Eleven
He had not felt so alive in years. Not since the days of his faded youth. And now, as he plotted the reconquest of Carolina Mendelssohn, he drew on the advice of those even less alive than he.
“Go see her in person,” El Chotay said. “It’s the only way.”
But on seeing his black Stetson hat and thick mustache through the peephole of the Mendelssohn family’s old two-story with the white picket fence sagging, the gaggle of grayed ladies protecting Carolina’s health refused to open the door.
Funny, Fulgencio noted as he walked away. Everything looked different than it had that homecoming night so many autumns past. The rosebush that had burst with flowers now lay in ruins, gnarled and dry. The once immaculate lawn had become a patchwork of dirt, weeds, and crabgrass. And the white picket fence now wavered, hanging in a state of bleak disrepair. The entire neighborhood had changed, Fulgencio Ramirez noticed as he drove away. In fact, the whole city had slowly deteriorated around him, but it took coming to Carolina’s house for Fulgencio to realize the transformation. What had once been the enclave of the rich was now a dilapidated running ground for widows and the vandals who would plunder the last vestiges of their dignity. The lonesome streets yawned, forgotten and cracked. And the downtown he still toiled in was comprised mostly of vacant buildings, secondhand clothing stores, and discount trinket shops. Long gone were the cotton boom days of the ’50s. Those innocent and optimistic times had been replaced with a deep reliance on trade with Mexico, and the peso devaluations of the ’80s had drained the life from the region’s once robust economy, such that even the nice neighborhoods now seemed run down.
Back in the confines of the drugstore, Fulgencio recounted his brief expedition and observations to his deceased delivery boy.
El Chotay said, “One man’s ghetto is another man’s paradise. Why don’t you try calling on the phone?”
But this effort went unanswered as well. Day after day, he left awkward messages on an infernal machine.
“I hate those things,” he would exclaim, slamming the receiver down in disgust upon completing what he knew was yet another disastrous message.
Chagrined, he turned to Brother William for help during one of their evening horseback rides on El Dos de Copas. Brother William suggested writing her a letter. “There’s something romantic and old-fashioned about a love letter, don’t you think? Maybe she’ll appreciate that. Maybe it will get her attention, remind her of how things once were between you.”
Brother William was right, Fulgencio surmised. It had been rather presumptuous of him to think that Carolina would simply run back into his arms the first chance she got. A letter would allow him to voice his thoughts without being cut off or interrupted by well-deserved recriminations.
High up on a dusty shelf in his broom closet office, behind a forgotten Joya bottle, Fulgencio found a sheaf of ancient and yellowing stationary. Sitting at his antique pharmacy typewriter, he carefully articulated his thoughts.
Dear Carolina,
I never meant to ruin your life or bring you any pain. I have waited all these years to be able to speak with you and be your friend without bringing you any shame as the wife of another man. Now that your commitments and obligations have been fulfilled, will you do me the honor of allowing me to call upon you in your time of sorrow?
Sincerely,
Fulgencio Ramirez, RPh
He carefully folded the letter, sealed the envelope, and gave it to Little David to drop off with the evening deliveries. The next morning, he waited impatiently for Little David to report to work, hoping for a response. But his heart sank upon seeing the unopened envelope clasped in Little David’s hand as he walked in.
“Sowwy, Fully,” Little David drawled in a dialect only his immediate family could comprehend, his speech impediment a result of the cerebral palsy with which he had been born.
“Give me that,” Fulgencio grumbled, freeing the envelope from Little David’s tight grip. “And don’t call me ‘Fully.’ ”
“But that’s what she call you, wemembah? When we was young and putty?”
“I was never pretty, Little David,” sighed Fulgencio, stuffing the unopened envelope into his desk drawer next to an empty tequila bottle.
“She was,” Little David whispered wistfully.
Ten years his junior, Little David had been a wide-eyed witness to Fulgencio’s roller coaster ride with Carolina. The young couple had taken him—just a little boy back then—on their trips to the beach during those endless summer days before Fulgencio’s senior year. Her hair as bright as the sun, they had all danced, holding hands in the shallow water. They’d built sandcastles for the relentless tide to swallow. Fulgencio belted out songs from the top of a sand dune as the sun set. Carolina melodramatically waved her hands in the air like an orchestra conductor, commanding the waves to spare their castle in the sand. And he, Little David, had marveled at them.
Fulgencio understood then—as he did now—that Little David loved them immeasurably and cherished his memories of them as a couple because they had been the only two people in the world that truly enjoyed his company. They invited him along because it pleased them, because they wanted him there, not because they pitied him, not out of some sense of obligation.
One night on the two-lane back from the beach, Little David had fallen asleep during the ferry ride back to the shore, waking to find Fulgencio and Carolina cuddled in the front seat as they cruised beneath the canopy of stars. Inspired, he’d blurted out: “Fulgencio, you aw da King of da Sea. And Cawolina, you aw da Queen of da Waves.”
The two smiled and nuzzled, feeling new in their sun-baked skins, their arms touching, her cheek lightly brushing against his shoulder.
Carolina glanced back at Little David, caressing him with her sweet smile. “And you, Little David, you’re the Prince of the Sand Castle!”
“I like dat!” Little David exclaimed, beaming proudly as if the queen herself had anointed him with her scepter. “I’ve never thought of myself as a prince before.” With a tranquil smile grooved upon his face, Little David fell back asleep as Fulgencio and Carolina wove dreams of marriage and children.
“Fully,” she spoke gravely, “someday when we’re married, if your parents were to not be there for Little David anymore, I would want him to come live with us.”
Fulgencio pulled the car off the road and rolled to a halt. He made sure his brother was still sleeping and then turned his body toward hers, took her face in his hands, and kissed her passionately.
“I’ll never be able tell you what your words mean to me,” he said, gazing into her eyes. “You are so much more than the pretty girl I fell in love with in the drugstore. You are an amazing person.”