by Darcey Bell
Yesterday Daisy asked if she can wait to show Charlotte the notebook until they’re on the plane to New York. Daisy wants the book to be perfect. She doesn’t want Charlotte to see it until it’s done. Charlotte is pleased that Daisy takes her project so seriously, and she’d said yes, of course. But why is Daisy showing it to Mom and not her? Because Mom won’t be on the plane, and good-hearted Daisy knows that it will be a nice distraction for her grandma as she waits for her friends.
Finally the guests trickle in. Fred and Arnie, Charisse, Martine. Charlotte has met some of them before. Quite a few look like Mom. Their yoga pants and cotton shirts are like a uniform. Underneath that baggy homespun, their bodies are nobody’s business. Some have put on shifts embroidered with bright flowers. A few men wear guayaberas and straw hats.
Mom introduces Charlotte to everyone, even the people she already knows. Gypsy and Melody have moved down from Marin County to make Melody’s trust fund go further. Seraphine is a translator who puts English subtitles on Spanish telenovelas. Maria Luisa, an Argentine doctor, is a single mom with a six-year-old son, Rodrigo. Charlotte is glad that her mother is friendly with a doctor. Maria Luisa has been summoned every time Charlotte visited, because Rodrigo is Daisy’s age, and Mom wants to show Charlotte that if Oaxaca is safe for Rodrigo, who lives here, for God’s sake, it will be fine for Daisy.
Now Rodrigo and Daisy have finally been introduced. They regard each other with terror from opposite ends of the courtyard.
Just as Daisy said, all of Mom’s friends greet Daisy like old pals. They’ve heard so much about her! They recognize her from her pictures—except she’s grown so tall! But they seem less clear about which of the adults—Charlotte, Rocco, or Eli—are related to Mom.
Obviously not Eli.
Charlotte is so distracted, she doesn’t notice that Ruth is missing until a real estate agent named Harding (he claims to have met Charlotte before) asks Rocco if he’s married yet. Rocco says no. Does he have a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend? Rocco looks as if the information is being extracted under torture. His girlfriend has come to Oaxaca with him. And where is the lucky girl? Oh, Rocco says, Ruth’s around. She went out for a walk to clear her head. She’ll be back any minute.
Charlotte thinks: He’s worried. Well, fine. Charlotte’s worried too. She can’t stop thinking about that conversation with Ruth about Daisy. How much does Ruth know?
Maybe Ruth is gone for good. And for a moment Charlotte thinks that she would be just as glad if Ruth never came back. It would solve lots of problems. Problems that haven’t really happened yet, but still . . .
“Where’s Ruth?” Charlotte asks Rocco when Harding wanders off for another tamarind margarita.
“She went out about an hour ago. To get something. She wouldn’t tell me what. It’s strange that she’s not back yet. I hope she’s not lost.”
“Oaxaca’s hard to get lost in. Ruth can find her way. She’s a smart girl, as you know.”
Is he really afraid that she’s lost? Did Ruth tell him about the driver stalking her, demanding his tip? Was that even true? The story seems improbable, just like the story about the swarming children. If she lied about that . . .
Charlotte should have mentioned the driver to Rocco, but she doesn’t want to scare him. She’ll wait and see what happens. Ruth will be back. Unless . . . Ruth was telling the truth about being stalked by the driver.
Charlotte has three choices. One: She can assume that Ruth will return any moment. Two: She can forget about Ruth and deal with her absence after the party. Or three: She can ruin everything by leaving to find Ruth or insisting that someone go search for her.
It does seem strange. Ruth had put so much effort into charming Mom. She’d hardly want to destroy what little headway she’s made with Mom by showing up late, or not at all.
“Look!” Charlotte tells Rocco. “There’s Reyna! Go talk to her.”
Reyna, Mom’s friend from the library, is very pretty. Unlike most of Mom’s friends, in their shapeless embroidered sacks, she’s stylishly dressed in a short lemon yellow dress that makes her skin glow with youth and health.
Reyna has a two-year-old daughter. Adorable, Mom says. They’ve lived with Reyna’s mother ever since the girl’s father hit Reyna. A few days later he’d come to her mother’s house with two friends, and they’d stood outside until Reyna’s mother called some tough male relatives to persuade them to leave.
No one here calls the police. Ever. No matter what.
What mischievous impulse made Charlotte send Rocco over to Reyna? Is she hoping that he’ll find her more attractive than Ruth? At least Reyna’s sane. But she lives in another country and has problems of her own. Maybe Charlotte just thinks that a conversation with a smart, beautiful woman will keep her brother occupied until Ruth returns.
Charlotte crosses the patio, chatting with the people she knows, introducing herself to strangers. They are all easy to talk to, even if they all have only one topic of conversation: how happy they are in Mexico, what a great decision they’ve made.
Mom’s Mexican friends are harder to figure out. Most are artists or writers or retired teachers. Maybe they think it’s important to meet different kinds of people; maybe they hope for art careers in the US. Mom and her friends must seem different from their families and most people they know.
After a while Charlotte sees a man waving to her from across the courtyard. Without his chef’s jacket, in a salmon-colored T-shirt and jeans, Chef Basil is barely recognizable. Holding his elbow, as if he’s afraid of losing him, is a taller man with a black mustache in a sharply pressed navy guayabera.
“Ernesto,” Basil says, “this is . . . this is Sally’s daughter. Sally’s daughter . . . Carla.”
“Charlotte.”
“Poor dear Basil,” says Ernesto, who is quite a bit younger. “Don’t take it personally, Charlotte. My husband does this all the time. Our cooking school would be more successful if there weren’t so many one-star reviews on TripAdvisor about him not bothering to learn students’ names.”
“That may be more information than . . . our new friend needs.” Now Charlotte can see the sadness beneath Basil’s maddening qualities. It’s also Ernesto’s sadness. He loves Basil and is struggling to cope with his memory deficits. His forgetting Charlotte’s name really isn’t personal.
“I was so hoping to run into you here. And where is your darling sister-in-law?” He looks past Charlotte into the party.
“Ruth’s not my sister-in-law,” Charlotte says. “She’s my brother’s girlfriend. She stepped out for a minute. She’ll be right back.”
“Good,” he says. “Because I have a very—very—strange thing to tell you. I don’t know what to make of it. I’m sure it’s a mistake. But last night . . . I happened to talk to my old friend, the Baroness Frieda’s accountant. I told him I’d run into a former employee of the baroness. I told him her name, I described her. I assumed he’d know her. He’s been with the baroness forever. He basically lives at her house, that’s how often she demands his physical presence.
“Well, here’s the strange part: He’d never heard of your sister-in-law. He didn’t recognize her description. He never had her name on a payroll, never cut a check with her name on it. So I sent him the picture that Lydia took of us. And he swore he’d never seen her before. Isn’t that peculiar?”
Why is Chef Basil telling Charlotte this? Does he want her to doubt Ruth’s credentials as a former abused employee of the Baroness Frieda? Does he relish the possibility that his accountant friend’s memory is as bad as his? There’s a chance that he’s trying to sow suspicion and discord in the family. But that seems like the least likely possibility.
“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation,” Charlotte says.
“I’m sure there’s a very simple explanation,” says Ernesto. “Which is that poor dear Basil has no idea what that girl’s name is.”
“Ruth,” protests Basil. “Her name’s Ruth. Carla just said Ruth. And what
about the photo? I sent him her picture.”
By now the patio is crowded, and with the party swirling around her, Charlotte doesn’t have time to consider the fact that a man with a memory problem has just told her that his friend can’t remember meeting her so-called sister-in-law.
Still, it is unsettling. The black mark beside Ruth’s name is getting darker.
Across the courtyard, Charlotte’s mother is sitting on top of a picnic table, surrounded by fascinated listeners. How can this be the same woman who made Charlotte take care of Rocco while she played the tragic abandoned wife? How can this be the person who burned down their house and almost killed Rocco?
Charlotte says, “Try the cheese-and-green-chili tamales. They’re the best.”
“Oh, yes,” says Basil. “I know the woman who makes them—Estella. They are the most delicious in Oaxaca. And believe me, Carol, the bar is set pretty high for that.
“Ta-ta,” says Basil, and as he walks away, it occurs to Charlotte that he remembers the name of the woman who makes the tamales—and not hers. But of course he and Estella live here. Charlotte is the outsider who will be gone by tomorrow night.
Rocco and Reyna are chatting in a corner of the courtyard. Daisy has sidled over to them and is leaning against him. Rocco and Reyna are smiling and nodding. Rocco looks relaxed and—
Of course it’s just at that moment that Ruth arrives.
The air around her crackles. Ruth looks semi-demonic, like one of those Satan-haunted girls in horror films whose heads spin on their necks. She’s holding a large package in front of her as she struts through the crowd and places herself squarely between Rocco and Reyna.
“I’m Ruth,” she announces, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Rocco’s fiancée.”
Charlotte reaches them in time to hear Reyna say, “Rocco’s told me so much about you. He’s been telling me what a wonderful time you both are having in Oaxaca.”
By now the party guests notice: Something’s going on. Like Moses parting the Red Sea, Mom charges through the space that opens up around her.
Ruth wheels around to face Mom. “Happy birthday!” She thrusts the package at Mom.
“Thank you,” says Mom. “I’ll just put it on the table with the other presents, even though I insisted there be no presents. I remember saying that any gift would be given to the poor. I’m still considering that, though I would be lying if I pretended my decision didn’t depend partly on how much I like the presents—”
Mom laughs at her little joke, and the guests chuckle, relieved that the tension generated by Ruth’s arrival seems to be dissipating.
“Open it,” Ruth says. “Now.”
Charlotte remembers how Ruth insisted they eat her grandma’s sticky buns.
Astonishingly, Mom obeys. As she rips apart the package, Luz gathers up the shredded wrapping paper. Mom holds her gift up for the others to see.
It’s what Charlotte knew it would be.
The angel-devil mask.
“Wow,” says Mom.
“Pull it,” says Ruth. “The chain.”
Mom pulls the chain and the mask splits, the angel and the devil separate, and the woman’s face appears beneath them.
Mom says, “This is me. This is a mask of me on the inside.”
“It’s a mask of everyone,” says Ruth.
Ruth said that masks scare her, and then went back and bought the one that Charlotte loved. Where did she get $300? She’s taken a risk, assuming that Charlotte’s mother would like it. But it’s worked, and she’s won. Charlotte tells herself to be glad that at least someone in the family has the mask.
“Thank you.” Mom puts her hand over her heart, a gesture totally unlike her. “I love it.”
“Don’t thank me,” Ruth says. “I mean, don’t thank just me. It’s from me and Rocco.”
17
Rocco
Ever since the vanishing start-up, Rocco has been weighing Ruth’s good points versus her bad. It’s something he used to do with women, and he’s come to think that it’s wrong. Anyone weighing his good and bad points might come to some disturbing conclusions. He is, after all, a guy who threatened his own mother with a knife. That was when he was drinking. He’s not drinking anymore.
On the night before Mom’s party, Rocco and Ruth lie beneath the ceiling fan evaporating the light film of sweat from their bodies.
Ruth asks, “What did you get your mom for her birthday?”
It seems like a sign of intelligence, or at least sensitivity, that she waits until after they’ve had sex to ask the difficult questions.
“Nothing. She said no presents. My mom is capable of giving the gifts away, just like she threatened.”
Ruth says, “People say they don’t want presents, but everyone wants presents. You need to get her something. I saw the perfect gift. Trust me on this, Rocco. I know what people want. I inherited it from Granny Edith, the world’s best present giver. She gave me clothes and heels and makeup when my mom was still giving me Barbies.”
Rocco says, “The party’s tomorrow.”
“No worries. I’ll go. I’ll buy it for us both. I’ll be back long before the party starts. But listen . . . This thing I have in mind is a bit expensive. Worth every peso, but news flash, beauty isn’t cheap, not even here. We could split the cost, so it could really be from us both . . .”
That’s how Ruth gets Rocco to give her his credit card. She says she’ll ask the store to divide the charges between his card and hers. He knows she’s had credit card trouble, but he can’t bring himself to mention it.
When Ruth isn’t back when the party begins, Rocco knows she’s probably buying the gift. But still he worries that she’s lost, or that something has happened. He’s also afraid that he’s set her loose on the town with his credit card—and that she’s never coming back.
But they’re flying back to New York together. That’s reassuring. Sort of.
It’s hard to enjoy the party when he’s constantly looking for Ruth. The only thing that’s any fun is talking to Reyna, who is charming and funny and, despite her domestic problems, which he’s heard about, lighthearted. She cares about his mother, and better yet, she respects her. Señora Sally. Soon they’re laughing—affectionately—about what an impossible person Mom is.
Reyna says she wants to send him a picture of Mom surrounded by the kids she reads to at the library. Rocco types his number into her phone, and she texts him so that he has her number too, just in case he ever needs her to help get in touch with Mom.
He senses Ruth’s presence before he sees her, the way—when he lived in the country as a kid—he always thought snake a few seconds before he saw one.
It’s Rocco’s luck that Ruth walks in just when he and Reyna are exchanging phone numbers.
Ruth sees him; she sees Reyna. Ruth looks . . . fierce. For the first time, he’s actually scared of her. Then the feeling passes.
Ruth had warned him that jealousy is one of her “fatal flaws.” He’d never heard it as a warning, exactly. Now he thinks maybe he should have paid attention to the implicit threat. Be faithful . . . or else.
Ruth pushes her way through the guests, holding a package like a shield or a weapon.
Mom and Charlotte sense the tension and come over to them. Ruth hands Mom the package, and—against all odds—Mom obeys Ruth and opens it.
The mask casts a spell on the party. For a moment no one breathes.
Reyna says, “That’s a very beautiful mask.”
“I know.” Ruth’s voice is so cold that Reyna flinches.
Mom seems to like it. “Thank you,” she says.
Everyone starts breathing again.
Around them, everyone’s eating and drinking. Several feuds are patched up. No one wants the evening to end. Rocco looks at his watch. When do the mariachis arrive?
Everyone except Rocco and Ruth and Daisy drinks margaritas. It’s a miracle that Rocco has stopped thinking of sobriety as a torture. He appreciates Ruth abstaining fo
r his sake. Solidarity is a good thing for a couple, if that’s what he and Ruth are.
Yet even without alcohol, he feels a little high. He finds himself talking to his brother-in-law in the way you can only talk to someone in the middle of a crowded party.
Eli is complaining about the theater director whose ideas are becoming more impractical. Not only does he want the witches to fly in harnesses, but when the knocking portends the discovery of Duncan’s murder, he wants it to be a blast of electronic noise.
Rocco has heard most of this, but now Eli complains that no one takes him seriously. Because he made his money in business, no one believes he knows anything about the theater. Rocco’s about to say something encouraging when they hear, from the kitchen, a loud male voice.
Then Luz shouts, in Spanish, “You can’t go in there!”
Rocco thinks: Reyna’s boyfriend.
Reyna seems to think that too. She moves behind a pillar.
A man in a neat white shirt and black pants rushes onto the patio. Rocco takes a few warning steps toward him, stands between the intruder and Reyna. But the man isn’t looking for Reyna.
It’s Ruth. The stranger confronts her, glowering and shouting.
Rocco could take the guy out if he had to. He had to do that once, in a bar, to protect a waitress from a drunken customer. He hadn’t liked it, but he’d done it, and he could do it again.
The guy’s saying that Ruth never paid him for driving her from Mexico City. He makes a check-writing motion. Rechazado. Bounced. Ruth’s check has bounced. Is this guy an idiot, accepting a check from a gringa tourist?
Ruth is very persuasive. Maybe she convinced him that it was the only way she could pay him. Maybe she knew that no one here goes to the police.
Either Ruth’s Spanish is better than she’s let on, or she recognizes the guy. She understands what he’s saying.
“I paid you,” she says in English. “I asked for a receipt, but you said it wasn’t necessary. I’m sorry if I didn’t tip you enough. I was figuring things out. It was the middle of the night. I was stressed and exhausted—”
Somehow Rocco feels certain that the guy is telling the truth. He also senses that this is about something besides money. No Mexican would risk a scene like this, especially not a guy who depends on tourist business in a tourist town. Ruth must have insulted him. What did Ruth do?