clarity that Russell Monroe, was the prize of Isabella's life.
I, Russell, who had stumbled upon her reading poetry in the orange grove, five million years ago.
I, who had sworn to love and honor her.
I, who had sat outside Amber Mae Wilson's home not once, but four times, wondering whether I should go in, knowing that one night I would.
I, who carried a flask so as never to be too far from my beloved whiskey.
I, who had left her alone to fall in her own bathroom who was now not even the first person she would call to help her get her suffering, besieged body off the floor.
I was her greatest prize.
The sunlight continued burning the room, bearing down into my eyes. I felt singled out by it, revealed, exposed. When I looked to the mirrored closet doors, there was no Russ Monroe to be seen, only the bright outline of something manlike and hollow-a glare. I wondered whether that was what Isabella saw when she looked at me: just the shape of a man where the substance used to be.
I walked down the stairs, acutely tuned to the sound my shoes on the steps of our empty house.
Joe Sandoval, broad-faced and barrel-chested, was doing something to his front door when I parked in front of his house half an hour later. He and Corrine lived in San Juan Capistrano, quiet inland town south of Laguna, known mainly for its mission, to which the migration of swallows in March of each year is both a local legend and a tourist event. Isabella and I were married in that mission on a scorching Saturday in September, a day that felt much like this one in the sheer overwhelming presence of its heat. I read the inscription on the silver flask again-'With all my love, Isabella'-after taking a slug of the whiskey inside.
Joe stopped his labor and studied me as I came up the walkway. Years of work for SunBlesst Ranch had left his face lined and dark, his black eyes in a perpetual, dubious squint that contradicted his general good nature. His thick gray-black hair was combed straight back as always, tied in a short ponytail. He transferred a screwdriver and offered me a heavy, gentle hand. 'She's okay,' he said.
'Was the fall bad?'
'Just a bruise, but it scared her. Come in.'
He guided me into the house, one hand on my shoulder, the other on the door. I noted that he had been installing a second dead bolt, courtesy, no doubt, of the Midnight Eye. 'Corrine is upset,' he said quietly as we went in. 'You know.'
The living room was small but comfortable, furnished in the affordable Sears version of American colonial. There was a braided oval rug on the hardwood floor, pictures of family on one wall, and a simple shrine to the Virgin Mary tucked into the corner by the TV. Corrine's handmade afghans were draped generously over the sofa and chairs. A Bible lay on the coffee table. A window-mounted air conditioner hummed loudly. Beside it stood a. 30–06 deer gun.
Corrine sat in the rocker, but she stood when I came in. I hugged her with the genuine affection tempered by dread that many men feel for their mothers-in-law. She had accepted me unconditionally as a husband for her daughter, but slowly over the last year I had sensed her respect eroding, based on the care I was-or wasn't-giving Isabella. She had never said one word to me about it, but I had decided that in Corrine's eye: I was not tending her daughter as well as I could. I began resent this judgment. The thought had crossed my mind, of course, that in my own eyes I was failing, and what I truly resented was myself. By design, a man's conscience is eager to betray him.
Corrine is a tall woman, especially for one of Mexican blood. She was fifty years old then, the same age as her husband and only ten years older than I. Corrine is graceful in her height always immaculately groomed, and she is conspicuously beautiful when she smiles. It is a smile to die for. In fact, Joe has white knife scar across his belly, evidence of only one of the battles he fought in the dusty back streets of Los Mochis to win her hand and protect her honor. They had come north together just after they were married, in the summer of 1964, one year before Isabella-who would be their only child-was born.
She hugged me generously, then sat. 'She is sleeping. Please, sit down.'
I remained standing and looked toward the hallway. Joe sat down on the sofa and glanced at his wife, then at me. A minor point was about to be won or lost here. It was a matter of honor-or maybe only of pride-that I win it.
So I walked past the sofa, went down the hallway, and opened the door of Isabella's room. She lay on her back, deep asleep, the breeze of a ceiling fan riffling the bedsheet at her neck/ The room was cool, shadowed by an immense pepper tree the backyard. From the wall directly above her head, an agonized plastic Christ stared, it seemed, straight down at Isabel His cheapness angered me, his unconcern for the tumor cells growing unchecked and with His blessing, I assumed, in Isbella's lovely body. To ask Him for help seemed to grovel-the very worst of bad faith. I shut the door quietly and went back to the living room, where I sat on the couch and looked out the window to the street.
'Would you like for Isabella to stay with us for a while?' Corrine asked.
'I definitely would not.'
'Why, Russell?'
'Because she's my wife and it's my job to take care of her.'
Corrine's accusing silence blended with the hum of the air conditioner. Joe got up, went into the kitchen, and came back with a pitcher of iced coffee, three glasses. Joe and I never talked over anything but cold Bohemia. So, I thought, Isabella has mentioned my drinking. Were the beers and the whiskey still on my breath?
'If it is a job, Russ, then couldn't her staying here be a vacation-for you?'
'I don't want a vacation. I miss her already.'
'Sometimes it's good to miss someone,' said Corrine.
'This isn't one of those times.'
Joe poured the coffee and handed me a glass. Corrine ignored him as he gave one to her, though I caught Joe's inquiring glance. He was torn here, I saw, between his unquestioned conviction that a man lives with his wife and his own wife's powerful maternal instincts. Joe was going to sit this one out for a while.
'It would give you more time,' she said. 'To work, to do the things you need to do.'
'I'm working when the maid's there.'
Corrine was nodding preemptively: Isabella had already told her this, too. 'I know how hard it must be.'
Clearly, she suspected that I hadn't actually been writing. One year, two months, and eleven days, I thought. But Isabella would never tell her this, out of her respect for the strange, sometimes misplaced sense of sacredness that many writers attach to their work. I was one of them. Isabella would tell no one that the work was dead, that nothing was happening, because anything sacred-even inappropriately sacred-is diminished by talk.
'Isabella told me you haven't written in over a year.” Corrine said flatly. 'She told me that in the hope we-she and Joe and I-might be able to help you. Of all the things that are painful to her, this is the worst-that she's made you not at to write.'
Well, fuck me, I thought. Was I going to hear about this on CNN next, Charles Jaco live from my study in the stilt house? The fact that our money was almost gone came rushing in from another part of my brain, on a collision course with the fact that I'd written nothing but articles for so long. I resolved, then and there, to check the balances in all our accounts, if there were indeed balances to check. I had been filing bank statements, unopened, for six months now, on the theory that what you can't see can't hurt you. Of late, I’d noted bank correspondence coming in white, rather than tan envelopes. I wanted my flask.
'I'm working,' I said. I could feel the anger boiling over into shame, which was certainly running red into my face by now. I hated the petulance in my voice.
'I told you he was writing up something,' said Joe, mercy pitch that Corrine ignored. 'And the insurance covers the operation, right?'
'Yes.'
Corrine breathed deeply and leveled her lovely dark eyes at me. 'Russ, I worry not so much about your work as about my daughter.'
Joe stared down at the glass in his lap. Corrine's eyes remained trained on mine.
'The fall today shouldn't have happened,' I said. 'But no one can be beside her twenty-four hours a day.'
'We can, Russ. Joe and I. Let her stay. You can stay, too. She is our daughter, and you our son.'
She turned now to Joe, who, still staring down, must have felt her gaze.
