Carry Me Like Water (18 page)

Authors: Benjamin Alire Saenz

“H
I,” HE SAID
quietly as he walked in the front door.

“Hi,” she said.

Eddie and Helen looked at each other, then looked away, then stared at each other again. He wanted to kiss her. Maybe she didn’t want to be kissed. We’ll talk, Eddie said to himself. How to start? Open your lips and say—what? His mind had forgotten all the words. He felt as if language had abandoned him completely. There was nothing but chaos in the forgetting of all words—he panicked in that dark. He put his hands in his pocket as he stood in the entryway. He wanted to turn around and run. Instead, he locked his knees. Helen stood at the bottom of the stairs.

“I was just going to put on some coffee,” she said, a stiffness in her voice as if she were being extra nice to a visitor she was obligated to care for.

He nodded.

She cleared her throat.

“I should change,” he said, playing with his tie.

She nodded.

Eddie started to walk up the stairs.

Helen walked into the kitchen.

“It will never be right again. Maybe it was never right, maybe the fantasy’s over. Maybe everything is over. Is it over, Helen? So
soon? Is it over?” Eddie ripped off his shin and tie and tossed them impatiently against the wall. He put on a T-shirt. He let his dress pants fall to the floor. He stepped on them. “Maybe if we just make love it will be fine, everything will be—” He put on a pair of jeans. He looked in the closet for a pair of tennis shoes. He picked up an old pair, then threw them against the wall, almost hitting the window. She would know it was all his fault. He put on his sneakers in slow motion, looked in the mirror, combed his hair, walked down the stairs. He saw his wife sitting at the kitchen table. He stood in the doorway and took a deep breath. Eddie smiled nervously at the woman he married. “Was it her
I
married? Was it me? Were either of us there that day?”

Helen returned the smile. She seemed nervous to him—that was good, he thought. He wanted her to be as nervous as he was.

“It’s like a first date,” she said.

He nodded. “What did we do on our first date?”

“We went to a concert,” she said.

“No, I mean what did we say?”

“You came to the door and said ‘hi.’ And then
I
said hi,’ and then we didn’t say anything. It was hard for us to talk. I remember.”

He nodded. “What did we talk about?”

“Our parents.”

He looked at her strangely.

“
I
was only kidding.”

He nodded.

She played with her watch on her wrist. “My name’s Maria Elena Ramirez,” she said quietly, “and
I
was born and raised in EI Paso.” She paused. “That’s in Texas.”

“Yes,” he nodded, “I know where it is—and it’s a beautiful name.”

“You said that to me on the phone.”

“
It is a beautiful name,”
he repeated. “And my name’s Jonathan Edward Marsh and I come from—” His voice cracked. He took a deep breath. “I come from La Jolla, California.” Tears rolled down his face, he stopped, started again, then stopped. “And, uh, and my father had sex with me from the time I was seven until
I
was—”
His voice cracked again. He placed his hands over his eyes. “Fourteen,” he said. “Until I was fourteen.” He wrapped his hand tighter around his face.

He felt his wife pull his hand off his face. She opened his palm and kissed it. He felt her arms around him, her big belly rubbing against him. She rocked him gently. “Oh my Eddie,” she whispered, “how could he have done that? To you—my Eddie? To you? Who could hurt you? My Eddie. Milagro, eres un milagro, mi amor.” She felt free—to say words she had never allowed herself to utter in his presence. He wept into her shoulder. He could not control what his body was doing, it trembled, it did whatever it wanted. “And my mother let him.” His voice was muffled and distant and distorted in the same way a mute distorted and made distant the sounds of a trumpet, “She let him.” Maria Elena felt him tremble in her arms. She wanted his hurt to run through her blood like wind ran through the desert in the spring. She wanted his sadness—to keep it and then to let it blow through the air like a light and graceful kite and then show him, “You see? Do you see? Look, it’s not as heavy as you thought.” Maybe people could be happy, she thought, maybe it was possible. Maybe Eddie could be happy. Maybe she could be happy, too. She wanted to spell out the word and make sure it was a word, and make sure it had a meaning. “Corazón,” she whispered. He wept on her shoulder for a long time, washing her shin in the salt that sprang from his years of silence. “Tears are a funny thing,” he said—and then stopped crying.

He shivered for a few moments, then took her by the arm and led her upstairs to his office. He took out three plain black notebooks from the shelf and handed them to her. “You can read these when you have time,” he said. He pointed to the shelves. “There’s a few more.” His eyes were red, and his hair was wild and uncombed as if he had been walking in a strong wind. She sat down on a chair and opened one of the books; it was filled with pages and pages of Eddie’s handwriting. She leafed through the book and stared at the dates. Each entry addressed to a man whose name her husband had never uttered in her presence. She looked up at him as he watched her. He looked fragile and hurt and afraid. She stared at the handwriting
then looked up at her husband again. She looked at the man’s name and was afraid to say it aloud. “Who’s Jacob?” she asked. “Is he a former lov—”

“My brother,” he said.

“Oh.” She was ashamed of her accusation. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Is he dead?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. My parents kicked him out of the house when I was seven. I never saw him again.”

“And you loved him.”

“Yes.”

“And so you addressed your journals to him?”

“Yes—I addressed my journals to him.”

“Did it help?”

“It helped.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“I know my parents had him arrested when he left the house.”

“Why?”

“He beat them up. They deserved it.”

She nodded.

“The night he left, I asked him if Dad had ever touched him. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Dad had used him for—for the same thing. I think he wanted to protect me. I think he confronted my father—I’m not sure—but I think that’s why he left. I think that’s why he roughed them up. I don’t know—maybe I’m making all this up. Do you remember when you told me you loved me?”

“Yes.”

“And, I asked you: ‘Are you certain?’”

“Yes, I remember.”

“You thought it was a strange thing to ask. For me it was completely logical. I’ve never been certain about anything. Sometimes, I’m not sure I know the difference between what I’ve made up—about him, about me—and what really happened. Sometimes I think everything about me and my brother is a lie. I want to be
certain. Anyway, he was eleven years older than me, and it was good that he left—good for him, anyway. Sometimes, I hated him for leaving me behind. But when I think about it—how could he have taken me with him? My parents would have never allowed it. It wasn’t that they loved me—it was just that they needed to have control. He was just a kid, I used to ask our maid to help me find him—but she said she didn’t know where to look. I asked my mother about him all the time, but never my father. My father told me never to say his name. One day my mother was drunk and I asked her about Jake. She told me that he was a homosexual. She sneered when she said it. I wanted to cut her open, but I just smiled at her as she sipped on her scotch. ‘Your brother’s a sick and violent animal,’ she said without emotion. ‘You’re better off without him.’” Eddie shook his head and looked at his wife. He wanted to ask what she saw. “Can we go to the beach?” he asked. “I need some air, I want—I want to feel the sand on my feet.”

She smiled at him. “I need to see the doctor in half an hour. After that, you got yourself a date.”

He nodded. “Is the blanket still in the car?”

She nodded. “We should take some sweaters. It’s always cold there.”

“It feels that way because you’re from the desert.”

“It isn’t cold for you?”

“No—not really. Cold? Cold was the house I was raised in.”

“Help me up.” she said. She held his journals in one arm and held the other arm out. Eddie gently helped her up. “If this baby doesn’t pop out soon, we’ll need a crane to lift me out of chairs.”

“Beautiful,” he said.

“I don’t feel beautiful.”

“You should.”

She placed her palm on her husband’s cheek. “Never leave me.”

“Never. What if you leave me?”

“Nunca.”

“Nunca?”

“First Spanish lesson. Nunca. Never.”

“Nunca,” he said.

She combed his hair with her fingers. “What happened to them?” she asked.

“My parents? A week after my eighteenth birthday, my mother took a gun and shot my father—then shot herself. Nice, huh? The old girl just couldn’t take it anymore. Did you know their house is still standing—my house really.
I
actually pay someone to live there. Well, actually, they live in what used to be the chauffeur’s house.”

“You were very rich?”

“Am rich.”

“How rich?”

“Well,
I
haven’t checked in a while. This guy handles everything. He gives a copy of everything to my lawyer.”

“I didn’t know you had a lawyer.”

“You’ve met him.”

“Where?”

“Company parties. He does some work for the company.”

“So how much?”

“Thirty million dollars—something like that—well, no, a lot more—I can’t know—
I
’m not that interested. And then there’s the house. You want it?”

“Their house?” She grinned. “I have a house. Besides, I’d rather be homeless than to live in their house.”

“Me too. Do you want the money?”

She was half-amused, half-disgusted by his question. “No,” she said, “I don’t want the money. I have enough.”

“What am I going to do with it?”

“Do you have to solve it today?”

“No,” he said.

“Good, then grab the sweaters and help me down the stairs.”

“To the doctor’s,” he said, and kissed her halfway down the steps.

Eddie was sleeping in the waiting room when Maria Elena came out of the doctor’s office. The receptionist smiled knowingly at her. “They fall asleep everywhere, don’t they?”

Maria Elena smiled. “But they’re so nice when they’re asleep.”

Eddie woke at the sound of her voice. He smiled lazily.

“We don’t have to go to the beach,” she said, “you look tired.”

“No.
I
want to go. I want to look at the sea. Did you know that sometimes I dream that you and
I
go to the water’s edge?”

“And what do we do there?”

“We’re just there, that’s all. And we’re looking out at the water, standing at the place where the world ends.”

“Do we want to jump in?”

“Maybe we do. I don’t know.”

As they drove toward one of the beaches near Pescadero, Maria Elena told Eddie what the doctor had said. “Perfect, Eddie, the doctor said
perfect
—just as
I
suspected. He says I’m healthy and the baby is perfectly healthy and that he doesn’t anticipate any problems. He told me not to worry.
I
told him I wasn’t worried one bit.”

“You lied to him like that?”

“
I
didn’t lie.”

“The hell you didn’t—you’re worried as hell about this baby.” “Why shouldn’t
I
be?”

“I didn’t say you shouldn’t be, but you should at least admit to your doctor that you’re a little worried.”

“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with a little lie.”

“One thing leads to another,” he said.

When they arrived at the beach, already it was foggy and cool, nothing of the noonday’s warmth left in the sky. They walked hand in hand saying nothing, both of them staring at their bare feet as they walked, both of them listening to the waters swaying back and forth on the earth, the two of them riding the sound like a swing. They felt each other’s palms. “I have a brother, too,” she said breaking the silence. Eddie liked the sound of her voice against the beating of the waves. He looked at her, and noticed the sea in the background framing her face.

“What’s his name?” he asked.

“His name’s Diego.”

“Like the artist?”

“Yes. Well, actually my mother named him after the saint.” “What saint?”

“You ever heard of Our Lady of Guadalupe?”

Eddie nodded, “The Virgin.”

“The story goes that she appeared to a poor Indian whose name was Juan Diego. My mother was very religious. She loved him.”

“The saint or your brother?”

“Both.”

“Do you believe?” He watched her eyes.

“In what?”

“Don’t be funny—you know what I mean.”