The Wilkinson’s were inclined to have a drink at dusk. In reality the Wilkinson’s were inclined to have a drink—or two or three or more—at any time of day, anywhere. During the good times, they’d traveled a lot. Not lengthy trips but they’d traveled and dozens of photos decorated their apartment’s living room: Wilkinson and the wife on a beach in Hawaii, colored shirts, ukulele and hula-hula, a frozen rum cocktail, his stuck with a little paper umbrella, hers with an origami flower. The Wilkinson’s in a café terrasse. Sharing a cold dry martini, two little green olives and a smile for the camera, in Las Vegas. The Wilkinson’s on a golf course, each gripping a flask, ill-fitted to the sporting life. The Wilkinson’s in Vienna, weighed down with beer steins. Venice: viva Chianti. Some sake in Hong Kong. The Wilkinson’s chin up, pointing at the rain from a Spanish wineskin. Or how about the Wilkinson’s in Mexico, fish-faced under Mariachi hats, or the Wilkinson’s in white-upholstered easy chairs in the Copacabana Palace, King of the Caipirinha. The Mrs. in a pineapple turban. An incoherent Panama hat balancing on her husband’s head. And like that, all over the world. Poland, so a bit of vodka. Berlin and its Liebfraumilch. A Scotch Beloved. An Irish Welcome. But if one had to fix on one repeated instance, like a facial gesture that hardens into a wrinkle over time, it would have to be the Wilkinson’s sat, each with a glass in hand, next to the window which opened panoramically onto San Martín Plaza, the auspices of the bells of the Torre de los Ingleses clanging out the afternoon’s seventh hour.
An X-ray of the couple. One of those photos an aficionado would kick herself for not having taken. An aficionado like me, for example. Shame that that this particular photo was never actually possible. The Wilkinson’s were always alone with their afternoon libation, just the two of them. No room for a photographer crowding the scene. But it would have been the perfect shot, irreplaceable even amongst the sum of all those others. Click—and straight into the album that never existed.
Like nearly all alcoholics of the Susan Hayward era, Zulema Wilkinson stepped out in a black dress, tailored and uncomplicated. This was only an apparent simplicity, given that between the opaque seriousness of its exterior and the sateen lining there was a web of millimetric stitching and needlework. Because nothing takes more work than sobriety. Hyram Wilkinson normally wore a blue shirt with hunting pockets and was rather exhausted with life.
The Wilkinson’s drank any and everything. The point was to drink. They’d met each other, edging close to their forties, sitting in the highchairs of a worn-down bar. They celebrated their discreet wedding with a toast and then a few more. They drank when they quarreled and they drank when they made up. They drank at the same time—that is, always—even when Hyram traveled to visit relatives and they talked over the phone.
“What are you drinking, Zulema?”
“A Manhattan, Hyram.”
“What are you drinking, Hyram?”
“A Jack Daniels, Zulema. Salud!”
They drank into enrapturing discussions they no doubt found thrilling; they drank to forget and to remember what they’d carelessly forgotten. When things got difficult, they continued being grade-A lushes. First, for courage. Then, with time, to forget the pain. Some afternoons because there was nothing else to do. Others because they dedicated a few hours to look over photos, revive a memory they shared which time had begun to expunge. Every night before, during and after dinner. When things turned bad between them, they drank so as to keep from speaking to each other. And they drank separately, too, one in the kitchen, the other at the desk or in the bathroom, while engaging in that somewhat sad way of orbiting around the path of night which is sometimes called insomnia. Everything was up for a Cheers.
The Wilkinson’s were a solid couple. What I mean is, they got along not all that well and they had a multitude of problems. A stable couple, as they say, one of those that play Bridge or tennis to be closer to one another when things are complicated. The Wilkinson’s didn’t play Bridge or tennis—hobbies that were too expensive for them—but they drank and lately hardly ever made love because, as Shakespeare put it nicely, booze provokes the desire but takes away the performance. But they were a family. Families form, with or without children, between people or between people and animals—and sometimes between people and objects—and suddenly that’s that. The family forms into a diamond, it forms into an iceberg or it goes gangrene, but it’s a formation anyway and to live through any change in it can be a horrible thing. The Wilkinson’s were one of those families, then, that one might qualify as ambiguously stable. One of those that had shared in the difficult moments, with no guarantee of coming out of it all alive.
But always together. The 23rd of February of 1946, Zulema received the following telegram:
Mother dead. Stop. Stop. Stop. Father dead.
The little slip paper onto which the message had been typed did not shake in Zulema Wilkinson’s hands. A telegram is a telegram. The words are read, that’s all, especially when messages of this kind are involved. Telegrams are there to fall to the floor, to be thrown away, to be kept or passed to someone else, they’re responded to or they’re ignored, almost in the same moment they’re opened. Too bad for the person who has to listen to one, seeing as how something proper to telegrams is that they demand to be read aloud. Zulema looked at Hyram and said:
“Mother dead. Stop. Stop. Stop. Father dead.”
And Hyram understood. So they talked, thus:
“Bottoms up, then.”
“Down the hatch, Hyram.”
I lived on the same floor as the Wilkinson’s, the service door between our two apartments. Every morning, when I took Orson out for his walk, I noticed the pile of bottles formed into incredible shapes in the hallway, enormous test tubes, a few perfect for tossing messages to the sea from the coastline of a shipwreck. Wines with striking names. Little beer kegs. Orson sniffed at this transparent pile with his little punchy snout. I’d make a little comment and we’d be on our way. One day I found out that, in a building co-op board meeting, the two had been asked why they didn’t throw the bottles down the incinerator.
“If that’s how you want it,” Hyram said.
“We’re so sorry,” Zulema assured the group, and waddling duck-like they made their way to the elevator doors.
The consequences of this discussion could be heard the next four nights. Bottles clanged against the tunnel’s walls heading toward the basement. The sound rebounded like a voice in the throat. A voice that stayed on-key. Sometimes they tossed two at a time. I don’t know if they ever got a formal complaint or if they themselves decided enough was enough, but by the fifth day the clamor had ceased.
Every Saturday they went to a store around the corner. Zulema Wilkinson, as if remembering something, would stop halfway and look to both sides. Always at the same corner, breathing like a deer in a forest clearing. Hyram Wilkinson would hold her up by the arm and dab her forehead with a handkerchief, always, even in the winter. I often wondered if she perspired from embarrassment, or exhaustion, or maybe both. One night I had the pleasure of riding the elevator up with the two of them. Zulema Wilkinson played it up—first, she was apparently enchanted by Orson. Oh, what a cute little face, she said, twisting her own like a girl trying to hold back a snicker during the solemnest of ceremonies. When we reached the second floor she asked, in a dialect somewhere between Basque and Flemish, what we would do if we ended up trapped in the elevator. With all sincerity, I told her I wouldn’t make it out alive. Zulema Wilkinson looked me up and down and said:
“You’re not very pragmatic, are you?”
Out of respect, I’ll refrain from repeating her behavior, or the opinions she proffered between the fourth and fifth floors. When we finally reached the seventh and Hyram opened, quickly and elegantly, the elevator’s gate, Zulema dropped face first onto the hallway tile and it was difficult to know whether she was cackling or writhing in agony with all the pomp of a crumpled elephant. Hyram bent down, lifted one of her arms and said, “I think we all need a drink, huh?
“Except the dog.”
I said nothing and made a beeline for my apartment. I was in such a hurry to close the door behind me that I left the bag I’d been carrying out in the hall. When I opened the door again to retrieve it there was a woman’s shoe on the hallway floor. Zulema’s, no doubt. It was small and wider than I would’ve thought and the heel was worn down on the outside. Now, then: either she’d gotten to her apartment with one shoe on or Hyman had picked her up and carried her home, a handkerchief in one hand to dab at her forehead as soon as he’d sat her down on the couch, and in this feat of acrobatics a shoe must’ve fallen from Zulema’s foot, neither of them having noticed.
Cinderella Wilkinson, I discovered there in the hallway, was not ignorant of the good things in life. I noted the interior silver oval, like a little mirror, typical of the bespoke shoe store Jackie. Orson let out a little sneeze standing in the door frame and I tossed the shoe to him. Eventually it became his favorite toy. That night I had trouble sleeping but I did what I had to and eventually, as usual, I was able to nod off. The following morning I was awoken by someone knocking on my front door. This was a bad sign, considering that my apartment has a doorbell. But yes, unpleasant surprises knock; it’s the devil that rings the bell. Orson started yapping and I opened without asking who was there and saw, in an angular pinstripe suit, hands at his side, a rather tall, fat man who asked:
“Are the Mr. and Mrs. in?”
Orson and I tilted our head at the same time.
“Please tell them their nephew is here.”
“I think you’ve got the wrong apartment,” I said.
“The Wilkinson’s,” he said, looking down at Orson with contempt.
“There.” I pointed him to their door.
He thanked me with a feeble lift of his hat before setting it back in place. He turned then and headed toward my neighbor’s apartment. Something in the hallway smelled awful. The man banged on the Wilkinson’s door, even though their apartment also had a doorbell. He called for his aunt and then for his uncle. Then he pronounced, badly, Zulema’s name and then Hyram’s as well. The door opened. The man stepped inside.
I couldn’t get back to sleep. Something was happening in the apartment of Zulema and Hyram Wilkinson. Something I could easily hear through the walls. First it was laughter; but then I heard a scream, then the sound of something crashing against something else. Lastly, a door slamming. When I heard the elevator doors close, I went to the Wilkinson’s apartment, with Orson in tow. I rang the bell.
Zulema opened, dressed in a robe. She was wearing a hairnet. I heard the bells of the church clanging. It was a Sunday morning.
Zulema’s eyes were glazed over with the stupefaction of post-argument. She pulled her robe tight around her and smiled.
“Everything alright?” I wanted to know.
I heard Hyram’s voice from somewhere in the apartment.
“Who is it, dear?”
“The girl with the dog, Hyman.”
“You want ice, Zulema?”
“Of course, Hyman.”
I stood there a moment, like an idiot, waiting for something. For the ridiculous idea that something had to happen, in the moment. And then something did.
“Sorry about the other day,” Zulema Wilkinson said.
I shook my head in a gesture of absolution and, now that I was there, asked if I could borrow a little sugar. To alleviate her guilt by conceding me a favor? To magically change the topic? To be able to come in, have a look at the apartment? Why did I ask her that? Because I was out of sugar, of course.
The Wilkinson’s were also out but they had an idea to replace it (if it was for coffee) with I can’t say what kind of filter made from Cointreau and whiskey. I declined. They both took a sip at the same time. We’d gone through to the kitchen and had sat there, together, like friends sharing a moment. On the table covered in an impermeable tablecloth, itself covered in flowers, I saw Hyram’s open wallet and Zulema’s purse, also open. A little savings book next to it. That nephew of theirs was a real charmer.
But we didn’t talk about that and to be honest we didn’t really talk about much at all. I just sat there and watched them perform their dance: glass to mouth, a half-second of solemnity. A planetary smile. And another sip. Every once in a while one or both of them shook their head melancholically, and the other would nod to this, letting her or his gaze fall to the floor. Then they would invite themselves to another nip and then glare at each other, silently. I excused myself, I told them thanks and marched to the door. The three of us, Zulema and I and Orson in the lead, walked out to the long, narrow foyer.
At the front door Zulema said, “Well, maybe we’ll see each other again sometime in the elevator.”
That was the only goodbye I got.
Every day at seven in the evening, Zulema and Hyram Wilkinson had their drink and silently gazed out over Plaza San Martín. Every once in a while they noted the flash of the photos people took at the steps of the sculpture. The nephew came back that Sunday night. And then that Monday afternoon. On Tuesday I took the elevator up with Zulema and asked about her husband. The humidity had peaked and it slightly exaggerated everything. Orson smelled terrible.
“He’s in the clinic,” she said. “A little annoyance. His heart.”
That night I heard two empty bottles rattling down the incinerator shoot. Zulema Wilkinson was a selfless spouse. She left early to head to the clinic and returned late, to go to sleep. When her husband returned home, the black dress hung off her. That week I crossed paths with the two of them at the corner. Zulema stayed quiet while her husband held her by the arm, dabbed her forehead with a handkerchief. But something had changed. This time they didn’t go on after their pause at the corner. This time they murmured something to one another, and turned back. That night Paredes, the concierge, broke the news to me. Zulema Wilkinson had died.
The building co-op board made a collection to purchase a wreath. I put in for two, for me and for Orson. A violet sash, lettered with a golden edging and crossed diagonally by a wheel of flowers and stems, it had the feel of a No Smoking sign and looked more than anything else like an Arcimboldo painting. I asked when and where the burial was taking place. The next morning, they said, at Recoleta Cemetery.
When I got there I found Hyram Wilkinson sitting on a step, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. He looked so lonely and defenseless amongst so much overwhelming funerary stonework that I thought the best thing I could do in the moment was to offer to have a drink with him. Hyram Wilkinson looked at me. That was it. Not a yes or a no, not a sure or no thanks. I stood there for a few more moments, for the time it takes to pray a hurried Our Father. Orson was there, sitting, waiting, his black leather leash tied to a fence railing. The viewing display for Zulema Wilkinson looked like one of those customs kiosks at the airport.
The next day, despite any qualms I may have had, I rang the Wilkinson’s doorbell. Why? Because my phone wasn’t working, and I needed to make a call.
Next to the couches there were cardboard boxes, one stacked on top of another. In the top one, still open, I saw a pair of shoes with the heel worn down on the outside and the silver oval of the Jackie brand. Zulema’s things.
“Everything’s going to the church,” Hyram said. “Tomorrow is the day they take in donated clothes and blankets.”
I nodded, as my conscious advised.
“There has to be more than one Zulema in this neighborhood,” Hyram said.
Orson had sat next to one of the stacks of boxes. As I wasn’t sure what to say and, thinking that Wilkinson was already drunk, I turned and scolded Orson, in one of the most unjust acts I’ve ever committed in my life.
But Hyram explained: “Zulema was so timeless.”
I did what I’d come to do. I made my call and, after nodding with all the world’s incredulity, I muttered a “Let’s go” to Orson and we left.
It was seven in the afternoon the next day when I was walking Orson down the street where the church sits. I saw two women there, both dressed the same, each in a black dress identical to the other. They were walking along the side of the road. They had bags clutched in their hands. I watched them plop down on the sidewalk, set the bags down, and begin to beg for change from people passing by. Orson lifted his leg against a light post a few yards from them. In the bags, I noticed, were Zulema’s things.
Cheers.
Translated by Tim Benjamin
