“No.” Noemí shook her head. “No, she said she needed it.”
“Are you a medical professional?” Dr. Cummins asked her. He was distinctly displeased. Noemí felt her mouth go dry.
“No, but—”
“So you have no idea what was inside this bottle?”
“I told you, Catalina said she needed medicine to help her sleep. She asked me for it. She’s taken it before, it couldn’t have made her ill.”
“It did,” the doctor told her.
“An opium tincture. That’s what you shoved down your cousin’s throat,” Florence added, pointing an accusing finger at Noemí.
“I did no such thing!”
“It was very ill-advised, very ill-advised, indeed,” Dr. Cummins muttered. “Why I couldn’t begin to understand what you were thinking, procuring a filthy potion like that. And then, attempting to put a spoon in your cousin’s mouth. I suppose you heard that silly tale of people swallowing their tongues? Nonsense. All nonsense.”
“I—”
“Where did you get the tincture?” Florence asked.
Tell no one, Catalina had said, and so Noemí did not reply even if the mention of Marta Duval might have shifted the burden of her guilt. She gripped the back of the settee with one hand, digging her nails into the fabric.
“You could have killed her,” the woman said.
“I wouldn’t!”
Noemí felt like crying again but could not allow herself this release, not in their presence. Francis had moved to stand behind the settee, and she felt his fingers upon her hand, almost ghostly. It was a comforting gesture, and it gave her the courage to clamp her mouth shut.
“Who did you procure the potion from?” the doctor asked.
Noemí stared at them and kept on gripping the settee.
“I should slap you,” Florence said. “I should slap that disrespectful look off your face.”
Florence stepped forward. Noemí felt that perhaps she really did mean to slap her. She pushed Francis’s hand aside, ready to stand up.
“If you could please go check on my father I would be very grateful, Dr. Cummins. All the noise tonight has him a little anxious,” Virgil said.
He had strolled rather casually into the room, and his voice was cool as he ventured toward the sideboard and inspected a decanter, as if he were alone and pouring himself a drink like any other evening.
“Yes. Why yes, of course,” the doctor said.
“It’s best if you two go with him. I wish to speak to Noemí alone.”
“I am not—” Florence began.
“I wish to be alone with her,” Virgil replied acridly. The smooth silk of his voice was now sandpaper.
They left, the doctor mumbling a “yes, at once,” Florence walking in a somber silence. Francis was the last to step out, slowly closing the doors of the sitting room before throwing her one nervous glance.
Virgil filled his glass, swirling the liquid in it, staring at its contents, before approaching her and taking a place on the same settee she occupied. His leg brushed against hers when he sat down.
“Catalina once told me you were a very strong-willed creature, but I didn’t quite understand how strong-willed until now,” he said, setting the drink down on an oblong side table. “Your cousin is a bit of a weakling, isn’t she? But you have a certain mettle in your bones.”
He spoke so blithely it made her gasp. He talked as if this were a game. As if she were not sick with worry. “Have a little respect,” she said.
“I think it’s another person who should be showing respect. This is my home.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry at all.”
She could not read the expression in his eyes. Perhaps it was contempt. “I am sorry! But I was trying to help Catalina.”
“You have a funny way of showing it. How dare you constantly upset my wife?”
“What do you mean I constantly upset her? She is glad to have me around, she told me so.”
“You bring strangers to look at her and then you bring her poison.”
“For God’s sake,” she said and stood up.
He immediately grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her down. It was her bandaged wrist, and it hurt when he touched her; the skin burned for a second and she winced. He tugged at her sleeve, revealing the bandage, and smirked.
“Let go.”
“Dr. Camarillo’s work, perhaps? Just like the tincture? Was it him?”
“Don’t touch me,” she ordered.
But he did not release her; instead he leaned forward. He clasped her arm tight. She thought Howard looked like an insect and Florence was an insectivorous plant. But Virgil Doyle, he was a carnivore, high up the food chain.
“Florence is right. You deserve to be slapped and taught a few lessons,” he muttered.
“If anyone is slapped in this room, I assure you, it won’t be me.”
He threw his head back and laughed a loud, savage laugh, and he reached blindly for his drink. A few dark drops of liquor spilled on the side table as he lifted the glass. The sound of his voice practically made her jump. At least he had released her.
“You’re mad,” she said, rubbing her wrist.
“Mad with worry, yes,” he replied, downing the wine. Rather than placing the glass on the table again, he carelessly tossed it on the floor. It did not shatter, but rolled across the carpet. But what if it had shattered? It was his glass. His to break if he wanted. Like everything else in this house.
“Do you think you are the only person who cares what happens to Catalina?” he asked, his eyes fixed on the glass. “I imagine you do. When Catalina wrote to your family, did you think, ‘ah, at last we can pry her away from that troublesome man’? And right now you must think ‘I knew he was bad.’ Your father certainly didn’t like me for a groom.
“When the mine was open, he would have been glad to see Catalina married to me. Back then I would have been worthy. He wouldn’t have thought me inconsequential. It must still irk him, and you, to know Catalina picked me. Well, I’m no two-bit fortune hunter, I’m a Doyle. It would be good of you to remember that.”
“I don’t know why you bring all this up.”
“Because you believe I am so inadequate that you had to go and medicate Catalina. You thought the care I give her is so atrocious that you must sneak behind my back and pour garbage into her mouth. Did you think we wouldn’t notice? We know everything that goes on in this house.”
“She asked for this medicine. I told your aunt and the doctor already, I didn’t realize this would happen.”
“No, you don’t know very much, and yet you act as if you know everything, don’t you? You’re a spoiled brat and you’ve hurt my wife,” he said with a brutal finality.
He stood up and picked up the glass, setting it upon the fireplace mantel. She felt twin flames inside her heart, anger and shame. She hated the way he was talking to her, hated this entire conversation. And yet had she not done a foolish thing? Hadn’t she earned a reprimand? She did not know how to reply and felt tears pooling in her eyes again as she recalled poor Catalina’s face.
He must have noticed her turmoil or else he was simply done berating her, because his voice wavered a little. “You almost made me a widower tonight, Noemí. You will forgive me if I don’t feel very gracious at this time. I should head to bed. It’s been a long day.”
He did look tired, frankly exhausted. His blue eyes were very bright, with the brightness of a sudden fever. It made her feel even worse about the whole mess.
“I must ask you to leave Catalina’s medical care to Dr. Cummins and never bring any other tonics or remedies into this house. Are you listening to me?”
“I am,” she replied.
“Will you follow this simple directive?”
She clenched her hands. “I will,” she said, and she felt very much like a child.
He took a step closer to her, carefully looking at her, as though trying to discern a lie, but there was none. She spoke in earnest, and yet he brushed close to her, like a scientist who must analyze and jot down every detail of an organism, taking in her face, her pursed lips.
“Thank you. There are many things you cannot understand, Noemí. But let me make it clear that Catalina’s well-being is of the utmost importance to us. You’ve harmed her and in harming her you’ve harmed me.”
Noemí turned her head away. She thought he’d leave. Instead, he lingered at her side. Then, a small eternity later, he stepped away from her and out of the room.
14
In a sense all dreams foretell events, but some more clearly than others.
Noemí circled the word dreams with her pencil. She enjoyed writing in the margins of her books; she loved reading these anthropological texts, sinking into the lush paragraphs and the forest of footnotes. But not now. Now she couldn’t concentrate. She rested her chin on the back of her hand and placed the pencil in her mouth.
She had spent hours in waiting, trying to find things to do, books to read, perfecting tricks to distract herself. She checked her watch and sighed. It was close to five o’clock.
She had attempted to speak to Catalina early in the morning, but Florence had told Noemí that her cousin was resting. Around noon Noemí had tried again. She had been dismissed a second time, and Florence had made it clear there would be no visits with the patient until nighttime.
Noemí must not push and pry and attempt to wedge her way into that room, as much as she wanted to. She simply couldn’t. They’d toss her out if she did, and besides, Virgil was correct. She’d done wrong and felt ashamed.
How she wished there were a radio around the house. She needed music, conversation. She thought of the parties she attended with her friends, leaning against a piano with a cocktail in her hand. Also her classes at the university and the lively discussions at the cafés downtown. What she now had was a silent house and a heart riddled with anxiety.
…and dreams about ghosts, not recorded in this book, inform people about happenings among the dead.
She took the pencil out of her mouth and put the book aside. Reading about the Azande did her no good. It offered no distraction. She kept remembering her cousin’s face, her contorted limbs, the hideous episode of the previous day.
Noemí grabbed a sweater—the one Francis had given her—and stepped outside. She thought to smoke a cigarette, but once she stood in the shadow of the house she decided she needed a bit more distance from it. It lingered too close; it was hostile and cold and she did not wish to parade before its windows, which felt, to her, like lidless, eager eyes. She followed the path that snaked behind the house and led up to the cemetery.
Two, three, four steps, it seemed it didn’t take her long until she stood before the iron gates and walked inside. She’d been utterly lost in the mist before, but she did not bother to consider what she’d do if she should lose her way again.
In fact, a part of her very dearly wished to be lost.
Catalina. She’d hurt Catalina, and even now she did not know how her cousin was faring. Florence was tight-lipped; she’d seen nothing of Virgil. Not that she wished to see him very much.
He’d been beastly.
You almost made me a widower tonight, Noemí.
She hadn’t meant it. But, intent or not, what did it matter? What mattered were the facts. That’s what her father would tell her, and now Noemí felt doubly ashamed. She’d been sent to fix a problem, not to make an even bigger mess. Was Catalina angry with her? What might Noemí say when they finally saw each other? Sorry, dear cousin, I almost poisoned you, but you’re looking better.
Noemí walked among tombstones and moss and wildflowers, her chin lowered, tucked close against the folds of the sweater. She saw the mausoleum and in front of it the stone statue of Agnes. Noemí peered up at the statue’s face and her hands, which were weathered with speckles of black fungus.
She had wondered if there was a plaque or marker with the name of the deceased on it, and she saw that there was. Noemí had overlooked it during her previous visit, although she could hardly be blamed for missing it. The plaque was hidden by an overgrown clump of weeds. She plucked the weeds away and brushed the dirt off the bronze plaque.
Agnes Doyle. Mother. 1885. That was all Howard Doyle had chosen to leave behind to commemorate the passing of his first wife. He had said he had not known Agnes well, that she’d died within a year of their marriage, yet it seemed odd to have a statue carved of her and then not even compose a proper line or two about her passing.
It was the nature of the one word etched beneath the woman’s name that bothered her too. Mother. But as far as Noemí knew, Howard Doyle’s children were born of his second marriage. Why choose “mother” as the epithet, then? Perhaps she was making too much of this. Inside the mausoleum, where the woman’s body rested, there might be a proper plaque and a proper message about the deceased. Yet it was unsettling in a way she could not define, like noticing a crooked seam or a tiny stain on a pristine tablecloth.
She sat there, at the statue’s feet, and tugged at a blade of grass wondering if someone ever bothered setting flowers inside the mausoleum or at any of the graves. Could the families of everyone buried in the cemetery be gone from the area? But then, most of the English folk must have come alone, and therefore there had been no kin to bother with such things. There were also unmarked graves for the local workers and with no gravestone to their name, there could be no crowns of flowers for them.
If Catalina dies, she thought, she’ll be buried here, and her tomb will be bare.
What a horrid thought. But she was horrid, wasn’t she? Simply horrid. Noemí dropped the blade of grass and took a deep breath. The silence in the cemetery was absolute. No birds sang in the trees, no insects flapped their wings. Everything was muffled. It was like sitting at the bottom of a deep well, shielded by the earth and stone, from the world.
The merciless silence was broken by the sound of boots upon grass and the crunching of a twig. She turned her head and there was Francis, hands deep in his thick corduroy jacket’s pockets. He looked, as he often did, quite fragile, the faint sketch of a man. Only in a place such as this, in a cemetery with drooping willows and mist licking at the stones, could he acquire any substance. In the city, she thought, he’d be shattered by the banging of the Klaxon and the rumbling of motors. Fine china, tossed against a wall. But she liked the look of him in that old jacket, frail or not, his shoulders hunched a little.
“I thought you’d be here.”
“Hunting for mushrooms again?” Noemí asked, setting her hands on her lap and steadying her voice so that it was not strained. She’d nearly wept in front of them last night. She did not wish to do it now.
“I saw you leaving the house,” he confessed.
“Did you need anything?”
“My old sweater; you are wearing it,” he said.
It wasn’t quite the answer she was expecting. She frowned. “You want it back?”
“Not at all.”
She hiked up the too-long sleeves and shrugged. Any other day she would have taken this as a cue to engage in charming banter. She would have teased him and enjoyed watching him grow flustered. Now she picked at blades of grass.
He sat down next to her. “It really isn’t your fault.”
“You’d be the only person who thinks that. Your mother won’t even tell me if Catalina is awake, and Virgil wants to throttle me. I wouldn’t be surprised if your uncle Howard wished to do the same.”
“Catalina woke up for a bit, but then went back to sleep. She had a little broth. She’ll be fine.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Noemí muttered.
“When I say it’s not your fault I truly mean it,” he assured her, his hand falling upon her shoulder. “Please, look at me. It isn’t. It’s not the first time. This happened before.”
“What do you mean?”
They stared at each other. It was his turn to pick a blade of grass and spin it between his fingers.
“Well, come on. What do you mean?” she repeated, snatching the piece of grass away.
“She’d taken that tincture…she’d had a reaction to it before.”
“Are you telling me she’s made herself ill, the same way? Or else that she’s tried to kill herself? We are Catholic. It’s a sin. She wouldn’t, never ever.”
“I don’t think she wants to die. I mention it because you seem to think you did this to her, and you didn’t. It’s not your presence that has made her ill; it’s not you at all. She’s miserable here. You should take her away immediately.”
“Virgil wouldn’t let me do that before and he certainly won’t let me do it now,” Noemí said. “She’s under lock and key, at any rate, isn’t she? As if I could even see her for a minute right now. Your mother is furious at me—”
“Then you should leave,” he said brusquely.
“I can’t leave!”
First she considered the immense disappointment she’d cause her father. He’d sent her as an ambassador, to squelch scandal and provide answers, and she would return home empty-handed. Their deal would be void—no master’s degree for her, ever—and worse than that, she hated the taste of failure.
Besides, she didn’t dare to go anywhere with Catalina in this state. What if she should need her? How could she hurt Catalina and then run off? How could she leave her all alone, racked in pain?
“She’s my family,” Noemí said. “You must stand by your family.”
“Even if you can’t possibly help her?”
“You don’t know that.”
“This is no place for you,” he assured her.
“Have they asked you to chase me away?” she asked, standing up quickly, irritated by his sudden vehemence. “Are you trying to get rid of me? Do you dislike me so much?”
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