Aching For It (10 page)

And so, as I allowed the negative to drain out of me and the
good clean energy washed over me, the face of my dad appeared. He smiled. I
smiled back at him and I felt the touch of his hand brushing my dreads from my
face so that he could get a good look at me, a good look into my eyes. And he
liked what he saw. I could tell. I smiled a “Thank you, Pops.” And his “You’re
welcome, son,” was so sweet and gentle that I didn’t even know he had gone. But
he’d been with me,
was
with me. Both my fathers, both visiting from
heaven, were with me.

I knew somehow they were with Étie and his father as well
and that peace would truly be made.

* * * * *

I had completely lost track of time. I had barely noticed
the sky outside had turned into a peach-and-pink reflection of the setting sun,
so deep into my séance state was I. I didn’t hear Étie’s voice gently calling
out to me. Maybe it was part of the assuring calm in which I had then floated.

“
Papi
?” he said again, as softly.

Slowly I turned to him.

“He is gone,” he said simply. “My father. He is gone.”

“Étie,” I whispered, awestruck and sad. I put my arms around
him and hugged him gently. “Baby, I am so sorry.”

“It is okay,” he answered me, resting his head on my
shoulder. “It is…okay.”

According to hospital records, Étie’s father officially died
at 4:34 p.m. It was now nearly seven. I could only imagine what Étie had been
going through in those almost three hours, from his father’s passing to now.
But I think I understood why he took as long as he did to come out and tell me.
That was Étie for you, always one to handle situations on his own, not one to
burden others with what he considered his problems, his challenges. Being on
his own for so long had made him that way.

As I held him in my arms, I ached for him, wondering how he
was dealing with what he’d experienced. Watching his father slip away, the doctor
making the pronouncement, receiving a copy of the death certificate, dealing
with his immediate, and quite surely, ambivalent feelings.

Whether they had resolved their estrangement was not for me
to know at that moment, although I suspected that they had. For the first time
I heard Étienne Saldano refer to Javier Marcos Saldano Jimenez as
my father
.
That was enough to bring tears to my eyes, tears that I did not want Étie to
see, tears that I was able to subtly wipe away while his head rested on my shoulder.

I drove us back toward La Habra Resort in Juan Dolio where
we were staying. We rode in relative silence. After a few minutes, Étie turned
on the radio. Merengue eased softly from the speakers, a lilting contrast to
the soberness in the air.

Eventually Étie turned the music off.

“Hungry?” I asked him.

He nodded affirmatively then placed his hand on my knee, his
way of assuring me that he was all right.

We ended up on ElMalecón and dined at the little
seaside café that had become one of our spots. The night was warm and balmy.
There was a breeze. Waves, reflecting the white moonlight, splashed against the
dark shore below us. I don’t remember what we ate. Whatever it was, we ate very
little, only picked at it, inhaled the scent of salty sea instead.

The light around us was subdued. The candle inside the small
amber lantern on our table illuminated in shadows the dark-caramel beauty of
Étie’s pensive face, his dimples, the small scar across his left cheek, his
midnight eyes sparkling with the candle’s gently darting reflection even as he
stared out over the rhythmic waves that danced against the shore below.

I stared at him. He felt my stare. Slowly he turned to me
and stared into my eyes. The smile he smiled was small and telling. He was
happy just knowing I was there. I could see that. I was glad for that. Being
there, with him, was my sweet joy as well.

He then looked back out over the dark and shimmering sea.

“She was great love of his life,” he finally said. “That is
what he say to me and I believe him.”

I sat across from Étie and listened quietly as he told the
story that his father had left with him. A handsome young fisherman by the name
of Javier and his beautiful new bride Isabella were born and reared in the
forest highlands of the Cordillera Central mountain range, into family clans.
The Saldanos and the Mendozas fought each other over things nature gave so
freely. Lush and fertile land within a hand’s reach of the sky was abundant in
these mountains. There were panoramic views of the lovely island below and the
clear blue-green water that surrounded it. The mountain folk relished the Yaque
del Nortewaterfall that tumbled down the mountainside into a pristine
lagoon rich with every kind of fish stock, easy for the catching.

Javier and Isabella married secretly, in defiance of their
families, and fled down to the city below, Santo Domingo. There they began a
full and happy life made happier by the news of a child on the way.

Javier, now working on an assembly line in a downtown shoe
factory, could not have loved his young wife more and as Isabella’s belly grew,
so did his near impossible passion for her. She was his life.

As months became weeks and weeks became days, he grew nearly
beside himself with glee and joyful anxiety, basking in the coming birth,
basking in the prospects of his young family’s bright future.

Javier had worked double shifts at the shoe factory for
weeks so that when it was near Isabella’s time, he would be at home with her,
monitoring her slightest wince, oiling the stretch marks on her belly,
massaging her aching feet, cooking for her, making sure she was comfortable,
singing to her. He made sure that everything she needed for the hospital was
bagged at the door and that
Señor
Montase, an elderly Haitian migrant
cane worker and the only neighbor he knew well who also had a car, was on call.

And so when Isabella’s water broke in the middle of Javier’s
Bésame Mucho
serenade, Javier fought his nerves and knew exactly what to
do. He freshened and dressed her gently but quickly then grabbed her up in his
arms, grabbed the bag at the door, all the while crying out, “
Señor
Montase!
Señor
Montase!”

The older man, perched in his open-air window three doors
down, knew the happy alarm in Javier’s voice. He limped out of his house as
best he could then hustled himself into his twelve-year-old Pontiac and revved
up the engine. He grumpily cursed in Creole, skidded its balding Firestones
over the chalk gravel that covered his yard and pulled up in front of his young
neighbor’s cottage just as Javier, his wife and her bag in his arms, reached
the unpaved road where the old man’s car coughed and sputtered like a
three-pack-a-day smoker.

Señor
Montase jumped out of his car, hobbled quickly
around to the passenger side and forced the raggedy door open with a mean yank
and a curse. Javier placed his wife in with a jeweler’s nervous delicacy then
climbed in beside her and pulled the door shut.
Señor
Montase had
already limped back around to the driver’s side. He climbed behind the wheel,
shifted the gear and skidded off down the unpaved road toward the short highway
ride to Hospital General.

Quickly Javier carried his wife down the hospital corridor
crowded with doctors and nurses and nervous fathers-to-be, cajoling themselves
and their seriously pregnant wives.

Señor
Montase tried his best to keep up with Javier’s
mad dash, but even through his huffing and puffing, the old man could see there
was something very strange about what was happening to Isabella. Javier and
Señor
Montase’s eyes connected, and they bravely, fiercely masked their looks of
concern. They were in the hospital now and everything would be fine.

But Isabella’s labor pains were frighteningly uncommon. Her
pains were coming much quicker, more often, too often, with such severity that
they caused Isabella to scream out horrifically, grabbing hold of Javier’s arm,
tearing at it, drawing blood as her agony seemed unbearable.

“It will be all right, my darling,” Javier told her over and
over, somehow unsure of his own reassurances.

A doctor in the corridor was the first to notice the blood
dripping down between Isabella’s legs.

“Nurse! Nurse!” the doctor yelled out to someone unseen as
he rushed to Javier and Isabella. “Get a gurney!
¡Apuro!
”

Javier could see it in the doctor’s eyes.

“We need to get her in right away,” the doctor said to him
as a nurse appeared with a gurney and, with the aid of a hospital attendant,
rescued Isabella from Javier’s bloodied arms, placed her on the gurney and
raced her down the hall.

Javier could feel his heart racing. He chased after the
doctor, the nurse and the attendant who had cleared the way as they sped
Isabella into an emergency room.

“Doctor! Doctor!” Javier pleaded, close on their heels.
“What is wrong? What is happening to her?”

“There are complications that we must attend to right away,”
the doctor answered in a rush while signaling another attendant to hold Javier
back.

“I need to be with her!”

“I am sorry,
señor
, but she is in very grave
condition,” the doctor answered, leading the gurney behind swinging doors,
eyeing the attendant to keep Javier back.

Javier’s fight to get in there and be with his wife was a
futile one. The attendant, a much bigger man, had obvious security credentials
and determination.

Javier looked on frantically, helplessly, and nearly knocked
Señor
Montase to the ground when the older man, huffing and wheezing,
had finally caught up to him and grabbed hold of his shoulder.

“Javier?”

“They will not let me in! Something is not right with
Isabella!”

“Try to calm down, my son,”
Señor
Montase pleaded in
a winded whisper. “You must let the doctors take care of this.”

But Javier could not hear what the old man was saying and
tried once again to rush into the emergency room and was, once again, stopped
by the attendant.

“
Señor
, you will have to clear this area,” the
attendant said firmly, “or I will alert the hospital police.”

“Come along, Javier,”
Señor
Montase pleaded again,
taking Javier’s arm. “Please…come.”

Javier allowed himself to be led away by
Señor
Montase, but in the waiting room the old man’s efforts to calm the young
father, who smoked cigarette after cigarette, were futile and unintentionally
foreboding. Indeed there was nothing that could ease the dread that hovered
over the long, excruciating wait.

Finally the doctor appeared.
Señor
Montase was the
first to see him. The old man’s eyes alerted Javier, who turned quickly. Upon
seeing the doctor, he dowsed his cigarette with the toe of his shoe and rushed
toward him.

“My wife?” he begged breathlessly, eyes widened anxiously.

“
Señor
, there were difficulties,” the doctor said
grimly. “Your son was born breached, and your wife…”

“Are they all right?” Javier begged again, grabbing the
doctor by the arm, shaking him without intention.

“Your son will be just fine,” the doctor answered,
understanding.

“And my wife?”

“
Señor
Saldano,” the doctor began slowly. “You wife
had lost a great deal of blood. The breach had severely traumatized her already
weakened body…she did not survive. I am so sorry,
señor
.”

Javier did not hear all of the doctor’s sad condolences nor
did he feel
Señor
Montase’s fatherly embrace or see the sadness on both
men’s grief-stricken faces.

His own grief was so intense that tremors racked his body,
wailing roared from the deepest pit of what remained of his soul.

Slowly his shivering body dropped to the floor. He suddenly
cried out, “No! No! No!”

* * * * *

For the next few days, Javier existed in a fog as thick as
the cigarette smoke that engulfed his every waking hour.

He had already started drinking himself to death, but now he
craved paths more efficient. A bullet to the head, a knife through the stomach,
a plunge into the deep end of the sea were the options he considered.

He informed the hospital to keep his baby boy, still there
for routine observations. Javier knew that if he were to end his life the child
would be better off left to the care of hospital holy sisters, who would surely
find good and righteous parents for him. This decision, and the decision to end
his life, Javier shared with no one, not even
Señor
Montase, who had
been checking on Javier every day since the death of Javier’s wife and the
birth of his son.

But
Señor
Montase was not blind to Javier’s
monumental despair. It had been a week since leaving the hospital, a week of
witnessing Javier’s disintegrating emotional state, witnessing Javier’s will to
live spiral downward with the force of a crashing jetliner. And so when
Señor
Montase knocked on Javier’s door several times on that seventh day and did not
get an answer, he panicked. He tried the doorknob but it was locked. He called
out Javier’s name only to be answered with silence. Finally he hobbled to the
side of the house, went to the window and squinted and strained as he tried to
see through a ragged slit in the closed shutters.

His eyes widened at what he saw—Javier’s lifeless body
sprawled out on the floor.

“Javier! Javier!” the old man yelled out, yanking furiously
at the unyielding window. Still there was no movement or sound from the body
splayed in the dankness and squalor of crushed cigarette butts, empty rum
bottles, urine-muddied grit and grime, rotting food and stale bread being
poached by winged cockroaches, fat and fearless in their feast.

He looked around for something, anything to break into that
window. But there was nothing. He slammed his naked elbow against the
windowpane and winced and cursed as shards of glass impaled his bony flesh.
Ignoring the pain, he cleared away the glass that barred him from the latch
then worked that latch with bloodied fingers into an arm-twisting surrender.

Frail limbs forced the broken window up. Sheer will and
adrenaline dragged the crippled Haitian’s body up and over the windowsill and
landed it, with an agonizing thud, onto the floor where insects dined.

He pulled his aching body up and limped across the room
toward his friend, most likely dead but slimly not, though he was discouraged
by the dull-edged machete beside Javier’s still body.

But the machete’s blade was clean of blood, as was Javier’s
body, as far as the Haitian could tell. Even the reeking stench of Javier’s
drunkenness and vomit was a blessed odor and as
Señor
Montase dragged
himself closer, he saw that the stillness was not a stillness at all, but a
stupor racked by a drunkard’s snore.

“Javier!”
Señor
Montase scolded, shaking the drunk
with grateful anger. “Javier! Javier!”

“
¿Qué? ¿Qué?
” Javier finally slurred with a stir.