by S. B. Niccum
All three of us turned and looked at Luz and Dorian who were in a world of their own. “What’s even stranger still is that he told me that we needed to come to Mexico before I even told him about you guys,” I added, now mystified.
“Now that’s interesting,” Paz mused, then took a sip of her tea. “Excellent as always,” she crooned to her sister.
“De nada,” Amor acknowledged cordially. “I wonder, ” she continued, as she looked at Dorian and Luz, “Could it be that they can see things that we can’t? Or receive information that we don’t?”
I immediately proceeded, between bites of bread and jam and sips of possibly the best tea I had ever tasted, to tell them about Dorian, his disabilities and his gift. In fact, I poured out my whole life before them, from my earliest memory up to now, complete with Alex’s disappearance. It almost seemed as if the tea was laced with a truth serum. Meanwhile, my aunts listened attentively, and with relish, supped on their own tea and buttered bread, topped with homemade plum jam.
Luz and Dorian joined us after a while, but they remained silent. Luz’s eyes had been fixed on me while I spoke, but every once in a while they would wander to some spot just over my left shoulder. She looked like she was watching something, so I turned a few times to see what she saw, but there was nothing there. She did this now and then, while I was talking and sometimes she would smile, as if whatever she saw in mid-air was amusing her.
“She has an invisible friend,” Amor leaned over and explained when she saw my puzzlement of Luz’ behavior. I nodded in acknowledgment, and we continued our conversation. I told them about my life, sparing no details about anyone; including Agatha, Alex, and his family. Then I asked them about my parents and grandparents, and they produced a photo album.
I got to see pictures of my parents, and a few of my grandparents. Celeste looked exactly as Dorian had drawn her. I told my aunts this, and I brought out all the pictures that Dorian had given me. While they looked at Dorian’s drawings, I looked at the pictures of my parents. We gasped and marveled in turns as we each saw the photos or the drawings that made up my past.
“What do you suppose these are?” Paz inquired as she pointed to the ominous shadows that hovered over me while I was at the bus station. I hunched my shoulders and shrugged. I didn’t want to go into that right now. They understood, it was fine for Dorian or Luz to have quirky gifts, but it was quite different for me to admit to hearing voices.
Paz looked unconvinced, but turned her attention back to the drawings that Amor was shifting through.
“Look here!” Amor exclaimed. “See? That’s—” Amor stopped short and Paz shook her head in dumb amazement. “But it can’t be!”
“What?” I asked looking up.
“This is our home in Argentina. This is where we grew up!” Amor said holding the drawing of the house with the dock and the sail boat in front.
“Is there a picture of it?” I asked, as I flipped through some of the pages. Paz stood up and bent over me, flipping some of the pages.
“Here,” she paused at one page where there were pictures of three little girls, dressed in identical white dresses, caught in the act of playing tag. “You can’t see the whole house, but here is this window, see? And here is the tree he drew here … this is nothing short of a miracle! I’ve never seen that boat before though.”
“I have,” I told her, “it belongs to Alex, or his grandfather, rather.”
“Then he will be found,” Paz uttered with awe.
This comment caught in my throat and that heavy feeling of dread returned to me.
“She’s right,” Amor said, “Dorian has been right about everything else he’s drawn. Alex will be found. How else will this boat make it all the way there?” She patted my arm while Paz looked at me intensely. We sat and looked at each other like this for some time—in silent acknowledgment of the miracles before us. Instinctively we turned to look at Dorian, who was absentmindedly looking around the room as if he were in heaven.
“Who knows what these two can really do?” Amor murmured with reverence. “For all we know, they can see Angels. Maybe, they were picked to be special because they were better than us. Maybe they are the ones that were sent to help us, and not the other way around.”
Paz nodded slowly, and waved her finger affirmatively, “I think you’re right, sister.”
I had no doubt that Amor was right; Dorian’s pictures have been a source of comfort and hope to me all these years. I turned my attention back to the photo album, and through blurry eyes, continued to look at pictures that had parts of the house he drew. My aunts looked like they had a happy childhood, filled with lots of sunshine and river water. Celeste was in many of the pictures, laughing, swimming, playing with her daughters, and tending roses. My aunts told me that she grafted and collected roses from all over the world. The rose garden at the home in Argentina was, at one point, well known and people came from all over just to look at it.
Max, her husband, looked like he was mild and indulgent. He worked as a teacher, and later on was able to get a post teaching at the university, but he died soon after that. Paz told me how his death was rather suspicious; he fell into a well and drowned. “We never did believe it was as simple as that,” she added solemnly. “But we’ve never been able to really piece together any other explanation, except … ”
“What?”
“That he was pushed in,” Amor finished. “But that’s a bit drastic. Who would have wanted to kill my dad? Everyone loved him!”
I thumbed through several other pages of my aunts’ teenage years, but there were no more pictures of Celeste, and there were no pictures of her second husband, Ricardo. I wanted to know more about that, but the time seemed wrong. They were quietly mourning their father again. Their minds were reaching out to him and to the happy memories they still had.
The next sets of pictures were of my dad, Leo. He looked like an imp, a real ‘Dennis The Menace’, wreaking havoc as he went. Luz especially seemed to be his constant companion. Amor and Paz confirmed my suspicions by saying that she was his accomplice from day one and that she took it very hard when he left for college. In fact, they said that seeing her with Dorian has been the happiest they’ve seen her since Leo left.
The last few pages had pictures of my father while in college. He looked a lot like Roger did, with wavy brown hair, but his eyes were a lighter gray color. In most pictures he had a cocky, mischievous grin, which made me smile. I mentioned this and my aunts assured me that, though he wasn’t conceited, he was very confident and exuded self-assurance everywhere he went.
My mom looked more reserved. She had an exotic beauty, accentuated by her jet-black hair, dark eyes, and high cheekbones. Irene was her name, she was Chicana; a native Californian, and my aunts knew nothing of her family. She had been studying to be a librarian when she met my father; perhaps I inherited my love of books from her.
One of the pictures of my parents caught my attention. It was a group picture taken at the beach. Several young couples were posing in the picture, but one man in particular stood out to me. He had dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, and that kind of forgettable face that was perfectly average. He was standing next to my father, with his arm slung casually around my father’s neck, as if they were close friends. But the most remarkable thing about this man was the fact that I knew him.
“Do you know who this is?” I asked my aunts.
They leaned over and looked at who I was pointing to. They both shook their heads, “Sorry, I don’t” Paz said, “Do you?” she asked Amor, who kept shaking her head. “Just a college friend, I suppose.”
I stared at that picture. I was sure of who it was, but it was impossible. The man next to my father looked like he was in his twenties, so today he would have to be in his mid-forties at least. But he wasn’t. Officer John Lovell had not aged at all in twenty years.
Chapter 20
Interestingly enough, Celeste had not said a single word since I set foot in Me
xico. I wasn’t sure why. Of all places, her daughters’ home should be her favorite place to be. Unless it was too painful; she had mentioned once to me that being around familiar places could be torturous to a disembodied spirit.
The next morning, Dorian and I were given a rundown of how things worked around the house. There were lots of things to do and we were given a list of chores. Laundry was done by hand, just like everything else apparently. I offered to buy Amor a washer and a dryer, and she turned me down flat, saying that washers used up too much water and that life was better when you worked with your hands. “It’s good for the soul,” she added, as she placed a garden spade in my hand.
At first, weeding didn’t look all that appealing. I approached it with trepidation because I didn’t want to get my hands too dirty. But as I pulled those obnoxious weeds, my mind began to drift towards Alex and my parents. The pulling and the yanking became somewhat therapeutic as I thought of how short lived my parent’s love had been. How unfair for my father to rot in prison, convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Then I thought of Alex and wondered where and how he was.
Involuntary tears of frustration and anger clouded my vision. Would our love be short lived like that of my parents? And how about Celeste? She lost the love of her life early on, too. Did she find love with Ricardo or did she marry him out of loneliness? What would I do if I lost Alex?
Tears were now flowing freely down my cheek and I knew that my face must be stained with dirt as I tried to wipe them away. I stopped weeding when the sun was too hot and the plot I had tackled was weed free. Though filled with sadness, I did feel better. Amor was right; working with your hands was good for the soul.
“Amor needs some vegetables from the garden,” Luz said, startling me. She was standing directly in front of the sun, so her outline shone like an unearthly creature. She was holding a wicker basket out to me with one hand and a lifeless chicken in the other. Shielding my eyes from the glorious and incongruent glare, I reached for the basket. “Did she say what she needed?”
“Ten tomatoes, two cucumbers, one bell pepper and a small onion,” she rattled.
“Okay, I’ll fill the order.” I smiled.
Satisfied with this, Luz skipped away dangling the chicken. Light flooded my eyes again, blinding me temporarily. “I’m the light that shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not,” the mysterious thought came into my mind. I knew these cryptic messages to be scriptures, they sounded like scriptures anyway. I must have heard them at church, when Charlotte took us, but why was my mind pulling them forward right now?
While I filled the produce order, I decided that I would ask Paz about these messages when she came by this afternoon. She would be able to tell me what they meant, and maybe why my mind kept bringing them up. Was it my mind? These thoughts always seemed so unrelated to my other thoughts. Usually I have a train of thought that connects one thought with another, but these thoughts…they seemed to be placed in my mind, and were not connected to anything else.
Inside the kitchen Amor was busy grinding herbs in the fine mortar. She looked up at me and smiled brightly. “How was weeding? Am I working you too hard?”
“No, you were right, it was therapeutic.”
“I feel the same way after a good round of weeding. There’s something about digging into mother earth with your bare hands that helps me stay rooted,” she winked.
“What are you grinding?” I asked, as I started washing the vegetables and digging the dirt out from under my nails.
“It’s valerian root, for you, actually. I noticed that your sleep last night was…spotty.”
“You could say that,” I sighed. “I want to sleep so I can dream of—so I can reach REM, but I can’t seem to shut my brain off.”
Amor turned and looked sympathetically back at me. “Dream of who; Alex?”
I took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. Amor’s patchouli and geranium scent reached me and soothed me. I wonder if that’s why she wears that all the time, to sooth those around her? As I exhaled I tried to figure out exactly how much to tell her, if anything at all. Besides Valerie, and then only in a very vague way, I hadn’t told anyone, about the dreams. Only Alex and I know how real those dreams are.
“It’s okay; you don’t have to tell me. Here, let me teach you how to make Celeste’s favorite lunch—Gazpacho with a twist.”
I handed her ingredients as she blended tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onion, garlic and a tablespoon of olive oil into a perfectly smooth texture. She then squeezed a lemon, and diced up an avocado. She ladled the bowls and topped them each with the diced avocado and lemon juice, served it with a side of Mexican tostadas.
“The avocado and the tostadas are the Mexican twist we added when we moved here. My mother loved traditional Spanish food, but along the way she incorporated Italian and Mexican influences. She was known for her cooking everywhere she went, she had a natural knack for it, but she didn’t start cooking until after she was married.”
“Everyone knows you’re a good cook, too,” Luz added.
“Thank you Luzita, I think I inherited that from mom. We all got something from them. Paz got my dad’s ability to learn languages easily, and Luz taught herself to play the piano after dad died.”
“Dad taught me,” Luz said simply and Amor frowned slightly, as if that didn’t jive with her recollection.
With morning chores done, after lunch, everyone took to their own pastimes. Luz sat at the piano and expertly played a sleepy Chopin tune, while Dorian sat on the couch and drew. Amor got back to her herbs, saying that she had a few patients coming by this afternoon. I changed into my swimsuit, grabbed a book and a blanket and headed for the beach. But once I was there, I found that I couldn’t sit there and read. I felt too guilty sitting here, enjoying the beach, while Alex was miserable, so I got up and started running.
At first I found it hard to run on sand, but I soon adjusted and found my pace. This was the first time I had seen the ocean for myself, but I found it … not new. I felt as if I had seen it my whole life. I loved its constancy and endless horizon. I loved its briny air and sticky feel on my skin.
I ran until I could no longer see my blanket and book, then I jumped in the water and swam back, always keeping myself parallel with the shore. Swimming in the ocean was hard, but again, my body got used to it, and soon I felt like there was no other way to swim.
When I got back to my spot, I was physically exhausted and I collapsed on my towel. I reached for my book then … thirst … thirst deep and sticky in my throat. Thirst consumed me and there seemed to be nothing in this world more precious than water.
“Alex?”
Alex groaned in reply.
“You’re in pain.”
His breathing took a great deal of effort, every breath hurt, his brain registered pain in his ribcage, and his head, as well as several sore muscles. “You could say that,” he answered.
“I want to help you. Please, tell me how I can help you!”
“I don’t know where we are. I don’t think we’re in Cuba any more. I’ve been in and out of consciousness. I’m pretty sure I heard water.”
“Water?”
“Yeah, like splashing against the sides of a boat.” He groaned again, and the mention of water made him thirsty again. “They haven’t moved us in a while. We’re in a prison of sorts; they have us all in one little room. It only has one tiny window that is up high. We’ve tried to look through it, but all we can see is another wall about five feet away. It seems desolate. Sometimes we think we can hear street noises, but they’re faint and we can never figure out exactly what we’re hearing. The climate is mild, so we must still be somewhere in Central America still, but I don’t know where.”
“Central America? I’m in Mexico, with my aunts!”
“Oh!” he tried to stifle a sharp stab of pain, “What are they like? Please, tell me about them. I could use the distraction,” he grunted.
“Alex! For all we
know we could be close to each other!” I wanted to shout, to get up, to start moving.
“Tess…Central America may look small on the map, but it’s not in real life. Not to mention, that most countries are a complete mess right now, ruled by drug lords and guerilla groups. They shot down an American plane and didn’t bat an eyelash. What do you think they’ll do to you?”
“I speak Spanish, I’ll blend in.”
He laughed a mirthless laugh, and then coughed. “Tess, you couldn’t blend in in a Miss Universe contest, if you tried.” I felt myself blush, even while still asleep. “You’re blushing,” he noted. “Please, promise me you won’t do anything stupid, or dangerous, just—just tell me all about your aunts,” he pleaded.
With resignation, and mostly because I wanted to bring him some amount of reprieve to his grim situation, I recounted all the events of the past few weeks: Finding Roger, discovering that I had money and that one of my uncles was after it. I also told him about his mom’s feeling that I should come to Mexico, and Dorian’s positive reaction to being here. Seeing pictures of my family—in particular my parents. Alex listened as attentively as he could amid the many pains he felt all over his body and the intense need for water and food that his mind was conveying to me. My stories, however, seemed to distract him enough to temporarily dull all these needs.
“Tell me more about this uncle of yours, the one who’s after your money.”
“I don’t know much,” I told him, playing it down. The last thing he needed right now was to worry about me.
“You need to focus on that right now. You need to figure—” a stab of pain on his side made him groan. “Someone’s coming!”
“Who?”
“The goon they’ve left to look after us. You better go Tess…I don’t want you to worry.”
“No, please!”
“Sorry Tess—”
“Buenos días! Me extrañaron?”
“Who’s that?” I asked, at the sound of a strange voice.
“Go Tess, go! I don’t want you here while—ow!” Alex groaned at a brand new pain—a kick to his leg. “Please, Tess, you shouldn’t be here.”