The People Who Report More Stress Page 5

  During one desperate month, when all their phone calls sounded like cash registers ringing and Vilma had tired of innovating rice, beans, plantains, and dented cans of vegetables as a main course, she approached another mother in the school parking lot.

  “Excuse me. I am the mother of Marcelo,” she said. “Simon is your son, yes?” A tall, slender woman with large eyeglasses nodded. “I just wanted to say I’ve seen you a few times,” Vilma continued, as she wrapped and unwrapped a section of her purse strap around her index finger, “and you have great style.”

  Simon’s mother placed one hand against her chest and the other on her hip. She wore a flowing—neck to ankle—beige, cotton dress. The rest of her was the red of fire trucks: wide vinyl belt, cinched tight around her size-three waist; large, plastic jewelry that wrapped her wrist and neck; slip-on flats; lips. “Thank you,” she replied. “In this town, it doesn’t seem to matter much, but I really do like dressing up. I always say, ‘You look as good as you feel.’ And dressing up makes me feel good.”

  Vilma smiled. “My husband and I run a small boutique out of our home. If you ever want to come by to take—”

  “I’d love to!”

  For several years, Vilma’s youthful face had been a liability at the school. The other mothers believed she was the babysitter, and no one wanted to interact with the babysitter, especially the beautiful one. Vilma approached Simon’s mother because of her clearly constructed appearance but also because she was the only other non-white mother she’d spotted around the school’s entrance during drop off and pick-up. They had never before spoken to one another, and yet, Vilma somehow feared approaching a Black mother less than she did the white mothers. In part, the white women were always in a circle that intimidated Vilma; in part, she cared less about the impression she left on a Black mother.

  Word of the clothes spread. And for a couple of months, whenever the children were at school, all the mothers came by the house, where suits, dresses, skirts, and blouses sheathed in thin plastic hung, like headless bodies, in every closet and behind every door in the house. It would continue this way until the summers came, or a check bounced, or someone wanted their money back.

  “We can do this,” Vilma whispered into Jorge’s ear at night, when all of children were asleep and the lights off.

  “We can do this,” she said after a windfall.

  “We can do this,” she said when everything seemed to be falling apart.

  * * *

  On a balmy Saturday afternoon in October that could have been summer or fall, the itinerant brood found itself parked near their usual corner at 7th and 56th. Packs of tourists outnumbered everyone else. A breeze perfumed with the exhausts of restaurant kitchens and old cars blew through Midtown. Across from the sprawling, modern hotel where most of their clients stayed was an older, smaller, and more regal one with one fewer star. Norma was there for one night. Norma was a flight attendant with a shopping addiction that always proved a certain enough bet for Jorge to work an abridged lunch shift, trade out his dinner, and remain in the car with the kids, while Vilma handled the sale.

  “I’ve been wearing the same things for years,” Norma said, as she fanned out her pleated, navy blue skirt, as if to corroborate a sartorial hardship. The look across Vilma’s face toggled between subtle tolerance and ersatz enthusiasm; she had, after all, five months earlier, sold Norma several new dresses and suits, including the skirt that was now twirling around the modest, green-curtained hotel room. “Help me pick something out for tonight. I trust your taste.” Vilma took that as a cue and extended the sleeves of a bold chartreuse blouse that she’d set on the bed.

  “I wanted to see City of Angels, but the man at the embassy got us tickets for The Piano Lesson. Have you seen it?”

  Vilma hadn’t heard of either.

  “Let’s see. Do I want this orange Nicole Miller pant suit, or this burgundy Adriana Papell? Norma seemed to be asking herself. “The Miller is perfect for a play, no? The Papell is more for a musical.”

  “They both look great. But the Tahari was also beautiful on you. Maybe as much as the Ellen Tracy.” Vilma was suave in her assessments, choosing well the moments and appropriate doses of fawning. “With your figure, you can pull off anything.”

  Norma, while petite in stature, was an enormous boon to the family business. Earlier that year, she’d also become an invaluable liaison, introducing Jorge to friends who were interested in buying wholesale from him for their own operation in Mexico. For months, she’d been taking home suitcases full of designer clothes and returning with thick envelopes. Her spree that afternoon—three dresses, three pantsuits, two blouses, and two skirts—along with the most recent cash payment from her compatriots, would be enough for Jorge and Vilma to turn the phone back on, pay that month’s mortgage, pay one clothing distributor, and the previous three month’s Catholic school tuition.

  “Maybe I should try them all on again, just to be certain,” Norma announced just as Vilma had begun to fold everything.

  Meanwhile, Jorge sat with the children in the new Dodge, a mud-brown, wainscoted minivan. The gray station wagon, which the children had named Eeyore, had broken down a final time on the expressway the month before, leaving the family to hitchhike home in shifts. Jorge had been relieved and not a little proud to have gotten a few hundred dollars for the scraps of Eeyore.

  Inés and Eduardo were growing restless: proclamations of guilt and innocence being bandied about in the back seat. Carmen, the newest addition, was still too small to be demanding in the ways that her older brother and sister were, and she could be pacified in ways that they couldn’t. Marcelo wasn’t there. As of his eleventh birthday, he was old enough to stay home without supervision. Since then, he’d resisted all efforts to participate in the family business. No more hotel lobbies for him. No more specter of a bellman’s gaze. No more holding anyone’s hand.

  “Can we go to the park, Dad? Please!” asked Inés, her hair pulled back in a tense, impeccable ponytail that Vilma had styled, knowing well that Jorge wouldn’t.

  “La policía nos va a multar.”

  “But we can go without you,” said Eduardo, who wore a Garbage Pail Kids T-shirt that betrayed his pleas for independence.

  “A tu madre no le gusta que anden por acá solos.”

  “Don’t worry. We won’t tell her.”

  “No.”

  “Come on, Dad. It’s nice out. Kids are supposed to play in parks.”

  Inés’s wryness caused Jorge to laugh. “Okay. Pero dale la mano a tu hermana,” he said to Eduardo, who didn’t mind one bit his new role of protective, older brother.

  “¡Y cuidado con los carros!”

  “Don’t worry, we won’t cross through Columbus Circle,” Eduardo responded. “We’ll take 7th all the way.”

  “Si alguien les pregunta—”

  “We know, Our dad just went to the bathroom. He’ll be right back,” said Inés as she fastened the Velcro on her shoes.

  “Media hora.”

  “Forty-five minutes?” insisted Eduardo, before examining his plastic Casio watch—a gift for his first Communion.

  “Okay.”

  Jorge glanced up briefly from Carmen and caught Eduardo and Inés, in their neon colors, shin-high socks, and plastic accessories, before they crossed 56th, hand in hand, and made their way along 7th toward Central Park. A few strands of Inés’s hair had come loose and now hung by her cheek. He didn’t care.

  * * *

  Eduardo and Inés had just returned, ice cream congealed in the webbing of their fingers, when Vilma appeared in the distance.

  Jorge handed Carmen to Inés. “¡No le digan nada a tu mamá!”

  “Not a word,” Eduardo responded. “Promise.”

  “Close the window!” Jorge shouted to Eduardo before stepping out of the car.

  “But it’s hot in here!” Eduardo shouted back after the door had slammed shut.

  Carrying two large brown-paper department store shopping
bags, no longer bursting with clothes, but heavy enough to mark her palms, Vilma waddled across 7th.

  Jorge grabbed the bags as soon as he reached her. “¿Y? ¿Cuánto?” he asked.

  Vilma’s lips spread before coming apart. She signaled with her chin toward her purse. They kissed with an expectant, albeit fleeting, passion and took the bags to the trunk. The children were already on the sidewalk, waiting for Vilma, who set her purse down through the passenger window that Eduardo hadn’t closed. She lifted Carmen from Inés’s arms. “Bebé,” she cooed at the pink ball of marshmallow flesh suited in pastel yellow. “Are you hungry?” she asked the others. The Sí’s came in unison. “Chinatown?” The Yay’s followed. She took a tissue from her pocket and told Eduardo to clean the unseemly evidence of ice cream from the corners of his mouth. Then she tucked the wayward hairs behind Inés’s ear.

  It was then that a deep voice pierced the family’s perimeter: “Miss, your sweater!”

  Vilma turned quickly to find two men approaching the car, both carrying soft leather briefcases. One man wore a black, pinstriped suit; the second, a solid gray. Vilma pulled up the tail of her sweater, a knee-length purple and green Lagerfeld cardigan that she’d inherited after months of not being able to sell it. Its powers of concealment had made it ideal postpartum apparel.

  “Mom, yeah, there’s yellow paint on your back,” said Eduardo.

  Inés inched her nose toward the sweater: “I think it’s mustard.”

  One of the men searched his pockets for a napkin. The other pulled a silk handkerchief from inside his jacket. But Vilma resisted. “Thank you, but we have—”

  “It’s running down your back. Here,” insisted one of the men, while the other turned away, distracted and impatient. Both had long hair gelled back, like European bankers or traveling fútbol players.

  Vilma relented and passed the baby back to Inés. During the exchange, a third man materialized, this one in jeans and a T-shirt. Before Vilma could do anything, he’d reached through the car window and grabbed her purse.

  “Mom!” Inés yelled.

  Jorge, who was accommodating the bags into a junk-filled trunk, looked up to find the men running in opposite directions. The one with the purse ran east.

  “Stop!” yelled Jorge, as he began chasing. Bystanders turned and craned, but there was little they could do as the men sped past. Jorge followed the one who’d turned south onto 7th. “Thief!” he shouted. But his accent transformed it into “Teeth!”

  “Teeth! Teeth! Teeth!”

  Jorge continued yelling as they crossed 55th and then 54th, but nothing slowed the man, who remained half a block ahead and kept a vigorous stride. An athlete, Jorge thought. Jorge, however, couldn’t recall a time when he’d run this fast for this long. Certainly it was during the Sunday soccer games when he first arrived in this country, when he’d had nothing else to do with his free time but spend it in Flushing Meadows Park with all of the other kitchen staff. “Please! My daughter’s medicine is in there!” he pleaded at 53rd—there was no medicine.

  The sidewalks were loosely thronged, but by the time anyone realized what was happening, Jorge had already sprinted past, making it difficult for an intervention. That’s what he theorized later when Vilma complained about “esos gringos estúpidos.”

  “Please give it back!” Jorge called out breathlessly. And at the corner of 7th Avenue and 52nd Street, the runner with a black purse under his arm did just that. He threw it down and kept running.

  Sweat dripped from Jorge’s temples. His back and shoulder pain had vanished. Crouched on the sidewalk, too fatigued to stand, he watched the thief weave through traffic and disappear with a bounty bigger than any they’d had in months. Jorge was paying a tax for his own carelessness, he thought. He wrapped the purse’s leather strap around his wrist as many times as he could. Then he rested his head on his knee, incapable of engaging with the curious onlookers. The gum-stained pavement was mesmerizing—a pox on the city’s streets. When his breathing had resumed its usual cadence, he pulled open the purse’s flap. A corner of Manilla jutted out of the unzipped cavity; inside of the envelope was a stack of bills. Jorge dug his hand further inside the purse and pulled out Vilma’s wallet, also intact.

  Jorge looked up to the sky before pressing his hand onto his knee to give himself a lift. His white undershirt clung to his sweat-coated chest and back. A man in an Islanders jersey and a Mets cap asked if he was okay. Jorge nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

  Vilma was sitting in the car, her hand splayed across her brow, before she caught sight of him. Inés and Eduardo were crying when he slid the back door open—fear, of course, but guilt too, for having left the window open. When they began to cheer, Jorge held a finger to his lips and pointed to Carmen, who was asleep in her car seat, resting in the console between the driver and passenger.

  The children wanted to hear the whole story, over and over, from the moment Dad had started running, until he’d gotten back to the car. He had created too much of a scene, Jorge explained. The thief had no choice but to drop Mom’s purse. Yes, it was scary. No, no one got involved. Who knows what would have happened if the man had turned around. Vilma grew exasperated and barked at Jorge and the children to stop reliving it. Once was enough.

  They abandoned the trip to Chinatown. Pizza at one of the strip malls along the interstate would suffice.

  Jorge, still shaken up and not a little bit fatigued, drove slowly along 56th. Between 6th and 5th Avenues, he saw the three men, mid-block, huddled beneath the awning of a shoe repair shop. They’d be stupid to try something again so soon, he thought. He scanned the sidewalks for a police officer, but then remembered the trunk full of clothes and the envelope in Vilma’s purse. When the light turned green, he pulled away.

  * * *

  Everything changed after that. The whole world, it seemed, had been mugged. A perfect storm—Iraq, Kuwait, Reagan, Bush I, Thatcher, Salinas, Columbus, Cortés, capitalism—caused a devaluation of the peso. All of Mexico was suffering, including its airlines. Flights to Rome and Frankfurt were eliminated, as were entire flight crews. There were fewer layovers, calls, and hotel visits. Vilma began looking for full-time work.

  One day, Norma, the airline attendant, showed up at the restaurant. Her hair was a blonde pouf from another era; on one side of her neck rested a bow of red gossamer. She embraced Jorge and asked about Vilma and the kids. Everyone was fine, he explained. He asked her if she wanted a table or a place at the bar. That’s not why she’d come by, but she didn’t want to explain there. Could they go for a short walk?

  One of the two men in Mexico who were buying wholesale from Jorge and Vilma was found in the trunk of his car with his hands tied behind his back and a bullet in his head. The other man had been carjacked along with the merchandise they’d been trying to sell. No one had seen him since. There would be no more envelopes.

  Norma was apologetic and offered to track down the families of the men. They might honor their debts. Jorge offered his condolences and made something up about her friends not having owed that much. Norma’s hands, which had been resting on her hips, dropped to her sides. She pulled a bag of chocolates from her purse. “Para tus niños,” she explained.

  What would Vilma say? She had warned Jorge—not only with her eyes, but very clearly with her words—about doing business with Norma’s friends. She’d been worried all along about their money disappearing. But this wasn’t his fault, Jorge thought. He couldn’t have predicted a recession.

  On his way back to the restaurant, he calculated the number of Sundays he’d have to work to recoup what he’d lost to the dead men: five months’ worth. The other servers in the restaurant—tall, young, and aspiring to be something else—would be happy to have their weekends free, Jorge suspected. But it would take time for Vilma to forgive him.

  CARLITOS IN CHARGE

  I WAS IN MIDTOWN, SITTING by a dry fountain, making a list of all the men I’d slept with since my last checkup—doctor’s o
rders. Afterward, I would head downtown and wait for Quimby at the bar, alongside the early drinkers. I’d just left the United Nations after a Friday-morning session—likely my last. The agenda had included resolutions about a worldwide ban on plastic bags, condemnation of a Slobodan Milosevic statue, sanctions on Israel, and a truth and reconciliation commission in El Salvador. Except for the proclamation opposing the war criminal’s marble replica, everything was thwarted by the United States and a small contingent of its allies. None of this should have surprised me. Some version of these outcomes had been repeating weekly since World War II.

  I’d been working at the United Nations for a little over a year, and in that short time I’d had sex with the South Korean ambassador, the spokesman for the Swedish Mission, an Irish delegate, a Russian interpreter, an Iraqi translator, the assistant to the deputy ambassador from El Salvador, an Armenian envoy, the chief of staff for the Ukrainian prime minister, the vice presidents of Suriname and the Gambia, a cultural attaché from Poland, the special assistant to the special assistant to the Saudi ambassador, the nephew of the ruling party’s general secretary of Laos, a distant cousin of Castro, a film director from Mauritania, countless low-level staffers, a few guides, a half-dozen tourists, and Brad.

  * * *

  William Mycroft Quimby. The other students called him Billy. To me, he was Quimby (sometimes Quim)—the PhD student who led my section of Comparative Government 245 (“Cuba Isn’t Finland, but Neither Is Finland Cuba”). Quimby was a smart guy who came across as even smarter because his English was high-register and thickly accented. And he was authentically Irish, unlike the third-generation Catholics I’d grown up with, whose ethnic pride consisted of tattoos of shamrocks and pots of gold along their necks and ankles. In phenotypical ways, he reminded me of my friends’ dads back home. He had dark hair (also thick) and a knotted face. Quimby was an academic, but he could have been a middleweight boxer, a boxer who gave me attention I wasn’t accustomed to. He also had a gorgeous, uncircumcised cock (it, too, thick) that made me want to know him better, but we drew the line at office hours.