After the Fire: A True Story of Love and Survival (15 page)

Chapter 24

A
ngie Gutierrez ended her freshman year at Seton Hall with a 3.8 grade point average. Over the summer she made up an English course she had dropped after the fire, and she earned enough money working a part-time job to buy her first car. Things seemed to be going her way. In July, the university sent her to China for a week to attend an international conference of students. She made new friends and realized how much she loved to travel and how many interesting people there were to talk to. At home, in her spare time, she babysat for her younger siblings while her mother worked. All of that had left little time for Alvaro.

Angie’s relationship with the Llanoses, which had once been so strong, had continued to deteriorate during the summer months. Daisy and Alvaro senior, who used to think of her as a third daughter, and who had once told people they couldn’t ask for a better, more loving girl for their son, blamed her now for not spending more time with him, for not encouraging him to get better. She wasn’t acting the way a girl in love was supposed to act, they said, nor did she seem like a girl who was planning on a future with their son. But Angie didn’t think of herself as Alvaro’s girlfriend, not anymore. She hadn’t for quite some time. She was just a girl, she would say, at the beginning of an exciting new chapter in her life. She still cared deeply about Alvaro, and sometimes guilt clawed at her about moving on when he was trapped in a shattered world that might never be whole again. Some nights she didn’t sleep at all, wondering,
Why can’t I love him like I used to?
Alvaro’s parents expected her to act like a wife, but she wasn’t married and she didn’t want that kind of attachment anyway, not to Alvaro, not to anyone. Although she planned to be a good friend to her former boyfriend, she didn’t want to be tied down. She wouldn’t allow herself to be. There was so much to see and do.

Alvaro’s parents didn’t understand. Sometimes weeks went by without a word from Angie. Not a telephone call. Not even a greeting card. Alvaro didn’t say much about it, and each time someone brought it up he changed the subject, but Daisy knew his heart was broken. She could see it in his eyes when Angie’s name was mentioned.

When Angie did finally show up at Kessler, after Alvaro had been there for three weeks, Daisy confronted her in the hallway and blocked her path before she could get to Alvaro’s room. Daisy angrily demanded that Angie return Alvaro’s gold crucifix ring, which Angie had worn on a chain around her neck since the fire.

“It’s my son’s ring,” Daisy said. “You have no right to wear it.”

At first, Angie said no, she wasn’t giving the ring back, not unless Alvaro asked for it himself. Alvaro had told her to keep it, to wear it around her neck for as long as she liked, she argued, and until he said otherwise, that’s what she planned to do.

Daisy seethed. “You don’t love my son,” she declared. “Now give back the ring and leave. Get out of here.”

Angie pulled the chain from her neck.

“Here,” she said, dropping the ring in Daisy’s open hand. “Take it.”

Both Angie and Daisy told Alvaro about the confrontation in the hallway. He felt caught in the middle. He loved and needed his parents. Who else would be there for him when he finally went home? Who else could he count on to be there, day and night, in the days and months ahead? To love him, burned? But he wanted to be with Angie, too. He understood her predicament, he told his mother. It was hard to take classes, study, and work and still find enough time to visit him.

“Stop,” Daisy said. “You’re making excuses for her.”

Angie never returned to Kessler. Instead, she stayed in touch with Alvaro through daily telephone calls. The conversations were usually brief and chatty.
What’d you have for lunch today? How’s your new car driving? What’cha watching on TV? Yeah. Okay. Talk to you later.

When Angie complained bitterly that his parents had been unkind to her, Alvaro tried to defend them.

“They’re just watching out for me,” Alvaro said.

Angie said she still loved Alvaro. “But honestly, I’m taking this one day at a time.”

What Angie didn’t say was that she also felt anger toward Alvaro that she didn’t quite understand. Sometimes at night, when she was alone in her bed, she felt abandoned by him. He hadn’t been there for her all those months he was in a coma, when she was so afraid, more afraid than she had ever been before in her life, and needed him to comfort her, the way he had always comforted her after a scary movie. Even after he woke up, he had been distant. Sometimes, when she reached for him, he seemed to recoil. Other times, when she talked to him, he seemed not to listen, lost in whatever mindless show was on TV. Her father had been burned, and even as a little girl, she had felt the loneliness of his retreating into himself. All of a sudden he wasn’t really there for his family anymore. He was there — he wouldn’t even leave the house for fear of a stranger’s stare — but emotionally he had disappeared. He had been burned, but everyone was trapped.

Sometimes, just before sleep, other thoughts crept into Angie’s consciousness — thoughts she didn’t want to think about, such as how Alvaro’s burns really bothered her. Sometimes she had a hard time looking at him. He used to be so handsome. So strong. Now he was as feeble as an old man. Maybe she would get used to his altered state. But maybe she never would. And what would happen when they were out and people stared at him? Or worse yet, when people turned away completely, trying not to look? What would it feel like to be a spectacle? Or to be invisible? How could she think such things? she wondered. What kind of person
was
she?

“There are two kinds of affection,” Angie told a friend one day. “I love Alvaro as a person, but I don’t know if I’m in love with him anymore. So it’s more of a friend thing with us right now. It’s easier for both of us.”

Angie turned melancholy as she spoke.

“If me and him don’t end up together after all this, he’ll find someone else and be okay,” she said, turning her ring on her finger. “Because he’s a great guy.”

While Angie was trying to rationalize the end of the romance, Alvaro was still holding on to thoughts of a future together.

“I just hope everything works out,” he said during a visit from Shawn one day. “I really hope that when I’m done with everything, we can get married. We both have to live our lives first, and we can’t put pressure on each other. We have to have fun and see the world and learn more stuff because we’re both so young.

“But even if we don’t get married, I want to stay best friends, which I am. I am Angie’s best friend.”

Two months and five days after Alvaro entered Kessler, Dr. Benevento signed an order for him to go home. The first person he called was Shawn.

“Guess what?”

“You just signed with the Mets.”

“Close. I’m going home.”

“You’re
what?
” Shawn’s heart felt full.

In the past few weeks, Alvaro had begun walking better. His balance and endurance had improved. He could walk halfway around the gym without becoming so winded he had to stop. He could get up from a chair without help. His hands still trembled, but less so, so he could lift a fork to his mouth without the food falling off, and he could brush his own teeth, even though he still needed someone to squeeze the toothpaste from the tube onto the toothbrush. The fire had not ruined his smile. Alvaro’s teeth were as white and straight as a brand-new picket fence, and he was proud of them.

Six months earlier, Alvaro had been near dead, and the doctors and nurses at Saint Barnabas had wondered if they were doing him a favor by keeping him alive. The fire seemed like forever ago to Alvaro, and at the same time like yesterday. Occasionally he wondered if he would ever know who had started it. He felt no animosity, no bitterness, toward the unknown arsonist — at least he didn’t think so. He did want to be able to look the person in the face one day and ask why. But mostly, his thoughts centered on getting better and going home.

Now he was packing his sweats and his collection of Mets hats, all permanently stained from his long hours in the gym and the oozing of his burns, into a giant duffel bag. Alvaro knew that going home didn’t mean the end of this painful chapter in his life story — hardly. Starting tomorrow he would have to return to Saint Barnabas for daily dressing changes and more physical therapy. But that meant reuniting with Roy Bond, and that made Alvaro smile.

He said good-bye to J. R., who had helped him build his strength and along the way became a cherished friend.

“This is just the beginning,” J. R. said, hugging Alvaro. “There’s still a lot of work to do. It’s going to be up to you now.”

“I’ll miss you, man,” Alvaro said. “But not too much.”

They both laughed.

The day before, Benevento had left for her African safari, because for once everything had gone right. Alvaro had progressed better than anyone had expected. She signed his release form in advance and left him a note: “Hey kid, by the time you read this I’ll be halfway to Africa, and you’ll be on your way home. Stay in touch. You’re awesome.”

Alvaro folded Benevento’s note and shoved it in his pocket. So many people had been so kind to him, had taken such good care of him, and he felt indebted to every one of them. He hoped that one day he would think of himself as just a person again, that his burns would be something he talked about in the past tense, and that when he did, people who hadn’t known him as a burned person would say,
Oh! You were burned? Who would know?
Even if that didn’t happen, he was determined to make the best of whatever lay ahead of him.

It was dinnertime when Alvaro and his parents began the half-hour trip from West Orange home to Paterson. They walked out of the rehabilitation center into a perfect, sunny afternoon and Alvaro’s cherished blue Mazda. He hadn’t seen his car for months, and his father had made sure it was buffed and shiny. Alvaro slipped into the front passenger seat, and his father slid into the back. His mother drove. First, they made a stop at Saint Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. Daisy had prayed there every day since the day of the fire. Now she thanked God for allowing her to keep her son when it had once seemed certain he would die. Alvaro senior prayed that his boy would one day be well enough to play baseball again. Alvaro prayed that going home would be everything he hoped it would be.

From the moment Alvaro could think clearly after awakening from his coma, all he thought about was going home. It was what had lifted him out of many funks and blue moods and motivated him when he was feeling too tired or too gloomy to work. Once he went home, he would tell himself over and over again, everything would be better. He could concentrate on his relationship with Angie, get back to his schoolwork, go out with his friends.

He was finally there.

Daisy blew the horn as she pulled up to the house on First Avenue. The first person Alvaro saw was Shawn.

“Hey, friend,” Alvaro said. Shawn opened the car door.

“This is a very good day,” Shawn said, helping to steady Alvaro as he got out of the car. Aunts, uncles, and cousins spilled out of the house and into the driveway, calling Alvaro’s name and acting like an honor guard as he walked up the three wooden steps leading to the kitchen and another crowd of well-wishers. Pans of piping hot baked lasagna and chicken wings and rice and beans, Alvaro’s favorite foods, waited on the table.

“Welcome home!” everyone shouted as he made his way through the doorway.

“It’s good to be home,” Alvaro said.

“It’s good to have you home, Pápi,” Alvaro senior said, wiping tears from his eyes.

That night, when the party was over and all of the guests were finally gone, Daisy showed Alvaro to his new room. It was the largest bedroom in the apartment, the one his older sister, Shirley, had once shared with her young daughter. While Alvaro was away, Shirley had moved into her own apartment so that Alvaro would have plenty of room during his recovery. Daisy had wanted it that way.

“Wow, this is great,” Alvaro said, falling onto the bed. Within moments, he was fast asleep.

Alvaro slept in fits and starts that night. He woke up at midnight, frightened and unsure of where he was. When he fell back to sleep, he moaned and mumbled, his words incoherent and troubled.

Daisy was up all night, listening by his door. As much as she was happy her son was home, she was also terrified, and no amount of antidepressants or sleeping pills had been able to calm her. How would she care for Alvaro? she wondered. He was still so weak, and his burns still bled. Just before he left Kessler, Alvaro had been getting out of his bed one day, and Daisy saw his bare back. She was shocked at how it looked after so many months, a mass of mutilated skin and open wounds. She had wanted to run out of the room and scream. How would her son live like that? How would he face the world with his distorted neck and his blighted face? How could she be reassuring now when she had a hard time just looking at his burns?

At least when Alvaro was in the hospital and at the rehabilitation center, she had been able to keep her worries from him, keep them for her own private moments at home when she would shut herself in her room and cry, or sit in the bathtub with the water running to drown out her screams. Even though her son was alive, she grieved for who he had once been, how he had once looked, and she was angry at the nameless, faceless person who had done this to him. Her bitterness and resentment were eating her alive. She couldn’t let him see it. But how could she hide her feelings now, when he would be there all the time? Surely he would see the uncertainty in her eyes. Would he see the revulsion when she looked at his burns?
God help us,
she prayed.

Daisy watched the clock tick from midnight to daybreak. She could hardly wait to get Alvaro back to Saint Barnabas so that the professionals could take over again, even if it was for just a few hours.

Alvaro was supposed to be there early in the morning. Just getting him up and dressed was an ordeal, taking more than an hour. Nearly an hour after that, they were finally pulling into Saint Barnabas. The walk to the hospital from the parking lot seemed endless. Daisy and Alvaro senior had to keep stopping to wait for Alvaro to catch up. After greeting the nurses in the burn unit, Alvaro and Daisy headed for the tank room, where his wounds were scrubbed and his dressings changed. Mansour had agreed that Alvaro would be bathed every day at the hospital until Daisy felt comfortable cleansing and dressing his burns. Once the tanking was done, he headed downstairs for three hours of physical and occupational therapy.