Under the Rose (26 page)

He was pleased to see Juana eat. She was not at all like the small Elizabeth Taylor, but thinnish and frail like a plant in need of a stake. Her wrists were the size of his two middle fingers and there were shadows under her eyes.

Watching him watch, Elena whispered, ‘She had to leave home and come back here because of the disgrace. People were calling her the gringos’ whore.’ Her brothers, murmured Elena, were treated as pimps, even the one who’d rescued her. ‘She needs someone older to look after her. Don’t you like those
fajitas
? There’s no fat on them.’

Tom said sure he did and put some chicken on his fork. Cancer, he remembered reading. They buy the good bits of cancerous chickens and cover them with chile. He hid the chicken under some onion. No way would he eat this.

‘You don’t eat much,’ said Elena, catching him.

Tom said he’d had something earlier.

‘Juana starved herself when she got home,’ said Elena. ‘Trying to get rid of her ass and tits from shame at being a woman. That’s what the doctor said, so her mother sent her to me. It’s not a convenient time to have her, but how could I say “no”? She can’t go back there. There’s nothing there anyway.’

‘I suppose not.’ Tom thought of a drive he had taken to Baja California where the First World meets the Third and green land yields to parched brown. A mile or so south of this, he’d taken a wrong turn into an encampment of derelicts sitting by a bonfire. It was dusk and the air was thick with ashes or maybe bats. Some of them stood up and closed in on his car. They waved their arms menacingly – but were bought off with the price of a few beers.

Pocketing it, they’d looked shrunken and forlorn and the thought grazed him that maybe they’d merely been directing him to the nearest hotel, a place where you could drink margaritas and listen to mariachis while the sun set over the Pacific. Where else would the gringo driver of a car like his be heading? He had no Spanish, and money, his only currency, seemed to disappoint them. Perhaps they had been hoping for news of the First World which, though inaccessible to themselves, was just up the road?

‘Rafael’, Elena was saying, ‘sees you as his model. His father is jealous. He never liked his doing karate.’

‘Why not?’

Elena looked uncomfortable.

‘Does his father blame me for Rafael’s trouble?’

‘Sure he does, but don’t let that bother you. It’s how Chicano families are! The parents are fearful but the kids want to stand up for themselves. Rafael thinks of you as his North American father. Really! And your mother was a heroine for me too. Heppy! So brave when she had to defend you from
your
father! She told me how he’d get drunk and beat you senseless until she was sure he’d turn you into an idiot or maybe kill you, if she didn’t kill him. And how then she had to explain this to a jury which had been turned against her by photographs of his head with the eye hanging out like a loose knob. I’m sorry, am I upsetting you? No. I know you’re proud of her! She had such courage! And heart!
Corage y corazon!
She was such a small woman, no bigger than Juana, yet she told me she snatched up that statuette without thinking whether it would do the job – or of what would happen if it didn’t. It was just there on a side table and could have been made of anything – ceramic, glass, but she was lucky and it was made of lead. That helped with the jury. That it wasn’t premeditated. Oh I’m sure even they admired her. Anyway they found her innocent. That was great – even if she did have to leave home later. Like Juana. Juries try to be fair but gossip doesn’t. Do you know that if I’m letting Juana stay with me at a time like this, it’s in memory of Heppy?’

While she talked, Elena was removing plates and bringing on a ‘flan’. Some sort of custard. Taken up by her reminiscences, she said no more about Tom not touching his food. He felt badly about that, recognizing a primitive violation of – what? Solidarity? Also he was hungry. Maybe that stuff about cancerous chickens wasn’t true? Too late now to change his mind. Elena had scraped the plates into a garbage bag.
Pinkish refried beans mingled with tomato sauce. The business about his father’s eye shocked him. Had he suppressed it? Tried to give it to Jim? ‘Hanging out like a loose knob?’ Yes, that was how it had been. A drooping tassel. On whom? Jim? Pop? For moments their heads fused and swam inside his own. Nacreous and messy, the eye swayed unattributably. What colour had his father’s been anyway? Pop’s popped eye! Now back in its socket, it lit up in Tom’s memory and scanned him knowingly. It expressed pure rage and Tom was dazed with fear. Behind Pop’s head, Tom’s mother raised the statuette and he, despite his daze, saw – and stayed silent until his father’s exploding head splashed substances which, later, had to be washed from Tom’s hair. Could he have imagined this? Could he?

Blinking, he rose. ‘I’ve got to phone about Jim,’ he told the table and went down to his office.

‘How about his eyes?’ he insisted when he got through. ‘Are they injured?’

He was told that the patient’s vision did not seem impaired. Tests would be run later but as of now no injuries to the ocular region appeared to have been sustained.

Tom went into the bathroom where he rolled his own guilty eyes at the mirror and threw water on his face. His mother had clearly needed to reminisce and rid herself of her memories, and he’d never let her. Couldn’t bear to be left with them himself. Oh well, too late now! Pop goes the weasel! Try and forget it all. They were both dead.

Or should he see a shrink?

He went back up to find Gary leaving along with a neighbour who had helped with the moving and stayed to eat. Elena was loading the dishwasher. She asked about Jim, then remarked that he and Martin had been trying to raise money to help pay for Rafael’s appeal.

‘For that and Jim’s downpayment. Well, they blew it. Poor Jim!’ She turned on the machine.

Its heave echoed the sensation in Tom’s head.

‘Are you sure?’ he harried on a rising note.

‘Of what?’

‘That Jim and Martin …’

‘What?’

‘Never mind. Excuse me. Must talk to Gary.’ He could hear him down below saying goodbye to the neighbour. A car door slammed. Tom tumbled downstairs and out to where Gary’s face, gleaming in his car window, vanished, then gleamed again in the blink of a revolving sign. ‘Did Jim and Martin plan to raise money for Rafael?’ Tom asked.

‘Tom, you don’t want to know. OK?’ Gary patted Tom’s hand, removed it from his window pane and drove off.

Tom stumped indoors. Back in his own quarters on the ground floor, he looked glumly at his video collection. There was no way he’d get to sleep now. Why did they keep things from him? What was their opinion of him anyway? Reading the video titles like mantras, he tried to calm down.
Four Feathers, Oliver Twist, Superman Two, Silence of the Lambs
… Violence
was
coming all right.
Great Expectations
. Funny how much, even as a boy, he’d liked nineteenth-century English stories! That century had been a manly time for the English. Their prime. Elena had been trying to work on him. She wanted him to see her as in some way Mom’s heir.

Really hungry now – he’d eaten nothing since the yoghurt – he opened his office fridge which was empty except for a can of tuna. He was starting to wolf it when there was a knock on his door. It was Elena to ask about locking up. She saw the tuna.

‘Oh Tom, you’re hungry! You hated those
fajitas
! I could …’

‘Hungry? No, no. I was just tidying. Throwing this out.’

He threw it in the garbage. Rafael’s family was always making him do this.

‘I’ll take that out, then lock the doors. You go to sleep. We’ve disturbed you enough.’

‘No, no, please, don’t bother.’

‘It’s no bother,’ she picked up the bag.

Arguing, he followed her through the dojo. He had half a notion that he might discreetly recover that tuna since the office garbage-bag would have nothing worse in it than paper. But she evaded him playfully and seemed to be in high spirits. He remembered that she had drunk several beers.

Pausing to wave at the dragon-and-knight pictures, she said, ‘Know what Rafael says, Tom? He says you’re “in thrall” – that’s his word – “to the dragon of memory”! That it’s like in some old story about someone who’s asleep and guarded by a dragon!’ She nodded at a lively monster with a scarlet trim to its jaws and scales sprouting green as grass. ‘This made no sense to me, so one time I asked your Mom what she made of it – and she began to cry.’ Elena shook her head a few times, shrugged, then smiled, it seemed to Tom, a little sourly and added, ‘Of course Rafael wants to rescue you!’

Tom didn’t understand any of this and had a feeling that he didn’t want to either, so he gave up on the tuna and, after saying goodnight to Elena, returned to his room.

Later, hearing her go upstairs, he put on a video, then fell asleep in front of it. Woken by hunger, he decided to go to an all-night store, only to find, on trying the outer doors, that she had taken away the keys.

Upstairs the rhythm of sleeping breath had changed the place; the temperature was warm and the air musky. Padding about in stocking feet, he told himself that Elena must surely have left the keys somewhere obvious. Having switched on a light in the kitchen and found no keys there, he followed its slanting gleam into the dining room which smelled of Mexican cloth – that cheesy memory of sheep – a whiff which he remembered sometimes getting from Rafael.

There was a
rebozo
on the table but no keys. Groping, his fingers alighted on flesh and someone gave a tiny scream. It was Juana who turned out to have left the bed she had been sharing with Elena, then fallen asleep in here. In explanation, she showed him the photo-romance she had been reading before turning out the light. Pointing and grimacing, she laughed at her own lack of English.

‘Elena took my keys.’

‘I sorry. No understand!’ A breathy gabble of Spanish.

The whispers were too loud. Tom, who wanted her to look for his keys in Elena’s room, led her downstairs in the hope of explaining his predicament by showing her the locked front door.

A prompt, submissive smile told him she’d got the wrong idea. Of course! The photo-romance still in her hand showed a picture of an evil seducer.

‘Not that!’ Waving agitated hands, he tried to shoo away her misapprehension. Poor girl! She saw men as predators!

She quailed, clearly thinking him angry, so he tried to look well-disposed but not predatory. ‘It’s all right, Juana. Don’t worry. It’s just that I need my keys. To get out. See.’ Carefully avoiding eye-contact, he made a show of trying and failing to open the front door. But now her misapprehension changed. Panic clouded her. Was he putting her out? No, no. He smiled reassurance – but this too was open to misunderstanding.

‘Keys?’ He mimed the act of sliding one into a lock. ‘
Llaves?
Get it? No?’ Frustrated, he flung himself onto the sofa in front of the video where Scrooge – he must have put him on earlier – was embracing Tiny Tim.

‘
A!
’ she cried, ‘
que rico!
’ And, joining him, cuddled close and took his hand in hers.

He snatched it away then, as she quailed, became remorseful and led her back up to where a startled Elena awoke, rubbed her eyes and shot him an unwarrantedly knowing look.

‘Elena,’ he tried to keep exasperation out of his voice, ‘Juana
keeps getting the wrong end of the stick. Will you please tell her that I’m not putting her out, but that I don’t want to sleep with her either?’ The voice sounded querulous. He tried to soften it. ‘Listen,’ he soothed. Yes, that was better. ‘Listen, you can both stay here as long as you choose. OK?’

‘Oh Tom, do you mean it?’

‘I … oh well I guess so!’

He went back down to find his TV screen curdling furiously. Turning it off, he realized that they might want to stay for months! Years even! Could he back out? He couldn’t. He had, moreover, forgotten to ask for the keys. Could he go up and ask for them? No, he could not do that either. The girls would be in bed again by now. He’d embarrass them – and Juana might again get the wrong end of the stick. Yet he was hungrier than ever and his windows, since he’d had the place soundproofed, didn’t open. Sitting on his couch, he could only laugh to think of Rafael in prison, Jim in hospital and himself locked in his own house and dreaming of food. Gary might say he’d always kept himself locked in and on a diet! Well, maybe so.

Upstairs was now silent, so he tiptoed back up, opened the fridge and took out Juana’s last remaining cakes which were by now a little crumbly and reminded him of boyhood greeds. Bright and smeary like First Grade crayons and dripping with lipids! Thoughtfully, he chewed, then swallowed one, two, and finally four with the help of a can of
Dos Xs
beer which was in the fridge too, then went down to his bed where he dreamed recklessly that Juana was lying beside him, only to find her turning into Rafael who had the same black, brilliant eyes but was in better shape and had the grace of a healthy feline. The crumbs on Tom’s lips were sweet and he imagined a prison-hungry Rafael asking if he might lick them, and himself saying ‘Sure!’ Rafael said, ‘
Hombre
, I’m weak with longing for
pan Mexicano
!’ Then, somehow Tom had him in his arms. Why not, he thought and, feeling himself start to
wake up, pulled the dream back over him like a slipping comforter. Why not? Why not stay under here with the smell of vanilla and strawberry and Rafael’s smooth, hard body and fresh, athlete’s sweat? Because before we know it,
hombre
, pop goes the weasel. The DNA boys aren’t moving fast enough, so we’d better be our own Merlin the Magicians – if and while we can! Tomorrow, he thought,
mañana
, I’ll visit Jim. Then dozed again, with an eager, dreamy hunger, in Rafael’s arms.

Later, in a deeper, more unruly dream, he thought he heard himself say one day in class,

‘Somebody should teach those guys! Blow them away! Wham!’

Had he? Had he said that? To Rafael? Egged him on? Played Lucifer? He had. He had.