I’d told Catherine I would be looking for my father’s grave—the grave or its absence—and telling her that, telling someone, writing it, made it more than ever a real “agenda.” Surely there was someone who could help me. I could at least check on that. Tomás Garcia, for instance, the T.G. in the letter. If he was still living and available. If I was prepared to hold the conversation it would require. Whatever, I had only one week left to do it.
I found myself curled into a fetal position. Disgusted, I stretched out full length, pressing my feet against the cumbersome footboard. I was a bad fit everywhere I put my body, even in a bed.
ELEVEN
The very next day, Catherine claimed to notice a change, a new freedom in my speech, she said. I denied it. The lesson we’d just finished had been the same as all the others, like pushing a freight train up a hill.
I suggested taking another week, though I didn’t intend to. She wiggled her shoulders, noncommittal. “That’s up to you. But I won’t be available next week. Not that it should matter. Méndez will find someone to take my place.” Obviously she entertained no regret at our parting. Why should she? The twinge that brought was entirely unjustified.
When school was over at four, I took off for my run and a beer. The TV in the bar was full of news of a soccer tournament, an important event, judging by the clamor of the men around me. A game was about to begin and a reporter was thrusting a mike in the faces of players. One after the other they gave their spiels in rapid-fire monotone sentences, exactly as I’d heard it scores of times by football players back home. They were saying the same things, too. Just gotta get out there and show ‘em who we are. Just gotta play both ends of the field. It might have been three minutes before I realized how I was listening, which was not by conscious translating. The language entered my head not as words and phrases, but as meaning. Skeptical, I left my beer and wandered around in the plaza, deliberately eavesdropping on bits of conversation. I listened to a couple arguing, about money, of course. I got it. He had been suckered, according to her, into buying warranty insurance on a television set.
I headed for a tienda and bought a Guatemalan newspaper and began to read as I stood there on the sidewalk. I remember even now the story my eye fell on and that I read with no trouble. Charles Glass, ABC news chief and Mideast correspondent, had escaped from Hezbollah kidnappers in Beirut. I tested out an inside page with “further details” of an earlier story about Rudolf Hess, who had hung himself in prison three days before. I didn’t know that. Further in, the Order of the Garter had opened up to women, an odd item for a Central American paper.
On every page I was really reading, not getting every phrase, certainly, but getting the meaning with ease. It occurred to me with wonder that I was reading the way a kid does, maneuvering around the “big words,” but getting the larger sense of things. All right, I thought, be a kid, be seven years old. That was fine, poetically just. I had found my private functioning level, ready for my “agenda.” I was even willing to admit that Catherine’s approach had been right, be a child again.
I went a little loco, buying earrings (for no one), haggling over the price. Then I stopped at another bar and ordered another beer and sat there exulting. By the third beer I was indeed envisioning myself as a boy, trudging the hills of the country, alone on a winding road, stalwart and unafraid. Starting a fourth, I realized that was a scene I’d read over and over years ago, when Frodo climbs alone to the Seat of Seeing, the lookout tower atop the hill called Amon Hen. But Frodo was no child, by Hobbit chronology. A little guy, to be sure, but out of his “irresponsible tweens,” maybe even age forty. Clearly I’d had enough to drink.
On the way home I bought a big bouquet for the Ávila family, and that night I called Rebecca, just to tell her the news. It was after 11:00 P.M. my time, after 1:00 A.M. in hers. I knew she hated the portent of a late night ring, but I thought I’d better do it while the impetus was strong, while I was still in the Frodo buzz. I had to find my way in the dark to the house telephone. It sat on a table next to a wall niche where a candle in a red glass burned before the virgin. It was enough light to dial all the numbers on my phone credit card, and I did it before better judgment caught up to me. I was lucky, or Frodo was. Rebecca was awake.
“It’s you,” she said. “Well, hi.”
“I hope I didn’t startle you.”
“Well, yes, you did. Is something wrong? Why are you speaking softly.”
“Nothing is wrong. I don’t want to wake anyone here in the house.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Antigua. Where are you?”
“You should know. You called here.”
“Where in the house? Tell me exactly.”
“In the kitchen, getting a snack. In the center of the room, exactly four feet from the sink. In fact, my left foot is on the black linoleum square that’s, let’s see, the eighth one in from the east wall, and my right foot has just landed on the white square which meets the black one kitty-korner.”
“Okay, yank my chain.”
“And now I’m walking to the counter and I am sitting down on a stool.”
“What are you wearing?” A tiresome cliché, but never mind. I wanted to know.
“You’re cheating,” said Rebecca.
“I know. But tell me.”
“My UMass jersey, what else?”
Good. I could picture her, which was what I wanted to do, for just a minute. I had loved that big old shirt, faded and laundered out of shape. I had loved it on her, that is, as it settled on her comfortable roundness.
“How’s the Mom?” I asked.
“The same. But I have something to tell you. Are you ready? Your mother spoke to me today. First time ever.”
“You’re kidding. Did she know who you are?”
“I’m sure. She looked me right in the eye and addressed me clearly.”
“What did she say?”
“She called me an asshole.”
I managed to hold down a shout. I had never heard anything approaching a “dirty word” from my mother’s lips. “Oh fudge!” was her standby expletive.
“I was thrilled,” said Rebecca. “It’s the most attention she’s ever paid to me.
There was a little awkward silence, then she said: “There’s something else I want to tell you, as long as you’ve called.”
“I’m listening.”
“This is cheating, too. Sorry. It’s just that I’m concerned.”
“What is it? Amy?”
“No, no. She’s fine. She’s visiting her Dad right now. This is about you.”
I answered with a grunt, emphasis up, a question.
“Well, first of all, I heard from the attorney yesterday. Everything is going along on schedule.”
I
