The Perfect Mother (3 page)

Jennifer gave a perfunctory nod and started to rise. She was eager to get to the jail to see Emma.

“One more thing,” José added, holding up his hand. “The police are interested in finding a man named Paco Romero, who has been identified by several acquaintances of your daughter as her boyfriend. She claims she doesn’t know where he is. Perhaps this is the case. I am not suggesting she is untruthful, but if you could communicate to her the importance of cooperating fully with the police, it would make a successful outcome more likely.”

“Of course she will cooperate,” Jennifer said coldly, and stood up.

He looked at his watch. “We can go to the police station now. Perhaps it will be better if they know we are there.”

A
t the station, José introduced Jennifer to Fernando Molina, the detective in charge of Emma’s case. He was about fifty, tanned, with a tight, muscular build, a square jaw, black hair, and unusually bright blue eyes. He spoke softly but seemed tough, even scary. She also met Raul Gonzalez, the local lawyer who had accompanied Emma during her interrogation.

“When can I see my daughter?” Jennifer asked.

“Cuando puede ver a su hija?” José asked the detective.

“We’ve finished talking to her for now,” Fernando answered in English. “We’ll bring her soon.” He walked to the front desk and spoke to the clerk, then turned again to Jennifer. “I’m sure you are very concerned, but this is just routine procedure in a homicide.”

“But why are you holding her? She is the victim here.”

“Ah, but she is alive, isn’t she? And some of her story doesn’t quite make sense yet. And she is a foreigner, you see. What would prevent her from taking the next plane back to the United States?”

“If you have no evidence against her, there is no reason for her not to do that,” José said.

“Yes. So we need to be sure that we have no evidence against her.”

“Please,” Jennifer said, her eyes misting, “let me see my daughter.”

“Of course.” He led them to a lounge that was used as a visiting room. There was a knotted wood table in the middle and a few orange plastic chairs scattered around.

“Wait here, por favor.”

It felt like hours, but about forty minutes later, they brought Emma into the room. She was handcuffed and walked slowly. Her long brown hair, the same shade as her mother’s, hung limp and greasy around her pale face, accentuating her strikingly beautiful aqua eyes, each iris bordered in black. She looked strained and miserable, but she didn’t run to her mother or embrace her. She stared determinedly at the floor.

“Mom,” she said softly, closing her eyes for a second and letting out a deep sigh. “Thanks for coming.”

Jennifer ran toward her and took her in her arms. “Of course, baby. I’m here. Daddy is coming too, as soon as he can. We love you.” She hugged her tightly, and although Emma submitted, Jennifer could feel her body stiffen in her embrace.

Jennifer appealed to José. “Why is she handcuffed? Can’t you ask them to take them off?”

José said something in Spanish and the police officer unlocked the cuffs and removed them. Emma shook out her hands and rubbed her wrists but didn’t look at the policeman, focusing on her mother.

“As soon as he can?”

“He has to stay for a while to help Granny and Pops with Lily and Eric.”

“And to do some more work?”

“He has to, Emma. We’re going to need the money, especially now.”

Emma swallowed and backed up a few feet. “Right,” she said crisply.

She turned her attention to José and, speaking sharply, asked when she would be released. “Cuando puedo irme? No puedo soportarlo más,” she said. She turned to her mother. “I need to get out of here. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. They questioned me all night with no break and nothing to eat. I can’t think straight.” She sat down at a small table. Her mother immediately sat across from her.

“All night?” Jennifer asked. She turned to José. “I thought you said they just asked her what happened and wrote it down.”

“That is what they are supposed to do. Emma, did you talk to them without Raul?

“A little. At the beginning. Before he came. I felt so scared, and I couldn’t even understand everything they were asking—they were talking so fast and so loud and there wasn’t anyone to translate.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Nothing. Just what I told you this morning. There is nothing more to tell. But they kept asking the same questions over and over until I got confused.”

“What did they ask?”

She shrugged and looked exasperated. “I don’t know. Everything. They wanted me to describe the guy who saved me. What did he look like, what kind of shoes was he wearing, as if I would have noticed. It was so fast and I was so scared, I don’t remember very much, but I did the best I could.”

“Emma, in the future, you are to say nothing to any policeman, psychologist, doctor, or judge unless Raul or I are in the room. Nada. Comprendes?”

“Sí,” Emma said in a small voice.

Jennifer reached for Emma’s hand, but Emma pulled it away. “We will straighten it out, honey, you’ll see. Everything will be fine.”

“Mom, please. You always think everything is going to be fine. This isn’t a play. Someone is dead. I was there. Don’t say things when you don’t know what you’re talking about.” She noticed her mother’s hurt face and José’s surprise and said in a softer voice, “I’m sorry, it’s just that I need to try very hard to stay calm and not get hysterical.”

Jennifer drew back. She turned to the lawyer. “Is there any way to speed this up?”

“I don’t know. I am going to speak to the investigating magistrate and find out what the plan is. It isn’t clear if they plan to charge her.”

“But what would they charge her with? Surely they don’t think she killed him?”

Fernando walked in as she spoke.

“Actually, we don’t think so, senora. In fact we have just received the early analysis of the crime scene and the pathologist’s report which confirm that she did not . . . how do you say”—he mimed stabbing someone—“strike the knife.”

“Wield,” José said. “She didn’t wield the knife.”

“
Sí
, wield,” he repeated carefully. “However, it is still not clear who did. We are looking for her mysterious savior. We will need to keep her passport, but she is free to go.”

Enormously relieved, they signed some papers and left the police station. They were headed for her apartment, but Emma said she never wanted to see it again. Jennifer hesitated, but José insisted—it was the crime scene, he explained, and he needed Emma to show him exactly what had happened and where. As they drove, the charming brick and cobblestone alleyways gave way to poorly maintained streets. Emma didn’t live in anything like the style Jennifer had imagined—and had been sending her rent money for. Emma had originally rented a room with a middle-class family in a good neighborhood. The idea was that she would improve her Spanish and the mother of the household would cook her meals and do her laundry. After two months, Emma told her parents that this wasn’t working. She didn’t like the family, which she said was too old-fashioned and rigid, and since none of her friends lived in those circumstances, she felt isolated. She wanted to live in the Residencia Universitaria los Bermejales, about four kilometers from the city center. It was expensive, but she told her parents it was safe and that it was where all her American friends lived. There was regular bus service back and forth from the university. Jennifer and Mark had hesitated—they liked the idea of their daughter having some adult supervision—but they wanted her to be happy and they gave in and supplied the extra funds.

The apartment Emma led her to, however, was a tawdry three rooms on the ground floor of a graffiti-scarred building. Jennifer looked at Emma as they approached, but Emma didn’t meet her eye. The police had already finished their forensic work, but yellow tape still crossed the door and windows. Emma provided the key and they ducked under the tape, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.

“Is this student housing?” Jennifer asked, appalled.

“It’s cheaper,” Emma mumbled. “It’s all I need.”

She went straight into the bedroom and lay down. The double bed wasn’t made and the sheets were rumpled and bunched at the foot. On the floor next to the bed was a tape outline of a body. The windows had been closed, and the oppressive hot air was stifling. “Would you two give me a few minutes?” she asked, closing her eyes.

Jennifer and José sat at a small table in the kitchen, which was equipped with a two-burner stove and a half-size refrigerator. There was no sink, but Jennifer could see through the open door of the adjoining lavatory that the bathroom sink was full of dishes. She was feeling worse and worse. How she wished Mark were with her. It was clear Emma had lied about her living arrangements, of course, but maybe that could be explained somehow, and it seemed like the least of her problems, given the circumstances. But Emma’s mood was also confounding. Of course she’d expected her to be upset, maybe even in shock, but she thought her daughter would have been more relieved to see her, bolstered by her presence, comforted in the way she had been all her life. Instead, Emma almost seemed angry at her. She must be steeling herself, Jennifer thought, because if she allowed herself to express need or weakness, she would cry and then she would never be able to stop.

She opened the window and turned on the fan. She found a glass in the bathroom sink, washed it, and filled it with cold water. She knocked on Emma’s door, and when there was no answer, she entered anyway.

“You need to come out now, Emma,” she said, offering the water to her daughter, who took it and, habit overcoming mood, even mumbled a soft thank-you. Emma reluctantly led the way into the living room and plopped down on a faded, stained couch. José joined them and Jennifer offered him a glass of water and took one for herself. They found chairs and sat down. There was a brief, awkward silence.

“Now, Emma,” José said quietly. “From the beginning. Tell us again. What happened?”

M
ark had made reservations at the Hotel Alfonso XIII, the oldest and most beautiful hotel in town, and José offered to drive Jennifer and Emma there. Jennifer suggested that Emma pack a few things and she complied, emptying her drawers into a duffel bag and adding items strewn around the apartment. As they got out of the car, José reminded them to contact him immediately if there was any further communication from the police.

The hotel was beautiful and gracious in an Old World way. In better times, Jennifer would have loved it. Now, she barely took in the Andalusian mosaics in the lobby and the central fountain with its romantic Arabian motif. They waited as the porter earned his tip by explaining the air-conditioning and other of the hotel’s amenities. “At last,” Jennifer said, when she had closed the door behind him. “We’re alone.”

Emma seemed glum. No wonder, Jennifer thought, but still, there was something else, an edge.

“How much is this place a day?” Emma asked, looking around disapprovingly at the formal floral curtains and matching bedspreads, the plush carpeting, high ceilings, and elaborately carved crown moldings.

“I’m not sure. Dad made the reservation.”

“Well, I’ll bet it’s at least four hundred euros a day, more than many workers here earn in a month, if they’re lucky enough to have any job at all. It’s kind of obscene to pay that much in this economy.”

Jennifer started to answer but thought better of it and said nothing.

When Emma noticed her duffel bag next to her mother’s near the door, she looked surprised. “Don’t I have a separate room?” she asked.

Jennifer couldn’t suppress a sardonic reply. “No, honey, as you pointed out, that would be obscene.”

Emma bristled. “Whatever. But I still have to have some privacy.”

This was a throwback to adolescence, Jennifer thought: the irrationality of wanting contradictory things. Emma had almost never behaved this way, but Jennifer had seen it often in her friends’ children. She was perplexed and beginning to lose her patience.

“Well, just think how long poor families could live on what it would cost for
two
rooms,” she snapped. Emma glared at her and she held her temper and, speaking calmly and rationally, tried again. “We’ll both lose our privacy, Emma, but we’ll have to make the best of it until this is over. We don’t know how long this will take, and we can’t afford two rooms. You’ve made it clear that you don’t want to go back to that apartment, and I don’t blame you.”

Emma sat on one of the beds, found the remote, and flicked on the television.

Jennifer asked her to turn it off, and Emma did, sighing as though much put upon. They sat in silence. Finally, Jennifer asked, “So what should we do now?”

“I don’t know about you, but I need to sleep,” Emma answered.

Of course, Jennifer thought. They’d been questioning her all night. No wonder she was behaving so badly. And Jennifer was tired too. She hadn’t slept well on the plane. “Let’s take a nap,” she said. But Emma had already pulled the bedspread off her bed and curled up under the light blanket. Her eyes were closed.

Jennifer was so disturbed by Emma’s behavior that she was sure she wouldn’t be able to sleep, but she dozed off before she knew it and awoke two hours later. Emma was still in bed but beginning to stir. Jennifer asked her if she wanted to get a bite to eat.

Jennifer was too hungry to wander around searching for a café, so in spite of Emma’s objections—“This restaurant is just for rich tourists and it won’t even have good food”—she insisted they eat at the hotel coffee shop. After they ordered, Jennifer suggested that since they had some free time together, they ought to do something fun. “What’s your favorite shop here?” she asked. “We’ll go shopping.”

This was a bonding activity of theirs, and Emma had never been known to turn it down, even when all she wanted was prewashed, pretorn jeans and flannel shirts from J.Crew. Before Emma left for Spain they’d had a wonderful time shopping for warm-weather shirts and pants, skirts and spaghetti-strap dresses. As a special good-bye, Jennifer had secretly gone back to Emma’s favorite shop on Germantown Avenue near their Chestnut Hill home. She’d bought a five-hundred-dollar Andrew Marc leather jacket that Emma had coveted and Jennifer had absolutely refused to buy because it was too expensive. She hid it and gave it to her as she was dressing for the plane. Emma had thrown her arms around her.

“Thanks so much, Mom; you’re the best,” she’d said. “You always know what I need.”

But shopping didn’t seem to be what she needed now. She thanked her mother in an offhand way but claimed she didn’t want anything.

“Maybe you should, honey. If they question you again, you ought to dress nicely. It gives a good impression. We can get you one attractive, professional outfit.”

“Professional what?” she said with a laugh. “Professional suspect?”

“Emma, stop it. There’s nothing funny about this. What is going on with you? You’re not yourself.”

Emma shrugged. “Aren’t I?” she asked softly. “I guess you would know.” After that cryptic remark, she seemed to pick up.

“We need something to take our minds off all this,” Emma said resolutely. “Maybe we should do a little sightseeing. I could show you around.”

Jennifer gratefully accepted and they walked outside. The hotel was surrounded by palm trees, and the flower beds across the street on Calle San Fernando scented the air with the sweetness of oleander and jacaranda. She felt a little calmer just standing there. They faced the monument on the Puerta de Jerez and looked around. Jennifer knew that the university was just next door and suggested they go there so Emma could show her where she spent most of her days, but Emma wasn’t interested. “Maybe some other time,” she said. Jennifer was disappointed but she didn’t insist. She suggested the cathedral. She could see the Giralda from where they stood.

“That’s a big tourist thing. It’ll be mobbed. And you don’t need me for that. You can take a tour,” Emma said.

“Okay. So where do you think we should go?” Jennifer asked.

“Triana,” Emma replied immediately. “It’s kind of a student hangout. I’ve spent lots of time there. I could take you around.” She looked at her watch. “Well, it’s still a little early, at least by Spanish standards. I guess we could go by the cathedral first and then walk across the bridge to Triana. Are you up for a walk?”

Jennifer said she was and they set off. As they approached the cathedral, Jennifer was stunned by its beauty—the massive golden beige stone, the majestic doorway with its intricate carvings, the spires that reached upward toward the heavens. Emma pointed out that it was an example of both Arab and Christian architecture. “You know, the people here are really proud of the fact that Muslims, Jews, and Christians coexisted here for centuries,” she said. “Of course they leave out the Inquisition, but that’s another story,” she added, raising her eyebrows in a theatrical aside. “Anyway, it is true that first the Arabs ruled this place, then the Christians, and the architecture reflects it. The Giralda was once the minaret of a mosque. Then it became the bell tower of the Gothic cathedral they built to replace the mosque. It ended up becoming the symbol of the city. The Christians added their own symbolism to the tower—see the sculpted lilies on top?”

Jennifer looked at Emma and felt a flush of pride. She seemed so knowledgeable, so confident in her surroundings. She followed Emma’s gaze upward and studied the Giralda. It looked like a wedding cake, with two square tiers topped by two graceful cylindrical ones, capped by what looked like a golden globe.

“See the very top, Mom?” Emma pointed. “It’s a bronze statue of a woman and it moves because it’s actually a weathercock. That’s what ‘Giralda’ means. It’s kind of funny that they named the whole tower after the weathercock when the statue isn’t even of a saint or anything.”

They wandered inside the cathedral, Emma talking all the while and Jennifer proudly listening. “How do you know all this?” she asked.

Emma shrugged. “I don’t know. When I first came I was really into this tourist thing. I read all the guidebooks and spent lots of time looking around.”

By the time they had finished their visit and Emma had deemed it an appropriate time to visit Triana, Jennifer wanted to get a cup of coffee and rest for a bit. They stopped at a café.

Jennifer ordered café con leche and Emma asked for a cortado. She explained that the Spaniards loved coffee so much they had specific names for at least six ways of drinking it—kind of like the Eskimos having more words than we do for snow, she said with a smile. Jennifer felt encouraged. She smiled back and reached over impulsively to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her daughter’s ear.

“So . . . you seem very much at home here. Did you make lots of new friends?” Jennifer asked. “Do you hang out with the American kids on the program?”

Emma stiffened slightly and a tense, strained tone returned to her voice. “I did at the beginning. But it’s stupid, don’t you think, to come to a foreign country and hang out with your little ghetto of Americans? I wanted to meet Spanish kids and get involved in Spanish issues.”

Jennifer immediately caught the signs of resistance, but she pressed forward anyway, pretending to have missed them.

“I can understand that. So how did you go about it?”

“It just kind of happened little by little.” She paused as if considering whether to go on. Then she said, “I met someone. He helped.”

Jennifer took her time. She sipped her coffee and answered casually, “Was that Paco?”

Emma was immediately on guard. “How do you know about Paco?” she asked accusingly. “Who have you been talking to?”

Jennifer tried to backtrack. “I don’t know anything, Emma. I just . . . After you called to say you were in trouble we got another call from a friend of yours, a girl named Julia. She said that she wished your boyfriend, Paco, was around but he wasn’t in town.”

Emma nodded.

“I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend,” Jennifer said. “Do you want to tell me about him?”

“No,” she shot back quickly, then seemed to collect herself. “I mean, I will, but not now.” She seemed preoccupied. “It was nice of Julia to call,” she murmured. “I didn’t expect that.” She got up abruptly and said, “Let’s go, okay, Mom? I’m tired of sitting.”

It was a fairly long walk to Triana. They walked on wide avenues and in and out of narrow cobbled streets and footpaths until they reached the Puente de Triana, which crossed the river. On the other side of the bridge was a wide staircase that led to Triana Square, a lovely public space surrounded by a church and several restaurants. The first street sign Jennifer noticed was
CALLE RODRIGO DE TRIANA
. “There’s a story about that,” Emma said. That guy Rodrigo, he was with Columbus. He was the one who saw land first. He shouted, ‘Tierra a la vista’—‘Land in sight’—and became famous forever after. Every Spanish school child has heard of him.”

Jennifer saw young people sitting on the steps, laughing, talking, some swigging from bottles of beer. Emma looked around—a little nervously, Jennifer thought. Maybe she was reluctant after what had happened to run into anyone she knew. But she didn’t seem to recognize anyone and no one greeted her, though Jennifer thought a few people seemed to stare at her and—was she imagining it?—some seemed to whisper together, looking in her direction. They wandered around for a while, looking at the houses, the architecture, the church, and finally, getting hungry, they found an outdoor table at one of a string of restaurants and sat down. Emma ordered chopitos—grilled baby squid—for an appetizer and followed it with cazón en adobo, which she said was marinated deep-fried fish wrapped in a cardboard cone, a Spanish version of the English fish and chips. The smell of sizzling olive oil and fried fish permeated the air. Emma was smiling. Jennifer felt relaxed, even happy. She almost forgot the tension between them since she’d arrived. Almost, but not quite.

She didn’t bring up Paco again. She found that while Emma would chat easily about the sights of Seville and listen happily to stories about her sister and brother or friends back home, she became edgy, secretive, and prickly as soon as Jennifer asked anything about her personal life in Spain, her boyfriend, or, especially, the night of the murder. Thinking this was a form of shock, or at least a means of self-protection, Jennifer hoped it would slowly wear off and they would be able to make progress in planning their next steps before too long. In the meantime, she avoided subjects that set off Emma’s hair trigger and tried to engage her in nonthreatening conversation.

They took a taxi back to the hotel. Jennifer hoped they would talk more the next day, but in the days that followed the pattern held. They saw the sights, ate in cafés and restaurants, walked all over the city, and spoke of anything that wasn’t the one subject Jennifer wanted to engage.

They picked up the local paper every day and saw that there was a new feature: a box on the front page requesting the man they called
el buen samaritano
to step forward. But no one appeared. Emma translated, reading the story aloud to her mother. Although Emma’s knowledge of the language wasn’t perfect, she could make out most of the details. The police had offered to petition for the man to be granted asylum in Spain if he gave evidence. So far, however, he had still not appeared. “I’m sure he doesn’t trust them,” Emma said. “I wouldn’t. Would you?”

There was one minor explosion when Jennifer admitted to Emma that it nagged at her that she had lied to her about staying at the Residencia when really she was living in a slum. “You had the money—what did you do with it?” Jennifer pressed. Emma turned on her angrily, saying it was just like her to focus on the most trivial, materialistic aspect of her situation. She refused to say anything else on the subject.

Jennifer called Mark daily, spoke to the children, e-mailed back and forth with Lily about her friends and school papers and extracurricular activities, a life that more and more felt far away and foreign. Mostly, she waited for whatever would come next. Then one day, just when Jennifer was beginning to think the police silence meant they must have found something to back up Emma’s story and were pursuing other leads, she got a call from José.