The Heiress of Water: A Novel

by Sandra Rodriguez Barron

  Monica chuckled dryly but didn’t reply. Bruce flashed her a look of warning, got up, and headed toward the door.

  “How are you two related to the Borreros?” Will asked casually, slipping his hands into his pockets and delivering Monica’s shoe an almost imperceptible, conspiratorial kick.

  Fernanda’s chest and voice rose with pride. “My grandmother was the nanny of several Borrero children, including Alma Borrero. And when Magnolia Borrero was old, my grandmother took care of her.”

  “… Grandmother on her father’s side” Leticia clarified.

  “Yes, and Doña Magnolia Borrero left my grandmother a nice sum of money that paid for my medical school. So my mother and I have close ties to the family. I originally learned about the potential of cone venom from my father,” Fernanda said, hands on her hips, orange eyes suddenly bright. “The Borreros already had this history with seashell collecting, and they had the facility, the capital, and the interest to pursue a cone venom study. It’s a marriage made in heaven.”

  “And speaking of marriage …,” her mother said in a singsong voice, smiling brightly. Monica couldn’t help but think that it was a damn shame Fernanda hadn’t inherited those fabulous teeth.

  Fernanda waved at her mother in a dismissive, embarrassed way, but Leticia persisted. “Fernanda is engaged to one of Doña Borrero’s nephews,” she said proudly. “He’s a chemist.”

  “Congratulations,” they all said, and Fernanda nodded her head modestly.

  Monica suddenly noticed the three-carat engagement ring on Fernanda’s short, stubby finger. By American standards it was huge, but by Salvadoran standards it belonged in a museum.

  “So interesting” was all Monica could manage. “And is your grandmother still alive?”

  “Barely,” Fernanda said. “She works at the Borr-Lac dairy plant, not too far from here. She’s so old she hardly does any real work, but she hates being idle. The Borreros keep her on the payroll because she’s a family relic.”

  Suddenly, Fernanda slapped her hands together, signaling that chitchat time was over and she had more important things to do. “So, Mr. Winters, Mr. Lucero—what are we going to talk about today?”

  “I want to talk about competence,” Will said, clapping his hands together in mockery of the bossy way she had clapped her own. “I want you to convince me that you know what you’re doing.”

  Fernanda pursed her lips and nodded. She pointed down the hall. “My office is down the hall to your right”—she motioned to Will—”please.” They all shuffled out into the hall. Will and Bruce stepped into the office and Fernanda followed them in and closed the door.

  Monica and Leticia Ramos were left alone in the hall. Leticia turned to Monica slowly, her head turned to the side, as if someone far away had just called her name. She blinked twice, then smiled oddly, a cold smile with only the teeth. She said, “Nice to meet you … Monica … Winters.” And in that slow and astonished pronunciation Monica understood, without a question, that the woman who had once been Maximiliano Campos’s common-law wife had just now figured out exactly who Monica was.

  THE MEETING had left Monica giddy. She wondered if Bruce had figured out the connection to Max or if he was truly as distracted with his vigorous note-taking as he appeared. Leticia Ramos, the only staff member at Caracol who would remember Alma when she was alive, had picked up on the mother-daughter resemblance. Surely she would tell someone and it would get back to the Borrero uncles, the ones who’d cut Monica out of the will. But so what? After Bruce walked out of the doctor’s office, he would have all the raw material he needed for his story. The two of them would go home in a few days anyway. Besides, she wasn’t here to take a piece of their empire or to discredit the program. If anything, they all had one thing in common: everyone wanted the venom program to work.

  Monica sighed. Maybe, just maybe, the whole money saga had two sides; maybe there had been some miscommunication somewhere along the way. But it seemed like wishful thinking, since according to Bruce, they had essentially erased her from the family. No, the Borreros would undoubtedly be threatened by their presence. She decided against telling Bruce about her moment with Leticia. He would only get more nervous than he already was.

  So the old nanny Francisca was still around, Monica thought with a mix of nostalgia and delight. Francisca had been so worn-out by raising hellions like Alma, Max, and several other Borrero urchins that by the time she got to taking care of quiet little Monica, she had been a loving but tired grandmotherly figure. Monica thought she would definitely like to pay her a visit.

  Monica headed toward the lobby and looked at her watch. Three o’clock. By now Paige would have spent her lunch break scouring for information on the Costa Rican shell. Monica guessed the registrant of the shell would turn out to be Fernanda’s fiancé, the chemist. Which cousin was he? Monica wondered. The doctor had not said his name. Monica took inventory of her Borrero second cousins—not much more than a blurry memory of a crop of scruffy schoolboys: Rodolfo? No—too young. Alejandro? Marco, maybe. She wondered what had changed in their prideful code of behavior to allow him to marry so far down socially. Perhaps it was just a matter of history repeating itself—perhaps this cousin was the rebel du jour, and Fernanda was the new Max.

  Looking into Fernanda’s all-too-familiar eyes had made Monica’s head feel swimmy with the sensation of peering into the past. She had the feeling that she was rushing toward something, like being on a ride at an amusement park; she was no longer certain of where she stood in the context of things from one minute to the next.

  There was a public phone in the lobby of Caracol, across from the seashell displays. Monica looked at her watch and dug her calling card out of her purse.

  “PAIGE NORTON, Development Research.”

  “Monica.”

  “Hello? Hello? Hello?”

  “Hello? Paige can you hear me?”

  “Monica? I can barely hear you.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, hi there. Hey, I’m running to a meeting, so I can’t talk for more than a sec, but the good news is I found it. The shell was registered with the Conchologists of America in 1999 to someone named Alma Borrero, who also happens to be a current member of the COA, with the membership dues paid up right through next month.”

  Monica chewed on her bottom lip.

  “Are you there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Since this doesn’t make any sense, I called the COA. As it turns out, this Alma Borrero penned an article that will appear in the next issue of their magazine, describing the adverse effects of biopharmaceutical conotoxins on the human nervous system. They sent me an abstract—something about the treatment causing extreme aggression in trial studies on mice.”

  Monica was sitting on a padded bench near the pay phone. She was playing with the plastic calling card, flipping it over and over as she listened. She pressed the edges of the card until they left a white line on the yolks of her thumb and index finger. Pressing even harder, she whispered, “There isn’t anyone else in the Borrero family named Alma. No adults anyway.”

  “A married name then,” Paige said. “How about someone using it as a pseudonym? Or perhaps it’s just someone unrelated to you. … Is Borrero a common name? Like Lopez and Martinez?”

  “Not at all,” Monica said, curling her bare feet under her marigold dress.

  “I gotta go, love. But I’ll work late tonight and research the name itself. I’m curious to see what other traces are out there on this person.”

  Monica hung up and went to sit down on one of the sofas in the lobby. She pulled the specimen catalog out of her day bag. She spread it open on her lap and went to the page she had dog-eared, to the Hexaplex bulbosa. The plain little shell was suddenly a little calcified box of secrets. She sat for a moment, trying to clear her mind, figure out the strange riddle, and calm her creeping nerves. On top of everything else, Paige had hit upon controversy over the use of cone toxins on humans, a discovery even her
father had failed to make—or mention.

  Despite the warm air, a shiver ran up Monica’s arms. She felt the presence of a thousand seashells, curled around the axis of their own mysterious past and glowing in the soft light of the display cases across the lobby. She tilted her head and heard the first stirring of something, or someone, approaching; like wind rustling through trees in the distance. No one ever found her body.

  The specimen catalog slid off her lap and landed upside down on the tile floor. Monica didn’t pick it up, but rather remained perfectly still, her spine straight. Her green eyes blinked at the glass cases in disbelief, as if all those pale pink lips had suddenly abandoned their calcified state and had curled themselves around those words before returning to their silence and mystery. She remained that way for a long time, until Will appeared, sat down beside her, took her hand in his, and asked her if something was wrong.

  MONICA HAD AGREED to massage Yvette and three other patients at five o’clock that evening. Since her mind was racing, she welcomed the opportunity to occupy her hands. She believed in doing the most difficult thing first, so she chose to begin with Yvette.

  Yvette’s eyes had ceased their former ping-ponging, but her hands kept up a strange, almost constant motion of combing or digging. Her skin seemed to have turned a yellowish hue, and her lips were chapped and stiff. Will dipped a washcloth in a cup of water and moistened her lips. Monica volunteered her favorite stick of lip balm, which she later threw out in the bathroom trash, as if it were contaminated with Yvette’s decay and ill fate.

  “Can I help with the massage?” Will asked, trying to still one of Yvette’s unnervingly busy hands.

  “Sure,” Monica said. “Crank the foot lift on the bed up about a foot.” After he had elevated his wife’s legs, Will cupped his wife’s small feet in his hands, just as he had on the day of that first massage.

  Will said, “Look at those hands. They won’t stop digging. How can I get her to relax?”

  “We can both massage her hands. It’s a very nice feeling to have both hands or both feet rubbed simultaneously.” Monica pointed to the night table. “Grab some lotion.”

  It worked, because Yvette’s hands stilled almost immediately. Soon, Monica’s mind drifted back to the conversation with Fernanda Mendez and what Paige had said on the phone. Monica was tugging at Yvette’s pinkie finger when Will said, “Relax, honey,” and for a moment, Monica thought that he had been speaking to her. When she recognized her error, she felt her stomach recoil. As if she could read what was going through Monica’s head, Yvette abruptly withdrew her hand from Monica and slowly turned her head toward Will.

  Will fixed his eyes on something behind Monica. Monica turned and saw an electric fan on top of a dresser, oscillating soundlessly into the space above them. Monica turned back to Will and said, “I know what you’re thinking, and, no, it wasn’t the cold air. Will, I think she turned away from me.”

  Will shook his head. “If she could do that, then she could get up out of that bed and make a ham sandwich. You’re tired, Monica, I can see it in your eyes. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

  Monica shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “I have three other customers. Now get out of my way.” Will sat down in a chair across the room and opened up a newspaper. After a while, he wandered out of the room.

  Almost as soon as he left, Yvette’s fingers recommenced their roaming and digging. Monica was massaging one of Yvette’s quadriceps, lost in thought again, when a thin, paper-white hand locked onto her wrist, then squeezed hard. Monica reacted as if she had been burned: she cried out and yanked her arm away. She rubbed her wrist, searching Yvette’s face for a sign of life. There was nothing. Her brown eyes were as vacant as a doll’s.

  Monica was so unnerved that she cut the massage short. Eluding Will, she packed up her tools and told the nurse on duty that she wasn’t feeling well, and that she would conduct the balance of the massages over the next two days. She found the driver and went back to the guesthouse, tumbling quickly into an empty, dreamless sleep.

  “LET’S GO to the little store again,” Will said as he stood outside Monica’s door at the guesthouse two hours later. “I want a beer.”

  “I’ll pass.” Monica opened the door a bit. “I had to drag myself here from the infirmary. Maybe my dad would like to go.”

  “I don’t enjoy his company quite as much as yours.”

  Monica shrugged. “It’s time to settle in. Watch some TV.”

  “There’s no TV in the rooms, only that minuscule black-and-white one in the dining room, and there’s already five women glued to it watching the stupid novela.”

  “So what do you want from me? A coloring book and some crayons?”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s eight o’clock. What am I supposed to do for two hours?”

  “Start a journal.” Monica covered her mouth and yawned. “Or would you prefer to study one of the specimen catalogs?”

  He grabbed her by the wrist. “Put your shoes on, you’re coming with me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re the one that’s actually from this boring place. If you’re not going to take me dancing, then the least you can do is buy me a cold beer.”

  She took a deep breath and gave him a look that she hoped communicated all the reasons they shouldn’t be alone together. It didn’t work because he just kept looking at her, eyebrows raised in anticipation.

  “Okay, one beer.” She looked at her watch and pretended to yawn. “Hopefully your life’s story won’t take more than an hour.”

  MONICA FIGURED THAT if she could keep control of the conversation, then she could keep the evening pleasant and free from uncomfortable and compromising moments. “So where did you meet Yvette?” Monica began. “Did I hear Sylvia say that she worked for you?”

  Will took a swig of beer and settled back into his chair in a way that some men do when they’re about to tell a long story. “I was nineteen,” he began. “I dropped out of the engineering department at UConn and took a job as a department manager at a large store. Yvette worked for me part-time. She was starting her freshman year at a local community college, and when we started dating, she hounded me about going back to school. It worked, and I was back at UConn the next semester, this time in the business program. My parents went wild—she was smart, pretty, polite, and a good influence on me. That she was of Puerto Rican descent was a huge cherry on top.”

  “Do you think that matters?” Monica asked.

  “To some degree. It does make things smoother if you know what’s expected of you, culturally speaking.”

  “And when did you decide to get married? Was it love at first sight?”

  Will laughed. “You sound like the chorus from Grease.”

  “ ‘Tell me more, tell me more,’ ” Monica sang.

  “I need a cigar first,” Will said, and stood up. “Care to join me?”

  Monica shook her head. “Not tonight.”

  When he was seated again with the last of the store’s dried-up cigars, he got back into the long-story position and drew in a good long puff.

  “So how did you know that Yvette was the one?” Monica asked.

  He looked up, slowly. Monica knew by his expression, before he even spoke, that he was about to confess something. He looked off to the side for a moment, blew out his smoke, and said, “The crazy thing is I almost backed out of the wedding.”

  IT WAS WINTER, and Will had gone to visit a buddy who had the flu and was stuck in his dorm at the UConn campus. The friend was the type who would die before seeking medical help, and his girlfriend had broken up with him a few days before. Will was worried about him and so trekked up to campus after a snowstorm, on treacherous, icy roads. The afternoon was gloomy and dark, and he struggled through snowdrifts and footpaths in construction boots, his toes wooden with cold. When he got to the dorm, his friend’s room was empty. Will walked around, checking the bathroom and asking for him, but no one knew where he was. A half hour
later, Will was about to give up. On his way out, he happened to glance out the window of the dormitory’s main hallway, to the open field on the back side of the building. He stopped when he saw his friend’s figure standing out in a foot and a half of snow, recognizable by the bumblebee-colored ski jacket. The friend had just finished digging a giant heart shape in the snow. Inside the heart he had written, in letters as big as a person, “I love you, Alison,” and was looking up, occasionally throwing snowballs at an upper-story window. Apparently, his gesture was being ignored by the ungrateful Alison. An hour later, Will succeeded in dragging his lovesick friend to the infirmary, but what ailed him was far more serious than the threat of the flu.

  Later that night, Will dreamed of the heart carved in the snow. In his dream, he was filling in the heart with words for Yvette. He was trying to spell out Te amo, “I love you” in Spanish, but the letters kept rearranging themselves to spell out a far less flattering sentiment: Me ato—”I tie myself down.”

  Will woke up with a weight of uncertainty on his chest, wondering for the first time if what he felt for Yvette was anything less than real love. Maybe, just maybe, what he took for love was no more than contentment and comfort. Worried, he skipped work and took a ferry out to Block Island, where his brother, Eddie, was spending the weekend with his wife. Will found them at their cottage and told them what had happened. Clenching his fists, Will lamented that he’d never risk pneumonia for Yvette. “Maybe love should make you do crazy stuff like that.”

  Eddie and his wife had assured him that his friend’s antics were more about getting attention than demonstrating mature love. By the end of the weekend they had him convinced that his friend’s gesture wasn’t passion, but rather, immaturity. A year later, Will and Yvette were married.

  MONICA THOUGHT he had finished his story, but he surprised her by pulling his chair closer to her and continuing, “About a year after our wedding, I went into business with my father and Eddie. It made sense to delay having kids for a while. After five years, I told Yvette that I was ready, that she could go off the pill whenever she wanted.”