The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015 Read online

  “It’s hard,” I tell her. “You remember.” I have done this so many times that Timoteo’s failure to show up at the park only means I have to spend more money to get him back home. But for Natalia, I know, it means her hand-drawn map is useless, as if she were standing not at a park entrance, but at the edge of the world.

  “What do we do now?” she asks again. She looks at the dark park and, in the dim streetlight, I think I can see tears forming in her eyes. “He said he would be here.”

  “Things happen,” I tell her. “Did you bring any money?” I ask her, keeping my voice low. “For a motel?”

  “He said he would be here…,” she says, trailing off.

  Despite everything, I am a smart person in the world. I could have been even smarter and better if life had turned out a certain way. If I could have stayed in school, there may have been more than just white ribbons. I think of the young Natalia from my girl days and I take this one’s hands, and then the name of the other girl comes to me—Carla!—as if her spirit knew that someone had been thinking of her. Such sweet girls, wherever they wound up.

  “Come with me,” I tell her, and we turn and walk back in the direction of the station. Natalia follows me without a word, and I eventually take a left toward the motel I always stay at when I need to. But first, I direct Natalia into the corner bodega just out of eyeshot of the motel office. “Go in there and pretend to look at the vegetables,” I tell her, and her eyes widen, her hands stiff around my wrist when she realizes I am about to leave her. “No,” I tell her. “The motel charges per person.”

  “Please don’t leave me,” she says.

  “I promise,” I tell her, and I know I don’t say it with much kindness in my voice. But I don’t rush away and I don’t turn back to look at her. If she chooses to follow me to the motel instead of waiting, I won’t pay the extra lodging fee. If Natalia chooses to leave the safety of the bodega, then she’s on her own.

  With the key gripped in my hand, I walk back to the bodega and find her cradling a box of saltines and two tins of Vienna sausages. I know the packaged sandwiches—salty ham and American cheese—are half off at night, so I get one and a tall bottle of soda. When I place them on the counter, I tell the clerk, “Just these,” to see if Natalia can fish any money out of her purse.

  “I’ll wait for you outside,” I tell her, as she counts out change to the clerk and waits for him to bag her items. When she clickclicks her way back out to the sidewalk, everything is set, and I know she’ll be with me for the rest of the night and a good part of the morning.

  “Now listen,” I tell her. “Just stay a little ways behind me on the other side of the street, and don’t cross until you pass the main office window. If the owner thinks we’re together, it’s going to cost me.” I give her the room number and point to where we’re headed, her heels so faint in the night I think for a moment that I’ve already lost her. I could’ve done the right thing and taken one of her bags, but then she’d never learn how to travel with hardly anything.

  I go into the motel room and set my dinner on the table with the television, leaving the door slightly ajar and the light off. Her heels gradually click-click from across the street and into the parking lot, a greater racket than I thought, and I wave at her to rush quickly to the door. She slips in and when I close the door behind her, I do so as quietly as I can, hesitating to turn on the light. When I finally let out a sigh of relief and slip the lock on, she hears my frustration.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  I turn on the light. “Keep your voice down,” I say, and open my paper bag from the bodega. “Let’s eat.”

  She kicks off her white high heels and rubs her feet while I eat my sandwich. I can see the red patches where blisters will appear in the morning. “Eat,” I tell her. “We need to be up early.”

  I’m surprised when she doesn’t open the Vienna sausage tins or the saltines, but takes out her last two cold tacos, as if standing in the glare of the bodega taught her that the only food she should ever bring along is the kind that can keep.

  “I don’t have any money—” Natalia starts.

  “I had to spend it on a room anyway,” I tell her. “But tomorrow, you’re on your own.” The moment I say it, the words sound cruel, but there is no way to explain to her what self-reliance means without bringing up the past. She doesn’t need to know my past. She doesn’t even know my name.

  “You’re lucky,” I tell her. “Sometimes people are not kind. Especially other women who are by themselves.”

  “I hope my luck doesn’t run out tomorrow.”

  “He’ll show up,” I say, but he may not, and the better part of me is already thinking ahead, to the kind of person I am if Timoteo shows up in the morning and I go back to my life by forgetting about her.

  “So why aren’t you married?” I ask her. I’m looking at her hands again, her fingers, and thinking about the man she’s come to get.

  “I want to get married,” Natalia answers. “But I have to wait for him to ask.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “No,” she says. “Not yet.”

  “You better marry him,” I say, hearing the longing in her voice, knowing how much harder it will be if he saddles her with his children before disappearing.

  “But you’re not married.”

  So she noticed my bare hands, too.

  “He’s too afraid to marry me.”

  “Men are always afraid.”

  “No,” I say. “He’s not afraid of marriage. I’m a citizen. I’ve been telling him for years that marriage would solve a lot of our problems. When he asks me what we have to do, I tell him we have to go to city hall and get a license, and that’s when he gets afraid. Like a lot of people, he’s scared of the government.”

  “Everyone should be afraid of the government.”

  “Maybe in Mexico,” I tell her. “But I was born here and I don’t let anybody push me around.”

  Natalia looks at me as if this revelation is beyond belief. She puts down the last bite of her taco and smooths the empty shopping bag flat against the little table. I can see from her face that a wave of relief has crossed it, that my determination comes from a place she can name, maybe even get to.

  “I was born in Texas,” I tell her. “I went to school for a little bit. That’s how I know English.” For once, this means something, and all the despair I’ve ever had about being no better off than where I came from dims in the light of Natalia’s silence, the futility of her white shoes and her purple dress, with no one in this new world to show her how to survive.

  “Eat,” I tell her, motioning to the last bite. My sandwich is almost gone, the soda flat and warm, and as soon as I take the last mouthful, I know I’m going to rise and prepare for bed. I look down at Natalia’s reddened feet. “We have the same shoe size, I bet.”

  “You think so?”

  I lean down and hand her my sneaker. “Try it on.” When it fits her like a glove, I get up from the chair and go to the bathroom, taking off my socks. I turn on the water and plug the sink. “Why don’t you wear the sneakers tomorrow?” I tell her, dipping the socks in the water and unwrapping the motel soap to wash them for her. She’s silent in the next room, maybe with the sneaker still on her single foot, maybe with the taco unfinished on the table, but she can hear my determination in the splashing of the water and the soap. Natalia must be no more than nineteen or twenty years old. Even if her man shows up, I know he won’t be much to worry over. It’s not my place to correct her mistake in placing so much trust in one man, but at least I can see that she knows how to spot the resilience in another woman and learn from it, like my two schoolyard friends, the little Natalia, the little Carla, wherever my poor girls ended up.

  I close the bathroom door to wash up and prepare for bed, hang the socks to dry. On any other night, I could take off my bra and panties to wash in the sink and dry overnight, sleep in some comfort, but I would be a fool to trust Natalia completely. No
w I’ll have to hide the money in one of the bra cups safe next to me once I drift off, dead tired. My panties are tattered—I don’t have to impress Timoteo anymore—but I hate that I’ll have to wear them two days in a row without washing.

  “We need to sleep soon,” I say, when I walk back out, and Natalia complies. She tidies the table and washes up in the bathroom, but when she emerges, she still has her purple dress on. She crosses the room to turn out the light before she undresses, and the darkness amplifies the street noise of late-night Los Angeles, the far-off sirens, men’s voices faint on the street, always sinister no matter what they might be talking about. Natalia takes her side of the bed and doesn’t move for the longest time, but I can tell by her breathing that she can’t sleep, that she’s afraid of tomorrow.

  I can’t sleep either, not sure of what to do in the morning. I don’t toss around, though. I stay rigid in bed, thinking of my old stern teacher from South Texas, the way she walked down the row of desks with her back straight. She walked with determination. She walked as if everything in her life had gone as planned. Her face comes to me, clearer and clearer, the white ribbon in her hand, and when my eyes finally close, her name comes to me—Mrs. Rolnik—and almost as suddenly, I can see the faint gray light of the morning through the ugly mustard-colored drapes.

  Timoteo will be there this morning. I know it in my bones. I rouse Natalia and tell her to shower, and while she’s in the bathroom, I take out the motel’s pen and paper from the nightstand and write my own name and phone number and address. I do it because Timoteo will come back—he always does—and I do it because everyone needs someone in this world. I take just enough bills to cover either a bus ticket back home or another night in the motel and I pray to the god I don’t believe in that she’ll make the right decision.

  Natalia emerges from the bathroom in a lime-green dress, the same style as the purple one, which tells me she knows a good bargain. Later, she’ll understand that it means little to suffer the indignity of wearing the same clothes two or three days in a row. When we’re ready, I send her across the street ahead of me while I go to turn in the key. She walks briskly now that she’s wearing the sneakers, but the socks weren’t dry yet. I’ll have to remind her to take them off for a moment when we sit at the park, let them air out in the sunlight. I have to cuff my jeans so the hems won’t stick on the heels of her white shoes and when I click-click along to the motel office, key in hand, the sound betrays her ridiculous wish to be the white women on the soap operas, at the county offices, at the J. C. Penney’s.

  Los Angeles is different in the daytime, but it is Sunday morning just like everywhere else, quiet, just a few cars on the street, older ladies walking to church. The Mexican bakery a block from the park is busy, people coming out with white bags, and I remember the days when Timoteo has shown up early enough to get some sweet bread and coffee, already waiting for me.

  But it’s too early and we make only one round at the park before my feet start to hurt. There are men around, but not very many yet. I motion her to an empty bench.

  “You should put your purse in the shopping bag if it fits,” I tell her.

  “It might,” she says, about to try, but I put my hand on her arm.

  “Put this in your purse,” I say, reaching into my bra and pulling out the little wad of bills and the piece of paper tucked between them. “Quickly. And don’t lose it.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Quickly,” I say again, and she opens her purse and I drop the money inside, a deep pocket of nothing, just as I had suspected: No wallet, which means no identification. No address book either, no gum, no mints, no tissues, no rolls of coins for the coffee machine, for the tampon dispenser, no nothing.

  “I left home when I was eighteen,” I tell her. “And somehow I made it here—” I sigh just from how good it feels to tell someone who I am, how good it feels to admit to myself that I want her to know someone like me can help. But I know enough to let it rest, to not say the rest of the story. It’s too long anyway, and we don’t have all day.

  All around us, the park starts to bustle with people. I know that most of us are waiting, but not everyone. Some are citizens, some are not. Some are out walking to their Sunday jobs, lucky to have something to do. Some are out walking just to relieve themselves of the boredom of being stuck at home, unemployed. To walk in the park, to sit in it as we are doing—it doesn’t feel like a luxury, like I imagine it does to all those women on the television. They lounge on a beach and wish time would never end. Here, it ends the minute my man shows up.

  And here he comes. I can spot Timoteo’s small round shape even if his T-shirt is just as white and plain as everyone else’s, and I raise my hand to capture his attention. But I don’t wave it. I leave it straight up in the air like a flag.

  Timoteo doesn’t hug me or kiss me, but he grabs my hand and squeezes it briefly in greeting. He looks at Natalia for a moment, trying to decide if we’re friendly or simply sharing space, and then I introduce her.

  “Natalia,” I tell him. “Mi amiga.”

  Timoteo nods at her and takes my hand again, impatient to get going. He asks her no questions, ready to move on with our lives. The day is early and I could invite Natalia to come with us to the Mexican bakery or to one of the food carts a few blocks away, where Timoteo likes to get a grilled corncob sprinkled with chile and lime. But she has her life to live, and I have mine.

  “Bueno,” I tell her. “Suerte,” and I say it with enough certainty and finality for her to know that she need do nothing—not return the shoes, not thank me for the money—except make the right choice when her man fails to show up in the park. I turn quickly before I have to see her eyes water from the fear of being all alone, and I clutch Timoteo’s elbow when he turns around to look at her, a flash of what might be alarm on his face. “Come,” I tell him.

  We walk back to the bus station and it’s only when Timoteo sees that I’m having trouble walking that he spots the high heels. “There’s too many men in that park for you to be wearing shoes like that.”

  His comment is neither stern nor kind: He knows my temperament well enough not to raise his voice to me. Even so, he’s quiet for the few hours we wait in the bus station for our afternoon departure. He sits hunched over, elbows on his knees, as if he’s contemplating Natalia more than me. He lets me have my silence. What we must look like to people, I wonder, neither one of us with a ring on our fingers.

  Once we’re on the bus, he takes the window seat, and it’s only then that I see how exhausted he is. Nothing new is ever in his stories of how he got back—the coming back is always stressful, always tense—and his reliance on me to be there outweighs his doubt. If this is love, then it’s as simple as it gets.

  The bus driver comes down the aisle to do a final count and I lean back in my seat. His footsteps remind me of old, stern Mrs. Rolnik back in Texas, her dignified walk in my direction along the row of desks. Do something with your life, Griselda. The rich feel of the ribbon in my hand when she placed it there, like a promise of things to come. Back then, there was so much hope. Back then, I loved nothing more than the brown newsprint where I tallied numbers and blocked out letters, the cool feel of the desktop when I rested my head in the afternoon as she calmly read to us for fifteen minutes. The bus backs out of the station; nothing will stop its determination to bring us back home. Ay, the cool feel of resting my head on the desktop. Fifteen minutes. Just enough time to dream. Timoteo is already fast asleep, his head against the window, and I would do anything to rest my head against his shoulder, to nestle there. Ahead of me, the other women and their men face forward, together and stoic, all of them alert to the city streets, to what’s passing by and what’s coming. It’s still love, the back of their heads seem to say to me. Not one woman is resting her head on her man’s shoulder, so I sit upright and look straight out into the distance.

  Russell Banks

  A Permanent Member of the Family

  I�
��M NOT SURE I want to tell this story on myself, not now, some thirty-five years after it happened. But it has more or less become a family legend and consequently has been much revised and, if I may say, since I’m not merely a witness to the crime but its presumed perpetrator, much distorted as well. It has been told around by people who are virtual strangers, people who heard it from one of my daughters, my son-in-law, or my granddaughter, all of whom enjoy telling it because it paints the old man, that’s me, in a somewhat humiliating light, or maybe humbling light is a better way to put it. Apparently, humbling the old man still gives pleasure, even to people who don’t know him personally. I half expect to see a version of the story appear, drained of all sadness and significance, in a situation comedy on TV written by some kid who was in a college writing workshop with my granddaughter.

  My main impulse here is merely to set the record straight, get the story told truthfully once and for all, even if it does in a vague way reflect badly on me. Not on my character so much as on my inability to anticipate bad things and thus on my inability to protect my children when they were very young from those bad things. I’m also trying to reclaim the story, to take it back and make it mine again. If that sounds selfish of me, remember that for thirty-five years it has belonged to everyone else.

  It was the winter following the summer I separated from Louise, the mother of my three younger daughters, the woman who for fourteen turbulent years had been my wife. It took place in a shabbily quaint village in southern New Hampshire where I was teaching literature at a small liberal arts college. The divorce had not yet kicked in, but the separation was complete, an irreversible fact of life, my life and Louise’s and the lives of our three girls, Anthea, Caitlin, and Sasha, who were six, nine, and thirteen years old. A fourth daughter, Vickie, from my first marriage, was then eighteen and living with me, having run away from her mother and stepfather’s home in North Carolina. She was enrolled as a freshman at the college where I taught and was temporarily housed in a studio I built for her above the garage. All of us were fissioned atoms spun off at least three different nuclear families, seeking new, recombinant nuclei.