The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos (44 page)

Her words and good humor had seemed to satisfy the release board, and they let her out to try her way in the world. By this
time, she was already thirty-five.

Her first impulse as she embarked on this new chapter was to find Lily. But though she scoured the city white pages of the
moth-eaten directory at the halfway house where Dr. Martinez had secured her a room, she could find no trace of her former
friend, nor even of anyone who had known her. Disheartened, she sat at the card table that served as both dining table and
writing desk, tapping her foot to a jazz rendition on the radio of the song made famous by Judy Garland—“Somewhere Over the
Rainbow”—the song she had sung to a crowded theatre hall as a schoolgirl, a song she had practiced with Lily.

Or had she?

Could it be that, as with so many other characters that have populated her thoughts and dreams, she has simply invented Lily
Nathifa Amparo, whose name means “Pure Pure Sanctuary”? All the evidence—or lack thereof, actually—might seem to point in
that direction. Yet, her memories of Lily are the most vivid, standing out from most of her recollections of life before the
asylum.

It is, of course, entirely possible that Lily and her family, like so many others, weary of an unforgiving political and economic
climate that ground their dreams to dust, had migrated to some small town in North America or Europe, or anywhere they could
maintain the fiction in their minds that to exchange their homes and traditions for security is a fair trade.

Or could it be she, Irene, who is imaginary? Perhaps we are all God; perhaps no one would exist if someone else did not dream
them into existence.

Now there is a thought the Jungian would appreciate.

It was her outpatient therapist, Lucrecia Usoa, who, quite accidentally, while substituting for a colleague on holiday, discovered
that Irene’s mother, Mercedes, had admitted herself to the Serenidad Old Age Home in the hills of El Hatillo several years
earlier. She suffered from Parkinson’s.

“They say she doesn’t recognize anyone now. I can go with you, si quieres,” said Lucrecia Usoa. Irene was certain that not
even Lucrecia’s reassuring presence would be able to shield her from the unquenchable nature of her mother. She was wrong.
When she arrived, her mother, a shell of her former self, looked right through her as though she weren’t there at all. Irene
sat in front of her, held tight her trembling hands in an attempt to still them, and blurted out the heartbreak of all she
had lost—her lost years, lost time, lost loves. She apologized for running, for her own lunacy. But Mercedes only stared at
a place somewhere over her head, her lips moving soundlessly, as if in silent prayer. Then, loosening her hands from Irene’s
grip, she stood and tottered over to her dressing table, where she began to fastidiously rearrange and meddle with the items
on its surface. Folding and unfolding a washcloth, mixing her tooth powder with water from a jug, dabbing rose water behind
her ears. There was a statue of the Virgin Maria on the dressing table. No Maria Lionza nonsense here; the place was run by
nuns. She stood up to leave. Mercedes took no notice. Irene did not return, for there was nothing to return to but ashes.

It was also Lucrecia, after reading some of her stories, who said she had a good ear for the cadence and mannerisms of speech
and suggested that she try her hand at scriptwriting. So she gave it a shot, completed a script about a family like the one
she would have liked to have had, sent it off to the biggest telenovela-producing station. And then she waited for three months.

When a letter from the station arrived, she tore it open with clumsy, trembling fingers.

Your script has been rejected. Too raw, too weird, with too many old people. Too much narration in the background. We make
telenovelas, not art films. We’re in the business of happily ever after. We fabricate dreams.

The rejection continued:

For future reference, there should be only two central characters destined to fall in love, and everything in the story should
revolve around that. Make them young, more contemporary, give them sexier names...Consuelo and Ismael are too antiquated;
our viewers don’t want to see old people in love. It’s a turnoff.

That’s how they talk over at the big, corporate TV stations. Though apolitical as a rule, she thinks it will serve the bastards
right if the government shuts them all down.

She is neither able nor willing to comply with the terms of the TV producers, to rewrite the beings culled from the imperfect,
twisted, but nevertheless beloved, fragments of her own psyche and experience. While she has no issue with fantasy per se,
she cannot write lies or characters who have no souls. In her present life she can no longer pretend that everything crazy
is exotic, she cannot ignore the elephant in the room, and when confronted with ugliness or pain or misery, she does not turn
away. Her tenacity over the matter of editorial control has paid off and she has successfully sold for radio eight starter
scripts, known as
enredaderas
because of the vinelike nature of their narratives, which can be continued by other writers into infinity, or as long as
the audience’s love and attention holds.

The first,
The Fall of Maria Lionza,
she dedicated to Lily after seeing her in a dream. It received widespread acclaim in a public survey among novela aficionados
and ran for six months. The next was called
The Boy Who Thought He Could Fly,
followed by
The Dancing Heart,
then
Opening the Door of Miracles—A Midwife’s Story, Diary of a Writer in Love, Daughter of the Revolution.
The latest,
Dreamwalkers,
whose protagonist is gifted with the ability to enter the dreams of others and change their destiny, has been on the air
since last September. And she is already midway through another,
Incarnation of a Princess.

No matter how many times she hears it, she is always thrilled when a new novela is announced with a dramatic flourish: “This
is Passion Radio with another hot-blooded tale from the pen of Coromoto Santos.” Coromoto Santos is her nom de plume.

It is public radio, not television, and it pays far less, but the fruits of her labor are read to the audience precisely the
way they are written. And once her starter script has been enacted on the radio, she is happy, and perfectly in harmony with
the idea that someone else will carry on what she has begun. Every now and then she tunes in to see what has happened to this
character or that, and, more often than not, she is delighted. She loves writing for radio. Radio scripts are far more equitably
balanced in terms of narrative and dialogue, inviting the audience to participate in their own unique visualization process.
There is no question that radio allows for a much more intimate storytelling experience than television. She has voyeuristically
watched people in cafés, or through the windows of their parked cars and living rooms, turn on the radio, close their eyes,
and be transported to another place, another time. Public radio is far less glamorous than television, but the scripts are
unadulterated, allowing for a more equitable balance between dialogue and narrative. It is literature. She likes that.

Long live public radio.

The Jungian had warned her against indulging her inclination toward magical thinking. But as for the fate of the corporate
TV stations, it amuses her to flirt with the idea that her wish is being granted. One by one, they are having their leases
revoked by the government. Students take to the streets, protesting in the name of freedom of speech. She believes in freedom
of speech, of course. But she will not be joining the protests in the streets. In her catatonic period, she had lived the
life of a revolutionary and died for it. She remembers the experience quite vividly, and as far as she is concerned she has
already paid her karmic dues toward society in this regard. In this, her current and chosen life, she is responsible only
for herself, and that responsibility is great enough, sometimes almost too great.

These days, says Lucrecia, you have to take care to differentiate between dreams born of your own subconscious that lead to
awareness, and fantasies handed to you on a platter that lull you into a stupor. You have to be on your toes when it comes
to discerning what is real.

For Irene this sometimes seems an exhausting and overwhelming task, mitigated only by her love for Manuel and his for her.
How fortunate she is to have seen him sitting moodily in a café on the corner of Benadiba and Cinco and caught his eye, how
fortunate that he took out his camera and asked her if she would mind if he took her picture, how fortunate that she, normally
so reticent with strangers, had agreed to accompany him to his studio.

When she thinks about it, it is a miracle that more people aren’t flocking in droves to the nuthouse. She supposes they go
to Sorte instead. Or, for those who can afford it, to the banks of the River Ganga in India, whose muddy waters, it is said,
can wash away even the most tenacious of ills.

Lucrecia says there are those in the mental health business (for in this crazy world, craziness has become a business) who
believe that blurring the line between what is real and what is imaginary is perfectly legitimate, even outside the realm
of fiction. One of Lucrecia’s collegues at the halfway house where Irene used to live teaches a self-brainwashing technique
to his patients, a complicated business involving the monitoring and conscious adjustment of one’s eye movements, which can
be used to convert unacceptable memories into acceptable ones. In other words, they alter the facts. Of course, writers of
novelas can do this automatically, without coaching. They write the world the way they
want
it to be at that moment. It is a heady thing, dreaming up worlds, kneading them like pastry dough, folding them over on themselves.

The day before the last of the private television stations was shut down, she watched a rerun of an American talk show dubbed
in Spanish, where the female host asked her celebrity guests, “What do you know for sure?”

The only thing Irene knows for sure is that she is done with running. She will stick it out till the end, clinging to her
own small slice of life, a life she had so long resisted and later fought demons and hellfire to keep. She will plant her
vine and nurture its fruit. She will graft it with budding hope for herself and Manuel, for her country and its people, with
all their attendant complications and contradictions, races and beliefs, secure in the knowledge that even in this, the so-called
real world, there is a place for magic, that it is possible, sometimes, to pull starlight out of sand, to reach into the sky
and bring home the moon. She will write her radio tales and blow into the mouths of her characters the hot, sweet breath of
life and passion. She will do what she has always done, only now she will draw an invisible line in the invisible sand to
demarcate where these lives end and hers goes on. She will stand on the foundation of the new life she has fashioned, trusting
that it will not crumble beneath her feet, and believing that her story,
this
story will continue.

And now Manuel is kissing her, sucking softly on that tantalizingly tender place just under her ear, the place that gives
her goose bumps.

“Perdóname,” he says about the photograph of her frozen terror on the rock, placing it facedown on the bedside table.

“For what?” she asks, and means it.

This book was several years in the making, during which I received sustenance from many quarters. I am deeply indebted to:

Sonia Anderson, best friend, touchstone, and co-custodian of memories.

The late Consuelo Perez, who was the inspiration for the character Consuelo in the novel.

My agent, Ellen Levine, for her judicious editorial feedback, patience with my process, and diligent efforts on my behalf.

My editor, Selina McLemore, and her assistant, Latoya Smith, for their belief in this book and painstaking attention to detail.
And the people at Grand Central’s art department, who created a wonderful cover.