Signal to Noise(57)

“Can you tell me the story of the girl in the well, grandmother?” she asked.

“Aren’t you working?”

“I’m tired.”

“There once was a little girl who lived deep in a well. The chaneques had taken her when she was little, stolen her from her mother and placed her deep in the middle of the forest, inside a well—”

The phone rang and Meche rushed to pick it up, breathlessly holding the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Hey, Meche,” her father said.

Oh. She thought it might have been Sebastian. He would tell her the evening had been crap and they would laugh together about it.

“I’m going to be home late tonight. I’ve got some business over here.”

“Do I leave your plate out?”

“Just put it in the refrigerator. Thanks, sweetheart.”

“Okay. Night.”

Meche went to the kitchen and put some picadillo on a dish, then began covering it with plastic. Her mother walked in and glanced at her.

“Dad’s coming late.”

Her mother did not say anything. She dropped her glass in the sink and walked out, but Meche could see it in her eyes: she was angry. Dad was probably at the bar, getting drunk. She hoped she was not going to be sent out to find him. But, as was regularly the case, an hour later she was putting on her green jacket and gnashing her teeth.

She poked her head into the bar and looked around. Her father was not playing dominoes and he was not chatting with the regulars. He was not there.

Meche walked back home and poured herself a glass of milk before going to bed. Her mother, nestling a cup of coffee between her hands, was reading a magazine.

“He wouldn’t come,” Meche lied, though she did not know why she did.

Her mother turned a page and nodded.





VICENTE LAY IN the arms of his mistress and thought of his wife. It was the worst time possible to be doing this, but he could not get Natalia out of his mind.

He needed to leave her. He was tired of sneaking around. He was just plain tired. When he woke up in the morning he saw a middle-aged man with grey hair and a forlorn expression in the mirror. He hated that man. He hated himself.

But there were some practical things to consider. Their daughter, for one. And, though it might sound crass, there was the issue of the money.

Vicente had none. His desire to move to Puerto Vallarta, to live by the beach and spend his days watching sunsets, drowned in the reality of his scant possibilities.

He wished he was fifteen, even ten years younger than he currently was. He wished he had never met nor married his wife. Then he didn’t wish that because that would mean Meche would not exist.

Azucena had told him about a business venture of a cousin of hers, something guaranteed to bring in dough. Vicente imagined himself rich, with a house in el Pedregal and a brand new sports car. Meche could live with them. She’d like it there. He’d buy her nice clothes and take her to eat out every night of the week.

“What is it that your cousin does, again?” he asked Azucena.





Mexico City, 2009





MECHE BOUGHT PISTACHIOS and a Coke at the corner store. Catalina Coronado was there too, buying eggs. The old woman stood gossiping and Meche had to wait ten minutes as the gnarled witch informed the shopkeeper of the movements of everyone in the colonia. Finally, Meche was able to pay, dumping her coins on the counter. Then it was onto the bus, headphones on, until she reached her father’s apartment.

The apartment seemed to be getting more depressing every day and Meche was sure the flamingoes were growing anemic. Their ugly, faded, pink bodies blurred into one large pink blob when she stared at the curtains for too long. If she stared at the records the faces on the covers also blurred and changed, becoming faces of people she had known. Becoming her father.





KEEP MOVING. KEEP going. Keep running. Go through another pile of records, toss another box in a corner. Repeat.

Three more nights of prayer and then it was over.

She switched to her father’s papers, cramming pages from his book into a box, slamming the typewriter on the top. She emptied the bedside table and found his diary for the current year.

March’s entry. Written with his tight handwriting, filling every centimetre on the page.





I am planning on visiting Meche next year in Norway. She doesn’t know it yet. I have decided to save enough money for the plane ticket and go in the summer. I want to see Meche before I die.





Meche went into the kitchen and searched the cabinets for her father’s booze. But there was none. The old drunkard was disappointing her: he wouldn’t even share his liquor.

Meche laughed. She opened the front door, determined to leave for Oslo right that instant. Determined to escape the dark, dingy apartment, the singers plastered on the covers of an army of records, the notebooks crammed with his life. She was going to die if she didn’t get some air.

But back home there would be the food, the prayers, the people, the conversations and her father’s picture in a silver frame set high upon a shelf for everyone to see.

She hurried back to the bedroom, lay on the bed and turned up the volume on the iPod, searching for a recent song. Something fresh. Meche closed her eyes.

When she woke up there was a tall, dark shadow in the doorway, blocking the light which filtered from the living room.