Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The - Junot Diaz [89]
Tarde venientibus ossa.
It probably would have gone off without a hitch too, but Jackie was so excited. Since it was her first big party, who’s surprised that it became something of an event for her? She went shopping for a dress with her mother, got her hair done at the salon, bought new shoes, and was even given a pair of pearl earrings by another of her female relatives. Socorro helped her daughter with every aspect of the preparation, no suspicions, but about a week before the party she started having these terrible dreams. She was in her old town, where she’d grown up before her aunt adopted her and put her in nursing school, before she discovered she had the gift of Healing. Staring down that dusty frangipani-lined road that everybody said led to the capital, and in the heat-rippled distance she could see a man approaching, a distant figure who struck in her such dread that she woke up screaming. Abelard leaping out of bed in panic, the girls crying out in their rooms. Had that dream almost every damn night that final week, a countdown clock.
On T-minus-two Lydia urged Abelard to leave with her on a steamer bound for Cuba. She knew the captain, he would hide them, swore it could be done. We’ll get your daughters afterward, I promise you.
I can’t do that, he said miserably. I can’t leave my family. She returned to combing her hair. They said not another word.
On the afternoon of the party, as Abelard was dolefully tending to the car, he caught sight of his daughter, in her dress, standing in the sala, hunched over another one of her French books, looking absolutely divine, absolutely young, and right then he had one of those epiphanies us lit majors are always forced to talk about. It didn’t come in a burst of light or a new color or a sensation in his heart. He just knew. Knew he just couldn’t do it. Told his wife to forget about it. Said same to daughter. Ignored their horrified protestations. Jumped in the car, picked up Marcus, and headed to the party.
What about Jacquelyn? Marcus asked.
She’s not coming.
Marcus shook his head. Said nothing else.
At the reception line Trujillo again paused before Abelard. Sniffed the air like a cat. And your wife and daughter?
Abelard trembling but holding it together somehow. Already sensing how everything was going to change. My apologies, Your Excellency. They could not attend.
His porcine eyes narrowed. So I see, he said coldly, and then dismissed Abelard with a flick of his wrist. Not even Marcus would look at him.
CHISTE APOCALYPTUS
Not four weeks after the party, Dr. Abelard Luis Cabral was arrested by the Secret Police. The charge? ‘Slander and gross calumny against the Person of the President’.
If the stories are to be believed, it all had to do with a joke.
One afternoon, so the story goes, shortly after the fateful party, Abelard, who we had better reveal was a short, bearded, heavyset man with surprising physical strength and curious, closeset eyes, drove into Santiago in his old Packard to buy a bureau for his wife (and of course to see his mistress). He was still a mess, and those who saw him that day recall his disheveled appearance. His distraction. The bureau was successfully acquired and lashed haphazardly to the roof of the automobile, but before he could shoot over to Lydia’s crib Abelard was buttonholed by some ‘buddies’ on the street and invited for a few drinks at Club Santiago. Who knows why he went? Maybe to try to keep up appearances, or because every