The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos (12 page)

“Ay, Doctor,” Lily had giggled nervously. “What a question! My mother is seventy-four years old!”

At this Consuelo had smiled in the manner of a conspirator at Dr. Morales and he had smiled back.

Ignoring Lily, he said, “Resuming sexual relations after a heart attack often involves more than the physical aspects of the
stress on the heart. You should wait at least a month. And even then, it is not unusual for the patient or their partner to
be at least somewhat fearful. Take it slow the first few times.”

If Dr. Morales were before her now, Consuelo would ask him why it is called a
heart attack,
as if the poor heart were at fault. The heart is not the betrayer. The betrayer is time and the cumulative effect of shocks
to the system. In her
heart,
Consuelo feels as young as a girl of twenty.

After Consuelo’s release from the hospital, Lily had insisted on preparing all her mother’s meals, shunning Marta’s assistance,
relying only on Consuelo’s instruction. By the end of the first week, she had learned eight recipes—one for each day of the
week, and one extra, just in case:

In spite of Lily’s well-intentioned efforts, and her own desire to please, in spite of diligently adding her mother’s secret
ingredient, for two weeks Consuelo had not been able to stomach what her daughter cooked. The medication made her nauseous
to the point where she could barely keep anything down, with the exception of chicken broth, unsweetened gelatin, lemongrass
tea, and the diluted juice of the passion fruit. The last was prescribed by Amparo, for reigniting the zest for life.

After thirty days of Consuelo’s convalescence, Ismael had still not returned from the Delta. Sometimes she would awaken to
the sound of her own voice calling out to him in her sleep. She would be embarrassed when Lily came running in to soothe her,
as if their roles had been reversed and she, Consuelo, were the child now. But Lily could not sustain the role of mother to
her mother for long. All of a sudden, tears would fill her long-lashed eyes and she would climb into Consuelo’s bed. She would
lay her head lightly on the pillow with her cheek against Consuelo’s cheek. Then Consuelo would become the mother again, stroking
her daughter’s forehead as if she were a little girl who was having a bad dream.

“Ay, mi amor,” Consuelo sighed one day, “if only I had been a much younger woman when I met your father, we would have more
time together, you and I.” Almost as soon as the words left her mouth, she was sorry to have said them. A solitary tear rolled
down Lily’s cheek and splashed right into Consuelo’s heart where it formed a tiny saline pool of remorse.

“Can you imagine,” she continued, smiling, trying to change the subject, “so far, I’ve only managed to teach you seven recipes.”
Lily had laughed through her tears then, because Consuelo’s recipes numbered in the thousands.

“It doesn’t matter, Mami, no matter how much you teach me, I’ll never be as good as you.” Lily placed her lips softly against
her mother’s cheek, curled her fingers in Consuelo’s long hair, and they fell asleep like that together.

Consuelo had never been sick before in her life. For the first time she considered her own mortality and worried about the
possibility that she might become a burden to her family.

“Listen, mi vida,” she said a few days later, “I’m all right now. But if there should ever come a time when I am no longer
myself, I want you to forbid any procedures that would prolong my life in a suspended state. I do not wish to exist as a vegetable.
And tell your father I will be very angry if he defies me in this matter.”

“Don’t talk like that, Mami,” Lily said, her mouth twisting, “nothing is going to happen to you.”

Later, Consuelo felt ridiculous for having spoken so theatrically, for by the seventh week she had recuperated fully and begun
a series of paintings of surrealistically enlarged hearts.

Ismael arrived, pregnant with the story of the campaign led by the Warao leader Carolina Herrera to stop a power line from
passing through the tribe’s rain-forest habitat. His new series of songs using the instruments crafted by the inhabitants
of the Delta was incomplete, and he would need to go back. He would take Consuelo with him.

It was Lily who interrupted him, in an accusatory tone, with the news of Consuelo’s heart attack. And though Consuelo felt
well enough, and even eager, to travel with her husband, it was Lily who had not recovered from the heart attack.

“I want Mami to stay with me,” Lily said to her father. “She is not in a condition to travel to el culo del mundo. What if
something were to happen? No, no y no. Mami stays here. And you should stay too. Whoever heard of a viejo of seventy-plus
years singing songs in the jungle?” Ismael had looked surprised, as if Lily had suddenly spoken in tongues; it was the first
time she had expressed contempt for his life as a poet and musician.

Consuelo was as taken aback by her daughter’s outburst at Ismael. But since Ismael said nothing to defend himself, she too
said nothing, though she caught her husband’s eye, signaled to him without words. For both of them, Lily came first. There
had never been any question about that.

“You should go ahead without me,” she said. And so, Ismael gently kissed his wife on the lips. He leaned toward his daughter,
who offered him her cheek but would not meet his eyes. Then he turned away, walked out the door, got into his car, and drove
away at his usual reckless speed.

Lily fretfully broke the silence left in his wake. “You see, Mami, how stubborn he is? Even now he will not give in.”

Consuelo did not voice her suspicion that Lily might have wanted to force both her parents to stay in one place for reasons
that had little to do with the state of her mother’s heart. As the weeks and months passed, she did not say that she missed
her husband every day and every night with every fiber of her being, or that she lived each day with the blade of separation
in her heart. She did not confide to her daughter that when her heart finally did thump its grand finale, she hoped it would
be while making love with Ismael, her long, full legs wrapped around his waist. She did not express any of these things because
she had seen a bluish tinge to Lily’s lip reminiscent of that terrible day when Lily had lost her memory.

For six months after she and Ismael had silently agreed to let Lily have her way, they had neither seen nor spoken to one
another, and all her artwork during that period had been gloomy drawings of still objects in charcoal, reflecting the darkness
in her heart.

Now that he is here in front of her, filling the air around her with his essence, now that the tempest in the hospital is
over, now that Lily is safe at home, Consuelo feels that she must ease herself into familiarity with her husband, gingerly,
as though wading into ice-cold water. She finds she cannot bring herself to address him directly, as though a word or even
a meeting of the eyes lasting longer than a few seconds would upset a delicate balance of her emotions.

And there is still Lily to consider.

Unsolicited, Marta has expressed to Consuelo her theory on the subject of Lily. According to Marta, Lily has only one problem:
a paralyzing fear of losing people she loves. “And you know the source of it,” says Marta. She means Irene.

Consuelo had met Irene’s parents only once, at the only cocktail party they ever threw, when they first arrived in Tamanaco.
And she had been surprised that Irene would be so readily allowed to spend Lily’s birthday in distant Maquiritare with virtual
strangers, strangers who had banned her from their home for nearly two years. Although she and Ismael had finally capitulated
to Lily’s request to bring Irene, Consuelo hadn’t really expected Irene’s parents to consent to it. But the afternoon before
the trip, Lily had gone to Irene’s house to ask their permission and returned with Irene. Consuelo had been flummoxed when
she inspected the contents of Irene’s suitcase—toiletries and makeup of a sort that should have belonged to a much older girl,
string bikinis, designer jeans, dainty boutique T-shirts with sequins, and abnormally high platform shoes.

“Some of these things will not really be appropriate where we’re going, cariño,” she said, pulling out the most irrelevant
items and setting them aside. “I’m sorry if Lily didn’t explain properly. You see, we are going to the jungle. You’ll need
more rugged clothes and shoes and you don’t want to spoil these. Lily can lend you some things to wear on the trip.” Then
she remembered Irene’s feet. “And perhaps you’ll be able to fit into a pair of my tennis shoes,” she said delicately, feigning
a lapse of memory concerning the last time this girl had worn her shoes, her most cherished pair, and lost them.

“Thanks, Señora Consuelo,” said Irene. “My mother packed for me. She’s never been to the jungle in her life! She wouldn’t
survive a single day without her stereo and air-conditioning.” Lily had grabbed Irene’s arm and spun her in the other direction,
away from Consuelo, and Consuelo had known it was so that her expression of pity would not register with Irene.

“Come on,” Lily had said, “let’s go to my room to get you some other clothes.”

Throughout the journey and for the first twenty-four hours after their arrival, Irene had behaved like an angel, and Consuelo
had been relieved. But although Lily had gotten her wish, Consuelo noticed that she appeared unnaturally subdued.

The day following their arrival, Consuelo and Ismael had woken from an afternoon nap to find Lily alone on the balcony with
her hair wet. When questioned by her mother, Lily said the girls had taken a nap and then Irene had gone for a walk. So far,
she had not returned. But it was getting dark, and they were responsible for the girl.

“Your father and I will look for her,” she said. “You stay here.”

As they walked toward the beach, she voiced her concerns to Ismael. “I know it may sound uncharitable, mi amor, but there
is something strange about Irene.”

Ismael said nothing for some time. Then he sighed and said, “I think that a girl who has been raised without a map, like Irene,
is bound to be strange. But she is a child, and the strangeness is not her fault.”

Irene Dos Santos.
In Spanish it meant “Irene two saints,” in Portuguese, “Irene of the saints.” Either way, there was nothing saintly about
the girl, Consuelo thought.

By nightfall Irene had not been found and the entire Maquiritare camp was searching for her. It was as though she had vanished
into thin air. Lily was questioned again by her mother, and repeated that they had taken a nap and then Irene had gone for
a walk. But two eyewitnesses claimed that although they had not seen either girl go into the water, they were present when
Lily emerged—alone. In fact, no one had seen Irene at all since lunchtime. Consuelo began to have a strange foreboding and
felt guilty for having thought so ill of the girl. After all, though she appeared older than her fifteen years, it was as
Ismael said: Irene was really still a child.

By midnight there was still no sign of the girl and so Irene’s parents were summoned by radio. They arrived the following
morning by helicopter, along with two officers of the Guardia Nacional. Interrogation of other employees of the government-run
retreat produced no results. But a search some hundred meters along the rough path into the forest nearby, hewn by the machetes
of its Pemon inhabitants, produced signs of a scuffle. One blue flip-flop lay abandoned at a place where the path forked,
but it was so large the Guardias were certain it could not have belonged to the girl. But nearby, there was also a silver
charm bracelet, its clasp broken. But, as Irene, along with the Martinez family, had been on the path the previous day, she
could have lost it then. The senior of the two officials conducting the investigation said that in all likelihood the girl
had drowned, and Lily, unable to accept the loss of her friend, had blocked it from her mind.