Page 27 of One Year Ago in Spain
July 7th
Dear Claire,
I am going to ask you to marry me soon, so I am beginning a project. This diary will be a collection of love letters to you, doodles, and random thoughts about us.
Marriage is a big step, and I know our relationship has probably gone at a faster pace than you would have chosen if you were in charge. But I hope that our upcoming trip to Spain—when you meet my family and see where I grew up—will help you fill in whatever gaps you need resolved to say yes when I propose.
With that hope in mind, I am going to start writing in this diary now, and then I will give it to you as a gift on our wedding day.
It will not be full yet, but over the course of our life together, I am going to fill this journal and so many others because there will never be enough pages for you.
~M
“Oh, Matías,” Claire said softly. “You really are such a romantic.”
—
She nearly weptwith relief at seeing Matías in the hospital bed; he was not dead or a ghost. For once, the hiss of the machines wasn’t sinister, but rather a reassurance. The oxygen cannula meant he was still breathing. The monitor measuring his pulse meant his heart was still beating. Even the feeding tubeand the catheter signaled that his body was, generally, still working.
But because he had so many family members, the nurses had to limit the number of people who could be in Matías’s small room to three at a time. His parents, Armando and Soledad, had organized a rotational system to cycle visitors in and out. Claire, though, could stay in Matías’s room during all of visiting hours if she liked, because having his girlfriend near him would surely be a force for healing.
“This is your chair,corazón,” Soledad said, leading Claire to the far side of Matías’s bed. “Everybody understands it is reserved for you, and no one will sit in it.”
“Gracias,” Claire said. “I appreciate you negotiating with the nurses for me to be here. But if I’m not here, someone else can sit—”
“Nonsense,” Soledad said. “This isyourchair, and Matías will know that, even though he is unconscious. Nobody else will use this space. It is yours.”
Claire nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”
The wise don’t fight when a mother is doing something to protect her child.
Armando and Soledad’s rotational system, however, meant that Claire never had Matías alone, save for the two minutes between visitation shifts when one set of relatives went out and the next hadn’t yet come in. So most of the morning, Claire sat in the chair just watching Matías’s chest rise and fall slowly, while across from her, various family members took turns talking or reading to him in Spanish and looking at her with pity. She wished she could communicate with them beyond sad pantomimes.
If you wake up,Claire thought to Matías,I promise I’ll work harder at Spanish.
But then it occurred to her that “work harder” was a half-ass commitment. Matías had begun a notebook with plans to fill volumes of them during their lifetime. Claire could do better than “work hard” at Spanish.
Even if you don’t wake up, Iwillbecome fluent in Spanish, in your memory.
But god, I hope you wake up.
Later, Armando came in with a tiny, gray-haired lady pushing a walker. Her face was entirely composed of wrinkles, and when she gave Claire a small smile, her eyes disappeared completely within the deep folds of skin.
“Soy Abuela Gloria,” she said, pointing to herself.
Grandmother.Abuelawas in one of the first Spanish vocabulary lists Claire had studied months ago. But she would have known the word anyway because Matías had a stack of letters from his beloved abuela, who wrote to him by hand every single week.
“Novia,” Claire said, indicating herself as Matías’s girlfriend. They hadn’t met on video calls before, because Abuela Gloria didn’t know how to use Zoom. She might not even own a computer. “Me llamo Claire.”
Abuela Gloria nodded and said in her small, sweet voice, “Ya lo sé. Matías me ha escrito mucho sobre ti.”
Armando helped his mother, who was ninety-two, into a chair and set her walker next to her, within reach. “She said she already knows who you are because Matías wrote a lot about you in his letters.”
Claire bit her lip. She hoped he’d said good things…andnot mentioned her strict silverware organization system, or how she insisted that coasters be used on every surface even if it was a counter that could easily be wiped off, or how she “reset the living room” every night before bed by straightening the magazines, putting the remote controls inside the coffee table drawer, and refluffing the pillows so it looked like a furniture showroom.
But Abuela Gloria was no longer thinking of Claire. She was fully focused on her grandson, lying on the bed in front of her. “Aah, cielo mío…”
Armando sat next to her, took his mom’s hand, and said something low in Spanish.
