This Is How I'd Love You (26 page)

T
he first thing Charles notices as the truck hesitates at the eastern edge of Hillsboro is the dry goods store. In the very last letter that he has, Hensley told him about a mummified child who had been placed in the window. It was found—the way nearly everything was—while a prospector was hacking away at the earth. The child, crouched as though searching for her own pot of gold, sat in the window, a petite, forgotten piece of humanity. As alarming as it is, it thrills him. He knows that he is looking at something that she has looked at, too. Their lives are finally intersecting. Her description of it runs through his mind.
It is eerie, maybe even gruesome, but I cannot take my eyes from the shriveled brown bundle. Life’s mystery looks stubborn and cruel when you see the little fingers curled in perfectly silent requests.

The hired driver is going on to Kingston and Charles tells him to leave him off right there.

“You sure, sir?” the driver asks, glancing at Charles’s leg and his black cane.

“Go on, please. I’m fine,” he says, slamming the door. He stands outside the window studying those little fingers, relieved that this is the right place. Within moments he might be gazing at the face that for so long has eluded him. It is lunchtime and there are not many people out, but he still feels the terrifying thrill that he may glance her actual face at any moment. The street is not long, hardly the length of a crosstown block in New York, but he takes his time.

Across the street, he notices a small wooden sign in the window, lettered in red, that reads
Lin’s Chinese Cooking
. His mouth waters at this sight and a smile forms on his lips, but he keeps walking. Could she, in fact, be sitting inside right now, eating a plate of cabbage and eggs? Will he know her when he sees her?

Charles would like to remove his jacket, for the heat is dry and unmoving, but his appearance matters more than his comfort. He lingers in front of the post office where she mails her letters. He walks in, smiling at the clerk and laying his hands on the counter. There is a brass slot for outgoing mail that he fingers carefully.

“Help you, sir?” the clerk says, without looking up from his sorting.

“No, thank you. Just getting acquainted,” Charles says and he is nearly floating.

The prosthetic that he acquired in Chicago fits tightly around his thigh with a leather strap. As he leaves the post office, it seems as though it alone is keeping his entire body from levitating.

The sound of his own gait on the wooden sidewalk announces his wound, his deficiency. The shoe carved into the end of the wooden stump is stiff and heavy. Will his loss forfeit her affection? He won’t blame her. Or will he? Surely she will have some physical flaw. Can any flaw ever match his own?

As he makes his way closer to her house, the sweat trickles from his hair across his temples. Removing his handkerchief to wipe his brow, he wonders if her affection is even real. Has he inflated something trivial into something grand? Has he given her words more meaning than she intended? He wants to pull the letters out right then from his case and reassure himself.

But then he sees the rock wall that she’s told him she is in the habit of adding to. Three stacks of smooth little stones, just there by the black iron gate. One for each letter. Meaningless to anyone else on earth but him.

The sight of this might as well have cut a hole in his chest. He nearly stops breathing. The heat of the afternoon whooshes through him as though he has a great big wound that has turned his body into a cavern of hot air. It seems impossible that those are the very stones she picked and placed while he trudged through mud, loading the lucky ones onto stretchers—unaware that his own leg would soon be obliterated into scraps. Which rocks did she choose while he was still whole?

Afraid to touch them, to disturb their careful placement, he walks past. He opens the gate and stands before the door. Leaning hard on his cane for support, he raps three times on the screen.

 • • • 

A
Mexican opens the door. Beneath his hat, his eyes are friendly; white paint is splattered across his work shirt and one cheek.

“I’m sorry,” Charles says, “I was looking for a Miss Hensley Dench.”

The man stares at him, then nods. “She’s gone. We got a new superintendent. He’s moving in here this weekend, after I get the place cleaned. You can find him at the hotel.”

“I’m not looking for the superintendent. I’m looking for Miss Dench. Where has she gone?”

“Back to New York.”

“When?”

“Weeks ago. I drove her to the train. She was . . . torn about it.”

The man stares at Charles, his cane, and his black case. Then, without any inflection, he says, “Are you the soldier?”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” Charles says, banging his cane once against the concrete porch.

The Mexican stands there, looking at him. The questions are not meant for him. They both know that. Nevertheless, he shrugs. “Women,” he says under his breath with a slight smile and walks into the house, leaving the door wide open.

Charles inhales. She is not here, but this is where she lived. Where she stirred those pots of beans and let Isaac tickle her legs. Where she mourned for her father and filled entire afternoons composing letters to him.

Carefully, he maneuvers the threshold.

He stands in the nearly empty living room. Long white curtains hang from the windows, taming the zealous sunlight. There is a single walnut desk, a chintz-covered armchair, and a trunk meant to serve as a coffee table. Through the back screen door, he observes the patch of bricks Mr. Dench called their terrace. A black-and-white cat lolls in a bright spot.

In the kitchen, there are several pans hanging above the stove. He wraps his hand around the handle of each. The cast iron is cool and rough to the touch. He holds it tightly, letting the coolness transfer to his hand. Then he presses his hand to his cheek.

He stands at the sink, staring out past the yard to the street. Is this really what she saw? Is this view really the one for which he spent all those months yearning? It is utterly ordinary. Sighing, he turns back to the table and sits in a chair, letting his eyes close against the smudged walls and the uneven counter. The magic of her words has faded. His body is tired and he dreads the trip back to El Paso.

Following the clamor coming from another part of the house, he walks back through the living room and peers into a bedroom, where the Mexican is pulling a canvas cloth across the floor, setting up a ladder. A paintbrush and a little can of whitewash sit in the corner. “Mr. Wright didn’t want me to touch it at first,” he says, adjusting the ladder. “He seemed nearly fixated on it. But then, after a few days, he decided to go again. And when he left, he told me to cover it up. Get rid of it.”

The wall looks a mess, as though it has been tattooed, or burned in a fire. Only as he stands there with his vanished leg aching and his temples throbbing does Charles realize what it is.

With no idea how much time has passed, he finally speaks. Though he knows he has absolutely no authority to do so, he instructs the Mexican to leave the room. “Get me a drink,” he says, his voice a quivering whisper. “Something strong.”

The young man kneels down, wiping the brush off carefully. Then, with a sudden movement, he is gone.

Alone, Charles reads the entire wall. All the words that he’d carefully chosen and written himself, suddenly new and different written in her hand. These words from before, from far away, from when he was whole. He pushes his forehead into the plaster, letting the black ink blur in his periphery, nearly surrounding him. Dropping his cane, he stretches his arms out wide, pressing all of himself against the cool plaster.

Finally, he retrieves his cane and inches back toward the bed. He sits on the bed—her bed—then lays his head on the pillow, letting the sweet pain of desire encompass him. He can almost hear the whistle, the whine, of a faraway train screaming the impossibility of the distance between them. It feels as though he’s been hollowed out, all of his blood and organs drained through that same mysterious opening that emerged when he saw the stones piled on the wall. With each breath, he seems to lose more vitality. He will wander through life like this until he can hold her head to his chest, look into her eyes, and hear her voice. Only then will this aching vacuum be filled. Only then might his breaths fill him, instead of empty him.

 • • • 

C
harles’s wooden leg hangs off the bed, its weight pulling against his groin. Suddenly, in the doorway, the Mexican appears again. His face has transformed—there is a wild look in his eye and a smile, wide and white, brightening his face. For a moment, Charles fears he’s gone mad. But, still, he is unable to move.

There is a cup in his hand. Silver. A tall cup with a stem, like a goblet. Charles is grateful, hoping it is filled with some blindingly strong liquor. But the man does not hand the goblet to Charles. Instead, with that mad look on his face, he places the goblet on the writing desk just inside the door and takes off his hat. A mane of thick, shiny black hair falls across his shoulders. Then, without changing expressions, he unbuttons his shirt, revealing an ample, womanly bosom. He unbuckles his belt and lets his trousers fall to the wood floor. Stepping out of them, it is quite apparent that he is not a man.

Charles does not move. He assumes he is hallucinating.

But finally, she does pick up the goblet, the work boots still on her feet but the rest of her completely bare, and brings it to Charles.

“This is for Hensley,” she says. “I have her address in New York. I know you will take it to her.”

Charles reaches out for the silver stem. “I will,” he says to her. “I will.” Her brown skin is sturdy in the most beautiful way. It seems an affirmation of life, of resilience, of metamorphosis.

She turns away from him. Then, in the doorway, she pauses. “I had no idea there was a cellar in this house. Until you came. Until you asked me for a drink. All that time. Right here in front of me. Or, rather, below me. Filled with glass canning jars. And these.”

Her face is beaming. Charles cannot find a single word to say to her. He clasps the goblet tightly in his fingers.

“I suppose I’ll never know why. Or how. But they are actually here. What madness. I’ll always be grateful for your visit. Always,” she says.

Charles watches her walk away, listens to her footsteps descend stairs.

A dry breeze blows through the open window, bringing invisible flecks of dust into the room, some of which collide with his wooden leg, giving noise to the maraca that is his heart.

 • • • 

H
e stands on the brick patio and imagines himself back in France, her bare feet where his are now. The sky is that tender blue that made her crazy with its enormity. He closes his eyes and pretends his skin is hers. He feels the warmth and it is almost like they are there together. Right there, inhabiting his own body. The thin desert air makes him breathe deeply. A sweet scent lingers on the edge of each nostril. That desert, vast and desolate, reassures him. Charles climbs up the hill just as the sun is setting.

 • • • 

I
nside the shack on top of the hill, there she is. The Mexican. But now she is dressed in a skirt and a blouse, her hair braided down her back, her face clearly feminine. In the corner, her brother appears to be asleep on a cot. They are the inverse of one another.

“What’s the trouble?” Charles asks her, gesturing to the invalid.

“He’s sick.”

He nods. “Still? With what?”

“We don’t know. But we will soon, hopefully. I will take him to El Paso and pay for a doctor to examine him. We can afford to now. We can afford to lose this job.”

“May I feel his pulse?” From this distance, his condition appears similar to the typhoid Charles saw in France. The way his face twitches and his legs are stiff beneath the sheet. “How long has he been like this?”

“Are you a doctor?”

Charles shakes his head. “No. But I was an ambulance driver in the war. I learned a few things.”

“It’s been months. Since May.”

“Oh. That’s too long to be typhoid. High fevers?”

He places his fingers on the man’s neck. His pulse thrums, with barely any space between its beats.

“His heart. It’s flying. Get me a cold cloth.”

For the next several hours, Charles dresses him with cold compresses, just the way they did it at the CCS, trying to bring his body to a normal temperature. Occasionally the man opens his eyes and asks for Teresa. This is how Charles learns her name.

She speaks to him in Spanish and tries to take the book that he has clenched in his hands away from him, but he won’t let her. She tells Charles it was once their father’s book. And his father’s before that for five generations. It is the place they’ve written all the births and deaths and marriages since the time of Hidalgo.

“This is part of the fever. Hallucinations. He’s afraid I’m going to write his name in there. His date of death.”

“A doctor needs to see him now,” Charles says, alarmed by the constant whir of the man’s heartbeat. He does not say it, but he suspects polio.

Her eyes make it clear that she understands him. Without warning, she begins to remove her clothes again. Charles turns and faces the window.

Through the fly-ridden windowsill, he looks down at the house where Hensley and Mr. Dench lived. He sees the brick patio, the windows of her bedroom, the chimney they never used. For months he’s thought of the place where she existed as some completely other world. A place so far away from his own that it might as well be in another universe. He’d been sure it would only ever exist in his mind. But now, as he stands in the small house on top of the hill, he feels remarkably buoyed. As though he is visiting another person’s dream—her dream. If he has found this place and confirmed its existence, perhaps he really will find her. Perhaps they might still have a chance.

 • • • 

T
eresa has transformed herself again. Her hair hidden under her cap and her dungarees tucked into formidable boots, she’s become a man.