Maybe you should wait a while before you take him back, Antonia advises. If you can spare him a little longer, I could use his help with a few things. Windows to wash. Lawn furniture to haul out of the shed. She makes up a list of improvised chores to delay his return. Best not to mention the promised phone call.
Roger scowls, looking them both over, probably suspecting they’re up to something. Okay, but I need the ladder back. Roger heads out the front door, and moments later his pickup pulls into the backyard, where she and Mario are waiting. After the two men load the ladder, Roger points to his left wrist, where he’d wear a watch if he wore such things. Be back by the afternoon milking.
Sí, patrón, sí, Mario answers, in a voice so submissive it pains Antonia to hear it.
Roger drives away, the ladder poking out the back of the lowered flatbed. Antonia notes the red plastic ribbon tied to one end to alert cars to keep their distance.
Mario pulls out a wallet from his back pocket. Monogrammed RL, Ralph Lauren? A fancy brand for a poor man, but then most of these brands are now pirated, cheap imitations sold on city streets by migrants in stocking caps, calling her over in accents from Haiti, Mexico, Ethiopia, countries she isn’t sure where they are on the map. Burkina Faso was the last one that took her by surprise. Remind me where it is, she had asked Sam, as if she had only momentarily forgotten. She didn’t want him teasing her about one more deficiency of her Dominican primary school education, adding her poor sense of geography to her deplorable math skills. He wouldn’t let her reconcile their checkbook.
Tucked inside the sleeve of Mario’s wallet is a worn piece of paper. Soon it will disintegrate with all the unfolding, refolding. Mario holds it out to her. Estela, written in a rough hand, then an area code and phone number. That’s all? she asks, and he nods. I thought for Mexico you needed more? Yes, you do, but she is not in Mexico. She is in Colorado. The way he pronounces the name, it sounds like a state in Mexico. But no, his novia has already crossed over. Estela has encountered some problem with being released. The coyotes have refused to put her on a bus to Burlington.
A bus cross-country by herself? Antonia questions. Does she speak English? Does she have her passport? What if she’s apprehended? Furthermore, does la novia have her parents’ consent? Does el patrón know?
La novia does not speak English. She has no pasaporte. She has only her mother and little sisters, the father died, no brothers to protect her. The coyotes would bring her door-to-door for more money than Mario has. Many have made the journey safely by bus. Mario answers every one of la doñita’s questions readily. But then he comes to a full stop. Here be his dragon: el patrón. Señor Roger is a hard man, Mario offers, watching to see if Antonia will agree before he goes on to admit that el patrón does not know Mario’s girlfriend will be arriving at his doorstep to live with him.
Antonia looks back at the young face, the high cheekbones, the carved features. Eighteen, he’s told her, no older than her first-years at the college. But although he has the slender body of a boy, Mario’s eyes are those of an old soul, the brown iris almost filling the socket, only a thin white rim showing, like the sun right before a full eclipse. If she continues to stare at them, will she go blind? And small as he is, Mario could kill her, cut her throat. The disquieting thought surprises her. More and more in her post-Sam life, things previously not dangerous now seem potentially so. No wonder all religions urge followers to care for the widow. Widow. What a name. Girlfriend, novia, esposa, viuda.
And when are you planning to tell el patrón?
Mario bows his head like a penitent boy. Maybe la doñita can help him with this?
Why would el patrón listen to me? I don’t know him. We’re just neighbors. Antonia can hear her mother’s scolding voice coming out of her mouth. She doesn’t want to berate him. He’s worried enough. But she can’t seem to help herself, some bully impulse to keep swinging even when your victim is down. And if I ask el patrón, and he says no, what are you going to do then, eh?
Mario doesn’t have to reply; what he is thinking is written all over his face. He now has seen the wing with its three bedrooms: her study, the master bedroom, and a guest room. Perhaps that’s what he was doing by taking the liberty? Checking out the accommodations for the girlfriend.
Anything else you need? she made the mistake of asking. In a similar situation, wouldn’t anyone ask as much? A Sam question. If there were any dinner parties coming up—not the obligation suppers friends and acquaintances have been inviting her to, but a freewheeling dinner party with sparkling conversation—she would bring up the question. Who do we ask for help when we’ve run out of options?
She hands the phone to Mario, then exits the room, not only out of respect for their privacy. She cannot bear to hear the happy voices of lovers reconnecting.
Doñita, Mario calls, toward the bedroom wing where she has disappeared. Mi novia quiere darle las gracias.
Thank her for what? Antonia hasn’t agreed to anything. But how can she refuse just talking to the girl? What is the minimum one owes another? Another dinner-party question.
Doñita, muchísimas gracias. The girl sounds timid, scared, her voice just above a whisper. And yet she has been gutsy enough to make the perilous journey north from the southern tip of Mexico—where Mario has told her he is from—the whole length of the country, over the border, through the desert, braving la migra, dubious smugglers, fellow travelers. All the dragons.
Gracias, gracias, the girl keeps saying. Her gratitude is hard to bear. De nada, Antonia replies, a more accurate rejoinder than you’re welcome: she has done nothing to be thanked for.
She considers sending Mario back on foot, across the back pasture, by the tree line, safely out of sight of the road. This might give him the message that she is not available for further favors: making arrangements for the bus ticket, picking up Estela in Burlington, getting her some warm clothes.
But Antonia cedes, as she always did with Sam, the good cop, who seems to be resurrecting inside her. A part of you dies with them, Antonia now knows, but wait awhile, and they return, bringing you back with them. So, is this all his afterlife will amount to? Sam-inspired deeds from the people who loved him?
She drives Mario home, and once there, decides to get it over and done with. She knocks at Roger’s back door, as she has never seen anyone come in or go out the front door in her thirty years on this road. When he doesn’t answer, Antonia is relieved. She has done her part.
Mario is waiting for her beside the car. He looks relieved as well. Maybe it is best if la doñita talks to el patrón after the girlfriend arrives?
And where will you put her if he says no? Antonia asks crossly.
Just then, Roger comes out from the barn, looking annoyed, too. Maybe he’s had an altercation with one of his cows or an old piece of machinery quit or José broke it—or does Roger even need a reason? Seems he’s always cranky. The old Vermonter. Makes it easier when you can pin someone down as a type with a ringtone or label. What type would Sam be? Have been, she corrects herself. And she? The bereft widow? The whiny widow? The wise widow? What kind of widow does she want to be?
Before she’s done conveying Mario’s request, Roger is shaking his head. No, he says, n-o, same word in Spanish as in English. He glares at Mario, who takes a step back as if the fire keeping him warm has suddenly flared up.