8. Musica y Machi

Marina rose from the couch, climbed upstairs to the bathroom, knelt by the bowl and stuck her index finger down her throat. She hated the up close view of the pink toilet, the stench of male urine that never seemed to wash off, but still, she couldn’t vomit. Her stomach was a solid brick of terror.
She heard the door and Machi’s voice telling Cristal, the young girl who helped Elena at the Pinocho Home Day Care after school, that nobody was home. It was Ori’s turn to pick up Machi and he’d arranged for Cristal to bring him home.
It wasn’t right for Machi to be home alone for hours when Ori worked late.
She called to him and he raced up to where she stood by the bathroom door. The moment he saw her he threw down his backpack. The first instant of happiness at seeing her was replaced by a wave of rage that she wasn’t there every day, that she was gone. He threw himself on the floor. He began to scream and pound his legs and fists. “I don’t want you I want Papi. I don’t want you I want Papi.” She wanted to cry or scream or tear out her hair. She wanted to hit him…give him something to cry about. Was that how her mother had felt? Her right eye throbbed. An image came to her of an anglo Mother she’d once seen on the subway platform. Her son was tantrumming and she’d knelt beside him, made a circle with her arms, enfolded him and held him while he raged. She knelt on the floor beside Machi and tried to hold him. He slithered out of her arms and she went after him again and again. If only someone had held her mother when she tantrummed, not beaten her, then maybe her mother wouldn’t have beaten Marina. She thanked her mind for pulling up the memory of the good Mother on the train, giving her the ability to not do to Machi as her mother had done to her.
Marina lay with Machi on his futon in the window well of his attic bedroom, looking down. She wanted to go to sleep. “Look, the bush is getting green.” The new foliage obscured his view of his domain. “I can see what David’s doing. He’s taking apart that bike he found.” Marina looked at Machi and couldn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. “He told me he found it.” Marina stretched out on his bed and watched him drag his keyboard from his toy box. He set it by the bed and bent over it fully absorbed.
“The streets are cool if you know what to do…” He played chords. “The moon…I want to go to the moon…”
He glanced at her and away. She could feel him taking in her expression of pure delight and hope.
He brought out his dog eared copy of The Lord of the Rings, opened to Frodo’s Song and began to play amazing chords.
If her son had music he would be all right. Music had saved Ori . Before politics saved him music saved him.
“I’ll play you a lullaby and you can go to sleep.” Machi played and hummed.

Marina knew she’d slept when she heard the screaming.
“I knew you were still married. You’re a bastard and a prick.”
She made her way to the top of the stairs.
Machi was crying, cowering by the door to Ori’s study. Ori stood helpless, his arms hanging by his side, wearing the hangdog face that would never arouse any woman’s longings for a cad. Except maybe Liuba’s. Marina had never seen her since the massage. She was shorter than she remembered, rounder, had short curly brown hair. She looked smart, too smart for being made a fool of, and five sheets to the wind of rage.
“I didn’t even know she was here. I fucking swear it.”
Machi kept repeating I’m sorry over and over again.
Liuba looked up and saw her.
“Well there she is, the woman that must have ridges in her cunt.”
She walked out and slammed the door hard enough the stairs shook.
Marina followed Ori into the living room. He was sunk into his recliner, eyes closed.
She stood by the door.
“Don’t wait to be invited in at this stage it’s kind of too late.”
She could tell there was a part of him that found this funny.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
Machi cut in. “Mami has a migraine. She came home sick.”
Ori smiled. “That’s how he greeted me at the door, the very words. Y pa que fue eso. Liuba’s every suspicion was confirmed. I’ve never been able to convince her you don’t still live here.”
Marina wasn’t sure where she stood. She had to ask.
“Aren’t you angry?”
Ori shook his shoulders. “Maybe I am. It seems inevitable that with Liuba things are going to come to an end. She’ll never trust me and it’s not just this. There’s a way she hates men I can’t break through…
Machi cut in
“Liuba does drugs up her nose...”
Ori couldn’t hide his surprise. He looked at Machi and then at Marina.
Marina wanted to scream. You asshole, letting our son see your girlfriend doing cocaine, but she stopped herself, felt too ashamed to have invaded his life, treated his world as if it were still hers.
Machi was happy that both of them were with him when he went to bed. So happy he fell asleep with the first paragraph she read him in the endless Lord of the Rings.
They sat alone in the living room. “You can sleep in your old study, everything’s just the same in there. That’s one reason Liuba thinks you live here. Truth is maybe you do.”
Marina sipped her tea. With all the drama her migraine had lifted, how had present time terror push out old terror?
“What’s happening with you and Hal?”
She shrugged. “You can’t let Machi see her doing what? Cocaine?”
“I didn’t know he could tell but he doesn’t miss much.”
She curled up on the single bed in her old study, pulled the quilt up to her neck and stared at the ancient wallpaper of farms and maples. What would it take for Ori to take her back?