NELSON WAS GIVEN what was simultaneously the largest and smallest room in Rogelio’s family home: the largest in terms of sheer physical space; the smallest because it had become, in recent years, a de facto storage locker. The rusty bunk bed where Jaime and Rogelio once slept now served as the essential infrastructure holding, but not containing, the family’s history in objects: bundled, precariously balanced, stacked from floor to ceiling, the remains of twenty-five years, thirty years, five decades of life in T—. In this house. Nelson spotted an old sewing machine, a teetering heap of newspapers from the seventies, a dead man’s mothballed clothes. There was an overstuffed cardboard box sitting on the lower bunk, with a dented teakettle and a few cracked wooden kitchen spoons peering out from the top. There were mismatched shoes beneath the bed; a couple of soccer balls, deflated and ripped open; bent wire hangers linked together like a makeshift cage; a box of marbles; and a child’s tricycle that appeared to have been taken apart violently. Nelson even saw a few of the old sculptures Rogelio had made out of wood.
Together, it was something to behold. Had it stood in a museum or an art gallery, the critics would have been unanimous in their praise.
Noelia must have noticed Nelson’s expression, or the sharp breath he drew at the sight of it all.
“We don’t throw anything away,” she said. “We just don’t. I’m not saying this is a good or a bad thing.”
Nor could Nelson decide.
Rather than attempt to make space on the lower bunk, Noelia had Jaime and Nelson bring in a cot, along with three heavy blankets that smelled powerfully, but not unpleasantly, of woodsmoke. She was eager to get her guest settled in. “Go ahead, give it a try,” she said, standing in the doorway, and watched as Nelson lowered himself carefully onto the cot. The fabric sank beneath his weight, like a hammock, but it held.
“Not bad,” he said.
“Lie down.”
Nelson flipped his legs onto the cot. His toes hung just off the edge. “It’s fine,” he said.
“I’m sorry, but it’s the best we can do for now.”
“It’s fine,” Nelson repeated. “Really.”
It was early evening, and Mrs. Anabel was resting. It had been a big day for her. The temperature was dropping, so Jaime, Noelia, and Nelson moved to the main visiting room, that dark and dusty place where Henry had first been received. The family photos were right where he’d said they’d be. Nelson glanced back at his hosts, as if for permission.
“Go ahead,” Jaime said.
Nelson nodded, and searched the menagerie of black-and-white images, the faces blurred, but recognizable. Young Jaime, young Noelia, and the youngest, Rogelio, he assumed. He examined that face most carefully of all, looking for some resemblance that might explain his own presence in this strange home, in this strange town. They looked nothing alike, which was both a relief and a disappointment. It felt unsettling to be suddenly so connected to a dead man. There were a few scenes from the plaza, from the days when T— had been alive. There was one photo of the family stepping out of the cathedral, dressed in their finest, Mrs. Anabel’s stern late husband with an arm around his wife, and a date scrawled in the corner of the image: May 1970. Nelson studied the old man’s face, an opaque, unreadable mask; it was the face of a man accustomed to suffering. Husband and wife both wore this expression, in fact; but the children clustered about them — two smiling, irrepressible boys, plus one prim and beautiful little girl — did not.
“What a lovely family,” Nelson said.
Noelia smiled. “Yes, we were. My mother thinks we still are.”
“We made a good team,” Noelia told me later. In spite of how it ended, she had fond memories of Nelson’s time in T—. “I told him everything I knew. Not just that night, but every day I added something, every day I remembered. He helped me, just by being there.”
Noelia began that evening by explaining Mrs. Anabel’s peculiar sense of time, the seven or eight key events which her mind played in a continuous and maddening loop, and the connective tissue between them. For example, it might be necessary to understand how the death of Rogelio’s father related to the 1968 earthquake. Noelia explained to Nelson (and later to me) that something in the chemistry of the soil changed after the quake, and the small plot he’d saved up years to purchase became suddenly infertile. The old man all but gave up hope after that. Though he didn’t die until a few years later, as far as Rogelio’s mother was concerned, he’d started to die at the moment of the earthquake.
“You would’ve been five in 1968,” Noelia told Nelson, like a schoolgirl slipping answers to her favorite classmate. “And almost eight when my father finally passed.”
She kept on, and Nelson took notes. Jaime was mostly quiet, nodding now and again, or correcting Noelia’s dates. Together, brother and sister conjured this memory: they’d last been together, all three of them, at a party in San Jacinto in the early 1980s. Neither could remember what they were celebrating, or why Noelia had been visiting the provincial capital. They remembered this: the sun setting, the three of them and perhaps a half dozen friends in a circle of plastic chairs on the unpaved street in front of Jaime’s house. It had rained the night before, and the chairs sunk and waddled in the soft earth. Music played from a handheld radio, they swapped stories, pulled bottles of beer from a bucket full of ice. Friends came by all through the night, and Rogelio was quiet—“He was always quiet,” Noelia said — until a certain song came on the radio, something bouncy and pop. Then, to everyone’s surprise, he stood up and started dancing.
“Everyone stopped to watch,” Noelia said, shaking her head at the image. “He was so shy back then.”
“It was a real sight,” Jaime said, and laughed to himself. It was the first time Nelson had seen him laugh.
They’re not talking to me now, Nelson thought. It’s like I’m not even here. He kept his eyes wide open, his ears perked, and did what he could to inhale this memory, to make it his, as if the truth of this emotional detail could make any difference at all to Mrs. Anabel.
“I was watching you today,” said Jaime finally.
“You were very nice,” added Noelia.
“That’s true. You did fine.”
“But?” Nelson said.
Jaime pressed his hands together, and held them against his chest. “But Rogelio had no schooling. He didn’t read plays or write books. He couldn’t read at all.”
“He was in Henry’s play, wasn’t he? In Collectors?”
“Just something to keep in mind.” He pointed at Nelson’s notebook. “Don’t let my mother see you writing, that’s all.”
“You have to remember who our brother was,” Noelia added.
Jaime frowned, and ran a hand through his hair. “And who my mother thinks he was.”
“Okay,” Nelson said. “I’ll try.”
When they’d finished for the night, Nelson went back to his room and sat on the cot with his back to the window. He’d heard many stories, some true, some invented; his journal was filled with notes, and his head was spinning. He stared at the clutter on the bunk bed, as if examining the gears of an inscrutable machine. It was impossible not to appreciate its size, the stunning illogic of its composition, and the history embedded within. He felt duty-bound to understand it, or attempt to. All this junk was something more: it was a family’s history, and wasn’t he, at least temporarily, part of this family?
If Nelson had known more about T—, known more about the region and the relentless out-migration that had changed it, he’d have known that all the houses in town had rooms like this. That some houses, in fact, were nothing but large, sprawling versions of this room, no living space left, no people, only assorted objects gathering dust behind padlocked doors. He might have appreciated that Mrs. Anabel and Noelia had managed to contain the past, more or less; that by holding it within the four walls of the boys’ old room, they were living, to a greater degree than many of their neighbors, in the present. It would have impressed him, certainly, but for an entirely different set of reasons. For now, he couldn’t escape the sense that this lawless room was simply the physical representation of Mrs. Anabel’s mind, that if only he could place these many items in some kind of order, he might discover the secrets of her dementia. He might resolve it. And find a place for Rogelio within it.
NELSON WOKE THE NEXT MORNING to find the family in the kitchen, chatting over a simple breakfast. He crossed the courtyard, wearing his best smile, and joined them. There was no mistaking Mrs. Anabel’s happiness; it was evident in the way she greeted him — brightly — and in every gesture thereafter. He drank tea, ate a hard-boiled egg and not-quite-fresh bread with cheese, and sat by the window, letting the sun hit his face. Mrs. Anabel kept her eyes on him, which might have been unnerving in another context, but which here seemed exactly right, and even expected. He performed for her.
“How did you sleep?” the old woman asked, and though his back hurt and his neck was sore, he didn’t hesitate: “The best I’ve slept in years, Mama. It’s so nice to be home.”
Her contentment was palpable, and it meant something to Nelson. When she took my hand, it made sense somehow, he wrote later. At least as much sense as the tour did.
That morning, his first full day alone in T—, would be the template for each of the mornings to come. The work of impersonating Rogelio, of convincing an elderly and senile woman of this identity — it was a task to be accomplished at the local rhythm, that is, slowly, carefully, making no hasty or unnecessary gestures. The breakfast table was cleared, and he helped Mrs. Anabel to her spot in the courtyard, where she sat with her back against one of the adobe walls. She asked him — Rogelio, that is — to sit with her, and he did, very close, in fact, side by side on the sunken top of an old leather chest, the outsides of their thighs touching. Their conversation could barely be called that: they enjoyed long silent spells, interrupted by Mrs. Anabel’s occasional questions, queries which did not require specific answers. Here and there, she made the odd statement about which there could be little or no disagreement: “The sky is good” or “The wind is nice.” She’d smile afterward, nodding at her own insight with an air of satisfaction. Nelson smiled back, and gently squeezed her hand to show her he was listening.
She asked Nelson about his life, and he improvised based on the general script he’d heard the night before: his Rogelio was a version of the lie Jaime had invented. He lived on the outskirts of Los Angeles, in a working-class neighborhood of small, tidy houses. There was an industrial area nearby, where giant factories ran all day and all night, frantic and bustling, belching thick smoke into otherwise blue California skies. In his description, the factory was good work, and everyone was happy to be there. Satisfied to be making something. It was the sort of cliché of which Henry might have disapproved, but still, Nelson owned it, holding his hands out, palms flat, when he said this.
“But your hands are so soft,” Mrs. Anabel said, not skeptical so much as delighted by her son’s lovely hands.
“I wear gloves. We’re required to wear gloves.”
Nelson had never been inside a factory. Still, Mrs. Anabel accepted his answer with a contented smile.
“What do you make?”
“Movie sets,” he said, because it was the first thing that popped into his mind.
She seemed to take this answer in stride.
Nelson’s Rogelio, like his brother Jaime, was a mechanic; unlike Jaime, he’d never married. He lived a quiet life, though he spoke with great conviction about his desire for a family. Soon, he told Mrs. Anabel, but insisted it would all come in due time. “I’m still too young for that,” he said that morning, a statement which worked on a variety of levels. At the sound of those words, time collapsed for Mrs. Anabel. If Rogelio was still young, then she must still be young too!
“Oh yes, you’re very young,” she said, and her eyes glistened with a pleasing confusion.
Then it was time for her nap, and Nelson was left alone with Jaime in the courtyard. A cat meowed from somewhere inside the weeds. Nelson had done good work that morning; he was sure of it, but his employer (for that is what Jaime was) kept his distance, observing him from the kitchen doorway.
Finally, Nelson said, “Were you watching? How did I do?”
“Not bad.”
“Did I get anything wrong?”
Jaime shook his head. “Not really.” He stepped out of the doorway, and into the courtyard. “A matter of degree, I guess. I see you and I don’t see Rogelio. But that’s not your fault. You’re not doing anything wrong, it isn’t that. My mother sees what she wants to see. And she likes you. I don’t know how you people do it.”
Nelson shrugged.
“How it is you pretend, I mean. Come with me. Let’s take a walk.”
It would become habit to break up the tedium of the morning with a stroll just before lunch. This was the dry season in the mountains, when every day is a replica of the day before. Above, a smattering of white, cottony clouds. They walked the few blocks to the plaza in silence, passing only a few people along the way: a girl skipping in the direction of the school, and an elderly gentleman with his hat pulled low against the sun. The narrow side streets of T— were shadowy and cool, but the plaza was blanketed in boiling sun. And it was empty, but for a few people milling around the bus that would leave in a few hours. The owner of the bodega sat on the steps outside his store, reading a newspaper. He waved to Jaime, and they walked over to greet him.
“Mr. Segura,” Jaime said, “you remember my brother, Rogelio, don’t you?”
Nelson narrowed his eyes. He was being tested.
“Of course,” said Segura, and he nodded deferentially.
Nelson stretched out his hand. “So nice to see you again. It’s great to be home.”
Jaime bought a couple of sodas, then told Nelson to wait outside while he made a phone call. Segura motioned for Nelson to join him. “It came today,” he said, waving his newspaper in the air proudly. “The bus driver gave it to me. Look.”
The front page carried the story of the accident between the mango truck and passenger van. Twelve people had died. There were photos.
Nelson had gone many weeks without much interest or curiosity in something as abstract as “the news.” It was a concept that had no relevance on tour but which suddenly seemed necessary. Not because of these deaths, but because of everything else. Another world existed, and he felt suddenly reminded of it. Now that leaving T— was temporarily out of the question, Nelson felt a very keen desire to know what was happening. It was something he hadn’t realized until he saw the newspaper.
Nelson opened the front page. He looked for news from the city, politics, sports. National news was relegated to an inner section, a few poorly written items that read like dispatches from a distant planet. A senator had proposed a law against drunk driving. (Bar owners were opposed.) A police dog had been wounded in a fire, and would have to be put down. (Animal rights groups were opposed.) A building in the colonial center had partially collapsed, and would have to be demolished. (Preservation groups were opposed.) Nelson scanned the paper, then the empty plaza, and failed to see any connection at all.
Just then Jaime stepped out. He saw Nelson and frowned. “Let’s go.”
“Just a second.”
“We’re leaving,” Jaime said. “Segura, I understand my sister owes you some money.”
The man nodded.
Jaime reached into his pocket and pulled out a few bills, which the storeowner accepted with his head bowed. Then Jaime turned, and began to walk off. Nelson closed the paper, and hurried after him. He saw then — and it was strange that he hadn’t realized it earlier — how physically impressive Jaime was. It was somehow more apparent at this distance: he wasn’t tall, he was wide. His shoulders were broad and strong, and now that Nelson saw his shape, Jaime’s swift attack on Henry was even more surprising.
“I’m coming,” Nelson called out.
“Rogelio doesn’t read,” Jaime said when Nelson had caught up. “Not the newspaper, not anything. I told you that.”
Nelson apologized.
They walked on, across the plaza, toward the northeast district, over a footbridge, and then up the steep hill that rose to the east of town. A few blocks on and the houses petered out, giving way to terraced fields and irrigation ditches carved expertly into the earth. By whom? Nelson wondered. Where were the people? He wanted to ask, but was afraid to.
“Do you know San Jacinto?” Jaime asked when they were above the town. He didn’t wait for an answer. Below them, lay T—, its red-roofed and white-walled houses, its narrow, picturesque streets. “San Jacinto is a terrible place. Nothing like this. Hideous. But it’s where the work is.” He cleared his throat. “What did you earn on this little tour you did?”
“You mean money?”
He always meant money.
One page of Nelson’s journal was dedicated to a rough accounting of what he’d made and spent on the tour. The figures were a jumble, but the basic arithmetic was clear enough: he’d broken even. Nelson knew that, and he’d had no opinion on this information until that very moment. One didn’t join Diciembre for the wages, after all. But now, the idea of breaking even seemed suddenly disappointing. He glanced at Jaime and saw opportunity. He made up a number, an outrageous, ambitious number, he wrote that evening, to which Jaime laughed.
“That’s it?” he said.
Nelson blushed.
“I’ll give you twice that. Now start thinking like Rogelio.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means don’t say silly things like ‘It’s great to be home.’ If it was great, you would’ve come home ten years ago.”
“Okay,” Nelson said.
Jaime sighed. “You know what I think, when I see this?”
“No.”
“I think, How lovely. Thank God I don’t live here. Now, do you have your wallet? Good. Take it out. Give me your ID card.”
Through it all, Nelson was still thinking of money, the possibility it implied. He could pay a few months’ rent. Or take Ixta on a trip. Buy his mother something nice. Not all of those things could be done, but some of them could. In particular, this phrase stood out: “twice that.” He did as he was told. Jaime squinted at the picture on the ID card, smiling. He held it up and compared it to the young man standing before him. Then he put it in his pocket.
“I’ll be back in a week,” he said to Nelson. “In the meantime, be nice to your blameless mother.”
IT’S DIFFICULT TO WRITE about these days in T—, about this lull in the action (for that is precisely what it is) without succumbing to the pace. Such is the languorous nature of small-town life. I know it well enough. Thought slows, the need for conversation vanishes. You are prone to introspection, never a productive habit, and one which city life, for example, quite rightly suppresses in the name of efficiency. On the third day of any visit to T—, I give in to a specific kind of melancholy that is part depression, part boredom. The normal stimuli one associates with human activity begins to seem aberrant, even unnecessary. Throughout my childhood and early adolescence, arriving in T— was like stepping outside time, just as it might have been, I suppose, for Nelson, had he not had the length of the tour itself to adjust, at least in part, to the rhythms of provincial life. Perhaps this is why the appearance of a newspaper was so striking to him that first morning. It reminded him just how far away he was.
For the most part he spent his days listening to Mrs. Anabel; keeping her company. At night, he and Noelia swapped stories, and with her, he could be Nelson again, something they both seemed to welcome. “He was very funny,” she told me later, “and I hadn’t had anyone to talk to in so long. He told me about his mother, about his brother. He told me about Ixta, and even said he was going to be a father.”
“When was that?” I asked.
She thought for a moment. “It must have been at the end of the first week. We were expecting my brother back any day, and Nelson had even packed his things. He was glad to be going home, he said, so he could see her.” She paused here, offering a bemused smile. “But then Jaime didn’t come, so he unpacked his things and stayed.”
Nelson was getting anxious.
On the ninth day, they got a note delivered by the man who drove the bus to San Jacinto. It was from Jaime:
Something’s come up, it said. I’ll be there in a week to settle up.
“See?” said Noelia. “He hasn’t forgotten about you!”
At least the work was manageable. They’d settled into routines, and the old woman seemed quite happy about that. She peppered him with questions, but they were mostly variations on the ones she’d had at the beginning, and Nelson felt enough confidence to shift his answers — just slightly — to suit his mood. One day, to his surprise, he didn’t make movie sets when Mrs. Anabel asked; instead, he fixed boats in the harbor. He wasn’t sure why he said it. The old woman clapped with delight. “Where did you learn boats?” she asked, as if boats were a language one studied in school.
“In the city, Mama. When Jaime sent me to the city.”
She nodded very seriously. “And when was that?”
“Oh, you know how Jaime is. Always bossing me around. Sending me here, sending me there.”
“That Jaime!”
To keep things interesting, Nelson invented an accent, a variation on the sort of voice he imagined might result from two decades living in California, among Mexicans and Salvadorans and Guatemalans. It didn’t take. He shed it, almost without thinking, a few days later, and she didn’t seem to mind. What was the point of this invented vernacular anyway? Had she even noticed this dash of authenticity?
I’m not going to try so hard anymore, he wrote that evening. If all goes well, I’ll be home in a week.
WHILE NELSON WAS in this state of suspended animation, playing Rogelio for his very small audience, his life was going on without him. And by life, I’m referring to his real life, his life in the city. This is not urban chauvinism or elitism or discrimination against the provinces; only fact: Nelson’s rural exile did nothing for the problems waiting for him back in the capital.
Ixta was never far from his mind. If Nelson was able to expel his private troubles from his thoughts during his first days alone in T—, once the routines of his new life were settled, he could no longer manage it. By the end of the first week and the beginning of the second, his journal entries are less and less about the details of his days with Mrs. Anabel, and more meditations, or even speculations, on parenthood. Try as he might, he simply could not accept Ixta’s assertion that the child was not his. He drew a chart tracking the instances when he and Ixta had made love since their reconciliation the previous winter: where they’d been, how long it had lasted, and how careful they’d remembered to be. He scoured his memory for details, filling pages with clinical accounts of the final weeks of their affair that read more like legal briefs than erotica. He argues for paternity and presents the evidence. He notes clues and small gestures that might give him some hope, for if one reads the journals, this much is clear: hope was what he needed and wanted most. Accepting he was not the child’s father would have meant relinquishing his claim on Ixta. It would’ve meant letting her go for good.
Meanwhile, in the city, Ixta’s belly kept growing each day, and with it, she confessed to me, her anxiety. Nelson’s late morning walks took him, more often than not, to Mr. Segura’s store, where he ignored Jaime’s admonition and read the newspaper whenever it was available; and where, on no fewer than seven occasions, he managed to reach Ixta by phone. These mostly unwelcome incidents served only to deepen her unease. She knew what she knew about her baby, and still he tried to convince her that it was his. It had to be. “That was all he wanted to talk about,” Ixta said when we spoke. “He was obsessed. It wasn’t that the child couldn’t have been his. But she wasn’t. That’s all.”
She occasionally succeeded in steering the conversation elsewhere; the truth was she enjoyed talking to him, and didn’t have the heart to hang up.
“I should have, I know, but I just couldn’t.”
As uncomfortable as those conversations could be, Ixta needed to hear Nelson’s voice; apart from being her lover, he had also been her friend. She was tormented by the usual set of questions: whether she was too young or too selfish to handle the responsibility of motherhood; whether she’d be a good parent, or even an adequate one; whether the maternal bond would be felt right away. Though it seems cruel to mention them now, given the events to come, Ixta had even begun to have doubts about Mindo, her partner, the father of her child, a man I never had the opportunity to meet. But this was all in the future: while Nelson was in T—, Ixta’s misgivings were only just taking shape. She’d begun to find Mindo rather unresponsive, insensitive to the idiosyncrasies of her pregnancy (which were not idiosyncratic but absolutely normal), and, in a broad sense, “unimpressive.” This last, unkind word was the very one she used, albeit reluctantly and only because I pressed her.
“I don’t like to talk about him, not anymore,” she said, but then she went on: it was all part of a slow realization she’d had over the course of her second trimester, when her ankles began to swell and the night sweats interrupted her sleep. “A man should cause an impression,” she said. “He should leave you with something to think about. Without that, there’s no magic.”
“Was there magic with Nelson?” I asked. “Was he impressive?”
I knew the answer. It took her a moment.
“Once you knew him, he was. Very much so. And I knew him well.”
The changes in her body were some compensation for her melancholy: it was an aspect of the pregnancy she found dramatic and wondrous, confirmation that there was, undoubtedly, some sort of miracle taking place, even if that miracle sometimes made her recoil with fear. But there was a problem: while she’d never felt more beautiful in her life, this man of hers wouldn’t lay a finger on her. Her breasts had grown, her hips — she finally had the curves she’d always wanted — and Mindo scarcely seemed to notice. She found this simply unforgivable. He came home late, something he’d always done; smelling like the Argentine steak house where he worked long hours, just as he always had; only now she found it all intolerable. The odor of grilled beef was repellant. One evening in May, when she was four months pregnant, she asked him to shower before getting in bed. He agreed, with a frown. The next night, she asked him to do the same, and to her great surprise, she woke up the following morning at dawn, alone. It was a chilly early-winter day: she padded out into the living room in her socks, and found her unimpressive, unwashed man on the couch. He was asleep with his mouth open, still in his work clothes, still smelling of steak, his feet hanging off the edge.
How else was she to interpret this except as an insult?
Perhaps, I suggested, he was simply frightened. First-time fathers often are.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter anymore.”
I didn’t argue this point. “Did you think much about Nelson in those days?”
She nodded. “Sure. Whenever he called, I thought about him. I was angry, I was hurt, but I thought about him. Sometimes fondly. Sometimes not. I missed him. I felt very alone.”
“And when he called — did you feel less alone then?”
“No,” she said. Her eyes closed very briefly, just an instant. “I resented the phone calls, but I looked forward to them too. The connection from that shit town of his, wherever he was, it was terrible. I couldn’t understand what he was doing.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wanted to talk to him, to tell him things, but he wouldn’t listen. He would never listen. That was always his problem.”
MINDO, the putative father of Ixta’s child, Nelson’s rival, was an artist, a painter — and not a bad one, by all accounts. He was thirty-one years old that year, and worked as a waiter.
It’s true he was not cut out for fatherhood. When I suggested to Ixta that he might have been afraid, I was merely repeating what many of his friends told me. To a person, they hated Ixta, and a few even blamed themselves for not helping Mindo escape her clutches sooner. I understood their anger, but their vision of Ixta was at odds with everything I knew about her. Still, I listened mostly, didn’t interrupt as they spoke.
Mindo came from a working-class district of the capital known as the Thousands, and that’s where his artistic education began. He began painting murals when he was very young, only twelve, memorials to friends who’d passed away. Given the circumstances of the neighborhood (known colloquially as Gaza), this was steady work. Mindo was featured in Crónica, one of the city’s main newspapers, when he was only sixteen, a back-page feature under the headline “Teenage Artist Paints War Memorial.” In the photo he stands before one of his murals, a painted wall along Cahuide, one of the main arteries of his district. He has a heavy build, and looks much older than his age. He has stubble on his chin, and dark, piercing eyes. Like Nelson, Mindo has curly hair, but beyond that there is no similarity.
Ixta and Mindo met in August 2000, when he opened a show at one of the newer galleries in the Old City. He was no longer painting murals but very detailed, stylized portraits of his old neighborhood friends, some of whom had been dead now for fifteen years. Mindo painted them as adults, as if they’d survived their troubled teenage years and skated past the dangers that had prematurely ended their lives: the drugs, the street battles, the allure of crime. It was speculative biography, in images. Some gained weight. Some lost their hair. Some wore suits and ties, or aprons, or soccer uniforms. Some went shirtless, showing off intricate tattoos. Some held diplomas and smiled proudly. It was simple, affecting work; in Mindo’s paintings, all these tough young men had lived, and by living had earned the right to be ordinary. Beneath each image was a brief text noting the age at which they’d died and the circumstances of their passing.
The opening was very well received, most of all by Ixta, who spent the evening drinking glass after glass of wine and trying to get the artist to smile. It wasn’t easy, she told me: the ghosts of Mindo’s violent adolescence were on every wall in the gallery. But she persisted. And we know that in mid-September, Ixta gathered her things and moved in with him. We know Nelson was shaken by the news, and that many of Mindo’s friends expressed their concern. Who is this woman? What do you know about her?
It was never a good match. Mindo was handsome and charming and troubled. He’d never been in a serious relationship before. It couldn’t have worked out, though it seems petty to assign blame for this now. Ixta, for her part, accepts much of the responsibility herself, while noting the ways in which he let her down after she got pregnant. Mindo was jealous and frightened by the responsibility that fatherhood entailed. We know he suspected that Nelson was still part of Ixta’s life. Though Mindo never had proof of the affair, he certainly had his doubts, and it seems he was relieved when Nelson joined Diciembre on tour.
“Maybe he’ll stay gone,” he commented bitterly to a friend. That was in mid-June, when Nelson was newly arrived in T—, and things with Ixta were beginning to unravel.
“Perhaps,” his friend said.
They even toasted to the idea.
Everyone agrees he didn’t deserve what happened to him when Nelson came back.
MEANWHILE, Mónica would have loved to have been in touch with her son, to have received those phone calls from T—, but she didn’t. She knew nothing of what was happening because her son didn’t call her even once. In fact, besides Ixta (who claimed to be uninterested), no one knew much about Nelson’s whereabouts, because neither Henry nor Patalarga shared the story. They expected him home in ten days at most, so there was really no point.
Faced with this silence, Mónica daydreamed of her son on ad hoc, rural stages, images which inspired a mix of pride and anguish. In her mind, it was all a continuation of the tour he’d described from San Jacinto, a tour she felt might never end. And in a sense, it never did. Mónica didn’t compare Nelson’s adventures to Francisco’s, at least not consciously, though she found herself approaching both absences the same way. She’d acquired, over the years, a certain skill for projecting herself into the lives of her children, a talent all mothers have — it’s what allows them to intuit a child’s hunger, his frustration, his fear — but Mónica had honed it, by necessity. With Francisco, she’d managed to create memories where there were none, build an elaborate, and mostly factual, time line of his travels. She’d formulated opinions about all the major events of her son’s life, and of the friends he’d acquired and discarded along the way. She kept a catalog of certain details, and, having committed these facts to memory, felt reassured about herself as a mother: she knew, for example, where her elder son had spent each of his birthdays since he’d left her side in 1992, even though she hadn’t been present at a single one of these celebrations. It didn’t matter. She’d imagined herself there. In her mind, she’d eaten cake and helped blow out the candles (whether there had been cake or candles being entirely beside the point). The fact that she and Francisco were still close was something she felt proud of, an achievement not to be minimized. This isn’t as obvious or as simple as it might seem; every bond, even that of a mother and child, is breakable.
If Mónica and Ixta had been in touch during those final weeks of Nelson’s absence, they might have had a lot to talk about.
So now, with only the clue of Nelson’s last phone call from San Jacinto to guide her, Mónica began to consider the scope of Diciembre’s travels, and do what she’d always done, perhaps what she did best: fill in details where there were few to be had. Her younger son, her Nelson; he’d been gone about two months by then, longer than he’d ever been apart from her. Too long — though she felt guilty for begrudging him this adventure he’d surely earned. There was, it seemed, nowhere in the country that he couldn’t have seen on this journey. Were there any villages left to explore? Any hamlets? Any rural roads he hadn’t yet taken? And if there weren’t, why didn’t he come home already? It was June, the dry season, a healthy time to be in the mountains. On the coast, the cold had begun in earnest. The heavy sea air clung to the shoreline, enveloped the city. She prayed that her son was enjoying himself, that he’d learned what he needed to learn on this trip, grown in the ways that he’d expected, and in others that would surprise him. She hoped most of all that he would come home soon, though she wrestled with this notion, and wondered if it was selfishness, if a better mother wouldn’t prefer that her son wander and live every adventure he desired. Mónica imagined young village girls falling in love with her son; she found it easiest of all to picture this, since she was in love with him too: with his bright brown eyes and crooked smile, with his curls and the way the edges of his mouth dropped into a frown when he was deep in thought. He looked like a young Sebastián; everyone remarked on the resemblance. She hoped he was careful, at least, if there happened to be an affair in the offing, and that no hearts were broken unnecessarily along the way — especially not Nelson’s. In truth, his was the only heart she cared about. Never mind the girls.
In the city, her days went on without him; not in a blur, but yes, actually, in something of a blur. There was little to distinguish one from the next. Mónica hoped for news, but didn’t expect any. She fell asleep every night, certain that there was no greater torture than an empty house, than this empty house. When she told me this, she gestured with a delicately waving hand, palm up, pointing to the lifeless rooms that surrounded her. I asked if all her careful imagining had been useful at all; if, in all that conjuring, she’d managed to have a sense of what Nelson was going through. Not the details — she couldn’t have had an idea of the details — but a sense.
She thought about it. I think she wanted to say that she had, but found it dishonest, given what came after. That mother’s intuition — she was forced to admit that perhaps it had failed her.
“Maybe I didn’t want to think of him in any real trouble.”
“It wasn’t trouble,” I said. “Not exactly.”
She shook her head. “But it was close enough.”
CERTAINLY THERE WAS NO ONE who missed Nelson more intensely than Mónica. Other people in his circle admitted that his absence in those months was noted, but not often. He was missed — but only in the most abstract sort of way. It was as if in the process of becoming Rogelio, he’d completed some mystical erasure: Nelson almost ceased to exist, temporarily, though it would eventually be seen as a prelude to a more serious kind of erasure. Again and again, I heard versions of the same sentiment: Nelson was well liked, but hard to know. The role they’d all wanted, to form part of Diciembre’s historic reunion tour, had gone to him, their talented, arrogant friend; and now he was off in the provinces, becoming a new, if not improved, version of himself. There was a hint of jealousy to all this, but little curiosity about the specifics of the tour; and in truth, what curiosity there might have been was soon eclipsed by the news of Ixta’s pregnancy. The world over, people are the same. They love to gossip. They love scandal. People asked the usual questions: If Nelson knew, if he was heartbroken, if he was the father, the jilted ex-boyfriend, or both. If he had regrets. If it was true love, or just sex. Any hint of squalor made ears perk up — it was what they lived for. Old girlfriends offered theories and shared indiscreet stories. Those who’d been friends of the erstwhile couple chose sides; and most, it should be said, chose the proud but ultimately likable Ixta over the absent Nelson. No one knew for certain that Ixta and Nelson had been sleeping together until just before he left — their discretion had been absolute — but taken as a group, the students and alumni of the Conservatory were a rather promiscuous bunch, so many suspected it. The conversation among this particular generation of Conservatory alumni played out along the sordid lines of a television talk show, the kind where couples proudly displayed their dysfunction in front of enthusiastic audiences who pretended to disapprove. More than a few of Nelson and Ixta’s friends had played roles on those shows, as drug dealers or teenage mothers, as no-good boyfriends or lying girlfriends, so they understood the tropes well. Betrayal and infidelity had been normalized long ago. They were actors, after all.
One friend of Nelson’s that I spoke to, Elías, was almost sheepish about the way they’d all forgotten their old classmate. We met in a creole restaurant not far from the Conservatory, on a warm afternoon in late January 2002. The tile floors were sticky and we tried three different tables before we found one that didn’t wobble. Nelson’s friend smoked one filterless cigarette after another, a compulsion which seemed to bring him no pleasure at all, but which I finally understood when I noticed that he was studying himself in the mirrored walls of the restaurant, as if critiquing his performance. He caught me watching him — our eyes locked momentarily in the mirror — and blushed.
“I’ve been thinking of quitting,” he said, raising the cigarette above his head.
I nodded, not out of solidarity or comprehension, but out of sheer politeness. Pity. It was clear he was a terrible actor, or perhaps he was simply suffering a bout of low confidence. In any case, he didn’t want to say anything bad about Nelson, so he shared a few memories instead, funny anecdotes about their time studying together, the mediocre scripts they’d endured, the dreams they’d had, which neither, he guessed, would ever achieve. Elías was working at his father’s advertising agency now, making photocopies, fetching coffee, receiving far-too-generous pay for such simple and mindless work. He resented this bit of good fortune; told me it was, in fact, debilitating to his art (he blew a plume of smoke in the direction of the mirror as if to underline the point) and that he was all but torturing his old man, doing everything he could to get fired.
“If it’s so bad,” I asked, “why don’t you just quit?”
The would-be actor stared at me. His expression told me I hadn’t understood a single thing he’d said. He began to answer, but instead picked a bit of tobacco off his tongue. It was a practiced gesture of disdain, which he pulled off fairly well. Then he asked me how I knew Nelson.
“I’m a friend of the family,” I said, which was, by that point, true.
“Sure,” he said.
I brought us back to the subject: Elías carefully blamed the generalized indifference toward Nelson’s disappearance on the actor himself. You reap what you sow, after all.
“He’d always cultivated this air of superiority, this sense of not belonging, of standing apart.”
“I’ve heard that,” I said. “But you were still friends?”
Elías said they were, in a manner of speaking. “But the longer he was gone, the farther away he began to feel. No one said anything at first. But it wasn’t as if he called us. It wasn’t as if he made any effort to reach out to us, to stay connected. He disappeared. Just like he’d always said he would. He’d always pretended not to be one of us. I guess we began to assume it was true.”
BACK IN T—, in his free moments, Nelson was asking himself similar questions. And there were many free moments, plenty of time for a young man of Nelson’s character to ask himself all sorts of uncomfortable things. About his past, his mistakes — many of which he cherished — and his future, which he found unsettling. With each passing day, he was more anxious to leave. He said as much to Ixta by phone.
“I knew he meant it,” she told me later. “I could hear in his voice that he was serious.”
“When are you coming home, then?” she asked him.
“Soon,” Nelson said.
A week passed after Jaime’s message, and still they heard nothing. On the seventeenth day, Nelson demanded Noelia call. “Your brother promised me money,” he explained. “It isn’t a lot, but it’s a lot to me.” She said she understood, but Nelson wasn’t finished. Then there was the matter of the ID card; it was technically illegal to travel without one. Any police checkpoint could spell trouble. “Did you know that? Did you know I could be arrested on the road? While they confirm my identity, I’ll be enlisted in the army, clearing land mines on the northern border!”
Noelia had not known that. He was exaggerating, she was sure of it. Still, she’d never really traveled, except to San Jacinto. And she hadn’t even been there in a few years.
“I tried to tell Nelson there was nothing I could do. I assured him Jaime hadn’t forgotten, and that he hadn’t lied.”
“So where is he?” Nelson asked. “Where is this powerful brother of yours?”
“Jaime’s always busy,” she said carefully. “That’s all it is. He’ll be here soon. I bet we’ll hear from him tomorrow.”
But when they didn’t, Nelson insisted they go to Mr. Segura’s bodega to make the call. The bus from San Jacinto had come and gone; no news from Jaime. Noelia relented. Mrs. Anabel saw them getting ready to leave, and began to panic.
“Where are you going?”
She hadn’t been alone since Nelson had arrived, a fact neither he nor Noelia realized until that moment.
“Just to the plaza, Mama,” said Noelia.
Mrs. Anabel opened her eyes wide. “Without me?”
I almost snapped at her, Nelson wrote in his journal that night, without guilt, only wonder. He saw it as further proof that it was past time to leave this place, to abandon the performance before he made some mistake.
“No, Mama, of course not. We’re all going together.”
And they did: across town to Segura’s shop. It took them more than twenty minutes to make the six-minute walk. Segura was just closing up, but he seemed happy to have company. Noelia went in to call and Nelson waited outside with Mrs. Anabel. He and Segura lowered her delicately onto the steps so she could sit.
“It’s like I’m a queen,” she said.
Nelson had never been with Mrs. Anabel outside the house. Her eyes darted about the plaza, marveling at everything she saw. The heat of the day had passed, and a few locals were out for a stroll. Mrs. Anabel seemed happy to watch them go by. The shawl around her shoulders slipped, and Nelson helped her rearrange it.
“This is my boy,” Mrs. Anabel said.
“And a very nice boy, indeed, madam,” Segura answered. “Are you enjoying your stay?”
“Quite a bit,” Nelson said.
“And how much longer will you visit us?”
Mrs. Anabel looked on. They’d never discussed it.
“A while longer yet.”
“Wonderful,” said Segura.
A moment later Noelia came out of the bodega, apologizing. There’d been no answer on Jaime’s phone.
“What are you sorry about?” Mrs. Anabel asked. She smiled gamely at Segura. “These children are always so polite.”
Nelson sighed. “We need to talk to Jaime, Mama. That’s all.”
The old woman nodded as if she understood. “That sounds nice.”
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” said Noelia.
NELSON DID GO BACK the next day, in fact, only this time he went alone. Segura was friendly, as usual. “Calling your brother?” he asked, but Nelson shook his head.
“Calling the city,” he said, and Segura nodded.
He was calling Ixta. There was very little in Nelson’s journals about the content of those conversations, but he scrupulously noted the length of each call: five minutes, eight and a half, three, seventeen. He made no mention of the long silences she reported to me, just these numbers, now rising, now falling. Perhaps the simple fact that she wasn’t hanging up on him was what mattered; perhaps what he feared most was that one day she might.
Segura had a weather-bitten face and a heavy brow. His hair was mostly gone, so he wore a red cap on his head to protect it from the sun. That day, he dialed the number, then drifted outside to wait. It was his habit, a way of showing respect for his client’s privacy. The call was four minutes long, and when it was over Segura came in to write the amount in his red notebook. Nelson stood at the counter, tapping his fingers and forcing a smile.
“You wanted to talk to your brother, didn’t you?” Segura said, and without waiting for an answer, he reached below the counter. “Take a look at this.” It was a drying, crinkled newspaper from the previous week. “Go ahead, you can take it. If I had to guess, I’d say your brother is busy these days.”
Nelson thanked the shopkeeper and left.
Months later, I found this paper folded into Nelson’s journals. By then it was yellowed and fading, but entirely legible, a copy of San Jacinto’s local tabloid, dated June 21, 2001. On the cover was a photo of a truck surrounded by policemen. The headline read busted, and the accompanying text recounted the seizure of eighteen kilos of processed cocaine at a checkpoint just fourteen miles outside San Jacinto, on the road to the coast. It was the largest seizure in the area in more than three years. There was another fact, mentioned only in passing, but which Nelson, or perhaps Segura, had underlined: the seized truck was registered to Jaime’s company, but had been reported stolen three months prior. Police were investigating. The driver, a young man surnamed Rabassa, was being held in the local jail. The paper said his transfer to another facility was imminent.
THAT NIGHT, Nelson dreamed of the play. In the dream, he and Henry and Patalarga switched roles at random and constantly, even within a scene. It was dizzying and frenetic, but they couldn’t stop. The feeling was terrifying: to be onstage and not be in control. Nelson tried to apologize to the audience, but he couldn’t; nor was it necessary. Far from being put off by these sudden and confusing shifts, the crowd seemed to be loving them. Peals of laughter rose from the dark theater. Bursts of applause. Each time the actors changed characters, the spectators roared wildly, as if the members of Diciembre were acrobats on a wire, improbably cheating death. Henry, Patalarga, and Nelson barreled along. Nelson might begin a line as the president, and finish it as the servant, then shift immediately to Alejo, all without the consent or agency of the actor himself. In the midst of all this chaos, Nelson realized the stage was familiar to him: it was the Olympic, only now the theater was filled with miners and farmers and half-starved children with windburned cheeks, the people he’d been performing for up in the mountains. His head hurt. It was like running on a speeding treadmill, and he couldn’t keep up. He didn’t want to. Meanwhile, Henry had given in to it: the playwright flashed a manic, energized smile, nodding toward the audience with each new round of applause. At a certain point, Nelson realized they were saying “Olé!” as if it were a bullfight; as is often the case in dreams, the metaphor seemed right for an instant, and then fell apart. Who exactly was the bull? Who was the matador?
In the audience, Nelson caught sight of Ixta. (How? he wrote in his journal. Wasn’t the theater dark? It was, and yet, I could see her.) And just like that, he was free of the play. Volume dropped off. Henry and Patalarga went on without him, while Nelson tiptoed to the edge of the stage, and peered out into the dark (which was not so dark, in fact). It was her. It had to be. He could see her clearly: Ixta’s hands rested gently on her very pregnant belly, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was frowning. She was the only person in the theater who appeared not to be enjoying the play at all.
She and Nelson himself, that is. Ixta didn’t call his name or wave or offer any gesture to acknowledge him. She just sat and watched.
Nelson woke with the disturbing sense that many years now separated him from the heady days of his past. From the tour, his life before, and the optimism he’d once had. It was still early, an hour before dawn, the time of day when one’s doubts are most devastating; they hang heavy on your bones. The room was very cold: if there’d been light enough, Nelson might have been able to see his breath. He didn’t understand why he felt the way he did, but there was no denying it. That morning, he was afraid of becoming old, and it was a very specific kind of old age he feared, one which has nothing to do with the number of years since your birth. He feared the premature old age of missed opportunities. He turned on the bedside lamp, but the bulb flashed and burned out all at once. In that brief instant of light, Nelson was able to make out the contours of the messy sculpture with which he shared this icy space. A monster, he thought, and forced his eyes closed. He felt very alone.
He forced himself to sleep again, and this time he did not dream.
Morning came, as it always did, and Nelson readied himself for the day’s performance. He wrote down the dream in his journal and gathered his thoughts. This was what he must have expected of the hours to come: a few quiet moments sitting in the sun with Mrs. Anabel; a sputtering conversation, reminiscent in rhythm and tone of the squeaky up and down of an old children’s teeter-totter. A day like all the others, spinning in place. At some point, he would go for a walk, moving through the streets like a ghost. No one would speak to him unless he spoke first. No one would approach him, or ask where he was from. He’d been introducing himself as Rogelio, and no one in T— questioned him. Some people shrugged, as if they knew already; others nodded without skepticism. A few even smiled. Not complicit, knowing smiles, but ordinary, guileless expressions of approval, of satisfaction: Of course you’re Rogelio, they seemed to be saying. Who else would you be?
When Nelson emerged from his room, Mrs. Anabel was up already, sitting in her usual place in the courtyard. One of the cats, the gray and black tabby, had curled up at her feet in a patch of sunlight. At the sight of Nelson, the cat yawned and stretched, then retreated into the tall weeds. Mrs. Anabel, on the other hand, smiled at him, a hopeful, contented smile, just as she had each of the previous twenty days. But this morning was different. Nelson didn’t smile back, not right away.
“What’s wrong?” Mrs. Anabel asked when he sat.
“Nothing, Mama,” he responded.
Noelia watched from the kitchen window as she cleaned up after breakfast. She saw Nelson sit by Mrs. Anabel’s side and rub the back of his neck. He sat for a long time without talking. She was in and out of the kitchen that first hour, her usual flurry of morning activity; scrubbing, cleaning. As soon as she was finished, she started right in on lunch. Nelson hadn’t mentioned leaving again, not for two days, and she had come to hope he might stay, just awhile longer. She’d miss him when he was gone. At around ten-thirty, she went to the market for some vegetables, leaving her mother and Nelson alone. “They had their heads bowed and were whispering. I even saw my mother smiling, heard her laugh, and I thought everything was fine.”
But when she returned an hour later, things were not fine. Mrs. Anabel’s face was full of worry and her eyes rimmed with red. Nelson wasn’t there.
“Is everything all right?” Noelia asked. “Where’s Rogelio?”
“He’s packing,” Mrs. Anabel said, despairing.
“He’s what?”
“He said he’s leaving. He said he has to go.” The old woman shook her head, then shuffled her feet, as if to stand. “I’d like to talk to your father. Is he out in the fields?”
When she recounted the events of that day, Noelia paused here. There were, she said, some things I should know about her mother. Mrs. Anabel’s deterioration had come slowly, over the course of many years, a process so subtle that at times you wondered if it was happening at all. And even now, when that deterioration was an indisputable fact, her mind was always shifting: there were days when the old woman seemed completely lost, unable or unwilling to connect; and then, just when you’d begun to lose all hope, she’d recover. Like a fog lifting. There might be a spell of three days or more when she was something like her old self. Nelson’s stay in T— had coincided with a relatively consistent period. While Mrs. Anabel was not exactly sharp, she was not lost in the muddle, something Noelia attributed to Nelson’s steadying presence. This was the context, part of what made Mrs. Anabel’s remark about her husband all the more disconcerting. She had scarcely mentioned him in the previous days, and when she had, he’d always been dead.
Noelia took a deep breath. “No, Mama. Papa’s not in the fields.”
“And Jaime?”
“He’s in San Jacinto.”
“Then why won’t he pick up his phone?” The old woman frowned. “Who’s going to give this boy the money he needs?”
Mrs. Anabel slowly got to her feet.
“Where are you going, Mama?”
“I must have something in there somewhere,” Mrs. Anabel said. She was standing now, gesturing toward the room where she slept. “Something I can give him.”
“Sit down, Mama,” Noelia barked. “I said sit.”
Mrs. Anabel gazed at her with big eyes.
“Sit! Now wait here.” Noelia called out for Nelson. She was angry. She wanted an explanation. She deserved one.
“Who is Nelson?” her mother asked.
“I knew immediately I’d made a mistake,” Noelia told me later. She turned back to her mother, attempted a smile, but it was too late.
“Who’s Nelson?” the old woman said again. “Why did you call Rogelio that?”
Noelia knelt before her mother. Mrs. Anabel was breathing heavily, looking pale and worried. Her voice trembled. “You said Nelson.”
“I know, Mama. I made a mistake.”
“Who is that?”
“It’s no one. Now calm down. Everything is going to be all right.” Noelia held her mother’s hands. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Anabel whispered.
Noelia put a hand to her mother’s cheek, and held it there for a moment, until Mrs. Anabel had closed her eyes. “Stay,” she said, then got to her feet and went into the room where Nelson had been sleeping these last three weeks. She didn’t knock, just pushed the door open, and found him sitting on the cot with his back against the wall. He had his legs stretched out, resting on top of his already packed bag.
“What’s going on?” Noelia said.
Nelson didn’t answer. He offered her a space on the cot, but she shook her head and stood with her arms crossed, unsmiling, unmoved.
“You know what’s going on. I want to go home. That’s all. I told her I was leaving.” His voice was full of exhaustion. “I told her I had to go see Jaime. She asked me what it was about, and I said money.”
“Why would you confuse her like that!”
Nelson turned very serious. “I never broke character.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not the one who just called me Nelson.”
“He was right,” Noelia told me later. “And I’m not angry with him. Not really. I was then, but I’m not now. It’s just that I’d hoped things would work out differently.”
“Different how?” I asked her.
She thought for a moment. “I wanted things to go smoothly. I wanted it all to glide to the end. Most of all, I didn’t want my mother getting upset.”
Just then, they heard a voice — Mrs. Anabel — calling out for Noelia.
“Yes, Mama?”
Then to Nelson: “You can’t just leave like that. You have to give her warning. You have to prepare her. It isn’t fair.”
Again, Mrs. Anabel called for her.
“I’m coming, Mama.”
Nelson stood. “Of course it’s fair.”
Just then there was a shout.
Nelson and Noelia ran to the courtyard. Mrs. Anabel hadn’t gotten very far from her seat, only a few steps, in fact. She lay on the ground, face pressed against the stone path. She wasn’t moving.
“Mama!” Noelia shouted.
Nelson reacted quicker; he ran to her side, saw that she was breathing. He helped her turn over. She looked ashen. There was a cut just below her hairline, and a knot forming on her forehead. A tiny rivulet of blood ran down her temple. “Why did you leave me all alone?” she said.
Nelson held her gently. “We didn’t. We were here all the time.”
Mrs. Anabel shook her head. “I don’t know you.”
Noelia had stood back, but she hurried over now.
“Rogelio,” she said. “Go across the street and get Mrs. Hilda. She’s a nurse.”
Noelia held her mother. Nelson hesitated for an instant.
“Go now,” Noelia said.
He did as he was told.
I was the one who answered the door.
I HAD ARRIVED on the bus from San Jacinto that morning. So began my direct involvement in all this. I had no firm plans for my visit: stay a few weeks, perhaps, not longer, spend time with my parents, help my old man repair the roof of their house. I’d brought along a couple of books to read, the long ones I never seemed to find time for in the city, and was determined to enjoy myself. As far as the roof, I was frankly enthusiastic about the task, a fact that surprised even me. The prospect of working with my hands, as my father had done for his entire life, as his father had done before him, seemed appealing. In the days before I left for my hometown, I must have been feeling something akin to what Nelson had, just before embarking on the tour: the heady anticipation of change, the desire to shake up my life, if only slightly, only temporarily. I’d been laid off and I was bored. My friends bored me, my routines. The block I lived on, with its drab storefronts and constant noise. The implacably gray city sky bored me infinitely, and every morning when I stepped out into the streets, I imagined squatting on the roof of my parents’ home in T— after a few hours of work (the details of which I had a hard time conjuring), looking out over the valley, the hills, the cartoonishly blue sky, and feeling good about myself. Proud. I hadn’t felt that way in many months.
That day when Nelson arrived, part of me couldn’t believe I was in T— again. I hadn’t been back in five or six years. Everything was the same, and yet not at all as I remembered, as if every item from my childhood home had been replaced by a smaller, and less impressive, version of itself. My old hiding place, for instance, the tree in the courtyard — from that spot, I’d spent many hours spying on my parents. I saw them argue on occasion, but on one family visit back to T— I also saw them kiss. I must have been eight or nine years old, and no gesture could’ve been more shocking. All displays of affection were scrupulously hidden from us, the children, and to see them touching so unself-consciously had dazzled me. My recollections of that moment are vivid, even filmic, but the tree, I realized now, couldn’t possibly have kept me hidden; it was thin and weak, with narrow knotty branches and a few scraggly leaves, suitable for hiding a cat but not a boy, and I was forced to consider the real possibility that my parents had kissed in the full knowledge that I was watching them.
This is what I was thinking when Nelson arrived. There was a knock, and my mother called from the kitchen that I should answer it. I went to the door. He was slight, with wavy dark brown hair, a little overgrown, and narrowed eyes that betrayed real worry. He was young, about my age, which might not have been important in any other context, but certainly was in a place like T—. It’s likely that on the day we met, Nelson and I were the only two men in our twenties in the entire town. Eric, the mayor’s deputy, was our closest contemporary, and he was still in high school. So we stared, neither quite believing in the presence of the other. If there was no complicity, there was, at the very least, curiosity.
But all he said was, “There’s trouble next door.” Then he asked for my mother. Noelia needed her, he said. Without quite understanding, I called for her. Though I offered, he wouldn’t come in; because I had nothing to say, I told him my name. The stranger nodded and introduced himself as Rogelio.
It was habit, I suppose. I don’t recall if we shook hands.
“Mrs. Anabel fell and hit her head,” he said to my mother when she came to the door, and a few moments later we’d crossed the street, the three of us, and were standing in the courtyard. This is what I remember: Mrs. Anabel sat on the ground, in the sun, looking very small, very frail. She had let herself sink into Noelia’s arms, and at first, didn’t appear to be in any pain, but such a flurry of words poured out of her — names, half sentences, questions — that it was clear she was not well. Noelia was trying to calm her down, and had cleaned her up as best she could with her shirtsleeve, which was stained pink with blood. There was an alarming bump on the old woman’s forehead, and she kept touching it gingerly, before pulling her hand away.
“Don’t touch it,” Noelia said again and again. “Leave it alone. You’re going to be fine.”
I wasn’t so sure.
My mother rushed over, and Noelia’s expression was of relief. I watched my mother in action. She asked Mrs. Anabel to explain what had happened. Then to follow her finger with her eyes. “Can you get up?” my mother asked. “Can you move your toes?”
Mrs. Anabel never answered any of the questions directly. She followed my mother’s finger as it drifted left, and then she stayed there, holding her gaze on the empty space in front of her.
I heard my mother sigh.
Together, my mother and Noelia helped the fragile old woman to her feet. I offered to help, but my mother waved me away. They held her steady. They brushed her off. Mrs. Anabel had a cut on her elbow too, and she held it up for inspection. I watched my mother brush the dirt from the wound, and pick out a few tiny pebbles that had stuck to the broken skin.
Then they all but carried her to her bedroom.
Mrs. Anabel wasn’t dying, or at least it didn’t seem that way to me — but she was on the border of something. That sounds inexact, I know, and perhaps it does lack a certain medical precision, but what I mean is that even then, in the first moments after her fall, Mrs. Anabel appeared to be drifting between two states of consciousness. Her voice would accelerate and then fall off, then pick up again; and neither my mother nor Noelia, and least of all Mrs. Anabel herself, could control it. I watched her move across the courtyard, held up by Noelia and my mother, and it seemed almost as if she were floating, her feet barely touching the ground. She kept up a steady stream of words, calling for friends and relatives, calling for Rogelio, for Jaime, for her husband, quite clearly beginning to panic.
We made eye contact as she passed me. “Where is everyone?” she asked, but I didn’t respond.
Noelia and my mother took the old woman inside, and Nelson and I pressed in too. After a few moments, my mother announced that she was afraid Mrs. Anabel might have suffered a concussion. We’d have to observe her carefully over the next few hours. The danger was swelling, and since no one had seen her fall, we had no way of knowing how bad it really was.
I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to hear any of this. Watching her loosed something within me; like I was a young boy, suddenly aware of nakedness, unprepared for it, and ashamed. I shouldn’t be here, I thought, and somehow this emotion felt selfless at the time, though I see now that it was just the opposite. I wasn’t respecting Mrs. Anabel’s privacy; I was protecting myself from something I feared instinctively. This too was clear: the young man standing beside me felt much the same way. Outside, the earth glowed beneath a miraculous Andean sky, but from the corner of her room, the shrinking Mrs. Anabel exuded only darkness. It was like standing at the mouth of a deep cave and being chilled by its cool breath.
My mother and Mrs. Anabel whispered together for a moment, the old woman shaking her head again and again. Then, in a surprisingly loud voice, she asked for Rogelio. I turned to Nelson (though that was not yet his name to me), who stood with downcast eyes, his fidgeting hands momentarily still, jammed in the pockets of his jeans. He rocked back and forth on his feet, very slowly, and then, without a word, turned and left the room. Even now, this gesture seems very cruel, and I looked to Mrs. Anabel, then to my mother, then to Noelia, who shrugged. There was nothing for me to do there, so I followed him.
I found Nelson pacing the yard, looking alternately at his feet and then up at the sky. I sat by the wall, relieved to be out of doors, and watched this fitful stranger, whose theatrical display of anxiety relieved me of the necessity of displaying my own. There was something very genuine to it, and at the same time, exaggerated. I asked him what had happened, and Nelson frowned.
“My name isn’t Rogelio,” he said.
“So what is it?”
“Nelson,” he answered, then apologized for having misled me.
I told him it didn’t matter.
“You live here?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you.”
“I’m visiting. My mom lives across the street. But you knew that.”
“That’s my room,” he said, gesturing with a half-raised arm toward the bedroom where he slept. “I’ve been here three weeks. Almost.” He shook his head then, as if the very thought of these past three weeks made him tense.
“You’re from the city?” I asked, though I could tell the answer just by looking at him.
“Yeah.”
And then, for some reason, I asked him how he liked our town.
He smiled wanly, then shrugged. “It’s very pretty,” he said, which I would’ve expected him to say. Then he went on: “What I can’t figure out is what people do for fun here.”
It was an odd remark. As odd and misplaced as my question, perhaps. The wounded Mrs. Anabel was raving just a few steps from us, and suddenly Nelson wore an amused look, as if the idea of fun had only just now occurred to him, as if that were his complaint — the lack of fun — and not the terrible scene unfolding in the other room.
“That’s what you can’t figure out?”
He laughed nervously. For this, I liked him. “Among other things.”
“What are you doing here?”
Nelson shrugged. “You know what? I can’t remember.”
“She’s your grandmother?” I asked.
I honestly had no idea what their connection might have been.
He shook his head, but didn’t explain.
My sense of him, in those first moments we spent together, was of someone who’d lost his way. He was tentative, unsure of himself. He showed not the slightest interest in my presence. I could’ve been anyone. The sun was in my eyes, and when I looked at Nelson now, it was almost as if he were being swallowed by the light.
“Do your people know you’re here?” I asked.
“Ixta does,” he said.
“Who?”
“My girl.”
The name stood out. I’d never met anyone by that name. Never even heard that name before, in fact.
It was then that Noelia ducked her head out of the room where Mrs. Anabel was languishing. She wore a look of worry. “Go to the store,” she said. “Ask Segura for hydrogen peroxide and aspirin and bandages.”
Nelson nodded, but made no move toward the door.
“And try Jaime. Segura has the number.” Noelia frowned at me, at my unnecessary presence. We hadn’t even exchanged a greeting. “You go with him.” We were two young men being shooed away from a crisis. Sent on an errand, like children. I was happy to be dismissed.
Except for the walk to my parents’ house that morning, this outing with Nelson was my first in many years through the streets of T—. I was always misremembering the place. The stunted tree in the courtyard was just one symptom of a broader condition. In my mind, the shuttered church had always been open; the dusty, neglected plaza had always been neat and tidy. It was a town where people did not die so much as disappear very slowly, like a photograph fading over time. And here I was again.
The bus I’d come in on that morning was still parked in the plaza, preparing to make its return trip to San Jacinto. A few locals hovered around its open door. They loaded the bags, rearranged them, made space, and jammed in some more. Buses like this one were never full. They left half-empty, and picked up passengers along the way, as many as could fit. Nelson glanced in the direction of the bus. I must have said something about T— not being as I remembered it. I’d been having versions of this very ordinary realization all morning.
“What was it like?” Nelson asked, with something like genuine curiosity.
“Bigger,” I said, though that word was not exactly correct. I thought back to my childhood, in the shadow of these mountains, beneath this sky, and it was the only word that came to mind.
“Everyone’s childhood seems bigger from a distance,” Nelson said.
Segura greeted us both warmly, even me, though he probably hadn’t seen me in years. Nelson was all business: peroxide, aspirin, and bandages. Segura shook his head sadly. “Bandages, I have,” he said. “And the aspirin. How many do you need?”
Nelson held up an open hand, and Segura uncapped a dusty bottle, and carefully tipped five pills into a small envelope. “Anything else?”
“I have to make a call.”
Segura took the phone out from under the counter. Nelson wrote a number down in the storeowner’s red notebook, while the old man spent a long moment and considerable energies untangling the cord. When this task was complete, he bent over the machine and lifted the handset, pressing it carefully to his ear.
“Good connection today.”
Nelson nodded. “Clear weather, I suppose.”
“God bless,” answered Segura. He squinted at the paper, then at the keypad, before pecking deliberately at the numbers, as if selecting which were his favorites.
And meanwhile, I had time to look around: time enough to see the dust motes floating in a bar of sunlight, to test my weight on different sections of the warped and creaky wooden floor, to notice the empty store shelves, featuring one of each item — a single bar of soap, a single box of pasta, a single bottle of Coca-Cola — as if these artifacts were not to be sold but maintained as visual reminders of a lost way of life.
“It’s ringing!” announced the old shopkeeper in a bright voice that seemed out of place in his dreary store.
I stepped outside and sat on the curb, closing my eyes against the early-afternoon sun. I could hear Nelson talking from inside the store, just the rising and falling murmur of his voice, and I made no effort to parse the words themselves. In any case, I didn’t understand much of what was happening, and felt only dimly that it had any connection to me at all. There was a frail and wounded old woman, a neighbor of my parents, that much I knew; and this stranger, whose foreignness in T— made him recognizable. Beyond that, there was nothing, just the ordinary confusion a young man feels when confronted with the place of his birth. My parents were nearing old age, and if they’d come home to be comfortable, part of me knew that they’d also come home to die. Not now, not soon, perhaps, but eventually. Mrs. Anabel’s sallow skin and bloodshot eyes had made that clear to me. The way my mother had rushed to her side only confirmed it. I would have preferred not to think about all this, and so when I felt a pat on the head, I welcomed the interruption. It was Segura, who smiled at me and, not without some effort, lowered himself down to the curb, placing a hand on my shoulder to steady himself through the process. When he was seated and comfortable, he spread his short legs out in front of him, pointing his toes at the sky, and let out a long, satisfied breath. Then he lifted the brim of his cap and let the sun hit his face.
“I like to give my customers some privacy,” he said with a wink.
I nodded, not because I agreed, or thought it was funny or even understood, really; I nodded because I’d been trained my entire life to agree with my elders. If I sometimes forgot this when I was in the city, it came back to me instantly in T—.
The shopkeeper didn’t wait for my answer. “You’re the Solis boy, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Here to help your old man with the roof, I guess?”
I nodded, not at all surprised that he knew my business.
“You’re a good boy.” He paused. “Rogelio, he’s your friend in there?”
And again, out of a sense of respect, I agreed. “My neighbor,” I said, noting briefly that the stranger’s name had shifted yet again.
“He’s always in here, always calling. His brother is going to have a big bill to pay when he comes home.”
Then Segura clapped his hands together at the prospect, a gesture that was not so much greedy as anxious. That money, that windfall, I quickly realized, had already been spent. Lest I misunderstand, the old man began to explain all the ways business had slowed since I’d last come to visit. I listened respectfully, and when the moment was right, told him that Anabel wasn’t well. The bandages, the aspirin — they were for her.
“She hasn’t been well for many years.”
“This is different. She fell.”
Segura shook his head. “At her age that can be very bad.”
Just then Nelson stepped out of the shop. He stood in the doorway, squinting against the sun. The shopkeeper and I turned to face him.
“I couldn’t get through,” he announced.
Segura eyed him quizzically. “That’s odd.”
“Happens.”
“Would you like me to dial again?”
Nelson shook his head.
“Just the bandages and the aspirin, then?”
“Sure,” Nelson said. “Write it down.”
The movement around the bus had all but subsided now, the last few passengers making their way aboard. A light breeze scattered a few leaves across the plaza, and the driver honked his horn twice to announce his imminent departure. It rang across the town like a shot. A few heads ducked out of windows; a sleeping dog sat up with a start, and stared in the direction of the bus.
Nelson did as well. His back and shoulders were straight, and from where I sat, he appeared almost statuesque. The bus clicked into gear, and slowly rounded the plaza in our direction. Without a word, Nelson stepped into the street, and blocked its path. It all happened very slowly. There was something robotic in his movements, as if he were being pulled by some force he could not resist. He held an open palm before him, and the bus slowed to a stop. The door opened. Nelson looked in my direction one last time, then stepped aboard.