After the Hurricane(9)
“We have dinner at seven,” Rosalind said, neutrally.
“We’re celebrating. Don’t forget,” said Elena, looking at him, willing his brain to remember.
“See you back at the hotel at six,” he said, walking out the door.
Hours later, lying on the hotel bed alone as Rosalind and Elena left for the meal without him, too drunk to stand on his own, he wondered what it was he couldn’t quite remember. It niggled at his brain, tugging at the edge of his inebriated consciousness. He should have made it to the dinner, they were celebrating something. The house? No, oh no, it was more than that, but what?
It was Elena’s birthday. And the anniversary of Neil’s death, the one he celebrated at least. His daughter, who he was not there for; Neil, who he could never be there for again. You gave them everything you could, you are giving her a house, that’s enough, something has to be enough, he thought, but he knew nothing would ever really be enough. He had been born so thirsty, he could never quench another’s throat when he himself was empty, forever empty. He gave his daughter the life she deserved because he couldn’t give her anything else, any part of himself, it was all too ruined for her to have. He lived in fear of her brain being like his brain. He lived in fear of what he had given to her, or he would have, if he had been able to focus. He was shutting down those fears because they were too much to feel and it was easier for him to live without them. He thought about Elena and Neil, coming and leaving. Doors opening and closing at the same time, and him, as unconscious as he could make himself so he wouldn’t have to feel a thing about either.
He was asleep long before he could remember all that he was forgetting.
Four
Elena sits in Newark Airport, and considers the concept of purgatory.
She is not Catholic. Her father is a Catholic, or was, or maybe Catholicism is like addiction, maybe you are always Catholic regardless of your consumption patterns. Elena has never met a Catholic who has uncomplicated feelings about the religion, including Santiago. He was always more than happy for Rosalind to take their child to synagogue, and Elena was raised Jewish. Perhaps he was always happy for his own history to disappear. Elena is content in her Judaism, it appeals both to the historian in her, which bitterly enjoys the richness and pain of her religious legacy, and the pragmatist, which finds the idea of heaven hard to stomach.
Besides, she has recently wondered if Rosalind would rather the parts of Elena that are Puerto Rican not actually exist.
Nevertheless, the concept of purgatory has always appealed. As she sits, carving out a tiny bit of space for herself, with her small carry-on bag with slick easy-rolling wheels, between expansive travelers on either side, she thinks that purgatory might be the truest thing any religion has ever invented, because it is so deeply reflective of the human experience.
On her right sit a couple, a man and a woman, whose appearances say, but don’t scream, tourists. They are late thirties, they do something that makes money—the ring on the woman’s finger is big, sparkly, definitive, the man’s laptop case is well-tooled leather and subtly bears an expensive brand’s initials. The woman pages through a slim guidebook with a matte cover and no photograph, always a sign of a more refined recommendation list, while the man plays on his phone. Both are dressed in a New Yorker interpretation of tropical wear, which Elena can see because they’ve discarded their layers of wool and fleece, laying down their armor against the winter. Elena imagines the man has dug out a linen shirt from his summer clothing box, happy to get to wear it in the off-season, and the woman has traded out her usual all-black everything for the sand-washed gray tunic with white crocheted lacework over slim white pants. Elena wishes that she could wear white pants and not hear her mother’s voice in her head, gently reminding her that white isn’t very slimming. Elena thinks that in white pants her legs each look like a lamb, fattened before the slaughter, or like pale German sausages, the pork flesh so light it has a pallid gray sheen.
Elena wonders why they are going to the island now, in the wake of all that has happened. Perhaps they want to support the local economy, or perhaps they got an excellent deal, a scavenger’s bargain. Tourism after disaster has an element of ambulance chasing, but then, is it not also exactly what people need to recover? Does it matter if the money comes from a hand soaked in pity, just as long as it comes?
On her left side, Elena is buffeted by two women and what looks like all of their worldly possessions. Their carry-on items are like Mary Poppins’s carpetbag; when they sat down next to Elena they were contained but as they open up their luggage it seems to multiply in space, infinitely. The women are nut brown, the skin around their eyes wrinkled with laugh lines, the eyes themselves sinking into their faces. Both of them have hair dyed colors not available in nature, one a vivid purple red, one a blue black, both pulled back from their faces into puffy frizzy ponytails. They are as bundled up as the couple to Elena’s right are stripped down, still shivering from the cold of the day. At their wrists and necks Elena can see gold and silver and coral bracelets and necklaces, a cross or two, a saint’s icon. They chatter, loudly, about the cold, about the airport, about Elena herself, asking each other if she, like them, is Puerto Rican. Elena does not reveal to them that she can understand what they are saying. Her Spanish is not perfect, her mistakes make her self-conscious, and besides, she herself does not know the answer to their question.