Woman in Black (9 page)

At eight-forty-five on the dot, the Town Car was pulling up in front of her building at One Park Avenue. Stepping out onto the sidewalk, Abigail felt as if she were coming home. Her stride was brisk as she pushed her way through the revolving door into the lobby. She caught her reflection in the glass as it spun past: a confident woman in a mink-trimmed coat, her body toned from hours at the gym, her forty-year-old face showing none of the fine lines, in that brief glimpse, against which she did daily battle with an armory of expensive treatments and creams. She rode the elevator up to the twenty-fourth floor, where she passed through the reception area of Abigail Armstrong Incorporated—done up to look homey, with comfortable furniture upholstered in Ralph Lauren plaids and cozy little touches like the collection of vintage cookbooks and cookware displayed in the antique bookcase against one wall—before heading down the hall. No sooner had she stepped into the inner sanctum of her office than there was a knock on the door. Before she could answer, her executive director, Ellen Tsao, slipped inside.

Ellen wasn't normally given to unannounced visits. One of the reasons Abigail had hired her was because Ellen was good at taking care of the myriad details that Abigail didn't wish to be bothered with. Ellen was in charge of overseeing the catering end of the business, run out of a commercial kitchen in Long Island City, as well as facilitating production on both Abigail's books and the line of how-to trade paperbacks, penned by a carefully selected stable of writers under her name, that she packaged—
Housekeeping for Dummies
, it had been dubbed by one snarky reporter—and more recently the bed-and-bath line, which currently had them in long-distance, Third World hell. In short, it was Ellen's job to make the trains run on time.

A five-foot-two dynamo, the product of a Scottish mother and Chinese father, Ellen had freckles and dark brown hair that bore unmistakable traces of red. She usually had the unflappable air of a Zen master, but right now she looked worried. That alone was enough to make Abigail's stomach clench. She had never seen Ellen look this way.

“We have a problem,” Ellen said in a dire tone, as in
Houston, we have a problem
.

Abigail slipped off her coat and tossed it over a chair. “Don't we always,” she said, with a sigh.

“It's the factory,” Ellen continued in the same ominous tone.

“What now?” There was always a problem with the factory. Nothing in Abigail's considerable range of experience had prepared her for the endless delays, miles of red tape, and countless palms to be greased in dealing with a Third World country. Never mind the intermediaries who were supposed to handle all that. But she could see from Ellen's expression that this wasn't about another broken piece of equipment or official snafu. It was something worse. Now she listened in horror as her executive director delivered the bad news.

“There was a fire last night. The place was gutted. I don't have all the details yet, but we do know …” Ellen swallowed hard, looking as if she were on the verge of tears. “There was at least one fatality.”

3

LAS CRUCES, MEXICO

“When I go to America, I'll live in a nice house, with a garden. Eduardo says the rich
Americanos
he works for, they all have fruit trees—lemon, orange, grapefruit. They don't eat the fruit; it's just for show.” Milagros shook her head at the peculiar gringo ways. Her brown eyes danced with anticipation, even so. She was counting the days until she could join her husband, Eduardo, in the Promised Land.

Her mother, Concepción, shifted her cloth bag from one hand to the other as they trudged along the road to the factory where,
gracias a Dios
, they both had jobs. The bag contained the extra sewing she took in. She would deliver it to Señor Perez, the boss of the factory, to take home to his wife, as she did every Monday morning.

“All that is very well,” she said, “but first you have to get to America. And how do you propose to do that when you have no money?” Even if she were able to save enough, Concepción went on to point out, everyone knew that the
coyotes
, who charged unheard-of sums to smuggle you over the border, were thieves who would just as soon leave you to die out in the middle of nowhere.

The light in Milagros's eyes dimmed. “Eduardo would send more, if everything up North didn't cost so much. Two dollars for a loaf of bread! And even when there's work, he gets half what the gringos make, and sometimes he doesn't get paid at all. Gringos have no scruples, Eduardo says.” She sighed. Forgotten for the moment were the fruit trees and shiny car and nice house with a washing machine that she dreamed of owning one day.

Concepción's heart went out to Milagros, even as it selfishly wished for another year, another two years, with her only child. “Ay,
mi hija
. And this is where you wish my grandchildren to be brought up? In a country where they steal your money and leave fruit to rot on the ground?” Concepción hated the idea of her daughter's living so far away, in a country where she wouldn't be able to visit. It was selfish of her, she knew. Who was she to dictate to a married woman? But she'd lost so much already—her parents, a husband, and three babies that had never even drawn breath. When the time came, how could she bear to lose her only child, the daughter she had named Milagros for the miracle that she was?

“So now you're worrying about grandchildren not even born?” teased Milagros, her characteristically sunny nature reasserting itself. In her daughter's wide, sparkling eyes and the jaunty sway of her hips, Concepción saw no fears about the future, only the boundless optimism of youth and the unblemished love for a husband she had yet to become disillusioned with. Milagros and Eduardo had been wed only a short while before he'd been forced to seek work up North after losing his job. The time they'd spent living together as man and wife numbered in weeks and months, not years.

So, yes, Concepción worried. She worried about the inevitable disappointments and heartbreaks to come. What did her daughter, a mere nineteen, know of life? Of men who betrayed you and babies who died for no reason? How would she manage when she arrived in America to find that the streets weren't paved with gold and that the only way of gaining access to those fine houses was with a mop and pail? With that in mind, Concepción had been putting a little bit of money aside each week for Milagros, so that she would have a cushion, however small, against the hardships ahead. For however loath Concepción was to be parted from her, she was determined that her daughter be given every advantage when that day came. And someday, God willing, her grandchildren would have all the things that had been denied her own child: the chance to go to college, to earn a good wage.

Concepción perked up a little at the thought. She told herself that if she dreaded the prospect of being parted from her daughter, it was only natural. It had taken her this long to get used to Milagros's being somebody's wife. Even now, she wondered why this beautiful young woman, who'd had half the boys in Las Cruces bewitched with her slim hips and shiny black hair to her waist, her lively black eyes and cheekbones worthy of a Mayan princess, had chosen to marry Eduardo: a man ten years older than she, who in Concepción's view was no prize. But there was nothing sensible about love, she knew. Hadn't she defied her own parents in marrying Gustavo? Though she wished now that she had listened to them. Once the enchantment had worn off, she'd seen Gustavo for what he was: a man whose only love was for the bottle and who'd preferred the company of easy women and
borrachos
like himself to that of his wife. On the other hand, if she hadn't married him, she wouldn't have borne this child who was more precious to her than anything in the world.

She gave Milagros a small, apologetic smile. “
No escúchame, mi corazón
. I'm an old lady, sick at the thought of losing her only child.”

“You? Old?” Milagros laughed. It was a well-known fact, she went on to say, that Concepción could have her pick of the unmarried men in the village. Why, just the other day, Señor Vargas, from the
abogado
's office, where Milagros earned extra money cleaning nights and weekends, had been asking after Concepción.

Concepción dismissed the notion that the widowed Vargas had his eye on her, though she knew it to be true. He'd come calling a few times when Milagros wasn't around, blushing like a schoolboy and tripping over his words. She'd politely pretended not to notice, but she hadn't encouraged him, either. He was attractive enough, she supposed, and he made a good living as a lawyer, but he wanted a wife, and even though she was now free to marry—word having come, five years ago, of Gustavo's death, from drink, nearly two decades after having run off to Culiacán with another woman—she had no interest in doing so. At forty-three, Concepción was done with all that. What had sweet-talking men, with their mouths full of promises and hands offering nothing but empty pleasures, ever brought her but heartache? After Gustavo had run off, when Milagros was a baby, Concepción had still been young and naive enough to believe that she'd merely chosen badly the first time, that with another man it would be different. But she'd been wrong about that, too.

A year later, Angel had come into her life. Angel, with a face to match his name and a smile like the noonday sun, lighting up everything around him. He'd been new in town, a stranger passing through on his way north to look for work. He'd picked up a few days' labor at the tannery, where Concepción had been employed at the time, and it had been love at first sight. Angel extended his stay from one week to two, then indefinitely. They began seeing each other outside work. Angel never showed up at her house empty-handed, and though the gifts were modest—a handful of wildflowers he'd picked, a
dulce
or a loaf of bread from the
panaderia
, a small toy for Milagros—they might have been diamonds and rubies as far as she was concerned. It had been so long since she had even felt like a woman, much less a desirable one, that she blossomed like a cactus in the desert after a cloudburst. And how like gentle rain were his words to her parched soul!

“Someday, when I have enough money saved, you and Milagros will join me in America,” he would say as he dandled the one-year-old Milagros on his knee, cooing to her, “You'd like that, wouldn't you? For me to be your
papi?
”

Milagros had gurgled happily in response, while Concepción had looked on with her heart full to bursting. Listening to him talk of their future together, and seeing how tender he was with her little girl, it had been easy to imagine a life with him. It wasn't just words, either. He'd seduced her with his hands and mouth as well, doing things to her in bed that made her blush now to remember them.

But in the end, he, too, had broken her heart. Ironically, she'd been on her way to church to ask Father Muñoz about the possibility of an annulment, which would have left her free to marry again, when she had run into her old friend Esteban, whom she hadn't seen in a while. They'd chatted for a bit, and she'd happened to mention that they'd hired a new fellow at the tannery, a man named Angel Menezes from El Salto. Other than that, she'd given no indication that she had any particular interest in Angel—she'd intended to wait until after she'd spoken to the priest before making their courtship known. But it was an idle remark for which she'd paid dearly … and which at the same time had saved her from certain humiliation, or worse. For it turned out that Esteban had a cousin in El Salto, and that was how Concepción had learned that Angel already had a wife and child back home.

Esteban's words had rendered her mute for a moment. She'd felt as if she had been struck by lightning, standing there in the village square under the cloudless blue sky. Then she'd become aware of a hand on her arm and Esteban's face had loomed close, peering at her with concern. “
Está bien?
” he'd inquired.

“
Sí,
” she'd lied. “Just a cramp in my leg. There, it's gone.” She'd forced a smile that felt hammered in place before wishing him a good day and continuing on her way.

It was a blow from which she'd never fully recovered.

Since then, the gateway to her heart had remained fiercely guarded. It wasn't just that she was protecting herself from being hurt; she'd also seen enough to know that marriage wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Vargas's intentions toward her might be serious, and he might have a big house and money in the bank, but those things didn't necessarily make for a good life. Concepción had spent the better part of the past two decades observing the marriages of those around her, noting how servile many of the wives were with their husbands, watching their inner light dim a little more with each passing year. Few of those wives were as happy as on their wedding day, and none enjoyed the freedom she did. Concepción regularly congratulated herself on having chosen a different path, even though it hadn't been easy raising a child on her own. It was only on occasion, late at night when she was feeling blue, or after the rare glass of spirits, that she wondered if, in barring the door to her heart, she was denying herself as much as she was the men whom she kept at arm's length.

Nonetheless, it secretly pleased her that she was still considered desirable. The glow of youth may have faded, but she hadn't lost her looks. No threads of gray had invaded her long, black hair, which she wore in a thick braid coiled into a bun at the nape of her neck, and except for a slight thickening about the waist, she was as slender as her daughter.

The dirt road they were making their way down was on the outskirts of town, the same one Concepción used to travel in taking her daughter to school, only yesterday, it seemed. It was lined with shanties, some with satellite dishes sprouting absurdly from their corrugated roofs, interspersed with the occasional open-air vendor, offering the usual assortment of boxed and tinned goods: rust-speckled cans of processed meat and fruit cocktail, Fanta soft drinks, packets of crackers and cookies. Chickens pecked in the dusty grass alongside the road, and two old men perched on folding chairs in front of a taco stand, playing checkers, nodded to her and Milagros in greeting as they passed. Concepción smiled at several women she knew who were on their way home from working the midnight shift at the factory, their slumped shoulders and glazed eyes telling an all-too-familiar tale of long hours without a single day of rest. Even on Sundays, you were expected to work, and though in theory you were free to take the day off, those who'd been foolhardy enough to do so had returned to work the following Monday to find that they'd been replaced.