Hard Red Spring (22 page)

“You don't have to lie. Just choose your words. We weren't born into all this like Jim and Marcella were. We've made our own way.” His hand found her waist.

“Tomás—”

“Everything I've gotten in life, Dorie, everything, I got by deception.” He pulled her close. “And biding my time.”

“That's not true, Tomás.” Dorie did not like where this was going. She felt the scene around her darkening, felt her life re-entwined with the people she thought she was leaving behind. “Everything you got by deception?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

“Even me?”

A high rubber squeal from the street trumped this small dig. Followed by a hard crack. Tomás pushed past Dorie and jogged down the hall. He was the type of person to run toward the unknown instinctively, sure of his usefulness.

There, in the street, lay an Indian man, facedown. At first Dorie thought he may just be knocked out by the black sedan idling a few feet behind. Then she saw the blood blooming on the pavement. Everyone stepped back from it. What had Tomás done in those few seconds before she arrived? Had he tried to revive the man? Had he merely turned the body over to spare them all his smashed face?

Behind the cracked windshield of the sedan, a dapper young Hispanic man sat at the wheel, stunned. Everyone knew what had happened. No explanations necessary. It was bound to happen, with the reversing of the road.

“That could have been me!” Jenks gasped, pointing to the man behind the wheel.

—

An hour later, they stepped out of the Gringo as the Nash Ambassador glided to the entrance, right through the blood, to pick them up. Conroy opened the door for Jim and Dorie to get inside. When he pulled back into the street, Jim became livid.

“No, no, Conroy, don't go this way. Go the other way.” Defiant with drink, he lurched halfway over the barrier, instructing him.

“But the road's been reversed,” Conroy said. “It goes this way now.”

“Communists drive the new way!” Jim threatened, with a good humor that only entertained him. “We drive the old way. You aren't a Communist, are you, Conroy?”

“No, sir.”

Conroy eased the car into an alley, backed up, and began again, driving south carefully, against the red warning signs.

“That's better.” Jim sat back, took Dorie's hand. How could she even begin this deception? It bothered her that it fell on her. But then again, Tomás saw Jim more than she did. They were closer. He'd probably have to come up with his own string of lies over the next six months. She was willing to go with Tomás's plan; what other choice did she have? Jim had never been confirmed sterile, so that left her some room to maneuver. A miracle baby, after ten years.

“Conroy, why are you going so slow?”

“Because of all the accidents,” he said. “The roads have everyone confused.”

“That's absurd. Drive faster. We've an equal chance of hitting someone in either direction now. Half the people will be looking the new way when they cross, half the old way.” Ash fell from his cigarette with these proclamations, right onto Dorie's lap. She brushed them away. “We must do our part for the new literacy program!”

The car, obediently, sped through the narrow street. Dorie nervously watched through the windshield, trying to anticipate an accident. If Jim now believed himself potent after all these years, she'd be raising him up to a great height before dropping him. Was she capable of such cruelty?

“Did you have too much to drink?” Jim asked. “Are you feeling okay, Dorie?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry about Emelda's hair. I'm sorry about that whole day.” He apologized, but did not retract his decree that Gilberto shadow her. He did not give up his gun, which she could see underneath his suit coat.

How funny, how sad, she realized: she had thought that by joining Jim's world, she would be leaving the infinite war behind. But just two months after the wedding, peace came and she found her husband enlisted in a truly endless, nebulous war.

The car suddenly went dark. The sun dropped behind the mountains. Night came in Guatemala like the flipping of a great switch. The darkness made it seem like they were going faster, too fast for the confines of the narrow street. Everything in front of them illuminated with cold white headlights.

~~~~~

Marcella and Dorie now shared Emelda the maid, at least until Marcella could find a replacement for her lost employee and Emelda left for Miami. Five days after the Gringo dinner, Marcella called Dorie to insist on a visit. When Dorie arrived at her house, Emelda was buzzing around barefoot in a maid's uniform, with her hair fixed into the shortest bob imaginable. Boyish and clumsy, she brought the coffee out on the balcony, then the whiskey.

“It's going to be impossible,” Marcella lamented to her friend. “I interviewed a girl today. Well, I shouldn't say girl. Can't hire girls anymore. This one had already, obviously, had fifty kids. So, not a girl. And do you know
what she had the gall to ask for?” She added a glug of whiskey to her mug. “Maternity benefits! Can you imagine, paying an Indian maid every time she gets knocked up?”

“We don't even have that in America. Why does she think she deserves it? What did you say?”

“I told her she wasn't Tomás's type.” Her eyes glittered in self-satisfaction. “You know that's how they used to do it. Maids would seduce the husband, get pregnant, then blackmail them for money or land. But now, of course, it's all legal. It's in their union contracts. Now they get knocked up and you
have
to pay. No, I told her she was too fat for Tomás. And just as I tell her this, Tomás walks in. You should have seen the look on her face.”

Dorie straightened in her chair, stung. “Tomás is back from Xela? How long has he been back?” She hadn't meant to use the Indian term.

“Two days.” Marcella smiled, spooning sugar into her cup. “He's even been to the embassy. You haven't seen him?”

Dorie took the whiskey and splashed some in her coffee. “Was he meeting with Jim? What about?” Tomás had been to the embassy, but had not come to see her.

“Cortez. Turns out he's in big trouble in
Xela
. When Tomás stayed at his villa, the government was in the process of taking
all
of his land away.”

“I thought they were just taking the fallow acres.”

“They were. But then he tried to fool them. He plowed the unused acres, trying to make it look like he had planted something there. Of course, they knew. It was stupid of him, but he did it anyway. If they catch you trying to fool them, they take it all. It's the law now.”

“Poor Cortez,” Dorie said, feeling sorry for herself. Not even a phone call or a note.

“They're letting him keep his villa, although it'll be in the middle of fields that don't belong to him. He'll have to look out his window every day at Indians working and doing as they please with his land! And reaping all the profits! He'll go mad!”

“I bet they'll cut down the coffee trees and convert it all to corn.”

“Tomás said Cortez paraded him around like a tiger on a leash, introducing him to every official as his houseguest. I have no idea what he thinks Tomás will do for him. Fruit has enough of its own problems. If some drunk Indian worker falls over his own bottle and twists his ankle, they have to pay him injury compensation. It's never-ending. Tomás sleeps four hours a night.”

“I've barely seen Jim. Everyone's going crazy. Us versus them.”

“Not us versus them. It's more like musical chairs now, Dorie. Someone's started the music. Everyone's got to secure their place. Tomás is so exhausted he can't even—”

Marcella stopped short, rolled her eyes toward the edge of the balcony toward Gilberto: Soldier? Secretary? Bodyguard? Spy? He stood guard closely, as if protecting one woman from the other.

Just as Dorie had suspected, Gilberto was a significant drag on her social life. He just sat there, suspicious of absolutely everything, making her paranoid. But still, he listened, which peeved her the most. They were being ignored and eavesdropped upon at the same time.

Though Marcella could not finish her sentence, Dorie understood the good news. Tomás now claimed to be too exhausted to make love to Marcella.

“Musical chairs,” Marcella said to herself. Her foot tapping on the floor. “There are no teams, Dorie. Every woman for herself.”

Dorie was forced to imagine this game, since Emelda at that moment turned on her shortwave radio. Marimba music. Marcella sighed. “I swear, it's impossible to find an Indian that isn't attached to one of those cheap little radios. They don't have shoes, but they'll spend all their money on batteries.” She nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “But at least it's music. I know someone whose maid listens to replays of Jacobo Arbenz speeches all day. She can't say anything about it, of course. The Maids' Union, freedom of expression. But what about the right to peace and quiet? All night those damned radios are going. Our wall doesn't keep them out. So Tomás can't sleep, even when he does manage to get away from the office.”

“Sounds like Tomás's court case isn't going too well. An Indian is inheriting the land, didn't he say? How?”

Marcella blossomed in her chair. “Turns out,” she said, “that wheat farmer may not have been very faithful to his wife. Turns out, he may have been messing around with their Indian maid.”

“Oh God.” Voices—serious, singing, screaming—spun from the radio dial.

“Turn that off!” Marcella cried. The music stopped. “She claimed shortly after the murders to be carrying the farmer's child, but the baby came out looking Indian enough, and no one took her seriously. But now there's a grandchild in that family, born with blue eyes. They've been parading it around for years, like there's an official stamp on his forehead, but there were so many Germans in the highlands for so long. It really proves nothing. At least, not with previous governments.”

So this was the dispute. Fruit versus some bastard Indian. “Do you think he has a chance of winning, this Indian?”

Emelda arrived on the balcony with round, terrified eyes. She clutched a broken wineglass in one hand and a sudsy toilet brush in the other. “I'm sorry. The soap is very slippery. I will buy you a new glass.”

Both women stared, not at the hand with the broken glass stem. Emelda followed their eyes to regard the toilet brush. Marcella leapt from her chair and slapped her.

“You've been washing our dishes with that?”

Dorie felt ill. She pushed her coffee cup away, but Marcella was not done. With her hand still raised, she bore down on Emelda, who shrank back in confused terror.

“You think you're getting paid this week? You still owe me for your uniform, now the glass, and now for
emotional distress.
”

“I'm sorry, sorry,” Emelda stammered, not knowing for what she apologized.

In one motion, Dorie stood to block Marcella's next slap. She caught her arm, bone striking bone. The impact had a strange effect on Dorie, something like a release. “If you hit her again, Marcella, I'll report you to the labor board.” She hadn't meant to say the labor board. But who else could hold Marcella accountable? She prepared herself for ridicule.

“The labor board!” Marcella snorted with laughter.

Dorie's grip softened and Marcella took immediate advantage, rotating her hand to now grasp Dorie's wrist. She tried to wrench herself free, but Marcella's fingernails dug into her skin. Surprised by the pain, the twisting force, Dorie watched her other hand come up and strike at Marcella's smiling face. But Marcella ducked, releasing her, leaving her unbalanced and swiping foolishly at the air.

Shocked by her reaction and embarrassed at Marcella's now-hysterical laughter, Dorie turned to leave. “Okay, Emelda. It's time to go back to the embassy.”

Emelda did not move. Dorie had to push her toward the door. “We'll go together and gather the laundry. Have you learned dirty laundry yet?”

~~~~~

After a week of waiting, Dorie became convinced that Tomás was avoiding her. His job always kept him busy, but this land dispute also seemed a convenient way to forget her and their mutual problem. Mutual, at first. But day by day, as she paced the apartment, unwilling to leave for the inevitable
presence of Gilberto, the burden's weight seemed to shift slowly, exclusively onto her.

Not wanting to invite Marcella over, Dorie found herself thinking of Naomi. But to pursue that friendship would be impossible under the present circumstances, since Naomi had set her up with the free clinic. If Naomi didn't suspect already, she could too easily figure out Dorie's secret. So Dorie's only company, her only link to the outside world, became Emelda. She arrived every other day, carrying her shortwave radio and wearing one of the dresses Dorie had bought for her. Unlike Marcella, she did not make the girl wear a maid's uniform.

“Emelda, are you all right? You look upset.”

The girl nodded, brought her hand up to trace her fixed bob. She stood, wavering very slightly, in her heels. Dorie pulled a kitchen chair out for her to sit.

“Is everything ruined? Will he not take me now?” Emelda had become uglier with the bob, but also quite talkative since Dorie had rescued her from Marcella's wrath.

“Short hair is very stylish,” Dorie lied. What else could she do but change the subject to something constructive? “Are you meeting a lot of people at the embassy? You've met Tomás, of course. What do you think of him? Have you seen him lately?”

“He's very nice.” She nodded. “He gave me a quetzal feather for my hair. I can't wear it out because it's too Indian, but I can wear it when I'm by myself. Once my hair is back.” She patted the chopped sides, unsure they would come back.