Under the Skin (20 page)

Friday, May 25

Where am I?

Something had awakened me—had there been a cold draft? Had I imagined that sound of low hopeless sobbing? Opening a bleary eye, I was completely confused to see dim half-light and the wallpaper of my bedroom at Gramma’s house—the refuge of my youth.

I lay still, waiting for reality to reassert itself, studying the well-loved old pattern and expecting it to dissolve into the familiar windows of my own bedroom. When, however, it showed no sign of vanishing I shut my eyes again.

You’re still in the dream—it’s just done one of those quantum jumps that dreams sometimes do. Relax and go with it …

In the dream I’d been having, I was deep in conversation with Gramma, sitting next to her in the big comfy chair that was our special place. The worn copy of Gene Stratton Porter’s
Freckles
lay open on her lap but she had paused in her reading aloud to answer my question … my question … what was my question? Something about Gloria.

Gloria.

In a dizzying readjustment of reality, I sat up and
looked around. Not my room at Gramma’s—long lost, miles and years ago—but a room in the Mountain Magnolia. What time was it? Just barely daylight, according to the light beyond the window.

The clock on the bedside table said 5:43. I groaned and lay back down. And then I remembered last night. My sister … my poor little sister …

“I wish you’d been around back then, Lizzy,” she’d said. “You could have helped me be stronger. But of course, in the end it didn’t matter so much.”

The pre-bedtime chat was Gloria’s idea and it had been wonderful. We had giggled and carried on like girls at a slumber party. Like sisters, in fact. But then the shared good memories led to the subject of our father—our father which art … where? And when there was nothing I could tell her about the man she has only the faintest recollection of, Gloria dropped her bombshell.

“You weren’t around when I married Arturo. And by the time you came back, it was over. How much did Mama tell you about me and Arturo?”

I had tried to remember. It hadn’t been much. The whole Arturo thing had been just a tiny detour in the path Mama had mapped out for Gloria—the path to marriage with the right sort of man. The right sort, it went without saying, was a fellow WASP—a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, preferably of a Good Family, and necessarily wealthy. Gloria had been (and still is) a beauty and I had known that Mama had several eligible young men in mind as potential suitors for Glory.

But then, fate, bad luck, hormones, or some toxic combination thereof took control. Seventeen-year-old Gloria, off to the University of Florida for her freshman year, fell madly in love and before that freshman year was over, she had eloped with a decidedly dark and
probably Roman Catholic engineering student from Colombia.

“What did Mama tell me?” I had hedged, trying to edit out some of the worst of the language and accusations—those venomous late night phone calls, fueled by far too many stiff drinks. “Well … she thought that Arturo had taken advantage of your innocence and had probably married you to get his citizenship. She said that she had ‘friends in high places’ who’d hinted that Arturo might be part of one of those drug cartels … That was the main reason she was so insistent the marriage be annulled.”

I felt that chill draft again and pulled the bedspread up around my shoulders. Last night’s sisterly chat had covered the rocky ground of many lost years and I had seen a side of my little sister I’d never even guessed at.

As I’d finished my meager little recitation of the case against Arturo, I’d been appalled to see tears trickling down my sister’s cheeks.

“Glory! I’m sorry … I had no idea that you still had any feelings for him. I had the impression that you were relieved … you certainly seemed happy enough when you married Ben’s dad—”

“That’s not why I’m crying, Lizzy,” she had said, shaking her head and twisting at the little heart on a chain that she so often wore around her neck. I had suddenly realized that she’d worn that same simple little trinket for years and years—a rather un-Gloria thing to do—and for the first time wondered if it had some sentimental value.

“Did Arturo give you that?” I had said it as gently as I could and was startled when she let out a bitter laugh.

“Not exactly. Let me go blow my nose and I’ll tell you the part Mama left out.”

In spite of the mild May morning, I shivered under the covers, going back over the story Glory had told me—the secret she’d kept all these years.

She’d returned from the bathroom in complete control of herself and, in an almost emotionless voice, had traced the events of 1973, the year I’d been too busy with Sam and school and my own happy life to come home for a visit.

Arturo Rodriquez had been an assistant in her Spanish lab. Handsome and charming, he had gone out of his way to help her and they had begun dating in the fall of ’72. By December she knew she was pregnant and Arturo had insisted they get married right away, fearing that her mother might force her to get an abortion.

“He was right; when she found out, that was exactly her reaction,” a dry-eyed Gloria told me. “We went to Georgia one weekend and got married just before the Christmas break. He wanted to come home with me, to be with me when I told her but I was afraid … I knew how she’d be. So he stayed in Gainesville and I went home. I thought if things got too bad—and I knew they would—at least I could look forward to going back early so Turo and I could celebrate the New Year and our new life together.”

A new life.

“Gloria,” I ventured, “what happened when you told Mama you were pregnant?”

“Well, of course she pitched a fit. Then she went and made a bunch of phone calls and came back and told me she’d fixed everything and that we’d be going in to her gynecologist the next Monday. ‘You’re not very far along,’ she said. ‘This early it’s nothing, just a D and C—no worse than a bad period.’ ”

“So you went,” I said, knowing the hold Mama had always had over Gloria.

“I did not! But I didn’t argue. I just got up early the next morning before she was awake and drove back to Gainesville, back to Turo. He had the funniest little apartment—a converted garage behind a house and right on an alley. There was a little hand-painted sign over the door that said
Chalet in the Alley
. It was so tiny that the bathtub was in the middle of the kitchen, covered by a wooden top …”

Her voice had trailed off. Her face was frozen into a beautiful expressionless mask. “But when I got there he was gone. I hadn’t called—he didn’t have a phone. And the apartment was a wreck—drawers pulled out and things thrown all around. When I went to the landlady to ask what had happened, she said that some men from the government—Immigration or Narcotics or something, she wasn’t sure—had come that morning and taken Turo away. They had said that he was here illegally, that he was suspected of drug trafficking.

“I asked if I could use her phone to make some calls before I went back to tidy up the apartment and she just frowned at me and said the lease was with Turo and she wanted me off her property. It was clear she was terrified. So I found a phone booth and called everywhere I could think of. I finally found a lawyer who would see me right away.

“I had to take a room in a motel—and I was there for a couple of weeks while I waited for this lawyer to find out something. I was running low on money and knew that by the time I paid the lawyer, I wouldn’t have enough for my next semester’s tuition.

“When he finally called to tell me that Arturo Rodriquez had been deported to his native Colombia, I was beaten. Worry and sadness and morning sickness had worn me down. I’d maxed out my credit cards and all I could do was to crawl back home.”

Gloria’s words had cut deep. To think that I’d never …

“Glory, why didn’t you call me? I could have … we could have …”

“I called and the phone just kept ringing … over and over. Later I found out that you were with Sam’s family for the holidays. So I went home to Mama.”

“And Mama got her way about the abortion …”

“No. Oh, no.” Gloria had wrapped her arms around herself and was shivering. But she lifted her chin and went on. “I let her yell and carry on and say terrible things—you know how she could be—but I told her I was going to have the baby no matter what. She threatened and pleaded and tried to bribe me but at last she realized I wasn’t going to change my mind. So we made a bargain. I would go live with Aunt Dodie in New Bern and have the baby there. And then we would decide what to do. She talked about all the nice couples anxious to adopt but I told her we’d just wait and see.”

My heart ached at the thought of my sister separated from her child all these years. “And when the baby came, I’ll bet there was a nice couple lined up. Maybe it was the best thing—I mean, look how young you were. But have you ever … a lot of adopted children are eager to know who their birth parents are … I just wondered—”

Gloria had shaken her head. “No. That’s not what happened. Oh, she had a nice couple eagerly waiting all right. But I hadn’t signed anything … I felt like I couldn’t decide till I saw the baby …”

“Oh, Glory! What an awful decision to have to—”

“I never had to.” Her voice was still flat. “The baby was born dead. They said the cord had strangled it—that it never took a breath.”

I had listened in abject misery, aware of how badly I’d
failed my sister so long ago but unable to put together any words. And then Glory turned luminous eyes on me. “You see, Lizzy, that’s the other reason I’m here. Of course, it would be wonderful if I could talk to Harry and get his advice. But the real reason for this weekend is my baby—if only I could reach my baby … if I could tell my baby how sorry I am …”

Friday, May 25

W
hen I knocked on Gloria’s door the next morning, she opened it almost immediately. There was no sign on
her
face of the late night that had left dark circles under my reddened eyes. It was almost as though the revelations that were still spinning through my mind had never been spoken. Glory was crisp and fresh and perfectly made-up and she greeted me with a radiant smile. Before either of us could speak, however, Steve and Dawn emerged from the Walnut Room and we all went down to the dining room for breakfast, exchanging pleasantries about the beauty of the old house, the fineness of the weather, and the interesting weekend that lay ahead.

Xan, the fruit and nut eater, was in the dining room when we got there, sitting alone at a table and silently working his way through a bowl of mixed fruit and a smaller bowl of raw almonds. He didn’t acknowledge our entry in any way but continued his methodical mastication. I was pretty sure he had some rule about chewing each bite a certain number of times.

As the rest of the group filed in—some still sleepy-eyed, others obnoxiously cheery and talking about the brisk hour’s walk they’d just taken—we helped ourselves at the buffet and found seats at the various small
tables. Gloria and I joined Sandy from Wisconsin and henna-haired Charlene. These two had evidently just discovered a common interest in murder mysteries and were tossing titles and authors’ names back and forth.

Next to us, Len had snagged a seat by Giles and before long the whole dining room was treated to Len’s theories on ITC—Instrumental Trans-Communication.

“I figured I needed to experience communication through a human medium—then I can use that as a kind of a template for a program I have in mind. Of course, I’m not the only one out there working on this; there’s a fellow in Virginia named Atwater; though he’s pursuing a different …”

Concentrating on the delectable soufflé-like thing on my plate—an airy bit of heaven called Chili Egg Puff—I congratulated myself on my choice, all the while wondering how tacky it would be to go back for a little taste of the very righteous-looking French toast that Gloria had chosen.

“Good, is it?” I asked, noticing the look of bliss on her face. “Blueberries and pecans, is that right?”

She rolled her eyes, smiled, and nodded. “Only the best thing I ever put in my mouth.”

I saw Xan give a little shiver of disgust as he finished his healthful breakfast and, passing the laden buffet table with averted eyes, removed himself to the front lawn. There, as we could see through the French doors, he proceeded to go through a number of gyrations which Gloria informed me were yoga poses.

“They’re called asanas,” she explained. “I learned a bunch of them in that workshop in California a few years ago. See—he started with the mountain pose. That’s
tadasana
in Sanskrit. And now he’s moving into downward-facing dog …”

We sipped our coffee and I munched on the small (really just a taste) portion of French toast I’d convinced
myself I needed to try. Savoring the fruity, nutty confection and trying not to think about the calories I’d just downed, I watched in fascination as Xan arranged his wiry body into a series of poses ranging from very silly-looking to somewhat obscene to a bit alarming. Still, I had to admit, he was as flexible as a cat. Something I’d never be, especially if I ate like this every day.

Sandy and Charlene excused themselves to go back to their rooms and brush their teeth and I was finishing my second cup of coffee when, just like last night, the ambiguous-looking person known as Joss appeared in the dining room doorway. This time however, instead of flinging himself (I checked—there was an Adam’s apple) at Giles’s feet, he simply filled a plate and looked for a place to sit. I noticed that he had a somewhat shuffling gait, more suited to an old man than to the thirty-something he appeared to be, but put it down to whatever accident had caused the head injury he’d mentioned the night before.

“Would it be all right …” he asked, looking at the empty seats at our table, and when we said that yes, certainly it would, he lowered himself cautiously into the chair.