Read Online It's Not Love, It's Just Paris by Patricia Engel - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Patricia Engel
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pushing up through his temples. My father would warn you not to judge, say we’re all crooked in some way, and I loved my little brother, but love isn’t enough of a word in any language to describe what one feels for a sibling who can’t stand to feel life around him—a boy who, as a seven-year-old, turned blue and fainted at the dinner table because he drank laundry detergent before we sat down to eat. A year later, he tried to drown himself in the bath, so our father had the tubs taken out of the house, the swimming pool drained, and the windows bolted shut, fearing Beto’s entire existence was a suicide mission.
My mother said Beto’s was an illness just like those of the sick kids in the orphanage she funded back in Leticia. Kids born missinglimbs from contaminations, abandoned children with jungle diseases, born unwanted, which she said was the hardest malady to cure of all. Papi said when he was a kid he had every reason to want to curl up and die, but he heard the moon whisper to him at night that he had to wake up the next morning.
They didn’t understand the monster eating their son, so they paid for every treatment available. Therapists, pills, art therapy, music therapy, sending him to a ranch for depressed kids, buying him whatever he wanted. Beto had a thing for rabbits just like Séraphine’s husband, Théophile, had a thing for cats. Our house was full of animals—five dogs and seven cats, all former strays, a blind parrot and six rescued horses that roamed the corral we once used as a soccer field—but the only thing that kept Beto going was the bunnies he kept in the atrium, which used to be a greenhouse for Mami’s tropical plants until Beto turned it into a free-range rabbit sanctuary because he didn’t believe in cages. Our parents indulged him because that’s what you do when you want to love someone into happiness.
I found the church easily because of all the beggars out on the sidewalk. Even though there was no Mass, the pews were packed, heads hung in prayer, the altar before the blue-cloaked virgin lined with kneelers. A long painted banner on the dome above the altar said that whatever you asked for here would come true, and that’s probably why the place had such an impressive turnout. I got on my knees on my mother’s behalf because I knew she’d kill to be here, and what kind of skeptic would I be if I didn’t keep an open mind to prayer. Like my father says, the closest thing to faith is doubt.
Please keep my parents safe and healthy so they don’t drop dead before I have a chance to make them proud of me. Bless Santi so he doesn’t get anyone pregnant and stops drinking and driving. Bless Beto so he doesn’t accidentally kill himself on purpose
.
I didn’t know what else to pray for. I’d been lucky all my life. So I prayed to be a better person. Productive. Useful. Not the kind of girl who just is.
And then I added one little selfish prayer, for love, which I thought could pass for an honorable pursuit, but it was an amorphous prayer, as if I didn’t even know the words to my own wish.
I was hogging prime kneeling real estate with people waiting for a turn behind me, and my legs were stiff. I stood up and went to the gift shop to buy my mother a little silver medal of the virgin, which I figured she’d sew into Beto’s pillow or something. She was sneaky like that; there was a time when the lady used to sew santos into my panties to protect me from taking them off for boys.
The three o’clock sun was still high, so I ducked into a small fenced park, a playground at the far end with children on the swings but they weren’t the noisy kind, so I settled onto a vacant bench along the perimeter. I’d been walking around Paris with a stack of postcards since my arrival. My plan was to pre-stamp them, jot things down whenever I had a moment of inspiration, and drop them in a mailbox so Beto would receive a constant stream of correspondence and know I was thinking of
My mother said Beto’s was an illness just like those of the sick kids in the orphanage she funded back in Leticia. Kids born missinglimbs from contaminations, abandoned children with jungle diseases, born unwanted, which she said was the hardest malady to cure of all. Papi said when he was a kid he had every reason to want to curl up and die, but he heard the moon whisper to him at night that he had to wake up the next morning.
They didn’t understand the monster eating their son, so they paid for every treatment available. Therapists, pills, art therapy, music therapy, sending him to a ranch for depressed kids, buying him whatever he wanted. Beto had a thing for rabbits just like Séraphine’s husband, Théophile, had a thing for cats. Our house was full of animals—five dogs and seven cats, all former strays, a blind parrot and six rescued horses that roamed the corral we once used as a soccer field—but the only thing that kept Beto going was the bunnies he kept in the atrium, which used to be a greenhouse for Mami’s tropical plants until Beto turned it into a free-range rabbit sanctuary because he didn’t believe in cages. Our parents indulged him because that’s what you do when you want to love someone into happiness.
I found the church easily because of all the beggars out on the sidewalk. Even though there was no Mass, the pews were packed, heads hung in prayer, the altar before the blue-cloaked virgin lined with kneelers. A long painted banner on the dome above the altar said that whatever you asked for here would come true, and that’s probably why the place had such an impressive turnout. I got on my knees on my mother’s behalf because I knew she’d kill to be here, and what kind of skeptic would I be if I didn’t keep an open mind to prayer. Like my father says, the closest thing to faith is doubt.
Please keep my parents safe and healthy so they don’t drop dead before I have a chance to make them proud of me. Bless Santi so he doesn’t get anyone pregnant and stops drinking and driving. Bless Beto so he doesn’t accidentally kill himself on purpose
.
I didn’t know what else to pray for. I’d been lucky all my life. So I prayed to be a better person. Productive. Useful. Not the kind of girl who just is.
And then I added one little selfish prayer, for love, which I thought could pass for an honorable pursuit, but it was an amorphous prayer, as if I didn’t even know the words to my own wish.
I was hogging prime kneeling real estate with people waiting for a turn behind me, and my legs were stiff. I stood up and went to the gift shop to buy my mother a little silver medal of the virgin, which I figured she’d sew into Beto’s pillow or something. She was sneaky like that; there was a time when the lady used to sew santos into my panties to protect me from taking them off for boys.
The three o’clock sun was still high, so I ducked into a small fenced park, a playground at the far end with children on the swings but they weren’t the noisy kind, so I settled onto a vacant bench along the perimeter. I’d been walking around Paris with a stack of postcards since my arrival. My plan was to pre-stamp them, jot things down whenever I had a moment of inspiration, and drop them in a mailbox so Beto would receive a constant stream of correspondence and know I was thinking of
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