IT WAS THE SECOND TO last day of the year, and it was a beauty of a day. Even if the breeze was cold, the sun was warm, and as I ran, I thought the entire world was blazing with life. The year was ending, and a kind of order seemed to be filling up the chaos in my life. It was as if everything good was converging and everything seemed to make some kind of sense. My brother was gone from my thoughts, and if he ever returned, I would never again suffer from the pain of having loved him as a boy. He would no longer haunt my life or my dreams.
I felt as if the new year would be full of hope and the promise that something rare and beautiful awaited me.
I was happy.
I took a shower after my run and talked to Legs. She was getting old. But her eyes were still bright with life, and she still wagged her tail like a puppy.
I was drinking coffee with my mom, and Legs had her head on my lap. “Your friends are hilarious. Hilarious and wonderful. They’re fine people. Behind all that laughing and all that humor, they have very serious young minds. I enjoy their company.”
My mom and I talked for a while. She didn’t ask about my brother. We had plenty of time to talk about that. Not today.
“I’m going to the grocery store. I want to make a nice New Year’s roast. And, of course, menudo for New Year’s Eve.”
“Why don’t you and Dad go dancing?”
“Your father’s worst nightmare. The last time we danced was—I can’t remember. When it comes to dancing, your father likes to watch. I like staying home. I don’t know why, but I feel very close to your father on New Year’s Eve. I think he feels the same way. It sounds boring, but we love New Year’s Eve. We drink wine and listen to music and talk about the songs we’re listening to and why they matter to us. When the clock strikes twelve, he kisses me. And I feel like a girl again.”
And she did look like a girl again.
I thought of my mother and father kissing each other at the stroke of midnight as the old year ended and the new year began. I pictured them as two young people holding each other and the worries of the world going away. Just the two of them. Their whole lives still ahead of them.
The house was quiet.
My mother had left for the grocery store, and my father had slept late. I was writing in my journal at the kitchen table.
“Dad, what’s wrong?”
He was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, and he was clutching at his chest and having a hard time breathing, and he looked at me, a look of panic on his face, and then fell to the floor.
“Dad! Dad!”
I was holding him, and he was looking up at me, and I didn’t know what to do. And he whispered, “Ari,” but he couldn’t manage to say anything else and I wanted Mom to be here and I didn’t know what to do and I wanted to call 911 but I didn’t want to let him go as I held him and he hung on to me, he hung on to me and then he just smiled at me and he seemed to be at peace and he looked at me with such a calmness and he whispered, “Liliana.” And he whispered her name again. “Liliana.”
And I saw the life go out of him and he was motionless and his eyes, which had been so alive, went blank and so far away. And I rocked him in my arms, rocked and rocked him, and I knew I was crying out—but it felt like it was someone else. “No. No. No, no, no, no, no. Dad. Dad. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. No, Dad! Dad!”