Waiting For Columbus (37 page)

Moonrise. Stars pull back. Give the moon room. Perhaps when you are dying, you are able to hallucinate the truth. You wish Rashmi was your wife, and Chloe and Jane your daughters. What a beautiful dream you’re having. You’d better keep swimming. Keep moving. There is Chloe playing her cello at Christmas. She’s playing “Silent Night.”
Rashmi is humming along beside you. She can’t carry a tune, but she always tries. The acoustics in this room are phenomenal. A small echo adds body to the sound—forgives any imperfections. There’s a tree in the corner, a fir that brushes the ceiling. And there is Rashmi smiling. Her smile shatters you. The way she looks at you can only be described as loving. There is nothing else in that look, just that she loves you. Chloe and Jane are fussing with the tree, hanging the last of the ornaments. They’re dressed up. Chloe in a burgundy velvet gown that dips to her knees. She’s not wearing jeans, which is a minor miracle. Jane is wearing a simple black dress far too old for her age. You don’t want them to grow up too fast. She looks to be eighteen. Your own tears surprise you. You’re not sure what they’re attached to. You know for sure that tears are a completely useless addition to the ocean. Just keep going. A few more strokes and then you can rest for a while. Let the melody to “Silent Night” find you again. See Chloe’s dark hair—pulled back into a ponytail, a utilitarian gesture. Her hair has always been beautiful but she doesn’t care. Her lack of caring translates into a cool panache. Her friends follow her lead when it comes to dressing, and again, she doesn’t care or notice. It’s a hell of a thing to have daughters. You are surrounded by these women. You wish this was your reality, this beautiful dream. You could love these young women and Rashmi. Perhaps you already love these women. What’s the test for love? Is there a litmus test? Go back to the girls standing in front of the tree. They’re putting the last of the ornaments on, hanging them on their preferred branches. The light patterns on the wall are a lush combination of shadow and color. Do you remember snow? Was there snow this Christmas? Turn around and look out the window. Why can’t you turn around? You’re afraid if you turn away from your girls, they’ll be gone when you turn back. You want to keep them in sight. You’re going to stay right there inside that moment. You will not run away. You will not turn away. Stay here. Wait here. You are well past tired. You want to sleep. Something pokes you in the ribs—a softness that intrudes but does not seem
threatening. You hear the clicking laughter of a dolphin, several dolphins. What is a group of dolphins? A herd? A flock? A pack? The dolphins want me to be awake, you think. That’s funny. If I stay awake, I can stay afloat. If I can stay afloat, perhaps I will live. What does it matter? Falling through water is not so bad.

You’re not sure if your arms are moving. You don’t know if your ring is still on your finger. You have no idea. You haven’t had any feeling in your fingers for quite a while. You’re breathing. That’s good. You know you’re breathing. Each breath is a raspy hiss. Somebody is telling you to be quiet. Shhhh, they whisper. Shhhhhh. And you want to be quiet. You want to be quiet more than anything. Shhhh. You hear waves. The sound of waves arriving somewhere. You can’t feel … anything. A group of dolphins is a pod.
All is calm, all is bright. All is calm, all is bright
.

She doesn’t know whether to read it or not. It feels like an invasion of privacy. This journal was not meant for her. He’d have told her about it. It was tucked under his pillow. The orderly who changed his bedding brought it to her. Consuela flips through the journal quickly, not landing on anything specific. This isn’t reading, she thinks, it’s looking. There are more than a dozen entries. She decides she has to read this journal, and if they find Columbus, she will slip this booklet back where it was found. She wants in, goddamnit. She deserves to be included. She flips the journal open at random and begins to read.

The girl is stopped in midair, on her way to landing in the pool. The water sparkles beneath her feet. The sky is brilliant blue—dazzling, unadulterated. Scant seconds before this frozen image, there would have been the sound of slapping feet on the wet pool deck. She has such a joyous expression on her face. She
is thrilled to be jumping into this water. This girl wears her hair in pigtails. Even though there is joy on her face, something in her eyes says she’s not 100 percent sure about hitting the water. This apprehension is not enough to make her pause. She smiles and trusts it’ll be all right, and jumps anyway
.

This picture, obviously captured by someone standing in the pool, also catches an older, taller girl, standing on the pool deck waiting. She stands on the pale-green tile beside a wooden deck chair. The girl is wearing a one-piece pink swimsuit and she entertains no uneasiness. She will jump a bit higher and will land farther out into the water than her sister. Towels piled on the chair back. Perhaps she was supposed to be jumping along with the jumping girl, but no, she wants all the picture-taker’s attention. She waits to say, Hey, look at me. Slap, slap, slap, slap, and she will be airborne above the water, landing gleefully with a splash, hoping the lifeguard doesn’t bust her for running on the deck. Hoping whoever is there watching, sees her jump. There are a few other people reclined in deck chairs along the pool’s edge. He can tell by the way they lounge, they are very relaxed, and it is very likely a hot day. He knows these girls. He knows their hearts. He knows them at a level beyond knowing. But he cannot say their names. No matter how much he wants the scene to move beyond frozen, it will not budge. One girl hangs in mid-flight, her face happy and innocent, and the other girl waits on the deck—waits for her turn to show how well she can jump and how big a splash she can make. The sun is hot. The sky is clear. But there is no splash landing. No laughing-giggling-coming-up-for-air. No screaming: Let’s do it again! Let’s do it again! Nothing moves
.

They find him on the north coast of Morocco. He washes up on a
beach near the village of Tétouan. The ocean deposits him on the sand and the waves push him up and roll him over a couple of times before leaving him alone. Alerts had been sent to all the hotels and resorts along the coast. A group of children finds him. One of the children, a girl named Aabida, points into the ocean and shouts:
“Dolpheen! Dolpheen!”

“Eskoot
, Aabida,” a boy says.
“Shut up
.”

Columbus hears seagulls. Can’t open his eyes. Thinks perhaps those voices are angels speaking the language of angels. He’s in heaven. The air is warm. The light is bright. Angels with the voices of children.

There is a strange sort of sacredness, a holiness reserved for the presumed crazy. Columbus is not just another Spanish national on Moroccan soil. He’s a pitiful crazy person in trouble. His country becomes irrelevant except this is where he must be returned. Columbus is unconscious but stable when the medics arrive. He is transported to Ceuta,
the Spanish enclave on the northeastern tip of Morocco, and then by boat to Algeciras. He is back in Sevilla the next day.

Two days later he opens his eyes and sees he is back at the institute in Sevilla. He sees Tammy first. She smiles at him and he starts to scream. He’s horrified. He lived through the Strait of Gibraltar, through the memory of his dreamed daughters and his perhaps wife, for what? To arrive back where he started? To go through so much and not move? Tammy takes it personally, goes on stress leave, doesn’t come back for a week. Columbus is restrained and eventually sedated. The alprazolam takes him halfway back to his pleasant adrift-at-sea dream. He recalls the hazy faces of his dreamed family. Rashmi, Chloe, and Jane. He drifts back to this life with three women, life with his three girls.

Dr. Balderas told Consuela to go home on the morning of the third day. She’d been reading Malory’s version of the King Arthur story to Columbus. In the hallway, she sighed and paused, recognized how tired she was, and went home.

Dr. Balderas, who has been reviewing Columbus’s chart, glances over the lip of the clipboard at his patient. “Good morning. How do you feel?”

Columbus could give a flying fuck. He just wants to drift in the almost memory of what is, perhaps, his life.

“Do you know who you are?”

“Yesh,” Columbus says. His mouth is not responding. It won’t form words quickly enough. Won’t follow his thoughts.

“Can you tell me who you are?”

Columbus sighs. You ought to know, he thinks. “Yehhh,” he says finally, inside an exhalation.

“What’s your name?” He leans in closer. He’s hoping Columbus will say something other than Columbus.

“King Ah-thur.” Columbus closes his eyes, exhausted. Slowly, he turns the side of his face into the pillow.

Dr. Balderas is confounded. He has no idea Consuela was reading Columbus the Malory. He has no idea what to think, except that his patient is still delusional and that alprazolam is an effective sedative. Columbus is certainly sedated.

“What happened?” She glares at Dr. Balderas. His forehead is sunburned.