Forty-One
WHEN I WOKE UP, IT was late, almost noon. Legs was still asleep. She was sleeping more and more. She was getting old. But she was still a great sleeping companion. I petted her. “Let’s get up.” She barked softly. “Mom will make us breakfast.” I wondered when this strange sadness would lift.
I put on my jeans, slipped on a T-shirt, and headed for the kitchen to have a cup of coffee.
The house was quiet—except for my mom’s voice and the voices of my sisters.
“Morning,” I said.
“It’s afternoon.”
“What’s your point?” I gave Emmy a crooked smile. “I need coffee.”
Vera kept looking at me. “You really look like a grown-up.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” I poured myself a cup of coffee. I sat down next to Mom. “How come it’s so quiet?”
“The husbands took the kids to see their grandparents. My in-laws were very impressed by you, Ari.”
“They’re nice people.”
“Still don’t know how to take compliments.” Emmy was looking more and more like Mom.
“Compliments are nice. But, well, what am I supposed to say? I don’t like getting all that attention.”
“You’re just like Dad,” Vera said.
“I wish I were.”
“Ari, it makes us happy to know that you and dad stopped fighting with each other.”
“Me too, Emmy. But just when we’d gotten so close—it doesn’t seem fair.” I sort of laughed. “Dad hated the That’s not fair thing.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I know exactly what your father thought when people said It’s not fair. But I decline to enter this conversation you’re having with your sisters.”
“Why? Because they never happen?”
My two sisters nodded.
I looked at them. “Since I have taken steps to try to not hate myself anymore, I will not blame myself for the lack of communication among the three of us. I will only take one-third of the blame.”
“Well, we were older,” Vera said. “Maybe you should take only one-fourth of the blame. And I can take one-fourth of the blame—and Emmy will take half of the blame. She’s the oldest, and she likes being in charge.”
“Because I’m the bigger person—” Emmy began, which made us all laugh, which even made her join in the laughter. “Okay, since I’m so bossy, it’s one-third everybody’s fault that we two haven’t made all that big of an effort to reach out to you, Ari. Let’s make a better effort.”
“Well,” I said, “in Dad’s universe, when people say it’s not fair, they’re not really talking about fairness.”
“What’s it about, then?”
“He said all we’re doing is letting the world know how selfish we are. We’re making an assumption and also making an accusation. It’s all in one of his journal entries. Would you like to read them? When I finish reading them, I’ll send them to you, so you can read them too. And if you don’t send them back to me, I’ll have to drive to Tucson and steal them back.”
“I’d like that,” said Vera.
“Well, will you look at that,” Emmy said. “Little Ari has learned to share.”
I looked at Emmy and nodded. “Nice. And you were doing so well. But you had to screw it up.”
“I like this pretend fighting more than I liked the other kind of fighting.”
Vera was always the kindhearted peacemaker. She was so nice. Both of my sisters were nice.
“I want to say I’m jealous,” Vera said, “of what you and Dad had. But I’m not. It makes me really happy that you fought your way toward each other. All that quiet living inside Dad and all that stubbornness living inside you, Ari—but you made it happen.”
“You did make it happen.” Emmy was nodding and smiling. “It’s like that passage from Dad’s journal you read in your eulogy. We do invent who other people are. And we invent ourselves. And we can have very unpretty and very ungenerous imaginations.”
Mom laughed. “It’s true.” She reached over and took my hand in hers. “As sad as I am about your father’s death, right now, in this moment, I’m happy. And all of my children are here.”
And Emmy whispered, “Except Bernardo.”
“Oh, he’s here,” my mother said. She tapped her heart. “He has never left. He will always be here.”
I had no idea how my mother had learned to bear all her losses.
* * *
Happiness. Sorrow. Emotions were fickle things. Sadness, joy, anger, love. How did the universe think to invent emotions and insert them into human beings? My father, I suppose, would call them gifts. But maybe our emotions were part of the problem. Maybe our love would save us. Or maybe our hate would destroy the earth and everybody in it. Ari. Ari, Ari, Ari, can’t you ever just give it a rest from thinking and thinking and thinking?
What was I feeling right now? I didn’t know. I just didn’t know. How did I explain not knowing what it was I felt?
* * *
When my sisters left to visit their in-laws, I went to my room. I was reading one of my father’s journals, and I could hear his voice in them—and it didn’t feel like he was dead. It felt like he was in the room, sitting in my rocking chair and reading to me.
I decided I’d take the journal I was reading and sit on the front steps. It was cool outside, but the sun seemed to break through the unusually cold day. I headed for the front steps of the house. I don’t know why, but it was one of my favorite spots. It was one of my mother’s favorite spots too.
I found the place where I’d left off, and just as I started reading, my mother came out and sat right next to me. “Read me the part you’re reading.”
“He copied his favorite passage from the Bible.”
“Read it to me.”
“ ‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die…’
“And then Dad writes: ‘I have refrained from embracing for too long—now it is time for me to embrace. My time for silence has passed—now it is my time to speak. I have had my time to weep—now it is my time to laugh. My time to hate has passed. And now it is my time to love. I’m going to ask Liliana to marry me.’ ”
She leaned into my shoulder. “He never let me read them.”
“We can read them together now, Mom. How did he ask you to marry him?”
“I’d just gotten out of a night class. We went for a walk. ‘What’s different about me?’ he asked. I kept looking at him. ‘Are you better- looking today than you were yesterday?’ He shook his head. ‘You got a haircut.’ He shook his head. And then on the street corner of Oregon and Boston, your father put my hand on his heart. ‘Do you feel my heartbeat?’ I nodded. ‘That’s what’s different. Today, when I woke up, my heart was stronger.’ He put his hand on my cheek. ‘Will you be poor with me?’ And I said, ‘I won’t ever be poor as long as you love me.’ And then I kissed him and said, ‘Yes.’ ”