The Angels -- Part 4

 

Thomas Jeffrey Vasseur

 

* * * * *

Personally, I'm afraid of all passionless people, their robust voices and ironic smiles. Not laughter, mind you, but smiling. Laughter occurs within a different domain.

I think a lot of times we laugh to forget, or to remember. But deep-down we laugh because we are frightened.

Personally, I'm afraid of the fearless.

* * * * *

My mother never knew we were married and I can't tell her now. My future would be the color of a crow's wing because my parents would see things from a different perspective, from otherworldly Catholic eyes. My life as a woman would be over. My father might call me worse names than he did on the day I first left his house. So, I can't tell them now. Not that he actually said those names then, but I know what he thinks. So am I wrong to be silent on this matter, to prefer my form of pleasure to theirs?

No one had ever taken care of me, pleased me, the way that Frank could whenever he took the time. In spite of his big hands and his awkward way of saying what he wanted.

"Okay, espera. Not now," I might tell him.

But sometimes it was the other way around and he would say, "Hold on. Let's wait a minute." Occasionally I would sympathize with his strategy and neither of us would utter a word. One morning, before classes, I was wearing a yellow dress, a yellow dress with black dots, drinking coffee and reading papers from students. Frank was getting ready for work in the other room and he came out of the shower, soaking wet and dressed in a towel. He wanted to be with me, he said. "Me too," I decided to tell him. We had to hurry, of course, and afterwards I pulled down my yellow dress with the black dots. Frank drove me to school and I taught. But then all day long I felt him kissing me and had this intimate sensation which is hard to describe, like he was still actually there. I'm not talking about something vague, some evaporated sweetness like dried honey, but some solid logic, something tangible. Quite real.

I'll never forget that feeling Frank gave me. I want--I wish I had the opportunity right now, you know, of hearing him blurt out that he wanted me, then of telling him that there wasn't enough time.

I wish I had the luxury of telling him no.

* * * * *

I don't have to draw you a picture. I've not mentioned places much or named many names, have you noticed?

But this does not mean that I've forgotten the particulars of his story.

I have done what I can to be precise.

What else is there to say about my Christmas? What more can I tell you about how I feel? ¿Qué sé yo? You'll just have to imagine for yourself what my life was like in the outskirts of the largest city in the world, the things I had to do to leave, and how my life changed once I came here. Once I finished school and when I met Frank. I've only told you part of my story but every bit of it is true. While we can't absolutely control our dreams or our stories there is one difference between them, I think. Our dreams, they come to us. They're not dependable or straightforward or necessarily true, so we can say what we want about dreaming. But we can't lie to ourselves, can we, about what we've done? What would be the point in something so far-fetched?

If there's one thing I hate it is fantasy.

But perhaps I will fill you in, tell you a little bit more. I just want you to understand about my life. About the hope I had and the love I lost. About the importance of not being born important, which is the reason why I came to Los Angeles and the reason why Frank joined up.

* * * * *

I remember how one morning, when Frank had to leave for the weekend, we watched cartoons together lying on the sofa. "Oooooooh, I hate that rabbit," thundered a hot-headed prospector. Yosemite Sam was his name. Sometimes Yosemite Sam doubled as a castaway, a pirate or a cowboy, and he never learned a thing from his former experiences. In this particular cartoon, he had been tricked again. But he defied physics for a moment, racing off the edge of a diving board then feeling with his foot before falling.

While we were lying there, Frank explained about parachutes. He talked about his training drills while we watched Bugs Bunny and that dark Daffy Duck racing around, outwitting each other, or being outwitted. Then came that emaciated bird who runs across highways, past rickety cliffs and huge sandstone spires. She seems so alone in the desert. except for an occasional bus and that A.C.M.E. coyote. He is more notorious than any of these characters for not catching the drift of things, for celebrating his indestructibility.

* * * * *

I think of Frank and his parachute, the size of a man and a woman. They are playing some game together and she's riding on his shoulders. Wide-eyed and taking it all in. Overwhelmed and still not really believing that he has jumped. But the image is wrong, I realize, since Frank was completely alone. While I have no idea what it was really like, I see him buoyed up like a floating piece of cloth, flapping majestically against the purple sierras, not enjoying himself precisely, nor worried anymore that his chute might not open--beyond that now. Yet not impervious to the violet hills sloping down towards the sea. The blue and white buildings. The sand-colored sand.