Dying Unfinished Read online

  Readers familiar with María Espinosa’s American Book Award-winning novel, Longing, will find a familiar cast of characters in Dying Unfinished. Here again the story revolves around the troubled relationship between Eleanor and Rosa, mother and daughter, rivals for the affection of more than one man, caught in a psychological vortex that will drive both to the edge of madness.

  Narrated by both voices, Dying Unfinished presents multiple perspectives on their turbulent lives. Were this a Greek tragedy, one might say that Eleanor was fated to live a life of incompletion. Virtually nothing she undertakes—marriage, love affairs, motherhood, writing—achieves a satisfactory conclusion. Yet Eleanor’s kaleidoscopic fragmentation presents an alluringly terrifying wholeness. The landscape of Eleanor’s life is littered with cases of emotional shell shock, sensitive souls driven to the brink by their inability to conform to the cultural norms of post-World War II suburban America.

  Rosa lives an almost parallel existence, driven by many of the same obsessions as her mother—using anonymous, primal sex as a way of affirming their very existence, using affairs with those closer to them as a primary means of communication, seeking artistic fulfillment when other wells run dry.

  One of the most devisive events is Eleanor’s affair—begun with a rape—with Rosa’s abusive husband, Antonio. Ironically, it is this division that provides Rosa a route to sanity, a path out of the inexorable psycho-sexual maelstrom that is eating her mother alive.

  Espinosa’s writing is compelling, drawing us into this complex world where a daughter can write: “When my perceptions flashed signals of warning, the world told me those signals didn’t exist, that I was crazy. But, Mother, underneath your mocking words, you too have a sense of this reality.”

  Cover art: “Couple,” hand-pulled print by Pascale Vial

  $16.95 • Fiction

  María Espinosa’s Dying Unfinished is not a novel. It is a long poem of great lyrical beauty, a deftly-written tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, told in the intimate voices of Eleanor and Rosa, a mother once a daughter and a daughter now also a mother. Their stories resonate in the heart of every daughter who seeks her self-realization as an entity separate from her mother, and of every mother who fiercely protects her autonomy from family demands.

  – Lucha Corpi, author of Eulogy for a Brown Angel and Palabras de Mediadía / Noon Words

  [Dying Unfinished] is a tableau of complicated relations in which the mother is the central figure, and Rosa the daughter, plays the role of observer, narrator, and actor in the story. Once more Espinoza shows her skill in bringing to life and literature her story, in a very unusual family novel. This time it’s not scandal, but the dual points of view of mother and daughter that make it live.

  – Nanos Valaoritis, author of Pan Daimonium, My Afterlife Guaranteed; editor of An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry

  As with the unnamed hustler in John Rechy’s City of Night, Eleanor seeks her essence in a series of anonymous sexual encounters. Sex, the most primal currency of communication, becomes her nexus to the natural world of desire, dreams, and identity…. Dying Unfinished is more than a fascinating portrait of creative souls alienated in a materialistic world; it is a brilliant discourse in the search for the language of silence and otherness with the human soul.

  – Rosa Martha Villarreal, author of The Stillness of Love and Exile, Chronicles of Air and Dreams, and Doctor Magdalena

  (Full texts of comments on last page.)

  Other works by María Espinosa:

  Novels

  Longing

  (American Book Award, 1996)

  Dark Plums

  Incognito: The Journey of a Secret Jew

  Poetry

  Night Music

  Love Feelings

  Translations:

  Lélia, by George Sand

  Dying Unfinished © 2009 by María Espinosa

  Cover art: “Couple,” 2004, hand-pulled print by Pascale Vial

  First Edition

  ISBN: 978-0-916727-45-1

  ePub ISBN: 978-1-60940-039-2

  Kindle ISBN: 978-1-60940-040-8

  Library PDF ISBN: 978-1-60940-041-5

  Wings Press

  627 E. Guenther

  San Antonio, Texas 78210

  Phone/fax: (210) 271-7805

  On-line catalogue and ordering:

  www.wingspress.com

  All Wings Press titles are distributed to the trade by

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  www.ipgbook.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Espinosa, Maria, 1939-

  Dying unfinished: a novel / Maria Espinosa. -- 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-916727-45-1 (alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-916727-45-9

  1. Mothers and daughters--Fiction. 2. Self-perception--Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3555.S545D95 2009

  813’.54--dc22

  2008012013

  Except for fair use in reviews and/or scholarly considerations, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the author or the publisher.

  Contents

  Chapter 1: Manhattan, 1955

  Chapter 2: Night, 1955

  Chapter 3: The Past

  Chapter 4: Rosa

  Chapter 5: Eleanor

  Chapter 6: Rosa

  Chapter 7: Jesse, 1947

  Chapter 8: Nursery School

  Chapter 9: Parties

  Chapter 10: Jesse’s Polio, 1950

  Chapter 11: Raising Children

  Chapter 12: The Crack in the Egg

  Chapter 13: Flights

  Chapter 14: Rosa at Fourteen

  Chapter 15: Studio Party, 1953

  Chapter 16: Suburban Interlude

  Chapter 17: Rosa in Bloom, 1957

  Chapter 18: The Institution, 1958

  Chapter 19: Heinrich in Limbo

  Chapter 20: Rosa’s Purgatory

  Chapter 21: Change

  Chapter 22: Rosa

  Chapter 23: Antonio

  Chapter 24: Isabel

  Chapter 25: Eleanor and Antonio

  Chapter 26: The Apartment

  Chapter 27: Eleanor

  Chapter 28: Return

  Chapter 29: In the West

  Chapter 30: Ruth

  Chapter 31: Rosa in Marin

  Chapter 32: Berkeley Flatlands

  Chapter 33: Conflict

  Chapter 34: Balboa Beach, March 1975

  Chapter 35: Illness

  Chapter 36: Presences, 1980

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Critical Praise for Dying Unfinished

  In memory of my mother,

  Maxine S. Cronbach

  Dying Unfinished

  “The schizophrenic ceases to be so when he meets someone by whom he feels understood.”

  “Being crazy is like a nightmare where you call for help and no sound comes out, or no one hears or understands. You can’t wake up unless someone hears you and helps you wake up.”

  – D. H. Laing, The Divided Self

  CHAPTER 1

  MANHATTAN, 1955

  A gust of wind nearly knocked Eleanor Bernstein down as she crossed Lexington Avenue at 49th Street. At that instant, she understood in a flash of illumination that Rosa had not wanted to be born. A car honked as it swerved to avoid her, and she bumped into a woman in the crowd. “Excuse me! Oh, I’m so sorry!” cried Eleanor. The woman scowled, without a hint of graciousness. She wore a bright red coat, brassy earrings, and her hair was tinted an unnatural black. What a vulgar woman!

  Rosa also wore heavy metal earrings that dangled and jangled as she walked. But Rosa’s
mind was in the clouds. Rosa at sixteen, pale and beautiful, wandered about with an abstracted look. At birth, she had tried to climb the walls of Eleanor’s uterus. Had it not been for the obstetrician’s expert maneuvering with forceps, Rosa would have killed her mother. For days afterwards Rosa’s head was pin-shaped, and Eleanor was sure the infant had suffered brain damage.

  Even in her absence, her daughter’s coldness hurt as Eleanor hurried to meet Heinrich. She was going to be late! A quiver ran through her body, a mixture of excitement at the prospect of being with him and fear of his anger. Even now, after years of meeting secretly, she felt a sexual thrill at the thought of him.

  She glanced at her watch. One o’clock. Damn! How could she have let this happen? Somehow time always flowed too fast, and the lines at department stores, which gave her an alibi for coming to the City, had been interminable. “Taxi! Taxi!” Her shopping bags banged against her legs as she ran to catch a Yellow Cab. The hem of her cloth coat stuck in the cab door when it closed.

  He was at the bar of the hotel where they always met. A large man in his forties, he was impeccably dressed, in keeping with his position as director of the New York Historical Museum. His small blue eyes were set deep in his heavy, florid face. Now he was scrutinizing her with an impassive look, and she knew he was furious.

  “Why are you late when we have so little time?” He grabbed her wrist.

  “Ouch! You’re hurting me!”

  He loosened his grip. “El, why are you angry?”

  “Just because I’m late doesn’t mean I’m angry.”

  “It’s a way of expressing anger.”

  “Oh Heinrich,” she said in disgust, “You and your psychological theories! Damn! I was just late!” Tears welled up in her eyes. “It isn’t fair! I had so many errands to run and so little time … sheets and towels to buy because Aaron’s parents will be coming to visit … children’s underwear.”

  Tears were streaming down her cheeks. All the emotions which she never permitted herself to express or even feel when she was home with Aaron and the children flowed out when she was with Heinrich. She was crying for so much more than lay underneath this minor lovers’ quarrel.

  He handed her his drink of scotch on the rocks, which she sipped, and he kissed her tears. “I’m sorry, Eleanor. It’s just that we have so little time together.” Tears were glistening in his eyes, too, his small pig’s eyes, she thought irreverently.

  Yet as she gazed at him through her tears, underneath his form she seemed to see as if with x-ray vision the tormented, half-starved skeletal figure of a man. Heinrich in his unwieldy envelope of flesh wore a dark, pin-striped suit. A white handkerchief folded into a perfect triangle graced his vest pocket, and his gold cufflinks glistened. He stroked her cheek, then kissed her tenderly.

  “You are like your rats,” she murmured. “Underneath your large body, you are like the starved rats you draw.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course. Why else would I draw them?”

  Later in their hotel room she whispered, “Heinrich, when I was a child I was forbidden to touch myself. At night our governess used to make sure that my hands were outside the covers, and she forbade me to move.” He gave her a wet kiss and held her more tightly. She felt as if they were clinging to each other like rafts in a dark ocean. His bulk was comforting against her body.

  “The first time I made love …” he said—his voice still held the trace of a Dutch accent, although he had emigrated to the United States as a young man—“I seduced the maid when I was thirteen. In my family, we didn’t touch.”

  They laughed softly over their shared childhood miseries. She talked to him about things she never realized were in her mind. When she was with him, she seemed to expand like one of those miniature Japanese blossoms in water that used to delight her as a child. Their secret relationship kept some part of her alive.

  “Your skin is so soft and white,” he said. As he was nuzzling her breasts, his words got muffled. He sucked gently on her left nipple.

  Filled with electricity and joy, she felt close to tears. It was so beautiful with him. Their senses were sharpened. There was nothing more precious, she thought, than being loved for whom one actually is. And Heinrich loved her.

  She dreaded going home.

  “I want to live with you. I wish we could always be together,” she said, the words coming unbidden.

  “We could.”

  “No, my darling. That’s only a dream.”

  He gripped her buttocks and breathed his words into her ear. “It would be better for everyone if we were honest and out in the open.”

  “Living together is only a dream. We’d get tired of each other. After a while you’d miss Erica. She’s so loyal, and she loves you so much. She’s a much better wife to you than I could ever be.”

  “What binds us is far more than physical attraction. You know that, El.”

  She trembled at his intensity. If she were living with him, perhaps something in her would unfreeze, and she would complete those scraps of stories she envisioned. And her presence might release his creative inhibitions. Almost unbearable sadness swept through her. She nestled closer.

  “I could never leave my family.” Her mother’s voice with its calm, strong inflections seemed to be speaking through her. “I’ve committed myself.”

  “You’re a coward, El.”

  She was silent. Her tears wet his cheeks.

  The tangled web of family created a stranglehold. What would happen to the financial backing of Aaron’s parents and her own which made their lives possible? What would happen to the children if she left?

  How harshly the world would judge her.

  “I’ve made my life what it is. Now I have to live with it.”

  But his continued silence made her question her own words. What was the ethical choice?

  She bit his lips with a fierceness unusual for her, swiveling her groin against his until he thrust into her.

  Outside it had begun to rain. Drops splashed against the windows. They rocked back and forth, silent now, in a dance of fusion. Afterwards, Eleanor drifted off. When she awakened, she felt Heinrich’s arms around her, his thighs pressing hers. He was still sleeping. Outside on the street, horns honked. The sound of rain had stopped. She worried about the time. If she missed the five forty-nine commuter train she’d get home to cook dinner terribly late. Her thighs were sticky with his semen. How good it felt, because it was part of him. She wished she didn’t have to wash his fluid off her before she left.

  In Penn Station she glanced at the windows that sold tickets to places like Chicago, Baltimore, and Raleigh. How tempting to buy a ticket at one of these windows, obtain a small tube of toothpaste and other toiletries from one of the drugstores here in this underground station, and disappear.

  “Where is she?” Aaron would ask when he came home. “Where is she?” the children would ask. They were birds with hungry beaks who pecked away at her soul and body.

  She would disappear. She might surface in New Orleans or Tucson or perhaps Vancouver as a waitress or librarian, a slender, middle-aged woman with graying hair and no past.

  But as always, she went to the Long Island Railroad section and boarded her train. They rolled past miles of Queens suburbs, identical houses with television antennas. She scribbled bits of poems in a small green spiral notebook:

  Am I me? Are you really you?

  Or do we only see shadowsWe mistake for the other?

  She paused. This was only a fragment. The root of what she wanted to say eluded her, in the way that the sky is obscured by clouds. Those clouds covered her thoughts, her memories, and only a few clear bits of blue sky remained.

  What if she did follow her longings? Eleanor imagined the two of them together in a cozy Village loft. She began to sob.

  “Lady, are you all right?” asked the conductor.

  She nodded, put her pen and notebook back in her purse, and held out her ticket to be punched. Held out her neck to
be beheaded.

  Ah, shades of Madame Bovary. She and Heinrich were hopelessly romantic. Let her thoughts stream out into the atmosphere, for to formulate them in words was dangerous. So let them dissolve into mist.

  CHAPTER 2

  NIGHT, 1955

  Their old house loomed above the others on the block. It was three stories high, with creaking stairs. When they moved in ten years ago, the yard had been a wilderness, totally neglected by its former owners who died of alcoholism. Eleanor thought perhaps their ghosts remained, for upon occasion she seemed to feel their presences.

  Howard, Jesse, and Rosa awaited her. They were like wild roses in the garden which she had somehow failed to prune in time. Aaron was off at a Sculptors’ Guild meeting and would not be home until late. After the children had gone to sleep, she soaked in her lavender scented bath, donned a long white nightgown that made her feel medieval, and settled herself in bed with a book of poems by Saint John of the Cross. Secretly she had always been drawn to Catholicism. It was a romantic religion with its cathedrals, incense, long-robed priests, rituals, sorrowful virgins, and robust, holy infants.

  Perhaps Aaron was with one of his students from the local college. Certainly a Sculptors’ Guild meeting would not last this long—and lately they’d been frequent. But she told herself this did not disturb her. After all, she had exercised her freedom, too.

  She read drowsily, enjoying the solitude and her cozy bed with the plum-colored quilt her mother had given them long ago as a wedding gift.

  Around one o’clock she heard the front door open, heard it slam, heard Aaron’s footsteps on the stairs. He entered their room a little out of breath. For the merest fraction of a second his face had a brutal look that startled her. But instantly his face adjusted, and he became familiar.

  He leaned down to kiss her, and his breath smelled of liquor. Later on when he began to make to love to her, he caressed her more lightly than usual.

  “Did she do it this way?” Eleanor murmured.

  “What?” He was startled.