The Perfect Mother (19 page)

A
fter Consuela left, the air practically vibrated with optimism and excitement. Jennifer was certain that although Emma would obviously be upset by this new information, she would also be released from Paco’s spell and perhaps even a bit relieved. In any case, she would see that she no longer needed, or even wanted, to protect him. Hopefully, she would be angry—that would be the healthiest response—but even if she felt ashamed and embarrassed, she would no longer feel he deserved her loyalty at the expense of her own freedom. But she worried about Consuela. Would she change her mind? Would she simply disappear? She didn’t have a cell phone. How would they reach her?

Roberto tried to assuage her fears and dampen her enthusiasm at the same time. He too hoped that Emma would react positively to this news, but he wasn’t sure—and even if she did, he pointed out, it wasn’t clear what Paco would say and what the prosecutor would believe. But he was relatively confident about Consuela. He had installed her in a small rooming house, and she had been promised the money she demanded. She wouldn’t risk losing that.

Several separate conversations competed in the room—Jennifer and Roberto, José and Mark, Mark and Jennifer, everyone talking about a different aspect of the case at the same time, creating a chaotic buzz that Roberto finally put to an end by calling everyone to order. They faced him expectantly.

“So, we have had some good news and we are all hopeful. But now we must act,” he said. He turned to José. “How long before we can get Consuela in to see Emma?”

José considered before answering. “No está claro,” he said to Roberto. Then, in English, “She is not family, so she does not automatically have visiting rights. Emma must request her. Then she will be able to enter with me.”

This caused some consternation.

“How will that work?” Jennifer asked disconsolately. “We can’t ask her to request a visit from Paco’s wife.”

“No, of course not.” Mark’s voice sounded annoyed. “José, can you tell her you need to bring someone, a consultant or something, who you believe will help in her defense and ask her to request her by name?”

“You mean lie?” Jennifer asked.

“Do you have a better idea?”

She thought about it. “No,” she finally murmured.

José said he was willing to try. As her lawyer, he could see her on a few hours’ notice. He would go that very day, he said, and try to arrange a meeting with Consuela the day after. Everyone agreed on that course and the meeting ended.

As they gathered their belongings and started to leave, Jennifer had the unsettling but undeniable feeling that she belonged right where she was. She wanted to have some private time with Roberto and tried to think of some excuse that would delay her departure. She tried to catch his eye, but he didn’t look in her direction. Instead, he thanked everyone for coming and excused himself, saying that he expected another client and had a great deal of work to do to prepare. Jennifer felt offended, even jealous. It always came as a slight shock to her when he mentioned other clients—as if she thought she should be his only one. Of course, she knew that was absurd, and she felt embarrassed and a bit ashamed. Something about her relationship with Roberto sometimes made her feel like a schoolgirl with a crush on her teacher—hopeless and inappropriate.

Mark watched her hesitation and walked to the door, holding it open for her. “Jennifer? Are you coming?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

She left without looking back. They walked onto the street in silence.

“Well, things are looking up,” Mark said a few minutes later.

“Yes. I hope so.”

They continued walking, without a destination. After a few blocks, Jennifer broke the silence. “Where should we go? Would you like to see the sights of Seville?”

“No. Not now. I think we need to talk. Let’s stop at a café.”

She had known this moment was coming, but she dreaded it. They walked several more blocks without speaking, both distracted by their own uneasy thoughts, until they passed a restaurant with several outdoor tables shaded from the sun with red umbrellas.

“This one looks okay,” she said.

When they were seated and had ordered drinks, Mark reached over and took Jennifer’s hand. He seemed to do it deliberately, almost clinically. They knew each other so well—too well, in a way, Jennifer thought—that she knew he was not acting on an impulse of true reconciliation. She stiffened and pulled her hand away.

“Jennifer, it’s me. Remember? I know things are tense, but damn it, Jen, a bomb fell into the middle of our lives. This . . . this trouble between us, it’s the fallout, the radiation. We can make it go away.”

She sighed and looked in his direction, but not at him, not ready to meet his eyes. “Can we? I mean, I really felt last time like you were blaming me for this in a way.”

He pulled back, trying to control his frustration. “I never said anything like that. I don’t feel that. I’m afraid you think that, but it’s not true; it’s not even remotely true. You have been a wonderful mother, Jennifer, and this whole thing
, it isn’t about you
. How can I make you understand that?”

She shrugged. “I guess you can’t. Because in a way it
is
about me. I’m her mother. What happens to her happens to me.”

“Okay. It happens to you. But it happens to me too. And to Lily and Eric. Even to your parents, who are living in our house, giving up their own lives to take care of our children. We’re a family. But it didn’t happen
because
of you. There’s a difference.”

“I know.”

He reached for her hand again, and this time, though she didn’t look at him, she didn’t pull away.

“I said a few things that I believe are true, but I shouldn’t have said in anger, not during this time when you are feeling so fragile. But they’re things for us to work on together, to change, to improve, not things to tear us apart.”

She wanted whatever it was that was keeping her from looking at him to melt and disappear, but it didn’t.

“Mark, did you ever have an affair?”

“What?”

“Since we’ve been married, have you slept with anyone else?”

He let go of her hand. “Why do you ask that? Why now?”

“Just answer, Mark—yes or no?”

He got up and put some money on the table. “This is getting us nowhere. Let’s go back to the apartment.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. She got up and fell into step beside him. “I ask it now because when you said we have to work on things, I wanted to know if you thought it was only me who needed to change.”

He didn’t answer. He hailed a cab and they both got in and each looked fixedly out the window and didn’t say a word until they arrived, climbed the stairs, and settled in the living room. Still silent, she put on some water for tea.

“Want some?” she asked.

“No, thanks.”

He put his head in his hands. She waited for the water to boil, poured her tea, and sat down across from him. She realized they were positioned exactly as she and Roberto had been when he told her about finding and then losing his daughter. She thought about what Roberto had just done—how he had ignored her obvious desire to catch his eye. He was making it clear that anything more between them was not appropriate and wasn’t going to happen. The same way he had told her what to say to the police, what not to say to the press, what to do to help Emma in each situation, he was also showing her how to behave with him. She didn’t doubt his affection for her, so she knew he was protecting her from her own impulses. And he was right, of course. Her own emotions were so strained and volatile right now. She was confused about her feelings for Roberto—admiration, certainly; dependence; friendship; and, yes, attraction, maybe even love. But she had loved Mark for twenty-three years. They had raised three children together and emerged with their sexual life remarkably intact and their affection deeper. They had weathered frustration and boredom and sleeplessness and the stress of babies and young children. They had obviously even weathered his attraction to and probably his affair with someone else. And with a little more effort, they would ultimately weather this. They were hopefully coming to the end of this nightmare with Emma, and there would clearly be a long road ahead to get her home and get her help. It would be mad to push any revelations and confrontations that would cause a breach right now, or to make any decision that would hurt their marriage.

Mark looked up and was about to speak.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’m sorry I asked. I don’t even really want to know.”

He looked perplexed but relieved. “Maybe someday, when this is all over, we will talk about everything, Jennifer. Maybe that’s what we need.”

“Maybe.”

She got up and moved next to him on the couch. She put her hand on his knee and spoke softly. “I’m sorry, Mark. This has been hard on both of us, and I’ve only thought of myself. And Emma, of course; it’s hardest on her—but you’re right, it has hurt all the kids and my parents too. And you—you’ve had to try to work to earn the money to pay for all the help she’s getting and deal with all the problems at home. And I don’t think I ever really thought about how hard it must be for you to not be here, to have to hear about it all secondhand.”

He looked at her gratefully and shook his head to minimize his sacrifices in comparison to hers.

“Of course, it’s hard for me too, trying to cope with a crazy and dangerous situation in a strange country in a language I don’t understand,” she said. “I know you get that. So I think that nothing we say or do during this time should be held against either of us, okay? We get a free pass.”

He looked skeptical. Maybe he’d noticed that look she had tried to share with Roberto. “Well, not completely free.”

She laughed. “No, not completely. But I love you. I’m sorry if I haven’t been acting that way.”

He smiled and put his arm around her in the old way. “I love you too,” he said.

Now she could look at him, and she did, full in the eyes, before he bent to kiss her. Then, for the first time since Emma woke them with her middle-of-the-night phone call, they made love. She felt better after, and it was clear he did too. One thing bothered her, but she pushed it aside. They had fallen immediately into the sensual, comforting, familiar pattern of their lovemaking. But there were times when, her eyes closed, and against her will, she fantasized that she was with Roberto.

J
osé called early the next morning. He had fixed the meeting with Emma for 11:00
A
.
M
. Did they want to come?

They met him at his office and set out from there. Jennifer sat in the back, her body taut, her lips clenched, looking out the window. Consuela sat next to her, nursing her baby. Mark sat in front. Occasionally Jennifer commented on something she saw—a series of half-finished buildings abandoned, like so many throughout the country, because of the economic crisis; the abrupt shift from a cityscape to the dry, rust-red desert earth. Mark and José tried to respond in kind and make small talk to ease the tension. But it was clear Mark was feeling it too. When his phone rang, he quickly pulled it out, glanced at it apprehensively, and then, with obvious relief, turned it to vibrate.

“It’s not Emma,” was all he said and all Jennifer wanted to know.

The baby finished nursing and started to cry. The sound was loud, grating. Jennifer had never been able to hear a child cry without responding. When her children were little and she would hear other mothers say they could always pick out their own child’s cry from any others, she wondered how they did it. She thought any child crying was her own, and hearing a cry at the playground, she would startle, look around anxiously, and not relax until she saw her own smiling child in the carriage, or in the sandbox or on the swings. Now she turned to Consuela sympathetically. She asked José what the problem was—the baby had just eaten; why was she crying? Did she need to be changed? He translated and passed on her reply.

“No, just gas. And she is tired and needs a nap.”

Jennifer rooted around in her bag and found a set of keys, which she dangled in front of the crying child. Imaculada paused and reached for them, shaking them like a rattle and then putting them straight into her mouth. Her mother grabbed them roughly away and handed them to Jennifer, setting off another loud bout of wailing. “Sucio,” Consuela said, “Dirty.”

When they arrived and had gone through all the by now familiar security procedures, José said he wanted a few words with them before he saw Emma. He told them that he had secured a private visiting room for this meeting and had gotten leave to spend as much time as was necessary talking to Emma. If everything went as they hoped, Jennifer and Mark could join them later.

“Good luck,” Mark said. “We’re counting on you.”

Realizing it was time to go, Consuela abruptly handed Imaculada, who had finally settled down and fallen asleep in her sling, to Jennifer. The movement woke her up and she started howling again. Consuela stuck a pacifier in her mouth, which seemed to quiet her, and followed José through the heavy metal door separating the prisoners from everyone else. Jennifer tried to distract her, but the baby would have none of it and screamed frantically again as her mother moved away, leaning after her and wriggling so hard Jennifer nearly dropped her. Nothing calmed her until Jennifer took out the keys again and jiggled them. At that, Imaculada, who by now was sweaty, her hair plastered around her face and her nose running, stopped crying and reached for them. When she grabbed them and put them in her mouth, Jennifer didn’t take them back, though she bent to rescue the pacifier, which had fallen on the floor.

“It won’t hurt her,” she said to Mark, who gave her a questioning look.

She took a tissue from her bag and wiped Imaculada’s nose and face. A half hour passed. Then an hour. Imaculada, having tired of the keys and regained her pacifier, had fallen asleep on Jennifer’s lap, and fearful of waking her and unleashing another torrent of screaming, neither Mark nor Jennifer said a word. Finally, just as Imaculada was beginning to stir, José and Consuela appeared through the doorway. They couldn’t decipher the meaning of Consuela’s expression; it was grim, but she broke into a smile as she saw her baby, who, now wide-awake, stretched both her little arms out toward her. Consuela lowered Imaculada into her sling. The baby settled in, sucking contentedly on her pacifier. Mark and Jennifer looked eagerly at José and saw that he had a reassuring smile on his face.

“She has asked to see the prosecutor and is ready to make a statement.”

Jennifer had risen to hand over the baby when José appeared, but now, overcome with relief, she sat down again.

“Is there a deal?” Mark asked.

“None of that is worked out yet. First she must tell her story. Then they must find it credible. Then Paco will tell his. But if all goes well, there will be a deal. I will ask them to release her in exchange for her testimony. They want Paco, and she appears ready to deliver him. She wants to see you before she speaks to the prosecutor.”

“Both of us?” Jennifer asked timidly.

“Yes, senora. Of course.”

Emma was standing in the middle of the room. When she saw her parents she didn’t run to them. She could barely look at them. Her eyes stared at the floor. They stood in the doorway awkwardly. Jennifer spoke first.

“Emma, I’m so sorry.”

At this, Emma’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m so ashamed,” she said.

Jennifer walked into the room and wrapped her arms around her. Emma allowed herself to sink into her mother’s embrace. She hugged her back. They held each other for a long moment.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” Jennifer murmured softly into her ear. “He lied to you. He manipulated you. Nothing in your life prepared you for someone this cunning. This isn’t your fault.”

She remembered with a twinge of pain Emma at fourteen thinking about growing up and falling in love and getting married. “But Mom,” she had said, “how will I know? What if I make a mistake? Will you tell me? Will you promise to tell me?” And Jennifer, touched at her trust and innocence, had said, “Of course, honey. I’ll tell you.” But that wasn’t what she should have said, she thought now. She should have said,
You’ll
know. You’ll know because you are smart and intuitive and by then you’ll be mature enough to know those things on your own. Maybe that would have given her more confidence. Maybe if she’d had more confidence in herself and less need to prove she didn’t need her mother, this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda, she thought. It’s too late now. “If it’s anyone’s fault other than his, it’s mine,” Jennifer said.

Mark joined them, standing on Emma’s other side and holding out his arms. “How about a hug for me, honey?”

She let go of Jennifer slowly and then threw herself into them, laying her head on his chest, the way she had as a young child when he’d carry her in sleeping from the car.

“Oh, Daddy, I don’t know how you can ever forgive me.”

He just squeezed her tighter and caressed her hair. When he released her, she turned to Jennifer again.

“I said such awful things, Mom. I didn’t mean them. Please believe me. I just said what I thought would hurt you. I was so angry, and I didn’t know what to do with it.”

“I said some terrible things too,” Jennifer replied. “That’s what people do when they lose control. I didn’t mean most of what I said either, and some of what we both said was probably true. It doesn’t matter. We’ll have a long time to talk about it, but not now and not here. Let’s talk about what we all have to do to get you home.”

“I know what I have to do. I should have done it all along. I’ll tell the police what really happened. You know, Paco lied to me in almost everything he ever told me. I have to live with that and what I did to go along with him and how foolish and pathetic I was. I am. But the truth is, he didn’t purposely kill Rodrigo. They had a fight, and I think Rodrigo might have killed him if Paco didn’t stop him first.” She sat down, shaking her head in anger at herself. “I wanted to tell them that at the beginning. I begged him to go straight to the police. But he said they’d put him in jail and throw away the key. He said they hated him because of his activism for the poor.” She closed her eyes and threw back her head momentarily. Then she took a very deep breath and let the air out slowly through pursed lips. “I feel like such an idiot. Such a dupe. He must have laughed at me with his friends—if he had any friends. I never really saw any. Anyway, I thought the decent thing to do was to protect him, considering all the sacrifices he was making. What was my little life worth next to his?” She laughed, and there was a shadow of that harder Emma Jennifer had seen during the past few weeks. But it softened again when she turned to José.

“Please ask the prosecutor if he will speak to me now,” she said. “I’m ready to tell him anything he wants to know.”

Jennifer and Mark were eager for her to get started, but José asked them to sit down first. His voice sounded more somber than they expected under the circumstances and Jennifer felt a stab of anxiety.

When they were seated around the table in the center of the room, he pulled over another chair and sat facing Emma.

“Emma, the story you told me may not satisfy them,” he said.

Emma looked puzzled. Jennifer took a deep breath and Mark stiffened. “Why not?” he asked in a sharp tone.

José sighed. “She is barely changing her story. She admits there is no Algerian, but everyone already knew that. She claims that Rodrigo Pérez tried to rape her and Paco fought him to save her and killed him in self-defense. The police, as you know, believe the story is more complicated. They think they planned to rob him and they will want to know what happened to the money Rodrigo was carrying.”

He looked at Emma. “Did Paco take it? Did he know it was in Rodrigo’s pocket?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“It wasn’t there when the police came, Emma. Someone took it. Was it Paco?”

Emma didn’t answer and José continued.

“Another thing: Emma is still claiming that Rodrigo was killed on the floor near the bed, but the police know that he was killed in the kitchen and dragged to the side of the bed. He was a big man and Paco probably would have had trouble moving him alone. They believe Emma helped him. In that scenario, Paco is the murderer and Emma is his accomplice.”

Mark glanced at Emma and then got up and paced as he spoke. “But in order to have known he had money in time to make this plan, Emma would have had to know him. Roberto confirmed that there is no evidence, in spite of everyone trying to find it, of Emma ever having seen that boy before the night of the murder.”

“Paco had to know him. Possibly Emma didn’t.”

Mark looked incredulous. “But you say they think she seduced him. How did she do that if she’d never seen him before?”

José nodded. “I am not saying I believe their accusations, senor; I am only reporting them. But perhaps they will argue that she met him that night.”

“But the police, and also Roberto, have spoken to everyone they could find from the bar Emma was at and also from Rodrigo’s
caseta
, and no one ever saw them together,” Jennifer said.

Mark looked approvingly at Jennifer. “Yes, exactly,” he said.

“I think the police might recognize that not being able to prove that Emma knew Rodrigo or even met him that night will hurt their case against her. Because of that, I do think they will be ready to make a deal—Paco is who they want. They don’t care about Emma and would be glad to see her go back to the States and take the media with her. But she will have to give them more than she has offered so far.”

Mark and Jennifer looked at Emma. “Well, Emma?” Mark asked. “Remember what you learned today. He used you. He lied about who he was, what he wanted money for, and what he felt about you. He made a fool of you. Do you still want to protect him?”

Emma had been sitting with her shoulders caved in, not daring to look at anyone directly. Now she drew herself up and stood.

“Let me speak to Fernando,” she said. “I will tell him everything.”