Dia de Muertos 

October 30 

I saw Maria! 

At first it didn’t register. I was lost in my thoughts, as I am these days, hardly aware of my surroundings. Which was funny, because I found myself in Spirit Halloween, a place which I hoped would draw my attention outward. The costumes, the props, the crowd of shoppers. Everything designed to catch the eye, and remind you that you really need a giant spider, paper napkins decorated with witches on broomsticks, or a battery-operated Freddie Kreuger to put the fun in your life. 

I was in the aisle that runs along the south wall. It’s where the axes are found, near the machetes, and the knives dripping blood. The knives dripping blood. Just where a side aisle runs back to the center of the stores, there was a flourish of black hair, lightly tossed. The hair, the neck … I stopped, jolted. I wasn’t sure why. It was unexpected, as it would be, and then I thought: “Maria!” I hurried to the aisle, and looked down it. I saw no one like her, and told myself I had imagined her. “Wishful thinking.” Just then, I caught another flash.

I hurried, checking each side aisle, and there, I saw her again, at the far end, as she vanished once more. I trotted down the row but she was gone.  I looked at where I was. I was surrounded by displays of fake tombstones, and I knew it was deliberate. First the bloody knives, then tombstones? What game was she playing?

But this was madness. As certain as I was that I’d seen her, my rational mind assured me it could not be. So I left the store, before it triggered more visions. 

Outside it was already dark. Dark, and cold for Tucson. Summer lasts forever, baking heat day and night. Then as Halloween approaches warmth departs, darkness encroaches, and cold stabs like a sudden knife. Then again, the summer monsoon has ended, the clouds have lifted, and once again there are stars. They aren’t easy to see on Broadway, with its light pollution, but they are there. Travel outside of town and they blanket the sky. They hang up there in the millions. Some find them cold and distant. Maria did. We used to drive west on Speedway, out near the Desert Museum, out that way. I’d say: “Look at them!”

She’d shrug. Big deal. She’d seen stars, now let’s go back to town. A million people, that was her. Crowds and noise and fun. Me, I looked at the stars and saw eternity. The stars called to me, warmly, I thought, invitingly. Inviting me to share their immortal presence.

That was one of the differences between her, and me. There were others. I’d rather forget them. What’s past is past. I …

 

Halloween 

I saw her again! Two nights in a row. It was really her. No doubts, no questions: her.  The crowds along Fourth Avenue are just where she would be. I suppose I came here because they reminded me of her. I know, I’m torturing myself, but I’m human, Sue me! Halloween Night on Fourth Avenue, young drinkers in costume going from bar to bar. There she was, coming out of Bison Witches, then losing herself in the throng of pirates, Darth Vaders, men dressed like sexy nurses, women dressed like She Hulk. Someone deliberately bumped a guy wearing a Donald Trump mask, and he said: “Dude, it’s a costume!” The Eagles’s “Witchy Woman” spilled from one doorway, as Pink’s “Get the Party Started” came from next door. 

There! I saw her again, down the street, and just as quickly lost her. 

Was she meeting him? Was she meeting the him I had never met? The one that led to our final parting? 

That was what came between us. Oh, she denied there was anyone. “I love only you, but why are you like this?” Blaming me, for the distance growing between us. I tried following her, but never caught her meeting another man. Sure, girlfriends, or family members, but those don’t count. Shopping, with me waiting in the parking lot, in remote spaces, keeping an eye out. But no, when she walked out of Basha’s, or Costco, it was never a man’s hand in hers, just shopping bags, or a cart. She even caught me once, and I pretended I had come to buy a Powerball ticket on the way home.

“But why are you parked way over here?”

“I can see the stars better,” I said. “See?” I know it was lame. The light wasn’t that different, but I thought it was just goofy enough to be plausible. She looked at me funny, and I know she knew something was up, but she pretended it was fine. 

It was killing me! I drove out of town, parked off the road, and sat in the silent starlight. I thought, long and hard. Could I live with her betrayal? I told myself I could. I was wrong.

 November 1

After two sightings, I knew where I would find her today. Today, Dia de Muertos, the Day of the Dead. The anniversary. She would be in the one place I did not want to go, but I was sure her showing herself was her way of telling me where to find her. I went to the cemetery.

It’s one day when the cemetery is a busy place. Families gather to lay tributes on the graves of loved ones, to honor them. Maria used to insist we go every year. I knew where she would go first, so I waited there, near her parents’ gravestones, and soon enough, she came.

She pretended not to see me, as she placed flowers on their graves. She knelt, and prayed.

“Do they hear you?” I asked. “Do you think it works that way?” She ignored me. Maybe she really couldn’t hear me. If that was so, why was she doing this to me? 

She rose silently, not looking at me, and walked through the rows of graves. I followed, and I thought of how it all ended. Up ahead, she knelt again, and I realized it was the same pose as before, a year ago. A year ago, when she was down on her knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor. A year ago, when I suddenly realized that I could take no more. No more suspicions, no more pain.

A year ago when I pulled a knife from the wooden block, slid it quietly out of its slot. A large carving knife, gleaming in my hand. I moved silently toward her, as I was now. And then … I looked down at the grave, where she knelt, and read my name. And remembered how I slipped on the wet floor, and fell on that knife. Remembered the horrified look on her face, as she reached, thinking somehow, she could save me. 

I took one last look at her, crying over my grave, and then I went away forever to a place where there are no stars.