The Shape of Desire (9 page)

That’s not entirely true, of course. Ellen has sharp eyes and she can usually guess when I’m moping over Dante, though she doesn’t seem to have put together the cause of my moodiness; she just knows I have down days on a recurring basis. My family members, who see me more erratically, have proved easier to fool. I have perfected the art of bright and airy conversation when I’m with them for holidays and birthdays and random outings. I have learned how to conceal my true emotions.

As I say, it has been astonishingly easy. This has led me to wonder what secrets everyone else must be nursing behind cheerful or weary or unemotional masks. If I can hide the fact that half of my waking thoughts are consumed by my passion for a mythological creature, if I never mention his name at all to people who think they know me very well, how big could their own lies be? Are they serial killers, foreign spies, members of the Witness Protection Program? Have they been transgendered, bitten by vampires, kidnapped by aliens? Do they molest
their daughters, have affairs with their neighbors’ sons, give blow jobs to strangers while their spouses record on video?

No possibility seems too outlandish. And I would not blame any of them for refusing to spill their secrets.

I have hesitated too long in answering Kathleen’s question. It’s possible my eyes have watered; at any rate, they’re burning. Kathleen’s delicate face puckers into a worried frown. “Maria?” she says uncertainly. “I’m sorry. Did I upset you?”

“Oh—” I say, and I can hear the thickness in my voice.
Fucking tears.
I’m scrambling to think of a story that will explain my sudden despair while not giving anything away. “There used to be this guy, you know? And every once in a while he—he e-mails me. Or sends a birthday card. And it’s hard. Maybe I’m still in love with him, but he’s moved on. And for a while I think I’m over him, but then, there it is, another e-mail in my in-box.” I rub a finger over my eyelids. “I don’t really like to talk about it.”

So briefly it’s as if it doesn’t happen, Kathleen touches the back of my wrist and then drops her hand in her lap. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That must be really hard.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes life sucks,” I reply. I grab my Coke and take a few swallows just to clear my throat. “God, please don’t tell anybody I acted like this. I feel like such a loser.”

“You’re not a loser,” she says. “Love is impossible. I mean, even when you have it, it hurts you. So you know—” She shrugs. “You just get through the day.”

I nod. “Yeah, that’s what I try to do.”

She hesitates and then says in a rush, “But if you ever need someone to talk to—you know—I mean, you can tell me anything. I wouldn’t repeat it.”

Not only is the offer sincere, I think, but it’s a good one. Kathleen probably
would
be excellent at keeping secrets, and my guess is that her
sympathy would be boundless. I could pick worse confidantes—though I don’t want even this one.

“Thanks, Kathleen. I can’t tell you how much I genuinely appreciate it. But I really feel better if I
don’t
talk about it.”

“I know,” she says. “That’s the way I feel, too.”

W
hen the day finally limps to a close, I head out to the parking lot without lingering in the hall to say good-bye to Ellen and Marquez, as I usually do. In traffic, I am impatient and reckless, passing cars when I don’t have quite enough room, keeping the speedometer at a good ten miles above the speed limit. I am desperate to get home, almost able to convince myself that Dante will still be there waiting for me, on the verge of leaving, perhaps, but unwilling to melt into the shadows without giving me one last kiss. At the imminent risk of death, I run a red light to make the final left turn into my neighborhood, and my tires protest as I turn too fast into my driveway.

I run up the walk, fumbling for my house key, and waste a good sixty seconds at the door because I drop the key ring
twice
as I try to unlock the door. “Dante?” I call before I’m even across the threshold. “Dante? Are you home?”

Nothing answers me but silence.

He might be sleeping; he might have left to run an errand, to buy another pair of shoes, perhaps, or a snack food for which he had an irresistible craving. But he’s not lying in bed; he’s not in the bathroom. I can hardly bring myself to take the short walk from the bedroom back to the kitchen.

As always, he has left a note lying on the counter. Apparently, all he could find was an envelope rescued from the recycling bin.
Had to go
are the only words he has written in his thick, nearly indecipherable scrawl. He hasn’t even signed the note.

It’s as if someone has sliced me in two with a scythe so keen I didn’t even feel the blade bisect my body. Yet I am staggering with the knowledge of a pain that will soon be fatal. I open my mouth, as if to wail, but no sound comes out and no air makes its way in. My lungs have shut down, and my heart, and now all my muscles fail me at once. I drop to the floor, still silent, completely unseeing, unable to weep or even breathe. I can feel the cool linoleum against my cheek. The substrata of the floor makes a hard, unforgiving platform against my shoulder and hip. My mouth is still open, still producing no noise. My right hand is stretched out before me as if I am reaching for…something. A phone, perhaps. As if I could call for help. A shot of epinephrine to restart my heart. An oxygen tank. Something that will keep me alive.

None of those will help. Dante is gone.

I lie on the floor, unmoving, until all the light is gone from the world.

T
uesday I claim that I’m still feeling the ill effects of food poisoning, but by Wednesday I’m more or less recovered. I always follow this cycle when Dante leaves: a day of mourning, a few days of disorientation, and then I return to my normal routine. As his visits grow shorter, that normal routine has expanded. I have learned how to fill my days.

Over the weekend, I drive up to Springfield, Illinois, to celebrate my cousin Beth’s birthday. My mother, my aunt and uncle, and Beth’s sister, Sydney, all live in Springfield, which is where I was born and where my mother returned three years ago after my father died. Despite the fact that my father and my uncle were present for every holiday, every birthday, every summer camping trip that my mother and her sister planned, I grew up in a family that was utterly dominated by women. Two of my great-aunts are still living, still characterized by boundless energy and strong opinions. And the only member of the next
generation—so far—is also a girl, Beth’s three-year-old daughter, Clara. Already she shows every tendency to be as strong-willed and outspoken as the rest of the women in the family.

All of us share a certain olive-toned coloring inherited from my great-grandparents, who emigrated from Mexico, though a certain amount of intermarrying with light-skinned European descendants during the past two generations has definitely modified the gene pool.

We all gather in Aunt Andrea’s house on Sunday afternoon, stuffing ourselves on homemade quesadillas and tamales before lighting candles and singing “Happy Birthday.”

“I can’t believe I’m thirty-five,” Beth laments. “In my head I’m still eighteen and I don’t have to wear a bra to look good in a tight T-shirt.”

Even the older women burst into laughter at this remark, but Aunt Andrea puts her hands over Clara’s ears.

“Don’t listen to your mommy,” she says. “She shouldn’t say such things in front of little girls.”

“Hell, Clara already spends more time than I do thinking about clothes,” Beth responds. “You better believe she’ll care what she looks like when she turns my age.”

Both of my cousins are tall women with athletic builds and waves of dark curls. Beth, the oldest, wears her hair short enough so that it makes a wild frothing mass around her face. Sydney, who is two years younger, keeps hers long, but ties it back with scarves and scrunchies so that her face is uncluttered and severe. Sydney is the more beautiful and sophisticated of the two, but Beth is my favorite. Always has been. We were born eight months apart and were inseparable as children. As adults, we remain close. Her house is about twenty minutes from mine, so we get together fairly often and rarely go more than a week without talking.

Though naturally there are things we don’t talk about.

“I’m getting a boob job when mine start to sag,” Sydney announces. “And then a face-lift. Or maybe a face-lift first. Whichever body part needs the most work by then.”

“It’s the sags and wrinkles that show who you really are,” says my great-aunt Vannie. “Don’t be trying to smooth those away.”

“Well, I won’t if I look as good as
you
do when I’m eighty,” Sydney says. The easy flattery makes everyone smile.

“Who wants more cake?” Aunt Andrea asks.

“Me!” Clara exclaims.

“Me,” adds Beth. “Then I can get a tummy tuck along with my boob job and face-lift.”

As we redistribute ourselves for the second round of dessert, my mom settles beside me on the couch. I’m always struck by her serenity. She can be high-spirited in certain moods—a trait that is enhanced when she’s around her sister, Andrea—but her default mode is relaxed. When I was a teenager, I found her calm so maddening that it could incite me to hysteria; but as an adult, I find her presence soothing even on my most frazzled day. I wish I could live my life with equal grace, instead of being rocked by transient emotions and hopeless desires. On the other hand, I have often wondered if behind my mother’s smooth skin and dark eyes some hidden fire burned. She might be the person who had unwittingly taught me the art of living with secrets.

“How’s work?” my mom asks as she balances her cake plate on her knees and sips water from a paper cup.

I shrug. “Fine. Boring some days, actually kinda interesting other days.” I take a bite of cake. “Still better than working in a coal mine.”

That was what she always said to my father whenever he complained about his job as a delivery driver or to me when I commiserated about her own work as a waitress. I’m not sure she ever knew anyone who
did
work in a coal mine, but the message was clear:
Life could be worse. Don’t whine.

“Well, you look good,” she says. “Very pretty.”

I bat my eyelashes. “New makeup. I bought a whole pile of new stuff at the Clinique counter a couple weeks ago.”

She transfers the water cup to her other hand so she can reach up and rub a thumb across my cheek. “You’ve got good bones,” she says. “You’re beautiful even without makeup.”

“Oh, way to give yourself a compliment,” I scoff.

You have to look for a moment to see how much we resemble each other, because in superficial ways we don’t: Her hair is now a coarse gray, while mine is still deep brown and my eyes are dark blue. And, of course, our styles differ, since I tend to favor bright colors and she is most often in black. But our cheeks, jawbones, and pronounced noses—those indisputably prove that we are linked by blood.

“It’s true, Maria. All you girls would look perfectly fine without makeup,” Aunt Andrea calls from across the room.

“I wouldn’t,” Sydney says. “I’d look like a hag.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Beth says. “I’ve never tried to leave the house without lipstick and mascara. And usually blush. And some eye shadow. And fingernail polish.”

“And perfume,” Clara adds. “
I
want perfume.”

A
fter about an hour of the food and the banter and the laughter, Beth and I find a few minutes to slip outside and talk in private on her mother’s screened-in back porch. The weather has turned sharply colder for this last weekend in September, and our breath hangs in the air for a second or two as we speak.

“So how are things going with Charles?” I ask. Charles is the man
she has dated off and on for the past five years. He’s not Clara’s father; it was during one of their breakups that Beth met Enrique and had a brief fling. So brief that she had already broken up with him, and decided she never wanted to see him again, before she discovered she was pregnant with Clara. She told him he had a daughter, but made it clear she wasn’t interested in his interference or support, and he’s been only too happy to keep his distance.

Charles, meanwhile, has two kids of his own, and he shares custody of them with his ex-wife. The divorce was amicable enough that he occasionally still sleeps with his ex-wife, even though she’s remarried.

Beth rolls her eyes and leans against one of the flat beams that stand sentry along the perimeter of the porch, holding up the roof. “We had a fight last night.”

“Well, that’s too bad. On your
birthday
.”

“I think that’s why we fought,” she says humorously. “He thinks if I’m mad at him around my birthday and Christmas, it means he doesn’t have to buy me a present. You watch, we’ll make up in a week and then break up again right around December fifteenth.”

“That’s pretty sucky.”

“That’s Charles.”

Which about sums it up. She loves him, despite his childishness, his emotional unavailability, his complicated relationships. Who am I to counsel her to seek out a lover who will treat her better, behave more like an adult, and buy in to her hopes and dreams?

“What about you?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Nothing new on the romantic front.” From time to time, just to stave off more questions, I manufacture blind dates, occasional short-term boyfriends, cute guys at the office I have a crush on, just so my family doesn’t start worrying that I am completely incapable of normal social interaction. Once I used Marquez as my template,
just so I could make the details feel particularly real. I must have been successful because Beth still asks about him once in a while with an intense and knowing tone, as if she suspects he is the real love of my life.

She shakes her head and crosses her arms over her chest, hugging herself against the chill. “Well, aren’t we pathetic,” she says. “Let’s go do something fun! I’ve been thinking about driving up to Chicago someday. You wanna go with me? Mom or Sydney will keep Clara. We can get a hotel room on Michigan Avenue and spend three days shopping. And drinking margaritas.”