The Heart is a Poor Judge Ch. 10

Eddie's dark brown irises fixated on a blank spot in the night sky. They stayed frozen even as Gabe hovered in panicked motions directly overhead.

"Eddie," he pleaded. "Just hold on, we've got help coming. They'll be here any minute--I think I can hear them already."

Eddie spat up a mouthful of blood. It ran thick down his chin and neck. "I'm going," he choked. "My time."

"You can't go. Eddie, you're the only reason I'm here. I never told you that I know what you did--how you saved her."

Eddie turned his head slightly toward Gabe, but his eyes remained bizarrely trained on that invisible point in the sky.

"She never forgot what you did for her, Eddie. Never. She remembered it every day of her life. She loved you so much. She saw you as the kind of person she always wanted to be, and Eddie--that's the way I feel about you too. Oh, Eddie, please don't leave me--" He could no longer speak. His own cries interrupted him.

Out from nowhere came a source of dim cold light. Gabe thought Miguel had switched on the exterior lamp, but it hung dark against the cinderblock wall.

Eddie's head slowly re-centered. Gabe felt a pang of false hope as the man's arm lifted two inches above the asphalt. His index finger uncurled. His voice bubbled up in a faint whisper. "The moon."

Gabe looked up and there it was: full and bright.

"They sent it for me," said Eddie. "I'm going back now."

"Don't go," Gabe sobbed. "Eddie, please. I love you. I need you to stay."

A stillness spread through the man beneath him. Eddie was leaving. His body slackened, relaxed upon the hard ground. Gabe sank into the blood-soaked clothing and skin of the man who had been his friend. He clenched his teeth and wailed into the night. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to follow the man through the brilliant flashes, tried to share another moment with Eddie's departed soul. He cried Eddie's name over and over in a mad search for something he already knew was beyond reach.

The broad metal overhead door screeched open and a flickering warmth of new flames mingled with the steady cold light of the moon. He felt the heat from the rapidly growing fire.

A hand fell on his shoulder. He pulled himself away from the empty body. He stood slowly, drenched in blood that was not his own.

Miguel looked him up and down, eyes communicating a mix of horror and sorrow. He reached out with both arms and Gabe fell into them. They cried together as the sirens drew near. The fire grew hotter and brighter.

Miguel's voice grazed his ear: "Should we run?"

"No," said Gabe. "I think we should stay right here."

;-;

Monday, September 18th, 2006

I don't believe talking about his troubled past was ever cathartic for Eddie. He rarely did so, and I rarely pushed him toward it. Because of this, I never fully understood the nature of his connection with Bonnie until Gabe presented me with her diaries. Upon reading them, it became clear.

Very few moments in my life have felt so unfiltered as absorbing all those words through her jutting scrawl. I was a child again, learning to skate on a north-Idaho lake with my stern father. I was a young bride, taking that first breath of thick Vietnam air with Eddie at my side, during our honeymoon in the city he still insisted then I call Saigon.

Bonnie's English was crude at first, as Gabe had warned me it would be, but its rate of improvement astonished me. Simple words turned beautiful. They told it all. I ached; I wanted to explode because I could do nothing, help no one. Maybe Bonnie put it best near the end of her writing, which became so gradually smaller, smaller, until it was crammed into the final pages of that third book:

"When, in desperation, I wish to slip away into a sea of tears, they will not come. And then they arrive unannounced, on Thursday at lunchtime, when a fly lands on a mango in the wooden bowl. If the heart decides for us when it is time to cry, then mine is a poor judge of many things."

I always liked that last line. For me it served as the final, and probably the most poignant reminder of just how well Bonnie Villanueva knew herself. That is to say, while most of us barely breach the surface of our emotions, Bonnie dove deep beneath. She felt for the muddy floor of every rift. She became a seasoned expert on her own shortcomings. I believe this extreme acknowledgement of self stripped away her ego. I also believe it stole any shred of happiness she had left.

"It's not a bad theory," Gabe tells me when I run it by him. "She really did turn into a black hole near the end. It's much easier now for me to see what she had become."

I can't seem to tear my eyes from him today. "Did she ever tell you about the baby?"

He looks startled by the question. I think both of us are surprised it's never been asked. "The note said to keep her diaries. I guess that was her way of telling me."

"I guess it was," I say.

"I've thought about that baby every day since I read the words," Gabe says. "I like to think of him as my older brother."

"He would have been."

"I like to think of him that way," he repeats with a fervent nod. "He would be around Miguel's age."

"That's true."

"I think about all the things he could have taught me if he'd been around. Sometimes I still wonder about how life could have been different."

"I try not to spend much time thinking about that."

"Me neither," he assures me. "I don't dwell on those things. But it's still okay to imagine, sometimes."

"You're right," I tell him. "It is okay."

"It's fine if you disagree."

"I don't. Not especially--" My voice catches in my throat. I've been emotional around him before, though I do like to stay poised during our interviews. I have a very good track record for that. But right now, I fall apart. "Sometimes I let myself imagine what it would be like if he were still around," I say. Tears flood into my eyes.

"I know, Lydia. Me too."

I love Gabe for this--his emotional intelligence. He knows we're not talking about the baby anymore. He knows my lonely heart has drifted back, once again, to the man I loved. My Eddie, my everything.

I wipe my eyes and say, "Let's go."

He looks down at the floor.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm scared," he says. "We've been waiting for this day for so long. We've spent years anticipating what the moment will feel like. The version in his head--what if it doesn't look the same as mine? What if we can't make them fit with one another's and everything falls apart?

"It won't be like that," I tell him. "That's not how these things go."

He hangs his head. I have not convinced him.

I put my hand on his. "It'll be wonderful," I say. "It will be everything you both wanted, and better than you have even imagined."

He winces and squeezes his eyes shut. It is a very painful thing, wanting to believe something so badly.

"In other ways," I say, "it will be like none of this ever happened. You'll pick up exactly, instantly where you left off. Like you were the only two people in the world."

;-;

This black Lincoln, once Eddie's pride and joy, is not running well. I've been meaning to have someone look it over, but tasks like that elude me. The car does not start right away and hesitates as we accelerate down the streets of our neighborhood. The houses suffer from their own kind of disrepair. People believe stucco is more resilient than wood, that it can be left on its own for many years, exposed to the unrelenting sun. It's a lie we're all telling ourselves. This place is bleached like the barren bed of an ancient salt lake. But when the angle is right, it glitters like one, too.

Soon we are parked outside the prison. At my insistence, Gabe goes out on his own. I watch as two young men approach each other outside the chain-link fence, at first hesitant like children first meeting at a schoolyard. Then they embrace, colliding with force, not daring to let go. Hands fumble to get a better hold. I am moved to tears and I look away.

The most beautiful thing about their story is that they are indeed still young. After these long years spent apart, after all they've had to go through by themselves, they still have their youth to share with one another. I want so badly to tell them how special that is. Think of the incredible fortune, the opportunity--the potential of unwritten years! ... But I know the meaning would be lost somewhere in the deafening static between us.

THE END