John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“No harm will come to the dogs, darling,” Miriam murmured.

Now a breeze could be felt through the open seaward windows; Juan Diego thought he could smell the salt water, but he couldn’t hear the waves — if there were waves. He only then realized that he could swim in Bohol; there was a beach and a pool at the Encantador. (The good gringo, the inspiration for Juan Diego’s trip to the Philippines, had not inspired thoughts of swimming.)

“Tell me how you learned to swim in Iowa, ” Miriam whispered in his ear; she was straddling him, and he felt himself enter her again. A feeling of such smoothness surrounded him — it was almost like swimming, he thought, before it crossed his mind that Miriam had known what he was thinking.

Yes, it had been a long time ago, but, because of Lupe, Juan Diego knew what it was like to be around a mind reader.

“I swam in an indoor pool, at the University of Iowa,” Juan Diego began, a little breathlessly.

“I meant who, darling — I meant who taught you, who took you to the swimming pool,” Miriam said softly.

“Oh.”

Juan Diego couldn’t say their names, not even in the dark.

Señor Eduardo had taught him to swim — this was in the swimming pool in the old Iowa Field House, next to the university hospitals and clinics. Edward Bonshaw, who had left academia to pursue the priesthood, was welcomed back to the English Department at the University of Iowa—“from whence he’d come,” Flor was fond of saying, exaggerating her Mexican accent with the whence word.

Flor wasn’t a swimmer, but after Juan Diego had learned to swim, she occasionally took him to the pool — it was used by the university faculty and staff, and by their children, and also popular with townies. Señor Eduardo and Juan Diego had loved the old Field House — in the early seventies, before the Carver-Hawkeye Arena was built, most of Iowa’s indoor sports took place in the Field House. In addition to swimming there, Edward Bonshaw and Juan Diego went to see the basketball games and the wrestling matches.

Flor had liked the pool but not the old Field House; there were too many jocks running around, she said. Women took their kids to the pool — women were uneasy around Flor, but they didn’t stare at her. Young men couldn’t help themselves, Flor always said — young men just stared. Flor was tall and broad-shouldered — six-two and 170 pounds — and although she was small-breasted, she was both very attractive (in a womanly way) and very masculine-looking.

At the pool, Flor wore a one-piece bathing suit, but she was only viewable above her waist. She always wrapped a big towel around her hips; the bottom of her bathing suit was not in view, and Flor never went in the water.

Juan Diego didn’t know how Flor managed the dressing and undressing part — this would have happened in the women’s locker room. Maybe she never took off the bathing suit? (It never got wet.)

“Don’t worry about it,” Flor had told the boy. “I’m not showing my junk to anyone but Señor Eduardo.”

Not in Iowa City, anyway — as Juan Diego would one day understand. It would one day also be understandable why Flor needed to get away from Iowa — not a lot, just occasionally.

If Brother Pepe had happened to see Flor in Oaxaca, he would write to Juan Diego. “I suppose you and Edward know she’s here—‘just visiting,’ she says. I see her in the usual places — well, I don’t mean all the ‘usual’ places!” was how Pepe would put it.

Pepe meant he’d seen Flor at La China, that gay bar on Bustamante — the one that would become Chinampa. Pepe also saw La Loca at La Coronita, where the clientele was mostly gay and the transvestites were dressed to kill.

Pepe didn’t mean that Flor showed up at the whore hotel; it wasn’t the Hotel Somega, or being a prostitute, that Flor missed. But where was a person like Flor supposed to go in Iowa City? Flor was a party person — at least occasionally. There was no La China — not to mention no La Coronita — in Iowa City in the seventies and eighties. What was the harm in Flor going back to Oaxaca from time to time?

Brother Pepe wasn’t judging her, and apparently, Señor Eduardo had been understanding.

When Juan Diego was leaving Oaxaca, Brother Pepe had blurted out to him: “Don’t become one of those Mexicans who—”

Pepe had stopped himself.

“Who what ?” Flor had asked Pepe.

“One of those Mexicans who hate Mexico,” Pepe managed to say.

“You mean one of those Americans, ” Flor said.

“Dear boy!” Brother Pepe had exclaimed, hugging Juan Diego to him. “You don’t want to become one of those Mexicans who are always coming back, either — the ones who can’t stay away,” Pepe added.

Flor just stared at Brother Pepe. “What else shouldn’t he become?” she asked Pepe. “What other kind of Mexican is forbidden?”

But Pepe had ignored Flor; he’d whispered in Juan Diego’s ear. “Dear boy, become who you want to be — just stay in touch!” Pepe pleaded.

“You better not become anything, Juan Diego,” Flor had told the fourteen-year-old, while Pepe was weeping inconsolably. “Trust us, Pepe — Edward and I won’t let the kid amount to beans,” Flor said. “We’ll be sure he becomes one of those Mexican nobodies. ”

Edward Bonshaw, overhearing all this, had only understood his name.

“Eduardo,” Edward Bonshaw had said, correcting Flor, who’d just smiled at him understandingly.

“They were my parents, or they tried to be!” Juan Diego attempted to say out loud, but the words wouldn’t come in the darkness. “Oh,” was all he managed to say — again. The way Miriam was moving on top of him, he couldn’t have said more than that.

PERRO MESTIZO, A.K.A. MONGREL, was quarantined and observed for ten days — if you’re looking for rabies, this is a common procedure for biting animals that don’t look sick. (Mongrel was not rabid, but Dr. Vargas, consistent with his giving Edward Bonshaw rabies shots, had wanted to be sure.) For ten days, the dog act wasn’t performed at Circo de La Maravilla; the baby-stealer’s quarantine was a disruption to the routine of the other dogs in the dump kids’ troupe tent.

Baby, the male dachshund, peed on the dirt floor of the tent every night. Pastora, the female sheepdog, whined ceaselessly. Estrella had to sleep in the dogs’ troupe tent, or Pastora would never have been quiet — and Estrella snored. The sight of Estrella sleeping on her back, her face shadowed by the visor of her baseball cap, gave Lupe nightmares, but Estrella said she couldn’t sleep bareheaded because the mosquitoes would bite her bald head; then her head would itch and she couldn’t scratch it without removing her wig, which upset the dogs. During Perro Mestizo’s quarantine, Alemania, the female German Shepherd, stood over Juan Diego’s cot at night, panting in the boy’s face. Lupe blamed Vargas for “demonizing” Mongrel; poor Perro Mestizo, “always the bad guy,” was once more a victim in Lupe’s eyes.

“The asshole dog bit Señor Eduardo,” Juan Diego reminded his sister. The asshole-dog idea was Rivera’s. Lupe didn’t believe there were asshole dogs.

“Señor Eduardo was falling in love with Flor’s penis!” Lupe cried — as if this new and disturbing development had caused Perro Mestizo to attack the Iowan. But this meant Perro Mestizo was homophobic, and didn’t that make him an asshole dog?

Yet Juan Diego was able to persuade Lupe to stay at La Maravilla — at least until after the circus had traveled to Mexico City. The trip mattered more to Lupe than it did to Juan Diego; scattering their mother’s ashes (and the good gringo’s ashes, and Dirty White’s, not to mention the remains of the Virgin Mary’s enormous nose) meant a lot to Lupe. She believed Our Lady of Guadalupe had been marginalized in Oaxaca’s churches; Guadalupe was a second fiddle in Oaxaca.