She felt great compassion for Cheryl and wanted to protect her, but no one could intervene. Fate had given her a brutal husband and she would have to accept her punishment until the day she could take it no more; then Evelyn would be at her side to escape with Frankie far from Mr. Leroy. Evelyn had seen similar cases back in her own village. The man would get drunk, or fight with someone, or be humiliated at work, or lose a bet—anything could lead to him beating his wife or children. It was not his fault, it was the way men were and that was the law of existence, thought Evelyn. No doubt the reasons for Mr. Leroy’s behaving so badly toward his wife were different, but the consequences were the same.
As the other employees had warned Evelyn, discretion was essential if she was to continue to live there. In spite of the fear Mr. Leroy aroused in her, she wanted to keep her job. In the house of statues she felt as safe as she had in her childhood home with her grandmother and enjoyed things she had never dreamed of, all the ice cream she could wish for, television, and a soft bed in Frankie’s room. She was paid minimum wage but she had no expenses and could send money to her grandmother, who bit by bit was replacing the mud and reed walls of her hut with bricks and cement.
THAT FRIDAY IN JANUARY when the state of New York was paralyzed, the cook and her daughter did not turn up for work. Cheryl, Evelyn, and Frankie stayed cooped up in the house. The media had been forecasting the storm since the day before, but when it arrived it was worse than predicted. The wind lashed at the windows and Evelyn closed the blinds and curtains to protect Frankie as much as possible from the noise. She tried to take his mind off the storm by switching on the TV, but it proved useless because the rattle of the wind terrified him. When she finally managed to calm him, she put him to bed hoping he would fall asleep, unable to distract him with the TV anymore because the satellite signal was so awful. Anticipating a possible blackout, she had gathered up a flashlight and some candles and filled a thermos with soup. That day Frank Leroy had left at dawn in a taxi to the airport, heading for a golf club in Florida, content to ride out the storm if it struck. Cheryl spent the day in bed, sick and tearful.
On Saturday, Cheryl got up late in a panic, with the distraught expression of her bad days. But unlike on other occasions, she was so quiet that Evelyn grew worried. At around noon, after the gardener had arrived to clear the snow from the driveway, she left in the Lexus for an appointment with her psychiatrist. She returned a couple of hours later, very upset. Her hands were trembling so badly that Evelyn had to open the bottle of sedatives, count the pills, and serve her a large shot of whiskey. Cheryl took the pills with three big gulps of the drink. She said it had been a dreadful day, her head was about to burst, she didn’t want to see anyone, least of all her husband. It would be best if that heartless sonofabitch never came back, if he disappeared and went straight to hell, it was no less than he deserved for being mixed up in what he was doing, not that she cared what happened to him or that bastard Danescu, the enemy in her own home. “Damn the pair of them, I hate them,” she muttered, feverishly gasping for breath.
“I’ve got them where I want them, Evelyn. If I choose to, I can talk, and then they’ll have nowhere to hide. They’re criminals, murderers. Do you know what they’re up to? Human trafficking. They transport and sell people. They bring them from other countries on false pretenses, and they put them to work as slaves. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about that!”
“I have heard something . . . ,” the girl admitted, scared of the expression on her employer’s face.
“They make them work like animals. They don’t pay them, they threaten and kill them. Lots of people are involved in it, Evelyn: agents, trucking companies, police, border guards, and even corrupt judges. There’s never any shortage of clients. There’s a lot of money in it, if you understand me?”
“Yes, señora.”
“You were lucky they didn’t get hold of you. You’d have ended up in a brothel. You think I’m crazy, don’t you, Evelyn?”
“No, señora.”
“Kathryn Brown is a whore. She comes here to spy on us; Frankie is only an excuse. My husband brought her here. Did you know she sleeps with him? No, how could you, child. The key I found in his pocket is to that whore’s place. Why do you think he has it?”
“Señora, please . . . how can you be sure where the key is from?”
“Where else could it be? And do you know something more, Evelyn? My husband wants to get rid of me and Frankie . . . his own son! He wants to kill us! That’s what he’s after, and that Kathryn Brown must be his accomplice, but I’ve got my eye on them. I never lower my guard, I’m always watching, watching . . .”
At the limits of her strength, befuddled by alcohol and pills, Cheryl let Evelyn lead her to her room, leaning heavily on the walls as she went. Evelyn helped her undress and lie down. Cheryl had no idea Evelyn knew about the relationship between Frank and the physical therapist. Evelyn had kept the secret inside her like a malignant tumor for months now, unable to let it out. Thanks to the fact she was regarded as invisible, she listened, observed, and drew conclusions. On several occasions, she had caught them whispering in the corridor. She had heard them planning vacations together and seen them shut themselves in one of the empty bedrooms. Mr. Leroy often appeared in Frankie’s room when Kathryn was making him do exercises, and they always sent Evelyn out on some pretext or other. They made no attempt to be careful in front of the boy, even though they knew he could understand everything. It was as if they wanted Cheryl to find out about their relationship. Evelyn supposed Mr. Leroy must be in love with Kathryn, because he looked for excuses to be with her, and when he was, his tone of voice and his expression changed, and yet she found it hard to understand why Kathryn should want to be mixed up with such an evil-hearted person who was a lot older than her, a married man with a sick son. Unless of course she was attracted to all the money he was supposed to possess.
According to what Cheryl had told her, Frank could be irresistible when he put his mind to it. That was what he was like when he won her heart. If Frank Leroy got an idea about something, there was no stopping him, she told Evelyn. They had met in the elegant bar at the Ritz, where she had gone to have some fun with two female friends and he had come to clinch a deal. As she told Evelyn, they glanced at each other a couple of times, sizing each other up from afar, and that was enough for him to come over with two martinis and a determined expression on his face. “From that moment on, he wouldn’t leave me alone. I couldn’t escape, he trapped me like a fly. I always knew he would mistreat me, because it started before we were married, but back then it was like a game. I never thought it would get worse and worse, and increasingly frequent . . .” In spite of the terror and loathing he inspired in her, Cheryl admitted he was attractive, with his good looks, his exclusive clothes, his air of authority and mystery. Evelyn was unable to appreciate any of these qualities.
That Saturday afternoon as she was listening to Cheryl’s incoherent rambling, Evelyn caught the smell from the adjoining room warning her she needed to change Frankie’s diaper. Just like her hearing and intuition, her sense of smell had become sharper since working for the Leroys. Cheryl was supposed to have bought diapers but had been in such a state she had forgotten. Evelyn calculated that the dozing boy could wait while she rushed to the drugstore. Pulling on a sweater, a parka, rubber boots, and gloves, she left the house ready to face the snow but discovered that the van had a flat tire and Cheryl’s Fiat 500 was at the shop being repaired. There was no point calling a taxi, because it would take an age to arrive in this weather. Waking up her employer was not an option either, because by now she would be comatose. Evelyn was about to give up on the diapers and resolve the problem with a towel when she saw the keys to the Lexus where they were always left on the hall table. That was Mr. Leroy’s car, and she had never driven it, but she thought it must be easier than the van. The journey to the drugstore would not take long. Cheryl was in limbo
and would not even notice she had gone, and the matter would be solved. She checked that Frankie was fast asleep, kissed him on the forehead, and whispered that she would be back soon. Then she carefully drove the car out of the garage.
Lucia
Chile, 2008–2015
When her mother died in 2008, Lucia Maraz felt an inexplicable sense of insecurity, even though she had not depended on Lena since leaving for exile at the age of nineteen. In their relationship, she had offered Lena emotional protection, and in her final years economic support as well, as inflation ate away at her pension. Yet when Lucia found herself without her mother the sensation of vulnerability was as sharp as the sadness at her loss. Since her father had vanished from her life very early on, her mother and her brother, Enrique, were the only family she had. With neither of them there anymore, she realized the only person she had left was her daughter, Daniela. Carlos lived in the same house, but remained emotionally absent. Lucia began to feel the weight of her years for the first time. Though well into her fifties, she believed she was still thirty, suspended in time. Until then, growing old and dying had been abstract notions, something that happened to others.
She went with Daniela to pour Lena’s ashes into the sea. Her mother had made the request without any explanation, and Lucia presumed she wanted to be in the same waters of the Pacific as her son. Like so many others, Enrique’s body might have been thrown into the sea tied to a length of rail track, but the spirit that visited Lena in her final days did not confirm this. They hired a fisherman to take them out beyond the farthest rocks, where the ocean became the color of petroleum and there were no seagulls. Standing in the boat, bathed in tears, they improvised a farewell for the grandmother who had suffered so much, as well as for Enrique. They had never had the courage to bid him goodbye before then, as Lena had refused to acknowledge his death out loud until the end, although perhaps she had done so years earlier in a secret corner of her heart. Lucia’s first book, published in 1994 and read by Lena, gave details of the murders under the dictatorship, none of which were subsequently denied. Lena had also accompanied Lucia when she testified before a judge as part of an investigation into the use of army helicopters. Lena must have had a fairly clear idea of her son’s fate, but to acknowledge it meant renouncing a mission that had obsessed her for more than three decades. Enrique would have remained forever in a dense fog of uncertainty, neither dead nor alive, had it not been for the miracle of his appearance at his mother’s side in her final days to lead her into the next life.
In the boat, Daniela held the ceramic urn while Lucia scattered handfuls of ashes and prayed for her mother, her brother, and the unknown young man who still lay in the Maraz family niche in the cemetery. Over all those years, no one had identified the body in the Vicariate’s archives, and Lena had come to think of him as another member of her family. The breeze kept the ashes floating in the air like stardust, until they slowly fell onto the surface of the sea. Lucia suddenly understood that she should replace her mother; she was the eldest in her tiny family, the matriarch. At that moment she felt her age, but it did not overwhelm her until two years later, when she had to come to terms with her losses and it was her turn to confront death.
WHEN SHE LATER TOLD RICHARD BOWMASTER about this period in her life, Lucia left out the shades of gray and concentrated on the brightest and darkest events. The rest was almost erased from her memory, yet Richard wanted to know more. He was familiar with Lucia’s two books, where Enrique’s story provided the starting point and lent a personal touch to what was a lengthy political analysis, but he knew little of her private life. Lucia explained that her marriage to Carlos Urzua had never really been intimate, but her romantic vocation or simple inertia meant she could never make a decision. They were two people wandering around in the same space, so distant from one another that they got along well, since to fight there has to be proximity. Her cancer led to the end of their marriage, which had been in the making for years.
Following her grandmother’s death, Daniela had left for the University of Miami in Coral Gables, and Lucia began a feverish correspondence with her, similar to the one she had had with her mother when she lived in Canada. Her daughter was overjoyed at her new existence, fascinated by the sea creatures, and keen to explore the vagaries of the oceans. Several people of both sexes were in love with her and she could enjoy a freedom she would never have had in Chile, where she would have been constantly scrutinized by a narrow-minded society. One day she announced to her parents over the phone that she did not define herself as either a woman or a man and had polyamorous relationships. Carlos asked if she meant she was promiscuously bisexual and warned her it would be better not to advertise the fact in Chile, where few would understand. “I see they’ve changed the name of free love. That has always failed, and it won’t work this time,” he predicted to Lucia following the conversation.
After Lucia fell ill with cancer in 2010, Daniela interrupted her studies and sexual experiments. It was a year of losses and separations for Lucia, a year of hospitals, fatigue, and fear. Carlos left her, claiming he did not have the courage to witness her devastation. He felt ashamed, but his mind was made up. He refused to see the scars crisscrossing her breasts, felt an atavistic repulsion toward the mutilated creature she was becoming, and instead left the responsibility of looking after her to their daughter. Indignant at her father’s behavior, Daniela confronted him in an unexpectedly fierce manner: she was the first to mention divorce as the only decent way out for a couple who did not love one another. Carlos adored his daughter, but his horror at Lucia’s double mastectomy was stronger than his fear of disappointing her. He announced he was moving temporarily to a hotel because the tension at home was affecting him too much and preventing him from working. Though well past retirement age, he had decided he would only leave his office feet first. Lucia and Carlos said goodbye with the tepid courtesy that had characterized the years they had lived together, without any show of hostility but without clarifying anything. Within a week, Carlos rented an apartment, and Daniela helped him settle in.
At first, Lucia felt the separation as a gaping void. She was accustomed to her husband’s emotional absence, but when he left for good she found she had time to spare, the house seemed enormous, and the empty rooms were filled with echoes. At night she could hear Carlos’s footsteps and the water running in his bathroom. This break with her established routines and small daily ceremonies gave her a great sense of abandonment, and added to the worry of the months she spent suffering from the effects of the drugs she was taking to overcome her illness. She felt wounded, fragile, naked. Daniela thought the treatment had destroyed both her body and her spirit’s immunity. “Don’t make a list of what you haven’t got, Ma, but focus on what you do have,” she would tell her. In Daniela’s view, this was a unique opportunity for Lucia to cleanse her mind as well as her body, to rid herself of the unnecessary burdens of her rancor, complexes, bad memories, impossible desires, and all the rest of the garbage. “Where do you get this wisdom from, daughter?” Lucia asked her on one occasion. “From the Internet,” replied Daniela.
Carlos left so definitively that even though he only lived a few blocks from Lucia it was as if he had moved to the far end of another continent. Not once did he ask about her health.
WHEN LUCIA ARRIVED IN BROOKLYN in September 2015, she was hoping that the change of surroundings would revive her. She was tired of routines; it was time to shuffle the cards of her destiny, to see if she would be dealt a better hand. She wanted New York to be the first stop on a long journey and was planning to look for other opportunities to travel the world while she still had the strength and funds to do so. Above all, she wanted to leave behind the losses and sorrows of recent years. The hardest part had been her mother’s death, which affected her more than the divorce or cancer. Although at first she had felt her husband’s departure as a stab in the back, she soon came to see it as a gift of freedom and peace.
It took more of an effort to recover from her illness, which was what had finally made Carlos flee. The months of chemo and radiation left her gaunt and bald, with no eyelashes or eyebrows, blue circles around her eyes, and numerous scars, but she was healthy and the prognosis was good. Her breasts were reconstructed with implants that inflated gradually as the muscles and skin adjusted to accommodate them. This was a painful process that she endured without complaining, buoyed by her vanity, feeling that anything was preferable to the flat chest scarred with knife wounds.
The experience of that year lost to illness gave her a burning desire to live, as if the reward for her suffering was to have discovered the philosopher’s stone, that elusive substance of the alchemists that was capable of turning lead into gold and restoring youth. She had already lost her fear of dying when she witnessed her mother’s elegant passage from life to death. Once more she experienced with complete clarity the irrefutable presence of the soul, that primordial essence that neither cancer nor anything else could destroy. Whatever happened, the soul would win out. She imagined her possible death as a threshold and was curious to know what she would find on the other side. She was not afraid of crossing that threshold, but while she was in this world she wanted to live life to the fullest, without worrying about anything, to be invincible.
In the Midst of Winter Page 24
