a life they could have--all of them--if Celestino went away with Dr. Lartigue.
As Celestino's train made its way toward Boston, it would pass one or two trains on the outbound track. They were filled, you could tell as they hurtled by, with people dressed for office jobs. Some of these people were hurtling toward the gardens he'd spent his day watering, weeding, and cajoling into bloom. Would the man in the huge white house, the farmhouse that no longer sat on a farm, notice that his peach trees had been trimmed today, the rotten fruit discarded? Would Mrs. Connaughton's husband see that the sunflowers had been straightened, secured to wooden stakes? Celestino had never met these men; he could only imagine their existence.
Was he praised? Hardly ever. But that wasn't what he aimed for. What he aimed for was a life of not working for Tom Loud or anyone like him. Yet it became increasingly clear that Loud, or someone like him, would have to be the one to help Celestino break free. He would have to have a sponsor; he would have to become valued, indispensable. Perhaps this was the humiliation God would exact from Celestino; it was only fair. That he would have to become like a loyal, skilled hunting dog to the hijo de puta .
He would have to be nicer to Loud; he must make himself do this. My stubborn one , his mother called him. Also my quiet one . Stubborn and quiet: these were not qualities that married well if you wished to find favor. They were qualities you had to mold: quiet into listening and learning, stubborn into work.
Celestino was more frugal than Loud's other workers ("your compadres," Loud called them when he spoke of them to Celestino). He did not have a cell phone. He did not gamble on cards or buy lottery tickets. He'd found free clothes, decent clothes, left in bags behind a church on the block where he lived. He often wrapped and saved for later the sandwiches he was given by the women whose gardens he tended; once in a while, Mrs. Karp gave him a dish of leftover chicken or lasagne. If she traveled to visit one of her children, she told him to take food from her refrigerator, to keep it from spoiling. He drank one beer, or none, each night. Every so often, he went to Mass.
He sent half the money he saved to Marta and Adela, who lived with their mother. Because of pain in her back, Mama could no longer work at the hotel. She could not lift the thick mattresses on the fancy beds or carry stacks of linens, bath towels the size of blankets, down the endless halls (once the halls of a monastery). She could not walk all day on the hard stone floors that the tourists found so charming. She could not bend to clean a bathroom tub--or get up again once she had. From what his sisters had told him, during the phone calls he made every few months, Mama sat in their apartment and watched soap operas all day long--while claiming that her Spanish was too poor for any job not requiring exertion. Sometimes she made weavings that Marta and Adela took to the hotel shop, where tourists bought them to lay across their dining tables in London or Miami Beach.
When Celestino thought of Dr. Lartigue, he felt rage as often as pity. It was not right to be angry at someone for dying, especially dying too young, but this was how he felt when he was awakened at night by the teenage boys who played ugly music in the street or cruised noisily back and forth on their skateboards. He would lie awake and imagine his way through Dr. Lartigue's house in Cambridge: its winding stairs with the beautifully carved railings, the silver kitchen with its long green table where Senora Lartigue arranged every meal so artfully, fancy or plain (every meal delicious, served with wine or juice she had squeezed from fresh fruit). Dr. Lartigue's study, filled with so many books that they overflowed the shelves and stood in stacks as tall as a school-age boy; stone sculptures, frayed textiles, paintings of pyramids and tattooed gods that leaned against the
As Celestino's train made its way toward Boston, it would pass one or two trains on the outbound track. They were filled, you could tell as they hurtled by, with people dressed for office jobs. Some of these people were hurtling toward the gardens he'd spent his day watering, weeding, and cajoling into bloom. Would the man in the huge white house, the farmhouse that no longer sat on a farm, notice that his peach trees had been trimmed today, the rotten fruit discarded? Would Mrs. Connaughton's husband see that the sunflowers had been straightened, secured to wooden stakes? Celestino had never met these men; he could only imagine their existence.
Was he praised? Hardly ever. But that wasn't what he aimed for. What he aimed for was a life of not working for Tom Loud or anyone like him. Yet it became increasingly clear that Loud, or someone like him, would have to be the one to help Celestino break free. He would have to have a sponsor; he would have to become valued, indispensable. Perhaps this was the humiliation God would exact from Celestino; it was only fair. That he would have to become like a loyal, skilled hunting dog to the hijo de puta .
He would have to be nicer to Loud; he must make himself do this. My stubborn one , his mother called him. Also my quiet one . Stubborn and quiet: these were not qualities that married well if you wished to find favor. They were qualities you had to mold: quiet into listening and learning, stubborn into work.
Celestino was more frugal than Loud's other workers ("your compadres," Loud called them when he spoke of them to Celestino). He did not have a cell phone. He did not gamble on cards or buy lottery tickets. He'd found free clothes, decent clothes, left in bags behind a church on the block where he lived. He often wrapped and saved for later the sandwiches he was given by the women whose gardens he tended; once in a while, Mrs. Karp gave him a dish of leftover chicken or lasagne. If she traveled to visit one of her children, she told him to take food from her refrigerator, to keep it from spoiling. He drank one beer, or none, each night. Every so often, he went to Mass.
He sent half the money he saved to Marta and Adela, who lived with their mother. Because of pain in her back, Mama could no longer work at the hotel. She could not lift the thick mattresses on the fancy beds or carry stacks of linens, bath towels the size of blankets, down the endless halls (once the halls of a monastery). She could not walk all day on the hard stone floors that the tourists found so charming. She could not bend to clean a bathroom tub--or get up again once she had. From what his sisters had told him, during the phone calls he made every few months, Mama sat in their apartment and watched soap operas all day long--while claiming that her Spanish was too poor for any job not requiring exertion. Sometimes she made weavings that Marta and Adela took to the hotel shop, where tourists bought them to lay across their dining tables in London or Miami Beach.
When Celestino thought of Dr. Lartigue, he felt rage as often as pity. It was not right to be angry at someone for dying, especially dying too young, but this was how he felt when he was awakened at night by the teenage boys who played ugly music in the street or cruised noisily back and forth on their skateboards. He would lie awake and imagine his way through Dr. Lartigue's house in Cambridge: its winding stairs with the beautifully carved railings, the silver kitchen with its long green table where Senora Lartigue arranged every meal so artfully, fancy or plain (every meal delicious, served with wine or juice she had squeezed from fresh fruit). Dr. Lartigue's study, filled with so many books that they overflowed the shelves and stood in stacks as tall as a school-age boy; stone sculptures, frayed textiles, paintings of pyramids and tattooed gods that leaned against the
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