Paraíso, Page 5

  Marco motioned her out into the sandy little yard, protected by a big green cactus, a waist-high fence of woven sticks, and a small flame tree in full red bloom. The sun was beginning to dip into the sea, losing its roundness and becoming more like a flaming orange helium balloon. Chimes carried from the cinder-block church across the valley. “Lived here myself until I built my own place. It’s kind of scenic, isn’t it?”

  “It is.” She walked to the fence and gazed out at the view. “So where is your place?”

  “Next to the shop. You saw it. Much more convenient.”

  “Convenient?” She tilted her head. “You’re not married, I guess.”

  “Just waiting for the right girl.” He was fiddling with a loose stick in the fence. “My mother said yeah, she’d give you the place for twenty US a week, since I’m working on your car.”

  “When could I move in?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  No, wait. It was all too fast, too perfect. Maybe she should talk to Judy about it?

  You better act fast when you make a decision. It might be the wrong one. Her brother used to say that. She watched the sun disappear, half-expecting to see the omen of a green flash, but it didn’t happen.

  “Hey, I worked up an estimate.” The aw-shucks grin.

  It was very high, $3,000, but of course she’d already ordered the parts. And after she accepted the estimate, deciding on the palapa wasn’t too hard.

  Nature Takes Its Course

  Investigations at my erstwhile boarding school ruled against arson, but the school was as unenthusiastic about having me back as I was about going. I begged to be sent to the local public high, but thanks to our father’s English fetish for boarding schools I ended up at a second-rate outfit in the Colorado Rockies. Six thousand feet above sea level, nature finally took its course: I grew five inches, my voice changed, I made the climbing team and the honor roll. But Colorado always seemed to me like a papier-mâché stage set that you could poke a hole through and nothing would be on the other side. My sister wasn’t there to make it real: that was the problem, looking back. I don’t mean physically there, of course.

  She’d been trundled off to an elite, verdant girls’ prep overlooking the Potomac River in the Washington suburbs. It had a name for being both social and very academic: there were teas and dances, graduates went off to top colleges and married boys who were slated for white-shoe law firms, the most prestigious banks, the diplomatic corps, and the CIA.

  After a month or two, my sister was put on probation for roller-skating nude through the library. She made matters worse in the spring by taking up white-water kayaking in the Potomac, down the cliff from her school, in place of afternoon tea with the headmistress. The kayaking was definitely not sanctioned by the school—she’d become a kind of mascot for a group of young government men who did it to let off steam after hours.

  “We are a little at a loss what to make of Wendy,” the headmistress wrote our parents (I found the letter after our father’s death, going through boxes in the attic). “While we admire her spirit and feel she might be rather an addition to the School, we obviously can’t allow her to take undue risks while under our supervision. So we are forced to place her on bounds, and I must tell you that if she persists in her present activity we will have no alternative but to send her home.”

  This was followed by a letter from our father (carbons in the folder) asking for more details.

  The next letter was unabashedly on CIA letterhead:

  Dear Mr. Davis,

  I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m out of line. I just feel you should know that your daughter Wendy is a very, very talented young athlete, one of the most talented I’ve ever personally known. A small group of us white-water fanatics are training now on the Potomac with the hope and expectation that kayaking will be allowed as an Olympic event in the next Games. We have the highest safety standards, the best equipment, and are all former collegiate and/or Olympic competitors in one field or another. We’d be honored to include Wendy in our group, not only as by far the youngest, but also as the sole female. We would of course take full responsibility for her safety and well-being. Sir, would you and Mrs. Davis consider signing a release so the school will allow her to participate?

  However, no such release was in the folder. There was a last letter from the headmistress reporting Wendy was in the hospital having almost drowned on Great Falls (no one in her group had ever dared it, but she’d taken an early-morning shot alone), and was slated to undergo a series of psychological tests designed to identify her “conflict points, which very often had to do with a girl’s home life.” After review, these results would be forwarded, along with the school’s recommendations. As far as I know, our parents never visited her while she was in the hospital, and they never told me a thing. Later, they explained they hadn’t wanted to “bother” me at my new school.

  I’d written her many times from out in Colorado, chatty, light-hearted, superficial notes, not like the ones from the other school. She never answered, and when I came home for the summer she’d already been shipped to England. Our father had convinced our mother that the best thing would be to spend a year far away from her “conflict points,” boarding with keen sailing friends of his in Hampshire.

  But there was some kind of major blowout when our parents went over to see her for Christmas (I stayed with a classmate in the Texas Panhandle), and my sister was put in a place called Briarcliffe, a fancy mental hospital in the Connecticut woods. I was not allowed to visit when I came home the next June after graduation, and phone calls were forbidden. Our father described her as “just needing a bit of peace and quiet.” Our mother refused to talk about her at all.

  So I hijacked the little Husky for the second time. The hospital was only a couple of hours’ drive. Like before, I hid in the trees around the main building and waited for her to appear, surprised there were no fences to keep them in.

  I waited for almost two hours, but she never showed. Plenty of other people wandered around or sat on benches and chairs. I thought my sister was probably confined to her room behind thick wire screens, maybe even in a straitjacket. Finally, I marched in the door and demanded to see her.

  To my amazement, the nurse smiled, told me to sit down in the waiting room, and someone would tell her I was here. She was just finishing “a session.” The waiting room seemed very like our living room at home, right down to the musty smell of the blue velvet armchairs. I sat as far from the door as possible so my sister wouldn’t take me by surprise. I could feel my legs shaking. I hadn’t seen her for more than two years.

  The person who appeared in the doorway was a young woman in full flower—Gigi herself. Black cocktail sheath, high heels, pearls, coiffed brunette hair, lipstick, makeup discreetly applied. I could smell Chanel No. 5 as she kissed both my cheeks, and I could hear the light rasp of her stockings as she sat opposite me and arranged her legs. Her slightly lopsided, secret smile was new, too. She was still strong and wiry, the same racehorse legs, the muscles bunching in her upper arms and bare shoulders, but it only made her more stunning. And her square, clear blue eyes (that looked as if they had chunks of broken glass in them) were also the same. The same as mine.

  We chatted about this and that in a bizarrely grown-up way, as if the waiting room that looked so much like our living room had turned us into our parents, and I finally asked her when she was due to come home.

  “Never.” With her new smile.

  “What? Hey, you look wonderful. I guess you decided to be a girl after all.”

  “You do too. I guess you decided to be a boy.”

  “As our father would say, nature took its course.” Peter and Wendy redux. Could I still feel the old split? Or rather, the old connection? “Hey, they said you couldn’t have visitors. Or phone calls.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “No, Mummy.”

  “And you believed her? That’s always been your problem, Peter. But I’m glad you came to
see me. I really am.”

  “Listen, you look good. You look happy. I was worried, believe it or not. You never answered any of my letters.”

  “I am happy. I guess all I needed was a good mental hospital.” She had a mysterious new laugh that fitted with her smile. “I’m sorry about not writing.”

  “Well. I … missed you.”

  “I missed you too.” She smoothed her hair back. “Do you like this dress?”

  “Well, yeah … it’s very …” I was going to say “sophisticated” but decided not to.

  “For my sixteenth birthday. And the stockings.” She giggled. “The underwear too. It’s all from Lord and Taylor in New York. And the shoes.”

  “What about the pearls?” I was trying to picture the Lord and Taylor underwear.

  “Cartier, but of cawsss.”

  “So they came up and took you shopping? Lucky you. They never did anything like that for me.”

  “Over my dead body.” She angled forward in her chair. “I told Mummy to keep away, I didn’t want to see her, I didn’t want to hear from her.” I watched a thick vein pulsing in her throat. “I told her I’d kill myself if she came.”

  I couldn’t say a word. Now she had the same look as when I was cutting her hair in the abandoned barn. And I felt the same strange, involuntary shutter come down in my mind. No one home. Cannot process.

  “They had nothing to do with it.” She slowly relaxed. “Nothing. Nada. Hey, I’ve been taking Spanish lessons. I really am going to make it to Mexico, you know. Want to go with me?”

  “Definitely,” I said quickly.

  “But you’re going to college, aren’t you? That’s wonderful. Where is it?”

  I cleared my throat. “Little way south of San Francisco.”

  “Perfect. Ten thousand miles from home. It must be on the way to Mexico. I’ll pass through on my way and pick you up.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” I said. “So who’d you go shopping with, then?”

  “What?”

  “Who bought you all the birthday goodies?”

  “Ah.” I don’t think I’d ever seen her blush before. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “One of those kayakers, right?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Someone from here?”

  She tilted her head and thought. She had big news, and she never had been good at keeping a secret, especially from yours truly. She wanted to tell so badly it was almost forcing its way out of her mouth. A deep breath: “Promise not to breathe a word?”

  “Of course, I promise.”

  “Cross your heart and hope to die?”

  I crossed my heart. “I hope to die if I breathe a word.”

  She exhaled, eyes shining. “Okay. You’re my brother so you should know. His name is … Carl. There, I’ve said it.”

  “Okay … but who’s Carl?”

  “Well, if it weren’t for him, I’d still be … you know.”

  “You mean … he’s your therapist?”

  She nodded eagerly. “A lot more than that.”

  “Holy shit, Wendy. How old is he?”

  “Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter. I’m happy, and I’m not crazy anymore.” With girlish wonderment. “He’s helped me become a woman.”

  “Wendy. You’re only sixteen.”

  “I’m grown up now. Can’t you see?”

  I looked away. In another second I’d be crying. I didn’t want her to look grown up. I wanted my sister back. “Look. I want to tell you something,” I heard myself croak. “I’m sorry for what happened. It was all my fault.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” For the first time she looked scared.

  “In the car. I turned us in, remember? Maybe we could have made it. I’ve thought about it a million times.”

  “Oh that.” She laughed in relief. “I was plenty pissed for a while, all right. But then I realized you did the right thing. The whole thing was nuts, wasn’t it? What were we thinking?”

  We smiled carefully at each other from opposite banks of a fast, cold river.

  On the way out past the reception desk, something made me stop. Then I went on. Then at the door I turned back. The receptionist was on the phone, and I stood there while she told someone that Dr. Reiger would be available for consultation at 10:30 a.m. the next day.

  “Excuse me,” I said when she hung up. “Would you happen to have a facility brochure, by any chance?”

  “Of course.” She smiled, reached under the counter, and handed me an expensive heavy matte cream-colored folder inscribed with the place’s name in cursive black lettering as if for an invitation. I opened it back in the Hillman. Dr. Karl Reiger was Briarcliffe’s new director. He’d come from Austria.

  Volver

  It was an open-air dance floor with Van Goghish stars overhead. The girls sat together at tables, giggling, and the guys stood along the wall, looking them over, like high school dances in gringolandia. The little band played mostly one-two one-two ranchero numbers, but every once in a while they’d throw in a waltz. Pancho Clamato didn’t know the step, so he and Wendy—in her most demure outfit, a sleeveless, skirted white cotton dress—would sit those out.

  Then she saw the pushcart man, still in the same white baggy campesino clothes and cowboy hat, watching her sadly from the stag line. She smiled and nodded to him. “He’s got great honey,” she said to Clamato. “I bought two bottles when I first got here. He said his name was Augustin something.”

  “They call him Felipe Reyes. From the old radio show,” Clamato said. “Felipe Reyes, amigo del pueblo. The Mexican Lone Ranger. He rides into town, kills the bad guys, rescues the girl, and rides off into the sunset. I told you this place is famous for its nicknames. There’s Jefe the town retard, Felipe the Lone Ranger, and El Farolito the lighthouse, a blind guy with a guitar. Maybe you’ve seen him. Anyway, they mostly have a twist.”

  “More than a twist. So Felipe Reyes is actually Don Quixote?”

  Pancho Clamato snapped his fingers. “Precisamente. Instead of a windmill he takes on a D-9 Cat. Drives the sucker into the ocean because the surfers tell him it was leveling ground for a new whorehouse.”

  “What was it really doing?”

  “Hotel.” Clamato laughed. “Right on the break. They never found another D-9, so the thing was never built, see, so Felipe saved the break instead of saving the town’s morals like he thought. Felipe Reyes, amigo del surfo. Hey, Isabel.”

  A sturdy Mexican woman with long, tangled black hair threw her arms around him, kissed his neck, and stared past him at Wendy. “Clamato never comes here before. What you do to him? Put on a spell?”

  “Wendy, Isabel. Isabel, Wendy,” Clamato said. “The town artista. Just to make things complete.”

  “We were talking about nicknames,” Wendy said.

  “Díos mío.” Isabel rolled her eyes. “I hate to think what mine is.”

  “Want me to tell you?” Clamato asked.

  “Claro que nunca.” She smiled at Wendy. “Wait till you get one.”

  “She already has one,” Clamato said. “Record time. Only took a week.”

  “I have a nickname? Okay, you have to tell me.”

  “Doña Mercedes. Not bad, hunh?”

  “That depends,” Wendy said. “What’s the twist?”

  “Ah! So it’s you,” Isabel said. “Marco Blanco’s new project. Claro, I mean the car.”

  “Is that a good thing?” Wendy asked.

  “He take pride in his work,” Isabel said carefully. “This I know.”

  “Well, good. Are you from here too?”

  “Mexico City. Una chilanga. But I’m here almost a year. A good place to work. What do you do?”

  “I’m a photographer. And you paint?”

  “Some. A little performance stuff. Little of this, little of that, you know? Come by sometime, I show you. How long you’ll be here, querida?”

  “Until the car’s fixed, at least.”

  Isabel shot a
glance at Clamato. “Bueno, Mercedes. Clamato shows you where I live, right down the street. You can come tomorrow if you want. Around mediodía, okay?” She wove her way gracefully through the tables and sat down with the fat telephone operator and a striking young girl Wendy had noticed earlier in the phone office. With the next ranchero number, Isabel and the telephone operator got up to dance.

  “So now I’m Mercedes,” Wendy said. “What’s the twist again?”

  “There’s not always a twist,” Clamato said. “Look at mine. So how’s Marco doing, anyway?”

  “Still waiting for the parts. But he took the block to La Paz today to have the cylinders honed and the valves ground.”

  “Isn’t that him over there?” Clamato nodded toward the bar behind her. She could recognize Marco from the back, in clean jeans and a white dress shirt with the sleeves turned back on his forearms, saying something to the guy next to him, standing hipshot, one elbow on the bar, one long-fingered hand around the neck of a Pacifico. The easy bend of the back from the narrow hips to the solid shoulders.

  She and Clamato hopped around to a little number called “Camerón Pelado” and then sat down when the band struck up a slow waltz. She saw a white blur in the corner of her eye—it was Felipe Reyes asking Clamato for permission to dance with her. Clamato grinned and waved his hand, and she stood up and led the way back onto the dance floor. Felipe touched his hat gravely when she turned to face him, smiled, and held out her hands.

  The number was “Volver,” a great old flaming Latin love song, slow and stately. He held her at arm’s length, and they started to twirl, a real waltz step like she’d learned in dancing class. Where did he learn to dance like that? She closed her eyes to feel it, and when she opened them again she saw they were dancing alone. Everyone else had left the floor.

  Marco, still at the bar, had turned to watch. As they twirled, she looked over Felipe’s shoulder, saw the mechanic smile, lean over, and say something into his friend’s ear, the friend nodding and smiling back. She danced more extravagantly, swinging her legs out, holding Felipe close and sometimes resting her cheek on his shoulder. Seeing if she could wipe the smirk from Marco’s face and thinking in fact that she succeeded about halfway with the reckless excitement of a girl at her first major prom. Floating and swirling in three-quarter time: I dare you.