Page 77 of One Year Ago in Spain
Soledad
Soledad sat inthe dim, candle- and flower-filled living room with Carlos’s and Diego’s mothers, and the many other mothers and aunts and grandmothers of the neighborhood. The rest of the de León family was scattered about the house—the children on the back patio racing the toy cars Luis had brought for them, the young people in Diego’s bedroom listening to CDs from his teenage years, the fathers and uncles and grandfathers in the kitchen halfheartedly playing dominoes and drinking.
The entire neighborhood mourned because Carlos Garcia and Diego Ramirez and all the other boys had grown up in each other’s homes. Sometimes Matías was at Carlos’s apartment down the street with Diego and a handful of other kids, helping his mom fold empanadas and eating half of them as a reward. Sometimes they were all at Soledad’s house, making a joyful mess with Matías’s paints. But more often than not, they were here at Diego’s, because he had an Xboxanda PlayStation, and an older sister who had cute friends.
“I cannot believe they’re gone,” Guadalupe said. “I keep expecting my Diego to walk in the door at any minute, carrying his twin girls in either arm.”
“I hallucinate the same thing,” Lucia said. “Last night, I thought I heard Carlos knocking at the door. ItwasSofía andCarlos, Jr. But I could have sworn it was the pattern that Carlos used to rap.” She knocked three times fast, then two slow on the end table.
“Their poor babies,” another mother said.
“And their wives.”
Everyone sat with their heads hung for a minute. But then Guadalupe clapped her hands and said, “Suficiente.We wanted to gather everyone today to share our best memories of Diego and Carlos. We will pray for their souls, but then we must also celebrate their lives.”
Soledad nodded, barely holding back tears. Not only because Carlos and Diego were dead, but because she still had Matías, and the guilt twisted in her gut, even though it was no fault of her own and no one here would hold it against her. On the contrary, they were tender toward her, as they were for Leo’s and Facu’s families who were still in Valencia with them. No one wanted more of their boys to die. To lose two was already too many.
The women closed their eyes and held their hands before them as Lucia led a prayer.
“Lord, Carlos and Diego are gone now from this earthly dwelling, and have left behind those who mourn their absence. Grant that we may hold their memories dear, never bitter for what we have lost nor in regret for the past, but always in hope of the eternal kingdom where you will bring us together again. Through Christ our Lord.”
“Amen,” they said in quiet unison.
The candles guttered all around them. The heads of all the flowers seemed to bow a little more.
But after another minute of silence, Lucia opened her eyesand gave everyone a brave smile. “Now, let us please tell stories about happier times. Many of you have known our boys for a long time, and we would love to hear how they touched your lives, in any small way.”
Soledad wiped away a tear. “I would like to begin. If that is all right?”
Guadalupe and Lucia nodded. These stories about their sons were as much for them as they were for the practice of honoring the dead.
“This happened before many of you moved to the neighborhood,” Soledad said, “but a few of you will remember. It was May, when Carlos, Diego, Leo, Facu, and Matías were seven. Just old enough to think they were the most brilliant minds on the planet, and still young enough to believe that no one would notice their scheming.”
Everyone in the room smiled a little.
“They had decided that they wanted to assemble their own gifts that year for el Día de la Madre, and what do moms want the most for Mother’s Day? Sweets. At least that was their conclusion. But rather than bake their own using the ingredients in the kitchen, like their smarter sisters would have done, what did they decide to do?”
Lucia started snickering because she remembered exactly what had happened. Guadalupe was smiling, too.
“What?” one of the other women asked.
“They decided they would steal from the local bakeries,” Soledad said. Half the room gasped, and the other half tutted.
“But, as I said, they were seven years old, and clever enough to know that they would be caught if they tried to steal entire trays of cookies for their dear mothers. They thought, however,that if they nicked just a small piece or two from each panadería, no one would notice. I don’t know whose brilliant plan this was—”
“It had to be my Diego,” Guadalupe said. “He was always the most reckless of an already fearless bunch.”
“The plandoeshave Diego’s fingerprints on it,” Lucia said.
“As did the cookies,” Soledad said, and the room burst into more laughter—the borderline hysterical kind that comes with grief, when everything is sadder and funnier and too raw, all at once.
“So,” Soledad said, trying to talk through her teary laughs. “The boys enacted the plan for Saturday, the day before el Día de la Madre. But there were five mothers to gather sweets for, and only five bakeries within the radius they were used to traveling. Therefore, they needed a schedule, so they could pop in through the back doors of the panaderías at different times throughout the day in order to grab a couple of cookies. They figured that by the end of the day, they would have collected enough.”
Lucia shook her head, a small smile still on her face. “That part sounds like Carlos. My boy was always the organizational ringleader. We were not surprised when he grew up to be a logistics manager.”
“It’s amazing how much you can tell about someone’s personality from childhood,” another woman said.
“Yes,” Soledad said. “It was a pivotal point in Matías’s life when he realized that finger paints were more fun to draw pictures with than to eat.”
