The Middle of Somewhere(65)

Dante was silent for a moment. “True, I didn’t come here for love, but when I didn’t return home after college, it broke my mother’s heart.”

Dante’s mother wanted her only son to do his duty, to marry a Mexican woman and build a family close by—plans that meshed perfectly with Se?or Espinoza’s desire to pass his company to his son. Liz knew Dante had nothing in principle against marrying a compatriot, but was determined to go beyond his father’s notion of who he should become. His mother cared little for the disposition of the family business; money was like water from a faucet—it flowed when necessary. But she needed her children around her, and could not help but take Dante’s choices personally. Liz’s mind leapt to Felicia’s resolve in excommunicating her daughter after her affair. Her son could not be shunned—he had not committed a grievous moral error—but he had disappointed her deeply. And Felicia reminded him of it at every opportunity.

“Do you miss Mexico?” Liz almost said “home,” but decided the question was loaded enough.

“Occasionally. I miss something: a smell, a taste, a way of speaking. But this is sentiment, not preference.”

“And what about your mother?”

“One cannot always be on the side of the angels.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO





Gabriel had died on a Wednesday. The next day, Liz’s mother stayed with her overnight, then returned to Santa Fe. “See you at the funeral. You can stay with me, if you want.” Later it struck Liz she had no choice, other than a hotel—or the Pembertons’.

It was months before she also realized no one had asked her where the funeral should be held. In fact, no one asked her anything during that time, except whether she would care for something to eat or drink. Almost always the answer was no.

She couldn’t remember when the Pembertons showed up—had they overlapped with her mother?—or even in which order. They were a tide. She opened the door to them and that was it. She wasn’t complaining, not even in retrospect. She had neither the will nor the expertise to manage her own feelings, much less the grieving process and necessary arrangements for the hordes of mourners the Pembertons assured her would arrive.

Their grief was genuine. Liz confronted the enormity and finality of Gabriel’s death in their faces and gestures. Gabriel’s mother, Eleanor, had worn a slightly contorted expression, even when she was resting or smiling in response to a child, or a joke. Her face was broken, like the twisted metal of the car in the newspaper photograph Claire had not been quick enough to hide, or like Gabriel himself. Liz had to turn away.

She turned away from a lot of things, retreating to her bedroom—their bedroom—to sit on the floor. She couldn’t be on the bed. But the bedroom was not safe harbor either. The pastor entered in search of Gabriel’s Bible, his sisters came to choose photos from the dresser to display at the service and, worst, his mother searched her out to see if Gabriel’s good suit needed cleaning. Liz would never have thought of it.

Unseen hands set the funeral for Sunday. Liz moved with the Pemberton tide, out to the funeral home that would transfer her husband to Santa Fe, back to the house to deal with paperwork, and out to their local church, where pastor consoled pastor with such warmth and candor that she shrunk away in the shame of the weakness of her belief. After, she was ushered home once more, to choose something to wear. Normally she would have balked at the intrusion, but that day she opened her closet to Eleanor, docile. Gabriel’s mother had many choices, because Liz favored black and gray. In high school it represented a reaction to her mother’s zest for vivid colors, but later she adopted it as her style. She devoted little consideration to clothes and nothing went with black like black. Eleanor chose a narrow black skirt, a gray silk T-shirt and a black cardigan, “because sorrow makes us vulnerable to cold.” She was right. Outside the August sun baked the houses in the valley like pots in a kiln, and although the air-conditioning was no match for the weather, Liz needed a sweater. Eleanor understood all there was to know about the aftermath of death, as if she’d been rehearsing.

Then there was Gabriel’s youngest brother, the one with Down’s syndrome. Seventeen now, with a halfhearted moustache and a deepening voice, Daniel mentally hovered near five, and could not grasp Gabriel’s passing. He got it in his head it was a joke, a protracted game of hide-and-seek, and searched for his brother tirelessly if not distracted by something else. On Saturday, Liz sat in the chair she never sat in, while all around her Pembertons prepared to escort her, and their dead son, to Santa Fe. Someone mentioned Gabriel by name. Daniel shouted, “I know where he is!” and flung himself at Liz’s feet to search under the couch. She let out a scream—her first utterance of the day—and buried her face in her fists.