Free Stranger by David Bergen Page B

still Luisa. This is what happens, she told Íso. Nothing happens. You are who you are.
    One day she signed up for an English course. She met people like her. People who didn’t speak English. People who were strangers. People from China and India. There was a girl from Africa who was very thin and very tall.
    She wrote her assignments in a journal that she handed in to the professor, an older man named Lewis, who, when he read her writing, said that she had more to say than any of the students he had taught over the past ten years. She didn’t quite understand his enthusiasm, but when she told Henry, on one of the Sunday afternoons on the wharf, all Henry said was, He wants you. She had nointerest in her professor. She had no interest in Henry. Lan, with whom she was still living, thought it was great, all this romantic interest, and she asked which of the two men had more money. This was how Lan saw the world.
    One night after class, she went out with several classmates and the professor joined them. He sat beside her and talked about his life. For a time he had lived in Canada, in Vancouver, where he married and had a child. And then he moved back to San Francisco and settled in and he was now alone. He said the word “alone” with great gravity and she wondered if it was true that he wanted her. It concerned her that he had a child out there somewhere, because if it was true that he couldn’t take care of a child, then what did that say about the other rules in his life.
    The kitchen in which Íso and her mother sat had one light that hung from the ceiling, and at this point Íso stood and found a candle and she lit the candle and turned off the overhead light. Now her mother’s face was darker, and the flame flickered and threw shadows, but it felt safer. She took two glasses and poured water in both, and she handed her mother a glass and sat down and took her own glass and drank. Thank you, her mother said. She took some water, and continued to speak.
    When the course was finished she said goodbye to her new friends and to Lewis. For a year she shared the apartment with Lan. She washed dishes. She bought some new clothes. She went to the library and read books for free. She was happy enough. Sometimes she went to dances at a Spanish club, but the boys there reminded her of her brother, she said, who was dead.
    And then, one afternoon, on the boardwalk by the ocean, Lewis found her. She was eating fish and chips when he walked by with a woman on his arm. He stopped and said her name and she looked up and saw him and it was very strange because she was both confused and happy. The woman on his arm was his age, maybe a bit younger. This was Laura, his sister. Lewis and Laura had the same nose. He wanted her address and he gave her paper on which to write it. He asked for a phone number as well. She didn’t have a phone. An address is adequate, he said. This was how he talked and she recalled that she liked the way he spoke, with words that she didn’t always understand. His sister stood off to the side and watched the seagulls and crossed her feet like sophisticated and pretty women do. Then Lewis shook Luisa’s hand and said goodbye.
    He dropped by to find her two weeks later. He was wearing a blue sweater and an orange scarf. The scarf made him look younger. He said that he was still teaching ESL. He asked if she wanted to get a drink, or something to eat. She said that she didn’t drink. Fine, he said, we’ll eat then. They went to a small Italian restaurant. She had never been to an Italian restaurant—in fact, she had not been to a sit-down restaurant other than those places on the wharf where she ordered fish and chips and sat at picnic tables and chased away the gulls. He ordered spaghetti for them. And a bottle of wine. He poured himself a glass and then poured a small amount for her as well. Try it, he said. She found it dry and sour. Still, she finished it and