Gateway to the Moon_A Novel

by Mary Morris

  So the boys set out on their first hike into their new world. They’ve never headed out along Colibri Canyon Road let alone into the desert. They walk down the driveway to the side of house, and then follow the fence that contains their yard. Miguel can feel their excitement. They won’t go for long. Just long enough to get them good and tired.

  It is one of those broiling hot desert days. The kind when you can scramble eggs on the canyon roads, as his father likes to say. No wind comes down from the Sangre de Cristos. There isn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun beats down on them. Still the boys walk ahead at a good pace. This is something new. An adventure. Overhead a hawk glides. And in the distance vultures circle over the crest of a hill, probably above a dead deer or coyote. Maybe even a dog.

  They make their way down the arroyo. The riverbed is bone-dry. Tumbleweeds blow past them. Only the piñon and juniper grow here. The boys seem awed at how big the world is, at how much space they could have to play in. Suddenly Jeremy is racing ahead and Davie takes off after him. “No running.” The boys race on a little farther, then come to a sudden halt. Miguel catches up with them. Off to the side of the trail he sees what Jeremy has seen. An old diamondback rattlesnake lies coiled, basking in the sun. Miguel clasps the boys by the arms. “It’s not a problem,” Miguel says, taking each boy by the hand. “We just step around them here.” Gingerly they make a wide berth around the snake. Miguel breathes a sigh of relief. He’s so glad that he decided not to bring the dog. “If you hear the rattle,” Miguel tells them, “then it’s a problem. But for now let’s let this old guy take his nap.”

  He can teach these boys things. Things they’d never learn without him. He knows how to extract water from a cactus when you are dying of thirst and how to move logs in the woodpiles where scorpions hide. He knows that tarantulas don’t hurt you if you know how to handle them and that they even make good pets. And that in the spring during the melt these arroyos and canyons can bring on flash floods that you’ll never hear until they are upon you. Rattlesnakes are dormant in winter so you never have to worry about a snakebite at that time of year and now in the heat of the day this snake is just sunning itself. Even though diamondbacks are very poisonous, he can tell by the thickness of the body that it is an older snake. The young are more dangerous because they don’t know how to conserve their venom, but an older snake won’t bite unless you mess with it. An older snake saves its venom for its kills. Its bite might not release any venom at all. If the boys are going to live here, he’ll have to teach them what he knows.

  Now the boys are curious. Jeremy finds a dead lizard and pokes at it with a stick. Because of the rains the chamisa are in bloom and they pause to admire the yellow flowers. A ruby-throated hummingbird buzzes around the chamisa blooms, and the boys watch as it sinks its beak into the petals. Overhead a raven cries. Using his hand as a visor, Miguel searches for it in the sky. Though he can hear the raven, he can’t see it. It is hard in the desert to gauge distances. Perhaps it is farther away than he thinks. Still, from its sharp cry it seems as if it is right overhead. He scans the skies, letting his gaze drift toward the mountains. Perhaps one day, if Mrs. Rothstein will let him, he’ll show the boys Entrada.

  In the middle of the trail Miguel comes to a pile of fresh horse manure. Some riders have been by here not long ago. Normally Miguel wouldn’t stop and look at a manure pile, but the dung beetles are all over it. They are marching in a straight line toward the manure, and then they are walking backward, pulling their spoils in the same straight line. Pausing to observe their fecal foraging, he wonders why they are doing that. It’s what Mr. Garcia always told him to ask: Why? Perhaps he will show this to the boys. They’d probably find it gross but he finds it interesting. He squats down, looking more closely at the beetles. He prods the manure pile with his walking stick, but the beetles right themselves and continue on their way. Miguel turns his head, gazing up toward the blinding sun. Then he looks back at the beetles.

  He is distracted for only an instant when he hears the cry a few feet behind him. He turns to see Jeremy punching Davie hard in the arm. And Davie raises his fist and punches him back. Miguel can’t help but smile. Still he doesn’t want them fighting out here. “Stop that,” Miguel shouts, but before he can intervene Jeremy hits Davie square in the face. Blood splatters from the little boy’s nose and sobs rise that Davie makes no attempt to hold back. “I hate you,” Davie shouts at his brother, his little fists flying. “I hate you.”

  “Jeremy,” Miguel shouts. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Miguel runs to where the brothers are fighting, but Davie has already taken off back down the trail, away from his brother, away from Miguel. “Davie,” Miguel shouts, “Stop.” He chases after Davie, heading back to the house, calling out to Davie to wait for him. That is when he sees it. The snake, no longer coiled off to the side in the sun, is making its way across the path. Miguel raises his walking stick. “Davie, don’t move. Stop,” Miguel calls out just as Davie puts his sneaker down on the back of the snake, and it rises up to meet him.

  Ten miles away as Rachel Rothstein sits in the heat of the temple, listening to the rabbi drone on, a shiver runs through her, and she wonders if she too isn’t about to faint.

  * * *

  “I thought it would never end,” Nathan says, wiping the sweat off his brow, his jacket slung over his shoulder as they are heading to their car. He unlocks the car and turns his beeper back on. He had turned it off during the service. He wasn’t on call so it shouldn’t matter. But now he gets several beeps. “I need to call the hospital.” Nathan frowns. There should be plenty of doctors on call who can stand in for him.

  Rachel gives him an impatient look. They have been fasting, and she’s anxious to get home. And it seems to her as if there’s always something that gets in the way. If he calls now, he may not even go home. And Nathan is tired and hungry as well. “I’ll do it when we get back,” he says.

  “It was a long service, wasn’t it?” Rachel says as they are driving. “But then you saved that man’s life right in the middle of it.” Rachel touches his arm.

  Nathan shrugs as if he does this every day, which of course he does. “I don’t know if I saved his life.”

  “Well, his wife certainly thinks so.” It is the day to welcome the stranger, and Rachel has decided that she will invite Miguel to break the fast with them. But is he really a stranger? She has known Miguel for almost four months. He spends three afternoons a week with her boys. She leaves plates of cookies and pitchers of lemonade out for them. Yet Miguel has never eaten with them all together, not as a family. It only seems right that he should join them tonight.

  Riding beside her husband and lover of almost a decade, Rachel Rothstein wonders who the real stranger is. Even now, staring straight ahead, she is trying to think of something to say to him. She has no idea what Nathan does all day long. She has no idea whom he sees or talks to. She doesn’t know if he has a sandwich for lunch or a slice of pizza. He makes a joke in synagogue and she wonders if he is really a funny man. Does he keep the OR laughing, making jokes as he’s sewing up a child’s aorta? She doesn’t know. All of these details of her husband’s life are unknown to her.

  She has moved them far from family and friends and now they only have each other. It is as if she has been marooned on an island with a person she’s never met. “What was I thinking?” she asks herself. It is so odd, so hard to understand and yet she feels as if she knows their Hispanic babysitter better than she knows her own spouse. And she wants to share the trays of smoked salmon and bagels, creamed herring and pickled beets with him.

  They’re having a feast—enough to feed her entire extended family (who collectively think they were insane to leave New York and move to the middle of nowhere). So she will ask Miguel to stay. And then, because she has thought this through, afterward, when the kids are in bed and the dishes done, she will put on that purple nightgown she hasn’t worn yet. She will reach for her husband and bring him into h
er arms. Smiling, she reaches over and squeezes his thigh. And to her surprise he takes a hand off the wheel and clasps her hand.

  Something has been made right after all. That shiver that went through her, it is only that. A wisp of the wind. A chill that sometimes comes to you on a hot day. No, this is tikkun. She will invite Miguel to dinner and somehow Nathan will see why they are here and he will want to make love to her as he used to. And yet as they wind their way up Colibri Canyon Road, Rachel knows that nothing can be this simple. Nothing can so easily turn things around. She is having one of her strange feelings. Something that is difficult to describe. And yet as they swerve along the road, everything is eerily still. It is as if the world has slowed down.

  When they pull up to the house, Rachel knows something isn’t right.

  “His car isn’t here,” Rachel says, almost to herself.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Miguel should be here.”

  Nathan shrugs. “Maybe he took the boys somewhere.”

  But Rachel shakes her head. “Why would he? He never has before.”

  “Well, there’s always a first time. Let’s get inside.”

  Before he even stops the car Rachel is dashing to the house. As she approaches, Baxter is barking. Outside of the dog the house is quiet and dark. No TV on, no lights. “Davie, Jeremy, we’re home,” she shouts, and then goes to the picture window. Probably they’re in the yard, playing. She expects to see them banging the tetherball or on the swings, but except for a tumbleweed blowing across the yard, nothing moves. She begins running from room to room, calling their names, Baxter at her heels. Is this some creepy form of hide-and-seek? At some let’s-surprise-Mommy moment they’ll jump out of a closet in unison. But there is no surprise. No shout intended to startle her. The house is as empty as the yard.

  Then the darkest thoughts come to her. Has he kidnapped her boys? Is he involved with some drug dealer and they’ve taken them away? She really doesn’t know Miguel that well, does she? She hadn’t asked for references. She’d just gone on instinct. Her gut. And now her children are gone. Was this a big plot in the first place? A bad TV show? At any moment she expects the ransom call with those specific instructions. Do not call the police. Assemble a million dollars in unmarked, nonsequential bills. Your husband is a doctor. Of course you can get that much cash. Then you hear your kids, screaming in the background. Wasn’t it that Italian billionaire who kept getting parts of his son in the mail until he paid whatever the kidnappers required?

  She knows nothing about Miguel. Nathan is right. Everyone is right. Her boys are gone. She is trying not to panic. Trying to hold it together. She needs to think, catch her breath. Surely there is an explanation. That is when she notices the light of the answering machine. It is blinking with one message. Her family wouldn’t call on Yom Kippur. They are all in temple atoning for their sins. Miguel just called to say that they went somewhere for ice cream and ran out of gas or something like that. And she’ll laugh and everything will be forgiven.

  But as she listens, she can barely make out what Miguel is saying, but then she does. Not the specifics, but at least she knows where they are. That’s when she turns and sees Nathan standing at the door. “There’s been an accident.” Rachel races outside shouting at Nathan. “Quick. Drive. To the hospital.”

  Even as he speeds around the turns, Rachel can feel those pursed lips, those judgmental stares. “Oh god,” she thinks, “please let them be all right.” And then: “Oh god, Nathan will kill me if anything happens to those boys.”

  “Did he say what happened?” Nathan asks in that cold voice she can barely stand. She envisions dozens of things. The boys were fighting and one of them fell. Perhaps off the couch, twisting a wrist, an ankle. Or one of those sword fights with those cardboard-and-tinfoil swords. Some stupid childhood thing. The kind you dine out on years from now. How much damage can a cardboard sword cause? Can you lose an eye? Why not scribble a note? What can be so serious that you can’t leave a note on the kitchen counter.

  “Just drive,” she answers. And Nathan speeds along. As they are rushing to the hospital, Rachel does something she’s never done before. She prays. She prays to God that her sons are all right. She makes promises. I will be a better mother. I will be more attentive to my sons and my husband. I will do volunteer work to help the less advantaged. I will complete tasks I have begun. I’ll be a loving wife. I will make any bargain I can, but please let my sons be all right. Please God, don’t let any harm come to them. It is still the Day of Atonement, isn’t it, so after all it is a day when one can beg forgiveness and ask for pardon.

  They tear into the parking lot at Mercy Hospital, and Nathan pulls into his reserved spot. Rachel dashes out of the car, racing through the double doors of the emergency room entrance. All those antiseptic smells and other smells, the smells no one wants to think about, hitting her at once. There in the waiting room Miguel sits, slumped, his head in his hands and Jeremy, surprisingly quiet, is kicking his legs back and forth against the chair as she races up to them. When Jeremy sees her, he springs up, tears pouring down his face. “Mommy, Mommy, Davie stepped on a snake.”

  “A snake?” Though she never has before, she thinks she will faint. “There was a snake in the yard?” That’s why they built a fence, wasn’t it? To keep danger away. The coyotes and snakes and whatever else might threaten her children. That’s what the fence was for.

  Nathan arrives, panting behind her. Tears pouring down his face, Miguel tries to explain. “It’s my fault,” Miguel says, “I took them for a hike.”

  “A hike?” Nathan is yelling and Rachel is trying to calm him down. “Who told you to take them for a hike. Who the hell—”

  “It was very hot inside and the boys needed to get out—”

  “Get out? We have a yard. We have a swing set. Who says they needed to get out into the desert?”

  “Nathan, please, let’s just see about Davie.” Even as she runs to her son, Rachel doesn’t blame Miguel. No, she tells herself, no matter what happened, and she prays to God it is nothing terrible, it’s not his fault. This isn’t his fault. Dashing through the ER, she goes from bed to bed. Doctors look up at her, patients think she is a nurse.

  “May I help you?” a doctor asks.

  “I’m looking for my son,” she gasps.

  In one of the beds she finds him. He is pale, his skin bone white. His eyes are closed, and there is a droplet of spittle in the corner of his mouth. His ankle is packed in ice, and an IV goes through his arm. The attending physician is with him and a nurse is checking his vitals. “Dr. Rothstein,” the attending says, extending his hand. “Mrs. Rothstein.” He pats Davie on the head, and Davie opens his eyes. When he sees his parents standing there, he smiles. Rachel bursts into tears, hugging Davie, who seems surprisingly not upset. “He’s not out of the woods yet, but I think this young man is going to be fine. It was what we call ‘a dry bite.’ ”

  Suddenly she feels a sense of relief. “What is a dry bite?”

  “The snake was being defensive. It wasn’t trying to really hurt or kill your little boy. It released very little venom. He’s had a scare, but he’s very brave.” The doctor smiles at Davie. “Mostly I think he’s in shock.” He takes Rachel and Nathan aside. “You know, your babysitter, he did everything right. He tied a tourniquet. He carried Davie to the car, made him stay calm, and kept his leg elevated.”

  Rachel nods. “Yes,” she says, “I am sure he would.”

  “He even told the ER that it was an old snake and it probably didn’t release much venom.” The doctor smiles at them through watery blue eyes. “And he was right about that.”

  Again Rachel nods. “He’s smart. He would know.” She is still trembling, but Nathan seems calmer. “I’ll go tell him. And I’ll get Jeremy.”

  When she gets to the waiting room, she finds Jeremy sipping apple juice and sitting with a nurse. The nurse stands up. “You must be Rachel,” the nurse says. For an instant Rachel wonders. Ho
w does she know my name? Rachel glances at her name tag. “Dawn.” Is this significant, Rachel wonders? Dawn. The start of a new day.

  Rachel takes Jeremy by the hand and looks for Miguel. But Miguel is gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  EL ILLUMINADO—1569

  When Alejandro Cordero emerged from the mines of Taxco, covered in a fine silver dust, it was as if in a matter of days he had turned into an old man. Perhaps in some ways he had. Though he is barely thirty years old, his pallor and white hair startled those who encountered him. They gave him safe passage as if he were a ghost. Yet it was not only the whiteness of the dust that surprised but also the translucent blue eyes that peered from its paleness. No one had ever seen eyes quite like his before. Certainly not in the hills of Taxco. Alejandro traveled by night down from the hills with only one mission in mind. He had to go to his mother. He’d been told that they would be next.

  Now he makes his way in the darkness. The city is a puzzle to him. For all of his abilities, Alejandro has no sense of direction. Despite the fact that his grandfather sailed with Columbus, Alejandro does not know north from south, left from right. He can never remember if he’s been down one street or another. He carries no internal map. But it seems to be a family trait. More than once he’d run into his own father, walking home the wrong way.

  It is pitch-black with no lights to guide him. The cobblestones are wet and slippery from an afternoon rain. Alejandro is careful to avoid the rivulets of sewage that flow through the drainage ditches by the side of the roads. He also must keep his eyes on the upper windows, for at any moment someone could toss down a bucket of dishwater or a chamber pot of slop. In the night these streets are rife with murderers and thieves. Yet there are much greater things to fear.