Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman Read Free Book Online Page B

for brunch. Aura was sure the name must be a reference to the Triste-le-Roy of the Borges story “Death and the Compass,” but no, it turned out the owner’s name was Leroy. The waiters and managers there were mostly young Mexicans, and always so friendly to us, no matter how crowded the restaurant was or how impatient the people waiting for tables. They took our orders in Spanish, and spoke English to everybody else; they eagerly interrogated us about our lives, and we asked about theirs. Now, passing Café le Roy on my way to the subway, I crossed to the other side of the sidewalk. But they must have seen me, and I’d tell myself, I bet they think Aura has left me.
    Whenever the Ecuadorian checkout girl at the supermarket on our corner, a cheerful chubby girl with acne scars and Coke-bottle glasses, asked, ¿Y tu esposa, señor? I’d tell her that my wife was fine. And she’d laughingly tease, Ohhh, she makes you do all the shopping now. ¡Que bueno!
    Nor had I been back to the fish store. I was no longer that guy who went with his wife or came in alone twice a week to buy wild Alaskan salmon, always fillets for two, a bit of a splurge but it was what Aura liked, and often one or the other of the two friendly guys who worked there would lift a big glistening tangerine-hued slab of salmon off the bed of ice and start cutting as soon as either of us walked into the store.
    No longer him . No longer a husband. No longer a man who goes to the fish store to buy dinner for himself and his wife. In less than a year I would be no longer a husband longer than I was a husband. But we’d lived together two more years than that. But then will come the day when I will have been no longer with Aura longer than I was with Aura.
    Sometimes I would wake with the sense that I’d dreamed about Aura but I wouldn’t remember the dream. One morning, though, a few weeks after I was back in Brooklyn that first time, I had a dream that I remembered when I woke up. I was in a chilly, austere room with walls of yellowish stone and understood I was inside a tomb. A brown-and-cream-striped wool blanket with a motionless human shape beneath it lay atop a rectangular stone slab. I knew that it was Aura under the blanket, because it was the same scratchy Guatemalan wool blanket we had at home, but now it was ragged and torn, like a blanket you’d see wrapped around a homeless person on the subway. I climbed onto the slab and stretched out beside her. Then there was movement under the blanket, and I realized she was slowly turning toward me. One end of the tattered blanket lifted as her two arms reached out, and I pulled the so familiar body close against mine, just as the top of her head emerged from underneath, her black hair (so like a Japanese girl’s hair), its morning unruliness and baked fragrance tucked under my chin, like it always was in the mornings. Her arms around my neck, Aura tightly embraced me, embraced me like she used to embrace me.
    I woke and sat up. I wasn’t frightened, because it wasn’t really a nightmare. I stared blankly around the room. Then I burrowed back under the multicolored quilt and concentrated on remembering the details of the dream. It was the first time I’d felt a loving embrace in months—since the last time I’d dreamed that Aura was embracing me, a few nights after her death. I actually whispered, Gracias, mi amor. Te amo. And stayed in bed until about noon.
    * * *
    No day ever felt better than the one before it. Emptiness, guilt, shame, and dread, on an endless loop. I felt worse for Aura—thinking about all that she lost was the quickest way to make me want to drop, moaning, to my knees. Often I would think, But it’s even worse to lose a child, to lose your only child, your daughter … a single mother who has lost her only child! Even worse .
    Before Aura went away to the University of Texas, she and her mother had hardly ever been apart for more than a few weeks. When she was thirteen she’d