Lilia's Secret (8 page)

‘What do you mean, “If your father did die here?”' Bill demanded.

‘You don't seem to have any proof that your father was here at all,' Gerardo reasoned. ‘You have one letter from that woman inviting him down, and the rest is speculation you heard when you were a boy.' Gerardo looked calmly at him. ‘With all due respect, Mr Bixton, that's a long time ago now.'

They took the road leading west out of town. Bill had given up trying to make conversation with Gerardo. He had tried to use him to practise the Spanish he was learning from books he'd bought in Mexico City, but he hadn't been able to bear Gerardo's condescension.

He put effort into not falling into step with Gerardo. It was as much for the silence between them as for his aching muscles that Bill wished he'd relented and hired a car.

The waist-high gates were leaning open and grass had sprouted up about them. The headstones lay in neat rows. Gerardo indicated he would take one side and Bill the other. It was a sensible plan, but Bill cursed his arrogance anyway.

Bill walked to the end of the cemetery so that he was as far away from Gerardo as possible. He liked the headstones that were garlanded with strings of colourful flowers, though he would have sneered at their tackiness at home. He started at
the far corner. It wasn't as easy as he'd thought: some of the headstones were so worn and chipped that he had to bend down and squint at the writing.

After an hour Gerardo was well ahead of him. Bill took out his water bottle and went to sit under one of the largest trees in the cemetery. He rested against the trunk and closed his eyes. He had to admit that he didn't have significant proof his father had died here. Only a letter he'd never seen, sent by Lilia to his father's lawyers, and his boyhood memories. His father's body could be anywhere in Mexico, or anywhere at all for that matter.

A bird cawed overhead. He opened his eyes, brought back to the moment by his sore back and aching legs. The bird flew off, a moving black mark against the bluest of skies. He watched it until it was out of sight and groaned to himself.

After another hour of searching the cemetery, Bill no longer expected to find his father. He sat down to rest on a shiny marble slab that covered a Manuel and Manuela who'd died within a year of each other – Manuela had gone first. Bill wondered whether heartache had killed Manuel. He doubted anybody would die of heartache over him.

He considered his options. There were only small parts of the cemetery left to search.

If he didn't find his father, what then? There was still the priest, but what if he couldn't help? Bill couldn't go home and sit in his den for another eight months, pretending everything was fine. Carole, with her perfect hair, now seemed to belong to another life; a bland life that signified numbness. Everything was more vivid here, right down to the oranges and blues and pinks painted on the walls of the buildings. It was as if
he'd already shucked off the skin of his old life. Maybe his father had felt this too?

There was a crunch of gravel and Bill opened his eyes. Gerardo's finely crafted shoes appeared before him, layered in dust. Gerardo was very particular about his shoes. That was the business his family had made their millions in, and Gerardo didn't seem one to take millions lightly.

‘There's one section more,' Gerardo said. ‘It's for the outcasts. I've had a look but the headstones are very hard to read. Most names are just scratches and the stone is cheap and crumbling. It will be more efficient if we look together.'

Bill groaned again. ‘It's unlikely my father would be buried with the outcasts.'

‘With all due respect, Mr Bixton, you don't know what's likely or unlikely.'

Rolling his eyes, Bill levered himself off the tree and trudged in the direction Gerardo had indicated. The graves here were just humps of earth, many covered in fierce red wild-flowers. And then he saw it. Bill fell to his knees at the sight of his father's name.

 

Guillermo B. Bixton

Nacio 1900

Murio 1953

 

He ran a shaking palm over the letters. ‘With all due respect, Mr Bixton,' a voice in his head said to him, ‘you don't know if you have the right to feel furious with your father for abandoning you or the responsibility to feel guilty because you abandoned him.' Nonetheless, the grief poured out of him. He was a kid again, raw and curled up and sobbing in his bed.

Time passed. Gerardo's shadow fell across him. He squatted down to read the stone for himself. Bill took another deep breath. He must have looked better than he felt or, more likely, Gerardo didn't care enough to remark upon Bill's distress.

‘Strange,' Gerardo said. ‘With all his money, he's here with the outcasts.'

‘There's something wrong here,' Bill murmured.

‘You have only just reached that conclusion?' Gerardo barely glanced at him.

‘I'll take you to the airport, at least,' Andrés argued. We were standing on our balcony with the sun shining through a cloudless sky. I had my sunglasses on but Andrés was squinting; both of us looked at the ocean rather than each other. Not that I was seeing the water. I was seeing how parched things were between us. He didn't know how to say the words that would make it all right again, and neither did I.

‘Thanks,' I said, tapping my fingers on the rail.

In the car I sat as close to the passenger door as I could. He didn't say anything. I'd told him I was going to explore opportunities in the Central American market for the software packages we developed at work. It was all last-minute and he couldn't organise the time off from his job as a market analyst to come with me. ‘Next time,' he said. ‘You'll be fine with my sisters.'

‘Yeah, next time,' I agreed, feeling guilty for lying to him. Mexico had seemed best. I would be far enough away from Andrés but still in his orbit. Besides, I told myself, I could understand him better if I visited his country without him to filter it for me. I felt paralysed inside by my growing fear that I'd made the wrong decision in marrying him. This was the only way I could account for being able to lie to him at all.

On the plane as I clipped my seatbelt together I felt another moment of guilt. I hadn't told my mother I was leaving the country. It was a small omission – not enough for her to make a big fuss about, but she'd understand. Now it seemed a needless barb.

She lives in a small house in Melbourne. Nobody was disappointed when she sold the farm. She's a resilient woman, I can say that much for her. She swims every morning, and spends every night in front of the television knitting. In the day she gardens. Her face comes alight as she's bundling up beans and tomatoes into packages for everybody. She has an endless string of grandchildren. It's an excuse for her to visit my sisters and brothers. I'd seen my sisters one by one succumb to her once a baby was born. They were like helpless, damaged birds for our mother to cluck over. They even seemed grateful.

By the time I arrived in Mexico City, I wasn't so brave. Exhausted from the trip and the tension of the days leading up to it, I'd lost my capacity to absorb change. The lobby of the airport was a great cavernous belly heaving with people. I cowered by the wall with my backpack beside me and sucked in deep gulps of air. I blamed Andrés, of course. I wouldn't even be in this big, alien place by myself if he hadn't started pressuring me to have a baby.

He had tried to insist that his sisters pick me up. ‘It's a huge airport, Maddy. One of the biggest in the world. Lots of pick-pockets, bad people.'

I told him that work had already sorted out my transport and accommodation. I did plan to meet his sisters, but not immediately.

Squatting down beside my pack I huddled into it, concentrating on regulating my breath. It was as if now that I was away, I'd opened the floodgates to my pain. It wasn't the first time I'd felt like this; there'd been a lot of this panic before I'd met Andrés. I thought he'd ended it.

When I finally got to the hotel I stayed in my room for two days, in bed, eating the mini-bar chocolate and pushing the wrappers on to the floor so I couldn't see them. I channel-surfed through the American satellite stations, watching old episodes of
Friends
that I hadn't seen the first time round. I saw some really bad movies. There was one about a little girl who got lost, and when she was finally reunited with her family after a long and dreary couple of hours, I convulsed with sobs.

I got out of the bed long enough to fill the bath and immerse myself up to my neck. The white tiles were exactly, squarely perfect and without one blemish, not one spot. I wondered where they came from and what hands – brown or white – had made them. I could have been anywhere in the world.

On the evening of the second day, the phone shrieked in its cradle beside me, making me jump.

‘
Bueno
.' My voice was high-pitched, I cleared my throat.

‘I was worried to the bone,' Andrés said into my ear.

A layer of numbness stripped away inside me as I laughed at his English. It was lighter all of a sudden in the room.

‘Sorry, baby. I should have called. I've just been jet-lagged
and working hard.' I muted the TV. ‘I'm really sorry. I don't know what came over me. Of course you'd be worried. But you got my email, didn't you?'

‘Lucky for you, otherwise the Mexican police, or worse, my sisters, would be out on the streets looking for you.'

I laughed again. ‘I'll ring your sisters soon, I promise. I'm looking forward to meeting them.'

‘I'm really sorry about the baby thing,' he said.

I scratched at my wrist viciously. ‘What baby thing?'

‘You know, the other night, we were …'

‘Yeah, yeah, I remember,' I broke in. ‘It's no big deal.'

‘I know it's soon between us to talk of babies,' he said. ‘It's just that I'm so sure.'

‘You're just worried you'll miss out.' It was like a devil had got into me.

‘Do you really want this conversation now?' he sensibly asked.

The walls were bland hotel peach. My fingernails attacked my wrist again. ‘Why not now? Too close to the truth?'

There was silence into which my first drops of remorse fell.

‘We don't have to talk about babies yet.' Andrés voice was soft and I loved the safety in that softness.

‘OK, OK,' I softened again. ‘It did freak me out a bit.'

‘Are you really there for work?' he asked, after a pause.

I laughed. ‘Conspiracy theory? Or was I abducted by aliens?' I really hated myself for lying to him but it didn't stop me doing it.

He laughed back and we both breathed a sigh of relief.

When I hung up I jumped out of bed, threw back the flimsy bit of material covering the hotel window and surveyed Mexico City at dusk. I pressed my nose against the glass and
looked down at Avenida Reforma. The widest road in Mexico was crawling with dark blobs. A statue of an angel rose in the middle of the huge roundabout I could see, guardian over five roads. People here loved the angel, Andrés said, although she didn't seem to stop any accidents. I wanted to look up into her face as she held herself so still and composed in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in the world.

I threw off my tracksuit pants and took a quick shower, hardly allowing for a build-up of steam before I had finished and was shaking out a short black dress. I stood in front of the mirror, painting red on my lips and persuading my hair to point in exactly the right way in a hundred little spikes. I'd need to buy more product soon.

I picked my bag up off the bed. It was too big to be right for a nightclub, but I liked travelling light so I had to make do with one handbag for every occasion. I settled it over my shoulder and reached for the door handle. Then I saw the skin of my wrist chopped in little scabby waves from my recent attacks on it. All the euphoria after Andrés's call evaporated as if I'd clicked my fingers.

The bag was so heavy. I let it drop to the floor, backed to the bed and flopped down on it, shaking off my shoes. I put my fist to my solar plexus and started rubbing it. The intensity of the solar plexus pain never changed, rare as it was.

The first time I had it was walking up the road to our next-door neighbour, Auntie Silvia. She'd make us batter pancakes. She'd take them directly from the frying pan and put them on little red and blue plastic plates blobbed with a small pond of tomato sauce. Dad would rouse at us for asking, so we'd stand behind him so he couldn't see us signalling to Auntie Silvia.
She'd ask in a big theatrical voice, ‘Would anyone like some pancakes?' and pretend to look around for somebody to respond.

She'd sit down on the step between her kitchen and her lounge room and let us brush her short, sparse hair. Helen and I took it in turns. I'd purse my lips and brush it from every angle to get it just right. While one of us was doing that, the other was on a blanket in front of Auntie Silvia's special cupboard, laying out the little plastic cups and plates and saucepans.

Our mother never sat still long enough for us to brush her hair, and she didn't want us to mess up the house by taking things out of cupboards.

One day, walking up to Auntie Silvia's place, I discovered my pullover had a hole in the sleeve and I kept tugging it down to stop the wind getting in. There was a dirty white film to the sky rather than clouds. I was singing to myself, behind Ellen, Susan and Helen, when I noticed a pain below my ribs. I kept singing, but it grew fast across my solar plexus and before I'd reached the next strainer fence post I had a band of pain the width of my hand right across the front of me. I screwed up my eyes and fell to my knees, calling out to my sisters. But the wind flung my screams behind me. There was only the tight dark behind my eyes and this rapacious pain that felt like rats gouging out my insides. And then Ellen was beside me, helping me to my feet.

‘What's the matter?' she asked, shaking me a bit when I didn't answer straightaway.

‘It's pain. Right here.' I rubbed my fist deep into my solar plexus.

The wind whipped hair into her eyes.

When the pain let me walk again Ellen went on ahead. By the time we'd arrived at Auntie Silvia's, Ellen had forgotten.

I curled into a ball now and shoved part of the bedspread into my mouth to stop myself from making a sound. When the pain finally passed I lay light-headed on the bed, staring at the rosette around the light bulb. Slowly a nothingness seeped through me. I hated this more than the pain.

In the past I've spent weeks curled up in bed after one of these attacks. I knew I had to stop the fear before it took hold. I had to get out of that hotel room and talk to people. I had to have people tell me that I was visible, that I still existed.

I forced myself off the bed, washed my face, put on more make-up and went out. I went to a club in the Zona Rosa, just around the corner from the hotel. As soon as I got inside its front door I recognised the heavy ‘doof, doof' of the music. I got a margarita from the bar and took it upstairs to watch the people on the floor below, fluid and dancing together – so different from Sydney. Before Andrés, I had always danced on my own with my eyes closed. He taught me how to move to his body.

The music was starting to get inside me and I was thinking about going downstairs to join the crowd, when some guy offered me a second margarita. I was grateful. I needed to have somebody see me, touch me, tell me that I was real. He was tall and his skin was like milk coffee. I wanted to touch it. He introduced himself, yelling at me over the crowd. Did I want to dance? I gulped down the rest of my drink, then the one he'd bought me, and followed.

We joined in the sweaty mass of bodies all moving to the same beat. I loved this man's hips swivelling around mine.
Andrés was a great dancer too, but he danced to give himself pleasure, whereas Matías danced to give me pleasure.

That night Matías saved me. After we'd danced we went to a dingy place with harsh bright lights and ordered potato and chorizo tacos. I could have eaten and eaten. As we sat talking, it began to rain and people rushed in out of the sudden downpour, yelling and laughing. Others hurried to put bowls under the drips from the ceiling. I felt safe in that café. I felt safe with Matías and his carefully pressed white shirt. He preferred speaking English and he spoke it with an accent that promised order.

I told him about Andrés, and I told him how Andrés wanted a baby. He told me that his father wanted him to go into the family business. He told me how he'd beaten up kids at school when they teased his brother, who was slow. I thought he was a good person. All the while his carefully manicured fingernails brushed through the air in beguiling circles.

We talked until dawn and then agreed to meet later that day so he could show me around. I floated through the next few days. Matías and I walked around the Anthropological Museum and he told me about the Aztecs, the Oltecs and the Toltecs. He laughed as he darted to lick the ice cream from my cone. It was all so unexpected. I sunned myself in his gaze and I put Andrés out of my mind.

Sitting on the rocks above the lake at Chapultepec Park he took my hand for the first time. I wanted him to. Just holding hands was OK, I told myself. It had nothing to do with Andrés, and everything to do with me needing to contain the terror inside me. Andrés would understand. I felt guilty about my husband, but not enough to stop the train.

It turned out that all the joy was in anticipation. In the hotel room he'd booked, because I hadn't wanted to go to mine, the bed covers were an anaemic grey brown. We fell on them. Things moved too fast. As Matías pumped against me I counted twenty-three cars sounding their horns. I didn't let him notice. After it was all over, I smiled sleepily, extracted myself from his arm and pretended to go to sleep. As soon as I heard him breathing deeply I tried to slip out of bed.