Authors: Sally John
Calissa smiled to herself.
“Luke, who do you think called? No one else has this number except Calissa and you and Maria in Mesa Aguamiel. Not that it matters, because in about three seconds I’m pitching the phone into a trash can. What?” She listened. “Okay. And call off your watchdogs. We’re fine.” Again she listened. Suddenly smiling at Calissa, she said, “How did we ‘make’ the guy? It’s a girl thing. His car was the ugliest shade of blue we’ve ever seen in our lives.” She closed the phone.
Calissa chuckled. “So what’s the password?”
Sheridan sighed. “Three, five, six, eight. E, L, M, T.”
“Eliot Logan Montgomery the Third. Easy enough. It’s your nickname for him. Elm, as in tree because of his height.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Did Luke know it?”
“I must have told him. After the shooting, when he was around all the time, I probably told him a lot of things I can’t remember now. It’s such a blur.”
Calissa thought about Luke’s answers to her questions.
“No, we did not commit adultery.”
Most likely, thanks to him. In her clouded state, Sheridan could have gone off the deep end. Calissa would have, even with the likes of Luke Traynor.
“He said it again—that I shouldn’t talk to Eliot yet. Do you believe that?”
“I guess I do, under the circumstances.”
“What I can’t believe is that I’m following his orders. He said I can listen to voice mail. Isn’t that kind of him?” Sheridan worked with the keypad. “Okay. Three, five, six, and eight.” She entered the password numbers and put the cell to her ear.
A moment later she was crying. Calissa could hear a male voice, but not his words. She handed her sister a tissue. The message went on and on. At last it ended.
“How do I save it?” Sheridan blubbered, into a full cry by now, shoving the phone at Calissa. “You have to listen to it.”
Pressing the key to save the voice mail, she said, “Who was it?”
“Eliot. Oh, Lissy.” She wiped at the flowing tears. Her voice was almost incoherent. “To make a call he had to get someone to drive him and then he had to ride half an hour each way. We seldom go in the car because it’s so hard on him. He’s in pain for days afterward. And he went with the priest, who’s like a hundred years old. And to a stranger’s house. Oh, what he said!”
Calissa mentally moved their plan to visit the museum to the bottom of their agenda. It wasn’t going to happen that morning.
* * *
The sisters sat in Grant Park, on a bench in a quiet area. Sunlight through budding tree branches warmed their heads. In the distance before them Lake Michigan melded with the sky, lovely shades of blue. Behind them the Chicago skyline hovered like the arms of a gentle giant watching over them.
Calissa figured it beat the guy in the blue car. She loved her city.
They drank bottled water and talked nonstop. Calissa had listened to Eliot’s voice mail and knew she could not begin to comprehend the relationship he and Sheridan shared. It was true; she had never liked or trusted the man. His breezy tone did not link up with Sheridan’s totally stressed-out demeanor.
“Liss, he hasn’t talked like that since the shooting. So why now? Huh? That’s what I want to know! Why now, when I am thousands of miles away, why does he
notice
me?”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder?”
“And he buys a gift for Mercedes! The last time he bought a gift for me was two weeks before the shooting. Not that I’ve expected him to. I mean, life is not normal. But this.” She flung her hands in the air, at a loss for words.
“What was the gift that he gave you?”
“A tote bag. Colorful, for fun. I don’t even know what happened to it.” She rubbed her forehead. “Every now and then I think of things the staff packed up, things sent to the storage unit in Virginia. I hadn’t remembered the bag because it was so new. It wasn’t part of my life yet.”
“Sher, I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what your life has been this past year and a half.”
“And I’m sorry I haven’t told you.”
Calissa felt something shift between them. It was like a crevice opened in a rock. She wanted to peer inside. “What’s Topala like?”
Sheridan gazed at her, sadness written all over her face, her mouth turned down. Then she began to speak. The words tumbled out, words she had not shared, she said, with anyone because they had been compelled to keep their life hidden from the world.
Sheridan described the small village where she lived, Mercedes and her boyfriend, the sculptor Javier, the priest, the locals, the cobblestones. She talked about what it was like to need propane, drinking water, and food delivered, to get along without Internet or telephone, to watch the sun rise over the magnificent Sierra Madres.
And to have her loquacious husband slip into a wide-awake coma, lost in a world of physical and emotional pain, not present enough to interact with his wife on a heart-to-heart level. Eliot sounded like a bona fide hermit or like a drowning person clinging to the nearest body and dragging her down with him.
Except for that message he left on Sheridan’s voice mail. Mr. Congeniality now.
“Liss, Topala feels safe. It’s home, and I’m was okay with that. But now . . . I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
She met Calissa’s gaze. “Now Eliot’s acting so weird, I don’t recognize him. I don’t know if I can go back there and start all over again with a stranger.”
Calissa scooted nearer her sister and draped an arm around her shoulders.
Topala
“She calls me Elm Tree.” Eliot smiled at Mercedes across the desk. “For my initials.”
The girl nodded, head down, writing quickly on a yellow legal pad.
“Mercedes, you don’t have to wear the apron all the time.”
She looked up, grinning. “But it is so pretty, señor.” She fingered the ruffles at her shoulders. “So special. Sunflowers are my favorite, and you didn’t even know.”
Her giddiness over his simple gift touched him. She’d donned it the moment she pulled it from the bag the previous evening. When she served him his tea this morning, she wore it with a clashing multicolored print skirt, making for a bit of a gaudy outfit.
“Señor, we should work while you have the energy.”
“I feel great. I plan to work all day.”
“Let’s do it, then.”
“Señorita, you are such a
taskmaster
. Do you know that word?” They conversed in Spanish, but he sprinkled in English with the intention of expanding her vocabulary.
“Sí.
Taskmaster
means señora. She
es epítome
of
taskmaster
.” Mercedes switched to her tangle of the two languages, no doubt to rile him because it often did. “I learn from the best. Now,
por favor, manos a la obra!
Chop-chop!”
“‘Let’s get to work please, chop-chop’?” Eliot laughed heartily. What a pleasant companion! And what a lovely day!
The sentiments surprised him. But he had slept well and suffered no ill effects from the strenuous jaunt to Mesa Aguamiel the previous day. This morning he had used only the new canes for support and maneuvered his way through the ground floor of the house and around the backyard without incident.
“Señor Elm, you were saying?”
“I was saying that I was named after my grandfather and father.”
“Elm One and Two?”
He smiled. “Yes. But Sheridan and I already covered that part of my history. I was talking about how we first met.”
“But, señor, you are jumping too far ahead. We have information about your childhood.” She flipped through a short stack of paper, Sheridan’s latest printout, skimming as she spoke. “What growing up in foreign embassies was like. Your university years. How you followed in your father’s footsteps in a diplomatic career. How that was both a help and a hindrance.”
Her literacy impressed him. He had not expected such a high level from her. When she had first come to work for them, she knew how to read and write. He recognized that she was a quick learner, but it amazed him how much she had blossomed under Sheridan’s tutelage.
“Yes,” he said. “And your question is . . . ?”
Mercedes looked at him. “I do want to hear how you and señora met and fell instantly in love. But, señor, you said that happened when you had been working in Latin America for several years. Shouldn’t we go in chronological order and begin with your first overseas assignment, before you met her?”
“I think it best to spice up the story at this point by inserting more current affairs. The role of an ambassador is much more intriguing than the ones that preceded it. Sheridan was my wife when I became ambassador, so we’ll need to introduce our marriage. Mercedes, what is it?”
The girl whipped her head back and forth, a vehement no. “It sounds confusing. We should go in order, just to organize everything, and then you can rewrite it afterward.”
“That’s not how I am doing it.”
“But señora said my job is to listen to you talk about your life and write what you say. She said my job is to begin from where she left off with the internships during your time at the university. We are ready to record about your very own first assignment and then about your first wife.”
“Mercedes.” He heard annoyance in his tone. “Your job is to do it my way. Now, wouldn’t you rather hear about señora and me visiting with the president of the United States when he appointed me as ambassador to Venezuela than about me writing memos to some undersecretary?” He reached for his drink and clipped the corner of a book. It knocked over the full glass, and water spilled across the desktop. “Ah!”
He fumbled to right the glass. Mercedes untied her apron and pressed it into the spill.
“See why I wear the apron all the time?” She mopped efficiently and rolled the cloth into a ball. “There, all done. I will get you some more and then you can tell me about the la-di-da affair with the president of the United States.”
Eliot watched her leave the room, drained of the energy to remark on her humorous English phrase. Sheridan would have taught her that. It was a favorite of Sheridan’s when she felt like pinching herself because embassy life seemed like a fairy tale to her.
And she the daughter of a well-known politician.
Eliot had noted the smile on Mercedes’s face that did not reach her eyes. He heard the forced cheer, the resigned tone . . . the insinuation that he was insufferable and it was best for everyone’s sake to simply go along with him.
He recognized those things in Mercedes because they mirrored Sheridan to a T.
Sheridan had made a similar argument.
Let’s go through things chronologically. Later we’ll play with the style, rearrange where and how it works, hire a professional editor.
Chronological meant to cover the time period after the Harvard master’s degree, after the rigorous tests, acceptance into the foreign service, and commissioning as a foreign service officer. They would start with the story of his first overseas appointment in Caracas.
It had been everything he had hoped it would be. He was back in a U.S. embassy on Latin American soil, much like the ones he’d grown up in. He was working with an amazing diplomat, much like the kind his father had been before retirement. But now Eliot was an adult, officially representing his country, giving his all in service, carrying out policy, making an impact.
And meeting a vulgar congressman who undermined the whole thing.
Eliot wondered if the man was dead yet.
Chicago
Sheridan stood on the sidewalk, chilled to the bone in spite of warmish spring temperatures and her sister’s long black wool coat. With Calissa beside her, she gazed at Hull House, a lovely two-story redbrick structure with a wraparound porch and numerous tall, narrow windows. Built in 1856, it became a settlement house in 1889 through the efforts of two women, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. They served the surrounding neighborhood of immigrants, providing whatever was needed to combat ignorance and poverty.
Sheridan turned to her sister. “Remember why Mamá found her way here?”
Calissa chuckled, obviously catching the reference to their mother’s rendition of why she connected with the outreach programs still in effect when she first came to the U.S. As if on cue, Calissa followed the script. “Mamá was drawn to Hull House because she was an immigrant.”
“No.” Sheridan smiled. “Although she was an immigrant.”
“She needed help with her thickly accented, nearly unintelligible English.”
“No. It was still English, you know.”
“Then it was because she needed help finding a job.”
“A job?” Sheridan rolled her eyes. “Good heavens, she was married to a United States congressman. Which, by the way, gave her a direct link to the deceased Jane Addams, whose father had been in politics as well and a friend of Abraham Lincoln. Well, maybe
friend
is an exaggeration.”
“But, oh, my!” Calissa made a wide O with her mouth and cupped her face in her hands the way Ysabel would. “What a famous, honorable person to be associated with!”
They laughed.
Calissa said, “I swear, she told everyone she met about her ‘Lincoln link.’ She never did get around to answering her own question.”
“Sure she did.”
Calissa turned somber. “Yeah, yeah. Something about Jesus.”
Sheridan mimicked Ysabel’s lilting tone. “Jesús—He call me here so I find the association. Then I volunteer and help all the women in Chicago.”
“Saved countless numbers.”
“Liss, why are you so sarcastic about her work?”
“It’s not her work. I respected her work. It was the syrupy religion that bugged me.”
“It wasn’t religion. It was her relationship with God.”
“I know. I just never understood it.” She shrugged. “But it also explains why you found your way here.”
“Yeah, right.” Sheridan chuckled. “From Abe to Jane to Ysabel, with some Jesús mixed in.”
“The point is, you are very much like her. You have the same faith and the same dreams, neither of which I understand, but that’s it.”
It had taken Sheridan some years to realize that her mother’s dream was indeed her own. All through high school she had ignored an ever-present tug to serve. She wasted years pursuing one phase after another, from volleyball to piano to art to arguing with her sister.