Girl in Snow(14)

In prison, Ivan fought no one, made no friends. Instead, he read books: Latin American philosophers, combined with texts from a fresh-

man liberal-arts syllabus Ines found online. These were the sort of books Russ couldn’t get through if he tried. Plato’s Symposium, Foucault’s unintelligible French lectures about power. José Martí, Juan Montalvo, Leopoldo Zea, and the writings of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, whom Russ Googled and found to be the first Latin American feminist writer. Ivan copied the entirety of the New Testament onto legal pads, which Ines purchased and mailed in bulk. In the end, the only evidence of Ivan’s time in the slammer was this homemade New Age–Christian religion, an impressive combination of scholarly philosophy, Catholicism, and motivational speaking. And one sloppy jailhouse tattoo—a bleeding Virgin of Guadalupe on Ivan’s right wrist, a bouquet of four-petaled flowers drooping by her side.

A free man now, Ivan delivers winding philosophical sermons to the Spanish-speaking community that occupies plastic chairs in the one-room church on Fulcrum Street. He preaches in a clean white button-down and pressed slacks, encouraging them to further their spiritual exploration by reading, and instead of the Bible, he gives them Plato’s Symposium and speaks of emancipation.

Believe in your own goodness, Ivan cries. Trust your own goodness. Confíe en su propia bondad.

Ines sits in front. She sings with proud, open eyes. The old church women cook food for Ines and bring it to the house; while Russ is at work, Ines walks across town to return the empty pans. Often, Russ wonders if Ines misses that side of Broomsville, with its lopsided houses and peeling-paint cars and all those women who return her rapid-fire language. Sometimes, in her sleep, Ines mumbles in pleading Spanish. Russ keeps a pen and paper in his nightstand so he can write down words and phrases to Google in the morning.

When Detective Williams questions Ivan in the room at the back of the station house, Ivan has none of that messiah fury. Russ briefly watches from behind glass as Detective Williams pulls every interrogation trick he knows. They question Ivan for six hours, and Ivan gives them nothing but a resounding calm that terrifies Russ, who pictures the hundreds of legal pads—Ivan’s handwritten Bible—stacked next to a twin mattress on the floor.

I don’t know anything, he says, over and over again.

I just found her, he says, over and over again.

Confíe en su propia bondad.



Russ and Ines met in summer. Colorado summers are dry—heat presses down, slow and unbearable, a curtain lowered over a blazing stage. Red dust. Chlorine. White-hot cement.

It was Russ’s day off. Girls wore strappy dresses and walked barefoot through the park, where boys threw Frisbees and let the sun drench through their shirts.

Russ parked his car and watched the crowds under the wide, cloudless tent of sky. He had intended to take a run up the mountain, but it was too hot, so he stopped at Main Street Park. He couldn’t go back to his house, where he’d roast in front of the television, drinking Bud Light. It was not uncommon for Russ to go his full forty-eight hours off without talking to anyone but the pimply pizza-delivery boy.

So he had gone to the park for the push and squeal of other people, the existing fact of them. The day smelled like a sunscreen dream, and Russ meandered down the walking path, until he passed an ice-cream cart. He got in line, ordered a snow cone, and walked toward a half-empty bench.

The snow cone melted faster than he could eat it, cherry sugar dripping from the paper cup and over his knuckles, dribbling on his khaki shorts and flowering through like little blossoms of blood.

Here, she said.

Ines was sitting next to him on the bench, a book open in her lap. She held out a miniature wrapped packet of tissues.

Thank you, Russ said as he mopped himself up.

You’re welcome, she said. She had an accent. She was shiny in the sun, the pages of her book a blinding white, and she wore a pair of denim shorts and a baggy T-shirt.

What are you reading? Russ asked.

She held up the cover. Love in the Time of Cholera, he read aloud, stumbling over the word “cholera” because he could not remember what it meant or how to pronounce it. She had marked all over the open page in pencil. Russ could not recall the last time he read a novel. He wasn’t sure he’d ever finished one.

Is it good? he asked.

Yes, she said. I read it many times in school, but this is my first time reading it in English. It’s quite different.

How so?

The turn of phrase, she said. That’s what you call it, right? When a sentence twists in different ways?

Yes, Russ told her. That’s what you call it.

Look at this, she said as she flipped through the book, then tore out a page.

A Band-Aid–ripping sound—before Russ could protest, she had handed him the page with its raggedy edges, a single sentence underlined. He squinted to read.

“He was still too young to know thata the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”

Nice, yes? she said.

Very.

He moved to give the page back—as though she could reinsert it into the book—but she waved him away. When she smiled, he wondered if Ines was flirting. He had not flirted in years.

Keep it, she said, before lifting the book to her face and settling back into her seat, burying herself in words. Russ stuffed the page in his pocket and stood to throw away the snow-cone wrapper. He loped back toward his car, wishing she had asked him to stay, or that he had the courage to do so anyway.