Hard Red Spring (18 page)

“Who?”

Tomás moved in, clearing hair from her face with a careful, masterly hand. “That's not a very pleasant story for such a beautiful young lady,” he said in an excellent imitation of Jim. “Do you really want to hear it?”

What, Dorie wondered, could possibly be more unpleasant than an entire family murdered? But she didn't want to know. She had to stay on course. If she didn't tell him now, she might have to wait days for another opportunity.

“Corporate ownership can't stop the land grab,” he continued, “but a bunch of Indians and their petty disputes over a few acres and a chicken brings it all screeching to a halt. The government wants it all to be very fair, you see. Like they're governing a kindergarten class.” He smiled, showing small, crooked teeth. Almost translucent, without enamel, the only obvious clue to his past.

“Do you ever carry a gun?” she asked, when she really wanted to ask if he feared Jim. She suspected he didn't.

“You don't need a gun to rule a kindergarten class,” he said, pulling up his pants.

She was losing him. His shadow touched the door and she did not know when she'd have him here like this again.

“I'm pregnant,” she said as he slid into his black coat.

Tomás met Dorie's tearful, wobbly face with the ecstatic composure of a businessman who'd just pulled off a merger. Amazingly, nothing threatened his peace of mind. Not even Marcella's miscarriage nearly two years before. He existed in a world of ambition and success absolutely no one could touch. He knew, without even having to ask, that the child was his.

~~~~~

Dorie had met Marcella a decade ago at a World Affairs lecture at Ford's Theatre in Boston. Marcella had been there for a class requirement, while
Dorie went for the course of self-education she'd laid out for herself. Her father had refused to pay for her college, thinking it a waste of money to educate a beautiful girl, beautiful enough to snag a rich man. When Dorie complained that she wanted to make her own money, he enrolled her in a typing class, which she loathed. According to him, boys went to college and girls took typing classes, if they were so inclined for a career. Maybe, he hoped aloud to her, she would meet this rich man while typing for him.

So, to defy him, to try to educate herself, she attended the free World Affairs lectures. She hated to admit, but it bothered her that the war in Europe dominated every lecture of the series. Not confident enough to be critical, however, and fearful that this was exactly what a woman would be expected to conclude, she feigned interest and took notes at every one. During a Q&A following the last, especially depressing lecture (“Is Peace Possible?”), Dorie was floored when a bold, dark, and beautiful girl of her own age raised her hand and commented to the aged, supposedly brilliant professor onstage, “After ten weeks of these World Affairs talks, you'd think the entire Southern Hemisphere didn't even exist.”

Radicals usually frightened Dorie, although Marcella's proper looks, her calm composure, made her almost approachable. Almost, for it was Marcella who sought her out in the lobby afterward.

“You're not in my class,” she observed with a squint. “Who are you?”

Dorie introduced herself, shrinking a little with this scrutiny.

“Are you with another class?” Marcella asked, looking around.

“No.”

“Just you?” Marcella seemed surprised. “Well, that's refreshing. I never see any girls at these things, at least not any who come willingly.” She paused. “Though these talks are all distraction. There was a revolution in Guatemala a few weeks ago, did you even know?”

“No,” Dorie admitted, embarrassed. Her political knowledge extended no further than what she'd learned from the World Affairs lectures, which were now over. In that moment, she envisioned spending the rest of her afternoon in her typing class. If she did not leave now, she would be late. “No, I had no idea Guatemala just had a revolution. Tell me about it.”

They went for coffee. After one cup, Dorie had concluded Marcella was not a radical, just devoted to her home country, and was frustrated that its problems were being ignored for Hitler.

“But the thing is, Hitler's so clearly evil. We should defeat him, yes, but there are much subtler things going on in Guatemala. For that, it will go
unchecked. And
that
will be the big threat a decade from now. Bigger than Hitler, because it's so much harder to see the evil in it. They're calling it a democracy, they're making speeches all about rights and equality, but really they're Communists who want us all equally poor and miserable. They're already talking about land redistribution. By the time the U.S. realizes the Guatemalan revolution is a problem, it'll be too late.”

Marcella was exactly the type of girl Dorie wanted to be. Educated, effortlessly beautiful, and fierce, with a man who appreciated her for all these things. Her new husband, Tomás, paid for her classes at Radcliffe.

A few weeks into the friendship, Dorie began to borrow Marcella's textbooks. She'd asked Marcella for her final paper on English Romanticism and had put her typing skills to good use, transcribing it exactly, hoping to internalize its lessons through the process. The more Marcella shared, the more Dorie learned, the more grateful and enamored she became. Dorie's typing pool friends—suddenly dull in comparison to Marcella—fell away. They did not discuss revolutions, but hairstyles and keystroke efficiency. She stopped showing up for classes.

By the holidays, they were best friends. Marcella invited Dorie to the United Fruit Christmas party, for a double date. Fruit had rented the Majestic Theatre for a tropical-themed celebration during a blizzard that dropped a foot of snow on the city. On the taxi ride to the theater, Marcella gave her the brief history of Tomás and Jim, supposedly the most handsome man at Fruit.

“If he's so handsome and wonderful, why is he single?” Dorie asked.

“He's always been too busy for dates. But his mother's begun to hound him about having children. Now I have to find dates for him! He needs someone who'd fit in as a fourth. Tomás and Jim are terribly close. And Jim's been lonely since Tomás and I got married. He's never needed a girl until now! But you're perfect. You're as beautiful as I am.” She squeezed Dorie's arm. “If you were less, it just wouldn't work.”

Dorie found this pronouncement strange, as the two looked nothing alike. Hispanic, unmistakable Marcella, with her bottomless black gaze, made a stark contrast to Dorie's ethereal features. With golden hair and green eyes, she often felt transparent next to her new friend. It was a refreshing reversal, anyway, of the jealous dynamic with Dorie's previous, homelier girlfriends. She always felt uncomfortable with her good looks. Not only did she have to endure unwanted attention, but she had also come to resent it for her father's refusal to send a pretty girl to school. Marcella,
however, enjoyed admiration, especially Dorie's. And she could make beauty work for them both, procuring sold-out tickets, hailing taxis in record time, even in a snowstorm.

The men were, Marcella admitted, an odd pairing for best friends. Jim had grown up wealthy in Boston—his father worked for Fruit—and as soon as he earned his degree, he secured a job there, too. Tomás, on the other hand, had been a migrant worker in a rural Guatemalan province. A Jesuit priest had taken an interest in his education, taught him English, Latin, and other subjects. Eventually, the priest secured his acceptance to Weston.

“So Tomás is a priest? You're married to a Jesuit priest?”

“No, well, technically, he could have been one, but he never was. They could only afford to pay for a year at Weston, but they put their faith in God.”

“Indeed.”

“After Tomás's first year, he applied for a job with Fruit as a translator. He hoped to work a year, then have enough money for his second year at Weston. Of course, Fruit only hoped for someone who spoke Spanish, so the fact that he also spoke Quiché and such good English made him a shoo-in. They appointed him to assist Jim's father, who spent months at a time in Guatemala, on labor issues. This was in the thirties, when President Ubico decreed all Indians had to work the plantations a hundred and fifty days a year to pay their taxes. So, suddenly Fruit has more workers than ever, but no way to control them. They were always escaping. You wouldn't believe how much Fruit spent on fencing and police bribes and guards. So he's pulling his hair out over these expenses, and Tomás finally speaks up. He'd been afraid to for months, but he tells Jim's father that he doesn't need fences. All he had to do is hang dead animals in the trees all around the boundary, and make certain shapes with rocks, and the Indians would be too scared to cross.”

“Did it work?”

“Of course it worked! In a day, their biggest problem was no longer a problem. And the solution cost no money at all. Jim's father was so pleased that he tried to hire Tomás right away, but Tomás wanted to finish school. So Jim's father offered to pay for the rest of Weston, as long as he came back to Fruit within ten years.”

“How long did it take for him to go back?”

“He started as soon as he graduated. By then he'd spent a few summers as Jim's translator. When Fruit sent him to Guatemala for the first time, his father trusted only Tomás to take care of him. Since then, they've been inseparable. Tomás helped Jim in Guatemala and Jim helped Tomás navigate
Boston. They have all these stories of saving each other from malaria and runaway streetcars. I believe about half of them.”

“Whose half?”

“That's wicked,” Marcella said with a laugh, eyes flashing. “Beauty, brains, and brass. I do like you, Dorie. I'll admit, I'm afraid if Jim chose a girl for himself, I'd die of boredom.”

—

Magnificent and crumbling, the Majestic opened into a mirrored lobby and a corroded marble staircase that led up to murals of heaven and sky. Inside, the heat was up to a steamy eighty-five degrees. A Negro woman dressed in some bright, bizarre outfit (an Indian costume, Dorie later learned) took their coats. Marcella, in a pink satin sheath, laughed when she saw that Dorie had worn a gray wool dress.

“Oh, I forgot to warn you this is the tropics, Dorie!”

Inside the theater itself, Fruit had forested the floor with stunted banana trees in huge glazed pots. They followed a winding path, toward the sound of fast-paced music and the colorful glow of theater lighting that showed between the leaves overhead.

“Did I tell you not to make any jokes? And don't take the Lord's name in vain. Jim doesn't care, but Tomás is very sensitive to that.”

The path spilled them out into the party space. Hundreds of summery gowns and white linen suits sipped drinks and began to test the borders of the gleaming dance floor, so polished it looked wet. A giant papier-mâché volcano steamed onstage, amplifying the humidity. The scene was absolutely bizarre, and Dorie remembered thinking that these United Fruit people were savages, with their sweat, their impossibly bright drinks, and oyster forks. How did she end up here, a merchant's daughter enrolled in typing classes? Already she felt uncomfortable, feeling herself perspiring through the lining of her dress, to the wool. The theater held more men than she'd seen in the city in years. Somehow she had stepped into a world where there wasn't a war going on.

Marcella led her to a table where Tomás and Jim sat talking, Jim looking twenty years older than she had expected. Middle-aged! No wonder his mother worried about having grandchildren. At least, Dorie consoled herself, they were good-looking. Jim especially.

Then she noticed the performance onstage, in front of the volcano. A line of near-naked women danced with huge prop bananas. They scissored and turned in perfect unison, hoisting the bananas above their heads, then passing them through their legs.

Both men stood as the women approached, but Dorie found herself blushing for the act onstage. Tomás, short enough to catch her lowered eyes, seized them with his own and brought her gaze up. Age had softened his eyes into an expression of weary compassion. Like a priest. Dorie saw gold flecks sinking, settled at the bottom of his drink.

“This is Dolores.”

Dorie felt disheveled from the hot walk through the banana forest. “Hello,” she managed, though Dolores was not her real name. It was Pandora. Despite her family's respectable position now, the name broadcast their humble origins like a beacon. What halfway-educated woman would name a girl such a thing? Her mother had no idea about mythology. She had seen the name on a box of tobacco while pregnant. Of course, Dorie had never corrected Marcella's assumption that her name was Dolores.

“She's a friend of mine from Radcliffe,” Marcella added, to Dorie's alarm. Another lie, this one purposeful. Now she'd have to be careful to uphold them both without embarrassing herself.

Like some kind of comedy troupe, the men offered her a coordinated greeting—Jim the elaborate one, Tomás the straight man. The type of friends, she realized, who are constantly in on some joke together, feeling no need to inform anyone else of the particulars.

She felt better after standing in the snowy back exit for a moment and having a shot at the bar, then another. She had asked for the drink with gold flakes, not knowing its name. Her mouth burned, then turned sweet with what the barman offered her. When she returned to the table, the party had progressed during her absence, with couples now dancing. Dorie followed Jim, who stepped onto the gleaming wood and held a hand out to assist her, as if she ran the hazard of getting wet.