Of Women and Salt, Gabriela Garcia [100 best novels of all time .txt] 📗

“I can’t sleep.”

A sound like a snap. Turning on a light?

“That brand of ginger ale that you like,” she says. “The one they stopped selling at the supermarket near our old house? I saw it today where I shop.”

“Where do you shop?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“At least tell me you’re still in Miami?”

Silence.

A sigh.

“Jeanette, how long are we going to play games like this? If you won’t even tell me where you are, do you call just to break my heart even more? Just to make it harder for me?”

She can picture him. He sleeps shirtless and in boxers. She can picture the print of the sheets, the color, the smell of just-washed. The pile of library books on his nightstand. The color of the walls. They picked it out together: Eggshell Bavarian Cream. What’s he reading these days?

He says: “Just tell me you are okay.”

She says: “I am okay.”

She thought she was calling him to talk about the raid, the neighbor woman. Turns out she has nothing to say about that. Also turns out: sobriety is a daily exercise, especially at night. She pictures her nightstand of just a year ago: crushed OxyContins, grapey cough syrup to send her pain-free into morning. A kind of prayer. She pulls the covers to her chin. Wonders what real prayer she’d whisper if she were the kind of woman who prayed.

What she knows about the neighbor woman: likely in her thirties, probably Central American, comes home each evening around six or seven. She has burnt-sugar skin and dark black hair. Always her face is perfectly made up. Arched eyebrows. Deep brown lips. Eyelashes that curl up like flower petals. Unmarried? Jeanette has never seen her with anyone, not even a friend. Just a young daughter who gets dropped off every night around eight. What happened to the daughter? She realizes she hasn’t thought about the daughter. The driver who drops off the daughter never gets out of the car. Every day the little girl just runs up to her door and knocks. She is around seven or eight years old, Jeanette guesses. Occasionally their paths cross when she and the neighbor woman are at their driveways. They say hello to each other, the daughter smiles. They’ve never talked more than that. Jeanette is twenty-seven, and she hardly notices or thinks about children.

And now, after the raid, the blood orange of a Miami morning like any other. Of course she is still in Miami. These streets course through the blood—all pastel mini-mall suburban blight, tropical flourish to each dragging second, each concrete bungalow a kind of American dream achieved no matter how crooked the mortgage. No other place calls her home like this. It’s just another day in another home not that different from the one she shared with Mario, only Mario isn’t here.

Jeanette sets her laptop on the kitchen table beside the window. This gives her a view of the neighbor’s house. All day she sits with her headphones on, listening to a psychiatrist define patients by insurance number and ailment. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hypomania. Schizotypal personality co-occurring with generalized social phobia. She types furiously, occasionally pausing the tape to search her DSM for spelling and billing codes. She makes a note to order the newest version. She microwaves a Healthy and Lean meatball parmesan with a side of matchstick veggies. She smokes cigarette after cigarette even though her sponsor has warned her to stop because “reliance on any substance or drug is a slippery slope to relapse.” As if everyone in recovery doesn’t smoke. Outside: silence falls, a slow domino effect, cars leaving their driveways until the street is empty of all but Jeanette’s. A few rustling trees. An occasional lizard or bird. No sign of the neighbor woman. No sign that anything at all happened the night before.

By evening Jeanette has finished her transcription work, has emailed it to her temp agency. She readies for dinner, browses the freezer, hums a top 40 tune, Rihanna or Beyoncé or Adele. She glimpses a car driving up to the neighbor’s house. The neighbor’s daughter gets out, and the car U-turns around the cul-de-sac and heads away from the house. Jeanette thinks of rushing out and stopping the car. Explaining that the little girl’s mother isn’t home. But she freezes as her mind weighs possibilities, questions, her role in any of this. She looks out the window. The little girl stands before the neighbor’s door in purple leggings and a flowered polo. She holds a pink backpack with both hands. Stares up at the door. Knocks. Stares. Knocks again. The girl scans her surroundings, and her eyes stop at Jeanette’s kitchen window. They stare at each other.

What can she do? The cold grass crunches beneath her bare feet. A breeze comes and goes, rustles palms. The girl has a look of mild amusement or apprehension or both as Jeanette approaches, as she invites the girl into her home. The girl looks uncertain, frowns as Jeanette kneels before her.

“Just until we find your mom, okay? Do you know where she is?”

“No.”

“Who dropped you off?”

“Jesse.”

“Do you have Jesse’s number?”

“No.”

“Do you have your mom’s number? Maybe a cell phone?”

“She doesn’t have one. I have my number, my house number.”

“How about a family member we can call?”

“No.”

“No, like you don’t know their number? Know their name?”

“No.”

“Like an aunt or an uncle maybe? A grandma?”

“They live in El Salvador.”

“Okay, well. We’ll go inside. I’ll fix you a little snack while we try to find your mom?”

The girl hesitates but then takes Jeanette’s open hand. She lets Jeanette lead her into the house, where she lumbers onto a kitchen chair and places her backpack at her feet. Her legs dangle. She is silent, fiddles with a ruffle at the hem of her shirt.

“Do you like Hot Pockets?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want a Hot Pocket?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

“Ana.”

“Ana, I’m Jeanette.”

“Is my mom dead?”

“Oh God, honey. No, she’s not dead.”

Monosyllables. One-word answers. The microwave beeps. Steam emerges as Jeanette cuts