Part 9 (2/2)
”Friends who are the same age get married.”
”Yes, that's why I ended up alone,” Socorro snapped, maybe louder than she would have if the lights were on.
”Now you're talking about more than fifteen years ago,” her mother said. ”How are you going to find a man more young and healthy if you keep thinking about something that happened so long ago? You think that they are all the same, but you would know different if you gave them a chance.”
”The men my age have not changed - they only got older.”
”No man is perfect,” her aunt said.
”And how would you know?” Socorro couldn't believe this was coming from a woman who'd never so much as had a male friend.
”I was just saying, from what I hear.”
”Why do you have to keep defending him? You talk about Rogelio like I was the one who made everything go bad.”
Her mother leaned forward. ”I only want you to see what you're doing, if you go with this other one, the little old man.”
”He has a name,” she said.
”And that's all you are going to have when he dies,” her mother said. ”Do you really want people to say, 'There goes the widow of Don Celestino'?”
”They said it once about me, at least this time they would be saying it for more sincere reasons.”
”So you do want to marry him?”
”You two were the ones who brought it up.”
”Then he hasn't?”
”No, already he was married for more than fifty years, and he has his own family.”
”And you, what do you say?” her mother asked.
”I spent six years married, that was enough.”
”Hmm,” her aunt let out. ”She wants us to believe she hasn't thought about it.”
”Believe what you want.” Socorro pulled more of the blanket up to her chest.
Her mother rolled backward in a half circle. ”Later you will see that we were telling you the truth.”
”You worry because you think I would go away.”
”Bah, now she thinks we cannot live without her.” Her aunt laughed.
”You act that way.”
The wheelchair squeaked as her mother adjusted herself. ”You think your poor tia hasn't sacrificed to be here with us?”
”And where else was she going to go?” Socorro said. ”If before this she was living with her mother?”
”Taking care of her.” Her aunt stepped off the bed and went to stand behind the wheelchair. ”Until G.o.d needed her.”
”Very nice,” her mother said. ”Talking that way to your poor tia.”
”Sorry.”
”We just want to help you, right?”
Her aunt only nodded from behind the chair.
”It would be better if you stopped seeing him,” her mother said, ”found yourself another house to clean, just so you can get away from him.”
”You say it like I was a young girl and I need for my mother to tell me who I can spend time with.”
”A mother knows.”
”You tell me the same answer for everything, that you know better than I do.”
”When you get to fifty, he will already be at eighty-five,” her aunt said. ”When you are sixty, he will be ninety-five.”
Her mother laughed. ”As if the man is really going to reach that age.”
Socorro clutched her pillow a little tighter and curled up on her side until they left the room, then she shut the door and crawled back into bed. Since when had the differences in people's ages become so important? Her tio Felix had married a girl who was half his age when he was in his sixties, and n.o.body said anything. No, they congratulated him like he'd won a color television in a raffle at the church.
She lifted the pillow and turned from the wall. Why was she wasting her time arguing with them? Rogelio hadn't wanted her. He'd shown her with his body what he couldn't say to her face. He could've had babies with half the women in Matamoros, and her mother still would have thought they needed to stay married. Maybe in some way, all of it - the ugly woman he found, the baby he left her with, even the drowning - had been a blessing. By now she would have suffered so many years with him. But then maybe she had also given up too soon, before G.o.d might have fixed her body. What if her body hadn't changed simply because she had lost faith that it ever would? Maybe this was her biggest mistake.
The first light of day was peeking through the window. A chattering newscaster had replaced the voices in the other room. She could hear her aunt moving around the kitchen, the sound of the kettle on the stove. After a while the scent of cinnamon wafted throughout the house. She knew she hadn't heard the last from her mother and aunt. If this was the only sincere man she had found after all these years of believing she would be alone, who were they to protest? And then it occurred to her that she still hadn't reached the age when her body was supposed to have started changing. How, after giving up on Rogelio and then her own body, could she give up on this new man? Maybe Celestino was the type she should have met years earlier, maybe from the very start. A man who already had his children and didn't care to have any more. A man who simply wanted her for her.
20.
Don Fidencio knocked, then waited a minute and knocked a second time, only harder. It was better than opening the door and finding The One With The Hole In His Back asleep on the pot - again. When he didn't get a response, he walked in and searched under the sink, around the toilet, and in the s.p.a.ce behind the door.
He hobbled back to the closet for another look. With one hand against the wall, he steadied himself as if he were walking down the aisle of a bus pulling away from its last stop. His five shoe boxes, all of them covered up and in order with their appropriate numbers facing outward, sat on the top shelf where they had been earlier. His three s.h.i.+rts and pants hung where the attendant had left them. For all he knew, they had taken his canes to the flea market and sold them to some other old man with a bad leg. He couldn't believe the lack of respect these women showed him. If they had taken the time to ask, he would have told them that the wooden cane was the one he used when he was out in public. Who knows what else these women would have taken if he hadn't complained at the nurses' station? And then to make matters worse, they laughed when he reported that someone had been stealing his chocolates or that he was missing his lighter or one of his government-issue pens. Then a few days later The One With The Flat Face would come knocking on the door and say that the yardman had found his missing lighter on the patio, under one of the stone benches out by the back fence, or that an attendant had recovered his pocketknife from one of the trays coming out of the dishwasher. Always some excuse. Always some reason to blame him and make it seem like he didn't know where he left things. Look, here comes The One Who Loses Everything.
He set his baseball cap on the nightstand and pushed the chair next to the bed. Once he was sitting, he grabbed hold of the bed railing and with much sacrifice slowly lowered himself so both knees could gently touch the floor. Still holding on to the railing, he bowed all the way down. One of his government-issue pens lay under the center of the bed, for sure tossed there by some careless aide who didn't have the good manners to return the pen to its proper place after using it. He tried several times to grab hold of it, but his hand came up short each time. If he'd had one of his canes with him, this wouldn't have been a problem. The pen would have to wait for later so he could find something else to help him reach it. Off in the corner, near the headboard, lay a diaper, still folded up and unused (”Thanks be to G.o.d,” he whispered to himself), that must have been meant for the last old man to occupy the bed, because it sure as h.e.l.l wasn't his (again, ”Thanks be to G.o.d”).
No, they were afraid of him, that was what was going on here. They'd seen how much improvement he had made with his therapy and now they were scared that one of these days he would slip out and this time they wouldn't be able to catch up to him. One good, st.u.r.dy cane was all it would take. And soon, not even that. In the evenings he was still sweeping the floors with the dust mop, but now once he was out of sight of the nurses' station, he would lean the mop against the wall and continue on his own, staying close to the wooden railing, just in case. They probably thought he would never get anywhere without the walker. But that showed how much they knew Fidencio Rosales.
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