The Fallen Bluejay

A Sunday in spring at the Hermanos de José Restaurante

WE HAD AGREED after forty-nine years, eight months, that the light had gone out in our marriage. That light had been flickering for years, like a lantern whose owner had been remiss in trimming the wick, and the oil could no longer leach up to the dying flame.

One day it was simply dark. We could no longer find each other.

We phoned our adult children. There was denial, of course, and expectations that it would just go away, like a bellyache would, or like a cold that had run its course.

But it didn’t go away. And four months shy of our golden anniversary, Roseana and I, cocooned in our individual numbness, chose to move on, as they say.

Mine was more of a staying on. I would be caretaker of our home and guardian of Serius, our Shi-Tzu, then less than a year old.

Roseana, following a newspaper lead, purchased a mobile home in a trailer park in the Tehachapi Mountains, some thirty miles from Bakersfield. I helped her move in. I knew she was safe there, and secure. And I was relieved because I loved her.

To this day, five years later, I love her still.

One spring Sunday, six months after we separated, Roseana came off her mountain and into Bakersfield. At noon of that day, I left the solemnity of my home. I drove across town and parked my Chevy HHR in the strip mall parking lot and waited. Five minutes later Roseana pulled her Fiat between the diagonal lines next to me. Together we crossed the lot, pushed open the heavy iron gate, and walked under the sign announcing,
Bienvenido!” And below it, “Hermanos de José.”

Brothers of José or Jose’s Brothers, as it was more commonly translated, was becoming quite popular, largely through word-of-mouth advertising as a breakfast-brunch-and-lunch-only patio…

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