Wish You Were Here(62)
Today, when I left the hospital for the first time in 36 hours, there was a refrigerated truck parked outside for the bodies we can’t stuff into the morgue.
I bet every single one of those people came into the ER, thinking: it will only be a day or two.
I do not see Beatriz or Gabriel for five days. Even Abuela seems to be missing, and I assume that they are all up at the farmhouse together. I convince myself very easily that the reason I feel relieved has everything to do with Beatriz getting help and nothing to do with me being able to avoid Gabriel. The truth is, I don’t know what to say to him. This was a mistake is what sits bitter on my tongue, but I’m not sure what it refers to: the night with Gabriel, or all the years that led up to it.
So every time I leave my apartment and do not see him, it is a reprieve. If I don’t see him I can pretend it didn’t happen, and postpone grappling with the consequences.
One day, I hiked to the Wall of Tears, hoping to find another miracle of cell service. When those bars appeared on my phone, I called The Greens first, arranging for my mother’s cremation and explaining that I was still stuck outside the country. Then I called Finn, only to be put through directly to his voicemail. It’s me, I said. I wrote you postcards, but they … ?didn’t make it there. I just wanted to let you know I’m thinking of you. And then I didn’t trust myself to say anything else.
On another sunny, perfect day on Isabela, I pull on my bathing suit, take the snorkel and mask from Gabriel’s apartment, and walk through the streets of Puerto Villamil, headed to Concha de Perla one more time. A couple of storekeepers—who, like everyone else, have become less strict with the rule about curfew—recognize me and wave, or call out hellos through their masks. A few have come up to me at the feria, trading me sunblock and cereal and fresh tortillas for portraits that they then hang in their establishments.
When I get to the dock at Concha de Perla, there is a massive sea lion lolling on one of the benches. It raises its head at my approach, twitches its whiskers, and then flings itself back into its nap. I strip to my bathing suit and walk down the stairway into the ocean, fitting the mask to my face and swimming with strong strokes into the heart of the lagoon.
A huge, dark shape rises in my peripheral vision. I turn to see a giant marble stingray moving in tandem with me. Its wings ruffle past, a hem sweeping the dance floor. It brushes my fingers gently, deliberately, as if to convince me there’s no threat. It feels like stroking the soft, wet velvet underskirt of a mushroom.
Six weeks ago this would have sent me into a conniption. Now, it’s just another living creature sharing space with me. I smile, watching it veer away from me underwater, until it becomes a dot in the deep blue field and then vanishes.
I float on my back for a while, feeling the sun warm my face, and then lazily breaststroke back toward the dock.
Once again, Beatriz is sitting on it.
She isn’t wearing her ubiquitous sweatshirt. Her arms are bare, crossed with silver lines. She hugs her knees to her chest as I climb the stairs, drop my mask and snorkel, and wring my ponytail dry. I sink down beside her. “Are you okay?” I ask quietly, the same words I first spoke to her on Isabela, a bookend.
“Yeah,” she says, and she looks into her lap.
We fall into a strained silence. Of all the time I’ve spent with Beatriz, we’ve never had nothing to say.
“What you saw … ?with me and your father …” I shake my head. “You know I have someone waiting at home for me. It shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry.”
Beatriz rubs her thumbnail along a groove in the wood. “I’m sorry, too. About not sending your postcards.”
I’ve thought a lot about what might have made her lie to me about mailing them. I don’t think it was malicious … ?more like she wanted to keep me to herself, once she’d made me a confidante. All the more reason, of course, that she would have been shocked to find me in bed with her father.
She trusted me. Just like Finn had trusted me.
Suddenly I feel like I’m going to be sick. Because as much as I don’t want to face Gabriel to discuss what happened between us, I want even less to confess to Finn.
Beatriz looks at me. “I talked to my dad about Ana Maria.”
“How’d that go?”
“Not as bad as I made it out in my head to be,” she says ruefully.
“The mind is an amazing thing,” I reply.
She considers this. “Well, it’s not like I didn’t have a good reason to worry,” she adds. “There are a lot of people in the world who’d hate me because I … ?like girls. But my father isn’t one of them.” Beatriz ducks her chin. “I kind of feel bad for Ana Maria. She doesn’t have parents like him, so she has to pretend all the time. Even to herself.”
I don’t know what to say to her. She’s right. The world can be a fucked-up place, and I suppose you’re never too young to learn that.
“I’m not going to go back to school,” Beatriz tells me. “My father said he’ll let me do online courses here. But I had to promise to talk to a therapist, in return. We Zoomed for the first time, yesterday.” She grimaces. “Something else that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
“Online school?” I repeat. “And Zoom?”
“My dad paid Elena to open the stupid hotel and turn on the Wi-Fi so I could get a decent signal,” Beatriz explains.