Saving the World (20 page)

But this time, he hasn't asked if the flan is a native recipe, and he's still holding on to her dish, as if Alma has to come up with the magic word to get it back.

And maybe that's why she thinks of it. “Health,” she tells him smartly. There is something about this man that makes her want to get him back. She doesn't even want to imagine what his fellow Marines might have done with his personality type.

Mickey laughs. He gets it, without Alma explaining, as if the same ability that he requires of listeners to connect his loose dots, he has for their random thoughts. “Hot damn, you're right. Head, heart, hands, and health. What do you want for your calf?”

Her
calf?
Mickey grins. Slowly, the boy is surfacing, the boy who won a prize calf for his essay on the four
H
s. It takes Alma a minute to work out his meaning: what does she want as a prize for coming up with the fourth
H
?

“I want my dish back,” she tells him, holding out her hands.

“Ta da!” he says, setting it down with a flourish on her uplifted palms.

T
ERA AND ALMA DECIDE
to go out to dinner, Alma's treat, she tells her friend. She wants to be out and about among people. All week, she has been housebound, except for visiting Helen and running er rands, not knowing how to introduce herself into social situations without Richard.

The fax phone rings as they're setting out.

Alma runs back in, just in case the fax is from Richard.

November 13, 2004

TO:
Alma Rodríguez          
FAX:
802-388-4344

FROM:
Lavinia Lecourt Literary Agency          
FAX:
212-777-6565

Dear Alma, Just got back late last night from the regional booksellers' conference, so I'm in the office trying to catch up on the pile on my desk. I called you before I left, as I knew I'd be seeing Veevee at the conference and she'd ask. Since you didn't return my call, I assume you are avoiding me.

Rather than trying to chase you down by phone or put you on the spot, I'm faxing you the enclosed contract. Veevee sent it over—prior to the conference—after her assistant noted that the due date (already extended twice) was the last day of the past year, and still no manuscript. I can't keep making excuses, Alma. Veevee very kindly (took some arm twisting, believe me) agreed to one last extension, but that's it.

You've got to level with me. Do you want my agency to sign this new contract? Will you be able to deliver by the end of next year? My credibility and yours are on the line. I would love to continue representing you, but I've got to know where I stand.

Please think about it and let's talk at the beginning of the week.

Reading Lavinia's fax, Alma feels that old anxiety perking in the pit of her stomach. Her writing career's about to go up in smoke, and now it's not history taking a wrong turn, it's her, adrift in purposelessness, self-doubt, second-guessing, all the ills attendant to petite souls in crisis.

And it's not just Alma, who will pay, but the people who love her, who will feel the deeper gloom. Life ain't easy; some people can't even take it, as Richard would say, so why make it harder on everybody? What were those lines from Dante that Papote used to quote, back when he could remember things? Some story about a father in a dungeon
with his kids, all of them being starved to death, but the kids being kids are clueless. They don't know that tonight there will be no supper, tomorrow there will be no lunch. But the father knows, and when his kids ask him why he looks so scared the father decides not to alarm them. “For them I held my tears back, saying nothing; I calmed myself to make them less unhappy.”

So what do I tell Lavinia? Alma wonders.

That she's sorry. That she has lied. That she lost heart. That she got distracted. That she started listening to the songs of the losers. The still sad music of humanity that'll drown out any story. The terror reports from Tera. HI's feasibility studies, flow charts and graphs, a whole industry of help to stem the tide of human misery. The AIDS caller. Isabel and the orphans, the helpless, the powerless, on whose backs civilization carries itself forward, for the greater good.

So what does she tell Lavinia?

The truth is going to bring the card house down on her head, turn the wheel toward the edge, and her guardrail is gone, her clean windshield is far away, Helen is dying, and she'll owe Veevee & company a hell of a lot of money.

“You want to talk about it?” Tera has come down to the basement room where Richard keeps his little office. The fax machine is still rolling out page after page of the contract, all that fine print full of promises Alma is not going to be able to keep.

“Not really,” Alma says.

“Not from Richard, right?”

Alma shakes her head. “From my agent.”

“Oh.” Tera, Alma knows, does not believe in agents. Literature should be free, along with medical care. There's enough money to go around to be charging people for listening to the song of the species. Alma is inclined to agree with her, especially now when she is in a free fall toward Veevee's bottom line, fifty grand in the red, and her only song a stupid refrain going through her head,
What do I tell Lavinia?

• • •

T
HE HARD DAY'S NIGHT
Cafe sits right next to the creek, a small purple house with star cutouts in the shutters. It's a soulful place owned by former hippies, who feature a lot of vegetarian dishes. Soft lights, hanging plants, loose and laid-back, Alma half expects to find reefer on the menu. Commune morphed into funky cafe. Alma loves to come here with Tera. It reminds her of her pre-Richard days when she fancied herself a woman on the verge of a great breakthrough.

Tonight she feels distracted. But she rallies. Otherwise she is going to get all the help she doesn't need from Tera. They order a bottle of wine instead of their usual individual glasses. Why not? “It's been a hard day's night for days,” Alma jokes with the young waitress, who smiles wanly. “Have you noticed,” she asks Tera when the girl departs, “how the young people don't get our jokes anymore?”

“I know,” Tera agrees. “I'll tell a joke in class and I'm the only one laughing.”

Alma remembers to ask about the Buddhist in Tera's department. “How'd he do as a lecturer?”

“Evaluations were glowing,” Tera tells her. “Kids loved him.”

“I assume he talked to them? I mean you said he was almost moribund in his silence.”

“No complaints. Everybody did really well in the class. All A's.” They look at each other, the same thought going through their heads, the same giggles bursting out. Soon they're laughing too loud. Alma looks around. Better keep it down. She still has to live in this town after Tera is gone.

The restaurant is almost empty. A cold night mid-November. The two women have the waitstaff mostly to themselves. They're making Alma nervous, constantly alighting by their table, asking if everything is okay.

“Don't ask her that!” Alma says, pointing to Tera. The young woman who seems to be their assigned waitress looks from one tipsy broad to the other, smiling awkwardly. “She might just tell you,” Alma tries to explain.

Tera swats Alma with her napkin. Alma grabs her wineglass just in
time. It strikes her that they're back in yesterday's arena, that charged moment when Alma was mean and Tera was Tera. But now they're laughing at themselves, which is probably how they've managed to stay good friends now going on a third decade.

In the same light vein, Alma tells Tera about Mickey's imitation of Tera's drumroll as he put the platter back in Alma's hands. “By the way, did you get a chance to give him your pamphlets?”

“He wouldn't take them.” Tera sighs. Alma can just imagine the scene. “I tried to tell him that these were resources he could tap if he needed to. He said he could take care of Helen himself just fine.”

Oh yeah? “He doesn't have a great track record.” Alma wishes she hadn't brought up the subject. They're both quickly sobering.

Tera pours herself another glass of wine; Alma shakes her head, no, she doesn't want any more. Somebody's got to drive them home. “I guess it's like you said yesterday, most people want to stick their heads in the sand.”

That's what Alma said? Her pronouncements always sound ridiculous in somebody else's mouth, especially Tera's.

“I told him I'd just leave them in case he wanted to look them over, and it was like I was going to dump contaminated waste in his backyard. He said he didn't want them around.”

“Oh, Tera,” Alma says, touching her friend's arm. Alma can tell Tera is—hurt is too strong a word—baffled. It's rare that her friend meets someone who's more enraged than she is. Secretly, Alma is thinking, this might be good for Tera. “Don't take it personally. Mickey's a hard nut to crack. I guess he hasn't had an easy life.” Alma discloses her conversation with Helen. How Helen wanted to be reassured that Mickey would be all right.

As Alma is talking, Tera's gaze strays: something has caught her mind's eye. “I have this feeling, I don't know, that Mickey is up to something.”

“What?” Suddenly, Alma's alarm feelers are out. A prodigal son, a dying mother, a difficult past, a score to settle. A plot so easy to assemble, you'd think, nah, nobody would try that. But an odd person might. Mickey might. “You mean, he'd try to hurt Helen?”

“No, actually, I think it's more that Helen has asked him, I don't know. You know Mickey became a nurse after he left the Marines?”

How do people find out these surprising things about strangers they've just met whom Alma has known for years? Okay, she hasn't known Mickey, but she has known his mother, and Alma only just found out this last week that Mickey was an ex-Marine, which seems like something a mother would let a friend know about her son. But then Helen has never talked much about Mickey, and Alma has always respected Helen's silence, willing enough to fill it up with her own complaints and quandaries. “So what does Mickey's being a nurse have to do with Helen?” Alma has already worked out the plot herself, but she wants a different ending.

“Just that she might have asked him to help her die.” Tera shrugs. Like it wouldn't be the end of the world. But it would, for Helen.

“I'm not sure how I feel about that,” Alma admits, surprised in part that her feelings aren't as cut-and-dry as she would have them. Helping someone to die is murder: murder is bad. But Alma also feels a gleam of relief. It can be quick, painless, and not just for Helen but for those left behind.

One of their waitresses suddenly descends on their table again. Tera and Alma both jump, startled from their grim thoughts. “Will there be anything else I can get you?”

The two women look at each other, then back at the waitress, and shake their heads.

“Just the bill,” Alma tells her.

A
FTER TERA GOES UP
to bed, Alma heads downstairs to compose an answer to Lavinia, a brief fax in the telegram style.
No saga. Stop. Tell Veevee I messed up. Stop. I'm sorry. Stop. I will pay back the fifty grand.

That stops her.

She and Richard don't have a spare fifty thousand dollars lying around in the bank. But they do own their house; they can refinance it. If worst comes to worst, Alma could ask Mamasita for a loan,
though she couldn't tell Mamasita the truth, what it's for: book money being no better than blood money, helping finance this way Alma has of disgracing the family. But, actually, this time Alma could tell Mamasita the truth. This is money to pay back an advance for a saga novel Alma is not writing. Mamasita will be delighted. She might even make the loan a gift if Alma agrees never to write it.

It has crossed Alma's mind that she could offer Veevee the Balmis story as a substitute for the saga novel. But she keeps backing off from even thinking about this option. She knows what would happen. Lavinia and Veevee and her assistant and their marketing department would soon be climbing aboard the
María Pita
, wanting more orphan scenes, wondering if Isabel shouldn't have sex with Balmis. It would ruin everything. And Alma needs this story too much right now to risk it. Besides Veevee wants a saga. She doesn't want orphans and a woman scarred by smallpox. She wants the dying generations, with a Latin accent.

When Alma comes into Richard's study, she finds another of his faxes waiting for her.

November 13, Saturday night

TO:
Mi amor          
FAX:
802-388-4344

FROM:
Ricardo          
FAX
: 809-682-0800

I just this moment tried calling, but the machine came on, so I hung up. I didn't want to leave a message, afraid that you'd hear the loneliness in my voice and think something's wrong, especially since I just faxed you this afternoon. Missing you so much tonight! Bienvenido went off to the capital and invited me to go along, but I figure the guy needs time with just his wife and kid. Maybe, if he offers again next weekend, I'll say yes.

I cooked myself up a supper of local yuca with fried cheese and a hunk of longaniza. (Sorry, my vegetarian honey.) Dessert was some of the chocolates you stashed away here and there in my luggage—made me miss you all the more. So I wandered into the poblado, an after-dinner, chase-away-the-blues stroll. Everybody came out to greet me,
pulled up chairs, invited me to sit down, but I didn't want to intrude, as I could tell most were in the middle of their supper, if you can call it that, a bowl of boiled roots, yuca, rábano and maybe a plátano, with some rock salt, for a family of eight. Made me ashamed, remembering my own feast. Can't afford to be a sentimentalist about this. As Emerson says, bleeding hearts are ineffective, end up needing emotional triage, so get a grip. Has he called again?