Daughter's Keeper (10 page)

“What is?”

“Your getting married.”

“Why is that a coincidence?”

“Because Jorge and I are thinking about it, too.”

Elaine froze, the pan full of skewered shrimp in her hand. “Oh, Olivia.”

“What? You can get married and I can't?”

Elaine put the pan down on the counter and looked closely at her daughter. She didn't think Olivia was serious. The girl had that same defiant, closed-mouth scowl she always had when she was saying something designed to upset her mother. Elaine knew, however, that unless she pretended to believe her, Olivia would be furious. Worse, she might even do it, for no other reason than to prove that she had meant what she said.

“It's not that, honey. But Arthur and I have been together a long time. And we're older than you. You're still so young. You're younger than I was when I married your father.”

“Yeah, well, it's not like there's any other way to get a green card.”

“Is that what this is about? Isn't there
some
other way for Jorge to get papers? Maybe you can talk to an immigration lawyer before you do something so…so drastic. I'm sure Arthur knows somebody. He knows so many lawyers.”

Olivia slumped over her stool as though she had deflated. “I'm not going to do anything drastic, Mom. It's just, he's my boyfriend. Shouldn't I be willing to marry him, I mean, if that's what it takes to keep him here?”

Elaine stared at the top of Olivia's bent head, automatically cataloging all the colors of her hair, as she had done since the blond had turned into a veritable rainbow when Olivia was in grade school. Olivia was asking for her advice, something she never did. And Elaine had no idea what to say.

“Just don't do anything rash, honey,” she murmured.

***

Arthur swallowed his disappointment when he saw Olivia sitting at the kitchen counter he'd come to think of as his own. It wasn't that he didn't like her; they had always gotten along. When her mother ­wasn't around, that is. With Elaine there, Olivia turned into a caricature of a bratty adolescent. She whined and pouted and treated her mother like a sheet-draped member of the KKK who needed to be reeducated and dissociated from her reactionary politics. What bothered him more than Olivia's behavior, however, was how Elaine responded to it. Even with him there as a bulwark against her daughter's criticisms and condemnations, Elaine seemed unable not to take them to heart. It wasn't that she became emotional or exhibited her hurt feelings in any way—that wasn't something she would ever do. Instead, she shut down. Normally cool and even-tempered, she turned frosty and remote. That coldness remained long after Olivia had gotten over whatever had inspired her outburst. Olivia would turn to Elaine as if nothing had happened, only to be rejected. It was as if despite the lifetime they'd spent solely wrapped up in one another, Olivia didn't know Elaine at all. She never could seem to understand that merely because her mother didn't express her hurt like she herself did, with loud bursts of rage and bombastic expressions of pain, that didn't mean she didn't feel it. It was only with Arthur that Elaine permitted herself the barest expression of her emotions, and even then it was a constricted articulation, invariably more about her insecurity with how she'd handled her daughter than about what Olivia had made her feel. Arthur often wanted to tell this to Olivia, to make her understand that her mother possessed feelings that Olivia was capable of hurting. But of course, he could say nothing. His role was to support Elaine, and above all, to mind his own business.

“Congratulations on the wedding, Arthur,” Olivia said. “Mazel tov.”

“Thank you, thank you. So, shall I wear a top hat and tails to the event, do you think? Or biking shorts?”

Olivia laughed. “How about biking shorts
and
a top hat.”

“You know, my dear,” Arthur used the mock British accent he had often adopted to entertain Olivia when she was younger, “I think that would be lov-er-lee.”

“Have you set the date?”

Arthur and Elaine both shook their heads. “Not yet,” he said. “We want to have a terrific blowout, and neither of us has the cash for that just yet. We're saving our pennies for the condo in Lake Tahoe and a trip to Morocco this year.”

“Morocco?” Olivia raised her eyebrows. “How mundane. What happened, you couldn't find a good tour of Kabul or Rwanda?”

“You should talk,” he said. “Miss Travels-to-Chiapas.” While he certainly never would have said as much to Elaine, Arthur had been secretly impressed when Olivia had packed off to Mexico all on her own. He had admired the girl's moxie. He had certainly been much more excited about her infrequent postcards and letters than her mother had been. Elaine opened each envelope with dread, sure it contained news of some latest catastrophe, while Arthur approached them with gleeful anticipation. How much would he have loved to divest himself of all his worldly possessions beyond what could fit into a backpack and take off for primitive places and untraveled lands. He was downright jealous of Olivia's adventures and had been terribly disappointed when she had hung it all up in favor of a job waiting tables at a crappy Oakland restaurant.

Olivia sighed. “I never made it to Chiapas. I never got past San Miguel. I got distracted.”

“Yeah, well, you went pretty far. For a girl.” He punched her lightly on the arm and was pleased when she smiled.

“Hey, Olivia, I have to show you this new camera I bought for our next trip,” Arthur said. He went out to the hall and returned carrying a brightly colored cardboard box. He took the camera out of its wrappings and handed it to her. She wiped her hands on her pants and took it, holding it carefully.

“Wow. Is this digital?”

“Yup. It's the top of line. You would not believe the clarity of the image. Now I'll be able to do slide shows on PowerPoint instead of dealing with the slide projector.” Olivia was one of the only people, perhaps the only one, who genuinely enjoyed looking at the slides of his and Elaine's travels. So many of their friends' responses to his invitations to a vacation slide show were decidedly lukewarm. Some even begged off entirely. But Olivia had always sat right next to him, listening rapt to his descriptions and asking questions about the places they'd gone and the people they'd seen. He had occasionally considered asking Elaine if they could take Olivia along with them on one of their trips but had always thought better of it. He enjoyed their vacations too much to risk poisoning one with the strain of Olivia's presence.

“That'll be so cool,” Olivia said. “If I ever have the money to travel again, I'll have to get myself a digital camera.”

“You should,” Arthur said. Olivia had come over one evening not long after she had returned from Mexico and before Jorge had arrived in Oakland. She had brought the rolls of slides she had taken during her trip, and together she and Arthur had loaded them into both carousels of his slide projector. Elaine had, as usual, found something pressing to do that precluded sitting through the slide show, and Arthur and Olivia had watched them alone. Olivia wasn't a bad photographer. Her portraits of Indian women were particularly moving, and Arthur had complimented her on her skill with the camera. She'd obviously remembered what he'd taught her about shooting portraits with the smallest possible aperture.

They didn't speak of Jorge once during the evening. Neither Arthur nor Elaine asked where he was. Elaine was surely avoiding the subject on purpose, but it simply never occurred to Arthur to wonder. They ate their dinner out on the back deck, under the shade of the fig tree. Every once in a while, when the breeze blew from the east, they could smell the jasmine growing up the side of the house. After they finished their meal, Arthur took a brown paper bag and filled it with tomatoes and green beans for Olivia. She took it and kissed him and her mother good-bye. They watched her walk slowly down the street to her car.

Elaine bustled into the kitchen and began loading the dishwasher and wiping down the counters. Arthur put the tea kettle on to boil and leaned against the counter.

“What was that about?” he said.

“What? Her visit? I haven't the faintest idea. Well, except that she announced that she might marry Jorge.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, but
she
wasn't.” Elaine wrung out the sponge and put it in the microwave. “I'm sure she just said it to drive me crazy. I mean, really. Marriage? To him? Not even Olivia would be so stupid.” She pushed a few buttons, turning on the microwave. Then she wiped her hands dry on a dish towel and hung it over the bar on the oven door. “Would she, Arthur? Would Olivia be that stupid?”

Arthur was torn between his desire to comfort her and the knowledge that Olivia was one of those people who would do almost anything to prove a point. He would not have put it past her to marry the boy out of some deadly combination of political conviction and spite. Those seemed to be the blend that fueled her particular engine. “I don't know, babe,” he said.

“Oh, God,” Elaine moaned, resting her head in her hands.

He reached out his arm and squeezed her to him. “Don't worry. I'm sure she was just trying to get a rise out of you, in typical fashion. I wouldn't take it seriously.”

Elaine leaned her head against his chest. “God, that girl.”

“Why do you think she came by? When's the last time she showed up for dinner, unannounced?”

Elaine shook her head. “I don't know. A long time ago.”

“Mmm,” Arthur said, stroking Elaine's hair with his palm. She twitched a bit. “I know, I know. I'm messing up your hair.”

“No, no. It doesn't matter.”

But he could tell that it did. He stroked her cheek, instead. “I think I know something that will make you forget all about Olivia and her problems.”

“What?” Elaine asked, raising her face.

“This,” he said, and kissed her.

***

Jorge wasn't home when Olivia got back from her mother's. She took off her clothes and got into bed. She fell asleep almost immediately and awoke, much later, to the sound of pounding and shouts. She sat up in bed with a start. The noise seemed to be coming from the door of her apartment. Her stomach knotted, and she felt her bowels loosen. She reached for the telephone but had dialed only the 9 and the first 1 of the emergency number when the sharp, splintering crash of the door caused her to drop the phone to the ground. She scrambled for it, holding the sheet around her naked body. Dark forms of men burst through the door of her bedroom. There were more of them than she could count, and she began to scream, terrified beyond anything she had ever imagined she could feel. All she saw were the black of their clothes and the dull flash of their guns. The first to reach her grabbed her by the hair and forced her back onto the bed, her face pressed into the sheets. She felt his knee on her back and knew for certain what she would feel next. For an instant she imagined her body torn open by the force of him and the others as they took turns with her. She knew, as sure as she had ever known anything in her life, that they would kill her when they were done.

She lay silently, desperately trying to breathe through the sheets pressed tightly against her nose and mouth. The knee on her back was heavy, and the edge of the man's boot dug into the soft flesh of her buttocks. The quilt around her head prevented her from hearing much of anything other than the noise of the men shouting. Suddenly, the man jerked Olivia's arms behind her back, and something metal and sharp pinched her wrists.

It was only when she felt the handcuffs that Olivia realized that the man standing over her naked body, pinning her to her sheets, was a police officer.

Once her hands were securely bound, he took his knee off her back and jerked her to her feet. He forced her to her knees on the floor next to her bed and shouted at her to lie down.

Olivia lay there for a long time, slowly becoming aware of her nakedness. At one point she raised her head and saw the men tearing apart the mattress, slicing open the pillows of the couch and throwing the contents of her drawers to the ground. One of the men tossed a bouquet of dried flowers onto the floor and crushed it under his heavy boots. A rough hand shoved her face back down, and she closed her eyes again. She heard the cops jerking open the kitchen cabinets and the fridge, throwing their contents to the floor. She heard the sound of paper tearing and the crash and tinkle of broken glass and then a dry rustle that she recognized as the sound of Cheerios being poured out only after it had been replaced by the crunching noise of the cereal being crushed under feet.

Finally someone stood over Olivia and shouted to her to stand up. She got to her knees and did her best to shake her hair down over her breasts.

“I need to get dressed,” she said in a cracked whisper.

The man ignored her.

She made her voice as firm as she could. “I said, I need to get dressed.”

She raised her eyes to the man's face. He was young, not much older than she, with close-cropped hair and a nose that looked as though it had been broken.

He met her gaze, and then, slowly and deliberately, let his eyes drop down the length of her naked body.

“You need to shut the fuck up,” he said.

A voice from across the room shouted, “Agent, tell the prisoner to put some clothes on.” A few of the men who were digging through everything she owned in the world laughed. The agent with the broken nose and the dull, cold eyes smiled and said, “You heard the man. Get dressed.”

Olivia stood silently for a moment, waiting. Her nipples tightened in the cool air from the open door. Her cheeks grew red and hot. The agent turned his back to her, and she could see the letters D-E-A emblazoned on his jacket.

“I can't get dressed with these handcuffs on,” she said.

He turned to her again and reached out for her shoulder. She shrank back from his touch, but he grabbed her and spun her around. He freed her wrists and growled, “You have thirty seconds. Move.”