The Infinite Plan (35 page)

“This is a country of winners, Greg; the one thing no one can forgive is failure,” Timothy Duane told him. “It isn't the morality or justice of this war we question, and no one wants to know about our own dead, much less that of the enemy; what royally ticks us off is that we're not winning and are going to have to slink out of there with our tail between our legs.”

“Not many people here know what war is really like, Tim,” Reeves replied on the one opportunity he discussed the subject with his friend. “We're never been invaded or bombed; we've been engaged in hostilities for a century, but since the Civil War not one round of mortar has fallen on United States soil. People can't imagine what it's like to live in a city under fire. They would change their ideas fast if their children were being blown apart and their houses bombed to the ground and there was no food to be had.”

Reeves did not, however, waste any energy in complaints, and with the same determination that got him out of Vietnam alive, he vowed to overcome any obstacle in his path. He did not swerve a hair's breadth from the decision he had made in the hospital bed in Hawaii, and he succeeded so well that by the time the war was over, several years later, he had become the paradigm of the successful man and was managing his life with the same juggling skill Carmen had shown in keeping five knives in the air at once. He had achieved almost everything he had aspired to: he had more money, more women, and more prestige than he had dreamed of . . . but he had no peace. Because he had the arrogant and self-confident air of a master con man, no one suspected the anguish he carried on his shoulders—no one, that is, except Carmen, from whom he could never hide anything. But she could not help him either.

“The trouble with you is that you're in the bull ring but you don't have the matador's instinct for the kill,” she had told him.

What was I looking for in a woman? I'm still not sure. I wasn't trying to find the other half of my soul in order to feel complete, not by a long shot. In those days I wasn't mature enough for anything spiritual, I was after something entirely earthly. I demanded something of the women I dated that I myself couldn't name, and when I didn't find it was utterly depressed. Divorce, war, and age would have cured a more clever man of romantic notions, but not me. On the one hand, I tried to lure almost every woman to bed out of pure sexual appetite; on the other, I fumed when these women did not respond to my secret sentimental demands. Confusion, pure confusion. For decades I was frustrated; after every coupling I was ravaged by melancholy and wanted only to escape as quickly as I could. That was true even with Carmen. She had good reason not to want to see me for a couple of years; she must have hated me. Women are black widow spiders; if you don't stay free of them you can never be yourself and will exist only to please them: so Timothy Duane warned me. He met every week with a group of men to talk about how masculinity was being threatened by all the feminist shit going around. I never paid much attention to Timothy, because my friend is not a very good example of abstinence. When I was young, I didn't have the poise or the knowledge to have a system for chasing girls; I chased them with all the finesse of a bear cub and with unhappy results. I was faithful to Samantha until that night I drew the arithmetic teacher whose strawberry-colored bathrobe I had no desire to remove, but I take no pride from the loyalty Samantha did not return; just the opposite: I was stupid, besides being screwed. When I was a bachelor again, I set out to profit from the revolution in mores; all the old strategies for conquest had been dissolved: no one feared the devil, sharp tongues, or an untimely pregnancy, so I put to the test the bed in my home and in countless hotels, even the Britannic springs of the sofa in my office. My boss curtly warned me that I would lose my job on the spot if he received a complaint from any female employee of the firm. I ignored him, too, and was lucky that no one came forward with a grievance, or at least that the gossip didn't reach his ears. Timothy Duane and I had specific nights during the week programmed for partying; we used to exchange information and draw up lists of candidates. For Timothy it was a sport; for me, a kind of madness. My friend was a handsome fellow, polite and wealthy, but I was a better dancer, could play a number of instruments by ear, and knew how to cook—tricks that captured certain women's attention. We thought we were irresistible, but I suppose that was true only because we settled for quantity, not quality; I can't say we were selective, we went out with anyone who accepted us. We fell in love the same day with a covetous, self-assured Philippine girl whom we besieged with our attentions in a race to see who would win her heart, but she was way ahead of us and openly announced that she planned to sleep with both of us. That Solomon-like solution failed at the first try: we couldn't take the competition. After that we shared girls in such prosaic fashion that had they suspected, they would never have gone out with us. I had several names in my little black book that I called regularly; I wasn't serious about any of them and made them no promises. It was a comfortable arrangement for me, but it was not enough; as soon as I met someone new and slightly interesting, I ran after her with the same urgency with which I later dropped her. I suppose I was propelled by the dream that one day my search would be justified and I would meet the ideal companion, just as I drank wine, in spite of my allergies, hoping to find the perfect bottle, or traveled through the world in the summer, running from city to city in the exhausting pursuit of the one marvelous place where I would be idyllically happy. Searching, always searching, but searching outside myself.

During that stage of my life, sex was like the violence of the war; it was a malignant form of contact that in the end left me with a terrible emptiness. I didn't realize at the time that in each encounter I learned something, that I was not wandering in circles like a blind man but in a slowly ascending spiral. I was maturing, although at great cost, as Olga had prophesied. You're a strong, stubborn animal, you won't have an easy life, she warned me; you'll take your share of lickings. She was my first teacher in what was to determine a large part of my character. When I was sixteen she taught me more than erotic antics; her most important lesson was about what makes a true couple. She taught me that in love, two people open to one another, accept one another, yield to one another. I was fortunate; few men have the opportunity to learn that when they're young, but I didn't know enough to understand it and soon forgot. Love is music, and sex is only the instrument, Olga told me, but it took me more than half my life to find my center, and that's why I had such a hard time learning to play the music. Relentlessly, I pursued love where I could never find it, and on the few occasions when it was right before my eyes, I was incapable of seeing it. My relationships were ferocious and fleeting; I could not give myself to a woman, nor could I accept her. That was what Carmen knew intuitively the one time we were together in bed, but she herself had still to know a complete relationship; she was as ignorant as I; neither of us was ready to lead the other along the paths of love. She had never experienced total intimacy; she had been mistreated or abandoned by all her lovers; she trusted no one, and when she wanted to trust me, I, too, disappointed her. I am convinced that she tried with good faith to take me into her heart as well as her body. Carmen is pure affection, instinct, and compassion; tenderness comes easy to her, but I wasn't ready, and later, when I wanted to try again, it was too late. Useless to cry over spilled milk, as Doña Inmaculada says; life deals us many surprises, and in the light of things that have happened to me recently, probably it was for the best. In that earlier stage, women, like clothes or cars, were symbols of power; they succeeded one another without leaving a trace, like fireflies in a long and pointless delirium. If any of my women friends secretly wept over the impossibility of drawing me into a lasting relationship, I don't remember her, just as I have forgotten the roster of my casual companions. I have no wish to evoke the faces of the women who were my lovers in those years of libertinism, but if I tried, I think I would find only blank pages.

The letter that would change Carmen's life was delivered to the Moraleses, and they read it to her over the telephone:
Miss Carmen Tamar, I am placing my son in your care because your brother Juan José wanted him to grow up in the United States. His name is Dai Morales; he is twenty-one months old and is very healthy. He will be a good son to you and a good grandson to his honorable grandparents. Please come get him soon. I am ill and haven't long to live. Respectfully yours, Thui Nguyen.

“Did you know Juan José had a wife over there?” Pedro Morales asked, in a voice broken by the strain of keeping calm, while in the kitchen Inmaculada stood worrying a handkerchief, vacillating between happiness over knowing she had another grandson and the doubt sown by her husband, who thought the letter smelled of fraud.

“Yes; I also knew he had a son,” lied Carmen, who in fifteen seconds adopted the child in her heart.

“We don't have any proof that Juan José is the father.”

“My brother told me when he called.”

“Maybe the woman deceived him. It wouldn't be the first time a woman trapped a soldier with that tale. You always know who the mother is, but you can't be sure about the father.”

“Then you can't be sure I'm your daughter, Papa.”

“Don't be smart with me! And if you knew, why didn't you tell us?”

“I didn't want to worry you. I didn't think we'd ever see him. Papa, I'll go get our little Dai.”

“It won't be easy, Carmen. We can't sneak him across the border in a crate of lettuce, the way some of our Mexican friends have with their children.”

“I'll get him, Papa. You can count on it.”

She picked up the telephone and called Gregory Reeves, with whom she had not communicated in a very long time, and launched straight into the story, so excited about the idea of being a mother that she completely forgot to show any sign of compassion for the dying woman or ask her friend how he had been in all the time since they had talked. Six hours later Gregory called to say he was coming to see her to bring her up-to-date about the details; meanwhile, he had made a few inquiries, and Pedro Morales was right: they could hit some difficult snags trying to bring the child into the country. They met at Joan and Susan's restaurant, now so famous it was listed in tourist guides. The food was the same, but instead of strings of garlic on the walls there were feminist posters and cartoons, portraits signed by the ideologists of the movement, and, in a corner of honor, spiked on a broomstick, the celebrated bra the owners had made an icon years earlier. The two women were glowing with their financial success, and had lost none of their warmth. Joan was enjoying an ongoing affair with the most popular guru in the city, the Romanian Balcescu, who had left the park behind and was now teaching in his own academy; Susan had inherited a piece of property from her father, where she was growing organic vegetables and contented chickens that instead of living four to a cage and eating feed with chemical additives strutted freely about, pecking real grain, until the moment they were plucked for the roasting pans of the restaurant. Balcescu grew hydroponic marijuana on the same property, and it sold like hotcakes, especially at Christmas. Sitting at the best table in the restaurant, beside a window opened to an overgrown garden, Carmen reiterated to Gregory that she would adopt her nephew even if it meant spending the rest of her life planting rice in Southeast Asia. I'll never have a child of my own, but this boy will be like mine because we have the same blood; besides, she said, I have the spiritual duty to care for Juan José's son, and no immigration service in the world can keep me from doing just that. Gregory patiently explained that the visa was not the only problem; the arrangements would be processed through an adoption agency that would examine her life to determine whether she would make a proper mother and whether she could give the baby a stable home.

“They'll ask you all kinds of uncomfortable questions. They won't like it that you spend the day on the street among hippies and drug addicts and nuts and beggars, or that you don't have a steady income, medical insurance, social security, or normal hours. Where are you living now?”

“Well, for the moment I'm sleeping in my car in a friend's yard. I bought a yellow 1949 Cadillac, a real relic; you have to see it.”

“Perfect! That will delight the adoption agency!”

“It's only temporary, Greg. I'm looking for an apartment.”

“Do you need money?”

“No. My sales are good; I earn more than anyone on the street, and I don't spend much. I have some money saved in the bank.”

“Then why do you live like a beggar? Frankly, Carmen, I doubt they'll give you the boy.”

“Can you please call me Tamar? That's my name now.”

“I'll try, but it's not easy; you'll always be Carmen to me. They will also want to know if you have a husband; they prefer couples.”

“Do you know that over there they treat the children of American fathers and Vietnamese mothers like dogs? They don't like our blood. Dai will be much better off with me than in an orphanage.”

“Right, but I'm not the one you have to convince. You'll have to fill out forms, answer questions, and prove that he's really your nephew. I warn you, it's going to take months, maybe years.”

“We can't wait that long, Gregory; that's why I called you. You know the law.”

“But I can't work miracles.”

“I'm not asking for miracles, only a few simple tricks in a good cause.”

They worked out a plan. Carmen would take part of her savings and move into an apartment in a decent neighborhood; she would try to sell her jewelry somewhere other than the street and would designate a few friends and acquaintances to respond to the probing questions of the authorities. Carmen asked Gregory whether he would marry her in the event a husband was indispensable; amused, he assured her that the laws were not that cruel, and with a little luck she wouldn't have to go that far. Instead, he offered to help her financially, because her adventure was going to be expensive.