Chapter 13
I awoke the next morning to a telephone ringing, María calling to me from the upstairs landing. I must have slept very late. She had already mopped, the house full of the scent of lavender soap.
“Teléfono, senora.”
“Está bien, estoy despierta,” I called back. In my underwear, I hurried down the winding hallway that followed the drop and curve of the hillside to the room Tom used as an office, the old rotary-dial phone. “Hello?” I was slightly out of breath.
“Sally?”
“Tom!” It was only seconds before I realized: It was Saturday, the day of his return. “Oh my God, Tom—”
“I can’t believe you forgot.”
“No, I—I just overslept.” I laughed nervously. “We stayed up late to see the fireworks.”
“Oh.” He sounded crestfallen, in addition to everything else; Henry was still young enough that he had never seen them before. “Did Henry like it?”
“God, he loved it. It was wild, a woman next to us actually caught on fire. Well, her newspaper did, and some men threw beer on it, and they stomped it. Everyone was laughing.”
There was a brief silence.
“Tom, I’m so sorry, truly! I could come and get you now—”
“No. It doesn’t make sense. I’ll get a cab.”
“I’ll be waiting! I love you!”
I hoped he would say something, but there was only a click; then the phone went dead.
I sat for a minute in the cold room, getting my bearings.
I could still taste yesterday’s cigarette in my mouth, stale and filmy.
I brushed my teeth and washed my face. I dressed and went upstairs.
María was straightening the living room while Henry and Ida watched cartoons.
Seeing me, she paused and asked did I want coffee.
I thanked her, saying that Tom would be home in an hour.
Her face lit. “Qué bueno,” she said, it was good the senor was returning home.
Shyly, averting my gaze because I had again not brought home groceries the night before, I asked if she could make enchiladas suizas, Tom’s favorite meal.
“Sí, senora, claro, we only need chicken and tomatillos. I can watch the children.”
“Thank you,” I told her, kissing her on the cheek in relief.
I grabbed my bag, my car keys. In town, I hurried through the few errands I had neglected in Tom’s absence.
First La Conexión, the service that carried our mail across the border because the Mexican postal service was notoriously slow and corrupt.
Despite the thickness of the stack the girl handed me, there was little of interest: a few magazines, some bills that had already been automatically deducted.
A postcard from Henry’s friend Etta took me a moment to decipher:
I am aksitd for wen you com hom will you spek spanesh?
Her mother, with whom I’d walked along the sidewalk before we left, had written the Texas mailing address Tom and I used, with an ironic cactus in the place of the T. I put it into my pocket, thinking I would save it to give to Henry at some moment when he was particularly happy here.
Next I bought the homemade yogurt Tom liked at the tienda on Mesones, the chicken from the harshly lit pollería.
In the covered market, passing the counter where Henry and I had eaten, a wave of nostalgia swept through me—as if those pleasures, those small adventures, were ending with Tom’s return.
At the produce stand, I chatted briefly with the young seller whom I’d passed on the way to Louise’s.
“It’s a pleasure to see you on the weekend,” he said in his urbane way.
He really was extremely handsome. I wanted to respond in kind, perhaps inquire about his father, but before I could formulate the sentence, he had turned and picked up something from his stand that looked a little like an artichoke.
“A small gift for your son,” he said. “It’s called cherimoya. ”
The moment was only briefly sullied when, putting the fruit into my bag, my hand brushed the blue bathing suit, still stuffed in my purse and wrapped in sodden paper towels.
I didn’t want Tom to see it; or María, from whom I could hide nothing.
All morning, a vague resentment had been building, a wariness toward Louise.
Wasn’t it she who had suggested I take the children to the square?
If not for her, I wouldn’t have forgotten Tom, neglected to bring groceries to María.
Touching the wet suit, I thought, I can’t see her anymore.
It wasn’t a considered response. It was an impulse of self-preservation, as if her misfortunes—the crippled leg, the dead husband—had become contagious, a sickness capable of infecting anyone foolish enough to get close to her.
There was a large trash bin outside the public restrooms. I walked to it quickly.
With my back to the entrance, I disposed of the suit, pressing it deeper with the flat of my palm, burying it.
Stepping from the market moments later, I felt lighter, cleansed.
As I made my way back to the car, I practiced the name of the fruit, fixing it in my memory.
Cherimoya, una cherimoya, las cherimoyas.
My lips lifted and fell above the hushed sibilance.
In such moments, I felt what I imagined the faithful feel when reciting a prayer.