Chapter 65
We had returned to the living room. On a small sofa of the kind you see a lot in Mexico, made of leather and unvarnished wood, I sat facing away from the door.
My feet on the ground, ready, my fingers tensely interlaced.
I could hear their voices getting closer.
I couldn’t yet make out the words. Ida chattering away, happy in her particular way of being happy, the merciless trajectory of her thoughts.
It was Louise’s words that arrived first, in that haughty, scorning tone:
“You made it heavier with the rocks.”
Then Ida’s piercing voice, reaching me through the dusky interior: “I needed the rocks.”
At the sound, my chest constricted painfully.
Allan was pressing something into my hand, “This was taken when your mother was pregnant with you—not that I knew it then.” I must have muttered something, Oh or Thanks, not looking because I’d heard the door open, their voices suddenly loud, Ida’s continuing unabated even when Louise called tersely:
“Is someone here?”
She must have seen the back of my head. I sat frozen, too choked with emotion to turn and conclusively verify their presence.
Instead, I looked at Allan, reading his hopefulness.
My body had gone rigidly alert, and to reclaim myself—there was only a second in which to regain my self-control—I glanced at the photograph in my lap.
They were all standing on my balcony—that is, Bill’s—huddled before the backdrop of sky and descending clay rooftops.
Bill was at the far right of the frame. Beside him was Fernando Navarro, whom I recognized from the many images I’d searched up online, his arm thrown around a beautiful woman who must be Nuria.
Next to Nuria, a much younger Allan, handsome and tanned and sexy.
And leaning her head at his shoulder, Louise, young, unscarred, smiling in the sunlight.
The dog had trotted up, sniffing at my legs. Unsteadily I stood, turned toward the hallway. Hungrily my eyes took in my daughter, my firstborn, whole, alive! My face flushed with joy. Ida shifted closer to Louise.
Smiling at me, “So, you’ve finally come,” Louise said. “Good.”
“I don’t want to go!” Ida interjected before I could answer. “I want to stay here with Nonna and Grandpa Allan.”
“Of course you’ll stay,” Allan said.
“It’s your home,” Louise said. “Both of yours.”
A small sound escaped me. My eyes met Louise’s, her smile broadening, exultant in her achievement, her hand resting on Ida’s shoulder.
Ida clung to her, encircling her waist with her delicate arms, attaching herself in a proprietary gesture of love as if to protect them both, wrapping her in a pantomime of the very affection she kept from me.
Did they cling together like that at night?
Did they lie nested in sleep, Ida’s sharp body softening as Louise caressed her head, her back?
“I’m amazed it took you so long to find me.” Louise made one of those laughs that are just a quick intake of breath, adding to Allan, “We have such a strong connection, Mia and I. From the very first moment she was born, we’ve had a remarkable bond.”
Allan had taken the bright plastic shopping bag.
As he retreated to the open area that served as a kitchen, the dog trailing behind him, the thought of grabbing Ida and bolting for the door flashed across my mind.
But the car was too far. She would fight me, thrash like an animal, and I would not be able to contain her for such a distance.
“Go to them,” Allan was urging me. “I’m sure you’ve missed them these last few days. Give Ida and your mother a hug.”
I scanned Ida’s face quickly. It was unchanged by this reference to Louise as my mother.
She looked at me as if awaiting the answer to a question.
But I was unable to go any closer, sickened by the certainty that my reclaiming her would not be a consolation but a wound.
Never before had I been so sure of her separateness, that she was not something I could hold and tame.
Louise shook her head at me, releasing a long, generous laugh: Silly girl, why so shy? Aloud she said, “You’ve seen your room? Allan’s shown you?”
“I’ve done the basic tour,” Allan called. He had removed a large shoulder of lamb or goat, heaved it onto an enormous cutting board, and begun to trim the fat from it with a large butcher knife, absorbed by his task.
“Ida, why not show your mother what you’ve been working on?” Louise said, taking from Ida the smaller bag that I could see by its outline held a bundle of tortillas and some limes.
“Yes, I’d love to see it, Ida!”
At this, finally, Ida smiled. With immense effort, I kept my face open, hiding my desperate need, crouching slightly so that I might receive her.
When she reached me, wrapping her in my arms, I couldn’t help myself; I said quietly, “Should we step outside, maybe? You could show me the outside of the house?”
She seemed to hesitate.
“Her project is in the back bedroom,” Louise said, fixing me with a gaze that stopped me in my tracks.
I nodded, permitted myself to touch back a strand of Ida’s hair.
“After you’ve seen Ida’s project, you can help Allan with the dinner,” Louise announced, tilting her head toward the kitchen, where Allan was hacking at the white ligature that binds muscle to bone, sorting the fat and the flesh into piles.
“Yeah, help out your old man, why don’t you?
” he joked, pointing the thick blade at me.
His brow was knit in a way that recalled how he’d looked when I’d first seen him, when he’d followed and then caught Louise from behind on the arroyo path; how they’d shoved and struggled, then kissed.
I felt something give way then. A kind of resignation.
A loathing, not of her but of me; all the ways I’d coveted and enabled her, like a child craving limits, punishment.
“Of course,” I said, taking in the room again, the long front hallway and the bolted door. I smiled. I lifted my shoulders in a show of ease and warmth. “Yes, that sounds nice.”
Ida took my hand, and I allowed her to lead me back toward the bedrooms.