Chapter 3
The instant I stepped inside the house, I began to feel calmer, soothed by the smells of the food, the well-ordered, cheerful sounds of pots and plates being set out, water filling the sink.
Where before it had been my job to make the household run, maintain its happy atmosphere, now I was a part of a system that functioned independently of my moods and actions.
Each day, we ate in purifying sunlight, seated around a beautiful old Saarinen table while María shuffled in and out.
She prepared whatever we wanted—chicken tinga, mole, enchiladas suizas, Spanish rice and beans, thick stacks of warmed tortillas with extra wedges of lime for Ida.
Her own portion she ate standing in the narrow kitchen, occasionally peering out at us through the pass-through.
Tom’s boss, the house’s owner, had assured us we’d get used to being waited on.
At first, we invited her to join us at the table—a suggestion that seemed to mortify her.
She spoke not a word of English; it was difficult trying to explain ourselves in our limited Spanish.
Over time, we variously asked, could the children help set and clear the table?
Help her cook? Could we at least put a chair in the kitchen, to make her more comfortable?
No; she was adamant. “Es mi vida,” she always insisted, her voice as close to stern as it was capable of being.
“Thank you so much,” I said now, as she shuffled in to refill my water glass. “Please, let me do it, it isn’t necessary.”
“Ay, no, senora,” she said, lifting the pitcher and smiling placidly. “Es mi trabajo.”
“Yes, but in the United States, it was my work,” I told her in my plodding, careful Spanish. “In the United States, I cooked and cleaned.”
“Ay, no, senora,” she repeated, laughing lightly as though I were playing a joke.
When I insisted it was true, she uttered something quietly, addressing herself to Tom.
“Did she just say she’s worked here for twelve years?” I asked in English.
“No, since she was twelve years old.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked Tom, holding a neutral expression because María had not yet gone back to the kitchen. Tom asked her in Spanish. Smiling in mild resignation, as though connoting to us the way things are, she said, “Veintidós anos, senor.” After which she silently retreated.
Tom stared across the table at me. “I just did the math. She’s thirty-four.”
“That can’t be right.” She had six children; her daughter, who was pregnant and whom I’d taken to be closer to my age, worked here also on Wednesdays and Saturdays; her grizzled brother was our gardener.
“Can you believe it?” Tom said, turning to Henry. “María’s younger than Mommy.”
It bothered me, his appeal to Henry and not Ida, as if he was introducing him to a way men talk about women: María, plump and wrinkled, her graying braid trailing halfway down her back; me, slender and toned.
But I didn’t say anything; I disliked women who were overly strident around these things.
Henry just sat there sucking his thumb, the damp noise of it, the lizard pulse at his throat as his tongue worked.
Tom said, “Did you think María was a lot older than Mommy, Henry?”
“Sort of,” he lisped around his thumb. “María knows a lot more.”
“Ouch!” Ida said. “Burned, Mom.” We were all laughing except Henry, who continued to suck his thumb.
Reining himself in, with a tempering tone, Tom said, “I don’t know, Henry, Mommy’s pretty smart.”
“Maybe Henry was thinking about a different kind of smart,” Ida said. “Like with the spider and the tea.”
I knew what she was referring to. One afternoon shortly after we’d arrived, I overheard María seeming to scold Ida and Henry in the courtyard, Very bad, children!
When I rushed to the window, I saw her pointing at a huge spider.
“?Muy mala, ninos!” she repeated, before, with a decisive slap of her rag, she killed it.
More recently, when Henry became sick with a barking cough, she had brewed a tea from plants she’d picked in the fields near our house that immediately soothed his throat.
But her most impressive act was when, late one afternoon, she called us from the kitchen balcony.
We discovered her crouched beside the pot of red geraniums, her hands cupped in front of her like she was praying.
A small disk of metallic green glinted between her thumbs and first fingers.
She had caught a hummingbird. With an incline of her face, she gestured for Henry and Ida to come closer.
Without squabbling over who would be first, in turn they stroked its tiny head with their finger as she instructed them, like an incantation, “Suave, ninos, con mucho cuidado,” obeying her with an absoluteness of which I had thought them incapable.
I longed to touch it, too, but held myself back, clasping Tom’s hand in girlish amazement.
When each child had stroked the jeweled head, María opened her hands, the bird lifting weightlessly in the air like so much iridescent ash.
Remembering these things, I was proud of Henry and Ida for regarding them as intelligence.
Maybe, I thought, the world hasn’t ruined them yet.
When we had finished eating, we dispersed into the languor of the day.
Ida to the churchyard across the street where there was an ancient, rusted swing that she would ride, passing back and forth as she composed plays in her mind and songs under her breath.
Henry into the garden with his action figures.
Tom and I to the living room, slumped beside one another on the couch, surrendering to the inevitable torpor.
Tom picked up an old copy of The New Yorker.
I listened to the pages turn. I asked if he had to go back to work, and he said he didn’t.
The project, bigger than anything he’d worked on before, encompassing not only houses but also communal buildings, stables, an outdoor amphitheater, had been slow to get going.
Fifty years ago, its principal architect had designed the neighborhood in which we now lived, naming it Los Balcones for the way the houses were set into the steep bluffs like a series of terraced balconies.
His own house—ours for the year—was both more modestly scaled and more elegant than the others in the colonia, descending organically along the slope of the hillside, flooded morning to night with sunlight.
I had strolled over to the wall of glass that opened onto the upper balcony, looking down on the sea of tile roofs and church spires, to my left a cluster of clouds.
I could see people moving in the square, children in the playground in Parque Juárez, where we often took the kids on Sundays.
A bird dove and then paused before me in midair.
“God, Tom,” I said. By which I meant: I love our life; I am overcome with joy.
And, perhaps hearing those unspoken things, he came behind me, resting his hands on my shoulders to turn me to him, and I lifted my mouth.
We kissed for a long time, our knees touching.
We caressed, standing before the window as if we were invisible, María was no longer moving about in the kitchen.
That was how it was with us. That sudden igniting spark, in a few breaths the world falling away.
“Let’s go downstairs,” he said, looping his fingers through the heavy silver bracelet we’d bought together our first week here.
“Yes,” I answered, agreeing with my body when Tom tugged the bracelet, like a handcuff, leading me away.
But when he silently pulled the covers back from our bed, I went on edge.
A wave of repugnance swept through me. Not toward him but desire itself, as though hidden inside my body festered something rotten, a thing he touched whenever he was inside me.
As always, I tried to banish the feelings, scolding myself, Stop it; don’t be frigid; Tom is a good man; he’s the best man you’ve ever known; everything you have in the world is because of Tom.
Moments later, settling myself against the pillows and lifting my mouth to be kissed, I felt a smaller wave of satisfaction, as though his desire were a confirmation of having done my job well. You’re a good wife, Sally. He still wants you.