The Falling Woman

by Pat Murphy

  ‘Come with me? But your father . . .’ She stopped. ‘You’ll be spending Christmas with your father.’

  ‘I want to go with you,’ I said quietly. ‘I need to.’

  I watched her face in the changing light. She was no longer frozen: her eyes narrowed and her mouth turned down, weary, unhappy, maybe frightened. Her hand clenched the steering wheel and the lights flashed red, blue, green. ‘I’ll be leaving soon,’ she said. ‘Another dig. I can’t . . .’

  The dream had gone wrong. I stepped back from the car. ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Forget it. Just forget it.’

  ‘Here,’ she said. She reached in the backseat and pulled a blue feather from the band in the straw hat. ‘This is a quetzal feather. They bring good luck.’

  I stood in the driveway, holding the blue feather as she backed the car away from the house. The colored lights reflected from the wet pavement, and her tires hissed as she drove away. I threw the feather down on the pavement. When I looked for it in the morning, the wind had blown it away.

  I woke to the scratchy sound of a stewardess’s voice over the loudspeakers. ‘Please fasten your seat belts and return your seats to their upright position. We are now landing at the Mérida airport. We hope you have a pleasant stay in Mérida, and thank you for flying Mexicana.’ The voice repeated the message in rapid Spanish. I understood a few phrases in the flow of words, vocabulary from the high school Spanish I had taken long ago.

  The man in the seat beside me smiled at me and said, ‘Feeling better?’

  I nodded, smiled the mechanical smile, and turned to the window to avoid conversation. Through the window, I looked out on a dusty-green carpet pockmarked with cigarette burns, streaks and patches of gray-white. As the plane came in for a landing at Mérida, the carpet became trees and scrubby bushes; the pockmarks, small fields and roads. I could see thin lines of black slicing through the carpet: roads heading for the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean coast. Then the plane was down and I could see only the runway and the terminal.

  I felt disoriented and peculiar. The world outside the plane window looked flat and unreal, like the image on a TV screen. The sun was too bright; I squinted, but it still hurt my eyes. The plane pulled into the shade of the terminal and the other people on board were stretching and talking and pushing into the aisles, eager to get somewhere. The man who had been sitting beside me was standing already. He glanced at me. ‘Can I help you with anything?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, thank you.’ I did not want help. I wanted to be left alone. When he did not move away, I began rummaging beneath the seat for my purse. By the time I found it, he had given up and was heading away down the aisle. While the other passengers filed out, I took a small mirror from my cosmetics case and looked at myself. I was pale. When I lifted my sunglasses, I could see the dark circles below my eyes. I sat for a while, letting the rest of the passengers crowd toward the doors. I followed the last one out.

  As I stepped out onto the boarding stairs at Mérida, I realized that no one was going to stop me. I had flown away from home, from my job, from my former lover. No one had stopped me. I hesitated, squinting into the bright sun. The boarding ramp seemed very high; the terminal, far away. Remembering my vision of falling, I clung to the handrail, unable to take the first step down the stairs.

  ‘Is there a problem, señorita?’ asked the steward standing beside me.

  ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘No problem.’ The metal stairs made tinny noises beneath my feet. I could feel the heat rising from the asphalt as I walked to the terminal.

  I stepped into the shade of the terminal, my head up, my smile in place. I waited for my suitcase to roll by on the belt, letting the crowd surge around me. I tried to catch familiar words in the babble of Spanish, but had no success. I grabbed my suitcase when it rolled past and stepped outside the terminal.

  ‘Taxi?’ asked an old man standing beside a dirty dark blue Chevrolet. I nodded and told him in my best high school Spanish that I wanted to go to the ruins, but he refused to understand. ‘Sí,’ he said. ‘To Mérida.’ He wore a straw hat pushed back on his head, and when he smiled he showed broken teeth stained with nicotine. ‘Downtown,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘To Dzibilchaltún.’ I stumbled over the name and the cabby frowned.

  The young man from the plane appeared beside me and put a hand very lightly on my shoulder. ‘You want to go to Dzibilchaltún?’ he asked, then spoke to the cabby in rapid Spanish. The two of them argued for a moment, then the man from the plane said to me, ‘He’ll take you there for seven hundred pesos. OK? And if you are in town, you must promise to look me up. My name is Marcos Ortega. You can usually find me in Parque Hidalgo. Look for a hammock vendor named Emilio. He’s my friend. He’ll know if I’m around.’ His hand was still on my shoulder. ‘Promise?’

  I nodded and gave him a smile that was almost real. As I drove off in the cab, I looked back to see him standing at the curb, staring after me with a curious expression.

  The streets of the city of Mérida are narrow and winding, little better than alleys. The houses and shops crowd tightly together, forming an unbroken wall of peeling facades painted in colors that might have been brilliant once: turquoise, orange, yellow, red. The sun fades the paints to muted shades, gentle pastels.

  I saw the city in glimpses from the backseat of the cab: a row of shopfronts, each painted a different shade of blue, all peeling. A dim interior seen through an open doorway and a hammock swaying within. A group of men lounging on a street corner, smoking. A small park with a statue in the center. A fat woman leading a small boy down the narrow sidewalk. A row of stone buildings with carved stone facades bordering on the edge of a park. Trees crowned with red-orange blossoms. My cab narrowly missed a motorbike carrying a man, a woman, a baby, and a little girl, then swerved around a buggy drawn by a weary-looking horse. Finally, we headed out of town along a wider road.

  The highway ran straight through a landscape of yellowing trees and scrub, broken now and then by a cluster of small huts. We passed a crew of men who were repairing the road; the cabby tooted his horn and passed them without slowing.

  I thought about telling the driver that I had changed my mind: he should turn around and go back to Mérida. But I could not explain that in Spanish and he was already turning off the highway onto a side road. My hands were in fists and I forced them to relax. I tried to take deep breaths, tried to calm down.

  I had screwed up royally this time, and I knew it. I was arriving with no warning in a place where I was not wanted. I had been stupid to think that I could do this. I felt sick.

  On one side of the road, spiky plants grew in unbroken rows. On the other side, the trees and scrub towered over the cab. The cabby did not slow for potholes; the cab jolted and bumped over rocks and raised a cloud of dust. We passed a cluster of battered stucco houses. The driver slowed to let chickens scatter before us, then drove through an archway and down a dirt road to a cluster of palm-thatched huts that looked even more dilapidated than the stucco houses.

  The dust settled slowly. The place seemed deserted. Washing – three T-shirts and a pair of jeans – hung on a line by one hut. The tarp that shaded a group of folding tables flapped lazily in a light breeze.

  The cabdriver opened the door and said something in Spanish. I hesitated, then climbed out to stand beside the cab. ‘Where are the ruins?’ I asked. ‘Las ruinas?’ He frowned and waved a hand at the huts.

  I saw a white-haired man duck through the curtained doorway of one of the huts, squint at the cab, and start walking toward us. The sun burned on my face. I tried to smile at the white-haired old man, but I was glad my sunglasses hid my eyes. ‘You may want the cab to wait,’ the man said. He stood, his hands in his pockets, in the scant shade of a tree. ‘Not much to see here and it’s a long walk back to the bus stop on the highway.’

  ‘Isn’t there an excavation here?’ My voice was just a little unsteady.

  The old man did not take his hands f
rom his pockets. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘But there’s still not much to see.’

  ‘I’m looking for Elizabeth Butler,’ I said. ‘I’m her daughter, Diane Butler. Is she here?’

  He took one hand from his pocket to push his straw hat farther back on his head. His eyes were blue and curious. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well.’ A pause. ‘Then perhaps you’d better let the taxi go.’ Another pause. ‘Liz didn’t tell me that you were coming.’

  ‘She didn’t know.’

  ‘Ah.’ He nodded.

  ‘Is she here?’

  ‘She’s swimming. I’ll send someone down to get her.’ He turned and looked toward the huts. A man was strolling across the plaza toward us. ‘Hey, John,’ the old man called. ‘Could you go get Liz? She has a visitor.’

  Behind me, the cabby was pulling my suitcase from the trunk. He set it in the dust beside me and said something in Spanish. I fumbled for money, grateful to be able to look away from the old man’s eyes for a moment. The cab wheeled around in another cloud of dust and left me there.

  The man took my arm in one hand and my suitcase in the other. ‘You must be hot and thirsty. I’ll fix you a drink while we wait for your mother.’

  ‘I guess she’ll be surprised to see me,’ I said. I tried to ignore the tears that had started to spill over. I wasn’t even sure why I had started crying.

  He wrapped a warm, dusty arm around my shoulders. ‘Take it easy now. It’ll be okay.’

  I could not stop. The tears seemed to come of their own volition, through no fault of mine, and his voice seemed very far away. The bandanna he gave me smelled of dust.

  ‘I’ll make you something to drink and you can tell me about all this.’ He turned me around gently and started me walking.

  ‘Sorry . . .’ The word caught in my throat and I couldn’t say more.

  ‘Nothing to be sorry about,’ he said, and he kept his arm around my shoulders. He led me across a central plaza and into one of the huts. The curtain that blocked the doorway fell closed behind us.

  His hut was a single whitewashed room, furnished with two lawn chairs, a cooler, a footlocker, a small folding table that served as a desk, and a hammock that was looped over the hut’s center beam and pushed to one side of the room. Half the hut was filled with cardboard boxes, picks, jacks, and shovels.

  He made me sit in one of the lawn chairs, rummaged in a footlocker for plastic cups, and then in the cooler for a bottle of gin. ‘I’m Anthony Baker,’ he told me. ‘Call me Tony. If you’re Liz’s daughter, you’ll drink gin and tonic.’

  I nodded and tried to smile. I was having no more success now than I had had outside. The smile kept twisting on my face and turning into something else.

  Tony poured two drinks and fished in the bottom of the cooler for ice cubes. I studied his face when he handed me a glass. He looked like someone’s favorite uncle. He sat in the other lawn chair and rested his drink on one knee, his hand on the other.

  ‘Do you get many unexpected visitors?’ I asked.

  ‘Not many.’

  I took a sip. The drink was strong and tasted faintly of melted ice and plastic. ‘Sorry to take up your time,’ I said.

  ‘No problem. I’ve got plenty of time,’ he said. ‘That’s one thing archaeologists come to understand. We’ve got time. The ruins have been here for thousands of years; they’ll wait a little longer.’ He studied my face over the rim of his glass. ‘Being in the Yucatán for a while will change your view of time. The people who live here think like archaeologists. Two thousand years ago, their great-great-grandfathers burned over a plot of land in the monte and planted corn with a digging stick. This spring, Salvador will burn over a plot of land in the monte and plant corn with a digging stick. People who work on such a grand time scale don’t worry so much about how long it takes to have a drink with the daughter of an old friend.’ He shrugged. ‘You stay here a while, and you learn that attitude. You learn to take your time.’

  I looked down at my drink, turning the plastic glass in my hands. ‘I had to talk to my mother,’ I said. ‘I know I should have written or called or something, but . . .’ I shrugged. ‘It’s pretty weird just showing up here with no warning.’

  ‘Some people say it’s strange for a grown man to spend his summers digging in the dirt. Personally, I try to avoid making value judgments.’

  ‘I should have written first,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t see that it’s a real problem,’ he said. ‘We can always string another hammock. You can learn to sleep in a hammock, can’t you?’

  I nodded.

  He took the empty glass from my hand and poured me another drink without asking if I wanted one. I was taking my first sip when I heard footsteps outside the hut, a knock on the wooden doorjamb. ‘Hey, Tony,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘What’s this about a visitor?’

  The blaze of light when the curtain was lifted aside blinded me for a moment. I blinked, staring toward the figure in the doorway.

  My mother’s hair had more white in it than I remembered. Her hair was damp, the tendrils curling on her neck as they dried. She carried a towel slung over her shoulder.

  She was frowning. I tried to smile, but once again, I had lost the knack. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Surprise.’ I stood up, feeling awkward. I did not know what to do with my hands. She looked worried, I thought, in that first moment. Startled and worried, not angry.

  ‘Diane?’ she said. ‘Are you all right? What the hell are you doing here?’

  Tony was making himself busy, pouring another drink.

  ‘My father’s dead,’ I said. ‘He died two weeks ago.’ I did not cry and my voice was steady. I waited for a reaction, but my mother’s expression did not change. She sat down on the edge of the footlocker.

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  ‘He died of a heart attack.’ I was talking too fast, but I could not seem to stop. ‘I wanted to talk to you. Dad never wanted me to talk to you. I thought 1 could come and stay here for a while.’

  ‘Here?’ She still looked worried, a little puzzled. ‘For a while,’ she said. ‘I suppose you could.’

  ‘She could take the place of that student of mine who cancelled,’ Tony said, handing her a gin and tonic. ‘Don’t you think? We’ll teach you to sort potsherds,’ he said to me.

  I was watching my mother. She nodded cautiously and accepted the drink that Tony had mixed. Did she look relieved? Annoyed? Concerned? I could not read her face.

  ‘Do you want to do that, Diane?’

  ‘I’d like to try it,’ I said. ‘I promise I won’t be in the way. I’ll be no trouble at all. Really.’

  Tony sat in the lawn chair and my mother sat on the footlocker and they talked about which hut I would stay in, which work crew I would be assigned to, and other inconsequentials. I held my glass and watched my mother’s face and hands as she talked. For the moment, I relaxed.

  Before dinner, my mother took me on a tour of the central part of the ruins. She walked at a brisk pace, talking about people who had been dead for over a thousand years. She seemed quite fond of these dead people. As she walked, she looked at the rocks around us, at the trees, at the ground beneath our feet. She did not look at my face – she did not seem to be avoiding my eyes; she just found the rocks and trees and barren ground more interesting than me. Her straw hat shaded her face. She wore khaki pants and a baggy long-sleeved shirt.

  We walked past a low wall and a crumbling fragment of an archway. ‘The old church,’ my mother said. ‘The Spanish built it with Indian labor and the Mayan temple stones.’

  She spoke in fragments: short bursts of information, a verbal shorthand that eliminated the little words that slow a sentence down. Her way of speaking seemed to match her general attitude; she seemed to be overflowing with the willingness to act, to start new projects, to finish up old ones, to clear jungles and build pyramids. She was a head shorter than me, but I had to work to match her pace.

  ‘Just found an interesting possibility over there
,’ she said, gesturing vaguely. ‘Underground chamber, I think. We’ll start working on that Monday.’

  The sun reflected off the rocks and I was grateful for my sunglasses. The sky was an uninterrupted blue; no clouds, no hope of shade. Even the jungle did not look cool: the trees looked thirsty and worn. The path was flanked by mounds of rubble from which trees sprouted.

  ‘You’ll need a hat,’ my mother said, glancing at me. ‘Keep the sun off, or you’ll end up with a stroke. You can pick one up in the market.’

  I nodded quickly, aware that this was the first time she had acknowledged that I would be staying for a time. At the hut, Tony had made suggestions as to where I would stay, what I could do. My mother had simply agreed.

  ‘I didn’t know that it would be this hot,’ I said.

  ‘Sometimes it’s not,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it’s hotter.’ She flashed me a quick smile, so quick that when it was gone I could scarcely believe I had seen it at all. ‘When the rains come, it gets stickier, but stays just as hot.’ She lifted off her hat and ran a hand back through her hair without hesitating or breaking stride.

  I had seen pictures of the ruins at Chichén Itzá, Copán, and Palenque: great crumbling heaps of blocky stones, nearly hidden beneath tropical bromeliads and drooping vines; massive pyramids and sculpted facades; tremendous stone heads that glowered from the lush vegetation. I had expected gloom and mystery, the promise of secrets. Here, the sun was too bright for secrets. I could see no pyramids.

  At the end of the path we followed, a small building constructed of sand-colored stone stood atop a low platform. The building was a box with a flat roof. On top of the box was another smaller box. On top of that, a third box. Like a stack of three building blocks: big, medium, and small. Except for the roof, the building looked like a child’s drawing of a house: a neat flat wall with a dark rectangle for the door, two square windows.

  ‘. . . Temple of the Seven Dolls,’ my mother was saying. ‘Only building that’s been reconstructed. We’re working on some of the outlying temples over that way.’ Another vague wave of her hand toward the setting sun.