The Bonjour Gene: A Novel

Chapter 5. Unforgettable Tangos, Indelible Pagodas

53 “Are you okay?” Martina vaguely heard, but not loud enough to interrupt her rote knitting or call her soul back from where she had taken it, staring off into the summer night through the open window behind the TV set. Transported to the balmy night breezes of her island town, she was young again and waiting for Javier to arrive with his guitar and sing a repertoire of Carlos Gardel’s tangos. One of those songs, “The Day You Love Me,” their song, was the title song of the movie classic that she and Daisy, Javier’s niece, were waiting to see after the late news. “Martina? Martina?” She heard the voice louder now. But why was Daisy shaking her? Why was she asking if anything was wrong? Martina answered, “What?” “I have been talking to you, and you were not here. Gone completely.” “I’m here. I had been working on a difficult part of my knitting and got distracted.” Daisy reminded her that the Lotto drawing was coming up after the commercial and that they had just announced the night’s prize as seven million dollars. Daisy picked up the empty dish on her lap and went into the kitchen, her wide behind looking even bigger in jeans. Mrs. Graham had already nodded off on the sofa, as she normally did at that hour, with her bifocals slipped down to the very tip of her nose. Daisy returned with the dish piled with more green grapes and yellow cubes of cheddar. She tapped the back of Mrs. Graham’s k Unforgettable Tangos, Indelible Pagodas hand, a miniature map crisscrossed with blue and red roads. “Mrs. Graham, the Lotto.” “Apúntale los números. Write down the numbers for her.” When Mrs. Graham fell asleep, Daisy and Martina unthinkingly switched to Spanish. Daisy put the dish on the floor, went back to the kitchen and returned with a ballpoint and small notepad. She made the sign of the cross before the brunette ministering the lottery. “Today’s Lotto numbers are . . .” Up popped the first ping-pong ball. Daisy jotted down the six numbers, then checked her ticket. “Not one. Where’s yours, Martina?” Martina’s puckered lips pointed to the top of the set. “But first change the station, Daisy, for the Gardel movie.” At arm’s length she examined the nearly completed breast piece of the sweater she was knitting. Daisy stared, shaking her head. “It’s uncomfortable to watch you knit a wool sweater in this heat.” Martina explained that she wanted to have the sweater for the fall. But there was another reason. Two weeks before, a man crept up from behind as she entered the building, choked her and grabbed her purse. She didn’t see his face or height or color. In her distress, she dialed her son Edgar’s number, deliriously expecting him to pick up the phone. But Edgar had been dead for four months. Her daughter-in-law Jean answered. She did her best to console but reminded Martina that her son was no longer alive. Jean offered to visit but, having already faced the painful reality, Martina was getting a grip on herself and didn’t think it necessary. Left to her solitude, Martina reflected on her sorrow. First Javier, and now Edgar. Martina missed them so that she even dared to think of looking up Javier’s illegitimate daughter, whose name she vaguely recalled was Rosa Isabel or Isabel Rosa, who had to be a young woman by then. But it was only a fleeting thought. “How could I think of calling her. How could anyone, especially that child, forgive me?” So enraged had she been that Javier would betray her, would behave as they had warned her of Bonjour men, that she didn’t think of the children. After having Edgar, her body could not produce another, and he grew up wishing he had a brother or sister 54 Unforgettable Tangos, Indelible Pagodas 55 Unforgettable Tangos, Indelible Pagodas when all that time he did have a sister in Brooklyn whom he never knew because of his mother’s jealous anger. The mugging so soon after Edgar’s death, she came to believe, was part of the great penance she was paying for her sinful behavior toward that innocent girl. Her world had turned into a single cold season, and so she started knitting...