Thirty Years Later
APRIL CUPS A HAND UNDER a spoonful of pozole and lifts it to her mouth. “Mmm.” She swallows. “Mmm,” she emphasizes.
“Yeah?” Leo asks. “Does it need more salt?”
“No, it’s delicious.”
He takes a small slurp and nods. “Pienso que bien.”
He double-checks the stove burner as Sadie’s car pulls up.
They are not in anyone’s childhood home. Just a condo that kept them close to their students. Sadie walks in the door with tortilla chips, spicy mango salsa, and a bottle of cabernet.
Leo envelops her in a hug. “Hey, mijita.”
She sets the wine on the entry table. “Otto texted. They’re a few minutes behind me.”
“Está bien.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“In the kitchen.”
Sadie passes the framed photograph of her grandparents holding her as a newborn, before the Alzheimer’s wreaked its havoc. Before Billy stopped recognizing them all, his mouth hanging open in perpetual need. It’s one of Sadie’s earliest memories, his pocked tongue.
Otto pushes open the front door. “Sorry we’re late!”
Behind him is his wife, Eliza, and their four-year-old daughter, Ana.
They carry a plate of sopaipillas to the kitchen, which fills with chatter.
April is sitting at the table, subdued but smiling.
When they all move into the dining room, she lets out a little gasp. “Oh, who are they?”
Directly in front of them is a wall-sized canvas covered in photos of students holding books.
After Jonathan Gutierrez, April started photographing each student with whichever book they had read together.
For many of them, it was the first book they had ever read start to finish.
Later, after April’s diagnosis, Josie constructed the massive collage.
“Think of how it was with Dad,” she said.
“You won’t remember names, but you’ll remember feelings. ”
At the time, April had known every name, nearly two hundred students.
Her gaze had traveled across the photos.
But she had also known that she wouldn’t be able to keep them.
So she had squeezed Josie’s hand in gratitude, in heartbreak, in a black swell of fear.
She was facing her greatest season of powerlessness yet.
Leo, Sadie, Otto, and Eliza glance at each other like, Who gets to tell her this time?
Otto leans in. “Those were your students, Mom. You helped them read.”
Leo sets the pozole on a trivet and watches his wife.
“I did?” April brings a hand to her own cheek. “Well, they’re beautiful.” She looks around the room and explains, “Sorry, I have memory problems.”
Everyone smiles patiently, and Ana sneaks a tortilla chip. April steps closer to the collage. “I like how they all have”—she can’t find the word books—“stories.”
April Torres no longer reads. After adding Alzheimer’s to dyslexia, reading was one of the first things to go.
But Leo still reads aloud to her sometimes.
The Little Prince or Ada Limón or one of his own four novels.
Often, she will rest her head on him and fall asleep, and he will look down at her.
April: the place he decided never to leave.
They sit down to dinner, steam curling from their bowls.
After second helpings of pozole, Ana tugs her mother’s shirt and begs to play in the backyard. Eliza nods permission, so Ana leads everyone outside, two dark braids down her back.
The yard is an ocean of fire. Autumn has graced them with its reds and oranges, the trees only able to hold their leaves for so long.
Everyone scoots patio chairs as Sadie passes around wine and sopaipillas.
When bistro lights click on above their heads, April says, “Oh!” The lights remind her of her parents, so she puts her hand to Leo’s arm. “Will Mom and Dad be here soon?”
Sadie and Otto look down at their sopaipillas, and Leo kisses his wife’s temple. “Not this time, mi amor.” Then he calls their granddaughter. “Ana, ven aquí?”
She scurries over to them, and April smiles. “Who is this sweet one?”
With wide green eyes, Ana looks around uncertainly at the adults, who nod for her to go ahead.
She smiles, shy but proud. “I’m Ana.”
Behind her, the last petals of the season fall from the rosebush.