by Maile Meloy
Valentine was sorry about the necklace, and wondered which photographs.
“I guess it’s better that he lit the pilot,” her mother said, getting her own voice back. “But I can’t believe him.”
Valentine was too sleepy to respond, and she didn’t really understand about the pilot. She was still looking at the garden, its shapes coming into focus. Her mother looked, too.
“Oh—” Gwen said, ducking under the clothesline. She kneeled in the dirt.
Valentine followed. The neat rows of lettuce had been ripped out, head by head, and left to lie there. The ground was cool and damp from the timed water, and the lettuce was still green, only trampled and wilted. The roots had been kicked up, and the carrots pulled and broken, and the strawberries ground into mush. The raspberry bushes that hung over the garden had been cut so the branches lay with their crushed fruit on the ground. The smell was of wet dirt and sweet berries and green leaves and rot. Valentine sat among the ruined heads of lettuce, and her mother lay down with a little moan and rested her head on Valentine’s knee.
Her mother’s hair was soft beneath her hand and she thought of Carlo jimmying the door and turning on the heat. She wondered if her father would have done something like that, if he’d stayed in town—if that was why it was impossible for him to stay. She guessed he wouldn’t have, but she couldn’t be sure. She wondered if Jake had been with Carlo, if he had stomped with his father through the plants, laughing, kicking the lettuce heads like soccer balls.
She thought they might sleep out here in the yard. It was so cool and quiet and dark, and the house was so hot. The thought that she would never see Jake again—not in the same way—made her sadder than the ruined garden or the missing things. She thought of him on her bedroom floor, propped on one arm to kiss her, and how cool and soft it felt, and then how it was gone.
THE LIGHT in the morning made him happy. It was one of the few things that did now. It arrived discreetly filtered, not to disturb him, then poured in when Pablino came to open the shutters, lighting up the dark corners and bleaching the embroidery on the nineteenth-century bench at the foot of the bed.
Agustín didn’t care about the embroidery. His daughters did; they said it was fading. The bench had come from an estate auction, at which someone’s children sold everything and split the money so they wouldn’t fight. His daughters wouldn’t have an auction when he died; they loved to fight, and would agree only in condemning his treatment of the furniture. When the generals were taking everything, all the best houses, Agustín had hidden his property behind unpruned trees, let the buildings go to hell, and drained the lake until it became a fetid swamp, something the generals could not want. When the junta was thrown out, and other families opened their houses for dances and dinners, Agustín didn’t. He hired gardeners, and the lake filled itself back in, but he stayed alone, behind the trees. But today his daughter was coming to lunch. It was easier to hide from the generals than from those girls.
Alma, his elder daughter, was preoccupied with her spoiled teenage children, but found time to telephone him about nothing. Lucha, the younger, was very thin, and recently blond, and appeared in magazines with fruit on her head, which deeply upset her aunts. She was a singer, of sorts, and childless in her thirties. Agustín sometimes wondered if the girls would be more tolerable if their mother had lived. They had been thirteen and fifteen when she died of a melanoma no one had noticed, and it seemed to have arrested them at that selfish age.
Agustín read the newspaper in bed, finished the orange juice and croissant off the tray, and ate the remaining jam with the coffee spoon. Then he rose to go outside. He wanted to prepare an English lesson for Pablino, or to begin reading a new book that had arrived, about the battle of Trafalgar, but Lucha would interrupt anything he began.
He walked to the stables, where the groom had bandaged the leg of the new quarter horse. Agustín inspected the wrapping, to be sure it was clean, and the horse rubbed its heavy head against his shoulder, smelling of sweat and liniment. At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed.
Out of loneliness, he had gone to a party in Buenos Aires for the Prince of Wales. He had watched the white-haired women in pearls and their men in dinner jackets, people who had railed against England over the Malvinas, shoving each other out of the way to get close to the prince. A woman had broken her necklace in the rush, and crawled after the pearls on the floor. Another had dug her heel into Agustín’s shoe. They were hardy and ruthless, his contemporaries, these people who had survived everything.
It was that night after the party, as Pablino was driving him home on the bad roads, that Agustín had offered to teach the boy English. Pablino was an Indian, small and agile, with pockmarks beneath his high cheekbones. He was also an orphan, his father killed in the miserable war, his mother of an unnamed disease. Asked his age, he answered without confidence: he was twenty-eight or twenty-nine. He seemed both younger and older than his years. He wasn’t forthcoming about his past, though Agustín knew he had picked cotton for his grandfather as a boy, and had rarely gone to school. He seemed uninterested in the future, although it was hard for Agustín to know. But he spoke of no plans.
“I must be too old to learn English,” he said.
“Nonsense,” Agustín said. “You’re still a child.”
They had begun with simple greetings the next day: good morning, hello, how are you. Pablino seemed politely interested in the lessons, but he gave nothing away, and Agustín thought he might seem politely interested if his employer offered to shoot an apple off his head.
Lucha and her husband arrived for lunch in their spotless gold car on the gravel drive. His skinny daughter climbed out in gold sandals that left her feet almost bare and a buttery pantsuit that swung loose around her ankles. The husband had a gut like all Americans, and wore sunglasses and shorts. He spoke Spanish like a tourist, and made no effort to learn more. Agustín had a grudging respect for the man’s stubbornness. They spoke English together.
“I have a new gun to show you,” Agustín told him. “An elephant gun.”
“Oh, those guns!” Lucha said. She kissed him on the cheek. She was very tan, as if nothing had happened to her mother. “Why don’t you ever come to the city, Papi? We miss you so.”
He wasn’t fooled by her flattery. He had been in an accident in a hired car not long ago, and Lucha hadn’t been able to conceal her disappointment that he was still alive, spending her money. He tried to think back to a happier time—two round little girls in his lap, a living, loving wife—but it was no longer he. Children were experiments, and his had failed.
He led his guests to the patio for a drink. Lucha asked Pablino for a Coca-Cola Light and his son-in-law asked for whiskey. Such things, before lunch.
“I wish you hadn’t rented the summer house to the French lady,” his daughter began.
“She’s a good tenant.”
“People take their lovers there, and pretend they don’t have wives and husbands somewhere else.”
“Oh, Lucha,” he said. “What else is new?”
“They swim naked in the pool.”
“And?”
“And it’s embarrassing! Our caretakers are there.”
“Adulterers tip well.”
“Papi, don’t you care about anything? If Mami were alive, she would care.”
If Mami were alive. That was always the thing. “They are old bodies in an old pool,” he said. “What does it matter?”
Lucha slumped back, pouting. “Well,” she said. “You won’t believe who came to me for a job. Inez Martín.”
Agustín caught his breath at the rush of feeling in his chest. He shifted in his chair, trying to understand this news.
“Do you remember the Martíns?” Lucha asked. “They went away after Menem came. They lost everything.”
“I thought she was in Italy.”
“She came back,” Lucha said. “She’s been working here. I nee
ded a second housekeeper, and Ofelia let her in. I couldn’t believe it. I used to idolize her. She was older than I was, and so glamorous, in beautiful clothes. And there she was on my sofa, in a cotton dress and cheap shoes. She wasn’t surprised to see me, she knew who the job was for.”
Agustín waited for the rest of the story. The little black dog came to the table, the one the maid spoiled and the cook overfed, and Lucha began to rub its head. She made small kissing noises over the arm of her chair, and the dog wriggled with happiness.
“Her husband?” Agustín finally asked.
“He had a heart attack, I think,” she said. “But he didn’t die.”
Agustín tried to remain composed. Inez Martín! She had utterly disrupted his life. They had met in the house of a friend, and she had talked very charmingly at dinner, and touched his arm in a way that gave him encouragement. It was a hundred years ago: twenty years ago, at least. She was much younger than he. He had persuaded her to meet him in the garden. Her dreadful husband was asleep in the house. Agustín’s wife was dead, and Inez brought him back to the world. He remembered her warm breath and the taste of her, and the cold stone bench beneath them. He thought he had been saved. He had pursued her through other people’s houses, meeting in empty rooms when the others were out. The chance of catching her eye and slipping away was what he lived for. He was exultant in the conquest. Then the inconvenient husband lost his position and his money, and Inez went with him to Italy, where he had family, to start again. The husband was a bore; not even failure could make him interesting. Agustín had begged her to stay but she left, and he had heard nothing since.
“I couldn’t hire her, of course,” Lucha said. “She’s my equal. I couldn’t have her washing my underwear. So I sent her to the crazy French, who wouldn’t know anything or care. Poor Inez.”
“She’s at the summer house?”
“I think so,” Lucha said. “Imagine, with the naked guests!”
There was a long silence. The little dog yipped, at being ignored, and Lucha reached down to take its ears in both hands. “What is it?” she asked, as the dog panted with pleasure. “What is wrong, my love?”
“How about seeing that elephant gun?” the American husband asked.
“Such a waste of money,” Lucha said.
“It’s an investment,” Agustín said, out of habit. “And I’m going to Africa.”
Lucha looked up at him with her mother’s big eyes. “What?” she asked.
The plan hadn’t existed until that moment. He had killed a rhinoceros and a bear many years ago, and mounted them on the walls, but he was old now. Even the rhinoceros and the bear were shot under circumstances in which it was not difficult to shoot a large animal. He had bought the elephant gun because it was a magnificent firearm for his collection. But now he thought Africa might do him good.
“I’m going to kill an elephant,” he said. He knew there was an English story about the embarrassment of doing so, but he couldn’t remember it clearly. Why should he not shoot an elephant?
The three of them went to his office, where Pablino unlocked the glass case containing the best guns.
Lucha perched on the edge of the desk. “You’re so lucky to have Pablino,” she said in English. “Ofelia is hopeless. Inez at least would be smart. Someday I’m going to steal Pablino from you.” She gave the boy a big, seductive smile.
Pablino passed the gun to Agustín, ignoring her. The boy might not understand her English, but he understood Lucha well enough. The gun was heavy, a double-barreled rifle that could put a bullet through an elephant’s skull. Agustín handed it to the American, who let out a low whistle.
“That’s gotta have some kick,” he said.
“I suppose so.”
“Let’s go see!” Lucha said, springing up off the desk.
Agustín had not thought of shooting the gun—the cartridges were expensive and the recoil was intimidating—but he felt himself pushed along by the children. Lucha had an idea where to go, and they all climbed into Agustín’s little Renault, Lucha driving and Agustín in the passenger seat with the gun. The American folded his big legs into the back. They drove through the pastures, past the cows, and Agustín got out to open and close each gate. The sky was expansive and blue, and he found his own property majestic. He thought of Inez, who had never seen it—it was still an overgrown swamp when he was chasing her around other people’s houses, keeping her a secret from his tyannical teenage daughters. But she couldn’t fail to find it majestic, too.
“Here,” Lucha said finally, and she parked the Renault at the end of a road, by the lake that had been drained and now was full again. “We used to come here when we were little.” She walked, looking up at the trees, her trouser legs swinging around her ankles. “There,” she said, and she pointed. Above them, hanging like a giant wasps’ nest from a high branch, was a brown woven bulb: a nest of papagayos.
“I’m not going to shoot parrots with an elephant gun,” Agustín said.
“You should see if it works, before you go off to Africa.” She was daring him, taunting.
“I want to go back to the house.”
“Just try to hit something,” Lucha said. She picked up a fallen branch with leaves still on it. “We’ll put this on top of the fencepost, and you can shoot it off.” She balanced it carefully across the post, brushed off her hands, and stepped back.
Agustín studied the branch on the fence, not twenty feet away. If this branch were the only kind of target he could hit, they would have to hold the elephant on a leash for him. He loaded the rifle, thinking he might as well burn money, then raised it and fired. The kick was much greater than he expected, and he stumbled backward. The shot missed the fencepost, but broke a piece of barbed wire that waved in the air. The parrots fled the nest overhead, screeching. He thought he might have dislocated his shoulder, the pain was so intense. He investigated the mobility of his arm. The branch sat untouched, and the screaming of the birds faded into silence.
“You should be careful,” Lucha said mildly, “that the elephant doesn’t get angry and come after you.”
“You want me to die anyway.”
“Of course I don’t!”
“I want to go back to the house.” His shoulder was bruised and his hands trembled. He got in the car with the muzzle of the gun between his feet, and let the American open the first gate.
Riding past the field of alfalfa growing for winter hay, Agustín saw a hare out the window, darting along the road just ahead of them, and he knew he could shoot it. He would be ready for the kick now. He roared at Lucha to stop the car and lifted the gun, keeping an eye on the hare. Then the car was filled with the loudest noise he had ever heard, as loud as a bomb, and the car shuddered as Lucha braked to a stop. A sharp smell of powder hung in the air. He looked down at the floor between his feet. A ragged circle the size of a dessert plate had been blasted away, and he could see the gravel of the road below. He seemed to have hit nothing important: the engine still chugged.
Lucha swore loudly and shrilly. “What if that had been my head?” she cried.
It could more likely have been Agustín’s own foot. The gun had nearly jumped out of his hands. He didn’t look at Lucha, or at her husband in the back seat. There would have been nothing left of the hare, in the unlikely event he had hit it. He put the safety on, although the gun was now empty. Lucha stomped on the gas, and the car lurched forward. Agustín watched the hole in the floor, the road moving in streaks of gray and brown below. He was ashamed, but he wouldn’t give his daughter any quarter.
They drove along the windbreak of trees, past the lawn and up to the house. Pablino came out to meet them, looked alarmed, and helped Agustín with something like tenderness into the house.
The three of them sat over an awkward lunch, Pablino bringing the plates and taking them away. The boy moved quietly and missed nothing. As the husband reached for a dropped fork, Pablino appeared with a new one on a plate. Agustín kept feeling the kic
k of the gun, and a ringing in his ears.
“Tell me more about the girl,” he said, when the dessert finally came. “Inez Martín.”
“She’s not a girl anymore,” Lucha said. “She’s older than I am.”
“How old?”
“Oh, God, maybe forty-five? She’s not young.”
It was hard to imagine. In his mind, Inez was in her twenties, a young wife, and he was trying to steal her away. At first she said she couldn’t leave her husband because she stood to lose everything. Later she couldn’t leave him because he had lost so much. And now she was working as a maid for a capricious Frenchwoman. Life could punch you in the throat no matter how you chose.
His daughter’s husband stretched his arms, presenting his belly and big chest. “Want to go to the yacht club Saturday and look at boats?” he asked. “There’s a race, so they’ll have some good ones.”
“I have to get the car fixed,” Agustín said. “And make plans for Africa.”
“Oh, Papi!” Lucha said. “Africa. You almost shot my head off !”
She gave Agustín a perfunctory kiss as they left. She smelled of flowers. He wondered how Inez smelled: of washing powder, or the kitchen, or some perfume from her life before. Lucha lifted her gold sandals into her husband’s car, and they drove away.
THE FRENCHWOMAN met Agustín at the door of his mother’s summer house herself, not sending someone to do it. Her hair was chestnut brown and her face was stretched smooth, but he wasn’t fooled. She was as old as he. She wore a long green silk robe with an embroidered neckline, and her arms were tan. He had called to say he would like to speak to Inez.
“It’s wonderful to see you,” the Frenchwoman said. “I’ve been so happy in your house.”
He murmured some approving sounds.
“Inez is a good maid,” she said. “Are you looking for someone to work? I can’t spare her right away, but eventually I can, when I go to France. I can take with me only the ones I brought.”