Chapter 34 Soledad
Soledad
Soledad sat in the dim, candle- and flower-filled living room with Carlos’s and Diego’s mothers, and the many other mothers and aunts and grandmothers of the neighborhood. The rest of the de León family was scattered about the house—the children on the back patio racing the toy cars Luis had brought for them, the young people in Diego’s bedroom listening to CDs from his teenage years, the fathers and uncles and grandfathers in the kitchen halfheartedly playing dominoes and drinking.
The entire neighborhood mourned because Carlos Garcia and Diego Ramirez and all the other boys had grown up in each other’s homes. Sometimes Matías was at Carlos’s apartment down the street with Diego and a handful of other kids, helping his mom fold empanadas and eating half of them as a reward. Sometimes they were all at Soledad’s house, making a joyful mess with Matías’s paints. But more often than not, they were here at Diego’s, because he had an Xbox and a PlayStation, and an older sister who had cute friends.
“I cannot believe they’re gone,” Guadalupe said. “I keep expecting my Diego to walk in the door at any minute, carrying his twin girls in either arm.”
“I hallucinate the same thing,” Lucia said. “Last night, I thought I heard Carlos knocking at the door. It was Sofía and Carlos, Jr. But I could have sworn it was the pattern that Carlos used to rap.” She knocked three times fast, then two slow on the end table.
“Their poor babies,” another mother said.
“And their wives.”
Everyone sat with their heads hung for a minute. But then Guadalupe clapped her hands and said, “ Suficiente. We wanted to gather everyone today to share our best memories of Diego and Carlos. We will pray for their souls, but then we must also celebrate their lives.”
Soledad nodded, barely holding back tears. Not only because Carlos and Diego were dead, but because she still had Matías, and the guilt twisted in her gut, even though it was no fault of her own and no one here would hold it against her. On the contrary, they were tender toward her, as they were for Leo’s and Facu’s families who were still in Valencia with them. No one wanted more of their boys to die. To lose two was already too many.
The women closed their eyes and held their hands before them as Lucia led a prayer.
“Lord, Carlos and Diego are gone now from this earthly dwelling, and have left behind those who mourn their absence. Grant that we may hold their memories dear, never bitter for what we have lost nor in regret for the past, but always in hope of the eternal kingdom where you will bring us together again. Through Christ our Lord.”
“Amen,” they said in quiet unison.
The candles guttered all around them. The heads of all the flowers seemed to bow a little more.
But after another minute of silence, Lucia opened her eyes and gave everyone a brave smile. “Now, let us please tell stories about happier times. Many of you have known our boys for a long time, and we would love to hear how they touched your lives, in any small way.”
Soledad wiped away a tear. “I would like to begin. If that is all right?”
Guadalupe and Lucia nodded. These stories about their sons were as much for them as they were for the practice of honoring the dead.
“This happened before many of you moved to the neighborhood,” Soledad said, “but a few of you will remember. It was May, when Carlos, Diego, Leo, Facu, and Matías were seven. Just old enough to think they were the most brilliant minds on the planet, and still young enough to believe that no one would notice their scheming.”
Everyone in the room smiled a little.
“They had decided that they wanted to assemble their own gifts that year for el Día de la Madre, and what do moms want the most for Mother’s Day? Sweets. At least that was their conclusion. But rather than bake their own using the ingredients in the kitchen, like their smarter sisters would have done, what did they decide to do?”
Lucia started snickering because she remembered exactly what had happened. Guadalupe was smiling, too.
“What?” one of the other women asked.
“They decided they would steal from the local bakeries,” Soledad said. Half the room gasped, and the other half tutted.
“But, as I said, they were seven years old, and clever enough to know that they would be caught if they tried to steal entire trays of cookies for their dear mothers. They thought, however, that if they nicked just a small piece or two from each panadería, no one would notice. I don’t know whose brilliant plan this was—”
“It had to be my Diego,” Guadalupe said. “He was always the most reckless of an already fearless bunch.”
“The plan does have Diego’s fingerprints on it,” Lucia said.
“As did the cookies,” Soledad said, and the room burst into more laughter—the borderline hysterical kind that comes with grief, when everything is sadder and funnier and too raw, all at once.
“So,” Soledad said, trying to talk through her teary laughs. “The boys enacted the plan for Saturday, the day before el Día de la Madre. But there were five mothers to gather sweets for, and only five bakeries within the radius they were used to traveling. Therefore, they needed a schedule, so they could pop in through the back doors of the panaderías at different times throughout the day in order to grab a couple of cookies. They figured that by the end of the day, they would have collected enough.”
Lucia shook her head, a small smile still on her face. “That part sounds like Carlos. My boy was always the organizational ringleader. We were not surprised when he grew up to be a logistics manager.”
“It’s amazing how much you can tell about someone’s personality from childhood,” another woman said.
“Yes,” Soledad said. “It was a pivotal point in Matías’s life when he realized that finger paints were more fun to draw pictures with than to eat.”
The room erupted in another wave of sorrow-tinged laughter.
“Did you each end up with a big box of cookies for Mother’s Day?” one of the older ladies asked once everyone had calmed down again.
“Quite the opposite,” Soledad said. “First of all, seven-year-old boys may understand that their mothers like cookies, but they do not think about how important it is for those cookies to be whole.”
“What do you mean?”
Lucia chimed in. “She means that my Carlos may have had an early aptitude for scheduling, but he had not yet grasped the finer details of project management. He didn’t plan for any boxes for the cookies they stole.”
“They put them in their pockets!” Guadalupe said, snorting.
“Oh no!” someone said.
“Oh yes,” Soledad said. “What cookies they managed to snatch were crumbs by the time they reached us. But do not think that they went from cookie theft straight to their mothers—the plan was not executed so smoothly! Because the second thing we must remember about seven-year-old boys is that they are not as stealthy as they believe they are.
“Their early-morning walk-bys were successful because the panaderías were very busy at that hour. It was easy enough for a scrawny boy to dart in through the delivery door, grab a couple cookies from the extra racks in the back, and slip back out.
“The late-morning thefts were also, apparently, successful. But their third round—in the noon business lull—was when their arrogance caught up with them.
“It so happened that Lucia, Guadalupe, and Leo’s and Facu’s mothers—Pilar and Carmen—were at my apartment for our usual Saturday coffee and gossip when my phone rang. It was the baker at Pastelería la Favorita, who said, ‘I have a little thief here who says his name is Matías. Does he belong to you?’?”
The women in the room tittered. Being mothers, too, they were not unfamiliar with juvenile mischief.
“I asked the baker to hold,” Soledad said, “and I told Lucia and Guadalupe what the call was about. And then, to no one’s surprise, the call waiting on my phone beeped. It was Lucia’s husband, Esteban, calling to say that a baker at El Pan Dulce had caught Carlos pocketing cookies. We told him we would call him back soon with instructions on what to do. And then Guadalupe’s husband, Salvador, called to report that Diego was being held at Panadería Corona for the same offense.
“By this time, it was clear that this was no coincidence. Therefore, the Council of Wise Mothers—Lucia, Guadalupe, Pilar, Carmen, and me, of course—deliberated, and we decided that the best gift we could request for el Día de la Madre was to have a little fun with our sons.”
The eyes of the women next to Soledad widened, and those on the farthest couch leaned forward to better hear.
“We asked a policeman to pick them up. And he brought a priest with him.”
“?No!”
“?Dios mío!”
“?De verdad?”
“Yes, really,” Soledad said, grinning. “One of Carmen’s friends is an officer. He was off-duty, but he got into uniform, picked up Father Perez along the way, and then stopped by each bakery to retrieve the boys. He told a white lie—that he could arrest them, but that Father Perez had begged for mercy for them instead. They were taken to the church and ‘charged’ with community service for the afternoon instead of prison time.”
Guadalupe giggled. “We were terrible mothers to scare them like that.”
“But they were much smarter about the trouble they got in from then on,” Lucia said.
“Exactly,” Soledad said. “Also, the church was very clean ahead of Sunday mass.”
Everyone in the room laughed appreciatively.
“And we still got cookies at the end of the day!” Lucia said. “Crumbled and stolen, but with love.”
“To be clear, we did pay the bakers,” Soledad said. “Well, the boys did, along with handwritten apology letters.”
Guadalupe and Lucia smiled beneath their tears.
“I have a story to share,” said Isabella, one of their oldest friends. “Leo’s and Facu’s parents cannot be here because they are in Valencia by their sons’ bedsides, but I know they would want me to tell this.”
The crowd murmured their approval.
“It was the summer when the boys were sixteen. The five of them had known every aspect of each other’s lives until that point. But with hormones come changes, and while Carlos, Diego, and Matías were busy looking at girls, Leo and Facu had begun stealing glances at one another, although only when the other one wasn’t looking.
“While most young crushes pass relatively quickly, it was different for these two because they were already best friends. Unwittingly, they had fallen in love with every detail of each other—how Leo loved books so much he talked about the characters as if they were real. How Facu had an encyclopedic memory for fútbol statistics. How Leo spoiled his little sister, buying her little gifts whenever he passed by a store window with something he thought she’d love. How Facu was always the first in video games to offer himself as a sacrifice to the monsters, in order to save the rest of the team.
“But Leo and Facu didn’t want to ruin their friendship by revealing their feelings, because what if the other didn’t reciprocate? And they certainly did not want to destroy the dynamics of their group, because it had always been the five of them since their mamás met at the park when they were barely crawling.
“So one day when Facu was busy and couldn’t hang out with them, Leo confessed to Carlos, Diego, and Matías. And then just a few days later, when Leo was occupied elsewhere with his sister, Facu came to Carlos, Diego, and Matías, and also poured out his heart, wondering what to do.
“Well, those three did not even hesitate. They told Facu he should tell Leo. While they could not reveal Leo’s feelings themselves, they made it clear that they would help Facu in whatever way they could.
“That weekend, it was Leo’s birthday. The boys set up a scavenger hunt for him, and the first clue led Leo to the library. But only Carlos, Diego, and Matías were with him.
“?‘Where’s Facu?’ he asked.
“The boys shrugged. ‘He said he’ll show up later, but that you should go on without him.’
“Leo’s shoulders drooped, his disappointment evident. But the four of them walked into the library, where he solved riddle after riddle, collecting scraps of paper hidden in books. Each paper contained one word, the message scrambled:
Have. I. Tell. Secret. You. A. To.
“?‘I have a secret to tell you?’?” Leo asked.
“At that moment, Facu stepped out from between the library aisles. He clutched one more piece of paper in his hands, and, shaking, he held it out to Leo.
“Leo unfolded the scrap, and gasped. ‘I think I love you,’ he read in a whisper.
“Facu smiled. ‘I think I love you, too.’?”
The room was silent for a moment with tears—of sorrow and of pride. These were their boys. They had lived hard, and loved hard, and they had done it all together.
“They were very sweet boys,” Guadalupe said. “A handful, but wonderful. We were lucky to have them.”
Matías is a very sweet boy, Soledad thought, at the same time ashamed at how traitorous the thought was in the midst of Carlos and Diego’s evento conmemorativo.
She looked around the dismal room full of candles and the cloying sadness of flowers. Her poor friends. Parents should not outlive their children; it is a cruelty of the worst kind.
Soledad choked back a sob.
And she prayed that they would not soon be holding un evento conmemorativo for Matías, too.