“Placida” by Nic Kelman
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As I walk, I remember how, when I met Placida, the first thing I noticed were her
gnarled hands, the knuckles like tree roots cracking up through stone. She’d had Letitia
quite late and was now something like 70. Her age seems to change, but it might be my
memory of her age. And still she insists on working. She has had the same job since
before I met Leti—a secretary at a company that makes steel canopies and beams and
“pre-engineered” buildings—but it is relatively new for her. When Leti was born, when
her parents were still together, Placida did not work at all, and before she was married,
she lived at home in Mexico City where there was discussion of her becoming a
professional violinist. But then she met Letitia’s father and they got married and "bom
bom bom" as Letitia says sometimes. And yet she wants to keep working now even
though her daughters have offered to move her somewhere nicer, not a home exactly, but
a monitored community—probably near the middle sister who lives year round in New
Mexico. But she won’t do it. The first time I met her, that was the reason for our visit.
We offered to take Placida out to dinner at as nice a place as Phoenix could manage—
somewhere with burnished metal accents and glass tables and dim lighting, somewhere
with plenty of meat on the menu—but no, Placida had to take us out to dinner, her
daughter and her daughter’s new boyfriend, the one whom she had heard was serious
from her other daughters and might even marry Letitia. So instead we went to a family
restaurant just off the highway, somewhere with red chipboard tables covered in Formica
and random objects on the walls and with booths and bright lighting but also full of
people enjoying themselves too much to keep their voices down on a Saturday night so
while it would not have been my choice of where to eat, while you could see the highway
from some of the windows, out there beyond the well-lit parking lot, it was still fun.
And, of course, I recognized how much it meant to Placida to be able to treat us to dinner
and after a couple of beers I managed to stop feeling guilty about the fact that this was as
good as it gets for a great many people and just enjoy myself. Or at least I would have
been able to enjoy myself if the tension between Leti and her mother hadn’t been so
obvious. I had never seen Leti like that. She had barely spoken on the flight out or in
any of the cars and when she was getting ready at the hotel, she had dropped a bottle of
perfume on the tile floor and it had broken and she’d actually yelled, “Shit!&rdqupo; which, when
I thought about it, I wasn’t sure I had ever heard her say and, when I thought about it
some more, realized I had never heard her swear at all unless you counted the way she
talked in bed which I didn't. And then, there, in the restaurant, as soon as we sat down,
instead of sitting quite still as Leti usually did, paying close attention to the people with
her, she moved her cutlery around, adjusted her glass, lined everything up just right,
twisted the wrapper of her straw into a tiny little ball when her jug of “bottomless” diet
soda came. For dinner she only had a bowl of soup and she hadn’t eaten all day. But
they didn’t fight. In fact, it was almost the opposite. When Placida arrived, late, Leti
leapt down from the raised booth at the window and said, “Mami!” and threw her arms
out to hug her, which Placida let her do for a moment, accepting the kiss she gave her on
the cheek, but with her eyes open, looking at me, and with her own arms not around
Letitia, but already pushing her away as she said, “Mija, please, my hair—and I have to
meet Alexander.” I stood as she straightened her dress, glaring briefly at her daughter
before putting on a smile and shaking my hand and saying it was very nice to meet me.
“Where did you get that dress?” asked Leti, looking at her mother as we all sat
down, Leti next to Placida, me on the other side.
Placida did not turn to meet her daughter’s gaze, but continued to look at me and
smile as she said, “I bought it just now—it’s beautiful, no?”
“It looks expensive...” Leti mumbled, turning to look down at the place setting she
had arranged so carefully.
“Well, Mija,” her mother said quietly, tilting her head down slightly, as if hiding
her mouth would mean I couldn’t hear her, looking out of the corner of her eyes at Letitia, “I didn’t want Alex to get the wrong impression...&lrdquo; I began to look for the waitress—not that we needed a waitress, I just didn’t want to be part of that conversation—but then
Leti’s tone brought me back to the table. I had to see what she looked like as she began to
speak in a way I’d never heard her use, a chastisement, a lack of patience. Letitia had
infinite patience. I'd seen her not just play for hours with her nieces and nephews, but
help feed them, dress them, bathe them and never once losing her temper no matter what
they did, always talking to them like adults, always talking to them patiently, explaining
why they couldn’t do this or shouldn’t do that, explaining these things to them with such
patience that they could not ignore her equanimity and listened.
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