Rafael Yglesias - Fearless

She cried for her grandmother. Only a few tears. No sobs. Slow-moving sad drops of regret. She had ignored that old woman. She had waved her grandmother away morning and night on her way out of the apartment, annoyed by the old lady’s nagging warnings about her revealing clothes, the boys she was seeing, drugs, sex, whatever was the latest horror that television told the old lady to guard against.

Carla fell asleep.

Her baby returned to her arms. Hot, sweating, feeding from her.

Manny’s stern voice yanked her out of her shallow grave of dreams: “Carla! Is the air conditioner broken?”

She could have been swimming: her T-shirt was stuck to her belly; a translucent oval revealed her deep navel. She remembered the sight of Bubble’s thick trunk bursting out of his stomach, wiring him to her insides.

“You want an innie or an outie?” the doctor had asked.

“It’s working!” Manny complained, standing by the air conditioner. He switched it on. The overhead light dimmed for a moment.

“Leave me alone,” she said. Her mouth was dry and her lips thick, numbed. The words sounded like a trumpet player clearing his mouthpiece.

“Somebody’s here.” Manny opened the glowering dresser. He tossed out a yellow-and-black-striped polo shirt. “You’d better change.”

“I don’t want to see anybody,” she tooted. She was on her back. Twisting to get on her side, away from Manny, her head throbbed. The first wave of cooled air skimmed over her soaked shirt and its temperature clung, a freezing sheet tossed onto her skin.

Manny’s feet thumped, walking around to her side of the bed. His round face and charred eyes popped in front of her. “The lawyer’s here. I had a lot of trouble convincing him to come to see you. I know you ain’t up to leaving the apartment. I been patient, but it’s over a month now and we have to do something. They call me every day and I have to make a decision. You got to help me, understand?” Manny lifted her, one hand on her elbow, the other on her shoulder. He had no trouble doing it. She couldn’t lift herself; Manny got her up with no effort at all. She was a helpless child.

“Let me die,” she said into her husband’s mouth as he pulled at her drenched T-shirt. She no longer tooted: she growled.

“Don’t be crazy. You’re in mourning. You’re not dying.”

What did he say before? It’s been a month? You’ve been feeling sorry for yourself for a month?

He pulled the T-shirt off her. Sweat collected in the hollows, dripping down her breastbone, her armpits, the back of her neck. Manny took his callused hand and smoothed the perspiration all over her exposed ribs and breasts, small and empty of milk. He hummed with appreciation and looked at her nipples.

She was appalled: He wants to have sex with the lawyer waiting in the hall?

“You look good to me,” he mumbled. “I miss you,” he said and kissed between her breasts with a loud smacking noise. He spread the sweat on her hollow stomach. A pool filled her big belly button. “This is no good. You’d better take a shower. I’ll get your mother to help you.”

He left her halfway up out of bed. She could still feel his sandy palms sweeping across her chest and belly, squashing and squeezing her. She was warm and small while he handled her: a baby being bathed.

“Come back, Manny,” she whimpered and sagged back onto the bed. The air conditioner vibrated and struggled.

“You’re a mess,” her mother said casually and lovingly, the way mothers say it, the way Carla used to say it to a food-smeared Bubble or a dirt-encrusted Bubble or a red-eyed, temper-tantrum Bubble. “You don’t want to take a shower. We’ll go in the bathroom and sponge off.”

Carla allowed her mother to wipe her with the washcloth, although she was capable.

“You’re too skinny,” her mother commented, running the cool towel over her ribs.

“I’m always too skinny for you,” Carla said.

“That’s right. Something sick about those models. It’s not real men who want that. They’re selling you a bill of goods.”

“Nobody’s selling me anything,” Carla said sadly.

Her mother was done. Carla sat on the toilet, staring at the blackening edges of her cast. Her mother brought in a clean white long-sleeved blouse — too formal and too hot to wear with her shorts. Carla didn’t argue about it although she wanted the yellow and black polo shirt that Manny had picked out. If it pleased her husband then she should wear it. What did she have left to do but to please him? But she had no energy to fight her mother’s choice.

When the blouse was on and she was ready to go out to meet the lawyer, her mother said, “If you really want me to go back to California before you’re back on your feet, able to do for yourself, I’ll go. I didn’t want to while you were yelling because you yell things you don’t mean and then the next day you’re sorry but you’re too proud to take them back. You’re my baby,” and her mother was crying suddenly. Although she had sounded annoyed right up until she said “baby,” she was quickly a wreck. Tears rolled down her cheeks, her wide mouth trembled, and her old hands came together in a prayerful gesture. “I’m trying to help you,” she said.

“Okay, Mama,” Carla said and they hugged awkwardly, Carla still on the toilet, her mother arching past the rigid leg to embrace her. “I love you,” Carla said. You mean, if you still could love anybody . Later, as they hobbled together out of the bathroom, she added, “Stay until the cast is off.”

“Now I’m a mess,” her mother said, brushing away a tear. She smeared mascara across her cheek toward her temple.

“Fix yourself up. I can make it.” Carla took her crutches and faced the hallway. She made sure not to look at the jeweled doorknob to Bubble’s room. From the sound of it Manny had taken the lawyer into the living room. The hall smelled dusty and was only half-cooled. She listened to their conversation as she maneuvered in the narrow passage.

The lawyer was a fast talker: “—these new seats, they’re called sixteen-Gs, were ordered on all new planes by the FAA. They’ve been proven to be much safer in the kind of crash your wife was in.”

“No kidding.” Manny was grim.

“They don’t break loose. Passengers aren’t turned into human missiles—”

“And they knew about them?”

“Knew about them? They’re using them. All new planes have them. About fifteen percent of the old planes have had them installed. The FAA is going—”

Carla had reached the living room entryway. It had no doors and she faced the two windows at the far end. The sun was bright, irradiating the red drapes Manny had been given by the son of one of the old women in his building when she died. The glow rouged Manny’s and the lawyer’s faces as they turned toward her.

The lawyer was a little man, very nervous, or at least jumpy. When he moved at Carla, he seemed to leap out of his body, his motion was so sudden and quick. “Hi, I’m Steven Brillstein,” he said. His small hand was flat; he kept the fingers together and the thumb close. He noticed she was occupied by the crutches and removed his offered hand abruptly. “Stupid of me. Last thing you need now is to shake hands. Here,” he stepped aside and offered her the couch. “Sit.”

“They didn’t have these seats in the jet my wife was in?” Manny asked, preoccupied. He made no move to help Carla as she tried to get herself around the glass coffee table onto the couch. The living room looked weird. She hadn’t ventured there since coming home. She checked all the furniture, trying to understand what was odd about it.

No bottle lying on its side.

No abandoned toys.