“Love, mercy, light, good, beauty, friendship, soul, whole, good,” I repeated again and again until I no longer felt him wailing.
“Hector, I can’t help you if I don’t know what happened to you, and I can’t put it all together without what you know about what happened that night.”
“I just said! Somesing bad.”
“You mean like evil?”
“Eh,” he said sadly, shaking his head wistfully like an old Jewish grandma, as if I were close, but not quite, and trying to explain it to me were of no use.
“Okay. Something bad. Maybe like shame? Or blame?” I said, feeling strongly that I was on the right track.
“Woo-hoo-hooooo!” wailed Hector again, sections of him appearing and disappearing before my eyes.
“It hurts? Painful? Remorse? Guilt? Is it guilt?” I kept tossing out options at him like a game show contestant racing against a thirty-second clock.
I knew when I’d gotten it right because the second I said guilt, his wailing got louder and he covered his ears, out of habit I guess, as they were no more really there than his trench coat.
“Okay, okay. Stop it. I get it. It hurts. But it’s too late now. There’s nothing either one of us can do. You’ll have to take the guilt with you. It will go away in time, I promise.”
“How can you of all people say that to meeee, Merry Ella? Don’t you know I can’t go . . . like this?” he wanted to know.
He was right. How could I? I knew all about guilt. I’d been carrying it with me like a favorite purse all my life. I’d made a decision born of guilt and suffering over my mother’s death when I was eighteen, and then been too stubborn and too blind to the fact that I didn’t have all the facts, and refused to change it, denying myself the memory of my mother’s love until just a few weeks ago, when Hector’s death had cracked me open. The result was an entire life shaped by that one decision, by that one absence of self-love. So many opportunities to create my own happiness wasted.
So I got it now. That’s why Hector was still here. Guilt and regret, two sides of the same coin. Guilt of the kind so painful and powerful it springs at you from around every corner, keeping you from sleeping, from resting, even from dying. I understood now. But understanding it didn’t mean I had the remedy for it.
“You have to help Olivia,” he said again.
“Tell me about Henry.”
“I need you to help Olivia,” he said, standing his ground. “I don’t want her to pay for this. I owe her.”
“Tell me about Henry and Abril, or I’m going back to sleep,” I said, ignoring the fact that he’d basically conceded Olivia was behind his death, the pain involved in accepting this one fact probably the reason he’d stayed away after I’d mentioned that belladonna had killed him. Of course he’d known then. He must’ve known immediately.
But even though I could feel bad for what he was going through, the truth is I was really angry with him just then. Here he was, back from the dead, going on and on about Olivia and the supposed danger she was in, while apparently not caring one bit about a child who hadn’t asked to be brought into this world.
“Start talking, or I’m walking right back to bed and getting under those covers, and don’t even think of getting in there with me because I swear I’ll start chanting the rosary if I have to.”
“I’m not perfect, Merry Ella.”
“Don’t you give me that, Hector Ferro. Who the hell asked you to be perfect?”
“Please don’t say hell,” he said quietly.
“What kind of man doesn’t care about a child? His child!” I insisted.
He was very quiet for a few seconds, as if weighing his options, then got up, or that’s what it looked like to me, and “sat” on the chair across from me again.
“She wanted me to be a father. I told her to break up with her boyfriend,” he said, relenting at last.
“You mean, Abril? Oh, Hector! How could you do such a thing?”
“I’m baaaad,” he said, shaking his head again.
“Forget you. How could you do this to Henry?”
Then he told me how he’d been giving Abril cash for Henry after a detective contacted him threatening with proofs of paternity. How he’d thought he was doing the right thing by protecting Olivia, while giving Abril what he could honestly give. He really hadn’t seen how telling Henry that he was his father could do anybody any good. He’d told Abril that he’d continue to help her secretly, but she insisted that her son had a right to be loved by his father.
“He does,” I said.
“He’s a good boy, Merry Ella. I could take responsibility, but she say that was not enough. She wanted me to love him, spend time with him. But I never wanted to be a father!”
“You should’ve thought of that before sleeping with her. And you told Olivia you did!”
“I did no such sing!”
“You didn’t say you wanted a child?”
“I did not say it to make her feel anysing.”
“Yes, you did, you horrible, horrible man. You shamed her all these years, lied to her, made her feel worthless,” I insisted, not caring that I was making him writhe with every word. And when he didn’t answer, I kept right on going, as if I knew anything about his marriage.
“Say something, damn it!” I said finally, pounding the table with my fist.
“So I deserve this, then?” he asked, unruly brows vibrating like pond water, his words feeling as if the table had punched me back.
“Okay. So what happened? What really happened?” I asked, yielding.
“She wanted me to tell Olivia everysing. That it was the reason I sold the house, put the money in Olivia’s name.”
“Was it? In case she came back demanding child support ?”
“I told her she had to break up with her boyfriend if she wanted meeee to destroy my marriage,” he said, ignoring my question.
“Oh, Hector.”
“How to know she was going to do it?”
“Right, you just wanted to sleep with her. And when she showed you she was willing to do anything to get you to do the right thing, you decided to go for it, have your little fling again. That’s why you were in such a rush to break up with me, wasn’t it?” I said, seeing it all as if I were reading it right out of my grandmother’s journal.
He was silent again.
“Come on, admit it. You couldn’t wait to toss me like last month’s paper, just so you could, what? Prove to yourself how irresistible you were?”
“I said: I was baaad.”
“And for what?” I continued, on a roll. “Olivia would have forgiven you. I would’ve gotten over it. Instead you hurt me, you hurt Gustavo too, you hurt Abril and Henry, just to sleep with her? To prove you could steal her from a younger man? What was it?”
“I don’t know! Maybe. I don’t know. Leave meee alone,” he said, breaking up again.
“You’re kidding, right? Because unless you were going to leave Olivia, this makes no sense.”
“What? No! No, no, no. No, no. But, I felt, eh, you know, eh, macho. She always said ‘your son, your son.’ It was very, you know, macho. For me.”
“Padre no es el que engendra,” I said in my most disgusted tone, half of a saying that means “father isn’t he who engenders, but he who raises.”
He just shook his head, as if to himself.
“Stupid, I know. I know I did baaad.”
He didn’t remember why he’d been in the park or how Olivia could have known about Henry. All he remembered was the hate in her eyes, and then, nothing. And I saw this now; it was all he cared about. Which made me realize the futility of wanting him to be a better person in death than he’d been in life. It just doesn’t work that way. Like all egotistical philanderers, Hector had felt entitled to everything: the one loving wife that he loved back “in his own way” and the myriad dalliances, which were just that, the entertaining drama and variety he felt deserving of in the same way he felt deserving of good books, art, and music.
You know, the other joys of life.
“Will you help me, Merry Ella? Will you . . . be . . . a friend? Help Olivia?” he pled again, as if to remind me that nothing mattered now that he was dead, that there was no use berating him for what was done.
“What can I possibly do?”
“Tell her. Tell her I’m ssssorry.”
Now there was something I was absolutely not going to do.
“How can I tell her that, Hector? You’re dead!”
“Tell her. Merry Ella, I told you: I sink she wants . . . to hurt herself.”
I sighed, hoping he’d understand I’d try my best, but also that he’d be unable to see inside my mind and know there was no way in hell I was going to tell Olivia I’d been speaking with her dead ex-husband.
“Merry Ella?”
“Yes, Hector.”
“I want you . . . to forgive meee. For how . . . I was. I didn’t sink about you. I’m ssorrry I hurt you so much,” he said, back “on” the floor, looking up at me with those eyes that seemed as alive as ever, the intensity of their gaze unchanged as he knelt in front of me, just like Eddie the psychic had said he would.
“It’s okay, Hector. It’s okay. You didn’t hurt me that much. You didn’t. And you gave me good things too.”
“Like what?” he asked, unbelieving but expecting an answer.
“Like love of life. You know, of... art, books, music. Good stuff, and—”
“You are beautiful, Merry Ella. You are . . . good. I can see that now,” he said, stressing every syllable, making a huge energetic effort to speak clearly. I could tell because with each word, his image became more and more like a Venetian fresco seeping into the plaster of the wall behind it, to be hidden from history for centuries. “Forgive meee?”
“I forgive you, Hector,” I said, wanting him to believe, to know, that he’d never be alone. “I know Olivia forgave you too. You know that, right?”
He started to sob again, doing that who-whoing thing he did.
“Hector?”
“Tell her. She was always. My Olivia. No, tell her she was my olive tree. Tell her that, please. And that I loved her.”
I believed him. He’d faded almost to nothing in order to muster the strength to say those words as clearly as he could, to make absolution and his love for Olivia his last intention.
So I let him go, letting go also of the diversion this whole mystery had provided, and that I was only now able to admit to myself I’d held on to, like a crutch, to help me deal with the loss of him in my life.
It had been much too long for him, this roaming of days, unable to go, unable to be here. It was time for him to rest, and for the two women he’d hurt the most to live.
When he’d gone, I was no longer cold and could hear the sounds of Coffee Park, fully awake and ready to face the day. I was ready too, and now that I knew what I had to do, there was no time to waste.
Chapter 29
“For months, I knew something was wrong, but when I’d asked him, he’d just grumbled some nonsense about the cost of the booths for the Miami Book Fair. I knew he was lying, but . . .”
Olivia was on her bed now, where I’d convinced her to lie after she’d finally answered my insistent knocking and opened the door, trembling and unstable from lack of food and sleep and peace.
She’d waved me away when I tried to cover her with the shabby floral comforter by her bed, but didn’t object to my going into the kitchen in search of something for her to eat. Wasn’t she afraid I’d find her belladonna? Or was she beyond caring?
Opening cabinet doors (and loudly banging them closed) in my quest for eatable food, I was tempted to search for it, as confirmation, but stopped myself. I already knew what I knew. Plus, I’d promised Hector I’d help Olivia, not come up here to do the police’s job for them.
In the cabinets, I found cans: chickpeas, sweet corn, and white sardines in lemon. In the fridge, I discovered the last quarter of a red onion and some leftover shiitake mushrooms, which I chopped and threw, along with the contents of all three cans, into a ceramic bowl, followed by the last handful of feta cheese crumbles miraculously preserved inside the sturdy plastic supermarket container they’d been sold in.
There were no greens or fresh vegetables for a proper salad, so I doused what I had with some expensive extra virgin, cold-pressed, organic olive oil I found under the counter and sprinkled it all with Celtic sea salt that was thick and rough and almost as expensive as the olive oil.
I swirled my mix in the bowl until the oil coated everything, making it shiny and colorful. Then, not finding a proper (or a clean) tray, I put the salad of sorts atop a turquoise dinner plate and brought it into the bedroom for Olivia.
The room, like the rest of the house, was a complete mess. She’d obviously given up doing anything but the most basic things: going to the bathroom, drinking water, and bathing, maybe.
I placed the food on the night table next to her and started to pick up a little, noticing a small suitcase and a change of clothes on the chair by the window, but continuing to tidy up until I saw her eye the bowl a couple of times out of the corner of my eye.
“Here, let me help you,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed, taking the plate in one hand and holding the spoon up to her mouth with the other, very matter-of-factly, as if I did this every day.
After just a couple of mouthfuls, she shook her head, lips closed.
“You have to eat,” I said, wondering if I should ask Gustavo to help me take her to a hospital.
“I knew something was wrong. His mood, his absence even when he was here, but I thought whatever it was, whoever she was, would go away, like it always did. I decided to find a project. That always helped,” she said, looking intently at her hangnails, picking at them.
“A project?”
“A remedy, a recipe. I thought I’d help the boy. Henry. With his eyes.”
“The belladonna,” I said.
She looked at me then, surprised that I knew.
“I spent a lot of time reading about myopia. Some say that it isn’t hereditary, but I found that with the very extreme cases, as in degenerative myopia, it is.”
“But Abril told you she doesn’t have myopia.”
She looked away abruptly, fixating her gaze on the wall, and I knew that Hector had been right. She knew about Henry. But how?
After minutes of silence, I insisted: “The belladonna, didn’t you know it was deadly?”
She breathed deeply, as if bracing herself, then motioned for me to give her the bowl again and took an enthusiastic spoonful or two of my concoction before speaking again, already looking better. God only knew when she’d eaten last.
“I wasn’t going to have him ingest it. I was going to use it to dilate his pupils so that the secret ingredient in my remedy would work better,” she said, adding, “It’s shiitake mushrooms,” after it was clear I wasn’t very curious about naturopathy and wasn’t going to ask her what it was.
She was all business now, energy coming to her from the act of speaking about something she knew.
“I was so meticulous. I worked for days to carefully extract liquid from the belladonna leaves I’d ordered, drying them until the remaining liquid turned an almost perfect consistency, like a resin. And this with leaves from a plant that’s not even native. Well, I could have managed to grow it, but I didn’t want to risk one of those sudden Miami weather changes rendering it unusable.”
“You said you ordered it? Where?” I asked, not knowing what she would say before she said it, but knowing that she was telling me the truth, getting that feeling of confirmation each time she dropped another detail on my lap.
“At Pedro’s Pharmacy. They ordered it for me weeks ago,” she said as if I’d asked a stupid question, and I thought again how much like Hector she could be when it came to the little things.
“Who ordered for you—Pedro?” I asked.
When she shook her head no, I knew why they hadn’t arrested her yet.
Then there were Pedro and Sarah.
Sarah had been the only other person who ever tended the register or processed special orders. I remembered how distracted she’d been toward the end of their relationship. And how I’d thought it was all the fighting with Pedro that made her forget to write down what you were buying, forget to make the order sheet with the duplicate that would have served as your receipt, forgetting also to put the cash inside the register, “distractedly” saving, I saw now, for her getaway.
Since it was a cash-only establishment, there was no credit card to track and, thanks to Sarah, no record of the order. But even though Sarah would have remembered a belladonna purchase, she wouldn’t have told the police a thing. That is, if she’d been around to tell, which she hadn’t been, having gone back home the very week of Hector’s death, if I remembered Iris’s account of it correctly.
I was sure the police had searched all the nearby pharmacies for orders of belladonna plants, leaves, or seeds, starting with Coffee Park’s. But if Sarah had not written it down, I doubted Pedro would have thought to say anything other than “We would have had to order it, and I see no record of that on our special-order pad.” I wondered if, when double-checking for the police, even looking at Sarah’s handwriting on that pad had made him miss her, and if in his sadness, he could have been less than concerned about helping the policeman or woman, who’d be, in any case, just another outsider to him, if not the outright law-enforcing enemy.
“So did you dilate Henry’s eyes with the belladonna?” I prodded.
But Olivia just looked into her food for a while, then:
The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho Page 23