Carry Me Like Water (43 page)

Diego pulled at Mundo’s arm. He motioned him to stop. He looked at his boss, a big man, tall, a hard face. Diego hated him. “I’ll be here tomorrow,” he wrote, but before he handed him the note, Mundo grabbed it and crumpled it up. He jumped in from of Diego’s boss and grabbed him by the collar and yelled something in his face. Both of them clenched their jaws and they remained frozen for a few seconds. Mundo pushed him to the floor, but before Mundo could kick him, Diego stepped in between them.

Mundo smiled, then laughed. “It’s all right, Mr. Diego, I’m not gonna hurt the sonofabitch.” He stared down at Diego’s boss who was lying on the floor. Mundo kept his eyes on him, smiling, and spoke calmly. Diego saw the quiet expression on Mundo’s face, totally in control, almost peaceful. “Señor Asshole, I’m gonna tell you something—are you listening? My friend, Diego, is taking the rest of the week off, see? He’s gotta take care of some personal
business, got it? Who knows, he might even visit our friends at the IRS or something and find out what he can do about a pinche boss who don’t pay no minimum wage or nothin’—but he might not, got that?—you never know. He’ll be back next Monday and his job better be wailing for him, and if it’s not, well then I’m gonna burn your fuckin’ place to the ground. If you don’t believe me, just wait and see. And after I burn this hellhole I’m gonna find out where you live, and I’m gonna burn your house, too—with you in it. You got that? You like pushing people around, you like to play hardball. Weil, me too—I’m a pinche all-American.” He ripped his shirt open and showed off the scar on his side. “See this? The bastards tried to kill me, and I didn’t die. I’m hard to kill. It’s like this: You ain’t no St. Francis, and I ain’t no St. Francis neither.”

He looked at Diego and smiled. “Let’s go, Diego.” He looked down at the bitter face staring up at him. “Diego here will see you next week. Come Monday, if he’s still got a job, you’ll never see me again. If he don’t, well, Vicky’s Blue Bar is history.” He jerked his head toward the door, and strutted out. Diego followed him.

Mundo walked toward the 7-Eleven across the street, his shirt open, his chest bared to the sun. Diego could hardly keep up with him and had to chase him into the store. Mundo bought a six-pack of beer and a pack of cigarettes. Diego wrote him a note while he paid for his goods. “You promised me you’d control yourself.”

“No harm done—you got the week, didn’t you?”

Diego nodded. “Yeah, but it was a hell of a way to get it.”

“People don’t listen when you beg. People who beg are invisible—just ask the beggars on the street.”

The man at the counter put the beer in a bag and handed Mundo his change. “I know a place where we could drink our beer,” Diego wrote.

“Lead the way, You’re the man in charge.”

“Like hell,” Diego wrote.

11

W
HEN LIZZIE’S VOICE
had disappeared and Eddie heard only the dull, motonous tone of the dead phone, he sat in the quiet of his office. He felt dizzy, the room spinning around him. He put his head on the desk. The room slowed down. He felt sick. He reached for his trash can and tasted the watery salt in his mouth. He felt his stomach go into spasms. He stared at his own vomit in the trash can. He stood up and walked around the room. “An office,” he said, “why do I have an office?” His father had had an office. Now, he had one, too. He laughed. He remembered the day he and his brother had accidentally broken his father’s lamp because they’d been running and running around his desk. His father had hit them both with a belt. “
A man’s office is not a place of play.”
Eddie remembered the day his older brother had sat on his bed and promised him everything would be all right. It was the last time he’d seen him. Seven years old. Now he was thirty. For twenty-three years he had thought of his older brother. He had become addicted to thinking of him. Now, he was afraid. What if they had nothing to say to each other? What if there was nothing left between them? He felt numb and paralyzed and tired. He sat back down on his chair and turned off the light.

He sat in the darkness for a long time. In his mind his brother had been good; he had been a strong, protecting angel; he had loved
him and been faithful to his memory. And now, on this cold January night, it was time to meet his brother, not the brother to whom he had addressed his journal, but the brother he did not know,
that
brother, the brother who was a body and mind and a heart, a heart that had been beating without him for twenty-three years. But there had been a death, so then why was there this life? His brother would be grieving, and what good could he—a stranger—do him? What words were there for him from a man who would show up at his door saying, “I am your brother and this is my wife. She is beautiful, and this is my son, who is also beautiful—do you see all that I have? I am a lucky and fortunate man, and fate has smiled on me, do you see?” Would that comfort his brother? Would his presence remind him how poor and cursed his life had been—he with a dead lover and a grieving heart? How could he go to him like this? He’s going to hate me. My brother doesn’t know me. I don’t know my brother. Maybe they would just look at each other and turn away in disappointment and say to themselves in tired voices: “This is not the one I have been waiting for—he is not the one,” What then? What would happen then? He remembered Jake sitting on his bed that last evening when he’d been so sick, and he had promised he would make everything OK—had he promised that?—or had Eddie only made that up? What had happened, what had really happened? He had written a script with the information he had, but most of it was fiction, and like all fiction, it was as powerful as any truth and he had mistaken it for truth. Yes, this was the way history was written, his and his brother’s and the world’s. He felt sick and heavy, and yet his brother was alive. It was true, the brother who was lost, who perhaps had been wandering the country homeless and poor and had fought many demons only to find more demons, who was tired—but who had survived all the tempests. His brother was alive. He was alive. Or was Eddie having a dream? He would wake up any minute and find himself in his bed and ask his wife, “Have you seen my brother?” and she would look at him oddly but with compassion and say, “Amor, it was only a dream.” Eddie felt the weight of the disappointment. But he was here in his office and it did not feel like a dream, and he felt the weight, the weight of a loss he had known for years and years and years—and
now the weight was about to be lifted. He walked into the bedroom. His wife was dressing herself. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m gelling dressed. I’m going with you.”

“What?”

She looked at him. “You’re in shock, amor. I’ll drive.”

“What about the baby?”

“The baby’s going with us.”

“We’ll wake him?”

“Well, he’ll learn early that life has its interruptions. Someday you can tell him about this night, and you will tell him that he was there. You can begin the story by saying to him, “One cold winter night, your Aunt Lizzie called us up to say …” She smiled at him. “Get dressed.”

Eddie looked completely lost, confused, disoriented. He was glad to be told what to do. “What should I wear?” he asked blankly.

She smiled at him, went to his closet and picked out a deep blue pullover sweater. “Here,” she said handing it to him, “you look beautiful in this.” She sat next to him on the bed. As she held him, she could hear his heart beating. “You’re trembling, amor.”

“Yes.”

“Be happy, corazón.”

“Am I dreaming?”

She placed her hand on his cheek. “Do you feel this hand?”

He nodded.

“It will be good,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“You’re crying.”

“What if he doesn’t want me there.”

“He told Lizzie, ‘Tell him his brother needs him.’ Those were his words.”

“Did he really?”

“Yes, really.”

He took a deep breath. He felt cold. “It will be good?”

“It will be good.”

He watched her bundle the baby and pack a few diapers in a bag
she used for him. He was getting bigger and bigger every day. She picked him up. He cried. “Shhhhh.” She placed the baby in his father’s hands. “Make him calm,” she said to her son.

Jake and Joaquin’s apartment had emptied of people. The Shas prayed over Joaquin’s body once more before they left. Mrs. Sha expressed the feeling that Joaquin’s spirit had brought the two brothers together because his love had been so great. He had conjured the Chinese wind, and that wind had blown them together. Mrs, Cantor, who claimed to have felt Joaquin’s passing had shown up at the door a few moments after Lizzie had called Eddie and Maria Elena. Tom explained what had occurred as simply and succinctly as he could. “But of course,” Mrs. Cantor said, “it was like this in the old country. Things like this happened all the time, and no one thought anything about it. Perhaps the old times are returning,” she said. “It’s a sign. Elijah,” she whispered, “Elijah may yet come—but probably he won’t show up in San Francisco,” Tom smiled at her, and she insisted on praying a very short kaddish in praise of God and for her friend though she said it wasn’t orthodox. Even Jake was moved by her prayers in Hebrew. She promptly served everybody a glass of wine. “It’s good to toast the dead,” she said. And so they drank to Joaquin. Tom listened intently to the mourners and their theories. He only knew that Lizzie’s hair had turned white and that she had a gift. His culture gave him no entry, no access into the evening’s happenings. His father had been a rationalist in the extreme, but it did not prevent him from being moved by the evening’s events and the voices of the people in the room. Coincidence, Tom thought to himself, the coincidence of Lizzie knowing two men who happened to be brothers—that was all. On the other hand, there was the matter of Lizzie’s white hair, and her out-of-body experiences and her being able to read minds, however unsystematically. Tom neither dismissed her experiences nor theorized about them. He merely sat there and breathed in the evening just as he would take in the salt air when he walked on the beach. Breathing it made him feel clean. He was sad and exhilarated, sad and exhausted—and yet somehow he felt he could go without sleep
for days. And he knew he would never forget anything about this night, and the people who were present, and what he had felt. He would keep this night and honor it just as he kept his parents’ photograph in his house.

One by one, the visitors left despite the urge they felt to see and touch the lost brother. They were embarrassed enough by their voyeurism to excuse themselves. Tom stayed because he was waiting for the funeral home to come and pick up Joaquin’s body—it was something practical he could do. And, for some inexplicable reason, Jake had asked him and Lizzie to stay behind and be with him because he didn’t want to be alone with Joaquin’s body, and because he wanted to be with someone when he met his brother: “Stay. Just in case.”

Lizzie answered the door to Jake and Joaquin’s apartment before the doorbell rang. “I thought you’d take longer.”

“Oh my God, Lizzie! Your hair—what in the hell happened to your hair? It’s white! You dyed your hair white!”

Eddie only half-listened to his wife. He looked frightened and fragile, and didn’t seem to be affected by the color of Lizzie’s hair.

“I didn’t dye it. You think I’m crazy? It’s a long story.”

“I’ll bet. You know everything’s beginning to be a long story with you, Lizzie. And to think I liked you so much because you were so uncomplicated. Are you going to let us in?”

Eddie was beginning to turn as white as Lizzie’s hair. He wiped his sweaty palms on the thighs of his pants.

“Are you all right?” Lizzie asked.

He shrugged.

She took him by the arm and led him inside.

He looked at the comfortable living room.

“Jake’s in the shower,” she said. “He was nervous, and suddenly he had to take a shower. Poor man, he’s been through hell, and I picked a helluva time to put two and two together, didn’t I?”

Eddie nodded despondently.

She shook her head as she watched this man in front of her who had become deaf and dumb. She looked at Maria Elena and took
the baby from her arms. “I’ll take him,” she said. “Oh, look at you, such a pretty boy, and so good.”