I’ll Give You the Sun(42)
Author: Jandy Nelson

To reconcile with a family member, hold a bowl out in the rain until full, then drink the rainwater the first moment the sun shines again

(Months before she died, Mom and I went on a mother-daughter day to the city to see if it could improve our relationship. Over lunch, she told me she felt like she was always, in her mind, looking for the mother
who abandoned her. I wanted to tell her: Yeah, me too.)

Guillermo motions for me to follow him, then stops at the entrance to the grand studio space, which unlike the rest of the place is sunny and fairly tidy. He holds his hand up to the room of giants. “My rocks, though I suppose you’ve already met.”

I suppose I have met them, but not like this, towering above us like titans.

“I feel so puny,” I say.

“Me too,” he says. “Like an ant.”

“But you’re their creator.”

“Perhaps,” he says. “I don’t know. Who knows . . .” He’s muttering something I can’t hear and conducting a symphony with his hands as he walks away from me toward a counter that has a hot plate with a kettle on it.

“Hey maybe you have Alice in Wonderland Syndrome!” I call after him, the idea taking hold of me. He turns. “That’s this totally cool neurological condition where the scale of things gets distorted in the mind. Usually people who have it see everything teeny-tiny—miniature people driving around in Matchbox cars, that sort of thing—but it can happen like this too.” I hold my hands out to the room as proof of my diagnosis.

He does not seem to think he has Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. I can tell because the loca tirade in Spanish has begun again as he bangs around the cabinets. While he makes coffee and rants, good-naturedly, I believe, this time—it’s possible I’m amusing him—I circle the pair of lovers closest to me, brushing my fingers over their gritty granular flesh, then step between them and reach my hands up, wanting to climb up their giant lovelorn bodies.

Maybe he’s suffering from a different kind of syndrome after all. Lovesickness, it would seem, if the repeating motif around this place is any indication.

I keep my new diagnosis to myself as I join him at the counter. He’s pouring water from the kettle through two filters poised over mugs and has begun singing to himself in Spanish. It occurs to me what the unfamiliar feeling is that’s overtaking me: well-being. At ease has graduated to a full-on sense of well-being. And maybe he’s experiencing it too, what with the singing and all.

Perhaps I could move in? I’d bring my sewing machine and that’s it. I’d just have to dodge the English guy . . . who maybe is Guillermo’s son . . . a love child he didn’t know about until recently, who grew up in England. Yes!

And . . . looking around for a lemon.

“As promised, nectar of the gods,” he says, placing the two steaming mugs on a table. I sit down on the red sofa beside it. “Now, we talk, yes?” He joins me on the couch, as does his ape-man smell. But I don’t even care. I don’t even care that the sun’s going to burn out in a matter of years, ending all life on Earth, well, five billion years, but still, guess what? I don’t care. Well-being is a wonderful thing.

He picks up a box of sugar on the table and proceeds to pour a ton into his mug, spilling as much.

“That’s lucky,” I say.

“What is?”

“Spilling sugar. Spilling salt is bad luck, but sugar . . .”

“I’ve heard that one before.” He smiles, then whacks the box with the back of his hand so that it falls over and its contents spill onto the floor. “There.”

I feel a surge of delight. “I don’t know if it counts if you do it on purpose.”

“Of course it counts,” he says, tapping a cigarette out of a crumpled pack left on the table, next to another one of those notepads. He leans back, lights up, inhales deeply. The smoke curls in the air between us. He’s examining me again. “I want you to know I hear what you say outside. About this.” He places his hand on his chest. “You were honest with me, so I be honest with you.” He’s looking into my eyes. It’s dizzying. “When you came the other day, I was not in good shape. I am not in good shape sometimes . . . I know I told you go away. I don’t know what else I say to you. I don’t remember much . . . that whole week.” He waves the cigarette in the air. “But I tell you, I am not teaching anymore for a reason. I don’t have it, the thing you need. I just don’t have.” He takes a drag, exhales a long gray stream of smoke, then gestures at the giants. “I am like them. Every day I think to myself, it happen, finally I become the rock I carve.”

“Me too,” I blurt out. “I’m made of stone too. I thought that exact thing the other day. I think my whole family is. There’s this disease called FOP—”

“No, no, no, you are not made of the stone,” he interrupts. “You do not have this disease called FOP. Or any disease called anything.” He touches my cheek tenderly with his calloused fingers, leaves them there. “Trust me,” he says. “If anyone knows this, it is me.”

His eyes have become gentle. I’m swimming in them.

It’s suddenly so quiet inside me.

I nod and he smiles and takes his hand away. I place mine where his was, not understanding what’s going on. Why all I want is his hand back on my face. All I want is for him to touch my cheek like that and tell me I’m fine again and again until I am.

He stamps out the cigarette. “I, however, am a different story. I have not taught in years. I will not. Probably not ever again. So . . .”

Oh. I wrap my arms around myself. I’ve been terribly mistaken. I thought when he invited me in for coffee he was saying yes. I thought he was going to help me. My lungs feel like they’re closing up.

“I only want to work now.” A shadow has darkened his face. “It is all I have. It is all I can do to . . .” He doesn’t finish, just stares off at the giants. “They are the only ones I want to think about or care about, understand? That’s it.” His voice has grown solemn, leaden.

I stare down at my hands, disappointment pooling inside me, black and thick and hopeless.

“So,” he continues. “I think about this, assume you are at CSA because you mention Sandy, yes?” I nod. “There is someone there, no? Ivan something, he is in that department, he can surely help you with this piece?”

“He’s in Italy,” I say, my voice cracking. Oh no. How can this be? Now? Oh not now, please. But it is now. For the first time in two years, tears are streaming down my cheeks. I wipe them away quickly, again and again. “I understand,” I say, getting up. “Really. It’s fine. It was a dumb idea. Thank you for the coffee.” I have to get out of here. I have to stop crying. There’s a sob building inside me so immense and powerful it’s going to break all my bird bones. It’s Judemageddon. I keep my arms tightly fastened around my ribs as I make my trembling legs move across the bright sunny studio, through the mailroom, and down the dark musty hallway, completely blinded from the contrast, when his baritone voice stops me.