After the Hurricane(86)

Hours later, Elena lies on a bed, its sheets crisp and clean, the joy of hotel rooms, linen you don’t have to wash, and stares at the creamy ivory expanse of ceiling above her. It did not take her long to find a room, and she was checked into the Meliá Century Hotel by eight in the evening. Having avoided the rum, she treated herself to a drink in the hotel bar, wincing at the price, smiling at what her father would think of paying that much for a glass of wine in Puerto Rico. They had given her a pamphlet describing the history of the hotel, which has been in operation since the late 1890s, and as she looks around at the mix of architectural styles from the described renovations, early deco in 1915, midcentury modern in 1960, she thinks of the people who have passed through these rooms, drunk at this bar, stumbled into bed or climbed gracefully between the covers. Hotels are a strange thing, she thinks, always projecting the image of new, impersonal, a room just for you, but they are the village bikes of buildings, used and reused, filled with ghosts. Everyone is haunted, it seems, even her.

Hermando hadn’t seemed to mind her turning down his offer to stay with him, as long as she promised to keep in touch. She accepted his request to follow her on Instagram as he watched, like a hawk, and she has already received four messages from him, all in the form of emojis. She writes back, It was so nice to meet you, and gets another one, a cat with hearts for eyes. She smiles, happy that he likes cats, happy that he likes emojis, happy to know more about him.

Since she found out about his disappearance, Elena has been calling her father at least once a day. Santiago is old-fashioned, and he still has a voicemail box. When she calls, his phone is off, she knows, because it again goes straight to voicemail, and for a few moments she can hear his voice, telling her that he is not available. He still sounds like a lawyer on his voicemail, carefully enunciating his first and last names, asking that the caller provide the date and time that they have called, as well as the contact number at which he can reach them. Never mind that all cell phones have Caller ID, that he can see who has called, that the number will be saved in his missed calls.

Now, cradled in sheets that someone else will have to wash, the greatest of luxuries to Elena, who lives in a walk-up and carries her laundry to a laundromat a block away once a week, refusing to indulge in drop-off service, she again takes out her phone, ignoring further emojis from Hermando, and calls her father. She knows that nothing will come of it, as nothing has come of the last ten calls.

Then, someone picks up, and her heart stops. “Papi? Papi?”

She hears a fumble, and a click, and the call has ended. She sits up in bed. Was that him? Was that anyone? She didn’t even hear breathing or anything. Could that have been him? Or someone who stole his phone, or found it on his dead body, or, or—

She is breathing deeply, too deeply, she is dizzy. She tries to calm herself, to breathe normally. She does not want to pass out.

She calls him back, over and over again, but no one answers. And eventually the calls go right to voicemail, the message she was eager to hear sounding so stupid, so painful in her ears.

When Elena was younger, back in high school, and her father started drinking, heavily, again, a state she had never witnessed but something her mother tightly confirmed later had marked the early years of their marriage until he had promised, promised, that he would live life sober, she came home from play practice one Saturday afternoon to a trail of blood spotting the polished wide-plank pine floors of their entryway, kitchen, and dining room. It led up the stairs, marring the carpet, which her mother would replace the following spring, and across the second floor of their home into her parents’ bedroom. Elena followed it, in a gruesome parody of Hansel and Gretel, and found her father sprawled out on the bed, his forearm covered in congealed blood, dirt, and gravel. He had fallen off his bicycle on his weekly bike ride from their house around the East and West River Drives, wide beautiful routes framing the Schuylkill River, and hurt himself. After the long ride, he had stopped at a bar on Spring Garden Street and rewarded his labor with liquor, then veered off the road near a small park in their neighborhood and crashed. He had left the bike behind, Elena and her mother would later learn, and had walked home, made his way to bed, and fallen asleep, his blood painting the house. Elena had gone to the park the next day, when he had woken from his stupor and was able to piece together some of his actions, but the bike was gone.

This wasn’t the first, or the last, bad thing that would happen to her father. Rosalind tried, Elena knows that she did, to save her father from himself, but no one can do a thing like that, not really, and Elena also knows that her mother’s choice to leave him was a painful one because of the pain Rosalind knew her husband would end up causing himself. The fact that he has made it ten years now without her there to clean his cuts, to pick him up at the hospital, to make sure he survives the life he chooses to live, makes Elena feel that he is somehow blessed, touched by grace. But this can’t last forever.

Stabbing pain, under her left eye, comes and goes like a large needle. She looks up, rubbing at the spot, but it’s internal, her fingers don’t do any good. She lies awake for a long time that night, thinking of her father as a dead body, but no matter how long she thinks about the image, she does not cry. She does not feel sad. She just feels panic, and emptiness.



Elena wakes from blissful dreams of drowning to a call from her mother. She doesn’t answer it. She can’t. She can’t talk to her right now. If she does, everything will come out, the bitterness she feels, and she knows Rosalind will not say she’s sorry, not say she regrets it, and Elena isn’t ready to hear that lack of remorse. She doesn’t have the energy to think about Rosalind right now.