The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos

by Margaret Mascarenhas

  Twenty minutes later, as Carlos Alberto pulled into the driveway of Quinta Quintanilla, Consuelo realized her heart was no longer pounding, but dancing joyously to the beat of the love song Ismael had composed on the day Lily was born.

  Minutes before her heart attack six months earlier, Consuelo had been sitting in her studio reading a review of her exhibition at Galería Venezuela:

  Sadly, Consuelo Martinez has lost her edge. Anchored in the complacent and tautological lexicon of the middle-aged woman, she has safely retired to the comfort of decorative artesanía of a kind popular with foreign buyers, Europeans and Americans, who pick it up in bulk and ship it back to their overpriced art stores—the kind of stores that also sell books on indigenous cultures, jewelry of silver and turquoise, handmade wind chimes and feathery dreamcatchers. The contrast between her insipid offerings and the powerful canvases of Antonio Bosca is like night and day.

  Consuelo hadn’t minded the critics’ prosaic classification of her work; it had sold out, and that was what counted. For her, the paintings were mere reflections of her principal oeuvre—her family, immediate and extended, with her own heart pulsating at its core, fed and also consumed by the exigencies of loving and being loved. She might have preferred not to have been shown alongside, and compared to, the pretentious Bosca, who painted enormous psychedelic renditions of his own penis and called them self-portraits, but she knew it was largely the titillation of his work that had amplified the gallery’s public exposure. She wondered how she might convince Carlos Alberto to accept some money from the sales without offending him. Suddenly, her head felt light, her stomach queasy. Her chest tightened, and there was a peculiar taste like boot polish in her mouth. Unsteadily, she made it inside to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. That is all she can recall before she lost consciousness.

  What she remembers after is lying in a blindingly white room while a white-haired man more or less her own age, with ruggedly distinguished features and carefully manicured hands, said he was Dr. Morales and that she was going to be fine.

  After five days, before discharging her, he had asked her a number of questions, one of which was, “And are you and your husband sexually active?”

  “Ay, Doctor,” Lily had giggled nervously. “What a question! My mother is seventy-four years old!”

  At this Consuelo had smiled in the manner of a conspirator at Dr. Morales and he had smiled back.

  Ignoring Lily, he said, “Resuming sexual relations after a heart attack often involves more than the physical aspects of the stress on the heart. You should wait at least a month. And even then, it is not unusual for the patient or their partner to be at least somewhat fearful. Take it slow the first few times.”

  If Dr. Morales were before her now, Consuelo would ask him why it is called a heart attack, as if the poor heart were at fault. The heart is not the betrayer. The betrayer is time and the cumulative effect of shocks to the system. In her heart, Consuelo feels as young as a girl of twenty.

  After Consuelo’s release from the hospital, Lily had insisted on preparing all her mother’s meals, shunning Marta’s assistance, relying only on Consuelo’s instruction. By the end of the first week, she had learned eight recipes—one for each day of the week, and one extra, just in case:

  Sunday Mondongo

  Monday Arepas con carne mechada

  Tuesday Sancocho de gallina

  Wednesday Arroz con chipichipe

  Thursday Repollo con sardinas

  Friday Pescado a la campesina

  Saturday Arroz con caraotas negras y plátano

  Extra Casabe

  In spite of Lily’s well-intentioned efforts, and her own desire to please, in spite of diligently adding her mother’s secret ingredient, for two weeks Consuelo had not been able to stomach what her daughter cooked. The medication made her nauseous to the point where she could barely keep anything down, with the exception of chicken broth, unsweetened gelatin, lemongrass tea, and the diluted juice of the passion fruit. The last was prescribed by Amparo, for reigniting the zest for life.

  After thirty days of Consuelo’s convalescence, Ismael had still not returned from the Delta. Sometimes she would awaken to the sound of her own voice calling out to him in her sleep. She would be embarrassed when Lily came running in to soothe her, as if their roles had been reversed and she, Consuelo, were the child now. But Lily could not sustain the role of mother to her mother for long. All of a sudden, tears would fill her long-lashed eyes and she would climb into Consuelo’s bed. She would lay her head lightly on the pillow with her cheek against Consuelo’s cheek. Then Consuelo would become the mother again, stroking her daughter’s forehead as if she were a little girl who was having a bad dream.

  “Ay, mi amor,” Consuelo sighed one day, “if only I had been a much younger woman when I met your father, we would have more time together, you and I.” Almost as soon as the words left her mouth, she was sorry to have said them. A solitary tear rolled down Lily’s cheek and splashed right into Consuelo’s heart where it formed a tiny saline pool of remorse.

  “Can you imagine,” she continued, smiling, trying to change the subject, “so far, I’ve only managed to teach you seven recipes.” Lily had laughed through her tears then, because Consuelo’s recipes numbered in the thousands.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mami, no matter how much you teach me, I’ll never be as good as you.” Lily placed her lips softly against her mother’s cheek, curled her fingers in Consuelo’s long hair, and they fell asleep like that together.

  Consuelo had never been sick before in her life. For the first time she considered her own mortality and worried about the possibility that she might become a burden to her family.

  “Listen, mi vida,” she said a few days later, “I’m all right now. But if there should ever come a time when I am no longer myself, I want you to forbid any procedures that would prolong my life in a suspended state. I do not wish to exist as a vegetable. And tell your father I will be very angry if he defies me in this matter.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Mami,” Lily said, her mouth twisting, “nothing is going to happen to you.”

  Later, Consuelo felt ridiculous for having spoken so theatrically, for by the seventh week she had recuperated fully and begun a series of paintings of surrealistically enlarged hearts.

  Ismael arrived, pregnant with the story of the campaign led by the Warao leader Carolina Herrera to stop a power line from passing through the tribe’s rain-forest habitat. His new series of songs using the instruments crafted by the inhabitants of the Delta was incomplete, and he would need to go back. He would take Consuelo with him.

  It was Lily who interrupted him, in an accusatory tone, with the news of Consuelo’s heart attack. And though Consuelo felt well enough, and even eager, to travel with her husband, it was Lily who had not recovered from the heart attack.

  “I want Mami to stay with me,” Lily said to her father. “She is not in a condition to travel to el culo del mundo. What if something were to happen? No, no y no. Mami stays here. And you should stay too. Whoever heard of a viejo of seventy-plus years singing songs in the jungle?” Ismael had looked surprised, as if Lily had suddenly spoken in tongues; it was the first time she had expressed contempt for his life as a poet and musician.

  Consuelo was as taken aback by her daughter’s outburst at Ismael. But since Ismael said nothing to defend himself, she too said nothing, though she caught her husband’s eye, signaled to him without words. For both of them, Lily came first. There had never been any question about that.

  “You should go ahead without me,” she said. And so, Ismael gently kissed his wife on the lips. He leaned toward his daughter, who offered him her cheek but would not meet his eyes. Then he turned away, walked out the door, got into his car, and drove away at his usual reckless speed.

  Lily fretfully broke the silence left in his wake. “You see, Mami, how stubborn he is? Even now he will not give in.”

  Consuelo did not voice her sus
picion that Lily might have wanted to force both her parents to stay in one place for reasons that had little to do with the state of her mother’s heart. As the weeks and months passed, she did not say that she missed her husband every day and every night with every fiber of her being, or that she lived each day with the blade of separation in her heart. She did not confide to her daughter that when her heart finally did thump its grand finale, she hoped it would be while making love with Ismael, her long, full legs wrapped around his waist. She did not express any of these things because she had seen a bluish tinge to Lily’s lip reminiscent of that terrible day when Lily had lost her memory.

  For six months after she and Ismael had silently agreed to let Lily have her way, they had neither seen nor spoken to one another, and all her artwork during that period had been gloomy drawings of still objects in charcoal, reflecting the darkness in her heart.

  Now that he is here in front of her, filling the air around her with his essence, now that the tempest in the hospital is over, now that Lily is safe at home, Consuelo feels that she must ease herself into familiarity with her husband, gingerly, as though wading into ice-cold water. She finds she cannot bring herself to address him directly, as though a word or even a meeting of the eyes lasting longer than a few seconds would upset a delicate balance of her emotions.

  And there is still Lily to consider.

  Unsolicited, Marta has expressed to Consuelo her theory on the subject of Lily. According to Marta, Lily has only one problem: a paralyzing fear of losing people she loves. “And you know the source of it,” says Marta. She means Irene.

  Consuelo had met Irene’s parents only once, at the only cocktail party they ever threw, when they first arrived in Tamanaco. And she had been surprised that Irene would be so readily allowed to spend Lily’s birthday in distant Maquiritare with virtual strangers, strangers who had banned her from their home for nearly two years. Although she and Ismael had finally capitulated to Lily’s request to bring Irene, Consuelo hadn’t really expected Irene’s parents to consent to it. But the afternoon before the trip, Lily had gone to Irene’s house to ask their permission and returned with Irene. Consuelo had been flummoxed when she inspected the contents of Irene’s suitcase—toiletries and makeup of a sort that should have belonged to a much older girl, string bikinis, designer jeans, dainty boutique T-shirts with sequins, and abnormally high platform shoes.

  “Some of these things will not really be appropriate where we’re going, cariño,” she said, pulling out the most irrelevant items and setting them aside. “I’m sorry if Lily didn’t explain properly. You see, we are going to the jungle. You’ll need more rugged clothes and shoes and you don’t want to spoil these. Lily can lend you some things to wear on the trip.” Then she remembered Irene’s feet. “And perhaps you’ll be able to fit into a pair of my tennis shoes,” she said delicately, feigning a lapse of memory concerning the last time this girl had worn her shoes, her most cherished pair, and lost them.

  “Thanks, Señora Consuelo,” said Irene. “My mother packed for me. She’s never been to the jungle in her life! She wouldn’t survive a single day without her stereo and air-conditioning.” Lily had grabbed Irene’s arm and spun her in the other direction, away from Consuelo, and Consuelo had known it was so that her expression of pity would not register with Irene.

  “Come on,” Lily had said, “let’s go to my room to get you some other clothes.”

  Throughout the journey and for the first twenty-four hours after their arrival, Irene had behaved like an angel, and Consuelo had been relieved. But although Lily had gotten her wish, Consuelo noticed that she appeared unnaturally subdued.

  The day following their arrival, Consuelo and Ismael had woken from an afternoon nap to find Lily alone on the balcony with her hair wet. When questioned by her mother, Lily said the girls had taken a nap and then Irene had gone for a walk. So far, she had not returned. But it was getting dark, and they were responsible for the girl.

  “Your father and I will look for her,” she said. “You stay here.”

  As they walked toward the beach, she voiced her concerns to Ismael. “I know it may sound uncharitable, mi amor, but there is something strange about Irene.”

  Ismael said nothing for some time. Then he sighed and said, “I think that a girl who has been raised without a map, like Irene, is bound to be strange. But she is a child, and the strangeness is not her fault.”

  Irene Dos Santos. In Spanish it meant “Irene two saints,” in Portuguese, “Irene of the saints.” Either way, there was nothing saintly about the girl, Consuelo thought.

  By nightfall Irene had not been found and the entire Maquiritare camp was searching for her. It was as though she had vanished into thin air. Lily was questioned again by her mother, and repeated that they had taken a nap and then Irene had gone for a walk. But two eyewitnesses claimed that although they had not seen either girl go into the water, they were present when Lily emerged—alone. In fact, no one had seen Irene at all since lunchtime. Consuelo began to have a strange foreboding and felt guilty for having thought so ill of the girl. After all, though she appeared older than her fifteen years, it was as Ismael said: Irene was really still a child.

  By midnight there was still no sign of the girl and so Irene’s parents were summoned by radio. They arrived the following morning by helicopter, along with two officers of the Guardia Nacional. Interrogation of other employees of the government-run retreat produced no results. But a search some hundred meters along the rough path into the forest nearby, hewn by the machetes of its Pemon inhabitants, produced signs of a scuffle. One blue flip-flop lay abandoned at a place where the path forked, but it was so large the Guardias were certain it could not have belonged to the girl. But nearby, there was also a silver charm bracelet, its clasp broken. But, as Irene, along with the Martinez family, had been on the path the previous day, she could have lost it then. The senior of the two officials conducting the investigation said that in all likelihood the girl had drowned, and Lily, unable to accept the loss of her friend, had blocked it from her mind.

  Almost as an afterthought, he said there had been rumors of insurgents in the area, which raised another possibility: Lily was telling the truth—Irene had strayed into the forest and had been kidnapped, in which case the parents would no doubt receive a ransom note in due course. In the absence of clarity on the matter, with the help of the locals he attempted to drag the lagoon with fishnets weighted with stones. The only boats available were handcrafted Pemon canoes. They searched for four days but no body was discovered, which was not surprising in waters where the caiman patrolled the uninhabited mangrove shores in great numbers.

  Consuelo, even after painting it, had never been able to completely exorcise the heartbreaking sight of Benigno Dos Santos holding his head in his hands, nor blot out the mind-piercing sound of Mercedes Dos Santos screaming her daughter’s name.

  Before that fateful trip, Irene had qualified in the nationals, led her team to victory, accepted the first-place medal on behalf of the team on national television, por Dios. How could she have drowned, when surely she was the stronger swimmer? Though profoundly grateful that her own child had survived whatever had happened in the water, to Consuelo it seemed as though Lily in the very act of surviving had conceded something, some part of her soul, to the other girl. After they returned from Maquiritare, Lily had appeared to shrink, to become a diluted form of herself. And never, ever, would she acknowledge that the girls had gone swimming or that Irene might be dead.

  At Alejandro’s suggestion, but against Ismael’s wishes, she took Lily to a psychiatrist, who suggested drawing as a therapy. But Lily, when encouraged to sketch her experiences at Maquirtare, had only drawn toucans and parrots, flat and cartoonish in their rendition. When after three weeks none of the psychiatric strategies had achieved the desired effect, that of clarifying or altering Lily’s perception of what had transpired in Maquiritare, Ismael had said it was enough, that time and patience would be the cure
. And so, for months, whenever Lily spoke of Irene in the present tense, everyone went along with it. After a while, Lily stopped referring to Irene at all, and Consuelo, assuming the chapter finally closed, was glad of it. But, mira! Irene has resurfaced in their lives, if only in their thoughts and imaginations, and so perhaps the cord was never really severed. Consuelo now regrets having returned Lily’s box of childhood memories without going through it and checking for reminders of Irene. How could she have been so careless?

  As if Consuelo has spoken her mind aloud, Marta shakes her head and says, “That Irene, she’s the type to hold on even from the grave. If you ask me, this is all happening because of her.”

  “Don’t be silly, Marta,” Consuelo says, “we can hardly blame poor Irene for everything.”

  “Hummph,” says Marta, throwing the black beans in a colander to rinse.

  “Escúchame, mi amor,” Consuelo said on the day Lily got caught with her tongue throat-deep in the mouth of Elvis Crespo. “Maybe it is my fault you got into this mess. I’m quite a bit older than the other mothers, and I haven’t spoken to you about relaciones between a man and a woman. I thought you were too young. In my day, girls of thirteen had no chance to be alone with a boy, and they certainly didn’t know how to kiss with their tongues. And don’t make big eyes, because la Señora Ramirez was adequately graphic in her description of what you and that young man were doing in the elevator.”

  Consuelo watched her daughter’s face flush with a mixture of embarrassment and the memory of how crazy-hot and breathless the boy’s kisses had made her feel.

  “And, don’t be angry with me for saying this, mi vida,” Consuelo continued with velvet ruthlessness. “I know that Irene is your best friend and that you think the sun shines out of her culo. I know that the deranged way her family lives seems exciting and wonderful to you. And that you think Mercedes Dos Santos is the most sophisticated creature in the world. Much as you love your father and me, you hanker for a Dos Santos family life. But let me tell you something: Irene may teach you how to kiss, but she knows nothing of the passion that should make your soul fly when you do it. How could she know, when there is no one to teach her about love, pobrecita? The members of the Dos Santos family, for all their fancy modern ways, wouldn’t know love if it jumped up and bit their faces. And love is the biggest adventure of all. When you find it, you must embrace it with your whole being and never hold back. But until then, muchachita de mi alma, keep your panties on.”