To Chapter 4.
Onyx City Index.
SÍ, MI'JO, I WENT up to Los Angeles to live with your mother when she began to... well, when the doctors told her to stay in bed as much as possible. I stayed until you were about ten - yes, you remember that, don't you? And our first trips down here to see our brothers and sisters at the motel, after the war was over. That's when the place finally began to pay. Where was I? Oh yes, your mother, my sister, was living all alone in that big house that grandfather Relmond built after abandoning San Miguel, forever, in 1918. We had only been children then, so of course we went with our parents to live with old Relmond and grandmother Margaret.
Yes, that's right. Mama and Papa never came back either, they stayed up in Los Angeles until they died, those two years before you were born. What? Oh. Well, grampa Relmond passed on in... 1929 it was, and grandmother Margaret in 1934. That's when we - your uncles and aunt Margarita and I - the four of us decided to re-estabish our Mexican citizenship, and come back here, to San Miguel, or rather, San Quintín. Built the first part of this motel in 1937, just a couple years before the war. Right, that building over there. In the '50s, we added the other two wings. Ah, sí, you remember that later construction, no?
Anyway, your mother and father didn't come back with us. They stayed up in Los Angeles. Oh, of course, we all went up when they got married in 1936, and again in '39 and '40 when Mama and Papa died. And that Christmas and New Year's before Papa... left us. Yes. I remember that was when he told me he had chosen the time in his life when he would go back to begin over again. Papa was always a firm believer in the teachings of Theognamy, yes. You never saw the ruins of the temple, did you? Remind me to tell you about them some day. With all that glass, they disappeared real easy. Just crumbled and melted back into the sand. Yes. Well, Papa... what? His full name? Raoul Voorhaus Delano, sí, sí, born 1884, died 1940. And Mama, too? All right. Marguerite Joan Renard Dubois Delano, 1889-1939. That's right, she was Papa's second wife, and was your step-grandmother. Your grandmother was Lauren. Lauren Espinoza Diaz de Delano, 1886-1908. That's right, she was also your uncle Miguel's mother. Now, no more interruptions, mi'jo.
What was I... before you... oh yes, what Papa told me before he died. Said he had chosen the time to go back to. "Right after Lauren and I get married, when she asks me to leave my parents in San Miguel and go with her to Mexico City, or anywhere away from my father Relmond, well, next time, I will."
And he cried, mi'jo, when he told me this, because he knew what it meant. He would never see us again. What? Well, because if he and Lauren leave San Miguel, then what grandfather Relmond did would never happen, yes, but also she would never have that accident and... be killed, and Papa would never marry Marguerite, and we might never be born for him. Which is a contradiction, no, mi'jo? Because here we are, still with you, well... for a while, at least. Yes, I know it sounds impossible, but... your uncle Miguel thinks it is still possible from what he has read about... what was it? Oh yes, that's right, 'Guelito, thank you. Dimensions. Many different dimensions of time, and realities... alternate realities. Funny how mathematics is only now catching up with what Theognamy knew over a hundred years ago, eh?
But... you understand why Papa was crying, don't you? Because he knew he might really never see us again if he changed his life like that. And we think he did, because the year after he died, the last freestanding walls of the Delano mansion finally collapsed. Don't ask me how they had survived the fire of 1918, I don't know. Except that old Relmond was still alive, then, and he never believed in Theognamy. But they stood, out there, at the far corner of the ruined city, for over twenty years, until one night in 1941 - without a breath of wind, mind you - they just folded up and fell down into the sand. No, under the sand. Except for that one corner of faded wallpaper on wood - you remember when I showed it to you - nothing else was left above ground. That's right, that's what I told you then. See, you do remember. I told you that last bit was left for you, to see.
What? Oh, no, it's gone, now. Tomatoes. Or is it lettuce this year...?
To Chapter 4. |
Onyx City Index. |
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