril and Henry, just to sleep with her? To prove you could steal her from a younger man? What was it?”

“I don't know! Maybe. I don't know. Leave meee alone,” he said, breaking up again.

“You're kidding, right? Because unless you were going to leave Olivia, this makes no sense.”

“What? No! No, no, no. No, no. But, I felt, eh, you know, eh, macho. She always said ‘your son, your son.' It was very, you know, macho. For me.”