* * *
PRIETO CONTEMPLATED SKIPPING his flight home. He felt, for the second time in his life, that fate had put him in the right place at the right time to create positive change. That part of his destiny was tied to protecting this island—his island—from exploitation. He just didn’t know exactly what shape that would take. In the end, however, what drew Prieto away from San Juan was a middle school talent show. When he remembered it, his first thought was, But I’m doing important stuff here! Then he thought of his mother. How many things she’d deemed more important than her role as a parent. How secondary he’d always known he and his sister were to whatever the cause at hand was. Many things in Prieto’s life were, especially lately, out of his control. However, the kind of father that he chose to be to Lourdes, that was not one of them. He made his way to the airport.
As he rode home from JFK he ruminated on his existence the past few years; he felt as if he’d lost the beat to a song that he’d written. The larger his public life had gotten, the more abstracted his personal existence had become. The higher the stakes, the more the positive returns of his career diminished. He’d felt himself a matryoshka doll, the real him buried and obfuscated underneath levels of commitments and compromises. Only with his daughter did he feel his core self engaged. Until these past few days. A sense of utility had blossomed while in Puerto Rico that had evaded him for years. He understood that on the island, that ravaged strip of land, was the map back to the person he had lost sight of.
* * *
IT WAS MONDAY afternoon, September 25, 2017, when his car pulled up in front of his house. He saw his sister sitting out on the stoop, her face awash in worry. He knew immediately that he had tested positive.
GOOD MORNING, LATER
It crossed Olga’s mind that perhaps she was having a nervous breakdown. The past few weeks had worn her to raw nerve as she endured a torrent of facts, eroding her armor and unlodging carefully confined emotions. She could tell by the way that the nurse on the phone confirmed her patient number that Prieto’s results were positive. The woman began walking her through options for follow-up resources, but Olga just hung up on her. She wasn’t retaining any information. Her brother had been out of touch, without phone service, since he left for P.R. on Friday, but she had seen some clips of him on the news—knee high in mud, passing out water in the sun—reminding her of why she’d put her brother on his pedestal so long ago.
There wasn’t a good way to tell him. As soon as he saw her face he would know. So, rather than shock him, she figured she would sit outside, so he could see her first and decide how he wanted to react. She wanted to give him that moment. Anticipating the worst, she asked Lourdes’s mother to keep her for an extra night so they could have some space. Despite knowing that this was a completely treatable, livable illness, the well-worn sense of disquietude she’d experienced when her father got sick materialized again now. She knew her brother would bear these old angsts as well.
When his car pulled up, Prieto sat in it for a minute. Then he got out and put his hands up—like he was under arrest—and just kept saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m okay, I’m okay.” Which just made Olga lose it. Which she realized was the opposite of the point.
Once they were inside, they sat in the kitchen, at the same table they’d sat at their whole lives. She remembered him lanky and lean, when he took up so much less space in the world. Now he made the table look miniature. So solid, he looked. So healthy.
“Mira,” her brother said once they were inside, “had I gotten this news before I went down to Puerto Rico, I’m not gonna lie, I think I would have been a fucking mess. And don’t get me wrong, I’m fucking scared. I’m so fucking scared.…” He began to cry. “It’s hard to not think about Papi, you know?”
They’d had dinner with their father countless times at this same table. This table where he’d played his records and charmed their whole family. Where he would teach them his history lessons. Where they’d sat together and cried after he died.
“I know,” she said, her eyes brimming.
“I couldn’t bring myself to go see him, Olga. When he was dying. I was just so ashamed.” Now he was sobbing. “Do you think this is his revenge?”
“Papi’s revenge?” she asked. Her brother nodded.
The question was so out of character for her brother, and her father, that Olga started to laugh.
“Wait? You think Papi, who literally let insects out of the house instead of killing them, has become a dark and vengeful ghost? Blighting his own son—whom he worshiped—with disease? Now, maybe that’s some shit our mother would do, but Papi? Come on! That don’t even sound like him, Prieto!”