“Sí, it is terrible,” Marta exclaimed. “Everybody is getting it. One of those terrible new bugs. From China.” She crossed herself. “Be careful, Miguel, you don’t get it, too.”
“Ha!” Bobby barked out a laugh.
Luis glared at him, his spoon halted before his tightly closed lips. Bobby’s smile quickly vanished and he seemed to withdraw inwardly.
After the four cakes were served and the coffee was poured, the family gathered around the tree, as they did every Christmas Eve, to hand out a few special “parent-child” gifts.
“Bobby, you are eldest. You be Santa’s helper,” ordered Luis.
“Glad to, Papa,” Bobby replied with enthusiasm.
Michael watched with affection as his elder brother donned a red Santa’s cap and let loose a hearty round of “ho-ho-ho’s” before handing out the gifts. Although he made a pitifully thin Santa, Bobby was not above playing up the part for the sake of his niece and nephew. The children squealed with delight.
“Enough! Don’t be a fool, horsing around,” Luis barked.
Bobby’s shoulders drew back, but he smiled urbanely. “God bless us, everyone. Even you, old Scrooge.”
Luis grumbled as he shifted in his seat.
Bobby pressed on with enthusiasm, shaking the children’s gifts and making them guess. Everyone, save Luis, laughed and clapped as the children unwrapped their treasures. Instead, he sat with a bemused expression, watching as a king would his subjects.
Later, when the children were playing with their toys, the adults cast surreptitious glances at the remaining few packages under the tree. Just as when they were children, they wondered what gifts their parents had selected for them this year.
An awed hush fell in the room when Bobby opened his wrapping to find their great-uncle’s pocket watch nestled inside, the same revered uncle who’d left Luis the prime California land. Rosa and Manuel were equally surprised and delighted with the set of china that had been in Marta’s family for generations. Eyes were wide. These were not the usual token gifts: a camera, perhaps a new sweater. Tonight their parents had passed on the few family treasures they possessed. Now all eyes turned to Michael. Bobby searched under the tree but there was nothing left.
“Poor Tío Miguel didn’t get a gift,” said Maria Elena, wrapping a small, thin arm around his shoulders in consolation.
“I guess I was a bad boy,” he quipped, giving Maria Elena a hug.
At that Luis rose with great ceremony and walked before the fireplace. From the mantel he took an envelope, and after a dramatic pause, he delivered it to Michael with an expression of enormous pride.
Michael searched his father’s face for some clue, then quickly darted to the faces of Bobby, Rosa and Manuel. Their expressions were curious…guarded. Apparently no one knew what the envelope contained.
With a nod of gratitude he took the envelope from his father’s hands, opened it and read the legal documents enclosed. The color drained from his face.
“This is a promissory note.”
“I am a man of my word. I ask you to come to California to help and you came. He came!” Luis exclaimed to the others, turning his head to meet their gazes. “He has proved himself a son and now he will prove himself a Mondragon. He will rebuild the family honor in this valley. Michael will draw the designs, we will start again, as a family. I know this and it brings my old heart great joy to see.”
He moved closer, placing his hand upon the shoulder of his seated son with as much pride and dignity as any king would place a sword upon the shoulder of his champion knight. “I promise to you the land, the business, everything! In you I place the future of the Mondragon name.”
The burden of the honor was heavy on Michael’s shoulders. Unwelcome, unspoken promises were tied up with this promissory note: A promise of loyalty, of continuance. A promise to marry, to settle on the land, to produce an heir. Looking into his father’s eyes, he saw Luis’s determination to collect each promise.
“Father, how can you do this?” cried Rosa. She was the first to break the stunned silence and her bitterness rang clear. “Manuel and I, we’ve slaved for you all these years. Years that Miguel was away. We always understood…”
“Understood what, querida?” asked Luis, his voice strained in warning. Slowly he turned toward his only daughter. “You will always be part of the business. But your name is not Mondragon. Your son’s name is not Mondragon. This is what is understood.”
Rosa flushed as bright as a poinsettia, and she cast a furious glance at her husband. “Speak up, Manuel. Why must you always sit there like a beaten dog and let me fight your battles?”
Manuel flushed and his jaw set, forcing his lips into a tight line. Without a word, he rose and hurried from the room.
“What about you, Roberto?” she charged, turning to face her elder brother.
Bobby raised his glass to his lips with a shrug. “It’s Papa’s land to do with what he wants. And—” he paused, taking a sip “—Papa wants to give it to Michael.”
“You are the eldest son! It should be yours!”
Michael saw pain flash in Bobby’s eyes, but it quickly was doused with wine. “I paint murals, Rosa. What would I do with a landscape business?”
“Enough, all of you,” Michael said, standing in the middle of the tightening circle, unaware that he’d just sounded exactly like Luis. He silenced Rosa with a sharp glance, then turned to his father. Looking him in the eye, he handed back the papers. “Papa, this is a great honor.” He paused.
“Too great an honor.”
“You are fuerte, no?” Luis replied, pushing back the papers. “Strong. In heart and character.” He patted his son firmly on the back, and it shamed Michael to feel such joy in his father’s pride. “You will not turn your back on me. You will help the family, no?”
“Help, yes. You need me, that’s true. And I’ll do what I can. But I didn’t ask for all this in return.”
“Ask? Miguel, I give you everything. The lawn maintenance company, the nursery, the spring, everything! I give you freedom. Your own place makes you your own man. Nobody to tell you what to do, to make you feel small. With this a man with skills such as yours could be rich.”
He exaggerated, but to some extent, Michael knew it was true. The land was very valuable now, and the springwater could be tapped for untold amounts. He was humbled by the enormity of the gift.
“Gracias, Papa. Truly. However, I need time to think this through.”
“Think? Think?” Luis’s eyes were wide with shame and embarrassment that his most precious gift was refused. He swung his hand down like a machete. “You always need to think. Sometimes you think so much you don’t see with your heart. It turns to stone.”
Father and son stared at each other across a familiar impasse. It was always this way between them. Hot temper versus cool stone. Luis abruptly turned toward the Christmas tree. The lights were flashing green and red against the white and black of his father’s hair. His eyes were mournful. Michael thought he looked like a great bull that had just received the sword.
“Papa.” Michael moved to speak.
Luis cut him off with a backward wave of his hand. He glanced sharply at Marta. She stood quietly with her small hands clasped meekly before her apron, her eyes cast downward. Then, with a shrug of his wide shoulders, he turned and stomped from the room.
“So, you think this is fair, little brother?” Rosa said, her sharp voice breaking the brittle silence. “Is this why you came home? To get it all?”
“Rosa!” Marta exclaimed, horrified.
Michael, saddened and insulted by her bald-faced resentment, met her sharp gaze evenly. She was hurt, he knew this, and she was very angry to be ignored by her father. Poor Rosa, she would never be happy filling the traditional female role in their culture, despite their mother’s determination. She was too bold, too smart. She deserved better treatment than this. But so did he.
“First off,” he began, his voice low, trembling wit
h control, “I only came home because our father asked it of me. Second, I don’t want any of this.” His hand angrily slashed the air. “And if you’d listen instead of shout, you’d have heard me turn it down. Third, and pay good attention, hermana. If you paid half your mind to building up that husband of yours instead of tearing him down, perhaps Manuel would be able to take over the operation.
“As it stands, Papa is right. I am the only one in this family who can rebuild this nursery, and if you’d quiet your waspish tongue long enough to consider it, you’d realize it’s true. I didn’t come here to take anything from anybody. I came here to help my family. And I intend to honor that promise. But when I’m done, I’m out of here. It’s clear nothing has changed. I’m still ‘pobre negrito’ in your eyes. Undeserving. But I’ve learned something in that wide world out there. I deserve everything I work hard for.”
He scanned the faces of his family. They were flustered and silent. Then he followed his father out to the front porch.
He found Luis standing, one foot before the other, leaning against the porch railing. His eyes stared out at the dark. Michael knew it must seem to the old man that in rejecting the land he rejected him. Was it true? he wondered, gazing at the fertile property stretched out before him. Was he rejecting his father or the land?
“I will give you one year,” he said aloud. “This I will do out of love for you and my mother.”
“One year is not enough. We cannot rebuild in that time. Two. I need two. We can do much in that time.”
Michael set his jaw, realizing that a two-year leave would jeopardize all he’d worked for. Yet his father was right. Two years would be enough time to begin again.
“Agreed,” he replied. “If you promise not to hound me about my decision. After that—” he placed the papers firmly back into his father’s hand “—we will talk again.”
His father turned his head and studied Michael, staring intensely into his eyes, as though to catch a loophole. Whatever he found must have satisfied him because he nodded, squinting, and at last accepted back the papers.
“Starting when?”
“March. In time to complete orders for the spring.”
“Not soon enough! I begin in two weeks.”
“Mail me the materials. I’ll do it from Chicago.”
A loud, boisterous laugh burst from Luis’s lips and he wrapped his arm around his son’s shoulder, squeezing possessively. “How can I lose?” he asked in a voice gruff with emotion. “I know my land. She is like a fine, fat woman. All fertile and sweet smelling. You will plant your seeds in her and she will make you hers. See? I know you, too. You are my son. You are machismo. You will never turn your back on her that you love most.”
In Chicago, Ascension Church was ablaze in light and song as the jubilant congregation celebrated midnight mass. Though it was packed to the rafters, Charlotte and Helena sat in the reserved section near the altar, a boon for spending the day decorating the church. Charlotte looked with a proprietary air at the yards of crisp white linen trimmed in green embroidery, the six handsome balsams twinkling in white lights, and clustered around them the scores of fresh red and white poinsettias.
“Beautiful,” Charlotte sighed.
Father Frank offered them a wink of approval from the altar.
Charlotte’s heart was filled with thoughts of beauty this Christmas. Dr. Harmon had presented his final plan and, though she was shaken, the composite of her new face was so beautiful he could have wrapped and tied it up with a bow as a gift.
She’d stared at the sketches. “I can’t believe that will be me,” she’d said, breathless.
“Believe it. I can make it happen.”
“But the nose. You’ve changed it. It isn’t mine.”
“It will be,” he replied, persistent.
“I don’t know. My mother, she won’t like to see me so changed.”
“How do you like it, Miss Godowski?”
Her gaze lingered on the beautiful curve of the jaw. “I love it.” She then slipped a piece of paper over the face so only the eyes were left showing. “Is it still me?”
“Of course it is. And how clever of you to look at the eyes, Charlotte. That, my dear, reveals the real you.”
I wonder, she thought to herself. Yet, she had agreed to the design, refraining from telling her mother about the nose. Her new face was her gift to herself. Her gift to her mother was her new job. Dr. Harmon had kindly offered her the position of accountant for his practice at a handsome salary. Now her mother wouldn’t have to worry about the money coming in. She’d surprise her mother with the news when they broke the fast after mass tonight.
When the choir began singing “Joy to the World,” Charlotte joined in, singing loudly, joyfully—meaning every word. Her world was beautiful, full of joy and hope. How could her heart contain such happiness?
Five
Three months later, Dr. Harmon methodically removed the bandages that wrapped Charlotte’s head while she lay motionless upon the hospital bed. Like a high priest and a mummy, she thought, staring out from an open patch. Three men and a woman in their late twenties, cloaked in white jackets and clutching clipboards, all inched closer, their eyes focused on her face. They were residents in cosmetic surgery, Dr. Harmon had told her. Her case was particularly interesting, and over the past few weeks, they’d stopped by frequently to check her vitals, ask the same questions and read over her chart. Dr. Harmon allowed no one but himself to direct this case. Charlotte sensed from the residents and nurses that he’d taken an especially keen interest in her case, and within the walls of Six West, where Dr. Harmon ruled, she felt like a queen.
Two weeks had passed since her operation, weeks of desperate arguments with her mother. Weeks of praying that the operation would be a success while beating her breast in worry if she even had a right to pray, now that she’d “defied God’s will,” as her mother claimed. Charlotte felt again the prickly surge of resentment. She was not her mother’s sacrificial lamb. How easy for her mother to condemn her decision. Helena had a pretty face.
Charlotte didn’t blame her mother, however. Charlotte was simply past the point of being able to accept her ugliness as God’s will. To her mind, God gave her this life and it was up to her to make the best of it.
Well, she thought, tapping her foot against the bed’s cool metal rail in a dance of anxiety. This was the moment of truth. There would be no more waiting. As the bandages were unwound and gathered from around her head, she could smell the oddly sweet, pungent odor of dried blood and her stitches. Loosened from the constraints, her jaw throbbed, the nerve endings tingled.
“Just a few more…” muttered Dr. Harmon. The seconds seemed an eternity as his delicate fingers twisted and unwrapped the bandages.
When at last the final layer was removed, Charlotte’s face felt tingly and raw, exposed to the elements. Dr. Harmon examined her, touching her face with confidence. It stung where his fingers met skin. When he was done he cradled her head in his nimble hands and studied her with his pale, piercing eyes. Time seemed to stand still as she searched his face for some sign of his approval or distress.
“Are you ready?” he asked at length. His tone was fatherly.
She couldn’t speak. Very gingerly she brought her fingers to her jaw and palpated the soft flesh. It felt squishy and swollen, like a partially deflated balloon. Yet even in its fullness she detected the unmistakable curve of a jaw and, traveling farther forward, a jutting of bone that could only be a chin.
She glanced at her mother. Helena was peering down, her eyes squinting and her mouth working silently. She looked appalled.
Charlotte swallowed hard. Her throat was as dry as a desert.
“Mirror?” Dr. Harmon asked a nurse.
It took a Herculean effort just to sit up. The room spun and nausea rose in her throat, but she fought it back down, determined to sit. In an odd way, she felt as though she were about to meet someone new. Someone important.
“Now, r
emember that you will still see swelling and some bruising. That will be with you for quite a while, but gradually your face will appear normal.”
She felt alarmed. He sounded very tense. Had something gone wrong? She tried to speak, but the incisions inside of her mouth and the swelling made it hard to move her lips. “Normal?” she mumbled.
A resident piped in. “He filled it in nicely, but it’s so early yet.”
“What do I look like?”
“Why don’t you see for yourself.” Dr. Harmon handed Charlotte the mirror.
Charlotte held the mirror in her hands for a long moment, gathering her courage. Then she manipulated the glass, peeking first at her forehead and eyes, old friends that remained unchanged. Then slowly, hesitatingly, she tilted the mirror.
“Charlotte?” Dr. Harmon moved closer. “Are you all right?”
No, she wasn’t all right! She was afraid. Terrified. Charlotte set down the mirror with agonizing slowness and laid back upon the bed in degrees, closing her eyes. The world was spiraling. She felt as though her spirit had risen from her body and floated in the air, into some other dimension, like some people described near-death experiences. Hadn’t she died in a way? Wasn’t she some wandering spirit?
For there was no doubt, the Charlotte she had been was no more.
Helena huddled beside her daughter’s bed, her fingers speeding over the rosary beads and her lips moving silently in prayer. The hour was late; the lights were lowered to a dim green in the small, bare hospital room. Someone was moaning in the next room, a low keening sound that failed to arouse the nurses, who were busy preparing for the eleven o’clock shift change. They made eerie shadows on the wall as they passed the door. Throughout Six West there was an uneasy loneliness in the night quiet. Patients and nurses alike shared an unspoken understanding. Everyone was simply trying to get through the night.
Helena shivered and returned to her prayers. She hated hospitals, would rather die in the streets than return to one. Outside the room a pair of nurses were discussing Charlotte’s case: bandages off today…swelling normal…Percodan for pain on demand. After the medical report, the tone lowered to personal mumbles. Helena’s mouth twisted in annoyance. No doubt they were nattering about Charlotte’s transformation. Everyone on the floor was talking about it.
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