No Witness But the Moon(82)

He bent down and gave her a hug, afraid that he might crush her, but her grip was still surprisingly strong. She wrapped him tightly in her embrace. He caught a whiff of cologne—something vaguely musky that had gone out of fashion the same year men in the neighborhood stopped wearing qiana shirts. He felt a catch in his lungs. He knew that scent. Not from Martha. From his mother.

His mother used to say that she and Martha met over a bag of dropped onions. That was the short version. The long one was more painful. Vega’s mother was barely seventeen when she left her tiny mountain village in Puerto Rico to come to New York. She didn’t speak a word of English. She was boarding with a stern aunt she barely knew. It was February. She didn’t have a good winter coat, boots, or any money to speak of. And nobody in New York had patience for some backwoods jíbaro.

One day her aunt sent her to the local bodega to fetch a quart of milk, some onions, and a bag of rice. The milk carton was defective and started to leak. On the way home, the paper bag split. Milk, rice, and onions tumbled onto the slushy pavement. Vega’s mother started to cry, certain that her aunt would yell at her (and beat her, Vega suspected though his mother never liked to talk against the family). People passed by without giving Luisa Rosario a second glance. Only Martha stopped. She was twenty-four then—seven years his mother’s senior—and fluent in English, having lived in New York since she was thirteen. She not only helped Luisa salvage what she could, she marched her back to the store and harangued the owner into letting his mother have a new bag of rice and quart of milk (though Luisa always suspected Martha had ended up paying for it.) The two became fast friends after that. Their friendship never wavered for almost forty-five years.

“Come. Sit down.” Martha patted the bed next to her. She grasped Vega’s hand in her own. Her palms were as soft as a baby’s skin. Her bob of steel wool hair had been pinned back from her face. “We must talk. We need to talk.”

Her urgency surprised Vega. He took a seat on the bed. The room was hot. He stripped off his jacket and placed it beside him.

“What would you like to talk about?”

“We need Donna here first,” she said. “Is Donna in the kitchen?”

Vega started to panic. He’d never been good with people who suffered from cognitive issues. Even as a cop. He wanted to do the right thing but he was never sure what that was. Did he play along? Did he tell Martha the truth that her daughter had died in a fall from their apartment window more than two years ago? He had no idea what the playbook for this sort of thing was. Clearly, some part of Martha’s brain still believed Donna was alive. Vega didn’t want to be the one to break it to her all over again.

“We can talk without Donna,” Vega offered. Martha nodded, appeased for the moment. He felt relieved.

She leaned forward as if someone might overhear them. “I know Donna can be difficult.” Martha patted Vega’s knee. “But you must not be angry with her. She doesn’t understand.”

“I always liked Donna,” Vega insisted. “I used to give her candy when we were kids, remember?”

“You and Jackie always used to steal it from her.”

Vega stared at Martha, stunned. It wasn’t true! Bad enough that he had to deal with some witness telling the world that he’d shot an unarmed suspect point-blank. But now, his mother’s oldest friend was accusing him of stealing candy from a little girl with Down syndrome?

Vega went to defend himself. Martha shook a finger at him. “You know what you did, yes? So does Luisa. That’s why she wants to talk to you.”

Martha had told his mother this? Vega was dumbfounded.

“I don’t know what you’re remembering. But I swear, I always tried to be nice to Donna.”

Martha’s voice quaked. She was growing more agitated. “You need to say you’re sorry. You need to get your head right with God.”

Ay, caray! This was not going well. Martha couldn’t know about the shooting. And yet she was talking like she did. “Okay. I’m sorry,” said Vega. He was sorry for so many things, he couldn’t even choose between them anymore.

“Where is your sister? Where is she?”

“My sister? Donna’s not—” And then it hit him. Martha was confusing Vega with Freddy. She had no idea who he was.

He grasped what was happening, but it saddened him all the same. He wanted so much for Martha to remember him—or at least, to remember his mother. He noticed a photo album on a shelf above the television. He walked over and pointed to it.

“May I look through this album?”

Martha’s face had gone blank again. She smiled at Vega as if he’d just walked into the room for the first time, like there was a reset button in her head and it had just gone back to “start.”

Vega pulled out the album and sat down next to Martha. He slowly turned the pages. The laminated inserts crackled like a cheap shower curtain. Inside were the usual yellowed assortment of communion shots, weddings, christenings, and holiday celebrations, the gray concrete symmetry of the Bronx contrasting sharply with the verdant chaotic hillsides of Puerto Rico. Some of the people in the pictures Vega recognized. Some, he didn’t. He picked out Martha as a young schoolteacher. He saw her brutish husband grimacing for the camera. Other pictures showed sweet Donna who never seemed to age, Freddy with his sober, serious expression, and Jackie who, even then, looked like she wanted to be somewhere else.