ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife
Book One, Part One, Chapter 40: Playing Away Time
Joshua orders comic books from a dealer in Phoenix and waits for the postman to slide them under our casa’s front door. I read Architectural Digests I find on the shelf above our king-sized bed. Ernie plans a day trip to the Hippodromo, where he and Joshua buy pari-mutuel tickets with Seuerte printed on them. Ernie shows me a ticket. “Suerte means luck. I’ve never bought a pari-mutuel ticket before that wished me luck.”
Ernie plans another trip, this one to the reconstructed pyramids just outside Mexico City. He’s read the guide books. “The Toltecs built these pyramids to be closer to what they worshipped — the sun and the moon.”
That day, we three board a bus with the bus company’s name on its side — Tres Estrellas de Oro. It seems like a good omen — three gold stars. Joshua finds an aisle seat, and Ernie and I take an empty seat behind an older Mexican wearing two straw hats — one atop another. A few miles into our journey, Ernie taps the man lightly on his shoulder and points to the double hats. The man grins. Using a mix of Spanish and gestures, he tells us he came to town expressly to buy a straw hat but doesn’t want to wear it out, so he’s wearing it under the old one. He keeps grinning. He’s pleased with his invention.
Every night, and sometimes during the day, too, we three gather on the king-sized bed and play cards, mostly Hearts. Sometimes Tonk. One afternoon a week I volunteer at the English-language newspaper, Atencion, as a typist. I also type Ernie’s short story, The Man With Two Hats, although Atencion’s editor frowns at my using the paper’s typewriter for this purpose. Joshua volunteers to be a staff artist on the paper. He’s gifted this way; he can draw. That’s another reason he collects comics — he likes the art.
We eat a lot of ratatouille because onions, green peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, and squash are all we find at the market, along with white cheese. The bread we buy at the bakery is hard, and so are the doughnuts. Maybe that’s how the Mexicans wear down their teeth — hard bread and hard doughnuts. Most Mexicans have a hard life. We three have it easy. We sit atop the big bed and play cards.
“What’s the score?” Ernie asks, after another round of Tonk.
“You and I are tied, Daddy. Ma’s way behind.”
Playing cards is what my mother does, and what my grandmother and grandfather and aunts and uncles did and do. Have we come all this way to sit atop a big bed and play away Time?
