After the Hurricane(22)
“We have the rehearsal dinner tonight at eight,” she said, gently. Santiago Sr. dismissed her with a wave of his hand. Rosalind hated this most of all, on the island, the way his father treated his stepmother. But Santiago Jr. was helpless in the face of this, as he was with everything regarding his father. He sipped his beer, closing his eyes at the taste of alcohol, the feeling of it. He should have said no, should not have accepted the offer. It had been a year. But here, with his father, the reasons not to drink seemed far away and strange and stupid. He could have one beer, couldn’t he?
“I heard about your mother,” his father said, frowning slightly. Santiago Jr. did not want to discuss this with his father, so he said nothing. His father had, indeed, been in the army, and still sat with military attention until he had had enough to drink that he could sink into a chair unself-consciously.
“I couldn’t go to the funeral,” his father said. Santiago Jr. nodded. He knew. He had been there. Surely he would have noticed if his father had come as well. It had been a bizarre affair, much like his mother’s life. Rosalind sat beside him, clutching his hand, as Elena, then only three months old, slept peacefully. A motley crew of mourners, people from the old neighborhood, people Santiago Jr. had hoped, prayed, as if he believed in God, to never see again, sat around him crying for his mother. Santiago Jr.’s eyes were bone dry.
In the middle of the sermon, a thing of hellfire and brimstone delivered in formal Spanish in the funeral parlor at First Avenue between Second and First streets in Manhattan, a man had come in, off the streets, homeless, or he looked that way, and started speaking, interrupting the preacher. He had rambled about ancient gods and their demands and how there must be sacrifices and blood, they needed blood, everyone knew that, and that death was just a mirror and that he needed five dollars right now, why wouldn’t someone give him five dollars, it wasn’t right, wasn’t Christian, wasn’t human. No one had known what to do, what to say to make him stop. The entire funeral party had been frozen in shock, as his mother’s body sat, calmer in death than in life, and bore witness to this madness. Eventually, facing an unresponsive audience, the man had departed of his own accord, and the service continued, the priest’s words faint in the haunted air.
Elena slept through it completely. He’d been jealous of her, that deep baby sleep. It was like it hadn’t happened at all.
“Well. Better this way, I guess,” his father said, shrugging. Santiago Jr. looked at him. He had felt many things for his father over the years, but this, this spike of loathing, was entirely new, and he was not prepared for it. Better this way. He wanted to strike him, wanted to cry. He drank his beer, to stop himself from doing something else.
Rosalind appeared, then, in a change of clothing, with Elena looking awake in a frilly dress. She looked at him, and the beer in his hand, and her mouth tightened, but she said nothing. She put their child down in the garden, where Elena immediately started stumbling around pulling at things. His father chased her down, careful to guard his precious plants from her fat fumbling fingers, and grabbed her. She struggled, amazed at the land crabs his father kept in a cage at the edge of the roots of his avocado tree. She reached out for them, and they reached back, sharp pincers ready.
“No, linda, no, not that, let’s find you something better to touch,” his father said, tenderly, in the English he rarely offered Rosalind. He led Elena to bright flowers, and plucked them for her baby hands to shred.
Santiago Jr., already affected by the beer, looked at the scene of his father, who had just said his mother was better off dead, cuddling with his own daughter with petals covering them both, and wanted to throw up. He had never felt such rage than at this moment. He turned, downing the rest of the beer, and went to shower, to change, to prepare himself for his brother’s wedding, for the onslaught of family who would celebrate him and ask him where he had been and avoid the gaping hole between him and his father, the past that stretched out between them, the way his father had left his mother, and him, behind, to build all this back here.
He would get extremely drunk that night, but subtly, so that Rosalind, exhausted from the trip and caring for their daughter and interacting with the loving, nosy, judgmental hordes of Puerto Rican family members, barely noticed. But it would not help him sleep. Instead, it would keep him up, and he spent that night staring at the ceiling as his wife and daughter slept around him, wondering if Elena would ever feel for him what he felt for his father now: hard rage. In the morning, it would have faded, and he would, over the days and weeks to come, through the wedding and the trip home and the many days after, press it all down until it was over, forgotten, as he did so many things, but for a moment, he mourned what might come, would come. His child would hate him someday, when he failed her, the way he had been failed. He had never been more certain of anything in his life.
But in the morning, he looked at her and was certain he would never, ever let her down.
Six
After finishing the work on the March contracts, because Elena is nothing if not conscientious, she sips her coffee, grimacing at the bitter burnt-bean taste. Puerto Rico has much better coffee than the Starbucks she is drinking, sitting in the air-conditioned café and watching waiters set up outdoor seating in front of the many touristy restaurants that line Calle de Tetuán, the curved street that has an assortment of cruise ship–friendly bars and establishments. From the window she can just see the bay in the distance, where the massive ships dock and spit out lobster-red people daily. Or they used to. Hurricanes are bad for cruise lines.