Until the Darkness Goes

The Beginning

Outside the sun beat down on concrete and occasionally a car passed by. But for the most part stillness and a silence prevailed. It was the dead of summer, the Santa Ana winds blasted through the Long Beach ’hood and everyone moved slower for it. On a Sunday afternoon like this you could hear the Mariachi pouring out of radios, but today it was as if the energy of the music robbed every one of their last vestige of strength just to listen. The children were all quiet; Molly Morris peeked out between the slats of the blinds to see them listless on the steps in front of her building. They were all intent on sucking the sweet juices from their popsicles before they dripped onto their already sticky fingers. She watched the rainbow of colors as they quickly disappeared. Hector had a red one, Amelia a green and Ramon what looked like a pale yellow. That would be lemon.

Molly stepped back away from the blinds adjusting them to keep the sun’s rays from slanting onto the crib. Stella was fretful but Molly avoided picking her up because she feared the heat from her own body would make it worse. She rinsed out a wash cloth in cool water and wrung it almost dry; just wet enough to bring the infant some relief as she placed it slowly, gently on the baby’s naked back.

Javier was stirring in the other room. His late shift last night gave them the extra income they needed while Molly was on leave from her teaching position. At least he was inside, air-conditioned. He was a good man, proud of his gringo girlfriend and their baby.

Stella’s tiny body relaxed as her mother ran her soft hand over the baby’s head. The cool cloth reduced some of the heat from her body. Molly rinsed another cloth and replaced the old with the new. Javier shuffled into the room, his face flushed with sleep and the unremitting heat.

“Querida. I should buy a fan.” He looked with worry toward Stella.

“She’s okay. It’s close to her feeding time again.” Molly explained Stella’s fussing to him, and he seemed comforted to know all was well. She unbuttoned her blouse and settled into the rocker with Stella who quickly grabbed hold of the nipple and began to suckle. There was a momentary pinprick of pain that eased as Molly felt the milk flow from her. Her love for this perfect little girl overwhelmed her and tears stood in her eyes as the baby’s fingers held on to her pinkie. Getting pregnant had been almost too easy but at forty-one, almost forty-two, Molly cherished the happy accident even more so.

While Stella suckled vigorously Molly revisited her concerns about her mother’s impending visit. Stella was just three months old and Molly still held her mother off because she knew Esther’s will would prevail.

At least she gave me a few weeks’ notice to prepare, she thought. She held the baby and rubbed her back to express any air out of her tiny belly. She didn’t care what the doctor and La Leche League said, even babies that nursed gulped and needed to be burped. The baby had a dreamy look on her placid face. She was almost halfway to a nap when Molly placed her on her side, propped with a receiving blanket. She marveled at this little miracle. Her hair was darkening yet her eyes looked like they were turning green, almost like her own. She shrugged; maybe Javier’s Spanish side had some Anglo to it.

The phone rang at exactly 1:00 pm.

“Hi, Mom.”

“You picked up on the first ring?”

“I didn’t want the phone to wake Stella.”

“She should get used to noises, you know. Otherwise you’ll be tiptoeing around the rest of her life.”

Molly bit her lip to keep back a snorting laugh, thinking of the noise that penetrated their lives daily; fire engines, fly-bys and drive-byes a street away, and the inevitable LAX traffic as the planes headed toward Inglewood and barely missed the freeway.

“What?” Esther’s antennae were up and in fine form.

“Nothing, Mom.”

“Well, I wanted to give you my itinerary. I’ll be leaving from JFK at 1:20 and will arrive at Los Angeles at 5:00 pm. Still don’t understand how that happens with the time change.”

“The date. What day are you flying?”

There was some fumbling and rattling of papers. She knew her mother made her reservations through Uncle Sol, and was probably going to be the only person on the plane with a paper ticket in its proper blue United Airways folder.

“May fifth. Uncle Sol got me a good deal for arrival on a Sunday.”

There was a pause as Molly let go of the desire to ask her when she would be returning. Her mother could not conceive that Molly would ask. She wondered how it would all play out. Her mother and Javier in the same space. She could even see Esther leave and stay in a motel. Maybe she should start looking for a place nearby, like Hermosa or over on Warner Avenue in Huntington Beach.

“Now where did you say you’d be? I don’t want to get lost or anything.”

“We’ll be near the gate as you come out. Security won’t let us get any closer. Just look for a Mexican and his gringa girlfriend and half-breed baby.”

Silence pervaded the space between her ear and her mother’s lips. “You’re not married.” It was a statement, maybe an expectation, possibly a demand.

“Hey Mom, we’ll be there.” Molly hunched her shoulders to relieve the tension, and said good-bye.

* * *

She surveyed the room with Esther’s eyes and was glad for a new coat of paint in all the rooms. But that wasn’t going to assuage her mother whose big unanswered questions seemed to always be on the tip of her tongue whenever she called. Who was Javier? Where had she met him? What was she thinking to have started up with a Mexican, a guy who worked in a body shop? How could she answer these questions sufficiently for herself let alone her mother, who never recovered from her disappointment when her daughter graduated and left Boston College and with it, the Resident in Orthopedics, her mother’s idea of a perfect match?

She walked quietly from the room where her baby slept and stepped out onto the back porch of the apartment house. It was a quiet enough neighborhood, although mostly a barrio close to but not in the gentrified section of Long Beach. The more expensive shops down near Ocean Avenue were only minutes away, but she admitted that you had to pass through “the ’hood” to get there. Which begged the question, why she was here and with Javier. She lived in Long Beach because it was cheaper and because she couldn’t stand Orange County with its overly tanned white-bread communities measuring their own worth by the year and model of their Mercedes or BMWs. That part she could defend, she chose to live here before Javier came into her life.

She leaned against the railing, remembering how Javier’s cousin Theresa introduced him to her just a little over a year ago. Molly noticed him hanging around the outside of Theresa’s Hair Salon while Molly lingered after the last customer, helping Theresa close up for the night. It was the least she could do for such a great highlighting job and for so little. Besides, she liked Theresa; the two shared their lives with one another. To Molly’s way of thinking, Theresa had more to share. All Molly could relate to Theresa were her academic credentials and a guy her mother wanted her to marry.

She glanced again at her image in the mirror; the blonde streaks were subtle and Molly felt they took years off her appearance, something she gave more thought to than she’d ever admit.

“There’s some guy out there. I’ll stay with you until you lock up.”

“That’s my cousin, Javier.” Theresa nodded toward the young man as she wiped her hands on a towel and opened the door to speak with him. Molly stood to one side looking between the slats on the blind. He was tall and angular for a Mexican, maybe it was the Spanish side or some Apache wandered down south of the border. She glanced at herself in the mirror and pushed her long hair away from her temples. She felt flushed; her skin had more color than usual.

“Javier wants to meet you.” Theresa’s voice had a heightened sound to it. Molly heard her jesting with customers, teasing their secrets out of them. This sound was not unlike that. Theresa hinted once in a while that some of her boy cousins would really like to meet a nice gringa. She wondered vaguely whether she was being set up.

Molly looked again into the mirror nearby and stood taller, tightening her tummy muscles. She walked toward him and extended her hand perhaps a little too eagerly. “Hi, Javier. Mucho gusto.”

“The simpleton. He was afraid to come in because a woman customer was still here.” Theresa playfully shoved Javier toward Molly which almost sent him crashing into her.

Javier held Molly’s hand in both of his. His hands were warm, big and the palms were calloused. He spoke in a soft and low voice. “Hello, Molly. My cousin can be foolish with her jokes.”

“See how pretty her hair looks?” Proud of her work, Theresa rearranged a strand of Molly’s newly shaped coif. “Too nice to waste on a Saturday night alone. Eh?” Theresa and Javier spoke quietly for a few minutes while Molly tugged her arms into her jacket, trying not to listen closely although they resorted to a rapid, staccato Spanish she could not understand. It was evident that their chat had to do with her. Javier occasionally looked in her direction. Although, she told herself, they could just as easily be talking about some old neighbor who died last week.

“Molly, would you like to come to my brother’s party? We’re going there now. You can leave your car here, and it will be safe, and you can drive with me.” He spoke in short halting sentences. He spoke shyly and his color heightened too.

“But that’s a family party. I don’t know anyone…I am not invited.”

“We both want you to come. You won’t be crashing anything. We don’t send out invitations. Nothing formal. Just Enrico’s new business but in this family there’s never much of a reason to have a party, so we just have them.”

So that was it? She accepted an invitation to a party, and then proceeded to have a baby? Would Esther make that connection? If anything had driven her to accept, it was the night before which was so frustrating. The blind date with Howard Spellmann.

Her friend Sarah assured her, “You’ll like him, he’s from North Jersey.”

To Sarah that was sufficient explanation for a date — Howard grew up thirty miles from the Bronx. Maybe Sarah saw a connection to Molly’s Masters in History at UCLA with Howard’s job and his degree in accounting at UCLA’s Extramural Fund Management. So she was ready for Sarah’s call this morning, eager to hear how well it all went off.

“What can I say? He’s a nice guy if you like guys who spend half an hour cutting the skin off the pickled crab apple that was meant for presentation.”

“ He really is a nice guy who doesn’t know too many people. I thought you two would get along. He’s always so accommodating at Agape meetings.” Sarah was talking about her half-baked religious conversion, half Christian, one-third Judeo-Christian mix and some sprinklings of Eastern enlightenment for good measure.

“I know, I know.” Molly smiled at the thought. “Remember me, I’m the one you took with you as a guest?”

“What? You didn’t like the singing? I know you liked the singing.”

Friday night dates are only good when you already know the person, when it’s something done among friends in Westwood or Santa Monica where you celebrated the advent of a weekend. Instead it was an evening of tiresome conversation spent with a passionless but well-meaning guy. And all it did for me, she thought, was set me up and leave me vulnerable to the attentions of the first dark and handsome guy that came along.

And Javier was handsome, all that dark hair, the dark brown leather jacket and the very white tee shirt, and the way he filled it out. She didn’t need to mention the way his jeans fit. She admitted she liked living in the semi-barrio among the people there. It reminded her of home in the Bronx, the mix of so many cultures up and down Fordham Road, the smells of tropical foods on one floor of her mother’s apartment house, Middle Eastern on the next and all that eastern European cuisine on her mother’s fourth floor.

Molly felt the need for a cigarette, something she and Javier had forsaken from her pregnancy till this very minute. Yet the desire for a drag and a glass of wine or beer were strong. She left the back porch for the kitchen where she poured herself a lemonade and thought again of their first meeting.

That night she rode with Javier as Theresa suggested. They were both quiet, she looked over at his profile from time to time. He would look toward her, the sun was setting and they could see in the half-light. He didn’t smile. The cars ahead suddenly began to slow down, the freeway accordion effect. It was happening too fast and Javier swerved to the left to avoid hitting the car in front of him. There was the thick smell of burning rubber tires as a line of cars all screeched to a dead stop. Javier instinctively put his arm out to prevent her from lurching forward and bumped against her breast. A practical man, his face registered more concern for her physical welfare than embarrassment. And she did something she would always remember; she reached out and held his arm to her, saying, “I’m okay Javier.” He took her hand for the time they sat in the traffic near El Segundo just below LAX, and held it until the traffic began to pick up and he had to shift gears.

* * *

They arrived at the party. Enrico lived in a neighborhood just off the freeway on the ocean side. The house had a small front lawn with a porch painted in white and yellow. The side yard was ample, with people everywhere. Molly and Javier parked the car down the street. He came to her side of the car and took her hand to help her out, and he kissed her, just a light, furtive kiss, but it was enough. She looked around self-consciously, sure others would notice the heat of him and her heat throughout the evening.

Theresa was sitting on the porch, a bottle of Corona in her hand. She was quick to see their hand holding and as quick to wipe the smile off her face. “Took you long enough.” She paused. “To get here, I mean.” She handed her beer to Molly. “I’ll get another.”

“What about me?”

“You can take care of yourself.”

His smile was different with Theresa and the others she met that night. It was full and open, and she compared it to her life in the Bronx, where her mother kept a lock on how much fun anyone was having on any given day.

Fuck it, she thought. Maybe that was it, maybe fuck it was what propelled her closer to Javier and the life she entered from the time she moved to Long Beach.

Javier stopped to speak to an old person there, a very frail and thin-boned woman who had to be ninety.

“Tía Consuelo, ésta es mi molly del amiga.” He said this as he tugged on Molly’s resistant hand. She understood his words as they were spoken slowly for the old woman who seemed hard of hearing. Aunt Consuelo’s eyes glistened as she looked up at Molly, and Molly wondered what she must think of the gringa.

“Es un placir, senora.” Molly stumbled through the language. The aunt smiled and patted her hand, speaking to both of them, but her words were lost on Molly.

As they walked around he introduced her to this one, the brother of that one, the cousin of the next one. They all laughed, the men gave her an appraising eye, and then looked a bit closer at their cousin. She never felt this good, that she looked good, that her life was worth a positive appraisal from the men and welcome from the women.

* * *

On the way back down to Long Beach they were both quiet, she in her reverie of the evening and how much she liked everyone and liked how they assumed she belonged to Javier. Beyond handsome, he was kind and observant. More than once he helped her through the conversations that whirled around her in rapid Mexican, and stayed near her side. She liked his physical closeness. She could smell his soap and water clean skin, the casual elegance of his dark brown leather jacket and jeans. He looked like a fucking movie star.

What did he think of her? Why had this happened?

She turned to him now as he drove south on the 405 and asked. “Javier, why did you ask me to come to the party?”

She trembled because she knew his answer would tell her everything. She chided herself for being so adolescent.

His silence was disquieting, it felt like a goddamned eternity before he responded.

“You are wonderful, mi muchacha querida.” His hand had been resting on the shift, and now he slid it onto her bare arm in a whisper of a caress.

He slowed the car to a respectable seventy-five miles an hour and took quick and frequent looks at her. She saw an expression of sincerity and warmth. Yes, she understood the words, though she noted that from now on, she would be translating a lot of words on Babelfish from English to Spanish and back.

“You don’t know me, Javier. You may not even understand all of what I am about to say. I am a tired and lonely person. I don’t feel like I have a home, like I ever really had a home.”

“I understand.” He was saying this as he put her hand to his lips.

There would be opportunity for her to ask him later and many times what he understood that night. As her Spanish and his English improved, she would see herself through his eyes. Tonight he gave her a hint. He would tell her he wanted a woman who was smart, and a woman who was wild and pretty, and he found her to be all of that. She would ask him why smart and he simply said, to have smart children you need a smart woman.

He parked his Camaro at the curb and walked her up the backstairs to her apartment. “I see you many times at Theresa’s,” he confessed.

“How many?” She asked. Her voice was playful.

“You are so beautiful, so different.” He fingered her hair, pulling it close to his face, bringing her closer too. They were on the landing in front of her door. She fumbled for her key and he took it from her, leading her into the darkened apartment. He undressed her by the time they reached her big brass bed. His movements were deliberate, slow, someone who could control his own desire and fan the flame for her in the process.

He stroked her body in long and slow movements that had her almost out of her skin. She fought the climax that wanted to explode, until he entered her. His movements were deep and yet very gentle as he plunged again and again. When she finally released herself, so did he. He lay next to her and she gently pushed his hair away from his forehead. She examined his body as he had hers. She noted every little nick or scar, asking him for an explanation as if it were all a road map to his life, which in many ways it was.

“What is this from?” She rubbed the short scar on his forehead.

“Enrico hit me with a heavy metal object.” He laughed.

“What?”

“My father bought a horse,” he hesitated, “small, metal statue.” The words came to him. “Enrico picked it up and hit me as I napped.”

“Was that here or in Mexico?”

“No, not here.” He breathed deeply in memory of some other place. “It was home. In Mexico.” He pronounced it in Mexican and in a loving way that told her he missed his home there. They napped on and off and then, revived, they made love again.

There was too much fervor to call it sex. It was truly tender and ardently genuine love making.

* * *

Now all these months later, over a year, Molly thought most about that. He loved her that night, maybe before that night and for sure every night since. And what about her? Was her ardor cooled? Did she still hunger for him? While she knew the answer to that question, she couldn’t be as quick to call it love. She wandered around the quiet apartment, the place that became home for her, for him, and for this wonderful little girl they shared. No, she decided, I love him. And Esther? Somehow, for the moment, Esther didn’t matter.