After the Hurricane(34)

Seven




On a rare clear day in July 1987, Santiago Vega Jr. took the first flight out of San Francisco in the morning, the first ticket he could get, as sober as Diego had hoped he would be, terrified and hollow with grief. By 5:00 p.m. that evening, he was walking into Rosalind’s hospital room. She had delivered while he had been in the air, after fourteen hours of labor, and now she was sleeping, exhausted.

Next to his wife, wrapped in a pink blanket, lay their newborn baby, a daughter, he could see, pale pink swaddling her limbs. A daughter. It wasn’t until that moment he realized how much he had been hoping, praying, that he have a girl and not a boy. How unprepared, horrified, he would have been to have someone who was a reflection of him.

Her tiny fists were squeezed tightly shut, like she was shaking them at someone in her dreams. He was a mess, reeking from sweat and liquor and stale from his flight, bone tired from his own pain, his sadness. But here she was, this new thing that belonged to him, this whole new person in the world. She had come early, desperate to be in the world, to take the place that Neil had left behind. How was this possible, to say goodbye to a piece of himself yesterday and to say hello to a piece of himself today?

She opened her eyes. Most babies’ eyes were blue and cloudy, but hers were not. Even then they were large, and brown, and she looked at him, stretching out one of her little fists toward his face. He picked her up. She was so light, he could not believe it. How do we become people when we start like this? he wondered. How do we ever get bigger? She continued looking at him, her face so solemn. Rosalind had made him read books about babies, one of them had said they didn’t know how to smile immediately, that they had to learn. He smiled at her, letting his teeth show. He had no idea how to be a father, but this, he knew, he could teach her. He had always been good at faking smiles.

They had agreed on “Elena,” for a girl. It meant “bright one,” and he can see that she will be bright, this baby, she will be brilliant, he can tell by the look in her beautiful eyes, bright as his mother’s but without that flame, that madness.

“Elena,” he said, softly, testing it out. This was who this was, Elena. His daughter.

He thought of all the ways his own life had hurt him, failed him, and all the ways it had been generous, what it had given him. Rosalind. His work. His education. Neil. Diego. And now Elena. The world was a new place for her, and he would make it good, and clean, and perfect. He would do what Neil would have done, he would be a better father, a better man, for her.

He had to. He did not know how, but he had to do it. In that moment, he could not imagine any other reality but that. He would will it into being, like he had willed his life into existence, like he had willed his mind to be sane, like he had willed his past away. Santiago Vega Jr. would not fail, of this he was absolutely sure.

You just have to put them first. That’s all it is.

He was so sure he would not fail, this time.



Santiago Vega Jr. was drunk when his wife went into labor with their only child, drunk and howling with grief in California. Across the country Rosalind admitted herself, on her own, to the University of Philadelphia hospital, as inside of the birth canal Elena Vega started moving, reluctantly, from the safety of the womb to the light of the world. As his daughter prepared her body to experience pain for the first time, the pain of birth, of being cold, of the long years to come in which she would not be able to communicate what she needed, Santiago’s own pain, decades deep, was carving its way across his heart.

When he got the call, he was not alone in his inebriation. He sat, raising an empty glass to his mouth, uncaring, weeping, while next to him Diego sat, head in hands. Grief muted both men, men who talked for a living. They were at the hotel where Santiago was staying in downtown San Francisco, at the bar, the better part of a bottle of whiskey long gone, when the concierge interrupted them, telling Santiago there was a call for him. It was Rosalind, breathing hard, her contractions eight minutes apart.

Technically Neil had died a week ago, but Diego and Santiago and everyone else who remembered Neil celebrated the anniversary of his death on this day, the day they, along with scores and scores of mourners, had scattered his ashes in Golden Gate Park, watching him blow away in the wind. Over the years, they would forget Neil’s real death date, and only remember this day. Diego, who had been numb since the machines had beeped their last long beep, since his love, his life, had gone gentle into that good night, since that plague-marked body had released whatever the soul might be and become flesh, ready to rot, did not remember the time between that moment and the memorial. He must have done things, called people, slept, a little, but if he did it was lost to him, a wash.

Santiago took the call, his eyes on Diego, wondering what had happened to them both. Where had their past selves gone to? Who were these men looking out at him from the mirror behind the bar? He remembered the time they put ties on, for their law school mock trial at Yale, and Diego had laughed that it was choking him, that they were capitalist pigs in the disguise of rebels, that they would be the first ones killed, the betrayers of the revolution. Santiago had laughed, nervously, never as secure as Diego in privilege, never as comfortable putting himself with the bourgeoisie, he who had spent more than one New York winter without heat, sleeping in every item of clothing he owned. Now they both wore suits daily, and Diego had loosened his around his neck. Both of their necks were fatter, how had that happened? They had been skinny boys just the day before, hadn’t they? Now they were real adults in suits, their jowls softening, their skin stretching. There were deep deep circles under each of their eyes and scant white hairs in Diego’s stubble. Was his own hair thinning? Santiago wondered. But they were still young, weren’t they? Ten years ago they both said they would be, should be, everyone should be, dead after thirty-five.