Leaving the Atocha Station - Ben Lerner [30]
ME: limes?
CYRUS: She brought us two lime wedges and said something about shock and that we should suck them and we did. Someone covered her with a blanket. I saw the pay phones and I had a calling card in the truck and I went to one of the pay phones in a daze. I think I threw up again. But I called my dad, I was desperate to ask him about the cpr, to see if I had maybe killed her or at least missed an opportunity to save her. Something like that. I wasn’t
ME: you did everything you could. i’m so sorry
CYRUS: thinking clearly. And my teeth were chattering and each time they clicked I remembered her teeth
CYRUS: I did get my dad on the phone. Who knows what I sounded like. I was very confused, certainly. Sobbing. Managed to ask about the cpr, if I had done it wrong. He reassured me, although I don’t remember what he said. That nothing was my fault. That she would have already choked on her vomit or something. Not that a psychiatrist knows anything about cpr. I also think he said something about my coming home
ME: none of this is in any way
CYRUS: I got off the phone and went back to the truck. One of the people who worked at the restaurant said we could go so we left
ME: your fault
ME: you didn’t wait for the police?
CYRUS: Fuck no. We just left. We drove back to the apartment in total silence. We had put our clothes back over our swimsuits but were dried off from the heat by the time we got home. Like I said it was in the 80s. But my teeth were still chattering
ME: you didn’t talk about what happened at all?
CYRUS: We did later. Kind of. After we showered, we both realized we hadn’t eaten all day and although I felt sick I felt hungry, really hungry. We went to a little restaurant near our place we always go to. We started
WHICH know I hate but which helped get this taste out of my mouth. We talked about it then
ME: what did she say
CYRUS: The taste is back, by the way
CYRUS: She was shaken up in her way. She said she wished she’d never got in the water. But she also seemed excited. Like we had had a “real” experience
ME: i guess you had
CYRUS: Yeah but I had this sense—this sense that the whole point of the trip for her—to Mexico—was for something like this, something this “real” to happen. I don’t really believe that, but I felt it, and I said something about how she had got some good material for her novel
ME: is she writing a novel
CYRUS: Who knows
ME: and she responded how
CYRUS: She’s probably writing a novel now
CYRUS: She was quiet. I’m sure she was angry/hurt. Then she said something about how this just is the world, that things like this happen, that one can be as cautious as one wants, can waste one’s life being cautious, but that there is no avoiding the reality of death. I remember laughing at the phrase “reality of death” to show I thought it was an embarrassing cliché
ME: have you two made up
CYRUS: No. Yesterday we were both in the apartment reading and smoking but barely talked. We haven’t really spoken to each other today
ME: well, you both probably just need some time, right? i mean, this would shake anybody up
ME: i am really sorry
CYRUS: Yeah
ME: about all of this
CYRUS: Thanks
CYRUS: How is Spain?
3
INSTEAD OF CONFESSING TO ISABEL THAT MY MOTHER, MY BRILLIANT and unwaveringly supportive mother, was well, that I was a liar of the most disgusting sort, I decided to imply more and more that my father, the gentlest and most generous man I knew, was a thug, a small–time fascist, El Caudillo of his household. Not only did this lie, in my view, draw Isabel’s attention away from whatever discomfort she had regarding the initial dishonesty about my mom, replacing that discomfort with sympathy, but it also served to decrease my guilt; I felt much better about blaspheming both