Something She's Not Telling Us

by Darcey Bell

  She smiled into the camera. Her hair was blond and shiny, her face open and trusting. She had a little mole on her cheek. She must have really loved whoever took that picture.

  “Is the door locked?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” said Granny Edith.

  “Check,” I said. “Please check. You know that poor young woman was murdered in her own house—”

  “I’ll check later,” she said.

  Grandpa Frank said I needed to get back on the horse that threw me. I should look for another job. It was good advice, except that the horse had run away, leaving no trace in the stable.

  Granny Edith’s voice was unusually sharp when she said, “What you need, Ruthie, is to get away for a bit. Travel. We’ll be fine without you. I promise to keep the door locked. Isn’t there anywhere you want to go?”

  It was the perfect moment to ask if they could pay for a ticket to Mexico for Rocco’s mom’s sixtieth birthday party. They liked the sound of Rocco, though they hadn’t met him yet.

  Grandpa Frank asked, “When are we going to meet him?”

  “Soon,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Let’s celebrate,” said Granny Edith. “Drive out to our picnic spot and have a bite to eat.”

  It wasn’t clear what we were celebrating, and it was a cold day. But I never refused to go.

  “Can you drive?” I asked Grandpa Frank. “I mean, do you feel like driving?”

  My grandfather began his stupid poem: James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree took great care of his mother, though he was only three.

  Grandpa recited it like a threat. Or did I just imagine that because I was paranoid?

  Grandpa Frank drove to the picnic spot. We ate my grandma’s fried chicken and drank her homemade lemonade and watched the light sparkle on the river.

  It always cheered me up. I felt ready to go back out and face the world.

  Meanwhile I was going to Mexico. ¡Adios, abuelitos!

  16

  Charlotte

  As soon as they leave Chef Basil’s and step out into the burnished Oaxacan sunlight, Charlotte says, “Thank God Rocco wasn’t there.”

  Ruth gives her a puzzled look, then hesitates at the corner. Charlotte knows how to get back to Mom’s, so that makes her the leader. She crosses to the shady side of the street, and they fall into step.

  Ruth says, “Rocco likes good food. Your brother’s got political principles. But give him a good meal, and he’s yours. It runs in the family, Charlotte. You and Eli like to eat. And Daisy eats a wider range than most kids her age. You probably have to watch out for her in Mexico. Stuff can make kids sick. Is the water at your mom’s okay to drink? I’ve been embarrassed to ask.”

  Daisy! That Charlotte has forgotten her for an hour is alarming. Irrational, really. Daisy’s with Mom, who loves her and will take good care of her. It’s Mom’s city. She’s better qualified than Charlotte to navigate these streets with a child.

  Mom set fire to their childhood home. Mom tried to murder Rocco. That Charlotte’s not supposed to remember makes it harder to forget. Mom is a different person now. Responsible. Together. Well . . . reasonably together.

  Charlotte says, “The city water’s fine. Plus Mom’s got a filtration system.”

  “Glad to hear it,” says Ruth. “Hey, let’s go check out this fabulous antiques shop.” She points at a cluttered, grimy window. “Do we have time?”

  Charlotte trails Ruth into the tiny store. Why has she never noticed this shop, crammed with marvelous paintings, textiles and furniture, treasure and junk? A dusty skylight lets in just enough sun for customers to see what everything is. Toward the front of the shop is a case of antique wristwatches.

  Ruth says, “Wouldn’t one of these make a great gift for Rocco?”

  Maybe, maybe not.

  The store is a cabinet of wonders, crammed with old religious paintings, picture frames made from tiny seashells, bits of embroidery, tinted portrait photographs. Charlotte drifts toward the back of the shop, hoping to find a dollhouse or an antique doll that Daisy might like, though she knows that modern kids sometimes think old dolls are scary.

  On one wall are several rows of wooden masks: conquistadors, mermaids, snakes, eagles with giant beaks. The most amazing mask is in the dead center of the wall. Obviously very old, it’s divided into two halves. On one side is an angel, on the other a grinning scarlet devil. A thin chain dangles down between the two sections.

  Charlotte’s startled when one of the masks says, “Pull the chain.”

  The talking mask, which has the face of an old man with two wings of slicked-down gray hair, yawns and lifts its chin. Charlotte utters a little yelp of fear.

  It’s not a mask that has spoken to her, but the shop’s elderly proprietor. Judging from his sly chuckle, she assumes he often plays this trick on new customers.

  Again he motions at the angel-devil mask and gestures for Charlotte to pull the chain. She gives it a tentative yank, and the two halves of the mask divide. The angel and devil come apart, revealing a third mask beneath them: a pretty young woman with black hair, pink cheeks, blue eyes.

  Why does the mask seem evil? Then it stops seeming evil and seems beautiful. She wants it.

  “How much?”

  “Six thousand pesos.” About three hundred dollars.

  Ruth is standing beside her. Charlotte hadn’t noticed.

  “Birthday gift for your mom?” says Ruth.

  Charlotte’s mother doesn’t want gifts. She’s threatened: If they give her anything, she’ll “regift” it to the first beggar she sees. Charlotte’s mother would love the mask, but Charlotte’s not about to spend all that money on something that Mom might give to one of the women who sit on the sidewalk in the centro.

  “Just looking,” Charlotte says. “At that mask with the angel and the devil.”

  Ruth says, “Ugh. I hate masks. I must have been scared by one as a child. I’ve always hated Halloween. Everybody swanning around in pirate and kitty-cat costumes, and I’m at Granny Edith’s with my head under the blankets. But that’s another story. Let’s go. Your mom probably needs help.”

  “Gracias, señor,” Charlotte tells the old man, who says, “Hasta luego, señora.”

  Ruth and Charlotte walk another block, then turn onto a crowded pedestrian street that leads to the zocalo. People stream toward them, locals and tourists moving at different speeds, in different rhythms, looking at different things.

  Suddenly Ruth grabs Charlotte’s forearm and pulls her through the nearest doorway, into a cavernous café. Small groups of Mexican men are drinking coffee at long bare tables. There’s no music, hardly any light, almost no conversation.

  “Stay,” Ruth says. “Don’t move. Don’t speak. That’s him. I saw him. I’m sure.” Ruth has gone rigid. Her voice is shaking. “He passed right by me. He saw me.”

  “Who?”

  “Rafael,” she says. “The guy who drove me from Mexico City. The one who took me to the place where we were swarmed by children and pretended he didn’t know what was happening. Pretended he didn’t set it up.”

  “Why didn’t you say hello? I thought everything got sorted out by the time he dropped you off.”

  Did Ruth say that? Or did Charlotte just think she did?

  “Because he’s looking for me.”

  “Why?”

  “Why does anyone look for someone else unless it’s about money?”

  Charlotte’s surprised. Ruth has always struck her as having a hippy-dippy nonchalance about finances.

  “I assume you paid him.” Charlotte regrets the sharp impatience in her voice, but it’s too late to blunt the edge.

  “Of course I paid him. In cash. Pesos. I changed money at the airport ATM. But I think he thought I didn’t give him a big enough tip. Maybe he was right. I hadn’t got the exchange rate thingy down. Maybe I undertipped him.”

  “Then why didn’t you stop him just now and say so? Apologize—give him some pesos? I
could have loaned you the money, it probably wasn’t much.”

  “I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do. Is he looking for me? Can you see him? You go check. I’m scared.”

  Ruth waits inside the café while Charlotte goes out to look. No one is stopped on the street; no one is looking for them. Rafael, if that was him, has gone on his way.

  In the café, Ruth is sitting at a table. She looks shaken.

  Charlotte says, “You can relax.”

  “It’s not that big a deal,” Ruth says. “I wouldn’t have thought about it if we didn’t pass him. I don’t think he was thinking about it, either.”

  But Ruth just said he was looking for her, looking straight at her. And now she says he wasn’t.

  “I guess I’m just being paranoid,” Ruth says. “I get that way. I haven’t been here long enough to figure out how things work, south of the border.”

  “It takes time,” says Charlotte.

  “I ordered coffees,” Ruth says. “I hope you don’t mind. All that great food at Chef Basil’s made me sleepy.”

  Charlotte minds a lot. She wants to get back to her mother’s, to see if her mother needs her help and to check up on Daisy.

  “Sure” is all she trusts herself to say.

  A girl, not much older than Daisy, brings two small black coffees.

  Ruth says, “Chef Basil’s was amazing.”

  “Amazing,” Charlotte says.

  “I need to talk to you about something.”

  Rocco, thinks Charlotte. She knew there was a problem. She’s seen it in Rocco’s face ever since he got to Oaxaca. She just wishes she was hearing about it from him.

  Ruth says, “I have a crazy question. Totally loco.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Is Daisy adopted?”

  Charlotte puts down her coffee cup.

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “She doesn’t look like you. She doesn’t look like either of you.”

  Charlotte tries to laugh. “Unless I’m getting this wrong, I gave birth to her. I was pregnant. I stayed in bed two months. And I don’t think they switched babies in the hospital.”

  “She’s not anything like you.”

  “She looks like Eli,” says Charlotte. “Everyone says so.”

  “Actually, she doesn’t,” says Ruth. “Can I ask: Is Eli Daisy’s biological dad?”

  “Of course he is. And no, you can’t ask. Why would you ask a question like that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry. Sometimes I just get this feeling about things.”

  “A wrong one.”

  “It’s like I have a sixth sense,” says Ruth.

  It’s important not to react, not to do anything to show that Charlotte’s blood pressure has spiked. Where is Ruth getting this from? How could she possibly know?

  No one knows about Daisy. Not even Eli.

  No one.

  Charlotte should have been an actress. It’s quite a performance, walking the rest of the way to her mother’s with Ruth and not seeming completely crazed.

  HOW TASTEFUL AND unpretentious and real Mom’s house looks compared to Chef Basil’s.

  “Is Mom back?” Charlotte asks Luz. “Is Daisy still gone?”

  “Your mother and Daisy are still at the market.”

  Eli and Rocco have also gone out. Luz’s husband, Paco, has driven them to check out a rug-weaving village near Monte Albán.

  Charlotte’s anxious because Daisy isn’t back yet. Fear doubles the dose of the fight-or-flight chemical that’s been running through her since Ruth asked if Eli is Daisy’s real father.

  She’s glad that Eli’s not here.

  She goes into her bedroom and dials her therapist. Ted.

  In all her years in therapy, she’s never called him except to make or break an appointment. But she needs to call him now, or she’ll never stop shaking. She doesn’t have to fake the emotions she leaves on Ted’s answering machine.

  She’s arranging flowers in the courtyard when Ted returns her call.

  Back in her bedroom, she locks the door and goes into the bathroom and runs the water. But now Ted can’t hear her, so she returns to the bedroom and tries to keep her voice steady.

  “She knows. Ruth knows the truth about Daisy. No one knows but you and me. And I didn’t tell her.”

  Ted is silent for a long time.

  “Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” Ted says. “I’m thinking.”

  Charlotte has the weirdest thought: Ted told her. But she’s just being paranoid. Ted would never betray a professional confidence. And he doesn’t know Ruth. She trusts Ted more than anyone in the world except Eli and Daisy.

  After another silence, Ted says, “Your brother’s girlfriend may have some very serious problems.”

  Charlotte’s heart sinks even lower, as if that was possible. “What do you mean?”

  “I worked with schizophrenics early in my career. And I still remember the ones—there were several of them, I recall—whose intuition was so strong, they actually seemed to have ESP. Or to be mind readers. Or something.”

  “This can’t be that,” says Charlotte. “She can’t be that good. Or that crazy.”

  “Maybe she’s not,” says Ted. “Maybe she’s taking a guess.”

  Charlotte has learned to recognize those moments when Ted is about to say something she doesn’t want to hear.

  “Look . . . I was going to tell you this when you got back . . . I didn’t want to alarm you or spoil your vacation. But . . . a young woman left a long message on my answering machine. She said she was writing a profile on Andrew John for the local paper. She wondered if I knew anything about the family that owned the land before he did. It seemed that the papers had run a story about a fire. She’d found it in the archives—”

  Charlotte says, “The local paper up there folded. A couple of years ago. There is no local paper. I’m scared. Really scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything.”

  “You can’t be scared of everything. So don’t be. Maybe this means nothing. The woman who called me—let’s assume it was Ruth—was fishing. Or stalking you. Or both. My sense is that she knows nothing. Just stay calm. Keep busy. I’ll see you when you get back.”

  “Okay,” Charlotte says unsteadily.

  “One more thing,” says Ted. “Just on the off chance that this . . . Well! We might want to begin to discuss your finally having that talk with Eli.”

  CHARLOTTE CAN’T MOVE for several minutes after her conversation with Ted. Then she goes back to the courtyard. She doesn’t want to think about the implications of what Ruth said, of what Ted said. She doesn’t want to imagine how badly—how really badly—things could go from here on. Her whole life could be upended because Ruth had some weird intuition . . .

  Daisy still isn’t back. Time refuses to pass. Charlotte takes a Xanax and lies down on her bed.

  She wakes up when Daisy runs into her room and pulls her out onto the patio.

  In one hand Daisy holds Our Mexican Adventure. And in the other she clutches her glue stick and a stack of elaborate package wrappings—soap, honey, chocolate—that Grandma got her in the market and removed from the products they’d adorned.

  Daisy sits down at the table and begins to paste the papers into her composition book.

  Later Mom and Luz string the courtyard with paper flags, lacy cutouts of skeletons, and Christmas lights in case people stay late. Mom and Daisy have bought a Bart Simpson piñata, which they hang from a clothesline. Who is the piñata for? Only one of Mom’s friends has kids, though perhaps some have visiting grandchildren.

  Charlotte and Ruth don’t look at each other, which is fine with Charlotte. How much does Ruth really know—and how does she know it? The question is spoiling everything. No matter what Charlotte does, she can’t get it out of her mind.

  THE STREET VENDORS wheel in carts of steaming tamales and tacos, tortillas to wrap around the meats that begin to sizzl
e on the grill. If Charlotte were passing by, she’d envy the people inside.

  The mariachis are arriving at eight. That’s four hours into the party. What if the guests (some are older than Mom) leave before the musicians come? But Reyna, Mom’s closest Mexican friend, a young woman who works with her in the American Library, has told her: It’s a common mistake gringos make. They bring in the mariachis too early, before everyone has had enough to drink. Sober, the guests think the mariachis are corny. After a few margaritas, they love it.

  By five, no guests have arrived. Maybe the expats are trying to operate on “Mexican time,” to rid themselves of the tight schedules that, in their former lives, made them show up on the dot.

  Surely Mom expected this. But she looks forlorn, like a child afraid that no one will come to her party. It reminds Charlotte of how Mom looked just before she abandoned Rocco and Charlotte and retreated upstairs to play the madwoman in the attic. She was always a difficult person, and even though Charlotte knows that her mother had been ill when they needed her most . . . she was never a great mother. Not even close. Plus she set the house on fire with Rocco inside it.

  Charlotte is glad that she has grown up enough to be happy that Mom has found a community that cares about her and probably doesn’t know much about her past.

  Daisy senses her grandmother’s sadness and goes and sits in her lap. She’s more relaxed and chattier than she is with Charlotte or even Eli.

  Charlotte doesn’t like feeling competitive about her daughter, especially when she’s competing against her own mother. Daisy’s grandma. It’s much worse when she feels that way about Ruth.

  Ruth and Daisy like each other. So Charlotte does everything she can to make sure that they are never alone together. Something feels creepy—almost dangerous—about the way Ruth acts around Daisy. And though Charlotte tries to tell herself that she’s imagining things, she can’t shake her growing sense of dread.

  Daisy gets Our Mexican Adventure and shows Mom, which leads to more laughs and grandmotherly kisses.