She was there in the V.A Hospital in Boise after he’d managed to verify, through Marcel Fournier, that she was a veteran of the resistance in France: a concentration camp survivor, Franco’s prisons and, while in the resistance, a rescuer of American pilots during D-Day in Normandy. He’d done so after Alesander reached him through old contacts in the OSS and informed him she had been suffering cancer, under an alias, at a sheep ranch near Boise Idaho. He’d only quit his business a few years before and dropped all his aliases for his real name.
Coming “out from the cold” then, Harry had married Marilyn to have for once a normal life. The posting of wedding notices in the local paper didn’t escape the attention of Alesander’s associates whose antennae had been out looking for Harry since he’d heard of Iniga’s cancer. Harry then went to work with connections that landed her in the V.A. hospital of Fort Street in Boise.
He came onto her ward with a bouquet of flowers and a gnawing anxiety. Her skeletal frame was hardly discernible from the tubes, oxygen mask and wires to monitors. He put the flowers, Blood Red Gladiolas, in a vase and sat by her as she slept.
She awoke with a start, “Hurry?” she slurred…. sedated, trying to say Harry through a thickened tongue,
“Yes, it’s me.”
“And, along comes the injustice of God.” She managed a weak smile.
“What, Iniga?”
“That fate would shove your fuckin’ face in front of my eyes before I die.”
“Gratitude was never your strong suit…”
“I am grateful that I can tell you about our son.” Her contempt softened as she said, our son.
To Harry's uncustomary affectionate mind, the lines of premature age and the darkened skin under her eyes wrought by cancer and had not withered away the beauty of her cupid bow lips or the steely determination of her eyes were steely gray like his: gray eyes that were no longer framed by wild shocks of black Basque hair. They were set deep in the death’s skull of her shaved head: eyes that were pleading. Harry was moved by the sight of Iniga submitting to pain… to see her in physical weakness was... well, he remembered his last vision of her in the bath at their departure in Spain.
“He is in California…” she paused to take another hit off the oxygen mask; “A boy’s camp of some sort. He still has your name, Papa.”
“What do you want me to do about him?” Harry could tell, as soon as he protested, that any objections he might have would be vanity, He saw no need to tell her of his own emphysema. but he tried… “He doesn’t know me.”
“He needs help. I had no idea of his situation…” she arose on one arm and spoke forcefully, “until we tracked down that damned wet-nurse.”
Harry saw again her fierce determination as she continued, “The cur left him with nuns like a donation … a bag of groceries!” she wheezed…”I was too weak to follow-up…. but I found out where he is now.”
If he was honest with himself about it, Harry hadn’t given Nick much thought at all over the previous sixteen years. Love wasn’t part of his vocabulary. It was an expense… a far too costly an investment in time and energy to be committed to it. He had to do what he knew he needed to do now. He needed to do it now because he realized… or allowed the realization… that within the deep recess of buried emotions… he loved Iniga and, in loving Iniga,his betrayal of her years ago required something of him.
“It is up to you Harry, find him.”
“I will.
“Try to give him a life, Harry.”
“I will.”
“Oh, yes, Harry…”
“Yes…”
“Thanks for the gladiolas. Red glads were the favorites of the nuns at la Ventas.” She turned her head to the side to hide her tears, “Now go away please.”
Harry knew then what the rest of his life would be. He took the first flight from there the next morning and never again see Iniga's steely gray eyes before she died.
No comments:
Post a Comment