KAREN ]. GREENBERG
87
have rendered him incapable of following his choice for the foreseeable
future. But you should take some comfort in the fact that, before all this,
he chose you. And when he gets better, he will be able to choose you
again . Perhaps. But first, you must help him get better."
Carla continued to scan the river. The white-sailed schooner she'd
seen going out was returning. Maybe the skipper had changed his mind.
Maybe he'd forgotten something. Maybe he'd only planned to go out on
an evening's jaunt and return home for bed.
Once, not so long ago, Carla would have agreed to anything Alvaro
wanted just for the few moments of peace that staring out at the boats
together had given her. Now, his son was acknowledging that she not
only had been a necessary part of his father's life but that she remained
necessary. For some reason, at this moment, she remembered Stephana.
She could feel the thick curl of his dark hair; it used to grab her hand as
she patted him goodnight, leaning over his desk to kiss his cheek. He,
too, had been trying to help his father. She tried to imagine him, alive
and in his thirties, begging Martin's lover to help him recover, to help
him move away from their family memories to a new life.
Jorge looked up at Carla. He had young eyes. "You will help him,
won't you?" The antiseptically calm tone had completely disappeared.
Carla tried to focus on her decision but found herself wondering
instead how her paradigm about lovers might be expanded to include
dealing with lovers' children.
"Please?" Jorge repeated. Carla wanted to ask what Luce thought
about this, whether she knew. And then, for no reason Carla could dis–
cern, she saw Stephano sitting before her instead of Jorge. Stephano,
with his dark eyes and dark hair, and the intelligence that shouted out
at you. He was talking to her.
"It
wasn't your fault. I would have done
what I was going to do. I would have stuck by my father."
Carla's eyes fixed on the journal that lay between them, between her
and her son, pages full of the love Alvaro had felt for her. Reaching
down, she took her cup, not yet empty of coffee, and turned it upside
down onto Alvaro's cache of memories. Carla watched as the coffee
seeped from beneath the overturned rim and began to stain the journal
cover and sink into the pages, smearing the ink, erasing their memories.
The grounds swam in the runny brown liquid and rested only when
forced into position by the grooves on the leather. Their movement ren–
dered them unacceptable harbingers of anyone's future. When she
looked up Stephana was gone. "No. He didn't choose me.
If
he had cho–
sen me, he would have been able to live with his decision. He wouldn't
