“You haven’t told me what you thought of him,” she said. “It must have been strange for you.”
“I guess it was,” Hector answered, one hand propped on the steering wheel. The other was cradling a bottle of beer. That he was drinking while driving didn’t concern her in the least. He was calm. He wasn’t sullen or angry, and for the first time she thought he looked almost contented, if a little tired, as though the long night into day he’d spent dealing with Nicholas had in fact been a worthwhile effort for him. Perhaps something he would be glad for always.
“I’m so happy he was healthy,” she said. “His leg seemed completely healed.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“Don’t listen to me,” he said. “Nick’s going to be fine.”
“I’m sure you told me already but I forget. Did you talk a lot with him?”
“Not so much.”
“He must have asked many questions. Especially about you.”
“A few.”
“I assume you didn’t tell him you were his father?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I think he suspected something, anyway.”
“How’s that?” Hector said, taking a long sip from the bottle.
“When Nicholas finally came back, when you brought him to me again very early this morning, I asked him the same thing. I asked him what he thought of you. And do you know what he said?”
Hector shook his head.
“He said, ‘You have a decent man there, Mother. He’ll look after you. I think you should keep him around.’ ”
“Nick is some kind of boy.”
“You keep calling him Nick. I like the sound of that. It’s nice to hear.”
“Sure,” he muttered, though suddenly sounding to her as though he wanted to change the subject. But she wasn’t yet ready to let it go. At the moment there was hardly any discomfort in her body, even the expansion joints of the road giving her none of the usual painful tremors as they sped over them. And her mind suddenly felt right again, or at least geared in, her thoughts interlocking, turning forward, exerting some force.
“Maybe you’ll check in on him sometimes.”
“I doubt it.”
“But why? You don’t ever have to tell him anything. You could just be his friend. Someone he could contact, if necessary. He obviously respects you.”
“It won’t happen.”
“Why not? Because you don’t want the responsibility? There wouldn’t be any. He’ll have enough money. You wouldn’t have to do anything. What I’m thinking is that you’ll just be someplace he could find you. If he wanted to talk to you. That you’ll tell him, or at least my attorney, where you might be.”
Hector suddenly braked, slowing down enough that she had to hold out her arm and brace herself against the headrest of the front passenger’s seat to prevent going face-first into it. They were on the shoulder of the roadway but it was very narrow, as they had been crossing a long bridge. They were stopped midway across the two-lane span, the valley and planted fields receding majestically below them. He shut off the engine and got out and opened the rear door. A truck thundered by at full speed, blaring its air horn and only missing him, it seemed, by inches. Yet he didn’t flinch or even seem to notice, his glare trained only on her as he bent down to speak.
“You have to stop talking about him and me,” he said sharply. “Or this can’t work. I found him for you but that’s all I’m going to do.”
“Don’t you have any feeling for him? Any feeling at all?”
“I don’t want to see him, okay?” he shouted, with as much vehemence as he’d displayed since being with her. “I don’t want to think about him anymore. He’s gone his way and we’ve gone ours.”
“We could go back for him.”
“Is that what you really want?” he cried. “I’ll turn us around and take you. I’ll do it right now. Well?”
She couldn’t say anything and she thought he was going to slam the car door and walk off forever but instead he crouched on his haunches in the opened doorway, his head cast down with the kind of exhaustion that she had always counted on engendering for her own benefit. But she didn’t want to see it now. A car shot past, again too closely.
“Please don’t stay out there!” she pleaded. Two more cars careened by, in either direction, each honking at him in ire for impeding the road. “Please, Hector! I don’t know what I’d do if you got hurt. I couldn’t even drive you to a hospital. Please!”
Finally he got back behind the wheel. He drove them to the other end of the bridge and pulled off onto the grassy shoulder. He cut the engine and got out of the car, wandering off into the woods. She was going to tell him how sorry she was for upsetting him, that she was deeply grateful for his efforts, that he had been quite wonderful to her when all she was offering him was this toilsome, perhaps disturbing errand, but her body was once again rudely alive, shuddering with pain, and before she could summon any words he was gone.
When he hadn’t returned after fifteen minutes she wedged her swollen feet into her flats and lifted herself out of the car. She followed his direction, finding a deer path that snaked through the high weeds and into the woods. The undergrowth was brambly and dense at first and she didn’t think she could make it through, but then the brush gave way to firs, the higher canopy looming dark and cool above the open forest floor. The ground was covered with soft needles, and as it sloped steeply toward the valley floor she had to step sideways so as not to slide down or fall. Her legs were quivering and the pains from her belly and up her back and neck jolted her with each measured step, but she clenched her teeth and told herself as she had throughout her life whenever she needed to persevere that it was wartime again, those days between what happened to her siblings on the train and when she met Hector on the road, when every last cell of her was besieged by hunger and fear but was utterly resolved not to flag, and never did.
Yet a terrible feeling about Hector was overwhelming her and she quickened her pace and stumbled over a tree root in the path. She fell on her hands. An ugly, sharp squeal flew up from her throat. Her left wrist felt shattered. She tried to squeeze away the pain. On looking up she thought she could see something through the silvery green of the trees and she got up again, ignoring the pain-or, better, forcing herself to meet it differently, as if it were the embodiment of her own harsher self, the one that had mostly ruled her life, this cold, cruel woman she had relied on and befriended and to whom she would now lash herself in punishment.
The stand of firs thinned and the slope bottomed out to more level, open, arid ground and she found herself pushing through some large wild rosemary bushes to see an exposed ledge of rock. To the right of her was visible the long bridge they’d just crossed, at the same level as she, but before her was just air, in the distance a lovely expanse of dry rolling hills and verdant farmland and terra-cotta-roofed houses, the vista like any of the third-rate landscape paintings she’d periodically sold in her shop, except that this one was dotted by a single brush of dark, reddish hair in the foreground, the crown of a man’s head floating somehow out beyond the ledge. What was he doing? Suddenly a panic speared her chest and she called out his name, but he didn’t answer. She stepped gingerly to the platform of the rock, but once there she had to drop to her knees for the sudden attack of vertigo, the high clouds in the sky twisting about her. She had to crawl to the edge. Below her on a short spit of outcropping Hector sat with his legs hanging over the steep hillside that fell away below him. He took a last slug from the bottle of beer he’d taken with him, then tossed it into the chasm. It made no sound that she could hear.