Chapter 23
Louise stood in the center of the living room, taking it all in.
The live-edge coffee table and lounge chairs and built-in banquette that Bill had designed himself, vintage now; the Turkish rugs and polished stone floors; the gleaming walls of glass.
The view, particularly stunning that day.
Not a cloud, not a wisp of white. “Well, this is really something,” she said at last.
“Really, you like it?”
“No wonder she’s kept me away,” she said to Tom in that way she had, where she might equally be paying a compliment or expressing disdain. “It’s almost too perfect.”
Tom chuckled. “I guess we are a bit Cinderella at the ball,” he said affably.
“Come midnight, back to Minneapolis, and dragging this one behind you.”
“I’m sure she won’t mind.”
She had leaned her head back imperiously. “Won’t she?”
Tom laughed, thinking it a joke. At that moment, María stepped to the top of the three broad steps that lead up to the dining area.
“Listo, senora,” she said, indicating the meal had been laid out.
As we began toward the table, the children rushing ahead, Louise lurching as she gripped her cane, I hung back clasping Tom’s hand in a preemptively conciliatory gesture.
Love you, I mouthed, and he smiled back at me, inclining his head toward Louise with bemusement, touching my hand to his lips.
We began to take our seats, the kids already peeking inside all the little covered pots and dishes.
María came in carrying a magnificent majolica platter on which the sea bass I had bought that morning was arranged over a bed of edible flowers.
There was a strange expression on Louise’s face, and in a flurry of panic, I said, “It’s filete de róbalo, I hope that’s okay? ”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Oh, thank God.”
“Crisis averted,” Tom said, elaborately rolling his r’s in the Scottish accent that always made Henry laugh, shooting me a puzzled glance. “Good things come to those who bait.”
“Jesus, Tom,” I moaned. To Louise, I added, “He’s always ready with a bad pun.”
“Duly warned,” Tom said, still with the accent.
A few more awkward moments. As usual, I had to remind Henry not to sit on his knees; the dining chairs were too fragile. They were mid-century classics, cantilevered cane and chrome.
“Where’s his pillow?” Tom asked. It was something we’d bickered about, my insistence on tidying the pillow away whereas Tom thought it should be left there permanently—as though life was about maximizing efficiency, I’d jeered, rather than creating beauty.
“Obviously if it were our house, we’d have different chairs,” Tom said to Louise.
“Nonsense, they’re perfect. The whole house, down to the very last detail.” She said it like lahst. “Do you know,” she went on after a pause, “I don’t think a single thing’s changed. That might even be the same maid.”
I stared. “I’m sorry, the same—?”
“You’ve been here before?” Tom said.
“To Bill’s?” Louise threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, please, don’t get me started. Bill Barnes and my husband, Allan. Well, that’s a long and very sordid tale.”
“I love a sordid tale,” Tom said, reaching toward her plate with a portion of fish, Louise smiling her acceptance, declining to elaborate.
The usual sounds of spoons against dishes, water being poured, pots and platters passed.
I was groping my way backward, trying to remember if I’d mentioned Bill or the house.
No, I was certain I hadn’t. If anything, I’d taken care to avoid the topic.
María shuffled in and out, carrying little bundles of warmed tortillas in her hands, a small glazed bowl of sliced limes.
Henry sat sucking his thumb, not eating.
Tom asked if he’d looked in all the bowls, and Henry said he had and there was nothing he liked.
He’d liked María’s fish last time, Tom said, Henry countering that it was fried then.
All the while, a pressure was building in my chest. Catching Henry’s eye, I pantomimed removing my own thumb, then smiled encouragingly.
Ignoring me, Henry patted his father’s leg with his free hand, considering.
“I want ketchup,” he finally decided.
“Catsup, María, por favor,” Tom called toward the kitchen.
From the small opening in the wall, María’s gentle voice: “Ay, sí, para Senor Haynree.”
“Como siempre, ?verdad?” Tom called back cheerfully, making a show of their rapport, how happy we all were together.
In the momentary silence, while we waited for it to be brought, Louise seemed to me mortally offended, whether because of the request for ketchup or the fact we weren’t getting it ourselves, I couldn’t decide.
Tom, oblivious, was ceremoniously opening the bottle of Chardonnay that I had paid a small fortune for in the new wine shop off the Jardín.
“May I?” he said, extending the bottle toward her glass.
“Oh, please, absolutely.”
“Welcome to our home,” he said as he poured.
“Or, I guess I should say, welcome back.” He twisted the bottle as he righted it to catch a drip.
“I’m curious how you came to be in San Miguel in the first place.
Assuming you can tell us that.” He had settled back into his chair, turned slightly sideways to accommodate his long legs, which he’d crossed urbanely, and I thought, as I often did, how handsome he was.
Dashing was the specific word that came to mind.
Tanned, his white oxford shirt cuffed and open at the neck.
His discarded cashmere scarf draped on the back of his chair like an affectionate cat.
“To really tell the story,” Louise was saying, “I’d have to start quite far back.”
“We’ve got all afternoon.”
“I might need another glass of wine,” she said wryly.
Tom lifted the bottle and began to fill her glass clear to the brim, Louise laughing gamely.
“How marvelous, we’ll all be drunk by four o’clock. But I’m sure the children will take care of themselves nicely, won’t you?” Halting her laughter, she gave a menacing lift of her eyebrows.
“Wine makes you forget,” Henry said.
“I forget nothing,” Louise deadpanned, to a fresh wave of laughter, continuing, “I remember being poor and hunting for our food, just in those hills over there, not far from my house in Montes.”
“Really, Montes? That’s funny—”
“Well, funny. It’s certainly a far cry from this, I’ll grant you. Bill’s is a very grown-up house,” she said, making it seem a terrible insult.
“I like your house much better,” Ida said.
Seeing Tom’s surprise that Ida had been there, I said nervously, “You’d like it, Tom, it’s got sort of a Moroccan vibe.” Turning to Louise, “Tom has always wanted to go to Morocco.”
“Yes, Morocco’s wonderful,” Louise said. “I lived there for a time, on the invitation of Paul Bowles. Oh, forever ago; my daughter was very young, younger than Henry. Well, I was practically a child myself. I had lost my husband, and Paul…”
On and on it went. The meals they had eaten; Paul’s wife, Jane, who was “crippled by illness.” Louise conjuring Tangier for him now, its heat and headiness; the Grand Socco and the Avenue Pasteur.
I watched Tom become interested. He had often professed to love fiction above all other art forms. The only thing he had insisted on bringing to Mexico was a box of his favorite novels, The Sheltering Sky among them.
“And what about you, Tom?” Louise suddenly said, as if she’d only just remembered he was there. “How did you come to be in San Miguel?”
I looked quickly from Tom to Louise. The sun had shifted, hitting Louise full in the face. It reminded me of a scene in an old movie I once saw, where the witness was interrogated before a glare of sunlight. Only it was Tom about to confess.
“I’m surprised Sally didn’t tell you. I’m an architect overseeing a new housing development.”
“Are you indeed?”
“It’s one of Bill’s designs. Actually, funny coincidence, it’s in Montes. That vacant field on the Obraje road?”
“My God.” For a moment, my breath caught, before she said, “It really is astonishing how unobstructed you are up here. But that sun! It’s gotten so hot. Would you mind, darling?”
At Louise’s gesture, I rose and went behind her, easing her sweater up over her head and then folding it neatly and laying it across the back of Henry’s vacated chair.
I was unable to meet Tom’s look—surprised, no doubt, at my subservience toward this woman whom he didn’t know, whom I’d told him nothing about.
But in the next moment, I understood that it was something else.
He had noticed the bracelet, revealed when I’d removed the sweater.
“That’s a lovely bracelet,” he said, looking at me rather than Louise.
“There’s an interesting story about that,” I began. I was still standing behind Louise, and as I searched for what next to say, she very slowly lifted first the braceleted hand and then the other, fluttering them above her shoulders for me to clasp, which I did, shamefaced.
“We have a remarkable bond, your wife and I.”
There was a silence, in which I was unable to meet Tom’s eyes. “So, what’s the story?” he finally said. He was addressing me, but it was Louise who answered:
“It turns out we’re the same person, separated by a few decades.”
I glanced toward Tom, who was gazing steadily at me, a crooked smile lifting the corner of his mouth.
Ida had come back into the room, Louise saying to her, “How would you like to come over tomorrow? I have some special art supplies, and a beautiful old easel. They once belonged to a very famous artist. Would you like that, to paint with an easel? You could do a portrait of Bella.”
“Bella?” Tom said, patting Ida’s shoulder in a way I could see she didn’t like. “Who’s Bella, biscuit?”
Ida drew quiet, seeming to stiffen away from Tom.
“Biscuit?” Louise said.
Reviving the Scottish accent, “Aye, it’s what I called her when she was a wee babe. My little wee bairn. My wee bairn biscuit.”
“I hate those names,” Ida said evenly.
Tom had been waving his arms as he spoke, merrily tapping the table to the rhythm of his words, and now he stopped, the smile draining from his face.
“I didn’t know,” he said at last.