Inside his living room, El Pintor looked around with sharp interest, but, except for a troubled frown or two, there was no sign of recognition. “This is where I live?” It was a question directed at Monica. Inside his living room, El Pintor looked around with sharp interest, but, except for a troubled frown or two, there was no sign of recognition. “This is where I live?” It was a question directed at Monica.
She nodded, and Mrs. Callahan quickly said, “It’s a nice room. Warm. Livable. I especially like the rugs.”
El Pintor stood for several minutes looking at the books that filled the hanging shelves on the west wall. He pulled out a copy of Moby Dick and leafed through it. The soft rustle of the pages was the only sound in the room, and the remaining silence was as pressing as a prayer. Abruptly, with a quick shake of his head, El Pintor returned the book to its shelf and walked to the corner of the room with the small sink and stove. He opened the refrigerator door. Its shallow shelves were crowded with bowls of salad and fruit and cartons of milk and juice. He closed it and glanced at a casserole on the counter. “Someone’s been cooking,” he said gently.
Behind him, Toni swallowed hard and nodded. “My aunt sent you those enchiladas. She knows how much you like them.”
“Thank her for me,” he said, without looking around. And then, with a long, drawn-out sigh, he turned. He looked extremely weary as he glanced from Toni, to Rob, to Monica, and then to Mrs. Callahan. “I don’t remember anything,” he said in a low voice.
“That’s all right,” Mrs. Callahan said. “Don’t try so hard. Dr. Hilger said it will just happen.” She snapped her fingers as she said the last words.
Toni, fighting back tears, cleared her throat and said, “The studio’s this way.” She opened the door at the back of the small room, and Monica went on ahead of El Pintor. She wanted to see his face when he looked at the paintings that lined the walls.
Nothing. El Pintor walked around the studio, carefully examining the sketches and tools on the worktable, and, with even more deliberation, he studied the paintings on the walls and those stacked on the floor. The other four watched him eagerly. El Pintor turned to them and said, “So I did these? I don’t remember.” Their disappointment was palpable, filling the room like a thick fog.
Shortly after, Mrs. Callahan left, assuring El Pintor that she and the children would be back to see him in a day or two. Toni, Rob, and Monica left, too, but not before they wrote down their telephone numbers and not before Monica pointed out her bedroom window, which was almost directly across from the small window above El Pintor’s kitchen sink. He had nodded and smiled and said, “Of course. That’s how we send special messages, isn’t it?”
Later, as she waited on the front porch for Rob to return, Monica wondered if those words of El Pintor’s contained a memory or merely a suggestion. It was strange that only Cristina triggered his memory. You would have thought he’d remember Rob and César more easily. Well, there was no sense in trying to figure it out. She tapped her toe impatiently. Where was Rob? He’d called, “I’ll be back to tell you everything,” when Toni and he had started for home. And that was more than twenty minutes ago.
She fought back her irritation. Rob’s family, people who had known El Pintor for many, many years, deserved to hear the story of his disappearance before she did. After all, she had only met El Pintor today. Still, she was the one who had found him.
A screen door slammed at the far end of the street, and Monica turned in time to see Licha, César’s sister, step out of their house. Josie, Licha’s redheaded friend, was sitting under their tree in the hanging tire. She rose slowly and said something to Licha, and then the two girls moved leisurely down the block. When they were directly across the street from Monica, they stopped. Josie whispered something to Licha, and they broke out into loud laughter. In a couple of minutes, they stopped laughing and angled across the street to the torn-down car and the boys working on it.
Monica leaned forward to look for Rob. She could see only a small section of the rear of the car because the front of the studio hid the rest, but she could hear the clinks and clangs of tools on metal and the hum, if not the words, of the boys’ conversation. As Licha and Josie crossed the street, there was a sudden burst of sound from the car’s engine and yells of elation from the boys. Almost as suddenly, the engine died and the voices rose in argument.
Josie called, “Hi, what’s up?” and got no answer. “Hey, I said …” she started, but another look at the boys standing by the car kept her from going on. She and Licha stopped at the edge of the sidewalk, the green stripe in Josie’s dyed red hair gleaming in the mid-afternoon sun. They were clearly annoyed. When they saw Rob approaching, they ran up to him, flanking him on either side. Rob, too, it seemed, disappointed them. Whatever question it was that they asked, he gave a quick answer to and left them standing open-mouthed and chagrined once more. He gave a brief nod of greeting to the grumbling mechanics and lengthened his stride as he hurried toward Monica.
“I know, I know,” he said as he sat down beside her. “It’s about time.”
Monica shrugged. “I didn’t say it.”
“Yeah,” Rob answered with a grin, “but you looked it. You probably guessed what kept me. They had to know everything at my house. They’re old friends of his, you know.”
Instead of answering, Monica looked over her shoulder into the house and called, “Laurita! Rob’s here. Should we—”
“I’m right here,” Laurita said from the other side of the screen door. “I’ll come out there with you.”
They moved up onto the porch then. Monica and Laurita sat in the two porch chairs and Rob leaned against the railing facing them.
“It’s not a long story,” he said. “And it’s typical of El Pintor. I remember once when I was a little kid, he climbed that tree in César’s yard to bring down a kitten that had been chased up there by two of the neighborhood’s meanest dogs. He didn’t even—”
“Rob!” Monica interrupted. “You’re doing it on purpose.”
“If you don’t tell us what happened,” Laurita said with an impish grin that belied her age, “we’re going to beat up on you.” Monica glanced at her and thought, no wonder my mother liked her.
“What happened,” Rob said, “was that he saved little Annie’s life.” He paused, his black eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Don’t stall,” Monica said. “Now we want the details. All of them. And no more goofing off.”
“I hear you, I hear you,” Rob said and, with no more hesitation, plunged somberly into the story.
Mrs. Callahan, he said, and the two little girls had been at St. Francis Park on that Thursday afternoon. Annie and Peggy were kicking a soccer ball around while their mother sat on a bench watching them. The two girls were arguing about who could kick the ball farther. Finally, Peggy gave the ball a kick that sent it flying over Annie’s head. With a shriek of glee, Peggy plopped down on the grass and said “You’ve gotta go get it,” to Annie. Annie, grumbling, trudged after the ball past some shrubs that hid her from view.
After a minute, Peggy called, “Hey, slowpoke, hurry up!” When there was no answer, Mrs. Callahan hurried past the shrubbery to look for her. She was just in time to see Annie at the edge of the street, holding the ball and talking to a man who leaned out of the open passenger door of an ancient gray sedan. As Mrs. Callahan called to Annie, the man bent down and grabbed Annie’s arm, sending the ball flying and dragging her halfway into the car.
Mrs. Callahan screamed, “Stop! Stop!”
Annie yelled, “Mama-a-a-a!”
Out of nowhere, El Pintor appeared, executing the fastest, longest, and, according to Mrs. Callahan, the most magnificent flying football tackle she had ever seen. He grasped Annie’s legs and pulled her away from the stranger’s hold. Almost immediately, the gray sedan shot forward, and the open door swung back, striking El Pintor on the head and sending both of them rolling to the ground beside the curb. With its open door swinging, the gray car screeched up the street in a cloud of smoking rubber. When Mrs. Callahan reached the curb, she found Annie scratched and screaming, lying face down at El Pintor’s feet.
The little girl reached up to her mother, but El Pintor, who was lying on his back, one hand dangling over the curb, didn’t move. It was clear that he was unconscious. There was an ugly open gash on his forehead near his temple that was bleeding profusely. Mrs. Callahan immediately called the paramedics on her cellphone and, while they waited for them, stripped Annie of her T-shirt to stem the bleeding on El Pintor’s head.
A neighbor was called who came for the girls, and Mrs. Callahan followed the ambulance to the emergency room. There, El Pintor regained consciousness, but didn’t know who he was, what day it was, or what city he was in. There was absolutely nothing on him to identify him. The only clue was a bus transfer, so, although they searched the park for any of his belongings, they gave up the idea of looking for a car that might have been his.
The diagnosis was that he had a mild concussion and that he would be fine with a few days’ rest. As for the amnesia? That, too, Mrs. Callahan was assured, would disappear in a day or two. By that time Mr. Callahan had arrived at the hospital, and he arranged to have El Pintor released to them.
The following day, they took him to see Dr. Hilger, a neurologist, who agreed with the diagnosis. When several days went by and there was no break in the amnesia, Mr. Callahan had started to make inquiries in the neighborhood of St. Francis Park, but he had gotten nowhere.
“We know how frustrated he must have been, don’t we?” Rob ended. “And how glad he must have been when we showed up.”
“Right,” Monica said. “What a story. No wonder they call him Mr. Good Man.”
Laurita nodded and sighed. “He is a good man,” she said. “We must do everything we can to help him.”