The Heiress of Water: A Novel

by Sandra Rodriguez Barron

  Finally, Monica thought. Cough it up.

  He took a deep breath and said, “The day you told me about your mother and Max,” he said, looking out to the garden, “I was angry and confused to say the least. … So … I did tell one person of Alma and Max’s whereabouts that day.”

  Monica turned, looked at his profile. “Who?”

  He took a deep breath and exhaled, “Dona Magnolia.”

  “You told Abuela,” Monica said flatly, sitting back. “That pretty much explains the rest.”

  “I always wondered if she got word out to her friends in the high military as to where Max could be found.”

  “Of course she did, Dad,” Monica said. “She was hell-bent on breaking them up. She was furious at both of them.”

  Bruce folded his hands on his lap. “You were right about one thing out on the beach today, Monica. I was very jealous and very angry. So I lashed back by informing the most powerful person I knew.”

  “Abuela.”

  “Abuela,” he repeated softly. “I figured she wouldn’t do anything to hurt Alma, just punish her somehow, put an end to her disgusting behavior.”

  “Francisca said several others died with Max,” Monica said. “What really happened at El Trovador, Dad, what?”

  “I don’t know. I have a headache.” Bruce put his hand over his eyes. “I don’t even know what to think anymore.”

  “Are you coming with me to meet her boat?” Monica asked. “We’d have to stay a few more days.”

  He let his hand drop to his lap. “I don’t want to go, but I don’t want you to go alone. I’ll think about it overnight.”

  She nodded, then looked up to see Will coming down the hall. She waved without smiling. It was no surprise to either of them that he was defying Sylvia’s earlier proclamation that they would swap quarters.

  “You’re getting a little too close to him,” Bruce said in a low voice. The words rolled into a forced smile as Will approached. He was freshly showered, but Monica could see sweat was already beading up along his upper lip and his forehead.

  “What’s your take on what happened today at the factory, Will?” Bruce said. The question surprised Monica, since Bruce normally avoided the subject of Alma at all costs. Perhaps her father was experiencing his own version of hot and cold when it came to Will.

  Will shook his head, was about to say something, then paused and sat down next to Bruce. “I have to admit, Bruce, I encouraged Monica to pursue her suspicions for my own selfish purposes. I hope you understand that I’m very, very worried about Yvette. If it’s true that your wife knows something about the treatments at Caracol …” He wrinkled his brow. “Wife? Ex-wife?”

  “Wife,” Monica said. “Technically, they’re still married.”

  “I have a certificate that says she’s missing and presumed dead.” Bruce shook his head. “That makes her my ex.” He rubbed his razor stubble and pulled at an imaginary beard. “As for Yvette and the treatment, I don’t blame you for taking a hard look at the program. You two are one step ahead of my own research; I would have stumbled upon Alma’s publications on the subject eventually. I just don’t know how I would have handled it.”

  Will sat forward, folded his hands together, elbows resting on his knees. “And she just left one day,” Will said, as if Monica and Bruce were hearing the story for the first time. “She divorced her own kid,” he whispered, shaking his head. “An intelligent, beautiful woman from a powerful family, who could hire ten full-time nannies if she wanted … and yet she walked away from everything. I don’t get it.”

  Monica looked down at her hands, at the fingers that were once small and pudgy and fragrant with innocence, hands that had become strong and competent with the skill of healing. She turned them over and looked at her narrow fingernail beds, painted pale pink like seashells. Her hands folded onto one another, tenderly and without being willed, as if they were comforting one another.

  Monica wondered, what kind of woman could walk away from the same arms that reached out to her every morning from inside the crib? And how could she bear to see her twelve-year-old wave good-bye for the last time from a bedroom window? When she felt her eyes well up, Monica took a deep breath, then cleared her throat and straightened up. She gave Bruce and Will a fake smile and looked at her watch. “It’s nine o’clock. Anyone feel like taking a walk to the little store with me? I need a shot of something strong.”

  * * *

  ”AGUARDIENTE,” Monica pronounced, as she held up a capful of Tíc Táck, El Salvador’s national brand of moonshine, “is made out of fermented sugarcane. The campesinos buy it because it packs a punch and is cheaper than dirt.”

  Bruce had accompanied Monica and Will to the store to buy the liquor, complaining all the way that decent people didn’t drink moonshine. “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Monica said. “If you want me to drink something classy, then show me a place within a hundred miles where I can buy a nice bottle of chardonnay. I need something to take the edge off.”

  “Given the day’s occurrences and the fact that there’s nothing but moonshine in this little town, I’d say moonshine is perfect,” Will said. “Now do we drink it straight up, on the rocks, or with Coke?”

  Bruce made a face but held out his plastic cup. “On the rocks I suppose,” he said. By eleven, after several shots of Tic Tack, his face was in his hands. He had meant to stay up as long as Monica and Will wanted, mostly to prevent them from being alone together. But by eleven thirty he couldn’t stand it and went to bed. He left them sitting at a small, round cement picnic table at the center of the courtyard, surrounded by moonlight and palm fronds and stinking of insect repellent and moonshine.

  Will took another shot of aguardiente, coughed, and said, “It sure tastes horrible, but I feel like my grandma just wrapped me in a warm blanket.”

  Monica traced a line from her neck to her belly. “You can feel it burning its way down. … Hand me that bottle, will you? I’ll have another one.”

  Will moved the bottle away, placed it behind him on the ground. “I think a massage is a far more healthy sleep aid,” he said, taking away the plastic tumbler in her hand and placing it on the table. He stood up, walked around the table, and sat on the bench next to her. “Turn around,” he said, pointing at the foliage. Before she could move, he grabbed her shoulders and spun her around on the bench. He pushed his thumbs into her shoulder blades and began rubbing. Even with the shots of moonshine in her, she was still so tense he could barely get his fingers into the crook of her neck. “Relax,” he said. “Take your own advice and let it go.”

  “Easy for you to say. Your mom is probably home baking cookies right now.”

  He laughed, then got to work rubbing out the knots, noticing a long bar of tension running up along her spine. She pulled away when he pressed his thumbs along it. He worked in silence for a while, then, he dropped his hands onto his lap. His ears were buzzing with the pounding rush of blood as he explored the geography of the bones and muscles along her back. “Monica,” he whispered, allowing his lips to graze the velvet of her earlobe. “It’s taking all my strength not to turn you around and kiss you.”

  Monica twisted at the waist to look up at him. Will suspended his breathing, hoping that she was offering her mouth to him. But what he saw in her eyes was a tired melancholy. “We couldn’t do that to Yvette,” she said, and looked away.

  He dropped his forehead to her shoulders for a second. He wanted to tell her that he was sure that their meeting was no coincidence. But it seemed a bit much for now, so he just breathed quietly and leaned against Monica, listening to the crackle of insects in the darkness.

  “I can wish, can’t I?” Will whispered, and leaned in to see her profile. He pushed away a stray coil of her hair.

  “It’s all we can do, Will.”

  He slid his face into the crook of her neck and inhaled deeply, as if to drink in any words she might have left unspoken. Then, he parted his lips and ran the tip of his tongue a
long a small patch of her neck, tasting the salt on her warm skin. He found the pulse of her jugular, thumping softly beneath his mouth. He delighted in its quickening. Monica drew in air, but didn’t move.

  “I won’t kiss you then,” he whispered, as he dug his face deep into her hair. His hands encircled her waist. When his fingers met in the middle, he laced them together and pulled her toward him. Then, despite his best intentions, he sat forward just a little, just enough to let her know that his body was in love with her too.

  ON WEDNESDAY, they left the guesthouse by nine in the morning. A phone call from Bruce to San Salvador had brought Claudia Credo tearing across the country to accompany them to the marine station to await the research vessel. Bruce, Claudia, and Will sat in the first row of the passenger van, while Monica curled up in the back. She had slept little all night, but her eyes finally fell shut as the morning sun warmed the backseat of the passenger van. Sleeping wasn’t so easy since she was sliding around on the vinyl seat as the driver sped up and slowed down, avoiding oxcarts and stalled cows. Will complained and ordered the driver to slow down. “I don’t want to die on a dusty country road in El Salvador,” Will said. “No offense.” The driver just laughed and kept driving, slowing down for a few minutes before getting back to his erratic driving.

  Monica’s mouth was cottony, her eyes stung, and she had a dull ache in her head. Claudia chatted excitedly in the front seat. “There was a rumor that Alma was around. And it’s not such a strange thing in El Salvador, people disappearing in the chaos, then reappearing after the war.”

  “I bet,” Will said.

  “I hope that Alma’s research can enlighten your decisions,” Claudia said to Will, making the sign of the cross and pressing her hands together. “It’s great that someone is working to discredit any enterprises that may be reckless.”

  “Sylvia and I have been arguing nonstop on this whole trip,” Will said. “I feel really bad about our rift, but I’ve been distrustful of this clinic all along, and she—she’s so dogged in her pursuit. I’ve already made up my mind to take more forceful measures. I really need to find out what company helped transport Yvette down here. Then I can see if I can work something out. At least in the States I’d have the law on my side.”

  “I can help you,” Claudia said. “Let’s think about this.” She held up a finger. “Over hot coffee.” She had apparently packed a thermos, and Monica heard her pouring it into Styrofoam cups, the smell of it making her nauseated as she lay in the backseat. Just as she was about to doze off, she heard Claudia say, “Remind me to tell Monica that her boyfriend has been calling my house nonstop this week, looking for her. I told him he’s welcome to stay at my house if he wants to come. But first, he has to produce a nice little engagement ring.” She laughed and Monica strained to hear who responded, but no one did.

  Monica realized, with complete amazement, that she had forgotten to call Kevin in several days. She recalled the moment that had passed between her and Will the night before. She kept circling her mind to see if it was still there, her skin bursting with gooseflesh at the memory of his warm breath on her neck. This is what she had been missing all her life—the feeling that every moment together was a little nugget of happiness, something worth trapping in a capsule of memory, worth replaying over and over behind the surface of her eyelids. The fact that they had no future together didn’t make it any less of a gift. She could enjoy his presence in her life; but she knew that they had to bear the consequences of that unfulfillable attachment. Otherwise, she’d be exactly like her mother. Monica knew firsthand what it was like to be burned by the fires that others built to keep themselves warm at night.

  But what to do about that sexual pull that rushed and ebbed as predictably as the tides? Now she and Will had begun to lean on each other for moral support as their pursuits became more and more entangled. Was it possible that it was love she was dealing with here? The idea that she would have to sever something that was already pulsing with the lifeblood of the soul was terrifying. And the strange landscape didn’t help matters: El Salvador was a place where anything could happen—powerful men were recycled into mangoes and girls gave their babies away; sea creatures injected healing, and dead people reappeared like magic. The germination of love was an insignificant miracle by comparison.

  Lying in the backseat, Monica pulled a handful of fabric from Claudia’s day bag over her eyes to block out the sun. It helped her headache a bit. She wondered what kind of marriage Will and Yvette would be able to patch together if Yvette emerged from her state. If Will was falling in love, he might be less eager to begin the hard climb toward a future with his damaged wife. What if the harm was already done? She suddenly recalled a riff from an old bolero that Abuelo used to play on his guitar:

  Si negaras mi presencia en tu vivir

  bastaría con abrazarte y conversar

  tanta vida yo te di

  que por fuerza tienes ya

  sabor a mí

  She agreed with the song. The sensory recall of love is permanent. We are transformed by the taste of our own longing, and once savored, that same intimacy brands itself into the heart. Sabor a mí, she thought. I have made my mark on you, Will.

  Now her thoughts swung back to her mother, then again to Will and Yvette and back to her mother, in nauseating circles. She contemplated how strange it was that the future was a place in which her mother was alive. She wondered what people do when a loved one is released after a lengthy prison sentence. A wave of nerves took over with the realization that she would see her resurrected mother in a few hours. What would she say to her? All night she had rehearsed: casual, like running into an old friend; angry and outraged; relieved and eager to forgive. Or should she just stand before her mother and wait to hear and feel and say whatever came?

  Will announced that he too was going to take a nap, and Monica, her eyes still covered, heard him lay down on the bench seat in front of her. After a few minutes, something brushed Monica’s skin, and she removed the makeshift blindfold and saw Will’s hand appear behind the seat. His fist was closed, as if he were offering something, or asking her to guess what was inside. Monica reached over and pried his fingers open, but there was nothing inside. It was a trick: he pushed his fingers between hers. He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb, the rest of him unseen to her. His wedding ring was gone, and Monica stared at the pale band of skin around his finger. She let go of his hand at the first chance and rolled over. She heard him shift and sit up, felt his eyes on her back. She squeezed her eyes tight and didn’t answer when he spoke her name.

  An hour later, at noon, the driver announced that they’d arrived.

  chapter 17 ROSARY BIRTH

  The Carmelite nuns were chanting at Yvette’s bedside when the birth canal of clarity finally spit her out into the world. Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte, amén. Their harmony and repetition was trancelike. When the skin peeled back from Yvette’s vision, she was staring into the backs of their coarse brown cotton habits. Her vision was foggy, her eyes dry and flattened, as if someone had been pressing on her eyeballs for a long time. At first, she didn’t recognize the skinny sticks at her sides as being her own arms. Across the room, her mother was praying with the nuns over someone else’s bed, a string of small pearls dangling from her hands as she repeated the words with them.

  “Am I back?” she tried to ask, but no one heard her, because they were shuffling to another part of the room. She cleared her throat and rolled her eyes to the opposite side of the room, but it was curtained off and she couldn’t see.

  “Something bad happened in this place,” Yvette said in a dry, hoarse voice. “I can hear it in the exhaustion of the sea.”

  Her mother slowly turned her face toward her. Sylvia floated down the center aisle, her head cocked to one side. She stopped at the foot of Yvette’s bed.

  “I love you, Mama,” Yvette said.

  Sylvia’s disbelief
lasted the length of two slow blinks. Then, her face flooded with emotion.

  part THREE

  chapter 18 STITCHING THE SEA

  Jesus Peralta was loading boxes onto a hand truck when Bruce and Monica walked up the ramp to the marine station. The half-blind, redheaded fisherman didn’t recognize Monica Winters all grown up, but she remembered him from the days of cone-shell hunting with her mother and so called him by name. He told her that the research vessel Alta Mar had already arrived for a special project having to do with a local elementary school. Claudia and Will waited inside the small, barren marine station, sitting on molded plastic chairs and sipping grape sodas they didn’t really want. They waved and wished father and daughter good luck as the two walked on without them to a sandy stretch, where a crowd of schoolchildren were gathered around several people wearing black dive suits.

  It wasn’t hard to spot Alma. She was the only woman. She was surrounded by children, kneeling over a blow-up swimming pool, her palms covered with baby sea turtles, like potato chips with legs. She was demonstrating something to the smallest of her audience, a dark brown little boy with crutches and a stump for a leg. Bruce and Monica slipped into the small gathering of teachers and colleagues. Monica peered into the crowd, shielded by a tall man standing in front of her.

  Alma’s voice returned to Monica like a rush of warm foam. She could still hear the sea in its subtle, effervescent popping. Alma had a diving mask pulled up onto her forehead and was barefoot, red toenails gleaming in the charcoal-colored sand, and she flipped one of the baby turtles over to point to some anatomical part on the turtle’s underside.

  Monica drew in her breath slowly, quietly. She doubted that she would ever understand the woman who was standing before her, a woman who could engross herself in the wiggling of baby turtles, oblivious to the adult daughter who stood watching her across a distance of fifteen years.