Wading

Geraldo usually called on a Tuesday before the late night news, but it was Wednesday and there was still no word from him. Ever since her children had left home Dorada kept the television on to keep her company. She frequently checked to make sure the front door was locked. After a long work week at the lamp factory she depended on Geraldo's phone calls. Her children were too busy to visit. The calls were one of the things she most looked forward to. And when she admitted this to him, she regretted it instantly.

—He's like all the others, thought Dorada, upset that at her age she became so anxious that she lost her appetite over some silly man who hadn't called when he was supposed to.

When the phone rang and Dorada finally heard Geraldo's voice her body let a sigh of relief. She checked herself in the mirror to see if she had lipstick on her teeth.

—Amor mio, he said.

—Where were you yesterday? She asked.

—There was a storm. It was impossible to get anywhere.

—I heard about no storm on the news.

Dominican men had a special gift for spinning lies. She had lived thirty years with her husband and raised two sons to know better.

—The phone lines were down. The streets were so flooded, the water came up to my knees.

Geraldo called her from a public phone at a local colmado. She knew this colmado well. Before she had married her husband and moved to New York, she would beg her mother for pennies so she could buy paletas. She would sit behind the colmado and press her ears onto the tin walls, eavesdropping on all her neighbors, making phone calls to their families in New York. Forty years had gone by and nothing much had changed in that campo.

—Don't be mad at me. I have something for you, he said.

—Is that so?

The thought of Geraldo buying her something always made her feel better. But she refused to tell him so, because men gave less when women were kind.

—I bought you a pin.

—A pin, so it ruins my clothes? I think you should return it and be more considerate of my needs next time, she said, trying to sound disinterested, trying to hold back from having any expectations. She didn't want to think about Geraldo not having a job. That at sixty-five he depended on the money his family sent him from abroad. His days were mostly filled with tending to a small garden on a land his family had squatted on for hundreds of years. She knew him buying anything for her was a sacrifice, but she suspected he didn't buy it anyway, that he must've found it or stole it. Or maybe he didn't have anything for her at all.

—And I got you some roses too, a whole dozen.

She had promised Geraldo that she would buy an airplane ticket, to move back to DR into the house that she and her late husband had planned to retire in. But she hadn't even given a date for retirement to el jefe at the factory, let alone bought a ticket.

—By the time we see each other those roses will be dead, she said and tried to imagine Geraldo holding the roses in his hand. He could barely afford the tattered shoes on his feet and he talked about buying roses. If he had said bougainvilleas or lilies that grow wild in the fields then maybe she could believe him. But roses were for the rich. Besides, what store would carry all the things he professed to buy?

—Well you best be getting yourself here as soon as possible because missing you just about gonna kill me, he said.

She wanted to tell him, that if he wanted her to be happy, he should call when she expected him to and that the days were miserable and long when he made her wait. But she couldn't. She heard Geraldo sigh on the phone and then...