Dark Plums (27 page)

“Mama, it's me, Adriana. I'm coming home to visit you.”

“
Verdad
? Adriana! You haven't written to me in such a long time.” Elena's voice sent tremors down Adrianne's spine.

“I need to see you.” Adrianne had an almost incontrol-lable impulse to blurt out that she had gotten married and that Max had died, but she bit her lips, trembling with the fullness of all that she had concealed.

The next four days Adrianne drove, spending the nights in motels along the route. On the fourth afternoon she arrived in Houston during rush hour. The highways were clogged, but she finally reached the outskirts where her mother lived. She felt frightened and a bit numb. After she had parked the car in the double driveway next to Elena's station wagon, for a moment she sat still and gazed at the carefully tended rose bushes, the lush grass, and the willow tree. Using the rear view mirror, she combed her hair and freshened her makeup. At last she left the safety of her car. The air was cool. Dark clouds had massed in the sky. She rang the bell, and her mother opened the door.

“Hello, Adriana,” said Elena, and she embraced her daughter rather formally.

Her mother's cheek was as soft as Adrianne remembered, and she smelled of the same lavender cologne. However, she had forgotten how fragile her mother's body was. Once again, Adrianne was aware of her own heaviness. Evidently, Elena had just returned from work and was wearing a blue linen dress with a string of pearls. Her hair, pulled back in a chignon, had grown almost completely gray. The lines in her face were more marked and she looked older.

“How are you, Adriana?”

“I'm all right, Mama.”

“You wrote so seldom,” Elena said.

The house was as immaculate as always, with its gray-green carpeting and ivory drapes. Silver candle holders, passed down from her mother's parents, gleamed in the dusky light. Her father's photograph stood on the mantel-piece. Like Adrianne, he was large-boned, but darker. Several framed photographs stood on top of a small corner table. There was a wedding snapshot of her parents, along with one of herself as a little girl of six. An old-fashioned oval picture of Elena's parents in a silver frame completed the collection. Elena had been their only child.

When Adrianne carried her suitcase into her old bedroom, she was shocked for a moment because it looked so bare. Her furniture was still there, along with the white ruffled bedspread and matching ruffled skirt of the dressing table. But none of Adrianne's personal effects remained. Her clothes, her books, her pictures, and her small radio had all disappeared and her closet was empty.

Disturbed, she unpacked a few items, showered, and changed.

Her mother was preparing dinner. “I'm making
paella
,” she said when Adrianne came into the kitchen. “But I've only got frozen shrimp, and it should be fresh.”

“I'm sure it will be good,” said Adrianne, sniffing the spicy cooking odors. Elena poured them each a glass of Chilean wine.

“Where did you put all my things?” asked Adrianne, sipping her wine.

Elena was draining the shrimp and didn't seem to hear, so Adrianne repeated her question. Her mother looked straight ahead as she responded, “I gave them to the Salvation Army. I didn't know if you were ever coming back.”

“Oh, no!” Adrianne cried. You could have shipped them to me!”

“I didn't know you wanted them.”

“You never asked! You got rid of the piano, too—just like that. You never asked me how I felt.”

“Those scales and those pieces you used to practice over and over again wore down my nerves,” said Elena.

Adrianne burst into tears. “You never considered how much the piano meant to me.”

Elena stepped back, bumping into the stove. “
Cállate
!” she cried.
“You've just arrived, with practically no notice. I'm making you a special dinner. Is this the thanks I get?”

Adrianne retreated into the hallway and stood there for a moment, listening to the sound of her mother's heels against the kitchen linoleum. She had wanted so much for this to be a good visit. She would try to smooth things over, she thought, as she went into the dining room. Finding the silverware in its familiar place in the sideboard, she set the table.

Elena came out to the living room with her glass of wine and a bowl of olives. “Will you join me?” she asked.

Adrianne nodded. They sat down on the couch in front of the coffee table, which was piled with books on gardening in English, along with recent books in Spanish—short stories by Borges, novels by Marta Lynch and Silvina Ocampo.

“What have you been doing?” Adrianne asked, pushing down her anger.

“Exactly what I've done for years.” said Elena. “I work at the library. I go to Church. I see a few friends. I read and tend my garden.”

Adrianne could imagine her mother in her office at the Central Branch, where she worked as an administrator. On the job, her mother seemed to clothe herself in a distinct personality, much as she might put on a dress. Adrianne had caught glimpses of this personality whenever she visited her mother at work. There her mother was efficient and courteous. She never gazed off into space, as she was doing now.

Adrianne sipped her wine and gazed at her mother's profile, at the small, aquiline nose, at the soft skin marked with tiny lines,

While they ate, Elena and Adrianne made polite conversation. Their knives and forks sounded against the bone china plates.

“This
paella
is good,” said Adrianne. In truth, the saffron rice, the chicken, sausage, and tiny shrimp, usually a favorite dish, stuck in her throat.

After dinner as they were drinking tea, Adrianne said, “I brought you a gift.” She ran into her room and back again with the pearl brooch that she had bought Elena en route at a jeweler's in Atlanta.

Her mother opened the white box with its tissue wrappings and turned the brooch over, examining it. “This must have been expensive.”

“I wanted to get you something nice.”

Elena looked her full in the face, and then gazed past her, as though she were able to peer into Adrianne's mind but did not want to deal with what she saw.

“Are you still working as a waitress?”

“No, I'm not. I got married,” Adrianne blurted out.

“Married? Adriana, why didn't you tell me?” Her mother sounded on the verge of tears.

“I don't know,” Adrianne mumbled. Then she spoke haltingly about Max, their life in Vermont, her study of the piano, and finally his heart attack.

“How sad,” said her mother. She stirred her tea with a tiny silver spoon.

“That's what you wanted, Mama. You wanted me to get married.”

“
Niña
, why didn't you ever tell me any of this?”

“I don't know. I was afraid of somehow jinxing things if I did. I wanted to wait awhile, and then it was too late.”

“Were you happy with him?” Elena asked.

“Yes, I was. He was much older than me, but we were happy together and I loved him.”

“He was Jewish, you say?”

“Yes, he was.”

“I see.” Elena's disapproval was obvious.

“Papa's family was Jewish long ago.”

“Your father was Catholic!” her mother emphasized angrily.

“It doesn't matter what Max was. He loved me.”

“So much has happened to you. How sad that he died.” Elena's voice trailed off.

“He was such a good man. I've never known anyone so good.”

“You've gained weight,” said her mother, scrutinizing her.

“He thought I was beautiful.”

Just then the phone rang and Elena went into the other room to answer it.

“
Ah, Alicia
,” she heard her mother say. “
Me gustaría ir al cine pero mañana en la noche no es posible porque mi hija está de visita
.” She went on talking in Spanish, her voice warmer and more full of life than Adrianne was accustomed to hearing.

Then her mother returned to the table. “A friend from the Women's Church Guild,” she said, furling her napkin. “Alicia from Peru is the only other woman there who speaks Spanish.”

“Do you miss speaking your own language?” asked Adrianne.

“English has become my language.”

“Do you ever want to go back to Chile?”

“No, I don't.” Elena's lips trembled. “My parents are dead, and I never did get along with your father's family. There's no one there for me.”

She gazed off for a minute as if she were in a trance. Then she said in a softer tone. “I am sorry about your husband. Now perhaps you know something of what I went through when Julio died.”

Adrianne helped her mother wash the dishes. Immediately afterwards Elena excused herself, saying that she felt very tired.

That night Adrianne couldn't sleep for a long time. When she finally did get to sleep, she had disturbing dreams which she could only vaguely recall.

The next day while her mother was at work, Adrianne rested and read a few poems from an old volume with yellowed pages by Gabriela Mistral that she found among her mother's books. She could not understand some of the words, and she felt sorry for her loss of her Chilean past. Later on, she listened to some of her mother's Brahms' chamber music and to the recording of Satie's
Gymnopedes
that she had brought with her. The music calmed her. She found herself playing the Satie on an imaginary piano with her fingers as she lay on the couch.

In the afternoon she went out to buy groceries, and while her mother was still at work she prepared their dinner: Chili, rice, salad with avocados, and for dessert, chocolate ice cream and blackberry pie. The old craving to eat had returned in full force.

Later, she looked at herself naked in the bathroom mirror. Her face and body had grown fuller. She despaired over her stomach and heavy breasts. No, she was not the daughter her fragile-boned mother wanted.

Again she had difficulty in sleeping. She got up and consumed the rest of the blackberry pie. As she was going back to her bedroom, she saw beneath the door that her mother's light was still on.

She knocked.

“Mama, can I talk with you?”

“Come in, Adriana.” Her mother sat in bed, propped against lacy pillows. A black prayer book was in her hands. She wore a pale-blue nylon nightgown, and her long hair hung loose. “What do you want to talk about?”

“May I brush your hair?”

Elena looked startled. “If you'd like.”

On the dresser lay a worn bristle hairbrush made of silver with an engraved crest, from her mother's family. Adrianne picked up the brush, sat on the edge of the bed, and began brushing her mother's silvery hair. How soft it felt. She plaited her mother's fine hair into a braid.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I want to,” Adrianne said. She put down the brush.

Her mother reached over to a jar on the nightstand and applied cream to her face, rubbing it in with slow, circular motions. Then she turned so that she was facing Adrianne, but she was gazing beyond her in that way she had. Something in her mother's vague air cast a powerful spell around Adrianne.

It was hard for her to speak, and when she began, she felt as if she were choking on the words. “Mama, I want to be closer to you. We never have been close. This is the first time I've ever brushed your hair.” She paused, then forced herself to ask, “Do you really love me?”

“
Claro
, of course I love you.”

“Tell me the truth. How
do
you feel about me?” Adrianne stared directly into her mother's eyes, daring her to tell the truth.

Elena looked away and after a moment began to speak, deliberating over her words. “You were so different from what I thought you would be. I longed for a child who would be my friend. But from the very beginning you were a burden. You were a disappointment, just as your father was.”

“Were you angry with him?” asked Adrianne. The room seemed unusually bright, and things seemed to be in slow motion.

“At times, I was furious.”

Her mother gazed off into space again. “I nearly died giving birth to you. Afterwards, I was very depressed. Julio wanted more children.
But after you, I couldn't have any more. The doctors said I might die if I went through another pregnancy. You weighed more than five kilos, and you were far too big for a woman of my slender build.”

“I couldn't help how big I was,” said Adrianne, flooded with sadness.

“No, you couldn't. But somehow it colored my feelings towards you. It shouldn't have, but it did. And now you think you can just come home when you please and take up where you left off. Don't you realize I have a life, too?”

Every word of her mother's was like a blow, but tonight Elena was speaking truths that she never had before and might never have again. Adrianne needed to press on.

“Mama, when we still lived in Chile, and Papa left—before we joined him—did you have a breakdown? I remember my nurse telling me you were sick.”

Her mother gripped the black prayer book. “It was nervous exhaustion.”

“I see,” said Adrianne. “Sometimes I've felt close to breaking down, too.”

“You always were high-strung.”

“Like you.”

“No, not like me!” said her mother angrily. “You're different. When you were two-years old, your presence kept me from joining Julio in the the United States. That wasn't anything you could help, but the situation was too difficult for me.” Elena paused, looking down at her fingernails.

Through Adrianne's mind flashed an image of her mother long ago, blonde and elegant. When Adrianne was a child, Elena had seemed as beautiful as a movie star.

Raising her voice, Elena continued, “All those years I raised you—whether I did it well or badly, I took care of you. I wasn't happy when Julio went off on business trips. I was lonely, but I couldn't join him because of you.”