of animal cunning. But her craftiness, relying almost exclusively on the senses of the moment, did not and could not satisfy her secret needs; and so, she largely ignored it. The light cast by her great energies, coming from such a beautiful package, may have easily hypnotized a better man; but Hector had lived and so found it difficult to forgive himself for being such an easy mark.
Thus there was something frivolous about her. Or, perhaps, to be fair, it may have been the residue of past defeats and humiliations, an impulsiveness based on a blind faith in the odds. For she was indeed a gambler. And gamblers are first and foremost losers wagering everything on an aberration, a powerful, unreasonable fascination with Chance.
No doubt she possessed an enigmatic and direct manner; this gave her an air of mystery, and, in Hector’s estimation, the status of someone wonderfully uncommon – like an alien fragrance, made sweeter by the quality of its strangeness. He had fallen under a spell. Besides it had been a long time since he had been invited into a woman’s bed, and she was most definitely a woman.
She found, to her surprise, that she genuinely liked him. He was primitive in an unfamiliar way, primitive in a way that implied honesty – straight and sincere. But she sensed something else in him – something nebulous and inexplicable. A complex man in hiding – this feeling vaguely frightened her. A man, she sensed, whose scars were covered and would always remain so, as he went about his days in a perfect mask, one might say, a death mask; or, rather, a mask that fit him perfectly. Secretly insecure, she sensed in terror that she was wrestling with a storm and the feeling left her feeling ill at ease. Yet she was intrigued – theirs was an unlikely marriage, fascinating and doomed.
He imagined great things in her and foolishly believed what he imagined. For example, her playfulness he took for generosity of spirit; her passion for depth of feeling; her warm deference for respect and affection. In truth, she was fickle, carnal, and mocking...
For her it may be fairly stated that she took Hector just as he was – she suffered no illusions: a nice man, quiet, sincere, honest, certainly. Why clutter things with sentiment? She had simply wished to investigate the type. She’d had little trade with nice men. She was on a kind of vacation.
But one could not expect her to remain on vacation indefinitely. Nor for her to abandon her true nature. Once her investigations were ended, then what? Life would provide. Invariably she would return to her habitual patterns of self-destruction and immolation, and hook up with the most dangerous man she could find. This was her accepted Fate, her destiny to which she had long ago surrendered in the brutality of black eyes and bloody lips.
Hector proposed after three ecstatic weeks, and, to his great surprise, she had accepted – with a gay laugh and coquettish toss of her shiny ropes of hair. Soon thereafter they were wed by the local Methodist pastor in a quiet ceremony, attended and witnessed solely by Hector’s reluctant and puzzled sister. Hector hadn’t a clue. Her powerful attraction overwhelmed every warning. His personal assessment was that he had found his luck at last. Why should he throw it away?
Sara had known for some time that she was pregnant. At first this had given her pause, an incipient desperation that grew side by side with her unsuspecting child. Abortion was never even considered – she had her reasons and her personal sense of morality. However, she imagined her gypsy life ending in a dull, domestic anonymity. It was during the early stages of her pregnancy that Hector first suspected her true feelings. After the child was born she abandoned all pretense, and Hector withdrew into himself like a wounded animal.
Why, he wondered, couldn’t he simply send her packing? But she had touched his imagination deeply. A once sealed door, behind which lay his dead blood-brother in a jungle of blood, a repressed childhood, an unwanted solitude, and now the realization that he’d never lived the life he’d wished for all those useless years; a once sealed door that had been opened in foolish emptiness could not be allowed to close behind him for his ideal images to die all over again – images, as perfect as God himself, of enduring love and the courage to bear the loss this implied. He had nursed these ideals bitterly, the merest shred of hope mocking him in his ever-expanding withdrawal from life. His undying romanticism and idiotic idealism made him gag – his entire life stood against him as proof that he was a singular fool.
In his more reflective moods he was aware of the terrible game he was playing. Hope for what? She was utterly gone! He admitted that he had never really known her. But do we ever really know anyone? He asked the shadows of his thoughts to no avail. At last he faced things squarely, with an indignation approaching wrath.
Four months after the baby, David, was born, she left town with some guy she met at a bar. A narcissist, a gypsy wanton! He thought bitterly, like a general perusing (on a forced march) the articles of his surrender. Look under fool in the dictionary, he hissed, and you will find my stupid, stricken face.
Upon much reflection Martha believed she had discovered the reason for this unlikely union: the woman had inspired his compassion! To her Hector was a man of self-sacrifice, an innocent. But his lack of warmth towards the boy, now four years of age, troubled her to no end. Bewildered, she struggled to find a way to reach him. Her quiet, solitary brother was now completely inaccessible. Things couldn’t have seemed more hopeless if Hector had been reported lost on one of Jupiter’s moons.
She had suffered his silence and suppressed anger for these four years. And although she loved and sympathized with him, she had begun to lose patience. Indeed, he inspired her compassion, as Sara had no doubt inspired his. But Martha’s primary concern was for the child and the opportunity Hector was losing and would never, most likely, regain. And it would be the same for David: in every way that really mattered he was an orphan. Thus she had decided to push her morose and inscrutable brother as far as she dared – until he saw the light! His withdrawal from life had ramifications to which he seemed oblivious: his pain extending out to unknown regions and growing like a fungi.
To complicate matters, Martha had recently received a letter from Sara, a letter Hector not only refused to read but even to acknowledge; as if no such person existed. He had erected a modest stone on his burial plot and was working assiduously to destroy her ghost. This, of course, created quite a stir in the small town: alarm, mockery, fear, sympathy, and even anger. Strangely, this pleased Hector.
“She’s his mother, she has a right to see him,” Martha once again chastened him. He was sitting in the den, reading his time-worn Conrad. Martha was standing in the doorway, holding the forbidden letter. He slowly lowered the book, an expression of resolve frozen upon his unforgiving face.
“She has the right,” Martha repeated, unflinchingly, like conscience itself. Hector, rising to his feet, shook his head in adamant dismissal.
“If there’s a God in Heaven,” he thundered, dropping the book to the floor, “then he’s both our Mother and Father. . . Don’t talk to me about rights! You earn your rights, and that bitch relinquished hers!” Then he made a quick, obscene and uncharacteristic gesture. “To hell with ‘em all!” He finished his tirade and stared back at her defiantly. She hesitated, taken aback by the vulgarity and violence of his reaction.
“The love you stand by is your life,” he continued firmly, his rage somewhat abated. “This earns you your rights! Your privilege to be called mama or daddy!”
“Yes,” she began in a passionate whisper,” resolving to respond strictly to his reasoning, “and you have someone to stand by, someone who needs you. . . I’m asking you to stand by your son!” She was engaged in an obvious fight to control her emotions; the blood rushed to her face and her pupils dilated. “That’s all I’m asking,” she said forcefully, and turned and left the room. Again the arrow had hit its target. Hector staggered toward the front door and gazed out into the choppy sea, then sat on the edge of the living room couch, a slight tremble in his hands.
Dear Mr. Dvorak,
When you reach that heart rending series of notes, and drop me to the center of my being, for a moment then, life seems real and such beauty wakes me in the deepest place, the placeless place in which I have wasted my days circling myself, involved in ludicrous mental chatter, in tacit acceptance that my illusions are real. Then the deep longing