10
He wakes to Nélida’s call.
“Hi, Marcos, how are you, dear? Your father’s a tad out of sorts, nothing serious, but we need you to stop by, today if possible.”
“I don’t think I can make it today, tomorrow’s better.”
“You’re not understanding me. We need you to come in today.”
He doesn’t answer. He knows what Nélida’s call means, but doesn’t want to say it, he can’t put it into words.
“I’ll leave now, Nélida.”
First he takes Jasmine to her room. He knows it’ll be a while before he’s back so he leaves enough food and water for the whole day.
Then he calls Mari and tells her he won’t be coming in to the plant.
He speeds to the nursing home. Not because he thinks it’s going to change things or because he believes he’ll see his father alive, but because the speed helps stop him from thinking. He lights a cigarette and drives. But he starts to cough hard, and tosses it out the window.
The cough doesn’t subside. He feels something in his chest, like there’s a stone in there. He thumps on it and coughs.
Then he pulls over to the side of the highway and rests his head on the steering wheel. He sits there in silence, trying to breathe. The entrance to the zoo is right next to him. He looks at the sign. It’s broken and stripped of paint, and the animals drawn around the word “zoo” are almost impossible to make out. He leaves the car and walks to the entrance. The sign sits on a lintel arch made of uneven stones.
The arch isn’t very high up and he climbs onto the stones and stands behind the sign. He starts to kick the sign, to hit it, to move it until he’s able to push it over onto the ground. The sign hits the grass with a dull
sound, a thud.
Now this place has no name.
When he arrives at the nursing home, Nélida is waiting for him at the door. She gives him a hug. “Hi, dear, I don’t have to say it, do I? I didn’t want to tell you over the phone, but we needed you to come in today, to take care of the paperwork. I’m so sorry, Marcos, I’m so very sorry.”
All he says is: “I want to see him now.”
“Of course, dear, I’ll take you to his room.”
Nélida leads him to his father’s room. There’s a lot of natural light in the room and everything is in its place. On the night table sits a photo of his mother holding him in her arms when he was a baby.
There are pill bottles and a lamp.
He sits down on a chair next to the bed in which his father lies.
The man’s hands are crossed over his chest. His hair has been combed
and his body perfumed. He’s dead.
“When did it happen?”
“Today, in the early hours. He died in his sleep.”
Nélida closes the door and leaves him alone.
When he touches his father’s hands, he finds that they’re freezing and can’t help but move his away. He doesn’t feel anything. What he wants to do is cry and hug his father, but he looks at the body as though it were a stranger’s. Now his father is free from the madness, he thinks, from this horrific world, and he feels something like relief, but in fact the stone in his chest is getting bigger.
He goes over to the window that opens onto the garden. A hummingbird hovers right at the level of his eyes. For a few seconds, the bird seems to be watching him. He wishes he could touch it, but it moves quickly and disappears. He thinks there’s no way that something so beautiful and small could cause harm. He thinks that just maybe the hummingbird is his father’s spirit saying goodbye.
It’s then that he feels the stone shift in his chest and the tears begin to fall.