One time, a police officer smashed in one of our car windows because Noelia had left The Girls in the backseat while she popped into the bank. The police officer thought he’d played the hero, and afterward, Noelia had to slip him a bribe to mitigate his resentment at having ‘saved the lives’ of two inanimate beings. I always understood my wonderful wife’s care as one of her little eccentricities. Or a hormonal process, maybe. A secondary symptom of the uniquely named pain she felt in her uterus. Because, of course, Doctor Vargas Vargas coined an illness — half-Italian, half-Latin — to explain the pain that an only-a-daughter felt when mothers and their children went past: uterus mancanza.
It was all very weird, but also harmless. When people gave us funny looks I would become defensive, sort of animalistic, sort of ready to go for the jugular of normal people and things. Did I think the whole reborn thing odd? Of course I did. But it didn’t hurt anyone, and it made her feel better. The way I saw it from my privileged view in the royal box, the symptoms of uterus mancanza had hit Noelia too late in life; just a pity, perhaps. But it knocked her for six, and the fact that she found ways to alleviate the distress she felt, well, that’s the opposite of odd, isn’t it? That’s garden-variety maternal impulses: by taking care of The Girls she was looking after herself. She took the reins, identified what it was that hurt her and found the best palliative out there. Isn’t that taking responsibility for yourself? Moving beyond your childless condition to a state of maturity (that supposedly unachievable state for people who are only a child)? And yet, if I ever tried to congratulate her on any of these things, Noelia would answer, ‘Doctors, eh? Only ever treating the symptom!’
*
I’m writing with news: today I took The Girls to the Mustard Mug. It was a real palaver. First of all they didn’t want to let me in with my ‘granddaughters’. I explained that they were dolls and they didn’t believe me. The entire kitchen staff (of two) had to come out and confirm that they weren’t babies before the barman would believe me. And then he became all aggro thinking I was there to sell them. In the end I had to resort to emotional blackmail, reminding him of my extremely loyal custom to the Mug. Between taunts and apologies, eventually they let me in, and the adrenaline only stopped pumping through me when I was back at my usual table. My bones ached. I was hot and bothered and red in the face. I drank too quickly, with each sip seeing more and more clearly what the others had spotted the moment I walked in with the stroller: that I am a ridiculous old man.
But then Linda showed up, and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, I picked up one girl and she picked up the other. We held them in our arms as we spoke. And then I was seized by a new, let’s say triumphant, happiness.
‘It’s my right,’ I wanted to say. ‘It’s my right as an old widower to have something to love. Something that isn’t a someone. Something that can’t die on me.’
But now the happiness and the triumphant feeling have passed. Now I’m hungover in my study at four o’clock in the afternoon. The sun is too bright; it’s showing up all the dust on the furniture. I go around in obsessive circles thinking a) it’s time to grab the mop and get on with my house chores, time to seek the semi-peace they afford me; and b) that I didn’t get to choose a damn thing.
I would have liked to have children. Lots. Tons of them. Or at least a few. At least one. Half. A piece.
It’s not the first time I’ve thought this, but it is the first time I don’t want to delete it.
*
Amaranth, the plant I lost my head over, has a bland flavor. Not only is it Umami No, it’s also Tasty No. There’s no doubting the tremendous power of self-deception. I’ve always had a fine palate. How can I have only just seen what was right under my nose? Maybe you have to get to my age to see the wood for the trees; to spot the little ironies in the things that preoccupied you and into which you poured all your energies. And then you have to measure it all up: length by width by depths of absurdity. But in the end you have to laugh. You have to laugh at everything in this life.
‘That’s my chicken, god damn it!’
‘Noelia, I’m so glad you came. I was missing you. There’s something important I want to tell you.’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘The Girls and I are going to do some work in the yard today. Since the whole milpa went to pot, and it turns out amaranth doesn’t taste of anything anyway, and the climate’s all wrong for papayas, I’m going to put in the jacuzzi you always wanted.’
‘Ooh, Alfonso, you have no idea how jealous I am!’
‘Don’t you have jacuzzis in the hereafter?’
‘We don’t. But you’ll be pleased to hear we all go around butt naked.’
2001
‘Do you turn into a fish, too?’ I ask Grandma as she helps me into my pajamas.
‘No, that’s a gene from Granddad. I don’t have it.’
‘Is that why you threw his ashes in the lake?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does Ana know?’
‘No,’ Grandma says. ‘Nor do your brothers. Just you.’
She lets me stroke the soft side of one of her hands. With the other she wraps my curls around her fingers, then lets go, because she likes seeing how they spring back. She explains everything in English but I understand her anyway. She says when Mama was a little girl and used to turn into a fish in the middle of the week she would let her off school. Now my mom walks into the room with her nighty on. She’s dry again, apart from her hair, which is two different colors when it’s wet: yellow where there are knots, brown where it’s straight. Mama points at my pajamas.
‘Mushroom!’ she says.
It’s one of Theo’s T-shirts, from when he couldn’t think about anything other than Mario Brothers.
‘Why aren’t there any like that in your backyard?’ I ask Grandma.
‘Amanita muscaria,’ she tells me. ‘Pretty, but lethal.’
‘And they speak through their noses!’ Mama says.
‘They don’t speak through their noses,’ Grandma says, and she gets up from the bed and pushes my mom out of the room. They blow me air kisses and I catch them, though not all of them: some fall on the quilt. Before drawing the curtain door, Grandma asks if I want the light on and I say no.
‘What a brave little girl you’re going to be,’ she says, and turns off the light. They walk away and I hear them giggling until I can’t hear them anymore.
I lie there wondering, ‘When?’ then sing myself a song to be brave right now.
‘Amanita,’ it goes, ‘Amanito musico, amanita Mario manitomario…’ But it doesn’t work. Maybe I’ll be brave when I last a hundred long seconds under the water with the straw. Either I’m going to get brave, or turn into a fish. Or both: I’ll be a brave fish and I’ll swim down to the bottom of the lake to where the Emperor Umami lives. I wonder if his castle is pretty like the ones in books.