“One day you’ll have to examine that in therapy,” he interrupted me.
“You psychiatrists resolve everything with therapy!”
“It’s pointless to bury psychological wounds—you have to air them out so they can scar over.”
“I had enough of therapy in Oregon, Daniel, but if that’s what I need, you could help me.”
His reply was more reasonable than romantic. He said that that would be a long-term project, and he had to leave soon; besides, no sex is allowed in a patient-therapist relationship.
“Then I’m going to ask my Popo to help me.”
“Good idea.” And he laughed.
In all that horrible time in Las Vegas, my Popo came to see me just once. I had got some heroin that was so cheap I should have suspected it wasn’t safe. I knew of addicts who’d been poisoned and killed by the shit dealers sometimes cut the drugs with, but I was really desperate and couldn’t resist. I snorted it in a disgusting public washroom. I didn’t have a syringe to inject it with; maybe that’s what saved me. As soon as I inhaled it, I felt like I’d been kicked in the temples by a mule. My heart bolted, and in less than a minute I saw myself wrapped in a black blanket, suffocated, unable to breathe. I slumped to the floor, in the foot and a half between the toilet and the wall, on top of used paper that stank of ammonia.
I vaguely understood that I was dying, and far from being frightened, I felt flooded with great relief. I was floating on black water, sinking deeper and deeper, more detached, as if in a dream, happy to fall softly to the bottom of that abyss and put an end to the shame, to go, go to the other side, escaping from the farce my life had become, from my lies and justifications, from that despicable, dishonest, and cowardly being I’d become, that being who blamed my father, my grandmother, and the rest of the universe for her own stupidity, that unhappy creature who at just barely nineteen years old had already burned all her bridges and was ruined, trapped, lost, that skeleton covered in rashes and lice, that miserable wretch who’d go to bed for a drink, who’d robbed a destitute mother. I wanted to escape forever from Joe Martin and Chino, from my own body, from my whole fucking existence.
Then, when I was already gone, I heard shouts from very far away: Maya, Maya, breathe! Breathe! Breathe! I hesitated for a good long while, confused, wanting to lose consciousness again so I wouldn’t have to make a decision, trying to disengage from myself and fly off like an arrow into the void, but I was held to this world by that urgent voice calling to me. Breathe, Maya! Instinctively I opened my mouth, swallowed some air, and began to inhale, the shallow gasps of someone breathing her last. Bit by bit, astonishingly slowly, I came back from the final sleep. There was nobody with me, but in the small space between the stall door and the floor I could see a man’s shoes on the other side, and I recognized them. Popo? Is that you, Popo? There was no reply. The English moccasins remained in the same place for an instant and then left noiselessly. I stayed sitting there, breathing with difficulty, my legs shaking and refusing to obey me, calling him: Popo, Popo.
Daniel didn’t find it at all strange that my grandfather would have visited me and didn’t try to give me a rational explanation for what had happened, as most of the psychiatrists I’ve met would have. He didn’t even give me one of those mocking looks that Manuel Arias tends to give me when I start to get what he calls esoteric. How was I supposed to not fall in love with Daniel, who as well as being gorgeous is so sensitive? Most of all, he’s gorgeous. He looks like Michelangelo’s David, but his coloring is much more attractive. In Florence, my grandparents bought a miniature replica of the statue. In the shop they were offered a David with a fig leaf, but what I liked best were his genitals; I hadn’t seen those parts in a real human yet, only in my Popo’s anatomy book. Anyway, sorry, I got distracted—back to Daniel, who believes that half the world’s problems would be solved if every one of us had an unconditional Popo instead of a demanding superego, because the best virtues thrive with affection.
Daniel Goodrich’s life has been a gift in comparison with mine, but he’s had his troubles too. He’s a serious guy with serious goals, who has known since he was young what his itinerary would be, unlike me, who’s always drifting. At the first deceptive glance, he seems like a rich kid who smiles too easily, the smile of someone satisfied with himself and the world. That air of eternal contentment is strange, because in his medical studies and hospital internships and on his travels, on foot and with a backpack, he must have seen a lot of poverty and suffering. If I hadn’t slept with him, I’d think he was another aspiring Siddhartha, another man unplugged from his emotions, like Manuel.
The Goodrich story would make a good novel. Daniel knows that his biological father was black and his mother white, but he doesn’t know them and hasn’t ever had any interest in looking for them, because he adores the family who raised him. Robert Goodrich, his adoptive father, is a titled Englishman, although he doesn’t get called “sir” in the United States because it would be ridiculous. But as proof, there’s a color photograph of him greeting Queen Elizabeth II, and he’s wearing an ostentatious medal hanging from an orange ribbon. He’s a very renowned psychiatrist, with a couple of books published and a knighthood for services to science.
Sir Robert married Alice Wilkins, a young American violinist who was temporarily in London, and moved to the United States with her. The couple settled in Seattle, where he set up his own clinic, while she joined the symphony orchestra. When they found out that Alice couldn’t have children, after much hesitation, they adopted Daniel. Four years later, Alice unexpectedly got pregnant. At first they thought it was a hysterical pregnancy, but it soon proved to be genuine and in due time Alice gave birth to little Frances. Instead of being jealous at the arrival of a competitor, Daniel fell absolutely and exclusively in love with his little sister, a love that only increased over time and that was fully requited by the little girl. Robert and Alice shared a love for classical music, which they inculcated in both their children, as well as a fondness for cocker spaniels, which they’ve always had, and mountain climbing, which would lead to Frances’s misfortune.
Daniel was nine and his sister five when their parents separated and Robert Goodrich moved ten blocks away to live with Alfons Zaleski, the Polish pianist in the orchestra Alice played in. He’s talented and brusque, with the physique and manners of a lumberjack, an unruly mop of hair, and a vulgar sense of humor, in stark contrast with Sir Robert’s subtle British irony and courtesy. Daniel and Frances received a poetic explanation about their father’s flamboyant friend and were left with the idea that it was a temporary arrangement, but nineteen years have passed, and the two men are still together. Meanwhile Alice, promoted to first violin, carries on playing with Alfons Zaleski like the good colleagues they actually are, because the pianist never intended to steal her husband, just to share him.
Alice stayed in the family home with half the furniture and two of the cocker spaniels, while Robert moved to a similar house in the same neighborhood with his lover, the rest of the furniture, and the third dog. Daniel and Frances grew up going back and forth between the two homes with their suitcases, spending one week in each. They always went to the same school, where their parents’ situation didn’t attract attention. They spent holidays and birthdays with both and for a while believed that the numerous Zaleski family, who traveled from Washington and arrived en masse for Thanksgiving, were circus acrobats, because that was one of the many stories invented by Alfons to win the children over. He could have saved himself the trouble, because Daniel and Frances loved him for other reasons: he’s been a mother to them. The Polish man adores them, devoting more time to them than their actual parents do. He’s a cheerful bon vivant, who puts on shows for them of athletic Russian folk dances wearing pajamas and Sir Robert’s medal.
The Goodriches separated without going to the trouble of getting legally divorced and have managed to stay friends. They’re united by the interests they shared before Alfons Zaleski showed up,
except for mountain climbing, which they both gave up after Frances’s accident.
Daniel finished high school with good grades when he’d just turned seventeen and was accepted into a premed course at the university, but his immaturity was so obvious that Alfons convinced him to wait a year and, in the meantime, to get a little weather-beaten. “You’re just a kid, Daniel—how are you going to be a doctor when you don’t even know how to blow your own nose?” In the face of Robert and Alice’s solid opposition, his Polish stepdad sent him to Guatemala on a student program to learn Spanish and become a man. Daniel spent nine months living with an indigenous family in a village on the shores of Lake Atitlán, growing corn and spinning sisal rope, without sending any news, and came back the color of tar, his hair an impenetrable tangle, with a guerilla’s revolutionary ideas and speaking Quiché Mayan. After that experience, studying medicine seemed like child’s play to him.
The cordial triangle of the Goodriches and Zaleski might possibly have disintegrated once the two children grew up, but the need to care for Frances has united them more than ever. Frances is completely dependent on them.
Nine years ago, Frances Goodrich suffered a spectacular fall when the whole family, except for Alfons, was mountain climbing in the Sierra Nevada. She broke more bones than they could count, and despite thirteen complicated operations and continuous physical therapy, she can still barely move. Daniel decided to study medicine when he saw his sister smashed to bits in a bed in the intensive care unit, and chose psychiatry because she asked him to.
The girl was in a profound coma for three long weeks. Her parents considered the irrevocable idea of disconnecting her from life support, because she’d suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and, according to the doctors, would remain in a vegetative state. Alfons Zaleski wouldn’t allow it; he felt in his heart that Frances was suspended in limbo, but if they didn’t let go of her, she’d come back. The family all took turns spending the day and night in the hospital, talking to her, touching her, calling her, and when she finally opened her eyes, one Saturday at five in the morning, it was Daniel who was with her. Frances couldn’t speak, because she’d had a tracheotomy, but he translated what her eyes were expressing and announced to the world that his sister was happy to be alive, and they’d better abandon the compassionate plan of helping her to die. They’d grown up together like twins, knew each other better than they knew themselves, and needed no words to understand each other.
The hemorrhage hadn’t damaged Frances’s brain in the way they’d feared; it only produced a temporary loss of memory, made her cross-eyed, and left her deaf in one ear. But Daniel noticed that something fundamental had changed. Before, his sister had been like their father—rational, logical, with an inclination toward science and mathematics—but since the accident she thinks with her heart, according to him. He says that Frances can guess people’s intentions and moods; it’s impossible to hide anything from her or deceive her, and she gets sparks of premonitions so accurate that Alfons Zaleski is training her to guess the winning lottery numbers. Her imagination, creativity, and intuition have developed in a spectacular way. “The mind is much more interesting than the body, Daniel. You should be a psychiatrist, like Daddy, to find out why I have so much enthusiasm for life, and other perfectly healthy people commit suicide,” Frances said to him, when she could talk again.
The same courage that enabled her to practice hazardous sports has helped Frances endure suffering; she swore she’d recover. For the moment her life is entirely occupied by physical rehabilitation, which takes up many hours a day, her amazing social life on the Internet, and her studies; she’s going to graduate this year with a degree in art history. She lives with her odd family. Deciding it would be easier if they all lived together, the Goodriches and Zaleski—with all the cocker spaniels, of which there are now seven—moved to a big one-story house, where Frances can get around in her wheelchair more comfortably. Zaleski has taken several courses to help Frances with her exercises, and nobody really remembers anymore what the exact relationship is between the Goodriches and the Polish pianist; it doesn’t matter, they’re three good people who respect and care for a daughter, who love music, books, the theater, and fine wine, who share the same dogs and the same friends.
Frances can’t brush her hair or her teeth by herself, but she moves her fingers and operates her computer, so she’s connected to the university and the world. We went online, and Daniel showed me his sister’s Facebook page, where there are several photos of her before and after the accident: a cheerful, delicate, freckled redhead with a cute little squirrel’s face. On her page are several comments, photos, and videos from Daniel’s trip.
“Frances and I are very different,” he told me. “I’m quite laid-back and sedentary, while she’s a firecracker. When she was little she wanted to be an explorer, and her favorite book was Cabeza de Vaca’s Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America, by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, a sixteenth-century Spanish adventurer. She would have liked to go to the ends of the earth, to the bottom of the sea, to the moon. My South American journey was her idea; it’s what she had planned and won’t be able to do. So I have to try to see with her eyes, hear with her ears, and film with her camera.”
I feared, and still fear, that Daniel was frightened off by my confidences and will reject me as unbalanced, but I had to tell him everything; nothing strong can be built on a foundation of lies and omissions. According to Blanca, with whom I’ve been talking this through nonstop, everybody is entitled to their secrets, and this eagerness of mine to show myself in the worst light possible is a form of arrogance. I have thought of this too. The arrogance would be in expecting Daniel to love me in spite of my problems and my past. My Nini says that people love their children and grandchildren unconditionally, but not their partners. Manuel keeps quiet on this subject, but he has warned me against the imprudence of falling in love with a stranger who lives far away. What other advice could he give me? That’s how he is: he doesn’t run emotional risks, he prefers the solitude of his hovel, where he feels safe.
In November of last year, my life in Las Vegas was so out of control and I was so sick that I get the details confused. I went around dressed like a man, with the hood of my sweatshirt over my eyes, my head down between my shoulders, moving quickly, never showing my face. To rest I leaned against a wall, or better, in an angle between two walls, hunched up, with a broken bottle in my hand that wouldn’t have been much use if I’d needed to defend myself. I stopped asking for food at the women’s shelter and started going to the men’s, waiting at the end of the line, taking my plateful, and wolfing it down in a corner. In that male crowd, to look directly at someone could be interpreted as a sign of aggression, and a word out of place might be dangerous. They were anonymous, invisible beings, except for the old men, who were somewhat demented and had been coming there for years; that was their territory, and nobody messed with them. I passed as just another drugged-out boy of the many who showed up there, dragged in by the tide of human misery. So vulnerable did I seem that sometimes someone with a shred of compassion would greet me with a “Hi, buddy!” I never answered; my voice would have given me away.
The same dealer that would sometimes let me trade cigarettes for crack also bought electronics, CDs, DVDs, iPods, cell phones, and video games, but they weren’t easy to come by. To steal stuff like that, you need to be very daring and very fast, neither of which I was anymore. Freddy had explained his method to me. First you had to pay a reconnaissance visit to study the locations of the exits and security cameras; then, wait till the store is full and all the employees busy, which happens especially when they have sales, on holidays and paydays, at the beginning and middle of the month. That’s all well and good in theory, but when in need, a person can’t always wait for ideal circumstances.
The day Officer Arana caught me had been a day of constant suffering. I hadn’t managed to get anything, and I’d had cramps for hours, shivering from withdrawal and d
oubled over in pain from the cystitis, which had gotten a lot worse and was only calmed by heroin or pharmaceuticals that were very expensive on the black market. I couldn’t last another hour in that state, and I did exactly the opposite of what Freddy had recommended: I went in a state of desperation into an electronics store I didn’t know, the only advantage of which was the absence of an armed guard at the door, like others had, without worrying about the staff or the cameras, stupidly and crazily searching for the games section. The way I looked and was acting must have drawn attention. I found the section, grabbed a Japanese war video game that Freddy liked, hid it under my T-shirt, and rushed toward the exit. The security tag on the game set off the alarm with a noisy squawking as soon as I got near the door.
I took off running with surprising energy, given the pathetic shape I was in, before the employees had time to react. I kept running, first down the middle of the street, dodging cars, and then on the sidewalk, shoving and shouting and swearing at people to get out of my way, until I realized nobody was following me. I stopped, panting, out of breath, with a stabbing pain in my lungs, a dull ache in my waist and bladder, and the hot damp feel of urine between my legs, and sat down on the sidewalk, hugging the Japanese box.
Moments later, two heavy and firm hands grasped me by the shoulders. When I turned around, I was facing a pair of clear eyes in a very tanned face. It was Officer Arana, who I didn’t immediately recognize because he was out of uniform and I couldn’t focus, on the verge of fainting. Thinking of it now, it’s surprising that Arana hadn’t found me sooner. Beggars, pickpockets, prostitutes, and addicts keep to certain neighborhoods and streets that the police know only too well and keep tabs on, just as they have their eyes on the homeless shelters, where sooner or later all the hungry people end up. Defeated, I took the video game out from under my shirt and handed it over.