Ellen’s father brought her a glass paperweight shaped like a kangaroo and a T-shirt that said SYDNEY. She felt senseless, goofy relief as he talked about the vineyards he had seen, their red dirt and acrid smell of ripeness. The night at Mama Santos was something separate, something cordoned off. It made no difference. She thought about it constantly.
Ellen and her parents flew to Puerto Vallarta two days before Easter. They rented a small house outside of town, where flowers poured from the cliffs in a bright, clotted rush. Their first morning, they sat outside on the terrace, eating sweet Mexican rolls and drinking coffee.
“Remember Ed Morgan?” her father said. “He’s building some condos up the hill. I should take a look, the poor bastard.”
Her mother rolled her eyes. “Ed Morgan,” she said. “I think I’ll meet you in town.”
Ellen watched her father. She watched him constantly now, searching for signs of restlessness or boredom. Often his eyes had the fractured, glossy look of something repaired with too much glue. He would glance at his watch as though tracking events somewhere else. Ellen felt a continual need to distract him, to hold his attention.
“Ill go with you,” she said.
“It’s hot up there, squirrel.”
“So?”
Her parents exchanged looks of surprise. Ellen felt her mother’s gaze, the kind eyes in a face as rigid and spare as a kitchen table. She could still remember a time when her mother would lie in bed on weekends with a cup of cocoa, eating croissants Ellen’s father brought from the French bakery. He would rest his head on her stomach and protest that she was dropping crumbs in his eyes. “Oh hush,” Ellen’s mother would say, licking her fingers one at a time. But she wasn’t like that now. She was a person who got left in other people’s wakes.
Ellen and her father drove up the mountain road in a rattling Jeep. His elbow pointed out the window. Ellen pointed her own the same way. She kept her eyes on the wet curl of growth that sprang from the red dirt. Beside them, cliffs dropped straight to the sea.
“Am I like Mom?” she asked.
“In some ways,” he said. “Although you’ve got my adventurous streak—that’s a difference.” He used one finger to steer the car. When Ellen learned to drive this year, she would drive like that.
“Could get you into trouble,” he added, grinning.
Ellen smiled at the wind, letting it dry her lips and teeth. “I hope so,” she said.
Ed Morgan had a greasy cream-colored beard and the sort of skin that can grow only more red. He picked his way toward them over mounds of steaming earth. Skeleton houses dotted the land: fresh blond planks shimmering in the midday sun. A bulldozer smeared the air with its heat.
“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Ed said, pouring them each a vodka at a flimsy outdoor table.
Ellen’s father chuckled. “I keep her hidden.”
“No wonder,” Ed said, winking at Ellen as he handed her a glass. He gave off a meaty smell, as if the sun had partially cooked him. The heat soaked Ellen’s dark hair, making her feel almost faint.
“You may want to skip the booze, squirrel,” her father said.
He watched as she lifted her glass. Ellen sensed that he was nervous, and felt a rare, tenuous power over him. She took a large sip. “Delicious,” she lied.
Her father smiled uneasily and looked at his watch. “We’re in and out of here,” he said.
“Relax,” Ed told him. “Hang around a little.”
He topped off Ellen’s glass, filling it so high that the vodka spilled on her fingers when she tried to lift it. She and Ed toasted and drank. Vodka flooded her throat, gagging her. She felt almost frantic, desperate to keep the tiny edge she’d gained on her father, no matter what it took. He watched her, shifting in his seat.
“How go the legal battles?” he asked Ed.
Ed sighed. “About the same. Only the lawyers win.”
Ellen took another sip. It brought tears to her eyes.
“Look at this,” Ed said, watching Ellen with surprise. “Chip off the old block.”
Her father laughed weakly. “Christ, let’s hope not.”
When it became too hot to sit still, Ed took them on a tour of his construction site. Ellen was barely able to keep her balance as they clambered over the hot, soft earth.
“Take my arm, squirrel,” her father said, watching her with concern. Ellen could see he was anxious to get away. She asked every question she could think of to draw out the visit.
Finally they reached the Jeep. Ed’s face was scarlet, running with sweat. He looked on the verge of collapse. Ellen felt a sudden great affection for this harmless, clownish man who had been her accomplice. She was sorry to leave him. When the men had shaken hands, she kissed Ed goodbye on the lips.
Her father gripped the wheel with both hands as they headed back down the mountain. “I don’t think vodka at noon is such a good idea, squirrel,” he said in an easy, joking way. But he wasn’t smiling.
“You drank,” Ellen said, letting her head loll against the seat. “You drink a lot.”
“Your mother’s not going to like it.”
“Are we telling her?”
He glanced at Ellen, then back at the road. “Well no,” he said. “I guess we’d better not.”
Ellen watched the ocean awhile, her head spinning. “What are Ed’s legal battles?” she asked.
Her father explained that Ed had owned a company in Chicago that went bankrupt three years before. Now he was being sued by his former investors.
“Is he guilty?” Ellen asked.
Her father hesitated. “He lied too much,” he said. “If he’d told some truth and let the pressure off, he’d be in a lot less trouble now.”
Ellen wondered if this meant he was guilty or not. “What do you mean, ‘lied too much’?”
“He should’ve told just enough to win people over,” her father explained. “Enough to look honest.”
Ellen nodded in silence.
“As little as possible, but something.”
“I see.”
“If you have to lie, you’re already in danger.”
They rode in silence. Shortly before they reached town, Ellen turned to her father, raising her voice above the sound of the engine. “Dad, have you gone out with anyone else since you and Mom were married?” she asked.
His gray eyes were fastened to the road. “Of course not.”
“If the answer was yes, would you tell me?”
Her father sighed. “No, squirrel,” he said. “I probably wouldn’t.”
“But then you’d be in danger. Right?”
Her father didn’t answer, and Ellen let it drop.
Ellen’s mother was not at the café where they had arranged to meet. Her father put his hands in his pockets and stared at the breaking waves, which were crowded with the bobbing heads of children. He looked at his watch. “We’re late,” he said.
They sat without speaking. Her father ordered a beer and drank it quickly. “Let’s take a look around,” he said.
The streets were crowded with Mexican families celebrating the holiday. There were women in black dresses made of cotton, girls whose thin, dusty legs teetered over high heels as they trod the mud streets. The air smelled of bitter Mexican beer.
Ellen’s father stayed close to her as they wove among the crowds. He would crane his neck to look for her mother, then glance quickly back at Ellen. She began to wander more often from his side, peering with sudden interest into the windows of shops while her father rushed to retrieve her.
Finally he put his arm around her, cupping her shoulder in his palm. His hand was large and warm, and Ellen relaxed in the safety of his grip. She steered him into a sweetshop, where he bought her coffee ice cream on a heat-softened sugar cone. In a silversmith’s window a pair of turquoise earrings caught her eye.
“Better wait till we get home before you put these on,” her father said, chuckling as he counted out the bills. “They’re pretty flashy.�
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Ellen smiled sweetly and slipped the earrings on.
So much attention from her father was exhausting, and she felt a giddy tremor rising from her stomach. She tossed her head, so that the earrings bumped her cheek. She looked for her mother, hoping not to find her.
Finally they stopped. Her father shielded his eyes and turned in a full circle, staring over the crowds. A group of children scampered past, dragging a blue donkey-shaped piñata through the dust. Young men leaned in doorways and wandered in restless groups. Ellen noticed some of them watching her, and was conscious of her thin, bare arms, the tiny hairs on her thighs.
“I have an idea,” her father said. “I’ll ask the guy in that shop if he’s seen her. It’s the kind of place she likes.” He pointed to a store that sold clay jugs sprinkled with a thin, clear glaze that looked like sugared water. Beyond it, several men in bare feet and hats lounged against a wall.
“I’ll wait out here,” Ellen said.
“Come on, squirrel. It’ll take a second.” He took her elbow, but Ellen pulled away.
“I’ll wait,” she insisted, flushing to the neck.
Her father’s eyes darted along the street. “Just don’t move,” he said, jogging toward the shop. “I mean it, squirrel. You stay put.”
The instant he was gone, Ellen moved closer to the men by the wall. A few shielded their eyes to look up at her. They were squatting in the dust, passing a bottle around. She stood before them with one leg bent, staring at the exhausted plaster between their shoulders. Her heart was beating fast. She glanced back at the shop to make sure her father hadn’t reappeared. His Spanish was poor; the conversation would take a while. Her own mischief struck her as irrepressibly funny, and she gritted her teeth to keep from laughing.
They were young men, smooth-faced and a little shy. They spoke to her in Spanish, but Ellen smiled and shrugged her helplessness. They laughed, shaking their heads, and Ellen glimpsed herself through their eyes: a thin girl of sixteen with long strands of dark hair, resisting the flow of traffic to display herself before these men. It was a senseless, hilarious sight. She felt like weeping.
One of the men rose slowly to his feet and came toward her. “Hola, chica,” he said.
Ellen smiled at him. She felt as though some force were acting on her, making her breathless and dizzy. “Hola,” she said, extending her hand as if she and the man had just been introduced.
He took her hand and held it tightly. When Ellen tried to slide from his grip, he clenched harder, so that it hurt. He was grinning. Ellen felt the pulse of blood through his hand, sweat gathering between his skin and hers. She found herself grinning helplessly back at him, transfixed by the danger. The other men called and clapped, stamping their feet on the dirt. The music seemed louder. The man who was holding her hand adjusted his grip and began to pull her down the street.
Ellen resisted him, barely moving despite the man’s violent tugs to her arm. Her mind worked frantically: Why had she done this? What was going on? Being pulled down the street by this stranger seemed the culmination of a wildness that had been in her for weeks, and she recoiled from it now. It sickened her.
Ellen heard running behind her, the sound of her father’s shouts. He pushed the man away, knocking him into the dust. The man landed in a roll, and when Ellen’s father pursued him, he sprang to his feet, poised in a crouch. He was holding a knife, pointing its long blade straight at Ellen’s father’s heart. Her father froze. A whimper rose in Ellen’s throat, and he turned at the sound. The man with the knife slipped into the throng.
Ellen’s father grabbed her and pulled her to him so hard that her head knocked the bones of his chest. She found that she was crying. The sweet tastes of vodka and ice cream hung at the back of her throat, and she gulped them down. Her father stroked her hair. Through his ribs Ellen heard the urgent beating of his heart.
Ellen’s mother wandered from an alley. She walked slowly, carrying packages wrapped in paper. Wedged in a cone of newsprint was a bouquet of crepe flowers: dry, colored petals fastened together with wire.
“Vivian!” Ellen’s father cried. “Christ, where have you been?”
“You were late,” she said, looking rather pleased. “I got sick of waiting.”
She kissed the top of Ellen’s head, and Ellen relaxed against her mother, relieved that she was back. She felt shaken, full of dread.
“Keeping up with you two is some job,” her father said.
“You’re out of practice,” her mother said.
Ellen’s father put an arm around each of them and steered them toward the beach. He held tightly, and it seemed to Ellen that he cared for them more now, at this moment, than he had in a long time. He was scared, that was why. It made her sad.
He led them to a restaurant near the beach. A virulent sun lay close to the horizon, and the air felt steamy and dense. Ellen’s father leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. Then he flattened them on the table and spread the fingers.
“I’ve got a confession to make,” he said. “I’ve had an affair. One. In eighteen years of marriage.”
They stared at him. He was folding and unfolding his napkin. The cloth shook in his fingers. He looked up suddenly, before Ellen could look away, and their eyes locked. “Two years ago,” he said, speaking directly at Ellen. “In Kansas City, Missouri. A salesgirl I met on her lunch break.”
Ellen looked at her woven place mat and listened to her heart. It bumped in a scary, irregular way, and she wondered if she were old enough to have a heart attack.
Her mother sat up straight. “Why in God’s name are you saying this now?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. His eyes were still on Ellen. She thought of that day when he’d moved the hands of his watch, her delight at being part of the conspiracy. She looked at him now: handsome, grave, penitent. Following him would be so easy, she’d done it for years. But where would it lead?
“He’s lying,” she said.
Her mother’s lips parted. Light shone along the bottoms of her teeth.
Ellen stood up. “Lying,” she said again, letting the word rise from her mouth like a bubble. “He never went to Australia. I saw him in a restaurant with a girl.”
Without another word Ellen turned and walked toward the sea, letting the breeze fill her ears and block out every other sound. The water was rough, and its frothy edges bubbled over her feet. Ellen took a few more steps until the churning water scrubbed her shins, then her thighs. She had an urge to swim in her clothes, to feel the fabrics float around her in the warm tide.
Slowly she moved forward, letting the water cover her by degrees. Then a wave reared in front of her, and Ellen dove into it. There was a hard, salty blow to her head, and she was beyond the breaking surf.
Several minutes later she saw her mother on the beach. Ellen called to her and waved her arms, expecting to be ordered ashore immediately. Instead, her mother moved closer to the water, keeping her eyes on Ellen. She stepped into the waves with great care, as if fearful of sharp things hidden in the sand. Soon the rim of her dress floated around her waist. Standing that way, she looked like a girl, and Ellen was struck by the thought that her mother had once been her own age. She saw this now in the fine pale bones of her face, the wet hair sticking to her head.
“Swim,” Ellen called to her.
Her mother hesitated, then pushed off. She swam in the smooth, even crawl she used for laps in a pool. The waves jostled her, upsetting the neat strokes.
When she finally reached Ellen, her eyebrows were raised in a look of prolonged amazement. Her head seemed small in its slick coating of hair. “We’ve lost our minds,” she said with a high, nervous laugh.
Ellen was aware of not thinking about her father, and this gave her a tenuous sense of freedom. Her mother treaded water, looking up at the sky. Suddenly she turned to Ellen and grasped her hand underwater. Ellen felt her mother grow perfectly still. After a moment she let go of Ellen’s hand and began swimming back. Elle
n followed.
A wave washed them in, and Ellen found herself sprawled beside her mother on the sand. Her father was nowhere in sight. Her mother’s frail limbs showed through her wet dress. Ellen looked down at her own Mexican shirt and saw that its bright pinks and greens had drained away. A sudden despair overwhelmed her. She buried her feet in the sand and grasped a damp, gritty handful in each fist. She had an urge to put some in her mouth and suck the coarse grains.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked, ashamed of the tremor in her voice.
Her mother was kneeling, shivering a little. She put an arm around Ellen’s shoulders. “We’re going back to the house to dry off,” she said. “That’s what.”
She pulled her daughter to her feet, surprising Ellen with the strength of her arms. Ellen leaned against her mother, allowing herself to be led through the sand. The sun had dropped below the horizon.
“And then we’re getting out of this,” her mother said.
SPANISH WINTER
I’ve been an off-season traveler since my divorce, and this winter I’m in Spain. A man is following me. On the train from Madrid he was a copper salesman with an eager mustache and samples of his product: copper wires, copper disks, copper beaten into thin, pliable sheets. I took everything he gave me and stuffed it into my purse. In Cordoba he was a restaurant owner who fed me plate after plate of sizzling beef while I watched the rain slide from the awning of his restaurant. I ate until my face began to throb. Sweat gathered on my upper lip.
“The senorita is very hungry,” the man said, filling my glass with red wine. “The senorita has been underfed.”
I nodded, too full to struggle with my college Spanish.
The truth is, I’ll take anything I’m given.
In Toledo, where I have just been, the man was tall and gaunt as an ascetic. He wore a white turtleneck and was feeding squares of marzipan to children in the central square. It was nearly midnight. The air blurred with fog that rose from the surrounding river. The bare trees were strung with small white lights.
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