Slowly, he learned the right things to say. The right clothes to wear. He learned that people didn’t always want to talk to you, they wanted to simply be near you, just in case you were the next big thing. He’d become a story people might tell at Labor Day barbecues or happy hour. “Oh Reymundo Montoya? I was at his very first show. And yes, it’s real.”
Eddie insisted that everyone call him Reymundo. Rey was too sweet, too causal. Why be Rey? Something that meant king, when his mother had intended for him to be the king of the earth. Why be less when he was so much more?
Over the years Rey kept up with Marimar. He kept encouraging her to snatch up an eligible cowboy from town, but she was happy in her garden, still hibernating her heart though winter was long gone. The rest of the Montoyas, at least, were thriving. Caleb Jr. had come to the city for a partnership with some flashy designer, and Rey’d dropped thousands of Eddie’s money at New York Dolls on Murray Street just to show his uncle a good time. They’d visited Florecida in Key West and taken her on a booze cruise where she met her second husband. Eddie had even sat with Rey in the rain at the Jones Beach concert arena just to watch Juan Luis and Gastón be the opening act of a new boy band.
Knowing his family was safe, that he’d worried for nothing, he kept painting. He rolled his eyes at Marimar when she called him a sugar baby. She didn’t know how much Eddie protected him from the vultures of their world. Sometimes he worried that people were there to want him, to be close to the rose on his wrist, which he’d stopped hiding. That was when he locked himself away and didn’t emerge until he’d had a new batch of portraits. Florecida watching the sunset at the furthest most point of the United States. Marimar in her poison garden. Rhiannon with her pretty flower on her forehead, always changing.
A buyer once asked him, “Where did these come from?”
She pointed to the flowers growing out of Marimar’s throat and Rhiannon’s brow. She meant the one on his hand. She meant to ask how real he was, how authentic he was down to his bones.
“It’s a family curse,” he said, and he thought he meant it as a lie, but sometimes he wasn’t certain. But if people were going to stare and ask and want to touch, he might as well put on a show.
At that same show, a young woman buying art for some rich Brit approached Rey. She knew to stay at least six paces away, to keep her arms at her sides where Rey could see them. Eddie had done his job training the world on how to approach him, and sometimes, Rey was bitter he could not do it himself.
“One million dollars,” she said.
Rey was confused. He was standing in front of his favorite painting of Marimar. She was looking up at the night sky and stars were falling. The hummingbird he drew was so lifelike, if you moved, the creature seemed to flit back and forth. The most his paintings had sold for were thirty thousand, but Eddie had assured him his value would only increase. “I’m sorry, there must be a mistake.”
The young woman was dressed in all jagged black. She looked around and carefully took another step closer. “I’m buying for a very reclusive client.”
“Is that why he’s not here?”
“My name is Finola Doyle. I’ve attempted to get a hold of your manager, but alas.” She handed Rey a card made of the thickest cardstock. It had a coat of arms with a knight and heraldic lions. “Like I said. The offer is one million.”
Rey looked around at the noisy room, the clusters of people gathered around his pieces. He’d spent sleepless, hungry nights making them. “For the painting?”
“For you.” She blushed.
Rey let loose a soft chuckle. He touched the card in his hands, looked at Eddie on the other end of the room. His silver knight.
Rey did the only thing he could do. He went home, because if he stayed another minute longer, he’d be tempted to say yes.
* * *
People weren’t happy just looking at his art. No, they wanted to look at him. To rip off pieces and take them home. The bigger his profile became, the more people wanted to cut him open, down to the bone. He could never give a satisfactory answer to the flower on his hand. Was it a modification, the way some people split their tongues to hiss like snakes or the way some people surgically point their ears to make them look elf-like or the way people got diamonds embedded into their skin?
Though it was exhausting, after a while, being touched and tugged at like he was a doll became something he was used to, as long as they bought something. Even Eddie kept him like a toy.
Rey went out less. Didn’t return calls. Every moment outside of his studio felt like a moment he was wasting. Creating something out of nothing came at a cost. Seven years after the fire he could still remember his grandmother telling him that. There was a cost. A price. Why did some people have to pay a price and others didn’t?
Take Eddie. Eddie was the kind of rich that came with a Connecticut and a Hamptons vacation house. Fuck-you money that had paid for art school and years in Eastern Europe, where he went to find himself even though he hadn’t been lost in the first place. He’d stumbled into being an art teacher because he liked colors and judging other people, mostly. Eddie’s whole life, when he recounted it to Rey, felt like a fever dream. The kind he’d only ever seen in Baz Luhrmann movies. What was Eddie’s cost other than a beautiful young lover he could put on display and then take home and fuck?
Rey didn’t like thinking that way, but one day, that carousel of thoughts set in and never stopped. On top of that, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him. It started in his new apartment, a brownstone he’d bought in Harlem. He stood in front of the window and thought there was a shape on the other side. His room was on the third floor and so there shouldn’t have been anyone. He convinced himself that he was looking at his reflection, but the shape was not his own. It was a taller man, with long hair. He couldn’t make out much, just the glare of the sun hitting the glass.
Rey stumbled back, his heart hammering in his chest. The memory of ghosts, of his mother’s disembodied spirit, replaced any thought of his encounter.
Eddie came up behind him, resting a hand on either side of his muscular arms as if Rey was just having another moment of creative doubt. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Working too long.”
Eddie kissed Rey’s naked shoulder. “Come to bed, then.”
“It’s daylight and I have to work.”
“You have been nonstop since I met you, baby. Take a break. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Rey laughed, but didn’t answer.
The next couple of nights, it happened again. The shape was at the window, in the puddle on his walk to clear his head, in the mirror. He never saw a face and sometimes not even a body. Once, the figure got so close that Rey could see glowing eyes staring back at him.
He called Marimar, but she didn’t answer. He convinced himself that his mind was rebelling from not sleeping, too many cigarettes, and copious amounts of wine. What was she going to do anyway, hundreds of miles away as she was?
He focused on painting instead. But even in his paintings, he began to capture the figure that haunted him—a man who was like the negative of a roll of film. All of his insides filled in with the colors of a supernova. Rey painted another, and that time, it was black paint with a human-shaped prism at the center. Another, and it was a violent flash of light gutting the night sky.
These were not his usual neosurrealist paintings in saturated colors. These were not going to impress his agent. Although, if the universe had a sense of humor, he’d probably sell these for a million dollars. Then he could have his own fuck-you money.
When he showed them to Eddie, all he’d said was, “Interesting direction,” in a way that made it seem he was both confused and a little scared.
How could Rey explain that he wasn’t in control of his own hands? He wouldn’t tell his own boyfriend, but some nights he blacked out. When he would wake, three days had passed, and the painting was finished. He touched the rose on his ha
nd and remembered his grandmother’s words. Paint me another. He’d been painting for the last seven years, so why was this happening to him now?
He needed to get out of the house. The air was unseasonably cold, but he zipped up a hoodie and jammed his earbuds in. Music and audiobooks helped block the outside world. The cold humid air seeped into his clothes and into his bones as he trekked from 125th and Fifth Avenue, and straight down Central Park. He liked to catch the sunset over the reservoir.
But when he went to turn on Ninety-Second Street, the tall figure he’d seen at his window was standing at the corner. Rey broke into a run, shoving aside runners and tourists, and kicking up gravel. He sprinted with the calm murky water to his left and shadows taking up his peripherals. Where could he run to? Four Rivers, he thought, but even as he conjured the words, he opened his mouth to laugh and only a scream came out. Rey glanced back and saw the prism of light at the heart of the shadow, then leaped out of the running track to cut to the West Side. His thighs burned and the soles of his sneakers began to smoke. He blacked out again and when he opened his eyes, he was in the middle of traffic with cars honking incessantly. A police officer on horseback galloped in his direction. Rey couldn’t hear anything other than sirens and blaring horns. The officer lost control of his horse and the creature bucked, kicking Rey in the chest.
Rey woke up in the hospital for the first time in his life. He touched his rose, fearing that they’d done something to it. Fearing that if it was gone, he would also lose his art, and Eddie, and the nameless faces who wanted—needed him.
But it was still there.
Eddie was frantic at his bedside. His hair looked grayer than silver as he alternated between, “What were you thinking?” and “I’m going to call my therapist. He can prescribe you the good stuff,” and “Baby, are you sure you’re okay?”
“I swear, I don’t remember how I got there,” he said, and he meant it.
Eddie sighed deeply. “Well, I don’t know your password and your phone has been blowing up for the last few hours.”
Rey felt a pang of guilt in his gut. There were twenty-three missed calls from Marimar, all in quick succession. The cold spread from the center of his chest outward as he drew up the phone to his ear. Even just the sound of her voice brought him to tears.
“Hey, Tatinelly has a stalker and she’s driving over here with Mike and Rhiannon. I know! You should stop being a celebrated artist and come to the sticks to hang out with your cousins. Love you, loser.”
Relief flooded him. She was fine. They were fine. He played the next message.
“Uhm… Tío Félix is dead.” He heard the static silence as she searched for something. “Car crash. I’ll call you back.”
“Rey—Tía Florecida is gone,” the next one said. That time her voice cracked. “She drowned in her bathtub. Fell asleep. Penny found her. I’m trying to get in touch with her. Juan Luis—that’s him on the other line.”
Rey quickly pressed the button for the next message. He had to hear her voice. He clung to it even as Eddie tried to insert himself, asking more and more questions.
“Penny,” Marimar said, so softly he had to replay the message again and again just to be sure he understood.
Another call. “Tatinelly just got here.”
Then another. “Please tell me you’re not picking up because you’re a famous dick and not because something happened. Okay.”
And finally, just, “Rey.”
He was not okay. He was not going to be okay. He checked the time stamp of each message and they were all today. All while he’d been ignoring his phone and had somehow wound up in the middle of a street running away from some thing. Is that what Orquídea had warned them about? Was it finally here?
“Wait, where are you going?” Eddie asked. When he was worried, the wrinkles around his eyes and lips became more pronounced. He hovered as Rey quietly got dressed and then barricaded the door with his own body. “Rey, talk to me.”
“I can’t explain. I have to go home.” He meant a different home, of course.
Eddie went home to their Harlem brownstone, but he wouldn’t find his Reymundo there. Rey went straight to the airport and kept going, couldn’t stop moving until he was back in Four Rivers, because he wasn’t sure what would happen to him if he stopped.
16
MUSINGS OF A FAIRY CHILD
Mike Sullivan remembered the first time he’d set foot in Four Rivers. He didn’t want to offend Tatinelly, but he hadn’t understood why her family had made such a commotion that the whole place had caught on fire. The house, though impressive, had been in need of a renovation, stat. The fire was a blessing in disguise, if anyone asked him. No one did.
Families were not supposed to be dysfunctional the way the Montoyas were. Thankfully, their little unit was perfect. Tatinelly, Rhiri, and himself. Though he preferred that they spend holidays just the three of them, they alternated years visiting his parents and hers in Texas. He didn’t think he could handle another full-blown family reunion. But Tatinelly had been stressed all week, what with the news making her feel like she was being followed. He’d told her not to watch it before bed, but she insisted. They lived in the most secure neighborhood in Anywhere, USA. There was no possible way she was being followed.
Still, there was a snowstorm blowing in on the Pacific Northwest, and he had a few vacation days he wanted to spend with his best girls. Four Rivers wouldn’t have been his first choice. In fact, he’d intended on driving right past Four Rivers to the Gulf Coast for better weather, but then they got those terrible calls.
At the sight of the tree, Mike felt a deep shudder in his bones. How could a person have become a tree? Even though he’d seen it with his own two eyes, part of him didn’t want to believe it had happened. He’d said he was asleep, but he lied. He had to lie. How could he go on record saying that he’d seen what he saw? It wasn’t natural. The Montoyas could keep their crazy. At least now that Orquídea had passed, rest in peace, the whole family could move on from their myths and superstitions.
But then he looked at Rhiannon in the rearview mirror, nearly bouncing out of her seat as their pink Beetle crested the engine-killing hill. She should know her family, no matter how odd and off-putting Mike found them. Rhiannon was perfect. He’d even come to love the small pink rose growing out of the center of her forehead. She got her sweetheart shaped face and high cheekbones from her mother. Truth be told, the only part that she got from her father was her hair’s wheat-brown shade, when he’d had hair. After the fire, he’d woken up with it ashen. Then, a few days later, every single strand had fallen off, like a tree gone barren after a good howling wind.
Rhiannon pointed out the window and said, “It’s her! It’s Mamá!”
Tatinelly smiled, though every part of her hurt. They didn’t understand what caused her pain. When she went to the doctor, they told her she was well. She was imagining things. But when she moved, she felt like she was made out of rusted and forgotten metal parts. As if health issues weren’t bad enough, Tatinelly claimed to have her very own stalker. No one seemed to believe that either. But now that they were in Four Rivers, with the wildflower-scented air, she felt settled. She wished they’d come during a happier time. She wished she’d been able to call her daddy earlier in the day. Maybe she would have made him late for work and he wouldn’t have gotten clipped by that truck. Tears ran down her cheeks again, but the cool breeze kissed them away.
She reached out a hand to Rhiannon. “Yes, baby girl. That’s Mamá Orquídea.”
Rhiannon’s voice was like a bell chime trilling in the wind. Dragonflies flitted into the car, nudging at her rose, walking across her shoulders, nesting in the curls of her hair like she was a fairy changeling coming home.
The Sullivans parked outside of the house where Reymundo and Marimar were waiting on the porch. The tree beside it cast a long shadow. When they parked, the dragonflies left them for the tall grass in the hills.
“It’s good to see yo
u,” Tatinelly said, hugging her cousins tightly. She regained some of her strength, as if Reymundo were giving her some of his and Marimar was holding her up.
There was no time to regret how little they’d seen of each other over the years. How unfortunate the circumstances were. Rhiannon leaped from the car. Her dress was a sharp green, the color of new leaves, the color of the tight rosebud at Marimar’s clavicle that had never blossomed.
Marimar couldn’t help but laugh as the girl hugged her legs. She spoke at about a thousand words per minute. Her favorite color was leaf-green, and she was in the second grade. Her best subjects were science and reading. Her favorite stories were the fairy tales her mother liked to make up, stories about magic hills and river monsters and a place that neither of them had ever been to. She was afraid of the dark, but only when she was alone. She wished that she was tall enough to touch the flowers on the big tree. She could hear the tree crying. Could any of them hear the tree? Was there someone inside of it?
“You can hear the tree?” Rey asked, but his clipped tone wasn’t disbelief. It bordered on jealousy. “We never heard anything and we cleaned up this mess.”
Mike ruffled his daughter’s head. “She thinks all the trees talk to her. Such an imagination.”
Rey feigned a smile. “Such.”
But Rhiannon had already lost interest in her cousins. She pointed at the blue rooster and asked, “Mommy, what is that rooster doing?”
“Gabo is laying an egg, honey.”
“Actually his name is Jameson now,” Marimar said.
Rhiannon cocked her head up at Orquídea’s tree, waited as if listening, and giggled. “Mamá Orquídea doesn’t like that you changed his name.”
Marimar blanched. “What?”
“Why did you rename Gabo?” Rey asked.
Marimar shrugged defensively. “He drank a whole bottle of Jameson and croaked. I buried him, even, but there he was the next day, roosting in Orquídea’s roots.”
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina Page 16
