She drove past the reservoir. Rodrigo turned his face to the window and stared through the thatch of trees at the ribbons of light on the water.
“That’s where they found Maria Elena,” she said.
“I believe so. Yes.”
“It’s so sad that she died.”
“Yes, it is.” Since that Spanish detective first told Rodrigo about her death, he’d had no moment to absorb the loss. But now that everything was behind him, he allowed himself the sorrow he could not afford before. Perhaps one day, he would take some rose petals to the lake and say an Ave Maria for her. He could float the petals on the water the way people in Esperanza do when someone dies. Unless that would get him into trouble. Maybe it wasn’t permissible here. Norte Americanos had rules for everything. Half the time, he never understood what he was doing wrong even when he was doing it.
Señora Linda finger-combed some stray blond hairs that had fallen out of her ponytail. He had never seen her in makeup or anything fancier than jeans—another thing that was very different about Anglos to him. She could have been quite striking but she made no effort to showcase it.
“Rodrigo? Did you know Maria Elena well?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Did she ever mention a woman by the name of Socorro? Socorro Medina-Valdez?”
“Not to me, no.”
“Did she ever mention having worked years ago in Perkinsville, Iowa?”
Rodrigo kneaded his new baseball cap, a present from Anibal and Enrique. The words BEAR STEARNS were embossed across the front. It sounded like a cartoon character but Anibal said it was the name of a bank that went out of business. “We didn’t talk about such things, señora. I knew she had been to the United States before, but we did not really talk about it.”
“Did she ever mention Scott? My husband? Perhaps he had been her lawyer at some point?”
Rodrigo could not hide his astonishment at the conversation. He had answered every question the police and Porter had asked him. He could not see why he had to answer any more. But he did not want to offend her. She seemed almost panicked about getting an answer. He was only sorry he didn’t have the ones she seemed to want.
“I do not think Maria would have needed a lawyer in Lake Holly, señora.”
Señora Linda nodded. She seemed sadder and quieter after that. Rodrigo wished he understood why. It was one of the things he missed most about Esperanza. There, he knew everyone’s family, everyone’s history. He knew that the Garcias drank too much and beat their women; that Anibal’s family, the Roldans, were very religious. He knew the Pavon and Asturias families had had an argument over the sale of some chickens years ago and hadn’t spoken to one another since. He knew Enrique’s sister Sucely had had a baby with one of the Asturias boys but was distantly related to the Pavons so neither family was speaking to her.
And this didn’t even begin to take in the immediate families. Rodrigo was one of seven siblings, Triza, one of nine, so there were brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and cousins with gossip of their own. He knew all of it and kept up with it through Triza when he could afford to call. It was the landscape of his life. But here in Lake Holly, he knew almost no one, understood nothing. He often felt like a colorblind man in a room full of reds and greens. He could not read the subtleties because everything looked the same.
Señora Linda turned onto a long, winding street and then drove up a steep driveway through the woods. When Rodrigo looked out his window, there was no shoulder to the driveway and the woods fell away from him at a steep angle. It was like riding one of those brightly painted chicken buses in Guatemala, the ones with no suspension and only two speeds: fast and crash. No wonder his people were religious. You did a lot of praying in a chicken bus.
At the top of the climb, the land leveled out to an enormous house with a front porch, big windows, and a giant play structure out back. Rodrigo had worked on the landscapes of many big houses, but he had never actually met any of the owners. He couldn’t believe that this very sweet and unassuming woman would be the mistress of such a grand place.
Señora Linda powered open the door to one of the bays in the garage and parked. Rodrigo got out of the car and put on his baseball cap.
“Can I get you some coffee? A sandwich?” she asked him.
“No, thank you,” he said. He hoped she couldn’t hear the growl of his stomach. “I will need a ladder. If you can tell me where one is, please.”
She took him to a gardening shed in the back of the property and showed him where everything was. Then she excused herself to fetch her daughter off the school bus.
He started on the gutters surrounding the garage first. He was right about there being very little to clear out. He scooped out some acorns and small twigs, a few spiked seedpods and pine needles. But basically, the hardest part of the job was winching the aluminum ladder up and down and setting it at a proper angle to the house.
He worked quickly, starting at the back of the house using a small brush to whisk the leaves and twigs from the gutters. He could not see over the roof. It was only when he moved to the side of the house where the roof didn’t obstruct him that he was able to get his first glimpse west toward town. He saw a sight that filled him with awe: the entire town, spread out like one of those model railroad sets they sometimes put up in store windows here during the Christmas holidays. There was a fuzzy green cast to the land, like mold on a peach. Spring was here, even if he couldn’t see it up close yet. Through the gray tufts of trees, Rodrigo counted half a dozen ponds—all of them a surprise. They sparkled like earrings half-hidden beneath a woman’s long hair. A train lurched into the station and a hawk circled above the granite spires of that old Catholic church the Anglos went to.
He could see it all, could see how small and connected everything really was. He could not tell where one neighborhood ended and another began. The lonely peal of the train whistle floated toward him, crisp and clear as an Indian flute player on the square in Esperanza. But the siren that accompanied an ambulance speeding through town failed to rise above a mewl. Perhaps this was how God saw the world, thought Rodrigo. Men carving boundaries that didn’t exist, offering prayers too faint to hear, much less answer.
He hummed softly while he worked. A tune Triza had taught him. A child’s song about an owl in the forest. He liked the feel of the notes in his chest, the way they muted the loneliness and boredom. He stopped humming once Señora Linda reappeared in the driveway. He was shy about others hearing him.
A girl hopped out of the backseat, her long, black hair pulled tightly into two shiny braids, a backpack with pink and white flowers slung over one shoulder. Rodrigo had forgotten that the Porters’ daughter was adopted. He felt a small pang of longing looking at the child. She reminded him of his Juliza at that age. She disappeared inside with Señora Linda but reemerged about ten minutes later with a tray and called up to him. He still felt astounded when he heard Guatemalan children speaking like Norte Americanos.
He told her he was sorry, but he didn’t speak English.
“My mother asked me to bring you cookies and coffee,” she said in American-accented Spanish. He was surprised at her fluency.
“Oh. Many thanks.” He climbed down the ladder and took the tray from the girl with a shy bow of his head. The cookies were chocolate chip. Fresh from the oven. The coffee was hot and strong with plenty of sugar the way he liked it.
The girl stared at him. “What happened to your lip?”
She was a forward child. Children in Guatemala would never stare at an adult or ask such a question. He touched the back of his hand self-consciously to the scab.
“I fell.” His lip looked like a piece of chorizo sausage had gotten plastered to the lower portion. But it didn’t hurt anymore. It would heal in time.
“I fell once on the handlebars of my bike. I had to get three stitches.”
“That must have hurt.”
“I didn’t cry. Daddy says I’m brave.”
Se
ñora Linda came out and said something to the girl in English. She scampered off without a good-bye.
“Many thanks for the coffee and cookies,” said Rodrigo. He stacked his empty plate and cup neatly on the patio table and went to climb back up the ladder. Señora Linda stayed on the patio, bobbing on the tips of her toes like a schoolgirl. Rodrigo didn’t know her age—in his experience, Anglos always looked and acted younger than they were—but he sensed she was older than he was. He let go of the sides of the ladder and faced her.
“Yes, señora?”
“Do you know anything about toilet tanks?”
“Your toilet isn’t working?”
“It’s working. But the handle is broken. My husband bought a new one but he never installed it. I was wondering if while you’re here, you could do the job.”
“I would be happy to.”
“Thank you.”
By the time Rodrigo was finished cleaning out the gutters, the sun was on the far horizon. He put the ladder, gloves, and tools away and knocked on Señora Linda’s back door. A dog barked inside. Rodrigo hoped it was friendly.
When she opened the door, her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. The dog paced nervously at her feet.
“Señora?” He removed his cap and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, Rodrigo. No. I’m fine.” She ushered him into the kitchen. He made a point of wiping his new boots on the doormat. “It’s the toilet in the master bathroom that needs fixing. Come upstairs, I’ll show you.”
The master bedroom had a bed almost as big as the room Rodrigo shared with three other men. There was an enormous flat-screen television on the wall opposite the bed. Señora Linda walked over to a dresser in front of the television and handed a plastic carton on top to Rodrigo.
“I have no idea how to do this, and I’m pretty sure my husband doesn’t either.” She forced a smile. He could see her heart was heavy with some sort of sadness that had happened while he was outside cleaning her gutters. He wished he could help her but he knew that was impossible. She was the boss. He was the employee. There was a divide here that they both had to respect. She was trying hard to keep up appearances. So would he.
“I think the directions are in English and Spanish,” she said, “so you shouldn’t have a problem.”
Rodrigo looked down at the small black print, a whole dense paragraph of it. It would have taken him an hour to get through all of that, but he didn’t tell her that. He’d always been good with his hands. He could figure out a simple plumbing job without directions.
“Call me if you need anything,” she said and went back downstairs.
The dog stayed behind. She seemed to like Rodrigo and Rodrigo was glad of the company. He pushed open the door to the bathroom. A small gasp escaped his lips. He was glad Señora Linda wasn’t around to hear it. He would have felt embarrassed to gawk in her presence.
The room was like something out of a palace. It was tiled in soft green-and-white marble. There were two sinks with shiny gold swan-neck fixtures, a toilet, a shower stall behind frosted glass, and an oval-shaped bathtub set in a dark wood frame that looked big enough for a small party. It was in front of a bay window that overlooked the woods in back.
Rodrigo ran a hand along the cool beveled rim of the bathtub. He wondered what it would feel like to soak in such a thing, to be enveloped in a caress of warm water like a baby in its mother’s womb, to gaze out such a window on your own private paradise. Growing up, his family didn’t even have an outhouse until he was ten. He remembered having to make his way to the river at night, how difficult it was to see. How terrifying. He was always afraid of stepping on a snake. He was afraid La Llorona, the spirit who drowned her children, would pull him into the water. It was a proud moment for him when he was able to build his wife and children a house with a real flushing toilet. It made him feel like a millionaire. But this? This was something he could not have conceived of if someone hadn’t shown it to him. He wished he had a picture of it for Triza.
Enough of this foolishness. Time to work, as Anibal would say. Rodrigo opened the top of the toilet tank and depressed the handle. He saw right away what the problem was—the lift wire on the handle had sediment deposits on it. If it were up to him, he’d have removed the lift wire and handle, cleaned it all down with vinegar and a touch of mineral oil, and then tweaked it until it worked perfectly. But he knew from experience that when Norte Americanos want something replaced, they want it replaced. Not fixed or reconditioned. Replaced.
The dog went into the master bedroom and came back into the bathroom a minute later with a pair of brown men’s moccasin-style slippers—Porter’s slippers from the looks of them. Rodrigo laughed and murmured to the dog in Spanish.
“No slippers, dog. What I really need is a pair of scissors.” There was thick plastic packaging on the toilet repair kit that Rodrigo would never be able to open without scissors.
He checked the medicine cabinet and could only find a tiny nail scissor. He didn’t want to go rummaging around. Señora Linda might get the wrong idea so he walked into the upstairs hallway to find her. The dog followed. He heard her voice downstairs on the phone. She was speaking English. She sounded upset.
“Do you need my mother?” asked the girl in Spanish. She was sitting on her pink-canopied bed on the other side of a beaded curtain that separated her bedroom from the hallway.
“I need scissors if you have them, please.” Rodrigo held up the plastic carton so she could see his dilemma.
The girl put down her electronic game and pushed herself off her bed. She opened a drawer of her desk and tossed aside broken pencils and erasers. Rodrigo waited on the other side of the beaded curtain. The floor of her bedroom was covered in a fluffy white carpet that looked as if no one ever walked on it. Her walls were plastered with posters of a dark-haired Anglo boy who smiled like a girl. He was probably a musician or movie actor the girl liked. Rodrigo suspected Juliza had such crushes also. He wished he were around his own children to know such things.
“I can’t find my scissors. I think my dad borrowed them.”
“It’s okay,” said Rodrigo. “I will wait until your mother can help me.”
“She’s going to take a while,” said the girl with a roll of her eyes. “She’s been on the phone since I got home.”
“Everything okay?” What sort of rudeness was that? He had no business asking a child about her parents. No business at all.
The girl shrugged. She had no wariness of strangers. Rodrigo wondered if that was her nature or because she was adopted. “I think she’s having a fight with my dad.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rodrigo. Ay, caray! He shouldn’t be hearing this!
“It’s okay,” said the girl. “They don’t usually fight. They’ll probably make up by dinner.” She shoved all the pencils and erasers back in her drawer and slammed it shut. “I’ll find you some scissors. We usually have a pair in my dad’s office downstairs.”
Rodrigo followed the girl downstairs to a room off the kitchen with certificates in black frames on the wall and several large bookcases crammed with gold-bound books. He suspected it was Porter’s home office. It all looked very official and important. Rodrigo wasn’t sure he should even be in here.
Señora Linda was in the kitchen talking on the phone. The little girl perked up at something she heard her mother say. She called out a question to her but Señora Linda motioned for her to be quiet and turned away from them. Rodrigo hung back by the doorway of Porter’s office and kept his eyes on the floor.
“I think we’re going on a plane trip,” the girl told Rodrigo. “My mom’s talking to my dad about it now. I think it’s supposed to be a surprise.”
Unless you’re getting deported, Rodrigo was under the impression that plane trips were supposed to be fun. But nothing in Señora Linda’s demeanor suggested fun to Rodrigo. She paced the floor. Her voice rose and fell in tight little bursts that, even without knowing the langua
ge, sounded panicked and angry.
The girl rummaged through the center drawer of the desk until she found a pair of scissors. She handed them to Rodrigo.
“Many thanks,” he said, looking down. He did not feel comfortable looking at the girl as openly as she looked at him. All he wanted at this moment was to open the packaging, remove the guts of the old fixture, and replace it with this new one. It would be an easy job. He could already see that. Ten or fifteen minutes at most with the right tools. He felt bad that Señora Linda would have to drive him back to town. She was obviously busy right now. He’d offer to walk but it was a long hike on a narrow road and it would soon be getting dark.
The girl shoved the desk drawer closed. The motion dislodged a folder of papers that was lying on the edge of the desk. It tumbled to the floor, spilling the contents across the rug. Rodrigo bent to pick the papers up and put them back in the folder. He did not mean to read them. In most cases, he couldn’t have if he’d tried. But it was the layout of the page that was so familiar. Shapes and patterns were things he seldom forgot, probably because he’d spent so many preliterate years as a boy depending on his visual memory to tell him things printed words could not.
He recognized the form as the same one Señora Linda had wanted him to fill out when he first came to La Casa. Señora Linda had called it an “intake sheet”—whatever that meant. Rodrigo had refused. Politely, but firmly. Too personal. Too much information he’d rather not have on file. Maria was with him when he refused. For some reason, she agreed. He would never have remembered that except he saw the name now, printed in block letters that were easy enough for even him to decipher: Maria Elena Vasquez. She had not given Señora Linda her real name either. Rodrigo was sad that in death he knew more about her than in life.
He was standing in Porter’s office with the form in hand when he suddenly became aware of the jingle of dog tags behind him and the absence of echoing voices. Señora Linda was off the phone and both she and the dog had walked into the room.
Land of Careful Shadows Page 24