The Jade Notebook (11 page)

Her smile widens, and she leans over our table. “I’m glad you enjoyed my meal.”

I can’t seem to find words, so Wendell responds for us. “Delicious!” he raves.
“Gracias, señora.”

I nod, trying to stop myself from shaking—with nervousness or excitement, I’m not sure. I attempt to make normal
conversation, despite the fact that every cell in my body is screaming that this woman and I have to be related. Taking a deep breath, I say, “I’ve eaten seafood all over the world, and this tops it all,
señora
.”

“And your flan was incredible!” Wendell adds.

She glows.
“Pues, gracias, muchachos.”

I open my notebook and hold a pen poised, trying to keep it steady.

Wendell must sense my frazzled feelings, because he launches into the questioning.
“Señora,”
he begins, “your son tells us you know everyone in town, especially all the Cruzes.”

She laughs. “Yes, there are many of us!” She smooths her apron. “I’ve lived here all my life, so I know everyone.”

Wendell takes a sip of selzer and glances at me. I shoot him an encouraging smile. “You see,
señora
,” he says, choosing his words carefully, “we’re looking for a José Cruz from here. He left for Europe about twenty years ago. We met him last year in France.”

“He played guitar really well,” I chime in nervously. “And loved turtles.”

Wendell nods. “His nickname—at least in French—is Tortue. Turtle. El Tortuga.”

Cristina stares, and after a moment stammers, “I—I don’t understand. You—you say you met him in France. Why are you looking for him here?”

I’m too stunned by her reaction to speak. It’s not just her face that’s like mine, but her expressions, too. I can see she’s biting the inside of her cheek the way I do when I’m worried or scared. Her hands, at her sides, are moving slightly,
her fingernails digging into her palms—what I do when I’m overwhelmed with emotion. In fact, my own nails are currently dug deep into my palms.

Wendell takes over. “Last summer, Tortue—er, José—said he was going home. We think this was his home.”

Cristina says nothing, staring at the table. I bite my lip, waiting for her response. And then she bites her lip too, the mirror image of me.

“So you do know him,
señora
?” I ask, before I can stop myself.

Cristina studies my face. She must notice how alike we are.

My eyes meet Wendell’s. An unspoken question passes between us: should we tell her that José is my father? Wendell is silent, obviously leaving this up to me.

My mouth opens, then closes again. I can’t tell her. My father’s the one who needs to share this, especially if Cristina is his family. Tears springing to my eyes, I plead, “
Por favor, señora
. We just—it’s important that we find him.”

“I’m sorry,
muchachos
,” she says abruptly. “I can’t help you.” She takes a deep breath, flustered. “It was—nice meeting you,” she says. “I’m glad you liked my food.” She turns to go.

Wendell stands up, reaches out his arm. “
Espérese, señora
, wait, it’s just that—”

“I have nothing more to say,” she replies, her voice turning sharp.

And she’s gone.

“She knows him,” I whisper to Wendell, my voice shaking.
“She knows exactly who he is.” I take a sip of seltzer, feeling the fizz on my tongue. I try to focus on the cold, crisp bubbles, on Wendell’s eyes through the perfect candlelight on this perfect moonlit beach.

“Definitely.” Wendell studies my face. “And you do realize how alike you look, right?”

I see Cristina in silhouette back in the open kitchen, moving quickly, keeping her head down. “Wendell, remember how Tortue said I have the same face as his younger sister?”

Wendell considers this. “She’d be the right age. You think she’s your aunt?”

“Maybe,” I say, trying to clear my thoughts, make sense of this. “But I don’t understand why she was so secretive.”

After a pause, Wendell asks, “What about the problems Tortue had to face? Maybe his sister was somehow trying to protect him.” Wendell gives me a long, thoughtful look. “You know, Z, even if you don’t find your dad, you could at least get to know your relatives. Like El Sapo and his sisters. That’s something. That would be huge.”

“Maybe,” I sigh. “But …” I trail off. I think of my snow globe paradise, the crystalline world containing my father, Wendell, Layla, and me in our home. All of us happy. If my father’s not in it, there’s a glaring space where he belongs. A figure missing from the otherwise perfect scene.

“What is it, Z?”

“I just—if I don’t find him, I’ll always wonder if he’s okay out there. If he’s still …” I swallow hard. “I’ll always feel like something’s missing. A part of me will always be searching.”

Wendell reaches across the table, takes my hand. “Well,
your name does mean ‘seeker.’ Maybe you’ll never stop searching.”

I frown and rub my head. I look away, to the courtyard just beyond the restaurant, a tiny grove of tropical leaves and trees. Two of them have wound around each other, becoming essentially one tree.

Wendell leans across the table and kisses me. “Hey, let’s not give up.”

I offer him a halfhearted smile through the red-tinted candlelight. Then I ask the question I’ve been too scared to ask, to even write about in my notebook. It comes out in the softest whisper. “Wendell, what if my father—what if he’s lost? Forever?”

“We have no reason to think that, Z.”

Wendell stands up, walks over to me, holds me close. “We’re doing the best we can. We need to trust that he’s out there somewhere. That somehow, we’ll find him.”

I press my cheek to the fabric of Wendell’s T-shirt. “You’re right.” And suddenly, I feel overwhelmed with gratitude. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Wendell.”

He kisses me again, a kiss that tastes of caramel. “I feel the same about you, Z.”

“I’m just so glad we won’t have to say goodbye again, ever.” I imagine us as two trees growing side by side, woven together, solid and inextricable. As long as we’re together, I can handle anything, maybe even the worst-case scenario with my father.

Later, under the star-studded sky, I’m sitting at the edge of the bonfire, mesmerized by the leaping flames, my toes dug into the sand. Layla’s voice is a background, like the rush of waves, quoting Rumi to the guests, who listen with rapt attention.
“Flowers open every night across the sky, a breathing peace and sudden flame catching.”

Meanwhile, Wendell is talking—probably about sea turtles—to the Norwegian women, who are nodding emphatically.

I look at each of the rosy, glistening faces of the backpackers around the fire, watching Layla spout Rumi.
“We are the night ocean filled with glints of light. We are the space between the fish and the moon, while we sit here together.”

People murmur and nod and stare at the sky, then the ocean, then back at Layla. She’s found her calling, the perfect,
ever-changing community for herself. The kinds of people who choose to stay at a place like Cabañas Magia del Mar all have bits of Layla inside them. They’re obviously enchanted to be here with her, with each other. A gathering of strangers who, in a short break from their realities, play and laugh and sing and swim and do yoga and explore the mysteries of existence, with Layla as the Rumi-quoting guide. Symbiosis, that’s clear from the sparkles in everyone’s eyes.

Earlier, after the restaurant outing, while I was helping Layla carry wood from the shed to the bonfire pit, she asked why I was all melancholy. I explained Cristina’s strange reaction, and how she looked just like me, and how, at the heart of it, I feared my father might not even be alive.
“Walk with grief like a good friend,”
she recited softly in response.
“Listen to what he says.”

So here I am, waving away woodsmoke, trying to take Rumi’s advice and listen to what grief has to tell me.

Beside me, the blind Chilean man, Horacio, is playing guitar, what sounds like a folk song. His husky voice matches his rough beard, black, peppered with white and gray. I focus my attention on the guitar notes, the way his fingers move over the strings.

The image of a man playing guitar on a beach at night … this is how Layla described my father. And last year in France, when he slipped me the CD, I finally got to hear his haunting melodies, soul-touching and breathtaking. There are no words in the songs, but there’s so much feeling conveyed in his playing. My father’s French band was called
Illusion, which is fitting, because he himself was a kind of illusion. I didn’t see through his illusion until it was too late and he’d already left. All I have is his music.

But I want more. I want words, his words, tender words for his daughter. He did offer me some of these back in France, words that comforted me. What kills me is that I didn’t pay enough attention. I thought he was nothing more than a kind stranger. There’s so much I’d want to ask him if he were here with me. Since I learned to write, I’ve spent my life filling notebooks with words from strangers. And now, more than anything, I want to fill them with words from my father.

Horacio finishes his song, rests his guitar on his lap, stares contentedly into nothingness. I wave away smoke and open my jade notebook, angling it so that the firelight illuminates a page. Twirling my pen, I say softly, “Hey, Horacio.”

“Hey, Zeeta.”

Strange that he recognized my voice. We’ve hardly ever spoken. “You’re good with voices,” I say.

“Everyone’s is distinct. I recognize voices the way you recognize faces.”

I think about this, how it would come in handy for me. I’ve heard my father’s voice before, briefly, but I couldn’t pick it out of a voice lineup, that’s for sure. “
Oiga
, Horacio, mind if I interview you?”

“Sure,” he says, tilting his head toward my voice.

I decide to start with the basics, then dig my way deeper. “Do you have any kids?”

“A daughter,” he says, still facing the fire.

Something about the way he says “daughter,” with so much meaning, makes me catch my breath. What if—? Then I get my thoughts back in check.
He’s blind. Your father is not. Stop the wishful thinking
. I jot down
daughter
.

“And a granddaughter,” he adds with a proud, grandfatherly smile.

I close my eyes. Of course he’s not my father. But I know exactly what I’d want from my father if he were here. “Horacio, what’s your favorite bit of fatherly wisdom?”

With an amused look, he says, “Here’s what I told my daughter.” He chuckles, and adds under his breath, “Even though she never actually asked for it, like you.” Enunciating each word, he announces softly, “Your life will be a mess.”

I blink, taken aback. “Sounds more like a curse than advice.”

His fingers graze over his stubbled, fire-flushed cheek. “Twenty-five years ago, when my wife was eight months pregnant, we were in a terrible car crash. She died. Miraculously, our baby daughter survived. Little Elsa was in the hospital with me as I had surgery after surgery. They saved my life. But my head trauma was too severe. I never recovered my sight.”

I swallow hard. He’s paused and I feel I should say something, but I just stare at the fire, waiting for the rest.

“In the hospital, the nurses would wheel me into the newborn unit and I’d sit holding Elsa and feel how damaged we both were. She felt so fragile in my arms, so helpless, her tiny heartbeat …” His voice crackles with emotion. “I held
her and cried for my daughter who had no mother and a blind father. Like all parents, I wanted a perfect life for my child. But of course, this was never a possibility for Elsa. From the time she entered this world, her life was a mess.

“One day, as I held her little bird body, I felt this warmth radiating from her, this strength. That’s when the idea came to me. Life is a mess. My daughter would just realize it sooner than most people. So I stopped wishing for a perfect life.

“Instead, I focused on her feather-soft skin, this miracle. And I realized I wanted to travel the world with her.” He laughs gruffly. “A blind man traveling the world with his motherless baby. How messy is that? But I was determined. I’d gotten a settlement from the accident, so I had the money. My mother came along for the first few years, but when Elsa was old enough, it was just the two of us. She still travels with me sometimes.”

Horacio tilts his head back, as though gazing at the stars. “I’ll always remember holding my little girl that day and whispering, ‘Our lives will be a mess together. A beautiful mess.’ ” His voice softens, almost inaudible now. “You know, your life will be a mess too, Zeeta.”

It’s as if he can look right inside to my deepest fear. “Maybe not,” I say weakly, staring at the dark ocean.

“Oh, it will, sooner or later. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it.”

I close my notebook, trying to keep my voice steady. “My life has been a mess for the past seventeen years. There’s nowhere to go but neater.”

He grins into the darkness. “Life can always get messier.”