. . . . .
The sign outside for the Manchester Clinic was inviting and bright. Inside, the place was a dump. Shabby, but clean—the smell of bleach stung my eyes to the point of tears. The institutional green walls and white tile with blackened grout gave the waiting area the feel of a day room of a state mental hospital. Goodness knows I had seen enough of them. The clinic’s privacy curtains sagged from rusty hooks. A sullen clerk slapped across the room in loose sandals and handed me a medical history form on a clipboard. The signage, the paperwork—everything in English including her question, “National insurance, no?”
“No.”
“No insurance?” She shouted as if my ears, not my bones, were the presenting problem. “Vale, vale.”
Anywhere, anytime, somewhere a Spaniard is yelling “Vale, vale.” What does it mean?
She lay the completed form it on the counter. “Before the treatment, one hundred seventy-five euros.” She gave me a receipt and ushered me into an exam cubicle where Doctor Tony Berringer was pulling on latex gloves; he gave me a weary smile, his gaze reflecting either boredom or exhaustion. Gray streaks in his blond hair accentuated his tan, weathered skin. With a cool touch, he palpitated my back and politely and clinically correct, worked his way around my breasts. Exam finished; we sat in the consultation cubicle. Posters warning of AIDS and Hepatitis brightened the flimsy partitions. Barringer explained why he couldn’t show me the X-rays. “Against government policy.”
“But I’m private pay, not on Spain’s nickel.”
“And you’re not in America.”
“If you read the intake form, you’ll know I’m a doctor.”
“With ribs seven through nine snapped like pretzels,” he says.
I draw back. This man did not suffer fools gladly.
“And some murky cartilage around number nine,” he added. “I can’t determine more without a scan. Meanwhile, my dear, nothing to be done but rest, a deep breath every hour or so to keep the lungs tip-top, ice, pain medication as needed. How’d it happen?”
The truth would result in his calling the police to report an assault. My apartment combed for fingerprints. Questions. From my brush with the Guardia Civil, I knew the outcome would bring nothing but more grief in my getting out of the country. “My dog jumped on me, and I fell against the dresser.”
A prolonged stare, his thoughts written on his face, victim protecting the boyfriend who beat her up. “Dogs will do that.”
I held out my hand to Mozart’s height. “He’s a big boy.”
“I’m sure he is.”
A smile might have indicated I knew he knew I was lying. Folding the prescription, I turned at the entrance of the cubicle. Then suddenly turned back, for some reason, not wanting to leave. I felt safe, here, with this tired, but careful physician. Funny how the aura of a person transcends his physical self. Despite Barringer’s cool professionalism, or perhaps because of it, I wanted to rest my head against his cheat, wallow in self-pity and cry. Odd, because I never cry.
He looked up from what he was writing. “Anything else?”
Yes, but what? I recalled a line from a poem and heard myself say, “A cup of tea, made for me without asking,”
I hurried outside, the embarrassment of what I said hot on my heels.
. . . . .
Mozart shifted his weight on my legs, bringing me back to the sofa and the blue water and blue sky behind the glass door. The roar of a diesel engine trumped the memory of the clinic, and I propped myself up on my elbows. A fishing boat rounded the jetty and plowed courageously through rough seas. A magnificent arc of spray soared over the rocks, and gulls keened above the foaming wake. “Marvelous,” I said to Mozart. The word pushed through my ragged breath.
Bach’s fugue was played out, the apartment quiet but for an occasional gurgle from the drain in the floor near the toilet. A hint of sewer gas in the air saying it was time to pour water, better yet, bleach, down the drain to kill the smell: one more aggravation coming from the plumbing, pipes probably dating from Ferdinand and Isabel.
I half-dozed and awoke with thoughts jumping out of sequence. Maybe the woman-the girl I called the beheadee was the Arab’s wife. Or a lady of the evening. A stupid outdated phrase, but useful, I liked it. Was the murder about some sick sex thing? Was Zak into leather garters, whips, chains? One more reason to keep the police out of it.
An important question haunted me while I hovered near the gates of codeine heaven—why on earth did I care enough about Zak DeLeon to cover his ass?
6
Three days after the visit from the thugs, my broken bones still aflame, I pulled out of the garage into the morning sun on my way to the family’s summer house. Today Zak and I were to go over the work-scope for the renovations. This as a favor for my mother, who was too frail and disorganized to negotiate a real estate sale on her own. I had no stake in the property. According to Dad’s Spanish will, Mom inherited the summer house. Dad’s Texas will give Mom a life estate in the Houston house and bank accounts. Upon her death, instead of me as the beneficiary, the remainder would go to the Houston Museum. ‘Your father said you make enough money, Mom said.
But this wasn’t about money. It was about love and a father wanting to care for his kid after he was gone. One who wanted to remain in his child’s life even after his own death. Thinking of my father brought back the painful hollowness in my gut, the hunger beyond the need for food. And I wondered, as I always did, how it was possible to feel the loss of something I never had.
I turned onto the interstate and lifted my arm to open the sunroof. Big mistake. The knife paring my lungs, struck. I pulled onto the shoulder and rested my forehead on the steering wheel until the Vicodin kicked in.
The pain in remission, I eased the car onto to the highway. Taking as deep a breath as my chest allowed, I settled back to enjoy the whitecaps flashing offshore and the lantana spinning purple in the exhaust of passing cars. Miraculously, the temperamental Renault’s transmission was on good behavior, the gas tank full, and for the first time the car’s sound system radio picked up radio Gibraltar. The broadcast was a repeat of last night’s TV news showing a mosque in Cadiz in flames, firemen, police cars and two body-bags on the sidewalk. The Knights of Constancia claimed credit. The announcer quoted the group’s chief of public relations, “There will be another Inquisition, but this time we will get it right.”
Wonderful, I thought. Bring back Franco’s paradise of firing squads and mass graves. Give the world one more nation of medieval barbarism and silence. Casey was right, the Knights did go for high visibility; the spectacular Cadiz mosque bombing, the inflammatory speeches to inflame the Islamophobes. The announcer went on, “A spokesman for the Sons of the Emir report no progress on negotiations with the Knight’s for the release of the baby held hostage. Iman Tariq, the infant’s father, warned of repercussions.”
Tinny background music took over the news, and I lowered the volume. In front of me, a line of red tail lights crept past the entrance to the McAuto. I inched around them and took a right onto the 381 toward Seville. The four-lane highway wound over the gentle hills of the wildlife refuge. Eucalyptus trees flanked the road. Bulls earmarked for the ring grazed among sheep and dainty white goats. A few miles farther, a low wall sheltered an adobe cottage where chickens goose-stepped around a dusty courtyard. The Spanish countryside was pretty enough, but not quite right. The landscape lacked the freshness, the innocence and pristine glory of America. I pictured Big Bend at the curve of the Rio Grande, the Louisiana marshland graced with long-legged cranes. Spain’s tired earth seemed spent, as if too many feet had roamed the forests, too many hooves trampled the fence lines and too many plows scarred the fields. History had exhausted the leaves, the dirt, even the st
ones. America’s nature was spontaneous—Spain’s was resigned.
A few miles north, I took the potholed track that passed the abandoned cathedral. Just as I remembered, there sat the ruins. I parked, turned off the ignition, opened the window, and listened to the tick of the cooling engine, and the peep of a ground bird. The air carried a whiff of rosemary and brought back the summer day when Dad and I explored the ruins a decade ago. “I’m sure you can’t grasp the impact of the Visigoths,” he said with a sigh as if worn down by my stupidity.
During the Spanish Civil War either the Republicans or Falangist’s bombed the bell tower into a field of cubist blocks. Dad and I picked our way around the rotten planks at the entrance to the narthex, passed through the doorway that had no door, then crossed to the ankle-deep marble rubble of the chapel’s floor.
“A shame one of the Goth’s architectural beauties was reduced to this,” Dad said. The fragments of an icon lay atop a severed pillar. The Virgin’s face elongated, Byzantine style, but strangely enough she held a Celtic Cross. A twisted iron candelabra lay half-buried in the earth amidst shards of ruby-red votive cups, candles once lit by prayers going up in smoke.
The distant whistle of the silly tourist choo-choo train that ran from Algeciras to Rhonda brought me back to the here and now. Looking both ways before backing out, I noticed tire tracks in the mud. The deep corrugated grooves led to the only wing of the cathedral still in one piece. The vehicle must have been hauling quite a weight. A delivery? Or a busload of tourists? No hotels nor gift shops within miles.
I have profound respect for the sixth sense, the truth that comes not from the brain, but from the gut. Dreams, love at first sight… knowledge beyond statistics and peer-reviewed publications. Data is not truth. I looked down at the flattened weeds and the skin on the back of my neck tightened. A trail left by someone who never should have been there. I swung onto the main road and picked up speed.
Our family house baked in the noon heat. I pulled up in the drive and cut the engine, the silence broken only by the dialogue of two crows. A bee buzzed the wisteria. I was early. Since I’d given Zak my keys to let in workmen, I couldn’t get into the house. I decided to wait in the car. With the air conditioning full blast, I leaned back to ease my shattered bones. From the window, I could see beyond the house, over the valley and all the way to Gibraltar rising from the sea like a great humped-back whale.
So many vacations spent here, my mother sleeping off her depression meds and Dad working the golf course, leaving me free to explore, read and think about the kings and queens and Bishops and knights who once led processions through these woods. Since I’d last been here—about a year ago—the grounds appeared the same. Only a few signs of neglect: the yellow fungus on the hibiscus, the raspberry shrubs went rogue and the dead branches on the boxwood I hid behind the day I caught my father with Jorge Castillo.
. . . . .
I was twelve years old picking raspberries and trying not to eat more than I dropped in the pail when I saw Dad and Jorge Castillo naked on the grass. Castillo was a Dallas doctor of pharmacy, Dad’s friend, who scheduled his golfing vacations to coincide with ours. Why was he flat on his back? And what was Dad’s head doing between Castillo’s legs? A sickening wave of vertigo swept over me, when I forced myself to accept what I suspected they’re up to. I’d best get out of here, I thought. I turned toward the house before realizing I couldn’t cross the lawn without being seen. The men would have to leave, eventually. I crouched behind the boxwood hedge to wait. Although I tried not to look, I did.
Dad’s shoulders moved, quivered, and suddenly stopped. A tee-shirt beside him served as a napkin he used to wipe his mouth. Castillo’s chest heaved—slow, then slower. Dad swung a playful punch at Castillo’s stomach. Both men laughed.
“Gracias. You do good work.” Castillo’s speech the overly precise voice of a drinker trying to avoid slurred words. He ran his fingers through Dad’s thinning hair. They lay whispering with their arms around each other. Dad shifted slightly, drew back his hand and slapped Castillo across the cheek. A yelp. Dad raised his arm and the smack of the following blow cuts the dense humid air. A low moan is followed by a muffled gasp—or maybe a sob. Dad rolled on his side and gently ran his palm over Castillo’s chest. He must believe the pain was worth the tender strokes.
Sunbeams played among the branches of the magnolia. A wasp teased the lantana. A stork floated in lazy circles over the garage. Castillo raised his head. I realized if I’m able to see his eyes, he surely must see mine. He gave no indication. I crouched lower and watched through the mass of tiny leaves. When Dad kissed Castillo’s forehead, I felt an unexpected surge of—what? Anger, fear? So hard to say. Something almost like jealousy—something like the envy mixed with shame I’d felt when my enemy, Barbara Wallace won the spelling bee. Dad is always so aloof, cold, downright mean. Yet here was proof he could love. So why not love me?
The minute the men doze off, I make a bee-line for the kitchen.
That night around midnight I was reading in bed. This was during my H. Ryder Haggard phase and lost in King Solomon’s Mines, I failed to see Dad in the doorway. Sensing his presence, I looked up. From the way he listed against the frame, I could tell he was drunk.
“Jorge Castillo said he saw you, see us,” he said.
Trembling, I froze, wondering what to do. One false move would have brought Dad’s rage. A lamp tossed against the wall, a broken chair… I lowered my book as carefully as I would if a cobra were in the room.
He stared without blinking. “I hate you,” he said and turned into the hallway.
Feeling abandoned and ashamed, I drew the covers over my shoulders and buried my head in the pillow, so no one could ever find me.
. . . . .
Zak was due twenty minutes ago. I turned up the fan on the air conditioner and picked up my memory where it left off. Dad never had to speak those words again. His patronizing smirk and total disdain of everything I was, and everything I did said it all. When he was dying in the ICU, feeble as he was, he pushed away my hand and told the nurse, “Get her out of here.”
They say therapists choose the profession to resolve their own pain. Maybe it’s true. The textbook explanations of Dad’s symptoms hit the mark: attachment disorder, emotional hypersensitivity, disturbed identity, threats of suicide, and one botched attempt. It took my entire psychiatric residency before I faced the fact, I had a father with an Axis Two personality disorder. Was Dad gay? I must have come from somewhere.
The crunch of wheels on gravel jolted me from the past. Zak’s Porsche rounded the curve of the drive. Following him was a black SUV the size of a Greyhound bus, its fenders streaked with mud. Both vehicles pulled up at the far edge of the paved courtyard. Respecting my vulnerable bones, I carefully slid from the front seat. Zak came toward me, apologizing for being late. He wore a crisp navy linen blazer. I brushed at the oversized jersey, the only top I could get into without a return of the knife in my chest.
A slam of the SUV’s door and an elf of a man in a tight-fitting tee-shirt and Pepe jeans came around the tailgate.
“Kurt Shumaker,” Zak said with his hand on the elf’s shoulder. “Fiscal guru and the brains of Great Estates. He’ll help with the estimate.”
I held out my hand: Kurt’s grip a miniature vise.
Zak selected a key from a ring, and as he fought the stubborn lock to the front door, Kurt walked backward while shading his eyes with his hand. “Ve must get genuine tile roofing. No fake plastic.” Kurt’s accent familiar. No wonder, for every winter half of Germany flocked to the Costa del Sol.
The lock clicked, and Zak and I stepped into the foyer. Aside from the musty smell of closed rooms, the place was intact. “No signs of vandalism,” I said. “Castle security did a good job,” I tur
ned to Zak. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“Not my guided tour,” I said over my shoulder. “Only three bedrooms. Single-story because Mom had a thing about fires and getting out in time.”
I led him into the living room where Mom had converted what had been a charming Spanish finca into a tacky Texas Hill Country ranch. Talk about kitsch. Matching end tables with maps of Texas carved in the oak, a huge leather sofa that could seat a buffalo, and a bronze cowboy roping a calf—a Remington knock-off hauled from Dallas in her hand luggage. The wagon-wheel ceiling fan came in the mail from San Antonio, along with the machine-made Navajo rug. It was years before I realized not everyone’s house reeked of vanilla pot-pouri.
“Furniture’s from Perez Interiors near the bullring in Seville.” I felt the heat in my face as I realized I must sound as if I were trying hard—too hard—to impress Zak. As if his opinion mattered. “Anyway,” I added, toning it down. “A buyer might like the view from the terrace.”
“Nice.” Zak’s reply too polite.
“Gif me a hand with ze ladder,” Kurt called.
Zak touched my arm. “Be back.”
I returned to the car, opened the trunk, and guarding against sudden movement, lifted the bag from the Super Sol. It held tostadas and Manchego. Did Zak like cheese? I came to my senses. Who gave a shit what he liked?
I lugged the groceries to the kitchen. Zak lay on his back, half inside the cabinet under the sink. A pipe wrench lay on the floor beside him.
“I have cheese,” I said to a pair of boots.
No reply.
The Loss of What We Never Had Page 5