The Heiress of Water: A Novel

by Sandra Rodriguez Barron

  * * *

  BELOW THE PADS of Monica’s hands surfaced a faint tremor, then a shudder. Monica opened her eyes, jolted out of the digression of her memory. Had she inadvertently spoken out loud? Was it her imagination, or had Yvettte arched her back a bit? Monica was unsure if she had shuddered at the vividness of her own memory, or if she had just sensed the struggle of a woman trapped below the surface of her own being. Monica had the eerie feeling that the shudder had somehow been the response of an audience to her thoughts. She doesn’t respond to outside stimuli, Adam had said. Yet, a rash of goose bumps had erupted across Yvette’s arms.

  Monica looked up at the clock: twenty more minutes. She called the nurse to flip Yvettte over. She would finish up with the head, then the feet, and then she was out of there. Monica massaged the temples of that pale, bony face. Now the eyes were still and staring blankly into space. When she finished, Monica devoted a moment to praying for Yvette, asking for a miracle, or at the very least, for the peace and comfort her family would desperately need for whatever came next. Feeling a bit like the startled crab, she packed up her supplies, rushed her good-byes, and fled, comforted only by the certainty that she would never have to see any of them again.

  chapter 3 LA DUÑA

  “Kevin is really racking up those brownie points,” Paige Norton said, as she looked out over the wood deck that wrapped around the back of Monica’s two-bedroom cottage. Monica was making tuna fish sandwiches and could see her best friend through the cutout in the wall between the kitchen and the living room. She had been thinking about the work going on outside on her sundeck, the peeling gray paint to be replaced with natural stain. The day was perfect for working outside, seventy-two degrees and just a hint of a cloud cover. Monica, her father, her boyfriend, and Paige had spent the morning working side by side and enjoying the view of the water from her home in Milford.

  Monica looked up when her friend spoke and noticed that Paige’s straight, auburn hair blazed in the sunlight streaming in through the picture window. Even her eyelashes trapped the sunlight, crowning her pale blue eyes with tiny arches of light. Paige tapped at the glass with her fingernail. “By allowing Kevin to make improvements to your house, you’re indirectly agreeing to marry him.” Paige raised her eyebrows authoritatively.

  Monica stopped scooping the tuna out of the can and stared into the white porcelain sink and frowned. “What? By asking him to scrape some old paint?” As she spoke, Monica felt a sharp pain on her thumb. She looked down and saw a thick drop of blood plop into the sink, her thumb sliced by the edge of the tuna fish can. “Now look what you’ve done. I cut myself.”

  Paige shook her head and looked out toward the deck where the two men were working. “When a parent enjoys your boyfriend more than you do, things have the potential to get messy.”

  Monica nodded as she washed her wound. “No kidding. Kevin gets along with my dad way better than me.”

  Paige said, “Look at them. Even as they scrape paint, they’re gabbing away like a pair of little girls with a new tea set.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “It’s time to shit or get off the pot, honey.”

  Monica wrapped a paper towel around her thumb without commenting. Paige came into the kitchen and helped herself to a glass of lemonade. “I was just thinking about that couple you told us about earlier, you know, the guy with the wife in the waking coma. Amazing how your life can be gone all of a sudden.” She snapped her fingers. “In her case it’s even sadder because she had a life. Unlike me.”

  Monica scowled at her. “How can you feel sorry for yourself and talk about Yvette Lucero in the same breath?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Paige said, fussily rearranging Monica’s plastic sea-creatures refrigerator magnets with one hand, the glass of lemonade in the other. “It’s just that finding love has been such a slow and painful process for me. This woman found the Holy Grail, then it was over. It makes me wonder if it’s worth dragging myself through the endless charade of dating.” Paige stared up at the popcorn ceiling for a moment, then seemed to catch herself drifting toward self-pity again, because she said, “It’s just not fair that it was all taken away from her.”

  Monica nodded. “Indeed, she had a few of the blessings that have eluded us.” She stopped, cocked her head. ”Has, I guess, because she’s alive. But not really. It’s so strange.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Monica saw Paige turn and look at her. “Speaking of elusive blessings … you still think about your mom a lot, Monica?”

  “Every day.”

  “Would she have approved of Kevin?”

  Monica rolled her eyes and smiled ironically. “Did I ever tell you how my mother evaluated a man?”

  ”Noooo” Paige said, putting her hands on her hips. She had always had an insatiable appetite for stories about Alma’s life, and she needled Monica to retell the stories over and over in excruciating detail. Sometime around the ninth grade, Monica had begun to embellish, then ultimately to make them up completely. But she had never told this one, since it wasn’t really a story, but rather a seemingly inconsequential incident that she now realized indeed had consequences. “Well, one day,” she began, “while my mom and I were standing in a crowd outside the airport in El Salvador, I overheard her chatting with a toothless peasant woman—a campesina with a big heavy basket of fruit on her head. Anyway, the woman was telling my mom that she was finally going to marry her man after nine years and eleven kids. At the time, my mom was so out of touch with simple people and, in her infinite wisdom, thought she’d give this woman some advice on how to determine the worthiness of a man. She said, ‘Can he change the world? Deliver justice? Can he save what’s precious? Can he bring exceptional beauty to the world, or at the very least, relief of pain? If the answer is no, then you should move on.’ The poor peasant woman just looked away. She was depressed by those lofty standards.”

  “I’m depressed by those standards.”

  “I think that little speech got under my skin, Paige. It’s what made me select physical therapy as a career. So the answer to your question is no. Kevin doesn’t fit any of those measures. And here I am struggling with the idea of a future with him. Coincidence?”

  “ ‘Relief of pain’ …,” Paige repeated, her voice trailing off. “It’s what she pursued. And Max was a doctor who was fighting for what he felt was justice for the poor of El Salvador. That’s what she saw in him. She admired him.”

  “Admiration,” Monica said, holding up a finger. “Maybe that’s what’s missing in my relationship. That feeling of looking up to him and saying, ‘Wow.’ ”

  After a moment during which neither spoke, Paige stepped behind Monica, who was still at the sink, and put her arm around her friend’s shoulder. She must have been about to say something profound or sympathetic, but then she looked down and saw the enormous nest of paper towels that Monica had wadded around her thumb. “My God,” Paige said, putting a hand over her throat. “I hope you saved the severed hand in a cooler. We’ll have to reattach it after lunch.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Monica said, smiling and placing her injured hand protectively under her armpit. “It was your fault. You hassled me about commitment.”

  Paige bumped her at the hip bone. “Out of the way,” she ordered, and took the spoon out of Monica’s other hand. “No one wants bloody tuna fish.”

  Monica happily scooted aside.

  “In a twisted kind of way, you’re lucky you don’t have a mother’s constant pressure to get married.” Paige slipped into a perfect imitation of her mother’s voice. “When are you going to get married and have kids? Girls over thirty expire like milk.”

  Monica laughed. “She said that?”

  “Swear to God.”

  “Well, you sounded a lot like her when you were standing over by the window, putting the pressure on me.”

  “With you it’s different. You have a great guy just waiting for you. I say go for it, get it over with.”

&n
bsp; “When I was a little girl, I dreamed of the day when I would step into a big white dress, look into my beloved’s eyes, and … get it over with.”

  Paige wagged the wood spoon at Monica. “I know a dozen women who’d swallow up your sweet boy in a second.”

  Monica’s thirtieth birthday was still three years away, but she was just beginning to understand that thirty meant she was supposed to participate in an age-specific crisis, a developmentally useless milestone like cutting wisdom teeth. And although she was firmly Alma’s daughter in this sense—she refused to buy into the idea that she had to marry at all—she was beginning to feel the tug of something, the feeling that time was passing faster and faster, and she just wasn’t running hard enough to keep up.

  She heard the voices of the men, accompanied by the sound of the screen door opening and slamming shut. Kevin saw her and blew her a kiss. Monica looked at his paint-speckled boat shoes. How long would he wait? Monica wondered. She was stalling, and she had done a great job of convincing everyone, except Paige, apparently—that the decision to marry was hung up only on her solemn duty to do One Great Thing before settling into a cookie-cutter destiny of kids and retirement goals, minivans and dinner at the in-laws’ every Sunday night. But what was that One Great Thing? She didn’t know. Something life-defining, something unforgettable, something she would spend her old age telling and retelling to bored grandchildren. Something that could completely absorb her the way the sea had engrossed her as a little girl.

  But there was the mortgage on a waterfront property to pay and there were college loans to repay, plus her indecision over which of a dozen ideas to pursue in the first place. Of course, there were some couples, she had heard, who actually went out into the world and did the Big Thing together. But Kevin Mitchell didn’t see the point of leaving U.S. soil, ever. In fact, Kevin, like his parents, believed the world began and ended on the Connecticut shore. When Monica had brought up the idea of traveling to Europe or even back to El Salvador, his response had been “Why? So we can get sick on the water and have our traveler’s checks stolen by a pack of kids who haven’t showered in a year?”

  And there stood the impasse. He wasn’t the least bit interested in any of Alma’s measures of a well-lived life, he just wanted to be safe and comfortable and unchanged. That attitude had become more and more infuriating to Monica as her own desire for adventure grew. But Kevin was attentive, kind, and good-looking in a tousled, all-American kind of way. And here he was, all hot and sweaty, sacrificing a perfectly good golf day to scrape paint. Was she ungrateful to want a more adventurous, ambitious man?

  Kevin headed for the bathroom while Bruce washed up in the kitchen sink. He looked at his daughter’s hand. “Did you cut your whole hand off? I’ve seen turbans smaller than that.”

  Behind her, Paige chortled. Monica cupped her injured hand and shot back, “Did you finish scraping my porch or are you just here to get fed, old man?”

  “I think we can finish up in about an hour,” he said, peering over imaginary bifocals and examining her thumb. “Then we can start to stain. You’ll be having your first Fourth of July party on that deck this year.”

  Paige brought out a stack of plates and set them on the farmhouse table. “If you have a party, you should invite that Will Lucero guy. I’d love to meet him,” she said.

  “I hardly know him,” Monica said, opening a bag of potato chips. “Besides, the last thing I want is to get friendly with him. He might want me to massage his wife again.”

  “Well, I figure he’s going to have to start dating sometime. That wife is never going to find all her marbles,” she said, pointing to her temple.

  “Paige, that’s sick,” Kevin yelled from the bathroom.

  Bruce scrunched up his face at Paige. “You’re scavenging the scene of an accident for a husband?”

  Paige put her hands on her hips. “You have no idea how hard it is to find a nice guy. Most attractive, quality men tend to hang around other men that fit the same description. He might have a friend for me. It’s just good networking on my part.”

  Kevin sat down next to Bruce and elbowed him. “She’s right about quality bachelors sticking together,” he said, pointing his thumb at himself and then at Bruce. “Look at us.” Bruce nodded and opened his eyes wide, looking at Paige as if that indeed proved her point.

  “What about you, Bruce?” Paige turned her wooden spoon upon him. “Why haven’t you remarried? You’re not getting any younger,” she said, aiming the spoon at his thinning hairline. “You’re approaching your expiration date.”

  Bruce looked at her as if he had no idea what she was talking about. “I’m not a bachelor. I’m a widower.”

  Paige frowned. “That’s a piss-poor excuse. When are you going to marry that poor Marcy?”

  Kevin fetched two beers and handed one to Bruce. “Paige, has anyone ever told you you’re nosy?”

  Paige slapped a scoop of tuna onto a slice of white bread and handed it to him. “Has anyone ever told you you’re boring?”

  “Has anyone—” Kevin began, but Bruce put a hand up to shush them.

  “I’m not a fan of marriage. Once was enough for me, thank you.”

  “That’s not very complimentary to Mom,” Monica said from the kitchen. “Or to Marcy.”

  “Who said Marcy even wants to marry me?” Bruce nodded in agreement with himself and took a bite of his sandwich.

  Monica, Kevin, and Paige all laughed. “Dad, she already picked out her dress and the invitations. I’d say she’s open to the idea.” Monica heard a car pull up into the driveway. “Speak of the devil …”

  Bruce lowered his head, looked right, then left, collecting each of their gazes before saying, in a low voice, “Edgar Degas said, ‘There is work, and there is love, and we have but one heart.’” He put a hand over his heart as if to pledge allegiance.

  They heard a sound outside and were silent for a moment as they waited for Marcy to make her way in, all of them crunching potato chips at the same time. Suddenly Kevin looked at Monica and smiled. “I don’t agree with Degas. Work is what you do to support love.”

  Monica reached over and squeezed his hand. She was struggling to find a response that wouldn’t make him bolt out the door and return with an engagement ring when the front door squeaked open and Marcy stepped in, a canvas bag in each hand, with flowers from her garden sticking out of the tops.

  “Yoo-hoo. It’s me …” She looked at Bruce. “Hello, darling.”

  Bruce leaned toward Monica and, as if to stubbornly emphasize work’s priority over love, whispered, “Would you give me that fellow’s phone number, you know, the one with the wife who was in the accident.” He pointed at his temple. “While I was scraping paint, I had an idea for an article on the subject of brain-injury recovery that I might want to pitch to an editor.” Then he stood up and held his arms open to Marcy.

  * * *

  EVERY MAJOR EVENT of Bruce Winters’s personal life was instigated—or inspired—by his career choices, especially the bad ones. A prize-winning article he penned in his college newspaper won him a job as a junior reporter at the New Haven Register. His work at the Register won him a job as a bottom-feeder at the New York Times at age twenty-seven. A year later, his editor, who also happened to be his girlfriend, convinced him to go with her to work in press relations for the U.S. State Department at the embassy of the tiny, virtually unheard of Republic of El Salvador, a career choice he bitterly regretted from the minute he accepted and even more so when they broke up six months later.

  A week after the split, he was nursing his wounded ego and pondering the course of his derailed career when the U.S. ambassador hosted a party for the country’s most powerful families. Uncomfortable in any situation that smacked of social networking, Bruce preferred to process raw facts into news copy. But his presence was required, and so he stood in the corner of the room, itchy in a shirt and tie and feeling sorry for himself indeed. He was trying to avoid eye contact with his ex
-girlfriend and hopefully soon-to-be-ex boss, who was chatting up a Salvadoran military chief across the room. His ex was trying to get his attention so he could take over and she could float to the next VIP, but he was ignoring her, standing next to a large glass punch bowl, watching the crowd of beautifully dressed people smelling of expensive cologne. The men all nursed heavy-bottomed highballs of the finest Scotch whisky, some of them with a cigarette in the other hand, gesturing wildly and swapping political jokes. The women in the crowd lacked the homogeneity of those Salvadorans on the street whose stout stature and high cheekbones marked them as descendants of the indigenous Mayan races of Central America.

  It was obvious that these women were either imported or of European origin. Bruce watched a set of redheaded twins, several lithe brunettes; and a blonde who kept smiling at him from behind the rim of a big, floppy hat. With fashionable platform shoes and slices of bright blue eye shadow, one could easily transpose her, or any of the guests, to a cocktail party in New York City or Chicago. Bruce was fancying himself the observant but detached amateur sociologist when he felt a tug at his sleeve. He turned and looked down at a beautiful girl whom he had not seen before, with slick, black hair pulled tight behind her ears, and eyes so dark he could clearly see himself reflected in their distorting, convex mirrors. She couldn’t be a day older than seventeen. She smiled at him and boldly asked if he would like to dance.

  Bruce hadn’t even been aware that there was music, so engrossed was he in his thoughts and observations. He stood paralyzed, with a crystal mug of punch in one hand. He didn’t understand how an upper-class girl in this country would dare ask a man—a stranger—to dance. It was unheard of, simply impossible, and there was a stack of cultural briefings on his desk to prove it. Yet there she stood, totally unself-conscious, as if she had merely asked him for the time. Of course it would be ungentlemanly not to accept, and so he felt put on the spot, vaguely angry, his ears burning with embarrassment. All the while his more primitive alarms were beginning to go off—louder, louder, as they detected that this was easily the most beautiful creature he had ever seen in his life.