Page 54 of The Night We Became Strangers

Valeria

I f someone had asked me what I planned to do the night before my wedding, sitting in the waiting room of a hospital would be the last thing on my mind.

But here I was, or I should say, here we were: Graciela, Tío Bolívar, and I.

Earlier that evening, my uncle had burst into our room saying he had an important, unbelievable announcement. “Your dad is alive, Valerita.”

Well, at least I hadn’t been hallucinating. I had truly seen him a few days ago.

“Really?” I said, because it was expected of me.

“You don’t seem too surprised.”

I avoided his gaze. “No, I am.”

Graciela, in contrast, brought a hand to her throat, like the heroine of a radionovela . “ Dios Santo , I can’t believe it!”

“I’m afraid that’s not it,” my uncle said, his nervous tics fully on display. “He’s in the hospital right now. The maid at the hostel where he was staying found him nearly unconscious this morning. Apparently, he had a hard time breathing.”

We didn’t even have dinner. We rushed to the hospital, where my dad had been admitted and was going through some testing.

My uncle paced the waiting room, repeating to himself and to us that he couldn’t believe his brother was alive.

He alternated between excitement and indignation.

How could Leopoldo have hidden his whereabouts from us—from him —for so long?

But this was not the time for recriminations, Graciela told her father.

I just sat there numbly, tuning out the voices around me, the radio in the background, the complaints of other patients, my own thoughts.

Just when my father was back, I was about to lose him again.

“I knew he was alive,” I said at last.

My uncle stopped his pacing and stared at me incredulously.

“He followed me home the other day,” I blurted out. “He said he’s been living in Lima this whole time, but he was afraid to come back and face an arrest and a sentence for what he did. He made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone that I saw him.”

Tío Bolívar was shaking his head. “You should’ve told me.”

“Yes, I should have, but I had no idea this would happen.” I looked over my shoulder, making sure no one could hear us. “There’s something I don’t understand, Tío. How did you bury my father if there wasn’t a body?”

My uncle scratched his head. “Some of the bodies were unrecognizable, Valeria. We did what we could. I suppose we buried the wrong person under his name.”

The thought was horrifying.

A plump doctor with eyes that appeared too close to one another stepped out of the room.

“Bolívar,” he said as a salutation. My uncle had mentioned earlier that the doctor was a family friend.

“How is he?”

The doctor let out a deep sigh and when he spoke, his voice was more grave than earlier. “I’m afraid I don’t have good news. Apparently, Polo was diagnosed with pulmonary emphysema a couple of months ago.”

“What’s that?” Graciela said.

“Basically, his lungs are damaged and don’t work properly.

This causes him to have shortness of breath and can lead to other lung diseases, like chronic bronchitis, which I’m afraid is the case here.

Emphysema can be the result of heavy smoking or smoke inhalation.

” He gave us all a meaningful look. “We’ve managed to get his symptoms under control with some antibiotics, but the prognosis is not good.

I can go over some treatment options later.

He’s awake now, so you may go see him, but he must rest as much as possible. ”

I had a hard time processing what he was saying.

Everything around me seemed to be moving too quickly.

It was now a cold, hard fact: I was going to lose my father once again.

It seemed like a cruel twist of fate. And why hadn’t he come to us—his family—and shared his diagnosis?

We could’ve helped him. At least, I wanted to believe we could have.

The doctor opened the door for us, but Graciela stayed in the waiting room.

Inside, the curtains were drawn. Papá lay on a high bed, his face ashen.

An IV was connected to his arm. He turned toward us, cheeks sunken, thinner than the last time I saw him.

He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, it seemed, but had recently gotten a haircut that revealed his crown was thinning out.

Tío Bolívar greeted him in a low voice, stiffening as the two of them exchanged glances.

My dad shook his head. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or embarrassed that we’d come to see him. I sat on a chair next to his bed while Tío Bolívar stood in the back, gripping the metal bar at the foot of the bed. He was about to say something, but I spoke first.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” I said, reaching out for my dad’s cold hand. Since I already had time to process that he hadn’t died eight years ago, I didn’t feel the urge to reproach him today.

“I’m sorry, Valeria. I meant to, but I couldn’t find the right words.” His voice was so hoarse. He looked at Bolívar, cautiously. “My treatment in Lima was going well. I thought I had more time to make amends.”

“You should’ve come to the house,” my uncle said, firmly.

My dad coughed for a long, uncomfortable moment.

“I apologize, hermano ,” he finally said. “All those years that you had to do my job. What I did wasn’t fair to you. Trust me when I say that, if I could go back in time, I would’ve made different choices.”

My dad’s cough sounded like the sharp bark of a dog.

My uncle raised his voice. “Why did you disappear like that?”

My dad avoided his brother’s gaze. “Cowardice, mainly. But also, I was uncertain about what to do. I acted recklessly, which I had never done before, and I didn’t really know how to handle the consequences. That damn show got out of hand. And that’s just the half of it.”

“What’s the other half?” I said, cautiously.

The doctor had warned us about his fragile state, but maybe my dad wanted to talk, maybe he needed to clarify things after all these years.

My uncle chose a chair in the back to sit down. Under normal circumstances, he might have corrected me for being nosy, or asking questions at the wrong time, but I think he wanted answers, too.

My dad was silent, which made my uncle’s breathing faster.

“I don’t understand what happened, Polo,” Tío Bolívar said, impatiently. “You had just told me that morning you decided to go with Gloria and not The War of the Worlds .”

My dad let out a deep sigh. “ Gloria was a good story, but it lacked the novelty factor. We thought The War of the Worlds might appeal to our male population, too. Alcazar said it had been successful in Chile, with minimal casualties, so we thought that as long as we let the audience know it was a novel, we would be fine.”

“But you guys didn’t do that!” my uncle said, slapping his own leg.

“Tío …” I said, attempting to appease him.

“I think we did,” my dad said, scratching his head. “It’s all a little fuzzy now. We thought that it would be obvious since our regular sponsor—that orange soda—was constantly being announced.”

“Well, it wasn’t obvious to the people who panicked in the streets or to those who died that night. It was all about your ego, wasn’t it? And then, you left me with this terrible mess. You left Valeria!”

“I know, I know.” A coughing spell came over him. “I only thought about myself, but honestly, I believed Valeria would be better off with you. I’ve been tormented by guilt ever since she told me you sent her to a boarding school all these years.”

“I didn’t have any room for her!” my uncle said, avoiding my gaze. “Marga was about to have another baby, and I already had five children.”

“I’m not blaming you,” my dad said. “You did what you thought was best. The truth is, I didn’t plan to leave for so long.

At first, I thought I’d only be gone for a few months, just until things in Quito calmed down, but after I got settled in Lima and got a job there, it was hard to come back to a place where everyone hated me.

I thought my presence might make things harder for all of you.

” He reached out for my hand. “I’m sorry, hija . For everything.”

There was so much pressure inside my throat, I feared it might explode in an embarrassing outburst.

“It’s about time you know the entire truth,” my dad said, clearing his throat again.

“The promise of better ratings wasn’t the only reason why I decided to broadcast H.

G. Wells’s novel. An hour before the show, Alicia de Montero came to the station to tell me your mom and Agustín were lovers.

She was certain of it. And I”—he turned to me, his eyes filled with sorrow—“I adored your mom more than words can say, so this was a terrible blow for me. I admit that I’d been suspicious myself.

I knew your mom cared for me, but she’d never been in love with me, and I’d seen the way she looked at Agustín all those years.

Of course, I’d chosen to ignore it. After all, Marisa loved Alicia like a sister, and I didn’t think she would ever betray her. ”

His story was sporadically interrupted by coughs, but he continued, nonetheless.

“Agustín was not to be trusted. I’d seen the way women threw themselves at him.

He was a good-looking man, he was charming, and he had a lot of money.

I was no competition for him. When Alicia told me about them, I knew she was right.

I decided right there and then that I didn’t care about anything anymore.

Transmitting The War of the Worlds would be a blow to Marisa’s ego, as she was the star of a radionovela we were about to launch.

What better way to punish her than that?

And that would only be the beginning of my revenge, consequences be damned.

” He sniffed. “Little did I know that I would pay dearly for that reckless decision.”

The walls in the hospital room closed in on me.

I took in deep breaths. One thing was to suspect that my mother had been in love with Agustín Montero, but another one was to get confirmation from someone who had witnessed it all.

I still wanted to believe that my mother had been a good and honest woman.

I wanted to believe that Alicia was wrong in hating her.

I could feel Tío Bolívar stiffening next to me, but he didn’t utter a word.

“I admit I got carried away during the broadcast,” my dad said.

“I became immersed in the moment. I figured that since I was doing it already, I might as well excel and give the performance of a lifetime. I don’t know if I achieved this.

Some people have called it ‘pathetic,’ but that was exactly what I was aiming for.

A pathetic man who saw death in front of his eyes.

For a moment, I wanted it to be true: I wanted Martians to wipe me from this earth as my entire world was collapsing in front of my eyes. ”

He was silent for a moment, dabbing a handkerchief on his lips.

“Where was my mother during all of this?” I said, finding my voice.

“She participated for a little bit and then left. I figured she was angry, so I didn’t give it a second thought.

A live show of that magnitude required a lot of concentration and coordination.

Twenty minutes into the broadcast, someone called the radio station to tell us people were on the streets in a panic.

” More coughs. “It was a strange feeling. I was horrified, of course, but also satisfied that our acting and production had been so successful. We tried to appease the citizens, explaining that there was no alien invasion, and it was all radio drama, but that only angered the crowd even more. I don’t have to tell you what happened in the city that night—only that when they started attacking us, I worried about your mother.

We always went home together after the show, so I didn’t think she’d left the building.

I looked for her all over the floor, but someone told me they’d seen her go to Agustín’s office, and that infuriated me.

” His eyes filled with tears—I’d never seen a grown man cry before.

“I started going there, but when I saw people rushing down the stairs, I left her there.”

I removed my hand from his arm, where it had been resting for some time.

“I regretted it almost immediately,” he said, “but it was too late. Everything happened so fast.”

The doctor entered the room, followed by a nurse with a clipboard.

He went over some treatment options that would extend my dad’s life, but the inevitable was coming sooner or later.

I watched the brittle man listening to the doctor’s instructions and pitied him, but at the same time, I was filled with indignation.

If it hadn’t been for his reckless act of jealousy and pride, my mother would still be here with me.