John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“I’m going to swim, ” Juan Diego whispered to the kids. They looked surprised — all the water, which was everywhere around them, notwithstanding. The kids glanced worriedly at each other.

“What about your foot, Mister?” Consuelo whispered. Pedro was nodding gravely; both children were staring at the two-o’clock angle of Juan Diego’s crooked right foot.

“I don’t limp in the water,” Juan Diego whispered. “I’m not crippled when I’m swimming.” The whispering was fun.

Why did Juan Diego feel so exhilarated at the prospect of the day ahead of him? More than the swimming beckoned him; it pleased him that the children enjoyed whispering with him. Consuelo and Pedro liked making a game of his going swimming — Juan Diego liked the kids’ company.

Why was it that Juan Diego felt no urgency to pursue the usual arguing with Clark French about Clark’s beloved Catholic Church? Juan Diego didn’t even mind that Miriam hadn’t told him she was leaving; actually, he was a little relieved she was gone.

Had he felt afraid of Miriam, in some unclear way? Was it merely the simultaneity of his dreaming about ghosts or spirits on a New Year’s Eve and Miriam having spooked him? To be honest, Juan Diego was happy to be alone. No Miriam. (“Until Manila.”)

But what about Dorothy? The sex with Dorothy, and with Miriam, had been sublime. If so, why were the details so difficult to remember? Miriam and Dorothy were so entwined with his dreams that Juan Diego was wondering if the two women existed only in his dreams. Except that they definitely existed —other people had seen them! That young Chinese couple in the Kowloon train station: the boyfriend had taken Juan Diego’s picture with Miriam and Dorothy. (“I can get one of all of you,” the boy had said.) And there was no question that everyone had seen Miriam at the New Year’s Eve dinner; quite possibly, only the unfortunate little gecko, skewered by the salad fork, had failed to see Miriam — until it was too late.

Yet Juan Diego wondered if he would even recognize Dorothy; in his mind’s eye, he had trouble visualizing the young woman — admittedly, Miriam was the more striking of the two. (And, sexually speaking, Miriam was more recent.)

“Shall we all have breakfast?” Clark French was saying, though both Clark and his wife were distracted. Were they peeved at the whispering, or that Juan Diego seemed inseparable from Consuelo and Pedro?

“Consuelo, haven’t you already had breakfast?” Dr. Quintana asked the little girl. Consuelo had not let go of Juan Diego’s hand.

“Yes, but I didn’t eat anything — I was waiting for Mister,” Consuelo answered.

“Mr. Guerrero ,” Clark corrected the little girl.

“Actually, Clark, I prefer just Mister —all by itself,” Juan Diego said.

“It’s a two-gecko morning, Mister — so far,” Pedro told Juan Diego; the boy had been looking behind all the paintings. Juan Diego had seen Pedro lifting the corners of rugs and peering at the insides of lampshades. “Not a sign of the big one — it’s gone,” the boy said.

The gone word was a hard one for Juan Diego. The people he’d loved were gone — all the dear ones, the ones who’d marked him.

“I know we’ll see you again in Manila,” Clark was saying to him, though Juan Diego would be in Bohol for two more days. “I know you’re seeing D., and where you’re going next. We can discuss the daughter another time,” Clark French said to his former teacher — as if what there was to say about Dorothy (or what Clark felt compelled to say about her) wasn’t possible to say in the company of children. Consuelo tightly held Juan Diego’s hand; Pedro had lost interest in the hand-holding, but the boy wasn’t going away.

“What about Dorothy?” Juan Diego asked Clark; it was hardly an innocent question. (Juan Diego knew that Clark was hot and bothered by the mother-daughter business.) “And where is it I’m seeing her — on another island?” Before Clark could answer him, Juan Diego turned to Josefa. “When you don’t make your own plans, you never remember where you’re going,” he said to the doctor.

“Those meds you’re taking,” Dr. Quintana began. “You’re still taking the beta-blockers, aren’t you — you haven’t stopped taking them, have you?”

That was when Juan Diego realized that he must have stopped taking his Lopressor prescription — all those pills strewn about his bathroom had fooled him. He felt too good this morning; if he’d taken the beta-blockers, he wouldn’t be feeling this good.

He lied to Dr. Quintana. “I’m definitely taking them — you’re not supposed to stop unless you do it gradually, or something.”

“You talk to your doctor before you even think about not taking them,” Dr. Quintana told him.

“Yes, I know,” Juan Diego said to her.

“You’re going from here to Lagen Island — Palawan,” Clark French told his old teacher. “The resort is called El Nido — it’s not at all like here. It’s very fancy there — you’ll see how different it is,” Clark told him disapprovingly.

“Are there geckos on Lagen Island?” Pedro asked Clark French. “What are the lizards like there?” the boy asked him.

“They have monitor lizards — they’re carnivorous, as big as dogs, ” Clark told the boy.

“Do they run or swim?” Consuelo asked Clark.

“They do both — fast,” Clark French said to the little girl with the pigtails.

“Don’t give the children nightmares, Clark,” Josefa said to her husband.

“The idea of that mother and her daughter gives me nightmares,” Clark French began.

“Maybe not around the children, Clark,” his wife told him.

Juan Diego just shrugged. He didn’t know about the monitor lizards, but seeing Dorothy on the fancy island would indeed be different. Juan Diego felt a little guilty — how he enjoyed his former student’s disapproval, how Clark’s moral condemnation was somehow gratifying.

Yet Clark and Miriam and Dorothy were, in their different ways, manipulative, Juan Diego thought; maybe he enjoyed manipulating the three of them a little.

Suddenly, Juan Diego was aware of Clark’s wife, Josefa, holding his other hand — the one Consuelo wasn’t attached to. “You’re limping less today, I think,” the doctor told him. “You seem to have caught up on your sleep.”

Juan Diego knew he would have to be careful around Dr. Quintana; he would have to watch how he fooled around with his Lopressor prescription. When he was around the doctor, he might need to appear more diminished than he was — she was very observant.

“Oh, I feel pretty good today — pretty good for me, I mean,” Juan Diego told her. “Not quite so tired, not quite so diminished,” was how Juan Diego put it to Dr. Quintana.

“Yes, I can tell,” Josefa told him, giving his hand a squeeze.

“You’re going to hate El Nido — it’s full of tourists, foreign tourists,” Clark French was saying.

“You know what I’m going to do today? It’s something I love, ” Juan Diego said to Josefa. But before he could tell Clark’s wife his plans, the little girl with the pigtails was faster.

“Mister is going swimming !” Consuelo cried.

You could see what an effort Clark French was making — what a struggle it was for him to suppress his disapproval of swimming.

EDWARD BONSHAW AND THE dump kids rode in the bus with the dog lady Estrella and the dogs. The dwarf clowns, Beer Belly and his not very female-looking counterpart — Paco, the cross-dresser — were on the same bus. As soon as Señor Eduardo had fallen asleep, Paco dotted the Iowan’s face (and the faces of the dump kids) with “elephant measles.” Paco used rouge to create the measles; he dotted his own face and Beer Belly’s face, too.