Hypothermia

no concealed weapons, everything in sight: the oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and sauces, the dishes overflowing, the sliced bread laid in its basket, the bottles like gun barrels—one for every three guests—aimed straight up at the ceiling and heaven beyond, and the menacing sugary desserts laid out on the sideboard. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but this dinner turned out to be the most successful one so far. How exciting, said a neighbor, feeling caught between the abundance and her own embarrassment.
    When he wrote to his father, he was aware that what he’d be looking for in his son’s messages were stories about the girls—he adored them because they were gringas but also never stopped worrying that they were too gringo. He knew that his father printed out his messages and took them home to read to his mother, and that she fantasized for days over the paragraphs about how her granddaughters were growing. For this reason he took special care to mention how the older girl, who was about to turn five years old that New Year’s, helped him as best she could with the unbreakable table utensils. The younger girl was still just a baby, and really didn’t do much of anything, so at the end he added a paragraph about an imaginary cough that she’d just gotten over.
    Their New Year’s Eve celebration went on as usual, as he related in the e-mail: they ate dinner, and after putting the little girls to bed, turned on the television and sat down together to watch the countdown to midnight. As the year’send special didn’t look very promising, they made a strong pot of coffee to help them stay awake and keep the party going for three more hours. He took the last of his coffee outside with him when he went to have another smoke. The opossum was still there, trembling from cold and fear.
    When he went back inside he mentioned his discovery. The first time he hadn’t said anything, but this second encounter now struck him as odd. With his in-laws he didn’t take the same perverse pleasure in reflecting on recycling and the filth in the suburban ecosystems as he did several months later in his e-mail to his father: in English, in the provinces, musing without specific meaning sounded like intellectualizing, suspiciously lacking in sincerity and simplicity. He said that there was an opossum crawling on the fence, that it was very young, that it had probably come down from a tree and couldn’t get back up to safety in the branches. Hardly looking away from the screen, his in-laws mentioned that there was plenty of wildlife in the neighborhood thanks to the creek nearby. The presence of opossums was a good sign because they ate snakes. His wife appeared a bit more interested: she was moved by the idea that it was a young animal. Are we going to help it get down? she asked him, but he had already surrendered to the spell of the TV and didn’t feel like getting wet again. It’s just got to get up the nerve to jump down to the grass, that’s all, he said. His father-in-law observed that, no matter what, it would be neither safe nor hygienic to try to trap it, not just like that, without any preparations. If it was still there in the morning, they would go outside with the necessary equipment to help it.
    That exchange, on the other hand, he chose not to share with his father because it wasn’t his habit to complain. He kept writing, explaining how, with just twenty minutes remaining until midnight, he got up for the third time. He knew that he wasn’t going to have another smoke until just before going to bed because of what was coming up—they would wait for the clock on TV to strike midnight, followed by a very awkward round of embraces, then share a bottle of champagne so slowly that the glasses got warm while watching the stars on this or that TV special.
    As he came back into the room, his wife asked him if the opossum was still stuck on the fence. He said yes. Partly out of genuine curiosity—all recurrent history is always noteworthy—partly because the slow, pleasant moments of letting their meal settle had passed, and partly because the mounting series of commercials at midnight, one after another, made the programming unbearable, the problem now received the whole family’s attention. His wife thought that all the fireworks at midnight were going to give the poor animal a fatal heart attack, and that was reason enough to spur them into action. His father-in-law accompanied him back outside and confirmed