22 Lyra & the Three Marías, Aserrí, 1995

Lyra waved the soaked Three Marías into the house. Visita and her raucous stomach were the first through the doorway, Conchita followed, balancing her sisters’ bags under her arms, and finally Asunta, who’d paid the cabbie his fare. The Three Marías paused in the sparsely decorated foyer, looked into the long, rectangular mirror, and winced—their odyssey had been unkind, to say the least. The triplets fiddled with their glasses, checked their teeth for chips, fixed crooked parts, and when their reflections no longer made them wince, they hauled themselves and their luggage onto Lyra’s couch, whose cushions sank with a low, feeble hiss.

“I thought you had to take a shit,” Asunta said.

“I have to get used to a place first,” Visita said, her sharp glance obvious to everyone, as was her monologuing stomach.

“Visita, please,” Lyra said. “My home is your home. You know that.”

Conchita smiled. “Yes, but she has to warm up to a place before she bombs it.”

“She should be banned by the Geneva Convention,” Asunta said.

“Conventions,” Conchita corrected. “There are four.”

“Point me in the direction, Lyra,” Visita said. “Before I kill them both.”

“I’ll show you.”

Lyra helped Visita to her feet and up the stairs. Conchita and Asunta sat back in the delicious silence of a new home—those succulent moments between a hostess leaving the room and returning, in which one can freely turn to a fellow guest and pick apart everything ruthlessly. But when Asunta opened her mouth to criticize and Conchita’s ears rounded into satellite dishes, they were overcome with nostalgia. The house’s smells reminded them so much of Teresa’s—lavender floor cleaner, sweat in the fibers of the couch cushions, musk, coffee, onions from the kitchen. And Carmen’s smell joined them, too—coconut, clay, wet cigarette paper. Too many memories to bear knocked within them, pounded on the doors of their hearts. To let those joyous, painful recollections in would be a mistake, but to keep them out would only make the noise that much louder. Conchita shifted around in her seat, felt that familiar nothingness lick her vision.

“They don’t even offer you a glass of water in this place,” Asunta whispered to Conchita. It was to bring her sister back.

“¡It’s in the fridge!” Lyra yelled from the top of the stairs. “It’s filtered.”

“Filtered water,” Asunta scoffed. “¿What will scientists invent next?”

“Filtered memories,” Visita said. She’d returned, and with one hand she pet Conchita’s head, lightly enough that she wouldn’t disturb her hairdo. With the other, she pulled and flicked her cardigan repeatedly, thinking that would fan out any lingering smells.

“¿And Lyra?” Asunta said.

“Grabbing the boy.”

“You’re lying,” Conchita said.

“¿Why would I lie? ¿What did you think was going to happen anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Conchita said. “I thought maybe Lyra would lock us in a cage.”

“Idiot,” Asunta said. “Maybe she’ll lock you in a cage.”

“No one’s getting locked in any cages tonight,” Lyra said. The Three Marías (three minutes and three shades apart) turned around and looked upon Gabriel for the first time.

The triplets had read about telepathy before: that twins share a supernatural, psychic bond, and words are merely a formality to entertain the curiosity of the rest of the world. Those from the same womb at the same time have no real necessity to speak. Or rather, they shouldn’t. But that wasn’t the case for the Three Marías, to their great disappointment and consternation. They’d not been born of the same, evenly divided brain, and instead had to use their mouths like regular human beings. Two was the magic number, they decided long ago. The supernatural needs even numbers. Three threw off the whole balance.

When they saw Gabriel for the first time, the Three Marías wished again for this legendary, illusive telepathy. They didn’t want to wait until bedtime to comment on his skin, even and fair like his mother’s; to argue over whether he favored Teresa’s family or Cristina’s; if José María could be found in the boy’s face, and if so, was there any way to remove that. Sometimes grandfathers needed to be cut out like tumors. But the Three Marías hung their mouths open and gawked at Gabriel, who stared back as if challenged to a contest. Asunta’s lazy eye was the only participant who consciously accepted the challenge, and lost, because at the same time, all Three Marías blinked.

“He’s beautiful,” Conchita said.

“Handsome,” Visita corrected. “Boys are handsome.”

“Come,” Asunta waved Gabriel over. He looked up to Lyra, who nodded. “Let me get a good look at you,” she said. And with both eyes she scanned him, and with both hands she cradled his face and massaged his cheeks. Then Asunta giggled, her laugh like ice clinking in a glass. “Look at him, sisters.”

And the other two Marías did. Visita and Conchita each scanned and cradled, pinched and petted. And Gabriel let them with the tolerance of a house cat. Lyra watched the whole interaction with an acerbic bliss, burning and bubbling in her throat like a too-sweet soft drink. In Lyra’s mind, this was a practice round, a controlled experiment. Lyra trusted the Three Marías’ ability to keep their mouths shut. Tomorrow would be another story, though. Even if Teresa had stayed quiet yesterday for those few hours babysitting, hadn’t mentioned Carmen or Juan Julián or the past twenty-seven years, Lyra was unsure if Teresa had the fortitude to do it again. And Cristina, too, posed a problem, another potential leak.

After the Three Marías had their fill, Lyra relieved Gabriel of his duty, kissed him on each eye in gratitude, and slapped his butt upstairs. He ascended the carpeted steps backward, with a debutante’s wave, having taken an immediate liking to the Three Marías. They gestured back, the debutante’s court, invisible juleps and bouquets in hand. Lyra invited the Three Marías upstairs to their room to rest, or to the kitchen to eat, and by unanimous vote, the triplets chose their grumbling stomachs.

The quiet was awkward at first, the only audible conversation from the talkative appliances and their steam. The slush of served stew, the rice cooker’s whistling jet. Clanks against porcelain, metal on meat. Lyra and the Three Marías didn’t know how to slice open the silence, how to deliver it without issue or mistake. It was a delicate, potentially traumatic operation. Lyra fell back on a tried-and-true technique.

“¿Guaro?” she asked the Three Marías.

And the Three Marías sighed relief, slurped the rest of their soups in jubilance, coating their stomach for what they assumed would be a long night. Lyra presented the bottle of Cacique like a game show host and poured four glasses neat.

“¿Cancer, huh?” Lyra said.

“That’s what she says,” Visita said. “Cristina.”

“¿Who even knows if it’s true?” Asunta hiccupped.

“These things are always true,” Conchita said. “Even if Cristina’s exaggerating, even if she doesn’t really know, just speaking it will make it true.”

“True,” Visita and Asunta said. The Three Marías looked to Lyra for confirmation.

“True,” Lyra said reluctantly. “¿Another?”

“Yes,” the Three Marías said in unison.

It went on like that for an hour: Lyra pouring glasses, the Three Marías keeping answers short, obvious. Lighthearted, even though they shouldn’t have been. The four women were waiting for half the bottle to be done before speaking of matters below their surface. True feelings needed two requirements: steady lubrication and the shedding of inhibition. That moment came around ten o’clock, when the wind performed a powerful opera outside the window, and the rain had shaved off a layer of the tin roof. The question within a question arrived like a Trojan horse.

“¿You don’t have a boyfriend, do you, Lyra?” Visita asked.

“No,” Lyra said. She nestled the rim of the glass between her teeth.

Asunta smiled. “Just like us.”

“That’s right.” Lyra smiled back. “You three never settled down.”

“¿Why settle down? We never needed men.”

“Asunta did,” Conchita said. She stared into her guaro, studied light refracting in the liquor.

“Once,” Asunta admitted. “But never again.”

“We never fell into the trap,” Visita said.

“¿What trap?” Conchita scoffed. “¿Spikes and snakes?”

“She’s talking about romance,” Asunta said. “A good enough booby trap, if you really think about it.”

“That sounds about right,” Lyra said, raising her shoulders and one eyebrow.

“¿And you know who sets the trap?” Visita said to her fingernails.

“Everything,” Conchita said.

“That’s right. Every single thing. Songs, movies, our mothers. All the time, men in those boleros play their guitars and croon about love, and the women answer with their sadness, and they’re all going on about how lovely it is to be in love, how much it hurts when you’re out—”

“Out of the trap,” Asunta said.

“But you’re never really out,” Visita said. She rested on her elbows now. “No, you’re never really out of the trap, but it looks like you are. Take your grandmother, for example.”

“¿My grandmother?” Lyra said skeptically.

“Yes,” Conchita said, as if she’d just discovered gravity. “Amarga always went on and on about your grandfather.”

“She never let him go,” Asunta sighed. “Come on, Lyra, you remember.”

“No, you’re right. All she talked about was him.”

“That’s because all she saw was him,” Visita said. “When she closed her eyes, that’s all that existed.”

“His memory,” Lyra said. “Just like my mother.”

Conchita perked up. “Your mother.” The room grew darker. “¿She still thinks about your father?”

“I have no idea,” Lyra said. She walked to the freezer to grab ice, spoke with her back to the Three Marías. “You know I haven’t spoken to her.”

“That’s true,” Conchita said, embarrassed.

“It wouldn’t surprise me one bit,” Asunta said.

“He was handsome,” Conchita said.

“¿So what?” Visita said. “¿You think that’s enough?”

“Sometimes that is enough,” Conchita admitted. “You remember how she looked at him.”

“Like he was Rock Hudson,” Asunta said. “¿But do you really think that was enough?”

“Maybe not,” Conchita said. “¿What do you think, Lyra?”

“I think she’s weak.”

The Three Marías sucked their teeth in unison. A trio of hostile Virgin Marys suddenly closing ranks.

“Don’t say that,” Asunta said. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

“There’s a difference between observing and judging, Lyra,” Visita said. “¿Or did your schooling not teach you that?”

“But—”

“But nothing, girl,” Visita said. “You may have a graduate degree from some gringo university, but all of us—the three of us, your mother, your grandmother—all of us have master’s degrees in eating shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Lyra said. “I didn’t mean to act superior.”

“It’s all right,” Conchita said, calming her sisters. She touched the back of Lyra’s hand with her glass, using the cold to sober her. “We’re from different generations, we saw different things. Everyone watches their parents and swears to themselves that they’ll be different, that they won’t fall into the same traps.”

“And it’s true,” Visita said. “You’re better equipped to dodge those traps than we were. But remember: you learned because you saw us fall.”

Asunta grinned. “That’s deep.”

“Oh, shut up,” Visita said.

“Aristotle over here,” Conchita said. The Three Marías broke into full-bellied laughter, covering their mouths, shutting their eyes from tears, hanging their heads back; so loud, the storm felt challenged. Lyra couldn’t help but join in. For a moment, Lyra and the Three Marías felt as if they were back in Liberia. They could feel the white dust on their heels from dancing all night at the Salamandra Ballroom. Teresa in the crystalline river, Carmen humming like her mother, a songbird. These microcosms of time carved out by uncontrollable laughter, suspended from everything else, transported them back to a room in which everyone was still together—where there was no such thing as absence. In this elusive, fleeting moment of ebullience, all the world was whole again. Laughter a time machine in which happiness could reconstruct the past, and the present couldn’t do anything about it.

 

WITH THE CACIQUE finished, and everyone’s heads swimming laps, Conchita and Asunta marched off to bed, up the steps, one foot at a time, squabbled over the sink to brush their teeth, the toilet to pee, the mirror to remove makeup, bobby pins, gold jewelry, fiddled with their faded luggage, slipped on elegant nightgowns, competed to claim the side of the king-size closest to the door, and fell so fast asleep that Visita and Lyra smiled at the sound of their snores.

“I have another bottle,” Lyra said. “We could crack it open, drown out even the rain.”

“Oh, Lyra, I’m sixty-two, I don’t think my liver could handle any more. Besides, ¿you want to show up hungover to your mother’s party?”

“Maybe. ¿Why not, right?”

“That would be easier. A headache to shield you from truly being present. That’d be the easy way out, love.”

“Maybe.”

“¿What will you do when you see her?”

“I don’t know. I guess I won’t know until she and I are face-to-face again, and we’re trapped in a room full of people. ¿And you?”

“I don’t know either. Who knows if the years have softened us up or hardened us. We’re like boiled eggs, aren’t we. You never really know how we’ll be until you crack us open.”

Lyra turned her glass a quarter clockwise every few seconds, watched the ring of condensation stain the wood table. “¿What if it really is cancer?”

“Then we have to decide if we can forgive quick, ¿don’t we? If there’s a clock ticking, we don’t have time to waste.”

“I don’t get it. All there’s been is time. So many years of waiting and quiet. And if she dies, even more years of quiet.”

“And waiting.”

“¿For what?”

“To join her, silly. To join everyone. We don’t disappear, we just return to the unknown, float on up to where we came from.”

“¿Float?”

“Of course. I had a girlfriend whose heart stopped right on the operating table—she was getting something extracted, or something added, or sucked out, or stuffed in—and they pronounced her dead. Almost four minutes of being dead.”

“¿And they brought her back?”

“Obviously. They slammed those metal paddles so hard on her chest they cracked a few ribs. But she said that when her heart stopped, when the inside of her was all calm, something pushed her up. Like water, she said. Floated her high enough she didn’t weigh anything anymore.”

“¿And the returning?”

“I’m getting to that. She said everyone she’d ever loved was there, even if they weren’t dead yet. That they all floated up, too—only not on the water but inside her head. All their voices and their happiness flooded her for just an instant, so that she could say goodbye. And when that was done, all there was was peace.”

“¿Did she like it?”

“¿Did she like being dead?”

“Mhm.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask—it’s kind of awkward asking someone if they liked being dead. Anyhoo, what she said was that the floating felt like returning. The real returning. Not the ghosts or the loved ones, but the return to the stillness. Death feels like nothing. And that nothing is so, so warm.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“No, neither do I.” Visita laughed. “That girlfriend has the bad habit of exaggerating. But I like to think about it that way now. It’s a good backup theory. I don’t believe in Heaven, or Hell, or being forced to roam the earth in search of forgiveness. But I do like the floating. It’s got a nice ring to it.”

Lyra and Visita shared the silence as they had the alcohol. They each thought their own thoughts about tomorrow’s party, considered their own strategies and expectations. Visita worried about her sisters, while Lyra worried about Gabriel. Everyone’s fate was tied to Teresa’s, everyone’s futures dependent on whether she still had one. Their pasts, inextricable from hers. But the present tendered the most difficult choice: to forgive. What does forgiveness sound like? Look like? What does it feel like inside the chambers of the heart?

 

AMERICAN FRUIT COMPANY

GENERAL OFFICES, 588 20TH STREET NW, WASHINGTON, D.C.

CABLE ADDRESS

AMERIFRUITCO { SAN JOSÉ D.C.

VINCENT RICHARD SMITH, M.D.

ATTENDING PHYSICIAN

JOHN AUGUSTUS SMITH JR.

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

COSTA RICA DIVISION

SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA

March 26, 1968.

Dear sir:

I am writing to recommend that the board immediately send an oncologist to Costa Rica to begin comprehensive assessments of the female workers and spouses on the plantations. Besides reports of miscarriages, many of the women complain of headaches and seizures, and during their examinations I have noticed scarring on their extremities; it resembles melanoma, even in the darker patients. I have also felt tumors in over half the patients’ breasts. This might also be the result of DBCP, which is of great interest to the Company and the board. I suggest Dr. Torrence Johnson, the head oncologist at Johns Hopkins University. He is a Yale man and a trustworthy man of good pedigree.

I have also completed my examinations of the male workers on the plantation, and within the week I will attempt to collect signed consent forms from the workers. Most, if not all, are illiterate, and the documents are in English, which will make it almost impossible for them to decipher. Regardless, I predict it will be a difficult undertaking. The workers are cantankerous, a powder keg, if you will. The banana managers overestimate their influence on the plantations. I fear this process will tip the workers over the edge. You have not seen their eyes, Uncle.

Please confirm receipt and let me know further steps,