80
PARTISAN REVIEW
a place to vacation, not to live. For most of Carla's life, it had been a
place for neither. But the children had short memories; they seemed only
to remember life abroad and now life back home. No matter how many
moments of horror they had seen themselves or heard of from others,
about uncles and aunts, parents and friends being dragged out of their
beds at night, never to be seen again, they took their lives and their good
memories for granted . They were perpetual vacationers, tossing
unpleasant cares to the wind.
"How is Alvaro?" she asked, dispensing with the amenities .
Ruiz was only too happy to discuss business outright. "Alvaro is
recovering. The stroke's effects are diminishing every day. His language
has improved. The initial trauma still clouds his psychological func–
tioning, but the physical trauma has started to recede measurably. The
swelling in the brain is much reduced. His coordination, physical and
mental, promises a fuller restoratiofl of his faculties than we had first
anticipated. He is even walking by himself. He is doing well. Well."
Jorge was reading from an invisible checklist, the signs a doctor looks
for in assessing a patient. Here were the symptoms, here were the signs
of progress.
Please don't ask me how I feel,
his academic delivery
begged.
"Well, if he's improving, then there really isn't any emergency. We
can go," Carla wanted to say, but she knew better. She knew that Jorge
didn't call to tell her that things were truly fine. Unless maybe he thought
her recent absence from Alvaro's bedside had helped the improvement.
She had prayed since the day of jorge's unexpected phone ca ll that he
would tell her how important she was for his father's recovery.
Carla faced him. "Tell me, why are we here, Jorge? What is it you
want?"
"I'd like to ask you when you last saw him."
Carla paused. Before Alvaro had finally left Luce, Carla had thought
there was a day which would be their last. They had been in San Telmo
together. Alvaro liked to walk through the streets, pointing to the build–
ings. "Do you see, do you see how the courtyard is constructed here,"
he pointed to what was now an Italian restaurant. "We don't do this
anymore but we used to relish the private spaces. Even within the home,
there was always a separate place to be. Now we have only houses, four–
walled homes with tiny yards." He had kissed her on the cheek.
"You know, Alvaro," she would say at such times, "I hate to think
about the past."
"But this is the way past,
before
the times you don't want to remember."
