20. Laid Off, Back Home

Marina stood in the doorway hugging her disappeared and now fortunately reappeared roommate Elisa goodbye. Ori was downstairs waiting for her to load the last of the garbage bags full of clothes, books, Machi’s toys. She looked down the long hallway at her new apartment which was now her old apartment. With her things removed the place was revealed to have always been Elisa’s, the roommate who’d sublet her the small room and then broken up with a lover, kicked out the lover, made passes at Marina, found another lover moved out, left Marina the big bedroom and the run of the whole apartment, had now gotten a new lover and taken the apartment back just in time. Marina didn’t have to go crazy looking for someone to take over her under the table sublease of a sublease. Elisa wished her luck, kissed Marina on both cheeks and ran off to listen to her phone machine. She wanted to know who called her but Marina seldom saw her take a call. She studied the space. This place was to have effected a geographic cure but her old life had come to reclaim her.
Ori threw the sacks into the back seat of the little car and shoved them aside to clear the rear view. Marina sank into the passenger seat and closed her eyes as he pulled away into traffic. She opened her eyes and gave one last look at the little pond, the playground Machi loved. She could tell her season in this gentrified neighborhood was over. Another chapter of her life had fallen off the way the Partido days, even her whole country, had fallen off.
Her old study was jammed with bags. She pushed her way past them and threw herself onto the folded futon that would now be her bed. Lying here she wanted to hit herself hard on the head. She had been bad. She had a shot at getting away, starting a new life with a new lover, but she had fucked it up, didn’t see the collapse coming. Now she had no job, no lover, no marriage. She remembered coming home to her parents’ when she was away at college, lying on her single bed, marking time there, as if that life weren’t the real one and she was waiting, poised for her real life to begin.
She must have dozed. Machi had jumped on top of her, home from school.
“You’re home, you’re home, you came back!”
She sat up and took him in her arms. How confusing would this be for her little boy? How crazy was her own confusion going to make him? Here she was, somebody who was not capable of being in the relationship or outside it.
“Llevame a mi parque.”
She let him pull her up and was glad to be dragged out of the room. She couldn’t endure getting started on unpacking all that stuff.
On the way to the parque Machi wanted pizza. He sat waiting in their usual booth. She set down his slice and orange soda, his usual choice. She slid into the seat facing him and saw the bleak expression on his small face, before he reset it into a grin. This must be a please Mami grin. He must imagine that he can make her come back, stay, by being good and that when he lets his rage show he’s making her go away. Just like her. Did she not lose Hal because she was bad? Rageful?
Outside the pizza parlor Machi took her hand. “I close my eyes and you make sure I don’t get hurt.” It had been months since Machi last played this walking blind game. Whenever he did she looked at him in complete wonder. What went on in his mind? He was made out of her but he was not her, not like her.
He made it almost to the park without hitting anyone and kept his eyes closed up until David caught up with them, butted his shoulder into him. Right away Machi opened his eyes. This game was private for him and Marina, nothing David would ever know about.
“I’ve been tracking the two of you on the other side of the street. What were you doing, dancing in the street.” His face, hands and wrists were pocked by tiny scars from the glass. He barely glanced at Marina before he pulled Machi into the park. Marina caught a last glimpse of Machi’s red coat at the bottom of the hill, disappearing into the brush along the river. They liked to call it the jungle and they would be lost in there playing guerrilla with no way for her to find them until they came out on their own. Pizza should hold Machi for at least an hour but who knew when David had last eaten. Feral boys. If Machi was a feral boy then she was the wolf who raised him.
She sat on one of the benches on the crest of the hill, overlooking the river. The wind made a series of small white caps on the water and pushed a sailboat toward the sea. She let her gaze soften and breathed. She had no clear idea of what to do next about her life. Only Machi was a certainty. She felt her heart open with love for him. But what choices should follow from that love?
She turned toward the voice calling her name and there stood Julia. Marina felt her stomach turn with fear. She was afraid of her wrath, any woman’s wrath. Machi ran up to them, glanced at Julia and said nothing. “I’m hungry, let’s go eat.”
“I thought I saw you come into the park with David.” Julia's jaw was locked. Machi yanked Marina’s hand. “I haven’t seen him.” He pulled Marina away. They left Julia standing there staring at the brush. When they reached the street Machi slowed down. “We saw her through the jungle branches when we were lying in our burrow playing guerrilla and David told me to just say I didn’t know where he was. He took off on our secret path to our secret entrance.” Marina didn’t know what to say. She was modeling irrational feuding for her son. She was encouraging him to lie. She was inflicting a contagion of hurt and confusion. She was not the mother she’d hoped to be.