Chapter 20 Claire
Claire
Half an hour after the video appointment with Professor Hong had left Claire in shock, her phone rang.
“Claire, what happened to you?” Aracely said on the phone. “Why didn’t you come back to the hospital after lunch? There was another spike in Matías’s vitals, for much longer than the one last night!”
“Oh, really?” Claire smiled to herself. Maybe her theory was right, that the more time she spent with Matías’s soul, the stronger the real Matías became. That would make sense based on what the professor had said, since Claire was his soul’s connection to life.
“Are you okay?” Aracely asked. “Visiting hours are almost over.”
Guiltily, Claire looked at the clock on the hotel nightstand. It was 7 p.m. She’d been gone from the hospital for five hours.
She lied. “I, uh, took a nap. I didn’t realize I’d sleep for that long.”
“Well, I’m sending Luis to pick you up in a little while,” Aracely said. “You’re coming over to my parents’ house for dinner. Mamá doesn’t want you alone right now, okay? You need people around you, and good food.”
Claire smiled sadly. Her first date with Matías had begun with him trying to prove to her how important good food was.
She didn’t know if she could handle his big family. Hers had been so small, just her and Jim and Sarah, and then they’d died and her family had been only herself.
Her fingers fluttered, and Claire frowned down at them. When had she started doing that?
“Dinner will do you good,” Aracely said. “I’m not giving you a choice. Luis will be at your hotel just after eight.”
“Okay.” Claire sighed, her fingers stilling. “I’ll be downstairs to meet him.”
—
When Claire and Luis arrived at the de León’s apartment in Parque de las Avenidas, Claire was surprised to find only Soledad, Armando, Aracely, and Abuela Gloria there.
“We thought maybe you’d prefer a quieter evening,” Aracely said as she embraced Claire at the front door.
“Thank you,” Claire said, holding her tightly despite the heat of the summer evening. She hadn’t realized how much she needed the hug, but after an afternoon spent with the disembodied soul of her boyfriend and then a helpful—but still unsettling—call with Professor Hong, it was a relief to be with people who operated within the bounds of “normalcy.”
Soledad, Armando, and Abuela Gloria hugged her, too, as she made her way into their apartment. Their home exuded warmth—dark wooden floors, fat armchairs and a patterned rug in the living room, and photos of Matías, Aracely, and Luis as kids. Claire swallowed a lump in her throat as she imagined Matías as a boy.
Of course, Matías’s brightly colored paintings also graced the walls.
There, above the television, hung a painting of doting mother and father tigers with their cubs, resting on dry grasslands. Among the cubs, though, was a baby zebra, but instead of black-and-white stripes, it was black and orange. Different, yet just like the rest of its family.
Out of habit, Claire turned to see if Matías was there beside her, watching for that moment when she found the delightful, incongruous detail in his work.
But he wasn’t there—neither the flesh-and-blood Matías nor his soul. Claire blinked back tears. She hadn’t realized how much she’d hoped he would appear here in his home until he didn’t.
“I asked Matías for a portrait of our family,” Soledad said. “That is what he gave me.” She laughed softly.
Claire nodded because she understood completely. Matías might look like any other human, just like everyone else, but his quintessence was something different. An orange-and-black zebra living among tigers.
“Mamá likes Matías to paint our family’s emotional milestones,” Aracely said as she pointed at another painting on the opposite wall, a portrait of baby Luis having his first bath. It must have been done when Matías was younger, because he would have been barely a teenager when Luis was born. The style was still identifiably Matías’s, though—realistic with a small hint of the sublime—although Claire could see how he hadn’t quite understood subtlety yet at that age. The water in the painting shimmered iridescent.
Luis stepped in front of the portrait. “Er, we don’t need to look at that one too carefully.”
Aracely snorted. “Luis doesn’t like us looking at his baby penis.”
“ Es muy peque?o, ” Soledad said. “And so cute.”
Even Abuela Gloria laughed.
Luis turned crimson.
Claire choked back a laugh because her basic Spanish was enough to understand. She spared Luis, though, and moved to the other side of the armchairs, to a watercolor of white houses on top of green cliffs, overlooking a deep blue ocean. “This one is different from the others I’ve seen.”
“That is my painting,” Armando said. “Of the Canary Islands, where my grandparents are from. Where my mother grew up.”
Abuela Gloria beamed at the landscape.
“Armando, you’re an artist, too?” Claire asked.
“An amateur.”
“But it’s where Matías got his talent,” Aracely said, casting a quick but proud look at her papá.
Claire’s heart throbbed, suddenly missing her parents. Even though she’d always dreamed of getting out of her small Florida town, she’d also admired her mom and dad’s steadiness. For all of elementary school, Claire had dressed up on Halloween as a postal worker, collecting candy in a shoulder bag like her dad carried mail in. She enjoyed the reliability of her mom’s macaroni-and-beef casserole and a Hallmark movie every Friday. She loved knowing exactly where home was—with them.
Could she have something like that again? If Matías woke up and recovered, could she say yes to his proposal and find family again with the de Leóns?
“Aracely,” she said. “You mentioned that Matías’s vitals improved again this afternoon?”
“Yes, for about half an hour.” Aracely smiled softly. “I think that’s a good sign, don’t you?”
“I do,” Claire said, blinking back tears. Just like the minute from last night corresponded with her minute with Matías’s soul in the hotel driveway, the half hour today correlated with the time she’d spent with him at the park. Claire’s being with him seemed to make Matías stronger. She would have to figure out how to meet with him again.
But now was not the moment to think about that, because Soledad ushered everyone into the kitchen, where yellow stools surrounded a tile counter, and a well-worn wooden table was crammed into the corner. Garlic filled a small red bowl to the brim; a larger blue one was piled with tomatoes so ripe they scented the entire room.
“Please sit,” Soledad said, gesturing at the stools.
“How hungry are you?” Aracely asked. “Spanish dinner is usually very light—a salad, some ham and cheese and bread, and fruit—because lunch is our biggest meal. But I don’t know if you got to eat much for lunch, because of your nap.”
Claire bit her lip, because of course she hadn’t actually napped. But even though she hadn’t had an appetite since she left New York, suddenly being in a cozy kitchen with kind faces and the smell of tomatoes and garlic filling the kitchen made her stomach growl.
“Okay,” Aracely said, taking that as an answer. “Mamá, Abuelita, we need to feed this woman.”
Soledad nodded solemnly.
While Luis tossed a salad and Aracely cut fruit, Soledad and Abuela Gloria got some leftovers from the refrigerator and warmed a bowl of broth for Claire, followed by a huge plate of stewed meat, vegetables, potatoes, and chickpeas. Armando sliced crusty bread.
“This is cocido madrile?o,” Soledad said. “Spanish comfort food.” She took food seriously, and Claire understood now where Matías inherited his reverence for it.
Claire took a bite of the meat, rich and hot and bursting with the flavors of bay leaves, cumin, tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and vinegar. “Oh my god.”
Soledad gave her a small smile—the kind shared among people who were suffering but still managing to find brief moments of peace. “A good meal cannot solve everything, but it can make things a little easier, if it is made with love.”