When Héctor had first arrived here in the Land of the Dead what seemed like an eternity ago, he had been, for the first time in his life, completely and entirely alone. Even in death, memories did not fade into obscurity, but lingered forever, and the memory of what it had felt like to open his eyes and behold his then newly-skeletal form remained as vivid as ever. It was easy to recall the panic that had settled in, draped itself over his shoulders like a blanket, wrapping tightly around his chest and refusing to let him go. The teeming, multicolored city that sprawled throughout this endless graveyard (that's what all this was, there was no real way around that descriptor, like it or not) was overwhelming enough to a veteran — as a newcomer, it had been downright paralyzing to try and take in. He'd wandered the bustling streets for hours that day — or what had felt like hours at the time, anyway, time passes so quickly here that it's often difficult to really tell — and only Chicharrón had been kind enough to offer him any explanation. Chich, his very first friend here, and at times, the only real trusted companion Héctor had ever had, now forgotten forever, lost to the inevitable fate that awaited them all. Though he'd eventually calmed down and done his best to adapt to his new body, his new reality, he had never forgotten the terror that had encapsulated him that day. And so, with newfound resolve, he'd made himself a promise: when a beloved family member of his should happen to cross over into the Land of the Dead, they would not be alone, as he was. He would be waiting for them.
He'd tried with Imelda, to no avail. Word of her death had reached him quickly; in those days, before he'd fallen into squalor, before he'd nearly succumbed to the Final Death, himself, it was still easy to identify him as Imelda's husband. The Department of Family Reunions kept careful tabs on that sort of thing — in fact, it was only upon Imelda's vehement, stubborn insistence that they'd eventually stopped including Héctor in all business proceedings related to the familia Rivera. It was rather like a divorce, in a technical sense, but for whatever reason that he'd never been able to name, she'd never finished the job. Much as she claimed up and down to want him out of her life, she'd never stopped calling him her husband. Though, when she set out to accomplish something, she meant it, and that case had been no exception; she'd cut him from her life — or, well, afterlife — as cleanly and neatly as she might cut a cloth. He'd only even managed to speak to the other members of his family due to his own tenacity when it came to reuniting (or trying desperately to, anyway) with his wife. He would come around to their workshop (her shoe business had thrived even in death) and plead with her to listen, to just hear him out, and no matter how much his familia would urge him to leave — ¡Es suficiente, Héctor! You're upsetting her! Haven't you done enough? — he never did have the heart to cut his losses. Eventually, though, he'd given up, resigned himself to knowing that if he loved Imelda at all, if he ever really loved her, he would accept her wishes and do his best to move on. And so, painful though it had been, he'd tried.
Until he'd started to fade.
He'd felt the first flickers of it long before it had ever gotten truly serious. He'd brushed it off for years, but he supposed it had been a long time coming. The symptoms, at first, had been minuscule, always excusable for something else — no one ever truly wants to believe that their family members in the Land of the Living are forgetting them, after all. But after a while, the yellowing of his bones, the once-colorful markings across the sharp angles of his face losing their sheen, the increasing fragility of his body . . . it all became too pressing to ignore. He had quite literally begun to fall apart at the seams. And if one thing would soften Imelda's heart to his plight, it would be the knowledge that only their precious Coco — proof that she hadn't hated him for all her life — could save him from being lost forever.
How fitting, almost poetic, for their daughter to be the force which ultimately brought the two of them together again. In life, their marriage had always been a joyful one, but the two of them had been at their happiest when they'd introduced a baby to their lives. Héctor, who had never really had any kind of family of his own before marrying Imelda, had been overjoyed at the idea of beginning a new life, a fresh start, here with his wife and a child. Perhaps, in his youth and his eagerness to pursue his passions, he'd lost sight of that, but now he knew better. Now, nothing even came close to stacking up against how important all that was. It was what he'd been missing, all those years out on the road, when he'd started to become disenchanted with the idea of fame and fortune and being joined to Ernesto's side forever — love. And now, just when he'd started to believe that he might have lost all hope of ever getting it back, he finally had love in his life to spare. To think that he'd once chosen to sacrifice all that for just a chance of playing music for just a while longer, chasing that freedom that he was scared of losing if he resigned himself to the position of father before anything else. It seemed unfathomable, looking back, but hindsight always was much clearer, he supposed.
Time and loneliness were perhaps the greatest teachers of all. He'd had more than enough time on his hands to think over the consequences of his actions, and even now, after everything had at last been resolved, he wasn't sure if he would ever completely stop blaming himself for all of it. There was so much that he had ruined with such a careless decision, so many years behind him now that he could no longer take back. He could only hope that perhaps the eternity ahead of them that they were promised would be enough to start anew — it seemed like he was always doing that, messing up and then wiping the slate clean and starting all over again — and make a new set of memories together. And at least now, he had the comfort of knowing that his family was here at his side, with all the love and acceptance that he'd longed for all this time. At least now, he wasn't going to have to go it alone.
And as long as he could help it, neither would Coco.
The day that she'd departed the Land of the Living and crossed that bridge for the first time, Héctor had made certain to honor his promise. Inwardly terrified though he might have been — he'd been full of a nervous energy for the entirety of the minutes that had seemed more like hours leading up to her arrival, wringing his hands restlessly, bouncing up and down periodically on the balls of his feet — he'd stuck it out, determined to finally be there for his daughter when she needed him. He'd already put her through the unimaginable; he didn't think he would have been able to stand it if he hadn't been able to be here with her now, at the most vulnerable and important moment of any human being's existence. He supposed that his nervousness was amusing, looking back ("Do you see her yet?" he'd wheedled Imelda endlessly, to which she'd responded with a rueful little smile, "No, not since the last time you asked me.") but there had been a real, legitimate fear there, deep down. Before her death, she'd only barely managed to remember him with his great-great-grandson, Miguel's help. What if, he'd thought, she wouldn't be able to recognize him as her father when she got here? Not for the first time, he'd become painfully self-conscious of his tattered clothing, his straw hat sitting slightly akimbo atop his head, and he'd felt a rush of shame for Coco's sake. What must it feel like, he wondered, to have someone so pathetic for a father?
But, to his surprise, nothing had happened the way that his anxieties had predicted that it would. At last, he'd seen her — or at least, he thought it was her, it had to be her — drawing closer, her silhouette becoming more detailed by the second. And though her body was now every bit as skeletal as his, though the hair atop her head was brittle and gray, not the dark, thick waves that he'd known them to be, something deep within him, something instinctive and fiercely loving, recognized her as his. His daughter. The little girl that he'd been wishing he could see again all this time, finally here — and this time, it wasn't just for a moment, it was forever. He'd hung back for a moment just behind Imelda's shoulder — surely she would want to see her mother first, not the father who had abandoned her, left her all those years to question whether he'd even loved her at all — but whatever he'd anticipated had been incorrect. A warm, gleeful smile had touched Coco's weathered face almost immediately when she'd met his gaze, and she'd whispered, as if in awe, "Papá?" And of course, after all this time, that was the only sound he'd ever wanted to hear, and he'd hardly been able to contain himself, and it had been a wonder he'd kept from breaking down completely when he'd swept her up into the biggest, tightest embrace he could manage.
Since then, things had more or less begun the (rather arduous, at times slightly painful) process of returning to normalcy. Yet, so much had happened between the day he'd fallen dead upon a lonely dirt road in Mexico City and now. How could they ever possibly hope for things to be the same? The more he thought about it, the more Héctor began to face up to the fact that it would be impossible to do so. Maybe, though, that wouldn't be such a bad thing. It could be good for them to get to start over again, to really make amends. This was their new normal. And they would find their way around that, he was certain of it; Riveras were nothing if not resilient, and he knew his wife to be perhaps the most resilient of them all. She'd bounced back from unimaginable grief and loss to build a shoemaking empire and sustain her entire family all by herself; as far as he was concerned, there was nothing that wonderful woman couldn't help him through — nothing they couldn't achieve, as long as they were together.
He had to hand it to his familia, they'd accepted him back into their ranks with open arms and with far less squabbling or trouble than he'd originally anticipated. Such a transition hadn't been easy for any of them. He'd gotten so accustomed to living in Shantytown with the rest of the lost, forgotten souls just like him that he'd nearly forgotten what it was like to have so many people around him to provide him support. He'd adapted to a way of life that had involved talking his way out of trouble, stealing and swindling and relying solely on deception to get by — it felt so strange to suddenly let all of that go. He hadn't expected to be shocked the first time that he'd gone out with his wife in public and didn't have to lie to purchase even the most unassuming things, and yet, it had been, as Miguel would have said, a "big deal." He was glad for the change, of course; even when he'd been in the prime of his tricky, mischievous ways, he'd hated being a liar and a vagabond, and now that his daughter was here with him, he wanted to present to her a more positive image of her father. The white lies would be a difficult habit to break, especially since they'd grown to become as natural to him as breathing once had been, but for Coco, he was willing to do it.
For Coco, he was willing to do just about anything.
Perhaps a good place to start would be to rebuild their relationship. He'd left Santa Cecilia when she was so young — only four, at least, and at the time, he'd been only 21 — that he hadn't ever gotten to see her grow up and firmly establish a real personality, likes or dislikes. He'd missed so many milestones, had failed to be there to comfort her through so much, that there remained very little for them to talk about with one another. The days they were left to reminisce over had happened so long ago, when she was so young, that he wondered if Coco would even find them relevant or interesting anymore. Surely all his little songs and poems he'd written for her all those years ago wouldn't be nearly as important to her now that she'd grown up and led such a long, rich life of her own. But he had to try. She was finally here, after he'd spent so long going to the absolute end of his rope just to get a glimpse of her one last time; it would be a crime for him to allow any more opportunities to reconnect to slip through his fingers.
With that thought in mind to give him the courage he needed, Héctor ambled into the workshop on one lazy afternoon in particular, dark eyes scanning the room for any sign of his wife. The atmosphere of this place always felt so busy, but so efficient, and today was no exception, the very air itself seeming to crackle with an electric sort of energy. The Riveras bustled around dutifully, every bit as immersed in their work in death as they undoubtedly had been in life. And they were talented, too, truly talented — the brand-new pair of custom-made Rivera boots he wore, himself, stood as a testament to that. That said, he didn't want to distract them; having no skills or experience with shoemaking, himself, Héctor knew that he was only in the way the longer he stayed in here, and thus had made it his mission to get in and out as quickly as possible. At last, his eyes found the familiar pop of Imelda's purple dress flaring out in his peripheral vision. He glanced to his right, and sure enough, there she was, hard at work seated at a machine that looked like some bizarre cross between a spindle and a metal press.
"Imelda!" he called as he headed over, still pleasantly surprised by the fact that his gait had smoothed out, no more awkward, uncomfortable limping involved. "Ay, there you are. See? I'm getting better at this — this whole . . . routine of yours. I'm committing your schedule to memory and everything!"
A crooked, boyish grin punctuated his sentence, and as Imelda looked up and met his gaze, she couldn't help but give him a smile in return. "Sí, sí," she sighed, amused, pausing her work to fold her arms curiously across the expanse of her rib cage. "And now I suppose you think you can come and pester me whenever you want, eh? Is that how you repay my love — by interrupting my workday?"
"Nah," he laughed in return, leaning down and pressing a tender kiss to her forehead. With a teasing little smirk, he quickly added, "I'll just repay you by never letting you forget that you just said love. You really love me." And solely because he couldn't help himself, he decided to tack on an affectionate little nuzzle to the bony ridge where her cheek used to be.
This earned a disdainful snort from Imelda, as well as a roll of her eyes, but he knew her well enough to understand that this meant she had taken his playful jibes well. "¡Oye! Keep that up, and I might be tempted to change my mind." Still, sure enough, she laughed, and though she gently rested her hand on his sternum to push him back a bit, there was nothing unkind in the gesture. "What is it, querido?" she asked, looking up at him with mildest curiosity in her eyes. "Surely you didn't come all this way just to distract me."
"Aaah, well, as entertaining as that would be . . . " he joked, granting her a playful wink that harkened back to the days they'd spent together in the Land of the Living, young and newly married, constantly teasing and playing, without a care in the world. After a moment, though, his expression softened and, in a slightly more serious tone, he said, "No. I didn't. I was actually wondering, ahh . . . have you maybe seen Coco around?"
This question, though simple in nature, was enough to earn Héctor a knowing look from his wife. If he were being completely honest, deep down, he'd anticipated that sort of response. In the silence that followed his words, a million different things seemed to pass, unspoken, between them. They had always understood one another on such a deep, intimate level in the past — why should now be any exception? Still, sometimes it was frustrating, being such an open book. There were times that what he was thinking was particularly obvious, especially to Imelda, who knew him so well; it was like having his mind read, almost. Perhaps the fact that he felt he could reasonably guess what she was about to say to him from the look on her face alone, though, meant that they were fairly evenly matched.
"She is outside," Imelda conceded at last, the faintest amusement glinting in her eyes, the corner of her mouth curving upward into something close to the beginnings of a smile, as though she were recalling a joke that he knew nothing about. "She wanted to spend some time in her mecedora, taking in the sights. She hasn't been here as long as we have, after all. To her, it's still a novelty." With a soft sigh, Imelda pushed back her wooden chair and slowly rose to her feet, brushing a few flyaway wisps of hair back into line with the rest of her strict bun. Now turning to face her husband full-on, she placed her hands on her hips and, raising her eyebrows, regarded him with an expression of mingled humor and gentle admonishment. "You might think to allow her to visit her other family members for a moment," she said. "You don't want to smother the poor girl, Héctor."
Slightly abashed, Héctor hung his head, his shoulders slumping the slightest bit. "I . . . I know," he admitted at last, with a sheepish little grin meandering onto his skeletal face. "Lo siento, I — I guess I've been a little selfish," he said. "It's just — I can't help it. There's so much — so much I wasn't there for, Imelda. And you know that." Where moments ago he'd been his usual animated self, using his hands to gesture and emphasize his point as he worked his way through his complicated feelings, now there was nothing but a strange solemnity casting itself in shadows across his face. Reaching out and gingerly taking his wife's hands in his own, he all but whispered, "I've waited for this for so long. It feels like — like any moment now, if I close my eyes, if I wait for too long . . . I'll find out that this was all just a dream. And she'll be . . . " his voice trailed off, but his mind completed the idea for him, the thought too horrible for him to voice: she'll be gone again.
Luckily, Imelda could always be counted upon to know her husband like the back of her hand. There were times, in fact, that he suspected she knew him even better than he did, himself. Sensing the meaning behind the sentence he'd left unfinished, she gave his hands a quick but comforting squeeze in returning, her facial expression losing its severity in an instant. Now, there was only love and compassion in her eyes as she responded, "Let yourself close your eyes every now and then. I promise, when you open them again, you'll find her right here with you every time. You have nothing to worry about. She's not leaving you, mi amor."
"I know," he conceded again, though this time there was a bit more confidence in his voice. It always became so much easier to push his fears to the side when Imelda was with him. She had such monumental courage and strength that it made even the greatest concerns seem insignificant in comparison. Lifting his hand now to gently stroke the curve of her cheekbone with his thumb, the smile returned to his face as its own rueful ghost and he said, "I just want to make sure that she knows the same thing about me."
With that, Imelda at last seemed to relent, the stiffness of her posture relaxing into something far more compassionate, something vulnerable and loving that she reserved specially for him. She sent him on his way with one last kiss pressed against the curve of his bony mouth, and within the next instant, he was off. A renewed spring in his step, Héctor strode briskly, purposefully towards the back of the workshop, where a tall square archway opened up onto the adjacent patio. The air this evening was soft and cool, the endless canvas of post-sunset sky settling into its vibrant purple-blue hue with the ever darkening horizon. A nice, calm night — the first one he'd truly allowed himself to enjoy in a while, certainly the first time in as long as he could remember that he hadn't felt the impending stress and terror of possibly being forgotten looming over his shoulders. It would be perfect weather, he thought, for a chance to talk with his daughter.
True to his wife's word, he found Coco out on the patio, seated in a wicker rocking chair — her favorite, she'd explained to him once, that quite resembled one that she'd loved so dearly in life. She was so quiet and pensive these days, one of many stark contrasts to the fiercely energetic little girl he'd left behind all those years ago. Not for the first time, it really dawned on him just how much he'd missed all this time; so many wasted years, so much to make up for. So much heartache he'd bestowed upon an innocent child, and no matter how much he wished he could, he would never be able to take it back. All he could hope for now was forgiveness — which she, like the rest of her family, had already given him in spades — and perhaps the chance to start over here. A new beginning for all of them.
"Hey — ah — hola, mi'ja," he said at last, careful to keep his voice soft and gentle so as not to startle her. At the sound of her father's voice, Coco turned to face him, and he greeted her with a sheepish little smile and a wave. "Would you mind a visitor? Unless, ay, you know — I understand — you want, you know — alone time or anything like that," he stammered quickly, a premature reaction to the rejection he already was imagining himself facing from the daughter he'd loved so much for so long.
Contrary to his expectations, that rejection never came. Instead, perhaps sensing his nervousness, Coco gave him a warm little smile, reaching out and patting the armrest of slightly shorter little patio chair beside her. "It's alright, Papá," she told him at last, beckoning him over. "I don't mind. I was just watching the sunset. It is so beautiful here. Almost as beautiful as Santa Cecilia."
Sinking into the seat that she had indicated, Héctor had to crack the tiniest of smiles at her last statement — it was true, after all, painfully so. He only wished that it hadn't taken being poisoned to death at 21 years old to figure that out. His daughter had the wisdom of her years behind her; she had learned, in all her time, to appreciate the beauty around her, rather than long for what she didn't have. They always warned him of the day when his children's intelligence would surpass his own, but he never imagined it happening like this.
It was hard, in retrospect, for a place like this to seem beautiful to him, even now. For years, he'd thought of the Land of the Dead as a cage, a prison. To Héctor, it had been nothing more but an obstacle between himself and his wife and little girl; something to overcome, something that stood in the way of what he loved most. He'd been homesick for the Land of the Living for as long as he could remember, which was perhaps the most ironic part of all, considering that back when he was alive, he'd never been truly happy staying in one place for too long. Now that everything had fallen into a new perspective, it seemed unthinkable that he could have ever left this poor woman — his own daughter — to grow up without a father. And all for his music career, which his heart hadn't even really been in anyway.
"Do you remember when we — you, your mamá, and I — would all watch the sun set together?" he asked her, the smile on his face growing more nostalgic and affectionate. "You were just a kid, of course, but you always enjoyed it. I'd put you up on my shoulders, and you would laugh and pull on my hair. Dios mío, I was convinced you were going to make me go prematurely bald," he laughed, reaching a bony hand upward to massage the place on his scalp where Coco had pulled the hardest.
Giving a soft little hum of laughter, Coco turned her head slightly to face her father, amusement bright in her eyes. So much about her had changed, but those eyes were just as big and beautiful and serene as they'd been all those years ago. "I know that story because of your letters," she told him at last. "In one of the poems you wrote me, you talked about those times. And about how you had seen so many different sunsets, but none of them could compare because your familia was the one thing missing."
"You — you mean you remember all those?" he breathed, incredulous and endlessly flattered, the grin on his face broadening even more. He'd always hoped that she wouldn't be too angry with him for leaving, that she would hold onto those letters and know that he had always loved her, had loved her more than anything.
"Sí, of course I did, Papá," she answered, covering his hand with her own and giving it a reassuring little pat. "And then one day, the letters stopped coming. I was worried, at first. Then sad. I did not understand why. And before I knew it, Mamá wanted all your things out of the house — all of our memories of you." Héctor averted his gaze as he listened to his daughter speak; it was too shameful, the turmoil that he'd put Coco and Imelda through, too much to bear. Each syllable seemed to sink like a stone in the blank, empty region where his stomach used to be. Just when he had prepared himself to implore his daughter not to speak about such painful things, she fixed him with a surprisingly sly smile and said, "I kept all of it anyway. All your letters and poems. And your foto. Mamá wanted to forget you, but I could never."
If only he could express to her just how much those words meant to him! None of the words in his vocabulary seemed quite enough to properly convey it. Seizing on the opportunity to clear his name, he clasped her hand in both of his own and said sincerely, fervently, "I never forgot about you, either, mi'ja. Not for a second. Drove myself loco thinking about you and your mother. I always tried. I tried so hard to get back to you, I promise — I never gave up on you." The thought of her spending all those years alone, wondering why her father had stopped sending her letters, wondering if he even loved her anymore, drove itself through his chest like a burning spike. "You should have been enough for me, I should have seen it. You, you and your mother, you were always enough."
With a gentleness and grace that only a grandmother could possess, his daughter turned in her seat so that her body now entirely faced him, and she slowly reeled him in for a hug. "I know, Papá," she whispered, "I know." And that was all he needed for his fears to come crashing down around him, suddenly washed away like a tidal wave. Her forgiveness, that was enough to absolve him of all his self-hate and guilt. Without hesitation, he tightened the embrace, savoring every moment, knowing how long he'd fought just to be able to do this again. And then, she said perhaps the best thing yet: "I have always loved you."
Pulling back from the hug to be able to look her in the eyes, Héctor offered her a wobbly, teary-eyed smile (how interesting, he thought dimly, that skeletons possessed the ability to cry at all.) All the years that they'd spent apart seemed to pass between them, a moment of solemn understanding. Resting his hands gingerly on her shoulders, he beamed down at his daughter and answered, "Really? You love an old tonto like me?" It was a quick stab at a joke, an attempt to lighten the mood, but he felt certain that she'd seen through it right away. Rather than try to keep up the act and do what he usually did — hide his true feelings behind his own cleverness — he simply sighed and said, "Are you sure? I — I might not be as good as you remembered me, I might be . . . too old, you know." The worst of his fears remained unspoken: I might not have been worth all the trouble.
Still, with a smile, Coco reached out and stroked his cheek, taking in his facial expression — this man who had been her everything, who had died far too young, would no longer be forgotten. In her eyes, when she looked at him, she didn't see all the failures and the heartache; all she saw was the kindness that he'd always shown her when she was a child, the loving way he'd scooped her up into his arms, the gentleness with which he'd always held her, the soft lilt of his voice as he'd whispered to her that he loved her every night before she'd gone to bed. And of course, she remembered every song he'd ever played for her, special things that he'd written just for her, and nobody else on Earth.
It was with those thoughts in mind that she said, "You are exactly as I always remembered you to be."