The Genealogies: Chapter 9, "Transcripts", Parts i and ii

i.

{The doctor’s office is comfortably cluttered. Various magazines find space on the coffee-table, on chairs, on the receptionist’s stand. Children—two-three-four years old—scamper around the waiting room, noses running, mothers shushing them with veiled threats. The receptionist/nurse’s assistant is an overweight, cute-faced little Mexican girl. Lexie glances at her from time to time, surreptitiously giving her the once over. She knows better than to peer too closely; no need to freak anyone out, especially with Mamá sitting right next to her. But, she’s not here for that. And she tries to forget about Emily. She’s here for her mother, mostly because neither Carlos nor Marcelo were able to take off time from work, and her boss is an old hippie/independent music label exec who values family and insisted that she take the day off to help her mother. Thus battered with guilt on two fronts, she relented, and agreed to accompany Mamá on her appointment.

{The door beside the receptionist’s station opens. Another cute nurse pops her head into the waiting room.}

Nurse: Mrs. Enriquez! Mrs. Eufemia Enriquez!

{And thus, through a mere bureaucratic ritual, we finally discover Marcelo’s family name, the key to his genealogy, or at least part of it. “Enriquez”, “Son of Henry”, come from the Visigoths, those northern marauders, who bequeathed to Iberia a few Germanic names, some fair-haired genes, and then were quickly subsumed by tides of Romano-Iberians, Basques, Moors, and Jews. Of course, their descendants eventually won out; but “Heimrich”, “Home Ruler”, became “Enrique”, and half the language they would come to speak was born in the sands of Arabia, the other half by the waters of the Tiber.}

Mamá: Ay mija, you’ll come in with me, no? That’s why you came; I like my doctor, but I don’t trust his Spanish, or my English.

Lexie: Claro que si. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.

{They rise out of their seats, Lexie helping her mother up. Mamá is far from feeble, but she hasn’t been feeling herself lately, has had lapses, and is frightened. She clutches onto Lexie’s arm as they follow the nurse.}

ii.

{Gloria sits at her desk, entering figures into a spreadsheet. She works for a Spanish-language video distributor, shipping out hundreds of poorly made, terribly acted Mexican action films, dubbed Brazilian political thrillers, Argentine paeans to the tango. She works exceedingly long hours, arriving at 8 a.m. most days, and not leaving till 8 p.m. most nights. It’s all right: she has no one waiting at home for her at the moment. She moved out of her father’s house after she’d saved up enough money from her job—the only job she’d had since graduating from Cal State L.A. with her accounting degree. She had been very methodical in her choice of majors, making a list, considering the degrees of difficulty and the time required. She wanted something professional, something that would give her the ability to support herself without relying on anyone. She had been very adamant about that. And she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in school. So that left out the law and medicine. She had always been good for numbers, having taken over domestic finances after her father proved woefully inept at it following her mother’s death. So, there it was: accounting. She didn’t hate her job. Still, it wasn’t her dream job. She dreamed of working for a huge accounting firm with offices downtown, jetting around from city to city on auditing projects. But she knew she’d probably need a Masters for that, and she wasn’t willing to put in the time. Security and routine are very important to her.

{She notices a box flashing on her taskbar. It is an instant messaging box, with a familiar nickname. She opens it and reads the message.}

Gloria (to herself, silently): “Hey cutie, good morning.”

{A familiar colloquy ensues.}

Gloria (typing): And hello to my mythical creature.

Marcelo: What exciting thing did you do last night?

Gloria: Put on my pajamas and watched bad TV. I always get the feeling that you expect me to type something else.

Marcelo: A boy can hope.

Gloria: You’re past being a boy. It’s time to stop being a boy.

Marcelo: Our culture expects you to grow up too fast. Although I’ve been thinking of letting my beard grow. Shaving’s annoying, and I’d look older.

Gloria: I don’t think I’d like you with a beard. You have such a smooth face.

{This flirting is typical. It’s not even flirting. It’s normal banter, bandied between them, practiced, easy badinage. Both Gloria and Marcelo enjoy it, revel in its innate safeness. Soon after his birthday party, he asked Lexie for Gloria’s email address. He knew she’d given it to him before, but he had absentmindedly discarded it, not thinking it worth keeping. But after the party, something in the way she hugged him, in the way she had dressed, her scent… He emailed her, and they exchanged screen names, just as a way to keep from stultifying boredom during the day. Now a morning doesn’t go by when they don’t message each other.}

Gloria: What did you do last night?

{Marcelo imagines her on the other side of fiber-optic cables, typing coquettishly, if one can type coquettishly.}

Marcelo: Much like you. Got home, tossed off the boots and socks, watched news. Read a little bit. Nothing earth-shattering.

Gloria: You didn’t write.

Marcelo: Of course not. You should know better.

Gloria: (dramatic sigh)

Marcelo: Your concern for my writing is very agent-like. I should hire you.

Gloria: You should. I wouldn’t let you waste away your talent.

Marcelo: You’ve never even seen my stuff.

Gloria: True enough. But Lexie has, and she’s told me what a good writer you are.

Marcelo: She exaggerates. And I used to be a good writer. I think I’ve lost the talent, or the muse, or whatever. I tried picking it up again a couple-three months ago, and what came out was atrocious. I couldn’t force myself to continue.

Gloria: God knows I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. I’m all numbers and stuff. But I think you have it in you.

Marcelo: I have no memory.

Gloria: What do you mean?

Marcelo: Writing—good writing—is based on memory. Recalled incidents, remembered conversations, refracted and refined until the essence leaches out. I can’t remember. Things that are past sink into oblivion. And it’s not from lack of trying. I try so hard to remember. I try so hard to remember that I end up forgetting.

{ She taps a well-manicured nail on her desk as she lingers before responding. She formulates what she’s going to tell him, how she’s going to encourage him. Nothing comes to mind. She’s realized, in their intense Internet conversations, that he relishes frustration, to some extent. Such pathology is hard to remedy, at least not by an untrained friend such as herself. Jessie hasn’t been able to repair him. She wonders about that.}

Gloria: I’m back.

Marcelo: I’m glad. Where’d you go?

Gloria: Nowhere. Just thinking what to type to buck you up.

Marcelo: I didn’t know I needed bucking up.

Gloria: Everyone needs bucking up. It’s what keeps the world going around. And you should really send me some of your writing. I’d like to read. I could give you the opinion of someone who really knows nothing about writing.

{She can hear him shrug on the other side of the monitor.}

Marcelo: I’ll think about it. Most of the time I barely want to look at it myself. You should know that about me by now.

Gloria: I’m starting to.

{This is as good a point to break off as any. They continue whiling away minutes, then hours, conversing about nothing in particular, nothing very important, but things that become somehow meaningful in the intimate exchange of written words. There’s fragility to Internet communication. Its anonymity can lead to behavior that would be loutish in public; but, sometimes, it has an immediacy that can’t be replicated in face to face interaction, and an honesty that looking into a person’s eyes would stifle. Marcelo is now hooked on his daily chats with Gloria. The drudgery that still suffocates him at work lifts a bit the moment he types his first words to her, or receives the first message from her on his screen. He writes to her with the sort of openness he finds hard to replicate with anyone else. The scrim of processors and cables between him and Gloria enables him to loosen the bounds he places upon himself in daily life, the masks of employee, friend, son, lover, all particular roles for particular audiences. He feels to be the sum of his roles, but when the acting’s done, when the show’s over, he has no mask to assume. He doesn’t wear a mask when typing to Gloria. He talks about everything; he withholds nothing; he pours himself into her box, freely, unreservedly. And she, too, breaks out in a way she doesn’t normally, not even with Lexie. In a medium where disguises are easy to don, and oftentimes encouraged, they feel no need for them.

{They continue typing to each other. Set change.}