The lobby of Sunnycrest Manor had the look and feel of a preschool. There were snowmen cutouts on the windows and glittery handmade stars on the tile walls. The staff wore overly bright smiles and big name tags. But as soon as Vega left the lobby, there was no mistaking it was a nursing home. In the hallways and dayrooms, old people sat about in wheelchairs—some aware of their surroundings and some not. The air was overheated and smelled of canned soup, overcooked vegetables, and the faint but unmistakable odor of urine.
Vega asked at the front desk and again at the nurse’s station until he found his way to a double room on the top floor with Martha Torres’s name on the door. He hadn’t seen Martha since his mother’s funeral almost two years ago. She seemed shell-shocked and barely coherent even back then. In the four years before Vega’s mother’s murder, she’d lost her husband, been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, and buried her youngest child, Donna. Vega’s mother’s death must have seemed like the last blow.
He had no idea what he’d find on his visit today.
Martha was sitting alone in a wheelchair by the window. She was wearing baggy bright pink sweatpants and a matching hooded jacket. She’d never been a big woman, but the disease seemed to have compacted her even further. She inhabited her clothes the way a turtle might a shell—sinking deep into the folds and crevices. Vega inched into the room.
“Do?a Martha?” He used the respectful greeting, then added, “It’s me, Jimmy. Luisa’s son?” He wanted to bend down and kiss her but he didn’t know if she’d recognize him anymore and he didn’t want to frighten her.
The blue skies of the morning had given way to clouds and a gray light washed across her face. Vega had expected to see fear or confusion but there was a blank sweetness to her features. No raisin ridges on her forehead. No commas by her lips, and only the softest crosshatch of crow’s feet by her eyes. It was as if the struggles of the world had slid from her shoulders and left her with only a vague but simple gratitude for the moment. Like Donna. That’s how Vega would always remember Freddy’s disabled sister.
Martha slowly turned her face from the window. She smiled broadly and spread her arms like a child awaiting a hug. “You came. I knew you would come.”
Vega hesitated. He had no idea he’d made such an impression on her all these years or that she’d been anticipating this visit. His mother and Martha were very close, of course. Even after Vega left the neighborhood, he was often dragged back for visits. But still, it surprised him that a woman who couldn’t recall what she’d done yesterday could reach across the chasm of years and remember him so fondly.
He bent down and gave her a hug, afraid that he might crush her, but her grip was still surprisingly strong. She wrapped him tightly in her embrace. He caught a whiff of cologne—something vaguely musky that had gone out of fashion the same year men in the neighborhood stopped wearing qiana shirts. He felt a catch in his lungs. He knew that scent. Not from Martha. From his mother.
His mother used to say that she and Martha met over a bag of dropped onions. That was the short version. The long one was more painful. Vega’s mother was barely seventeen when she left her tiny mountain village in Puerto Rico to come to New York. She didn’t speak a word of English. She was boarding with a stern aunt she barely knew. It was February. She didn’t have a good winter coat, boots, or any money to speak of. And nobody in New York had patience for some backwoods jíbaro.
One day her aunt sent her to the local bodega to fetch a quart of milk, some onions, and a bag of rice. The milk carton was defective and started to leak. On the way home, the paper bag split. Milk, rice, and onions tumbled onto the slushy pavement. Vega’s mother started to cry, certain that her aunt would yell at her (and beat her, Vega suspected though his mother never liked to talk against the family). People passed by without giving Luisa Rosario a second glance. Only Martha stopped. She was twenty-four then—seven years his mother’s senior—and fluent in English, having lived in New York since she was thirteen. She not only helped Luisa salvage what she could, she marched her back to the store and harangued the owner into letting his mother have a new bag of rice and quart of milk (though Luisa always suspected Martha had ended up paying for it.) The two became fast friends after that. Their friendship never wavered for almost forty-five years.
“Come. Sit down.” Martha patted the bed next to her. She grasped Vega’s hand in her own. Her palms were as soft as a baby’s skin. Her bob of steel wool hair had been pinned back from her face. “We must talk. We need to talk.”
Her urgency surprised Vega. He took a seat on the bed. The room was hot. He stripped off his jacket and placed it beside him.
“What would you like to talk about?”