Rafael Yglesias - Fearless

“Come here and get some rest,” she said. Her hand touched the empty place near her.

He yawned. It was hot in the room. He pushed his shoes off and stumbled to her. The pillow was cool; its fabric smooth, but hard. He faced Carla. His hands folded into each other and lay beside her beautiful face. Her eyes were shut. She moved closer. Her hair spilled down over her shoulder and dripped black curls onto his hands. He smelled the sweetly dank fragrance of her hair and he smelled the lunch’s shellfish on both their mouths.

“I love—” he began.

“Shh,” she said. She touched his temple. His eyes shut as if she had pressed a button to close them. “You’ve helped a lot of people, Max,” she said. “You deserve to rest.” He felt a soft kiss on his forehead. He smiled and slept.

Carla woke to find Max’s hand under her cheek. He was asleep in the deep rest of a baby — eyelids smooth, brow untroubled, jaw slack.

The early sunset of winter had completely darkened the room. Through the open door to the sitting room there was a sickly amber light from the street.

She eased herself off the bed hoping not to wake him. He moaned faintly as she departed; but he stayed asleep. She went into the sitting room. It was a quarter after five. Manny was either home or soon would be. He might be patient about her absence for an hour. Then he would explode. She had to call him soon.

She turned on a lamp. Its switch made a loud noise. She listened for Max. There was no movement. The room — for a place in New York City — was very quiet. Only the occasional faint sound of a car horn or a siren could be heard. Sometimes a dim flow of water from one floor to another in the walls. Otherwise there was only a stillness that left her nothing to hear but the blood rushing in her ears.

She had to make a choice. Delay was no longer possible. Max needed her. He was lost. Although he was the same smart handsome man who had saved her sanity, he was troubled and distracted. But he was not crazy — except maybe about Brillstein and his wife. She could believe the lawyer might want to put Max away, although she had reason to think he was trying to settle the cases; besides she had told Brillstein she was going to tell the truth about what she did in the plane and the lawyer hadn’t threatened her. Nevertheless he was capable of putting Max in a funny farm if he could get more money. But she didn’t believe for a minute that Max’s wife would go along. The woman she met wasn’t capable of such a bad thing. Take Manny as an example. He wasn’t an especially good man and he loved money so much he could kill for it; still, he wouldn’t put Carla away to get more. She couldn’t believe Max had married someone more untrustworthy than she had. No. Max wants to run away, she told herself. She understood that much; she understood that Max couldn’t abandon his family unless he believed he was forced to and so he had made it up. To her there was nothing crazy about such a delusion — it was desperate common sense, a way of surviving.

She knew how to stop him from running. She knew what he needed. She didn’t even like to think about what she understood because it made so little sense to her outside of knowing Max and it was a mortal sin, against everything she had been taught and believed herself.

Well, whatever she decided she had to phone Manny.

Her husband answered on the first ring. “Hello?” Manny said in the slightly hushed and cautious tone of a child calling into a dark room. When she answered he came to. There was an angry snap to his tone. “Where are you!”

“I’m with Max.”

“What!”

“Listen to me—”

“You listen to me! You come—”

“Shut up, Manny, or I’m going to hang up on you,” she said in a calm but rapid tone. “Either I’ll come home tomorrow morning and I’ll be your wife or I won’t and you won’t have to see me ever again. But I owe him my time tonight. You can like it or not. If you don’t want me to come home tomorrow no matter what, tell me now.”

In the silence that followed her demanding question she heard him breathe through his nose. The inhalations and exhalations were fast and getting quicker as if he were blowing up a balloon. “You’re crazy,” he said abruptly and said no more.

“Manny, I need an answer. Do you want me to bother to come back or not?”

She heard him breathing fast again and then he made a sound that could have been a groan of disgust or a moan of pain. After that the line went dead.

Carla hung up angrily. She tossed the receiver onto the cradle. It made a racket and fell off. She replaced it carefully this time and then tiptoed to the bedroom to check on Max. He had rolled onto his back. His head was turned in her direction, but the eyes were shut. His mouth hung open in a mute plea. His right arm stretched across the bed onto the empty side. The hand reached into the air for help. His position reminded her of something but she couldn’t identify it. She returned to the sitting room. The furniture was big and heavy. Even the drapes that hung beside the glittering city views weighed a ton. The carpet was so thick it swallowed the curved feet of the chairs and coffee table. She felt alone. Not lonely. But isolated.

She dropped to her knees. They sank into the thick rug. She hadn’t prayed outside of church since she was a girl. And she prayed for something new. She prayed for Him to explain Himself.

There was no answer or comfort this time. The calm she was used to feeling afterwards — even for only a few seconds — didn’t descend. Rising, she was as alone as when she knelt.

“When you don’t feel He is with you,” Monsignor O’Boyle had said to her months ago, while she was in the dense fog of her grief, “then He is in you, waiting for you to bring Him forth. He wants you to choose Him.”

She hadn’t understood that. It sounded sneaky if true and she didn’t believe it anyway. While stuck in despair she knew He was there every minute. During her madness she believed He had killed her baby. After all, she had neglected Him once Bubble was born. For the two years of her baby’s life, filled by the happiness of being a mother, she had even forgotten He lived. She believed He had punished her for that sin; and she had hated Him for it. She went to Old Saint Pat’s in those days, she now realized, hoping to forgive Him —not to be granted forgiveness.

He had been merciful. He had sent Max, with his bravery and his love, to save her from madness.

But to do what?

Now where was He?

What game was He playing with Max?

Max had done His bidding, saving those He wanted saved. Was Max being humbled because his pride wouldn’t allow him to acknowledge the Lord? Or was this another part of Max’s saintliness — his martyrdom?

No. Max’s unhappiness was aimed at her. The Monsignor was right. Christ was hiding in her, behind these choices, ready to greet her if she chose correctly. And do what if she chose wrong?

Was she afraid of Him? Yes.

Was that what He wanted? Fear? Was that the purpose of the crash? Did He want her to be afraid?

She thought if Max believed in his family again then he would be all right. Of course Carla would lose him; even as merely a friend she would inevitably lose him once he was truly back with his family. Was that the point? Was that her lesson? That she had to return her angel or He would destroy Max? Just as He had destroyed Bubble because she had loved her baby too much?

She held her head with her hands and pressed as if she could squeeze these ideas out of her skull. It didn’t help. She moved to the cool glass of the window and watched the black park. It was infiltrated by the snaking headlights of cars, moving up and down its length and across its middle toward a city that was dark and alien.