After the Hurricane(102)

But he didn’t. And the car stopped, and Junior peeled his sweaty sandy back off the car seat, and opened the door, stepping out into the night and a thousand mosquito stings.

“Hey.” He looked back, and his father was looking at him. He reached for something, and Junior realized it was his own shirt, which he had taken off before they had arrived at the beach, and never bothered to put on again.

“Goli got you?” his father asked, and Junior nodded, reaching for the lanced boil. “Did you scream?” Junior shook his head, lying to his father. Santiago Sr. smiled. “Good. Reacting to pain only makes it worse, you know.”

“I know.”

And then Santiago was gone.





Eighteen




Elena spends the night on Goli’s overstuffed little couch. By the time the woman was tired of talking about her nephew the shadows had begun to deepen, and Naomi was yawning. Elena wondered idly how it was okay for this woman to just leave the cemetery for the day and not go back for hours and hours, but that was Puerto Rico for you, and besides, it’s not like there is much to steal in a graveyard. Goli insisted that Elena stay the night, and she cannot really refuse. She does not know where else to go, or what to do now, even. She texted Diego about her plans, and received a thumbs-up in return. Funny how the older people here seem so excited to embrace images as words. She texted her mother, too, a few short sentences, and Rosalind wrote her back, I’m glad you’re meeting Goli. Elena’s heart aches at this. Is Rosalind really glad? She hopes so. No matter her anger, she really does hope so.

Goli talked and talked about Elena’s father, Junior, never referring to him as anything else. Her memory was sharp as a tack in some places, blurry and flawed in others, and sometimes words failed her in Spanish, leaving Elena and Naomi shrugging. But most of it was achingly clear. Goli thought of Junior as a young man, still, under her care. She spoke of how smart he was, what great things life would hold for him. She told Elena of his college admittance, of the first time he brought Rosalind to the island, mixing up time, patching it together like a quilt. In one story he was still seven, in another it was his First Communion, then he was a man of twenty, then fifteen again. Elena listened to the stories like they were about a stranger—well, they were. The Junior of Goli’s stories was sweet, and serious, and always reading. He was easily amused by parrots chattering and dogs playing, but he was good, too, eager to help his grandfather, Goli’s father, in the fields despite it being his vacation. He loved the ocean, he would run into it screaming and stay in it for hours, and here Elena saw herself, ever ready to be in the sea. He loved San Juan, and he would go, when he was old enough, for a day, with fifty cents from his father, and wander the streets until his father could pick him up at the ferry terminal in Bayamon after he had finished his mail route. He always brought gifts for her and Luis, her deceased husband, little things they treasured, which Goli showed her, a glass figurine, a postcard from Mexico, a statue of a saint from Spain.

There is so much Goli cannot tell her, so much the woman doesn’t know, or doesn’t remember. His life in New York, his family there, his time at Stanford and Yale, how he met her mother, how he felt about himself, about his world—Elena knows she will never know any of this, never really know his story. So she clings to what she gets, little pieces of driftwood in the sea of his life.

She stares up at the ceiling now. It is early, ten o’clock, but past Goli’s bedtime. A lizard walks across the walls of the house, Elena can see it moving fast, then stopping for long moments, then running again. An extreme way to live life, either running or standing still, but it works for lizards, she supposes.

She had asked Goli one question that had given her some kind of useful response. She asked about Santiago now, where Goli thought he might be. She wasn’t really sure why she asked it, except that she wanted to know, even if it was meaningless. She wanted to ask someone else so she could stop asking herself. Goli had smiled her wrinkled little smile.

“El Balcón Familiar,” Goli said, winking at her. Elena looked at Naomi, who shrugged.

“It’s a bar in town,” Naomi said. Elena nodded.

“He loves that place,” Goli said. “His father did, too, and Luis. Might as well be our family home!” Goli giggled at her own joke, and Elena joined her, weakly.

Now she thinks of that name, wondering. She shouldn’t have any kind of hope, really, she knows, but she does. She tells herself that she will just leave in the morning, return to Rincón, give back her rental car, go back to San Juan, book her flight home, leave this all. Let go of the house, let go of her father, let go of expectation and need and anger and the desire for anything that comes from here, from him.

But in the morning, she knows she will be at the bar, instead.



Goli feeds her breakfast cheerfully, although Elena wonders if Goli quite knows who she is when she sees her in the morning. There is a moment of uncertainty before the smile, and Elena reminds her, I’m Junior’s daughter, just in case. This earns her toast with guava jam and a bottle of pitorro, which Elena is sure will burn the lining of her stomach, as well as the command to come again soon, like they have met before, like Elena even knew she existed. Elena hugs her, and even takes a photo of her with her phone in front of her little home. Perhaps she will print this, and all the other photos, and make her own album, she thinks, start her own book of Puerto Rico memories that are really hers, not borrowed ones. Because yes, this island is her father’s. But is it not hers as well, just a little bit? No matter what Rosalind thinks or wants, isn’t it Elena’s choice to take what has been given to her? It is there for the taking, if she decides she can.