The Perfect Mother: A Novel

by Nina Darnton

  He stopped translating and addressed himself to Mark. “She wants you to pay her, senor. She asks for five hundred euros.”

  Mark considered this. “I don’t mind the expense, but if she is to be a witness, I cannot pay for her testimony.”

  “No, senor,” Roberto said quickly. “She will not need to testify. She knows nothing of this case. She will simply tell your daughter that her boyfriend has lied to her and isn’t what she thinks he is. I believe this is worth five hundred euros.”

  Consuela broke into the conversation, shifting her daughter from one breast to the other. Roberto listened and said something. Consuela laughed—a bitter, cynical sound. “No puede ser,” she said, before launching into a longer reply that Jennifer couldn’t understand. She spoke for what felt like a long time. José nodded knowingly, encouraging her to go on. Jennifer and Mark looked questioningly at Roberto. When Consuela finished talking, he got up and walked to the bar. He refreshed his drink and asked if anyone else wanted anything. Mark and Jennifer shook their heads impatiently. What they wanted, Mark said, was to understand what she had said.

  Roberto nodded. “And the five hundred euros? You agree?”

  “Sí, de acuerdo,” Jennifer said quickly. Surprised, Mark looked at her briefly before turning back expectantly to Roberto.

  “I explained to her that Paco had told everyone he was an activist for the country’s poor and that he collected money for a fund to support the unemployed in what he called his home village. You already know that I checked that out separately and he had no connection to that village. I explained that Emma, an American with an allowance from her parents, contributed money to this fund.”

  “What did she say to that?” Mark asked.

  “That is when she laughed,” Roberto said simply. “She said, ‘It cannot be.’”

  “How can she be sure?” Mark asked.

  Roberto reported that she had said she’d been married to Paco for ten years, that his parents, both of whom were upper-middle-class Spanish doctors from Marbella, had tried to help him but finally disowned him after he repeatedly stole money from them to buy drugs. He had been thrown out of three different private schools and dropped out of university, where he had only taken courses, not having been accepted for a degree program. He had been enrolled in two different drug rehab programs and left both of them before he was released. He had spent time in jail in France, she said, though she claimed she wasn’t sure why, but she knew he had a fake passport and was using a different name. Roberto explained that when he had first told her about the amounts of money Paco had conned people out of or made through selling drugs, she had become furious—not that he did it, she had admitted, because nothing he did surprised her, but that she hadn’t seen any of the profits.

  Consuela interrupted him to ask for a beer. As he walked to the minibar to get it, she said something else, her voice hard and sad at the same time. He delivered the beer and sat down again, turning back to the others.

  “She says he has stolen from and betrayed and double-crossed everyone who ever knew him,” he said. “And the one thing she swears he has never done was give a shit about anyone but himself.”

  No one spoke. Finally Mark broke the silence. “Who should tell Emma?” he asked Roberto.

  It was decided pretty quickly that it shouldn’t be Jennifer. Mark volunteered to speak to her himself, but Jennifer and even José vetoed that proposal, remembering their last interaction. That left José and Roberto. Roberto said he thought he should talk to her, but Jennifer rejected that proposal so vigorously that both José and Mark looked at her with curiosity.

  “No. Emma hardly knows Roberto. The person she trusts is her lawyer.”

  Roberto, of course, understood.

  Jennifer turned to José. “You should do it,” she said.

  He nodded gravely, accepting the assignment. “She may not believe me,” he said.

  “She will believe Consuela,” Jennifer insisted. “We will bring her as well. I think she will be the most convincing.”

  CHAPTER 28

  After Consuela left, the air practically vibrated with optimism and excitement. Jennifer was certain that although Emma would obviously be upset by this new information, she would also be released from Paco’s spell and perhaps even a bit relieved. In any case, she would see that she no longer needed, or even wanted, to protect him. Hopefully, she would be angry—that would be the healthiest response—but even if she felt ashamed and embarrassed, she would no longer feel he deserved her loyalty at the expense of her own freedom. But she worried about Consuela. Would she change her mind? Would she simply disappear? She didn’t have a cell phone. How would they reach her?

  Roberto tried to assuage her fears and dampen her enthusiasm at the same time. He too hoped that Emma would react positively to this news, but he wasn’t sure—and even if she did, he pointed out, it wasn’t clear what Paco would say and what the prosecutor would believe. But he was relatively confident about Consuela. He had installed her in a small rooming house, and she had been promised the money she demanded. She wouldn’t risk losing that.

  Several separate conversations competed in the room—Jennifer and Roberto, José and Mark, Mark and Jennifer, everyone talking about a different aspect of the case at the same time, creating a chaotic buzz that Roberto finally put to an end by calling everyone to order. They faced him expectantly.

  “So, we have had some good news and we are all hopeful. But now we must act,” he said. He turned to José. “How long before we can get Consuela in to see Emma?”

  José considered before answering. “No está claro,” he said to Roberto. Then, in English, “She is not family, so she does not automatically have visiting rights. Emma must request her. Then she will be able to enter with me.”

  This caused some consternation.

  “How will that work?” Jennifer asked disconsolately. “We can’t ask her to request a visit from Paco’s wife.”

  “No, of course not.” Mark’s voice sounded annoyed. “José, can you tell her you need to bring someone, a consultant or something, who you believe will help in her defense and ask her to request her by name?”

  “You mean lie?” Jennifer asked.

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  She thought about it. “No,” she finally murmured.

  José said he was willing to try. As her lawyer, he could see her on a few hours’ notice. He would go that very day, he said, and try to arrange a meeting with Consuela the day after. Everyone agreed on that course and the meeting ended.

  As they gathered their belongings and started to leave, Jennifer had the unsettling but undeniable feeling that she belonged right where she was. She wanted to have some private time with Roberto and tried to think of some excuse that would delay her departure. She tried to catch his eye, but he didn’t look in her direction. Instead, he thanked everyone for coming and excused himself, saying that he expected another client and had a great deal of work to do to prepare. Jennifer felt offended, even jealous. It always came as a slight shock to her when he mentioned other clients—as if she thought she should be his only one. Of course, she knew that was absurd, and she felt embarrassed and a bit ashamed. Something about her relationship with Roberto sometimes made her feel like a schoolgirl with a crush on her teacher—hopeless and inappropriate.

  Mark watched her hesitation and walked to the door, holding it open for her. “Jennifer? Are you coming?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  She left without looking back. They walked onto the street in silence.

  “Well, things are looking up,” Mark said a few minutes later.

  “Yes. I hope so.”

  They continued walking, without a destination. After a few blocks, Jennifer broke the silence. “Where should we go? Would you like to see the sights of Seville?”

  “No. Not now. I think we need to talk. Let’s stop at a café.”

  She had known this moment was coming, but she dreaded it. They
walked several more blocks without speaking, both distracted by their own uneasy thoughts, until they passed a restaurant with several outdoor tables shaded from the sun with red umbrellas.

  “This one looks okay,” she said.

  When they were seated and had ordered drinks, Mark reached over and took Jennifer’s hand. He seemed to do it deliberately, almost clinically. They knew each other so well—too well, in a way, Jennifer thought—that she knew he was not acting on an impulse of true reconciliation. She stiffened and pulled her hand away.

  “Jennifer, it’s me. Remember? I know things are tense, but damn it, Jen, a bomb fell into the middle of our lives. This . . . this trouble between us, it’s the fallout, the radiation. We can make it go away.”

  She sighed and looked in his direction, but not at him, not ready to meet his eyes. “Can we? I mean, I really felt last time like you were blaming me for this in a way.”

  He pulled back, trying to control his frustration. “I never said anything like that. I don’t feel that. I’m afraid you think that, but it’s not true; it’s not even remotely true. You have been a wonderful mother, Jennifer, and this whole thing, it isn’t about you. How can I make you understand that?”

  She shrugged. “I guess you can’t. Because in a way it is about me. I’m her mother. What happens to her happens to me.”

  “Okay. It happens to you. But it happens to me too. And to Lily and Eric. Even to your parents, who are living in our house, giving up their own lives to take care of our children. We’re a family. But it didn’t happen because of you. There’s a difference.”

  “I know.”

  He reached for her hand again, and this time, though she didn’t look at him, she didn’t pull away.

  “I said a few things that I believe are true, but I shouldn’t have said in anger, not during this time when you are feeling so fragile. But they’re things for us to work on together, to change, to improve, not things to tear us apart.”

  She wanted whatever it was that was keeping her from looking at him to melt and disappear, but it didn’t.

  “Mark, did you ever have an affair?”

  “What?”

  “Since we’ve been married, have you slept with anyone else?”

  He let go of her hand. “Why do you ask that? Why now?”

  “Just answer, Mark—yes or no?”

  He got up and put some money on the table. “This is getting us nowhere. Let’s go back to the apartment.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. She got up and fell into step beside him. “I ask it now because when you said we have to work on things, I wanted to know if you thought it was only me who needed to change.”

  He didn’t answer. He hailed a cab and they both got in and each looked fixedly out the window and didn’t say a word until they arrived, climbed the stairs, and settled in the living room. Still silent, she put on some water for tea.

  “Want some?” she asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  He put his head in his hands. She waited for the water to boil, poured her tea, and sat down across from him. She realized they were positioned exactly as she and Roberto had been when he told her about finding and then losing his daughter. She thought about what Roberto had just done—how he had ignored her obvious desire to catch his eye. He was making it clear that anything more between them was not appropriate and wasn’t going to happen. The same way he had told her what to say to the police, what not to say to the press, what to do to help Emma in each situation, he was also showing her how to behave with him. She didn’t doubt his affection for her, so she knew he was protecting her from her own impulses. And he was right, of course. Her own emotions were so strained and volatile right now. She was confused about her feelings for Roberto—admiration, certainly; dependence; friendship; and, yes, attraction, maybe even love. But she had loved Mark for twenty-three years. They had raised three children together and emerged with their sexual life remarkably intact and their affection deeper. They had weathered frustration and boredom and sleeplessness and the stress of babies and young children. They had obviously even weathered his attraction to and probably his affair with someone else. And with a little more effort, they would ultimately weather this. They were hopefully coming to the end of this nightmare with Emma, and there would clearly be a long road ahead to get her home and get her help. It would be mad to push any revelations and confrontations that would cause a breach right now, or to make any decision that would hurt their marriage.

  Mark looked up and was about to speak.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I’m sorry I asked. I don’t even really want to know.”

  He looked perplexed but relieved. “Maybe someday, when this is all over, we will talk about everything, Jennifer. Maybe that’s what we need.”

  “Maybe.”

  She got up and moved next to him on the couch. She put her hand on his knee and spoke softly. “I’m sorry, Mark. This has been hard on both of us, and I’ve only thought of myself. And Emma, of course; it’s hardest on her—but you’re right, it has hurt all the kids and my parents too. And you—you’ve had to try to work to earn the money to pay for all the help she’s getting and deal with all the problems at home. And I don’t think I ever really thought about how hard it must be for you to not be here, to have to hear about it all secondhand.”

  He looked at her gratefully and shook his head to minimize his sacrifices in comparison to hers.

  “Of course, it’s hard for me too, trying to cope with a crazy and dangerous situation in a strange country in a language I don’t understand,” she said. “I know you get that. So I think that nothing we say or do during this time should be held against either of us, okay? We get a free pass.”

  He looked skeptical. Maybe he’d noticed that look she had tried to share with Roberto. “Well, not completely free.”

  She laughed. “No, not completely. But I love you. I’m sorry if I haven’t been acting that way.”

  He smiled and put his arm around her in the old way. “I love you too,” he said.

  Now she could look at him, and she did, full in the eyes, before he bent to kiss her. Then, for the first time since Emma woke them with her middle-of-the-night phone call, they made love. She felt better after, and it was clear he did too. One thing bothered her, but she pushed it aside. They had fallen immediately into the sensual, comforting, familiar pattern of their lovemaking. But there were times when, her eyes closed, and against her will, she fantasized that she was with Roberto.

  CHAPTER 29

  José called early the next morning. He had fixed the meeting with Emma for 11:00 A.M. Did they want to come?

  They met him at his office and set out from there. Jennifer sat in the back, her body taut, her lips clenched, looking out the window. Consuela sat next to her, nursing her baby. Mark sat in front. Occasionally Jennifer commented on something she saw—a series of half-finished buildings abandoned, like so many throughout the country, because of the economic crisis; the abrupt shift from a cityscape to the dry, rust-red desert earth. Mark and José tried to respond in kind and make small talk to ease the tension. But it was clear Mark was feeling it too. When his phone rang, he quickly pulled it out, glanced at it apprehensively, and then, with obvious relief, turned it to vibrate.

  “It’s not Emma,” was all he said and all Jennifer wanted to know.

  The baby finished nursing and started to cry. The sound was loud, grating. Jennifer had never been able to hear a child cry without responding. When her children were little and she would hear other mothers say they could always pick out their own child’s cry from any others, she wondered how they did it. She thought any child crying was her own, and hearing a cry at the playground, she would startle, look around anxiously, and not relax until she saw her own smiling child in the carriage, or in the sandbox or on the swings. Now she turned to Consuela sympathetically. She asked José what the problem was—the baby had just eaten; why was she crying? Did she need to be changed? He tran
slated and passed on her reply.

  “No, just gas. And she is tired and needs a nap.”

  Jennifer rooted around in her bag and found a set of keys, which she dangled in front of the crying child. Imaculada paused and reached for them, shaking them like a rattle and then putting them straight into her mouth. Her mother grabbed them roughly away and handed them to Jennifer, setting off another loud bout of wailing. “Sucio,” Consuela said, “Dirty.”

  When they arrived and had gone through all the by now familiar security procedures, José said he wanted a few words with them before he saw Emma. He told them that he had secured a private visiting room for this meeting and had gotten leave to spend as much time as was necessary talking to Emma. If everything went as they hoped, Jennifer and Mark could join them later.

  “Good luck,” Mark said. “We’re counting on you.”

  Realizing it was time to go, Consuela abruptly handed Imaculada, who had finally settled down and fallen asleep in her sling, to Jennifer. The movement woke her up and she started howling again. Consuela stuck a pacifier in her mouth, which seemed to quiet her, and followed José through the heavy metal door separating the prisoners from everyone else. Jennifer tried to distract her, but the baby would have none of it and screamed frantically again as her mother moved away, leaning after her and wriggling so hard Jennifer nearly dropped her. Nothing calmed her until Jennifer took out the keys again and jiggled them. At that, Imaculada, who by now was sweaty, her hair plastered around her face and her nose running, stopped crying and reached for them. When she grabbed them and put them in her mouth, Jennifer didn’t take them back, though she bent to rescue the pacifier, which had fallen on the floor.

  “It won’t hurt her,” she said to Mark, who gave her a questioning look.

  She took a tissue from her bag and wiped Imaculada’s nose and face. A half hour passed. Then an hour. Imaculada, having tired of the keys and regained her pacifier, had fallen asleep on Jennifer’s lap, and fearful of waking her and unleashing another torrent of screaming, neither Mark nor Jennifer said a word. Finally, just as Imaculada was beginning to stir, José and Consuela appeared through the doorway. They couldn’t decipher the meaning of Consuela’s expression; it was grim, but she broke into a smile as she saw her baby, who, now wide-awake, stretched both her little arms out toward her. Consuela lowered Imaculada into her sling. The baby settled in, sucking contentedly on her pacifier. Mark and Jennifer looked eagerly at José and saw that he had a reassuring smile on his face.