After the Hurricane(20)
Santiago found himself nodding. Rosalind wasn’t a bitch, but she didn’t get it either, that sometimes he needed this. This escape. This thing that shut down all the thoughts, that calmed his moods, that helped him be normal. But Paul got it. Santiago wasn’t something abnormal. There were other people like him. Thank god for Paul. Paul thought he was normal. He must be, then.
“Back to it,” Paul said, stamping out his cigarette.
The first time Santiago Vega Jr. had brought his infant daughter, Elena Vega, to Puerto Rico, for the wedding of his youngest brother, Jorge, he felt like he was stepping back in time, to when he could remember visiting the island himself for the first time, at the age of seven. He had been back before then, but seven was the first time he really remembered arriving, and so little had changed that it took the air from his lungs and he had to remind himself he was an adult, a man, a lawyer, someone real, and not just the ghost of his father’s former life.
He stood, waiting for their luggage to arrive on the belt, as nearby, Rosalind tried to calm Elena, who at eighteen months old had been an angel on the flight down, sleeping peacefully. However, as soon as the plane landed and the many Puerto Rican passengers clapped enthusiastically, congratulating the pilot, and each other, on not dying, Elena let out a scream to wake the dead and hadn’t stopped since. He didn’t blame her. His own heart felt like lead and he longed for a drink, a mouthful of rum to quell his dread of what was to come. But he wasn’t drinking now, he had promised Rosalind. He faltered, every now and again, hiding a night out with mouthwash and cologne, but for the most part he was good, he was strong, he abstained. He hadn’t had one in almost a year now, and while it killed him, he knew it was for the best. He had to be careful with Elena, with his daughter, a little doll whose giant brown eyes looked at everything, who grabbed his nose and pulled and made him wish he could give it to her, who he was more in love with than he had ever thought humanly possible, who was screaming so hard he worried her lungs would shatter as he spotted one of their suitcases.
“I’m going to walk her up and down for a bit,” Rosalind told him, her face flushed. The people around them were looking at his irate daughter with affection, but Rosalind never wanted her kid to be that child, the one annoying everyone with their unhappiness. He nodded, tickling Elena’s feet. She stopped screaming for a moment, looking at him with shock and dismay that he had tried to make her laugh when she was so set on crying, looking so much like her mother that it made him smile. Elena did not appreciate his amusement at her distress, and went back to her shrieking.
“Very helpful,” Rosalind said, dryly, pointing out another suitcase as she walked away, jiggling their daughter desperately.
An hour later, they were still at the airport, waiting for his father, who was, of course, late. Elena had exhausted herself and was sleeping on Rosalind, who had found a single spot of shade in the waiting area outside the airport, trying to escape the harsh tropical sun. Santiago sat on the curb next to them, feeling his skin baking. He never burned, but sweat coated his whole body. Rosalind looked at him, her gaze accusing, and he shrugged.
“We can take a cab. This is ridiculous, Santiago.”
“We can’t.” She knew the way his father was. He would be furious if they denied his hospitality, his help, he would mock his son for the expensive cab ride, goading him about his money, his success, even as he needled his other sons about their lack thereof. Time with his father was like time in a dog racing arena, with him and all his siblings as the dogs, eager for love, spurred by abuse, and all of them panting at the end, spent and sad and alone.
“Where the hell is he?” Rosalind asked, hissing. Elena wiggled in her arms, and settled, her little face as flushed with the heat as Rosalind’s. “We have a child with us, Santiago, and your father is an hour late. More! Our flight was delayed, which he had no way of knowing.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” he hissed back. “I can’t make myself important to him, can I?” He wanted to bite his tongue. Where had that come from? It was a ridiculous thing to say. But Rosalind’s expression softened, perhaps it had been useful. She laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Is this hard for you?”
“It’s fine, I’m happy to be here. Happy I got the time.” He looked away from her. He’d been at the firm for over a decade now, and while it was clear he was never going to make partner, any more than any other Puerto Rican lawyer at a corporate firm in the United States would in 1989, he was doing well, with a strong caseload. It made vacations hard. It made sobriety hard, but he was better, more in control, he was sure of that.
After Elena’s birth, and everything that had come with it, Rosalind had finally succeeded in forcing him to see someone. He had done it to make her happy, and he spent the session with the little man with half-moon glasses mostly in silence, answering a few questions as simply as possible and revealing nothing of himself he would not tell his boss, his clients, or a waiter at a restaurant he’d happened to get friendly with. At the end of the session, the doctor referred him to a psychiatrist, who was a man around his own age, Dr. Anthony Moretti. This was much more comfortable for Santiago, the world of illness and cure, not this ephemeral invasive talking, uncovering what was buried for a reason. You didn’t go around a cemetery digging up corpses, why do that in your own mind? If he fell backward, if he opened up the past and talked about it all, he would never escape it. He had to go on, he could not turn back now. Dr. Moretti understood, he listened to Santiago talk about his moods and actions and he nodded and gave him a pill, small and white. Santiago took it when he felt like it, and it helped sometimes, numbing him the way a stiff drink would. But sometimes it put him in a fog there was no path out of. Drinking, he could control how he felt. This pill controlled him, and he loathed it. Still, he took them, every day like he was supposed to. Medicine made you better. This made him better. He had to believe that.