“Thank you, Estrella,” I say to the maid as she hands me a fresh cup of coffee. “By the way, you did a marvelous job on the rug.” Her brown eyes tell me I’m welcome. I stroll through the dining room to the living room and stop momentarily at the faint ring of blood on the carpet where the baby was born two days ago into my hands before the paramedics arrived. My wife is here, just home from the hospital, holding the baby with my stepdaughter and my son from my first marriage looking on. Three years ago today I would have been standing here alone with my coffee, contemplating an empty couch, an empty room, a divorced man in his big new old house with the sparse furnishings his ex-wife would let him have. It is not a weekend; my son would not have been here on a weekday three years ago. He would have been in school.
Now there are five people here in this house who love me, if you count the baby, four in this room and Estrella, it has just dawned on me, in the kitchen. Should I say it out loud? “Three year ago I would have been standing in this room alone. Now there are four people here who love me, if you count the baby.” My wife smiles up at me from the couch and says, “Ummm.” My boy and the little girl take their eyes off the baby’s face for a moment, look at me, and wonder if I’m going to cry or say something else. The baby continues to breathe.
I’m standing in this room of perfect love. At this minute my family is poised before me like a snapshot of all my desires being fulfilled. I am struck by a vision of Estrella kneeling behind my wife and supporting her as the baby is pushed out into my trembling hands, Estrella’s smooth brown hand calmly stroking the side of my wife’s face. She is whispering a prayer in Spanish.
It will be another year before I sleep with the maid, and one of those times will be just inches away from the very stain the baby’s birth left on the carpet. When my wife finds out and I tell her it meant nothing she will say, “She is our maid, for God’s sake. You screwed her in the afternoon and three hours later you sat here and ate the meatloaf she made for dinner. How can you compartmentalize your life like that?” She will be pointing at the head of the table where we eat, but my eyes glide past her hand to the floor. I can’t answer her. By then I will have realized that desires are never fulfilled; they are only temporarily satiated.
In five years we will try to have another baby. My firstborn son will be married, and my wife will turn to me as we leave the church, the gleam of hope in her eyes utterly crushing me. During the ceremony she prayed to be pregnant, she will tell me. At that moment I will pray that Estrella, who is no longer our maid but still my lover, is not.
In ten years I’ll be diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Close to the end, I will tell my wife she and the children are going to be all right without me. My wife will cry, “No, I won’t. We were supposed to spend the rest of our lives together.”
“This is the rest of my life.”
But Estrella will tell me with her eyes the very last time we make love, “I will know you beyond the grave.”
Now there are five people here in this house who love me, if you count the baby, four in this room and Estrella, it has just dawned on me, in the kitchen. Should I say it out loud? “Three year ago I would have been standing in this room alone. Now there are four people here who love me, if you count the baby.” My wife smiles up at me from the couch and says, “Ummm.” My boy and the little girl take their eyes off the baby’s face for a moment, look at me, and wonder if I’m going to cry or say something else. The baby continues to breathe.
I’m standing in this room of perfect love. At this minute my family is poised before me like a snapshot of all my desires being fulfilled. I am struck by a vision of Estrella kneeling behind my wife and supporting her as the baby is pushed out into my trembling hands, Estrella’s smooth brown hand calmly stroking the side of my wife’s face. She is whispering a prayer in Spanish.
It will be another year before I sleep with the maid, and one of those times will be just inches away from the very stain the baby’s birth left on the carpet. When my wife finds out and I tell her it meant nothing she will say, “She is our maid, for God’s sake. You screwed her in the afternoon and three hours later you sat here and ate the meatloaf she made for dinner. How can you compartmentalize your life like that?” She will be pointing at the head of the table where we eat, but my eyes glide past her hand to the floor. I can’t answer her. By then I will have realized that desires are never fulfilled; they are only temporarily satiated.
In five years we will try to have another baby. My firstborn son will be married, and my wife will turn to me as we leave the church, the gleam of hope in her eyes utterly crushing me. During the ceremony she prayed to be pregnant, she will tell me. At that moment I will pray that Estrella, who is no longer our maid but still my lover, is not.
In ten years I’ll be diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Close to the end, I will tell my wife she and the children are going to be all right without me. My wife will cry, “No, I won’t. We were supposed to spend the rest of our lives together.”
“This is the rest of my life.”
But Estrella will tell me with her eyes the very last time we make love, “I will know you beyond the grave.”
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