Land of Careful Shadows (23 page)

S
eñora Linda offered Rodrigo a job cleaning out the rain gutters on her house. Rodrigo knew she didn't really need them cleaned. In all likelihood, they'd been cleaned in the fall and it was too early in the spring for much to have accumulated in between. Perhaps a few twigs and acorns and pine needles—that was about it.

She was doing it out of kindness, he knew. To put a little money in his pocket since it was almost three on a Wednesday afternoon and no jobs were likely to come into La Casa at this point. Anibal and Enrique had snagged a couple of days of yard work with Jeronimo Cruz, the old Mexican who always bragged about his daughter and shorted his employees. Even so, Rodrigo would have taken the work if he could have. He was never going to see the money Benito Silva owed him from clearing that land in Wickford and he sorely needed the cash.

At least he had sturdy work boots now. Really good ones—waterproof and everything. He pretended not to know where they came from even though he was sitting right in the car when that Spanish detective handed Señora Adele some money and five minutes later, she asked his shoe size. Rodrigo understood. Everyone has a role to play. They had respected his dignity. He would not embarrass either of them for their decency.

Rodrigo felt shy and awkward as he followed Señora Linda to her big blue minivan. He saw her at the center all the time but he'd never actually spoken to her. The
Norte Americanos
at La Casa—even those who spoke very good Spanish—all made him slightly nervous. He couldn't say why. They were always gracious and generous. He supposed it was the otherness of them. Their pink skin and light hair. Their tall, long-limbed bodies. Their instant familiarity. Rodrigo couldn't get used to the North American way of treating everyone like they were your cousins. Enrique loved it. But Rodrigo preferred the respectful dividing lines that separated men from women, adults from children, bosses from employees. At least you knew where you stood. In the United States, he was never quite sure how to behave, always fearful of offending.

Señora Linda unlocked her minivan and Rodrigo climbed into the front passenger seat.

“Did you have lunch?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you,” he lied. He did not want her to think she had to feed him. He would eat tonight after he got off work.

She pulled onto the road and tried hard to engage Rodrigo in conversation. She asked what town he came from, whether he was married, how many children he had, whether he'd known Enrique and Anibal growing up. Her Spanish was excellent, with all the soft singsong rhythms of Guatemala in the accent. Rodrigo wished he could speak English even a little the way she spoke Spanish. He wanted to learn but he couldn't admit to anyone what was holding him back. He hadn't been able to afford to go to school in Guatemala until he was fourteen and though he did eventually learn to read and write, it was always an effort. He feared if he tried to learn English, his attempts would come off as embarrassingly crude. Someone might make fun of him.

She drove past the reservoir. Rodrigo turned his face to the window and stared through the thatch of trees at the ribbons of light on the water.

“That's where they found Maria Elena,” she said.

“I believe so. Yes.”

“It's so sad that she died.”

“Yes, it is.” Since that Spanish detective first told Rodrigo about her death, he'd had no moment to absorb the loss. But now that everything was behind him, he allowed himself the sorrow he could not afford before. Perhaps one day, he would take some rose petals to the lake and say an Ave Maria for her. He could float the petals on the water the way people in Esperanza do when someone dies. Unless that would get him into trouble. Maybe it wasn't permissible here.
Norte Americanos
had rules for everything. Half the time, he never understood what he was doing wrong even when he was doing it.

Señora Linda finger-combed some stray blond hairs that had fallen out of her ponytail. He had never seen her in makeup or anything fancier than jeans—another thing that was very different about Anglos to him. She could have been quite striking but she made no effort to showcase it.

“Rodrigo? Did you know Maria Elena well?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Did she ever mention a woman by the name of Socorro? Socorro Medina-Valdez?”

“Not to me, no.”

“Did she ever mention having worked years ago in Perkinsville, Iowa?”

Rodrigo kneaded his new baseball cap, a present from Anibal and Enrique. The words
BEAR STEARNS
were embossed across the front. It sounded like a cartoon character but Anibal said it was the name of a bank that went out of business. “We didn't talk about such things, señora. I knew she had been to the United States before, but we did not really talk about it.”

“Did she ever mention Scott? My husband? Perhaps he had been her lawyer at some point?”

Rodrigo could not hide his astonishment at the conversation. He had answered every question the police and Porter had asked him. He could not see why he had to answer any more. But he did not want to offend her. She seemed almost panicked about getting an answer. He was only sorry he didn't have the ones she seemed to want.

“I do not think Maria would have needed a lawyer in Lake Holly, señora.”

Señora Linda nodded. She seemed sadder and quieter after that. Rodrigo wished he understood why. It was one of the things he missed most about Esperanza. There, he knew everyone's family, everyone's history. He knew that the Garcias drank too much and beat their women; that Anibal's family, the Roldans, were very religious. He knew the Pavon and Asturias families had had an argument over the sale of some chickens years ago and hadn't spoken to one another since. He knew Enrique's sister Sucely had had a baby with one of the Asturias boys but was distantly related to the Pavons so neither family was speaking to her.

And this didn't even begin to take in the immediate families. Rodrigo was one of seven siblings, Triza, one of nine, so there were brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and cousins with gossip of their own. He knew all of it and kept up with it through Triza when he could afford to call. It was the landscape of his life. But here in Lake Holly, he knew almost no one, understood nothing. He often felt like a colorblind man in a room full of reds and greens. He could not read the subtleties because everything looked the same.

Señora Linda turned onto a long, winding street and then drove up a steep driveway through the woods. When Rodrigo looked out his window, there was no shoulder to the driveway and the woods fell away from him at a steep angle. It was like riding one of those brightly painted chicken buses in Guatemala, the ones with no suspension and only two speeds: fast and crash. No wonder his people were religious. You did a lot of praying in a chicken bus.

At the top of the climb, the land leveled out to an enormous house with a front porch, big windows, and a giant play structure out back. Rodrigo had worked on the landscapes of many big houses, but he had never actually met any of the owners. He couldn't believe that this very sweet and unassuming woman would be the mistress of such a grand place.

Señora Linda powered open the door to one of the bays in the garage and parked. Rodrigo got out of the car and put on his baseball cap.

“Can I get you some coffee? A sandwich?” she asked him.

“No, thank you,” he said. He hoped she couldn't hear the growl of his stomach. “I will need a ladder. If you can tell me where one is, please.”

She took him to a gardening shed in the back of the property and showed him where everything was. Then she excused herself to fetch her daughter off the school bus.

He started on the gutters surrounding the garage first. He was right about there being very little to clear out. He scooped out some acorns and small twigs, a few spiked seedpods and pine needles. But basically, the hardest part of the job was winching the aluminum ladder up and down and setting it at a proper angle to the house.

He worked quickly, starting at the back of the house using a small brush to whisk the leaves and twigs from the gutters. He could not see over the roof. It was only when he moved to the side of the house where the roof didn't obstruct him that he was able to get his first glimpse west toward town. He saw a sight that filled him with awe: the entire town, spread out like one of those model railroad sets they sometimes put up in store windows here during the Christmas holidays. There was a fuzzy green cast to the land, like mold on a peach. Spring was here, even if he couldn't see it up close yet. Through the gray tufts of trees, Rodrigo counted half a dozen ponds—all of them a surprise. They sparkled like earrings half-hidden beneath a woman's long hair. A train lurched into the station and a hawk circled above the granite spires of that old Catholic church the Anglos went to.

He could see it all, could see how small and connected everything really was. He could not tell where one neighborhood ended and another began. The lonely peal of the train whistle floated toward him, crisp and clear as an Indian flute player on the square in Esperanza. But the siren that accompanied an ambulance speeding through town failed to rise above a mewl. Perhaps this was how God saw the world, thought Rodrigo. Men carving boundaries that didn't exist, offering prayers too faint to hear, much less answer.

He hummed softly while he worked. A tune Triza had taught him. A child's song about an owl in the forest. He liked the feel of the notes in his chest, the way they muted the loneliness and boredom. He stopped humming once Señora Linda reappeared in the driveway. He was shy about others hearing him.

A girl hopped out of the backseat, her long, black hair pulled tightly into two shiny braids, a backpack with pink and white flowers slung over one shoulder. Rodrigo had forgotten that the Porters' daughter was adopted. He felt a small pang of longing looking at the child. She reminded him of his Juliza at that age. She disappeared inside with Señora Linda but reemerged about ten minutes later with a tray and called up to him. He still felt astounded when he heard Guatemalan children speaking like
Norte Americanos.

He told her he was sorry, but he didn't speak English.

“My mother asked me to bring you cookies and coffee,” she said in American-accented Spanish. He was surprised at her fluency.

“Oh. Many thanks.” He climbed down the ladder and took the tray from the girl with a shy bow of his head. The cookies were chocolate chip. Fresh from the oven. The coffee was hot and strong with plenty of sugar the way he liked it.

The girl stared at him. “What happened to your lip?”

She was a forward child. Children in Guatemala would never stare at an adult or ask such a question. He touched the back of his hand self-consciously to the scab.

“I fell.” His lip looked like a piece of chorizo sausage had gotten plastered to the lower portion. But it didn't hurt anymore. It would heal in time.

“I fell once on the handlebars of my bike. I had to get three stitches.”

“That must have hurt.”

“I didn't cry. Daddy says I'm brave.”

Señora Linda came out and said something to the girl in English. She scampered off without a good-bye.

“Many thanks for the coffee and cookies,” said Rodrigo. He stacked his empty plate and cup neatly on the patio table and went to climb back up the ladder. Señora Linda stayed on the patio, bobbing on the tips of her toes like a schoolgirl. Rodrigo didn't know her age—in his experience, Anglos always looked and acted younger than they were—but he sensed she was older than he was. He let go of the sides of the ladder and faced her.

“Yes, señora?”

“Do you know anything about toilet tanks?”

“Your toilet isn't working?”

“It's working. But the handle is broken. My husband bought a new one but he never installed it. I was wondering if while you're here, you could do the job.”

“I would be happy to.”

“Thank you.”

By the time Rodrigo was finished cleaning out the gutters, the sun was on the far horizon. He put the ladder, gloves, and tools away and knocked on Señora Linda's back door. A dog barked inside. Rodrigo hoped it was friendly.

When she opened the door, her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. The dog paced nervously at her feet.

“Señora?” He removed his cap and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Is this a bad time?”

“No, Rodrigo. No. I'm fine.” She ushered him into the kitchen. He made a point of wiping his new boots on the doormat. “It's the toilet in the master bathroom that needs fixing. Come upstairs, I'll show you.”

The master bedroom had a bed almost as big as the room Rodrigo shared with three other men. There was an enormous flat-screen television on the wall opposite the bed. Señora Linda walked over to a dresser in front of the television and handed a plastic carton on top to Rodrigo.

“I have no idea how to do this, and I'm pretty sure my husband doesn't either.” She forced a smile. He could see her heart was heavy with some sort of sadness that had happened while he was outside cleaning her gutters. He wished he could help her but he knew that was impossible. She was the boss. He was the employee. There was a divide here that they both had to respect. She was trying hard to keep up appearances. So would he.

“I think the directions are in English and Spanish,” she said, “so you shouldn't have a problem.”

Rodrigo looked down at the small black print, a whole dense paragraph of it. It would have taken him an hour to get through all of that, but he didn't tell her that. He'd always been good with his hands. He could figure out a simple plumbing job without directions.