by Mary Morris
Todd and I followed Lyle Nashe’s long fingers as the masked man peered into windows, crept down the back stairs. Lyle Nashe outlined all the dangers—the things that could happen. He suggested motion detectors, raised above the level of the dog, which wasn’t very high, he noted, as he assessed Sandy. Panic buttons in all the bedrooms that would shine red in the night. He told us that if we were in a hostage situation with a gun to our heads and a maniac telling us to disarm the system, we could just punch in our code backward. “Believe me, the police will come.”
Lyle Nashe snapped shut the door of his miniature crime demonstration. “You can’t imagine the things I’ve seen. Last month I did an installation for a widow. Her husband had died a few weeks before. She’d woken one morning to find a man with a wire, standing over her bed. The widow doesn’t know what made her do this, but she shouted out, ‘John, get the gun; there’s a man in the house.’ The cat heard her and knocked something over downstairs. The man fled.”
Todd wanted the entire system—the motion detectors, the panic buttons, the grates on the skylight. We put in a steel hatch with a spring door and bars on the skylight Todd had carved out himself. The shadows on the ceiling look like prison windows. “I want you to feel safe.” At night we put the system on “home,” but I always forget it is on in the morning when I open the back door to let Sandy out. Alarm central is always calling, asking for my password. “Ninja,” I say, which is the word Jessica thought up.
Todd likes to put the system on test so we can run through our practice drills. “Pretend you’re in a hostage situation, Maggie, and someone has a gun to your head.” I punch in the code backward, but I have an odd feeling that this turns Todd on. At night in bed, I’ve whispered to him, “Todd, get the gun; there’s a man in the house.” He laughs, but soon his laugh turns to sighs and he is all over me.
For days after the break-in I trembled at the slightest sound. I envisioned the man who had broken in coming down the stairs, a crowbar in his hand. I always pictured the little burglar from Lyle Nashe’s model house—a man in a black cap, a Lone Ranger mask with a black mustache. Slightly dark-complected—Hispanic, not black. We confront each other on the stairs. He carries his burglar bag like a doctor on a home visit.
Once I took a self-defense class (“Women and Power,” it was called) and was told that if a woman is being attacked or taken against her will, it helps if she acts insane or growls like an animal. Urinating is also effective.
At night Todd reaches across, cradling me in his arms. He has long, taut arms that engulf me. The muscles on his back are sturdy. I can trace a butterfly. “You’re safe, Maggie,” Todd tells me when he finds me trembling. “Everything’s all right.” His kisses are deep and soothing. I rarely say no.
So why don’t I feel safe? I wonder.
Fourteen
IT WAS RAINING when I saw Isabel again. I had tried for a few days not to see her, going about my work, visiting the cigar museum, the sugarcane plant, the newly renovated plastic-surgery hospital where women were having face-lifts. Then she phoned. “It’s me,” she said, “there’s going to be a storm, so you can’t go out. Let me come and see you at the hotel.” An hour later the skies opened into a torrential downpour and Isabel raced into the lobby, drenched, a newspaper over her head. Her red dress clung to her thighs, her nipples stood erect as she came in laughing, shaking her body like a dog.
“You’re soaked,” I told her, “You need something else to wear.”
“Yes, that would be nice.” She squeezed the water from her hair as if she were wringing a towel.
“Come upstairs. I’ll loan you something.” Isabel looked me up and down. “A T-shirt,” I said, “a skirt. You need to get out of your wet things.”
As we rode the elevator to my room, we could hear the thunder roar. “The gods are angry,” Isabel said. Inside my room was dark and outside the wind blew, rattling the shutters. I told Isabel to go into the bathroom and dry off and I’d hand her some things. But she protested. “No, I want to see all your clothes. I want you to model them for me.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“No, please, I want to see everything you have.”
“Well, here,” I said, handing her an oversize T-shirt from Puerto Vallarta. “At least for now, put this on.” Isabel went into the bathroom. I could hear the sound of a towel rubbing against skin, a toilet flushing. While I waited, I gazed outside. Rain poured down into the narrow sidestreets, sending rivulets along the gutters. The sky was dark, black, almost as if it were the end of the world.
It seemed a long time before Isabel came out of the bathroom. She had twisted her hair up into a knot on the top of her head. My T-shirt just barely covered her thighs as she stretched out across my bed. “Okay, let’s do a fashion show. I want to see all your clothes.”
“But I’ve hardly brought anything down with me.”
Isabel rose from the bed, “Oh, come on now. I like this pink jumpsuit.” She was opening my closet, peering in. “I like this.” She pulled out a black cotton dress that I sometimes wear to travel in, and another with a floral print. “Oh, model for me.” She laughed.
Flopping back down on the bed, she cocked her head. I was embarrassed getting undressed with her in the light of day so I took the black dress off its hanger and slipped into the bathroom, where I quickly stepped into the dress and a pair of black sandals. I dabbed on lipstick for good measure, some perfume behind my ears. Then exited the bathroom with some flourish.
“Yes,” Isabel clapped. “Brava. Turn around, turn. Oh, you have great hips. Nice shape. You’ll go dancing with me tonight in that.” She jumped up, started scurrying around on my closet floor. “Let’s see. Not sandals. Another kind of shoes. Oh, I love these little red shoes.” She tried to slip them on, but her feet were much larger than mine and after a struggle she gave up. “You’ll wear these red shoes tonight.” I knew I didn’t really have time to go out dancing with her that evening. I didn’t even have time to be in the room with her trying on clothes. I had a five-page list of things to do, places I needed to see. But somehow that list meant less and less to me, and I found that world of responsibility and assignments and all those things I had to do drifting farther and farther behind.
“Now let me see you,” Isabel said, lying down on the bed. “Turn a little. Black eyeliner and your hair pulled back, off your ears, what do you think?” She tucked my hair behind my ears, then leaned back, satisfied. “There.” Stretching her long legs out, she raised her arms over her head. “We’ll go to the Palacio de Salsa. Dance the merengue.” She jumped off the bed and began to do what I assume was the merengue around the room, eyes closed, one hand resting on her belly, the other on an imaginary partner. She headed toward my closet, where she began once again to rifle through my things, pulling out a pink jumpsuit, shaking her head. “Oh, I like this,” she said, pausing at a floral dress. “Here, put this on.”
Just then the phone rang, startling both of us. Isabel looked at the phone askance, as if she had never seen one before, then pointed for me to answer it. “It’s for you,” Isabel said, as if it could be for anyone else.
“Maggie …” I heard the crackling sound of long distance. “It’s me.” It took me a moment to recognize his voice, but it was Todd. “I was just taking a chance. I’m glad you’re in.”
Isabel gave me a little wave, slinked off the bed, and began opening my drawers. I motioned for her to stop, but she winked and went on. “Is anything wrong?”
“No, does something have to be wrong?” He sounded a little hurt. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“Oh, well, I’m fine. Busy. Just catching up on some notes.” I looked at my notes, neatly stacked, the pile of what I had accomplished, significantly smaller than the one I should have had. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, as well as can be expected without you here.”
“I miss you guys too,” I said, gazing at Isabel, who was taking my Victoria’s Secret purple nightgown out
of the drawer, holding it up to herself. She ran her hands along its smooth satin, gave her hips a shake.
“I got a note from the school today,” Todd went on.
“The school?” I panicked.
“Oh, it’s no big deal. They said we missed a tuition payment in December, but I thought you’d paid it.”
“Maybe I forgot.”
“You forgot?” The tension rose in his voice. We divide our tasks carefully. He walks the dog; I make breakfast. I shop for produce; he buys staples. Here was a domestic task for which I was responsible—short-term finances, we called it, which meant bills, one of which was for Jessica’s private-school tuition.
Of course, we didn’t want her to go to private school. We had resisted because we both had public-school educations and we believed in it, but given our neighborhood and all the cuts (our school district didn’t have an art teacher until last January and then only because the PTA paid for it), in the end it seemed inevitable that she would have to go to the private school near our house, which was where all our friends’ children went.
Still it was a sacrifice, financially I mean. Perhaps I hadn’t paid December because our bills seemed very tight around Christmas. Or perhaps I’d just forgotten. But somehow in that hotel room with a blackened sky outside and the rain cascading down and Isabel going through my dresser drawers, examining my clothes, I didn’t seem to care. “Look, can you just pay it?”
“Of course I can, but …”
“Todd, is this why you called me?”
“No, I said I wanted to hear your voice.”
“Yes, well, I’ve wanted to hear yours as well.” Now Isabel had taken other clothes out of my drawers—a slip she seemed to like, a silk pantsuit. A sweater of silvery cotton that she held up to herself in front of the mirror. “Nice,” she mouthed to me. I stifled a giggle, turning away from her.
“Maggie, you seem distracted. Is anyone else there?”
“Well, yes, a friend.”
“What kind of friend?”
“A woman I know.” Isabel was taking off the T-shirt I’d given her, slipping my cotton sweater on. It was too short-waisted so she picked up the Victoria’s Secret nightgown again and danced past me around the room, my nightgown held across her chest.
“Well, then, I won’t keep you.” His voice relaxed; now he was somewhat reassured.
“Yes, I probably should go.” And then I asked him, “Is there anything else I forgot?”
“Yes, you forgot to say that you love me.”
“I love you,” I whispered into the receiver, not wanting Isabel to hear, though the words had little resonance for me at that moment as Isabel puckered her lips and blew me a kiss. “I love you too,” she whispered, then turned away from me, laughing.
“You’re terrible,” I said when I got off the phone. She shook her head, peevishly, still holding the nightgown. “If you really like that, you can keep it. I can get another one.”
She clasped it to her, smiling. “Oh, do you mean it?”
“Of course I mean it,” I said, wondering what I’d tell Todd when he asked me where it was.
“So, I’m going to go now and get ready for tonight. What time shall I pick you up?”
“Eight o’clock,” I told her.
“Good,” she said, smiling, kissing me on the cheek. “Be downstairs.”
Though I was downstairs at eight, Isabel arrived just before nine with a flurry of apologies and we went off to the Palacio de Salsa, where the music blared and Isabel danced in the strobe for hours without stopping. She danced with me, and then she danced with anyone who would dance with her—and there were many who wanted to. Her body shook in an odd, frenzied way, oblivious to her partner or to whether or not I was with her. Sometime after midnight I walked out of the disco without saying good-bye.
The next day I went looking for Isabel. Of course, I had a million things to do, but I was concerned that she had gotten home all right and felt bad that I’d left her there alone, so instead of doing what I needed to do, I took a cab to her apartment. When I rang, Milagro answered, the scent of incense (eucalyptus, perhaps, or cedar) wafting around her, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts that were tight for her. Music blared in the background. “I was hoping to find your mother.”
Milagro made a face, pointing inside to where the music was too loud. She disappeared, turned it off, then came back to me again. “She’s out, but please, come in,” Milagro said, leading me across the flower petals that were sprinkled on the floor. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Yes, I would, it’s very warm.”
She opened the refrigerator, which was filled with packages of cheese, chocolate, and soft drinks. “It’s so good of you to come and see us. You have been so nice to Mummy.” Milagro poured me a glass of Fanta, a drink that I detest. I sipped it slowly as she sat across from me on the sofa, drinking the rest out of the bottle. I sat in a large, soft chair.
“Well, I wish I could do more.”
Milagro sighed. “Oh, it’s not easy. Mummy is so unhappy. Everything is so terrible for her here.”
“Yes, she seems sad.”
Milagro wiped her brow with her hand. I had the feeling she had been dancing alone in the apartment. “I wish she could leave. I want her to go away.”
“You want your mother to go away?”
“Of course, I want to be with her, but she needs to get away.”
“Yes, I can see that she does …” I glanced around the apartment at the pictures on the walls, the windows open, the breeze blowing in. “This is a nice apartment,” I said. “It’s cozy.”
“We do the best we can,” Milagro said with the wry smile I’d seen on her mother’s lips many times before.
The sweetness of the Fanta stuck to my mouth. Suddenly I felt awkward being there, as if I was spying on them. Perhaps in some way I was. I rose without finishing the drink. “I must get going.”
“I’ll tell Mummy you stopped by.”
“Yes, please do that.” As soon as Milagro closed the door, salsa once again blared from inside the apartment, and in the window I could see her shadow, dancing. I paused for a moment in the overgrown garden, thinking about all the things I’d pull out if it were my garden. The weeping bottlebrush and the hibiscus were dwarfed by the giant screw pine that extended its tentacles through the garden. High in its branches I saw a white bird-of-paradise, its petals about to bloom.
Fifteen
IN THE EVENING Manuel comes to have dinner with me at the hotel. He is dressed in a linen jacket, tie, white shirt. His hair is slicked back with Brylcreem like a gangster. “Oh, you look beautiful,” he says. “I love this cream-colored jumpsuit.” He touches it with his hand, runs the fabric between his fingers. “I wish I could take you out to El Colibrí, then dancing at the Club Tropical,” he says, escorting me with a moist palm on my waist into the restaurant in the lobby, “but this will have to do.” El Colibrí is the only restaurant where dollars and pesos mix. It also serves the best rice, beans, and ropa vieja around, but I have to settle for dinner within the confines of the hotel.
The hotel restaurant is virtually empty and the waiters mill in the corners. On the menu there are scant offerings—a fried chicken dish, a seafood salad that I had for lunch. “Why don’t we try the roof terrace?” Manuel suggests, closing his menu. Nodding to the waiters, who shrug with indifferent smiles, he guides me to the narrow elevator, which climbs slowly to the sixth floor. The numbers in the elevator are set wrong and we cannot tell what floor we are on.
The elevator doors open to a roof illuminated with strings of Christmas lights. We take a table near the bar and both order the lamb on the spit. The lamb is scrawny, so it shouldn’t take that long to cook. It is a balmy night and Manuel orders two daiquiris. We sit at a dimly lit table, listening to the crackle as the grease falls into the fire. Looking up, I see a half-moon over the city. A gentle sea breeze blows through the palm fronds on the deck.
“Do you think,” Manue
l asks, pressing his mouth to my ear, “that it’s safe to talk here?” I decide I better get used to whispering. I tell him I don’t know. I’m not sure what safe is anymore, but I’m pretty certain that the roof is better than my room. “It took them two hours to get the room ready. Believe me, it doesn’t take two hours to make a bed.”
“I want to know whatever you can tell me. What do you think has happened to you?”
I tell him that I was stopped at the airport and not allowed in, that after a night they brought me here. That a man named Major Lorenzo is in charge of getting me home. But today they questioned me all morning about whom I met the last time I was here.
“And did you mention anyone?” Manuel asks, a tremor to his voice.
“No, I said I didn’t remember who I met.”
Manuel nods. “They must think you are a spy,” he says matter-of-factly.
“Me?” I laugh, though this does not strike me as funny.
“Yes, they are treating you decently for now, but they probably suspect you of spying.”
“But I’m not …”
“Of course.” Manuel pats my hand. “We know that. You must convince them.”
Despite its scrawniness, our lamb is slow to cook. Manuel and I watch it turning on the spit, the fat dripping down. Music comes on, a lively salsa beat, from the speaker beside our table. The group is Calle Ocho, Manuel informs me, named for the street in Miami’s Little Havana where they originate. Pirated music, Manuel says. “Dance with me.” He takes me in his arms and we dance, our cheeks pressed together.
He seems to be all arms, like an octopus, and I never know where a hand will appear next. On my bottom, on the side of my breast. I try to push them down, but they only reappear. We are about the same height and I can smell the pomade in his hair. His arms are stronger than I’d imagined and he holds me so hard I can scarcely breathe. “I’ve missed you,” he says. “Two years is a long time.”