lead your life well
And never forget me.
Your loving father
Beside the open letter on the table were scattered a few coins and a pencil.
…
IN ALL OF MARTHA’S FIFTY-SIX YEARS of marriage to Flavio, she had not one regret. She had married a man who cared for his cows and kept the house in good repair and who never once raised his hand in anger. While it was true the two of them seldom spoke of things of importance, other than the lack of rain or a cow that would not grow, the silence in the house comforted her. She would listen to the sounds of their forks while they ate or the hiss of the beans on the stove, and she would feel that the fullness in her life always came from the things not said.
Each morning, she rose with Flavio to prepare his breakfast: eggs and chile and a warm tortilla with butter and honey. She would drink a cup of coffee by herself and look out the window at the apple trees that grew along their drive. Then she would begin cooking dinner. When it was done she would cover the pan with foil and leave it on the counter to cool. She would straighten the kitchen then and sweep the floors and make the bed. In the summer months, she tended a small garden near the house where she grew corn and yellow peppers and small red potatoes.
She sometimes thought that her life with Flavio was like a season, although she wasn’t exactly sure just what season it was. Not spring with its winds and late snows, or autumn when the aspens streak gold across the mountains and the light is too thin. Martha’s life was more like the thick heat of summer, or the flat frozen days of winter when it seems as if nothing will ever change.
If there had been any difficulty in their marriage, it was the absence of children, and even that was not for lack of trying. In truth, she and Flavio had tried so hard and so often to conceive a child that eventually their efforts became a habit. Far past middle age the two of them would make love quietly and Martha would close her eyes, her hands light on Flavio’s hips, and listen to the sound of his breath. Sometimes she would cry softly at the thought of Flavio’s seed swimming lost inside her, and Flavio, who seldom knew the right thing to say, would pat her arm awkwardly until they both fell asleep.
On the morning of her death, Martha was preparing Flavio’s favorite food, enchiladas with cilantro, when her heart caught in her chest. She stood by the stove for a moment as if waiting for someone, and then she felt her knees buckle. As she fell slowly to the floor, she thought that there was something she should tell her husband, but she couldn’t quite grasp what it was. Her eyes closed and she could smell the scent of garlic. Through the open window she heard the wind moving in the leaves of the apple trees.
TWO DAYS AFTER MARTHA’S DEATH, her Rosary was held at the church. Flavio sat alone in the front pew, just a few feet before the altar. He was dressed in a black suit that was a size too small for him and black boots that pinched his feet. His head was bowed slightly and his hands were in his lap.
Behind him, the church was filled with his friends and their families, but among them was not one relative of his or Martha’s. For the first time, he realized that somehow he had managed to outlive his entire family.
Martha lay in her coffin on the altar, and as the priest led everyone in prayer, Flavio raised his head and looked at his wife. He could see that her eyes were closed. Her hands were folded together on her chest. She was wearing a soft white dress that had once been her mother’s, and her hair was brushed in a way that Flavio couldn’t remember. She looked younger in her death and also different, as if she were someone he had once known but then forgotten.
The thick wood planks beneath his feet had worn to a shine from people kneeling for so many years, and he remembered all the other Rosaries for the dead he had attended. Then it occurred to him that when the priest was done, everyone in the church would pass by him to give their condolences. He had no idea what to say to so many people. Flavio suddenly wished he was in his fields staring at the mountains, listening to the water in his ditch and knowing, without thinking, that his wife was home waiting for him to come for dinner.
For months after Martha’s death, it appeared to everyone in Guadalupe that nothing had really changed in Flavio’s life. He still rose early each morning and went to his fields. He kept the house clean and neat. He even watered and weeded the small garden that Martha had planted in the spring. The talk in the village was that it was good Flavio had recovered so quickly from the death of his wife, rather than complaining constantly and weeping by the side of the road as Onecimo Romero had done, making everyone else feel bad. It was best to let go of the dead, most people thought, not let them hang around and cause trouble.
At one time, Flavio would have readily agreed with all of this. He had always been a man who thought little about things, content to go through his life much as one of his cows would have, wherever his feet took him, which was usually from his field back to his house. Unfortunately, although it was true that on the surface Flavio appeared to be fine, not only had he quietly become lost, as if in a place he no longer knew, but he began to dream without sleeping.
Flavio would be in his fields with his cap pulled down low on his forehead, his arms loose, his shovel leaning against his body. He would stand by the ditch and suddenly he would find himself having long conversations with people who were not there. What made it worse was that when he was done visiting with these people, he would barely remember just who it was he’d been talking to, let alone what it was they’d been talking about. He would think that he had dozed while standing, but when he glanced about he would see that the field was wet and his boots were stained with mud and water.
Flavio began to feel as if he were living in two places at the same time. Although he took some pleasure in the knowledge that his body was smart enough to keep irrigating in his absence, it made him uneasy to think that his mind could leave without him knowing it. All that would remain with him when he came to his senses was a faint memory that was more like a scent. Sometimes it was the vision of his father splitting wood in the winter, his breath a cloud, his large hands chafed, or his brother walking backward as an infant, his eyes seeing only where he’d been. Sometimes what he could remember was only something he had once heard: the sound of coyotes in the winter when the air is dead. The harshness in his sister’s voice when they were children. His grandmother calling his name just before dark. Flavio was living in the past, and the present had become lost to him.
On a day in late autumn, Flavio left his field earlier than usual. He was tired and there was a deep ache in his bones. He thought that rather than stand in his alfalfa and feel poorly, he would go home and rest. Although it was not cold that day, there was a hollowness in the air and a thin feel to the warmth. The leaves on the aspens and cottonwoods had already fallen, and the gray patches of woods high up on the mountains wavered like smoke.
As Flavio climbed into his pickup, he realized two seasons had passed since Martha’s death and he could barely remember either one. He also realized that October had come and gone and he was still irrigating plants that had no use for water, but only wanted a little peace before the onset of winter.
Halfway home, as he drove through the center of town, Flavio began to cry. As tears ran down his face, he suddenly found himself making strange gulping noises. When the road became blurred, he slowed the truck and then lowered his head so no one passing by would see him in such a state. He could not remember the last time he had wept, and a mile later when his tears ended so abruptly, it seemed to him as if it had happened to someone else, some other old man driving alone in his pickup.
Outside his house, Flavio stood in front of Martha’s small garden. Although there was not a weed to be seen anywhere, the corn and peppers and potatoes had been left unharvested. The stalks on the corn were yellow and brittle, and they moved slightly even with no wind. He would take a nap, he told himself. When he woke, he would come back outside and dig up the potatoes his wife had planted just before she died.
When Flavio pushed open his front door, he saw a shoebox sitting in the middle of the room. It was a gray box with a faded blue lid. The last time he had seen it, it had been sitting on the top shelf of Martha’s closet. It had once held a pair of small red shoes with slender black straps that Martha had ordered from a city in the east just before their marriage.