Mr. Blue

“What are you thinking about?”

He looks at her, his eyes clouded with confusion. For a moment, he examines her, as though Ramona were and abstract figure whose shape he could only discern by squinting.

“I’m just… hoping the fishermen are okay.”

“Why wouldn’t they be?”

“Because of the weather. It’s really cloudy. If it rains, it could be dangerous for them out on the open sea.”

Ramona considers his response.

“They’ll be fine,” she says. “They’re professionals. They know what to do when the weather’s like this, right?”

Her father looks at her again, frowning this time. 

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

Ramona knows the conversation will end there if she doesn’t press further, but the thought of sitting in silence all day—watching her father scratch his crotch and gnash his teeth—is unbearable. 

“What are the fishermen’s names?”

“One if them is called Canela and the other is La pulga because he’s short.”

“Why is Canela called that?”

“Because he really likes going to las canelas”.

“And what’s that?”

“That’s what we used to call it when someone liked drinking a lot.”

Ramona laughs despite herself. She knows it’s wrong, but this is the version of her father she likes best: the one who forgets she’s his daughter and treats her like a stranger, making small talk as though they’re waiting for a bus or their turn at the bank. In these moments, she feels like a ship carrying him to the best memories of his childhood.

As a father, he was never interested in answering her questions. He was the type to get drunk and try to make up for it later with gifts, as if material things could bridge the gap between them. One day, he decided Ramona’s favorite color was green and bought her a hideous green dress for a ten-year-old—when she was already thirteen.

She didn’t know he had been a fisherman until he started losing his memory and tried to flirt with her.

“I was the kind who swam with a spear in hand, right in the middle of the ocean,” he had said, grinning. “I could catch you a shark if you’re curious about how its meat tastes.”

She laughed awkwardly, reminding him she was his daughter.

“Daughter!? I don’t have any daughter!” He’d reply, horrified.

But sometimes, he recognized her. His eyes would clear, and he’d whisper, “Mona? Where… Where are we? Where’s Leo?” In a trembling voice she’d only ever heard from him during those moments of clarity.

It was always hard to see him wake up from his daydreams, and Ramona often wondered what went through his mind in those fleeting moments of recognition.

For a long time, Ramona thought her father was a bad person—a man who abandoned her when she needed him the most. It wasn’t until he got sick that she realized he had once been a child too, dreaming of what lay beyond the horizon where the sun dips into the sea.

When she watches his eyes wander around the nursing home room, wearing that calm expression, she likes to imagine he’s thinking of himself as a child. Running barefoot along the beach with his chubby belly and skinny legs, searching for crabs hiding in the sand. Swimming in the sea, diving under waves. She imagines him praying with his parents, kneeling by the side of the bed, his father’s father with a rosary in hand, and him with his head down and his eyes closed, trying hard to concentrate.

Ramona hopes that every time he gets lost in reverie, it will be in those memories.

“The sun came out,” Ramona breaks the silence in the room.

Her father looks up, glancing around the room. The white walls. A photograph of a beach somewhere in California. The window, where a few sunbeams stream through the glass, lighting up the previously dark space.

“Oh…”

“Don’t you feel it?”

“Mh… I think so, yeah.”

“Come on,” she coaxes, “I can feel the breeze on my face. I hear the sound of the palm trees swaying, I hear the engine of a boat trying to start”.

Her father closes his eyes and smiles.

“It’s my uncle’s boat,” he says. “It’s oyster season.”

“I love oysters. My dad taught me how to open them.”

“Who’s your dad, mija? Maybe I know him.”

“His name is Juan.”

“There’s a lot of Juanes.”

“True. I don’t think you’d recognize him anyway.”

“And what’s your name?”

Her father rarely asked questions, even before he got sick. Conversations with him usually meant listing to his monologues, ending with a “Right?” As he crossed his arms, expecting approval.

Ramona hesitates, wondering if telling him her name might spark his memory. Then again, she isn’t sure she wants him to remember her.

He looks at her expectantly, curiosity lighting up his eyes.

“Don’t worry about me,” she says. “Let’s just keep talking. Tell me more about the sea.”

“Well, I grew up by the beach,” he says right away. “In southern Mexico.”

“I’ve been there a few times,” Ramona says. “To Mexico, I mean. What’s the name of your hometown?”

The question slips out before she can stop herself. Her father’s eyes fill with tears, reddening as his face twists into a grimace. “Sánchez Magallanes,” he says.

Ramona knows this well. Her father used to brag about the town during her first visits. She knows it has a sea and a lagoon, and that he learned to steer a boat long before he ever drove a car.

She also knows he was the kind of boy who walked barefoot through the streets, polishing shoes in exchange for coins. When the sales weren’t good, he would hide from his father, terrified of hearing the scrape of his sandals on the ground and the spring breeze carrying sand through the air.

“He’d beat me with an old cable,” he once told her, crying. “But that made me strong, you know? I still love him very much.”

Ramona used to hate her father when she was younger. Not because he beat her, but because of what he left behind for her to carry. After her mom died, she had to take care of him. She learned to turn him on his side so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. She made his favorite soup when the hangovers left him bedridden. She drove his truck at twelve years old after finding it stuck in the street, her father slumped behind the wheel, drunk and unconscious.

For years, she believed that if she did all this, somehow he’d see it—see her. That he’d recognize her love for him and realize he wasn’t alone. That he had her and Leo, and that it would be enough to make him change. He’d thank her. He’d finally start caring about her and her little brother.

That’s what families are supposed to do, right? They take care of each other.

But he never said anything.

He never changed.

Ramona has the urge to make him remember her—to ask how he feels about her, whether he appreciates her visits, whether he’d prefer she bring Leo too. But she’s afraid of the answer. She’s afraid the indifference will show in his lively expression, afraid he’ll tell her not to come back.

“My dad used to say,” she begins, testing the waters, “that when he dies, he’d like his ashes to be thrown into the ocean. What do you think about that?”

“That’s how I like to die,” he says, nodding as though it’s obvious.

“Hey, what do you think about me? Do you think I’m nice?”

“Mh… Yeah, you’re very entertaining, mija.”

Ramona smiles and feels her chest tighten. It’s enough for now.

“My brother used to shut me up every time I asked too many questions. I guess I’ve always been curious about other people.”

“Curiosity is a good flaw,” her father replies.

“Sometimes it feels that’s all we have left,” Ramona says, her gaze drifting through the window. “When we have no one, we wander the streets, trying to remember what it was like not to be so alone.”

Her father sighs.

“A girl like you shouldn’t be talking like an old lady.”

Ramona laughs.

“Sometimes I feel like an old lady. How old do you think I am?”

“I think you’re about twenty.”

“Always the same!” She says, laughing harder. “You always take years off me.”

“Always?”

“One time you bought me a dress for a ten-year-old’s when I was about to turn fourteen.”

“Did I?” He squints, confused “I think you’re confusing me with someone else, mija.”

Ramona studies his face. She thinks about their last vacation together—the waves crashing on the shore, foam bubbling across the sand, crabs darting into their burrows. Her father, opening oysters with a dull knife, offering her the sticky, briny meat.

It’s true he no longer looks like the man who once cried endlessly at night, not the one who drank to forget his wife. Now, he doesn’t avoid her gaze because it reminds him of her mother—he doesn’t avoid it at all. She doesn’t remind him of anything.

Ramona wonders if that’s for the best, him with his calm smile and foggy eyes.

“Yeah,” she finally says, her voice soft. “I think I was mistaken."