After the Hurricane(15)
She climbs the stairs, carrying her bag with her, sweat seeping out of her, rolling down her arms and thighs. Everything is shut, all the windows, and the air feels dead. The second floor has the kitchen, the living room, a bathroom, her parents’ room, why does she still think of it that way when they haven’t shared a room, a bed, in years?, and the stairs up to the roof. The light in the living room also isn’t working, but the kitchen light is, and she turns that on, hoping that there isn’t any food going bad. How long has Santiago been missing? She has no way of knowing if he walked out on a full larder, or if his cupboards are bare. The fridge is empty, to her relief, even though her stomach growls, except for a beer or two. Half a bottle of rum sits on the counter, and Elena’s lip curls, wondering why her father left it behind, she has never known him to be a man to leave alcohol unfinished. The pantry has a can or two of soup, a small bottle of olive oil, some dried beans, and some pique, vinegar infused with chilies, used as hot sauce on the island.
Elena fills a glass with water from the sink, relieved that that, too, is running. She drinks it down in one gulp, then fills her glass again, walking over to the windows, doors, really, which run from the floor almost to the ceiling, in the living room. She opens them, opening the house to the street, to the world, and enjoys the breeze, leaning against the wooden waist-height bars. Every window becomes like a balcony when it is opened in this house. Elena loves this about it, loves opening up the door-windows and letting the city, the night, into the place, loves all that she can see from up here, loves the wind that comes in two directions, from the bay and from the open ocean. She thinks about Santiago. Does he love that, too? Does he close his eyes and feel the breeze and feel happy, even when his house is like this, this mess?
This floor isn’t much better, more piles, more things for Elena to sort out in the morning. She moves to his room, where, at least, there is a bed. When were the sheets last changed? She looks—using her phone for light, for the room’s light works but not the closet’s—for more bedding, a towel, anything she needs. She finds stashed pottery, jumbled shoes, more books, cracked glasses, empty rum bottles.
There is a couch in the living room. She will sleep on that. She grabs the rum off the counter, and strips off her pants, which cling to her. She drapes them over her bag, and walks, in her blouse and underwear, up to the roof, where her mother had placed potted plants and her father loved to sit for hours, watching bees buzz and lizards sun themselves, where Old San Juan spreads out in front of her, damaged and defiant and smelling like the night. She should go get something to eat, she should make an effort to do some cleaning, she should shower. She has no energy for any of these tasks, no way to imagine herself doing them. She has made it, arrived intact, that is enough for now.
She sits down in her father’s chair, weather-beaten wood cracking and dry against her sweaty body, and takes a sip of his rum, and wonders how she got here. She wonders where he is, and if she will really be able to find him. She wonders what it must have been like when the hurricane came, when wind, an invisible force, hit the island like a boxer, pummeling it over and over again, no bell to end the round. She wonders if it felt like death, and rebirth, letting something like that move through your body, tear out the other side.
She drinks more rum, feeling it moving through her veins, sweet numbness, and wonders if her father is still alive. If he is tucked into a doorway somewhere in the city below her, or lost in the jungle, or dissolving under the ocean, his body food for fish. If he is lost and gone forever, or if he will be there when she wakes up the next morning, smiling and ready to take her out for breakfast. She wonders which one of those would make her feel something, anything at all.
When she wakes up, it is to the cooing of pigeons, somehow soothing and grating at once. The sun is small in the east, the day not yet flooded with light, and her body is stiff, her right arm asleep, her head aching. She swings her body forward, unable to move her arm otherwise, and watches it swing, dead weight. It will soon prickle in pain, and then it will be normal, under her control once again.
She blinks, her eyes crusted at the corners, and stands, stretching. She is an idiot for falling asleep on the roof, it was uncomfortable, and besides, it could have rained. It usually does, at least a little bit. San Juan is just a little over half an hour from El Yunque, a small rain forest, and the rain part is no joke. She was lucky, she thinks to herself, grimly smiling. Yes, lucky is exactly what she feels.
The house looks no better in the morning light. Darkness, in fact, had covered many of its sins. The wooden windows are faded and dull, their hinges rusted. The kitchen is sticky and dusty, the original color of the polished granite countertop invisible under a layer of grime and knickknacks.
The couch, she can see now, is the cleanest thing in the room. She lies down on it, her back aching from the chair, and watches the ceiling fan move lazily. The house is a disaster. But is that because it was left to decay weeks ago, or because this is how her father lives? She will not find answers on this couch, she knows, but how she would like more sleep. Since her mother told her Santiago was missing, sleep has not been a frequent visitor in Elena’s life. She gets it in fits and starts, ten minutes on a crowded subway, thirty seconds in the middle of a lease signing, an hour on the flight from New York. Sleeping on the roof, as strange as it was, is the most she has slept in days.
Her exhaustion has made it hard to see her friends, not that she sees them much anyway. Relationships have never seemed to stick to Elena. She watches them pass her by, and the people she calls friends today are similar, comfortable meeting once a month, comfortable with long silences in communication, and conversations without profundity or prying. Daniel had been the stickiest thing in her life in a long time, and she could not deny the relief when he unlatched. Easier to let people go than have them wake up and realize they were sticking to someone not worth the effort.