A Manual for Cleaning Women (29 page)

“And were you in love with Basil, Tía?”

“No. I was in love with Pirulo Diaz. But for years Basil was always there, at our house, at rugby games, at parties. He came to tea every day. Daddy played golf with him, was always asking him to dinner.”

“He was the only suitor Daddy ever approved of.”

“The worst thing for romance,” Mercedes sighed. “Good men are never sexy.”

“My Xavier is good! So good to me! And he’s sexy!” Sally said.

“Basil and Daddy were good in a patronizing and judgmental way. I treated Basil horribly, but he kept coming back. Every single year on my birthday he has sent roses or called me. Year after year. For over forty years. He has found me through Conchi, or your mother … all kinds of places. Chiapas, New York, Idaho. Once I was even in a lockup psych ward in Oakland.”

“So what has he said, in those phone calls all these years?”

“Very little, actually. About his own life I mean. He is president of a grocery chain. Usually asked how I was. Invariably something terrible had just happened … our house burned down or a divorce, a car wreck. Each time he calls he says the same thing. Like a rosary. Today, on November 12, he is thinking of the most lovely woman he ever knew. ‘Long Ago and Far Away’ plays in the background.”

“Year after year!”

“And he never wrote to you or saw you?”

“No,” Sally said. “When he called last week to ask where Carlotta was I told him she would be in Mexico City, why not have lunch with her. I got the feeling he didn’t really want to meet her tomorrow. He said it wouldn’t do to tell his wife. I said, why not bring her along, but he said that wouldn’t do.”

“Here comes Xavier! You are so lucky, Mama. You get no sympathy from us at all.
Pilla envidia!
”

Xavier is at her side, holding both her hands. He is married. Supposedly no one knows about their affair. He has stopped by, as if by chance. How can everyone not feel the electricity? Julian smiles at me.

Xavier has changed too, as much as my sister. He is an aristocrat, a prominent chemist, used to be very serious and reserved. Now he laughs too. He and Sally play and they cry and they fight. They take
danzón
lessons and go to Merida. They dance the
danzón
in the plaza, under the stars, cats and children playing in the bushes, paper lanterns in the trees.

Everything they say, the most trivial thing like “good morning,
mi vida
,” or “pass the salt” is charged with such urgency that Mercedes and I giggle. But we are moved, awed, by these two people in a state of grace.

“Tomorrow is Basil Day!” Xavier smiles.

“Victoria and I think she should dress up as a punk, or as an old old lady,” Mercedes says.

“Or I could have Sally go in my place!” I say.

“No. Victoria or Mercedes … And he’ll think you are still back in the forties, almost as he remembers you!”

*   *   *

Xavier and Sally left for her chemo treatment and Mercedes went to work. I spent the day in Coyoacán. In the church the priest was baptizing about fifty babies at once. I knelt at the back, near the bloodiest Christ, and watched the ceremony. The parents and godparents stood in long rows, facing each other in the aisle. The mothers held the babies, dressed in white. Round babies, skinny babies, fat babies, bald babies. The priest walked down the middle of the aisle followed by two altar boys swinging incense censers. The priest prayed in Latin. Wetting his fingers in a chalice he held in his left hand, he made the sign of the cross on each baby’s forehead, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. The parents were serious, prayed solemnly. I wished that the priest would bless each mother, too, make some sign, give her some protection.

In Mexican villages, when my sons were infants, Indians would sometimes make the sign of the cross on their brows.
Pobrecito!
they would say. That such a lovely creature should have to suffer this life!

Mark, four years old, in a nursery school on Horatio Street in New York. He was playing pretend house with some other children. He opened a toy refrigerator, poured an imaginary glass of milk and handed it to his friend. The friend smashed the imaginary glass on the floor. Mark’s look of pain, the same I have seen later in all my sons during their lives. A wound from an accident, a divorce, a failure. The ferocity of my longing to protect them. My helplessness.

As I leave the church I light a candle beneath the statue of our Blessed Mother Mary.
Pobrecita.

*   *   *

Sally is in bed, worn out and nauseated. I put cloths cooled in ice water on her head. I tell her about the people in the plaza at Coyoacán, about the baptism. She tells me about the other patients at chemo, about Pedro, her doctor. She tells me the things Xavier said to her, the tenderness of him, and she cries bitter, bitter tears.

When Sally and I first became friends, after we grew up, we spent several years working out our resentments and jealousies. Later, when both of us were in therapy, we spent years venting our rage at our grandfather, our mother. Our cruel mother. Years later still, our rage at our father, the saint, whose cruelty was not so obvious.

But now we speak only in the present tense. In a cenote in the Yucatán, atop Tulum, in the convent in Tepoztlán, in her little room, we laugh with joy at the similarities of our responses, at the stereo of our visions.

*   *   *

The morning of my fifty-fourth birthday we don’t stay long at La Vega. Sally wants to rest before her chemo. I need to dress for lunch with Basil. When we get home Mercedes and Victoria are watching a telenovela with Belen and Dolores, the two maids. Belen and Dolores spend most of the day and night watching soap operas. They have both been with Sally for twenty years; they live in a small apartment on the roof. There is not that much for them to do now that Ramon and the daughters are gone, but Sally would never ask them to leave.

Today is a big day on
Los Golpes de la Vida.
Sally dresses in a robe and comes to watch. I have showered and put on makeup, but stay in my robe too, don’t want to wrinkle my gray linen.

Adelina is going to have to tell her daughter Conchita that she can’t marry Antonio. Has to confess that Antonio is her natural son, Conchita’s brother! Adelina had him in a convent twenty-five years ago.

And there they are in Sanborn’s but before Adelina can say a word Conchita tells her mother that she and Antonio have been secretly married. And now they are going to have a baby! Close-up of Adelina’s grief-stricken face, her mother’s face. But she smiles and kisses Conchita.
Mozo
, she says, do bring us some champagne.

Okay, so it’s pretty silly. What was really silly was that all six of us women were bawling our eyes out, just sobbing away when the doorbell rang. Mercedes ran to open the door.

Basil stared at Mercedes, aghast. Not just because she was crying, or wearing shorts and a bra-less top. People are always taken aback by the sisters’ beauty. After you are around them awhile you get used to it, like a harelip.

Mercedes kissed him on the cheek. “The famous Basil, wearing real English tweeds!”

His face was red. He stared at us, all of us in tears, with such confusion that we got the giggles. Like children do. Serious, punishable giggles. We couldn’t stop. I got up, went to give him an
abrazo
too, but again he stiffened, held out his hand for a cool shake.

“Forgive us … we’re watching a tearjerker of a telenovela.” I introduced him to everyone. “Of course you remember Sally?” He looked aghast again. “My wig!” She ran to put on her wig. I went to dress. Mercedes came with me.

“Come on Tía, dress up real whorish and trashy … he is so stuffy!”

“There is no place to eat around here, surely,” Basil was saying.

“Surely, there is. La Pampa, an Argentinian restaurant, just across from the clock of flowers in the park.”

“The clock of flowers?”

“I’ll show you,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I followed him down the three flights of stairs, chattering nervously. How good it was to see him, how fit he looked.

In the downstairs foyer he stopped and looked around.

“Ramon is a minister now. Surely he can afford a better place for his family to live?”

“He has a new family now. They live in La Pedregal, a lovely home. But this is a wonderful place, Basil. Sunny and spacious … full of antiques and plants and birds.”

“The neighborhood?”

“Calle Amores? Sally would never live anyplace else. She knows everybody. I even know everybody.”

I was greeting people all the way to his car. He had paid some boys to watch it, keep it safe from bandits.

We buckled up.

“What is the matter with Sally’s hair?” he asked.

“She lost it because of chemotherapy. She has cancer.”

“How terrible! Is the prognosis good?”

“No. She’s dying.”

“I’m so sorry. I must say, none of you seem particularly affected by it.”

“We’re all affected by it. Right now we are happy. Sally is in love. She and I have become close, sisters. That’s been like falling in love too. Her children are seeing her, hearing her.”

He was silent, hands gripping the wheel.

I directed him to the park on Insurgentes.

“Park anywhere, now. See, there is the clock of flowers!”

“It doesn’t look like a clock.”

“Of course it does. See the numbers! Well, hell, it looked like a clock the other day. The numbers are marigolds, and they’ve just grown a little leggy. But everybody knows it’s a clock.”

We parked a long way from the restaurant. It was hot. I have a bad back, smoke a lot. The smog, my high heels. I was faint with hunger. The restaurant smelled wonderful. Garlic and rosemary, red wine, lamb.

“I don’t know,” he said, “it’s very rowdy. It will be hard to have a proper conversation. It’s full of Argentines!”

“Well, yeah, it’s an Argentine restaurant.”

“Your accent is so American! You say ‘yeah’ all the time.”

“Well, yeah, I’m an American.” We walked up and down the street, peering into the windows of one wonderful restaurant after another, but none were quite right, one was too dear. I decided to use the word
dear
instead of
expensive
from now on. Oh, look, here’s my dear phone bill!

“Basil … let’s get a torta and go sit in the park. I’m famished, and want to spend time talking with you.”

“We’re going to have to go downtown. Where I am familiar with the restaurants.”

“How about I wait here while you go get the car?”

“I don’t like to leave you unescorted in this neighborhood.”

“This is a swell neighborhood.”

“Please. We will go together and find the car.”

Find the car. Of course he didn’t remember where he had parked the car. Blocks and blocks. We circled back, out, around, ran into the same cats, the same maids leaning on gates flirting with the mailman. The knife sharpener playing a flute, driving his bike with no hands.

I sank back into the cushioned seat of the car, kicking off my shoes. I took out a pack of cigarettes but he asked me not to smoke in the car. Tears were streaking down both of our faces from the Mexico City smog. I said I thought smoking might form a sort of protective screen.

“Ah, Carlotta, still flirting with danger!”

“Let’s go. I’m starving.”

But he was taking photos of his children from the glove compartment. I held the pictures in their silver frames. Clear-eyed, determined young people. Lantern-jawed. He was talking about their brilliance, their achievements, their successful careers as physicians. Yes, they saw the son, but Marilyn and her mother didn’t get on. Both very headstrong.

“She is quite good with servants,” Basil said about his wife. “Never lets them step out of bounds. Were those women your sister’s servants?”

“They were. They’re more like family now.”

We turned the wrong way on a one-way street. Basil backed up, cars and trucks honking at us. On the
periférico
then, speeding along, until there was an accident up ahead and we came to a standstill. Basil turned off the motor and the air-conditioning. I stepped outside for a smoke.

“You’ll get run over!”

Not a car was moving for blocks behind us.

We arrived at the Sheraton at four thirty. The dining room was closed. What to do? He had parked the car. We went into a Denny’s next door.

“Denny’s is where one ends up,” I said.

“I’d like a club sandwich and iced tea,” I said. “What are you going to have?”

“I don’t know. I find food uninteresting.”

I was profoundly depressed. I wanted to eat my sandwich and to go home. But I made polite conversation. Yes, they belonged to an English country club. He played golf and cricket, was in a theater group. He had played one of the old ladies in
Arsenic and Old Lace.
Great fun.

“By the way. I bought that house, in Chile, with the pool, off the third hole of the golf course in Santiago. We rent it out, but plan to retire there. Do you know which house I mean?”

“Of course. A lovely house, with wisteria and lilacs. Look under your lilac bushes, you’ll find a hundred golf balls. I always sliced my first shot into that yard.”

“What are your plans for retirement? For your future?”

“Future?”

“Do you have savings? IRA, that sort of thing?”

I shook my head.

“I have been very concerned about you. Especially that time when you were in the hospital. You
have
knocked about a bit … three divorces, four children, so many jobs. And your sons, what do they do? Are you proud of them?”

I was irritable, even though my sandwich had arrived. He had ordered an untoasted cheese sandwich and tea.

“I hate that concept … being proud of one’s children, taking credit for what they have accomplished. I like my sons. They are loving; they have integrity.”

They laugh. They eat a
lot.

He asked again what they did. A chef, a TV cameraman, a graphics designer, a waiter. They all like what they do.