Part 16 (2/2)

Monica looked into her mother's eyes then, looked at her as an adult for the first time. She didn't intend to judge, at least not in that moment-but rather to understand her mother from the perspective of a woman, a grown woman who was now entangled in her own morally dubious relations.h.i.+p. In those dark, terribly familiar eyes she saw Alma's shame at using Monica, at asking her own child to lie to her father, at failing to s.h.i.+eld her from l.u.s.t, from disaster, from pain and war and death. Perhaps she had been right to go away, Monica thought. She was indeed unfit.

Monica stood. ”If you really want peace, Mom, then begin with Dad,” she said, remembering Marcy's words on the Fourth of July about Alma's ghost. The entire family needed this exorcism, this purging of the past, and Monica knew that her father had been the one most haunted. Monica briefly grabbed her father's hand and said, ”This man spent the last fifteen years thinking that he killed the woman he loved.”

Now Alma was looking at her husband, her eyes heavy, her lips pressed together. With as much delicacy as she could muster, Monica said, ”You let Dad and Abuela both live with that awful burden, Mom. It's time for you two to talk about that. If my father can forgive you, Mother, then I can.” Monica turned and bear-hugged her father at the shoulders. She could see sweat beaded up on his scalp and his skin looked pale. ”I'll be up at the station with Claudia and Will. Call to me when you're ready.” She got up and walked away, leaving her parents alone for the first time in fifteen years, the tension between them broiling in the thick, salt-laden air.

BRUCE LEANED FORWARD. He pointed at his own heart. ”She's right-you could have saved us a lot of trouble by just asking me for a divorce.” He pointed at his own heart. ”She's right-you could have saved us a lot of trouble by just asking me for a divorce.”

Alma had her arms folded in front of her, a defensive position. ”You just didn't do that back then, in Salvadoran society. It wasn't even an option.”

”Bulls.h.i.+t. You weren't a convent novice. You were a selfish coward.”

”I blamed you and my mother. I wanted something far worse than a divorce.”

”Ah, now we're getting to the truth.” Bruce scratched his scalp and c.o.c.ked his head to the side. ”I understand punishment. I wanted to punish you for cheating. But I wasn't going to take it out on Monica.”

Alma pointed her finger at him. ”I didn't take it out on Monica, I spared her. That's how I saw it at the time. You were a good father, and I was a bad mother. After I felt strong enough to resume my life and recognize my mistakes, I no longer had any right to her. Am I wrong?”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. ”No, you're absolutely right. And I am the better parent. Take just now, for instance. All these years I've been trying to s.h.i.+eld her from the knowledge that what she told me that day triggered your death, and you just blurt it all out.”

Alma shook her head. ”But I'm not dead.”

”But others did die.”

”Putting everything on the table is the best thing. She's almost thirty, for G.o.d's sake.”

Bruce exhaled slowly. Alma gripped the edge of the bench with both hands and said, ”I'm so sorry I ruined your life, Bruce. I never loved you, you know that. I should have been braver, I should have defied my parents and just followed my heart from the beginning.” She made a cutting motion with her hand. ”I don't expect you to forgive me. But I do want to say I'm sorry for my actions, because I am.”

He stood. ”Feel sorry for yourself. You've ruined every chance life gave you to be loved.”

She looked down at her toes, pushed the sand about. When she looked up, he saw himself reflected in those impossibly dark eyes. Eyes were supposed to be the mirror of the soul, he thought. They weren't supposed to reflect back your own image. He remembered suddenly that there had always been something terribly lonely about loving Alma, and that was it. You only saw yourself reflected back, you never got a glimpse of what was inside. She pulled at his wrist and said, ”Don't go.”

He sat. ”Why?”

”Because,” she said, lifting her fringed eyelids to reveal those black-mirrored irises with no pupil, no center, no heart of vision.

But she was right, there was more to say. He looked into her face, taking in the eternally swollen lips, the double accent marks of her eyebrows, the high swell of her cheekbones, and for a moment, he spoke to the face, not to the woman. ”I accept responsibility for getting caught up in your beauty. I chose chose you despite the fact that you told me over and over you didn't want to marry me or have my child. I saw you and Maximiliano together that first weekend your mother invited me to the beach and I chose to ignore it. When your father sent Max away to keep you apart, I seized the chance. That's my contribution to the baggage than ended up on Monica's lap. All I ask of you now is that you make sure that Monica never knows that you didn't want to have her.” you despite the fact that you told me over and over you didn't want to marry me or have my child. I saw you and Maximiliano together that first weekend your mother invited me to the beach and I chose to ignore it. When your father sent Max away to keep you apart, I seized the chance. That's my contribution to the baggage than ended up on Monica's lap. All I ask of you now is that you make sure that Monica never knows that you didn't want to have her.”

Alma winced, remembering the pain of that failed attempt at an abortion. ”That was destiny. That child was meant to live.” She nodded her head and looked away. ”I'll do whatever you say, Bruce. I feel as if life is granting me another chance, if only to seize the peace that honesty can bring.”

Bruce pursed his lips and nodded. ”Good.”

They sat in silence for a moment, then Bruce said, ”I have some things to ask of you if you're serious about starting a clean slate.”

Alma just raised an eyebrow and looked at him.

Bruce said, ”First, you're going to have to come out from under your rock. We're going to get a good lawyer and you're going to strip the Borreros of everything that belonged to your parents.” He held his hand up just as she began to protest. ”I don't care if it's uncomfortable for you. I don't care what your feelings about money are these days. You're going to force your relatives, and the law, to recognize Monica as the rightful heir to whatever is left of her grandparents' a.s.sets, which by now have tripled. You can start there.”

Alma opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, then closed it. She held her chin up. ”What else?”

”And then you're going to sit down with Claudia Credo”-he pointed toward the marine station-”and tell her everything you know about cone-venom-based drugs and that clinic. Let the health department know who you are and why you're here and what concerns you have with what's going on at Clinica Caracol.”

Alma bit her lip and finally nodded. ”Okay.”

”And no disappearing act. Alma, you had better be reliable and available for this.”

She put up her hands. ”I promise.”

He raised his chin and squinted at her. ”I was married to you for thirteen years. I don't trust you.”

”Technically, you still are.”

He frowned. ”Well, I guess that's the third thing. I'm going to need a divorce.”

Alma nodded and stood. She picked up the dried seed of an almond fruit and tossed it at the spider monkey. ”It'll be my gift to you, Bruce.”

Bruce kicked at the sand. ”I won't be seeing much of you again, but Monica is an adult and I'm not going to interfere with whatever she decides to do. You're on your own with her, Alma.”

”If I do these three things ...” Her voice trailed off.

Bruce nodded. ”Then she'll forgive you.”

chapter 19 EMERGING.

To keep his hands busy and calm his increasingly frazzled nerves, Will began to play with the baby sea turtles. He was encouraging a wrestling match between the two most aggressive ones. While everyone else kneeled on the sand and played with the tiny creatures, Claudia sat with Alma on a cement bench nearby. Alma said, ”As I moved from guerrilla camp to camp, I discovered that the poor and the idealistic can be just as arrogant and dishonest as the rich. I came to realize that my ancestors worked hard to obtain their money. They were intelligent, focused people who didn't exploit anyone, and they deserved what they accrued.”

”But your parents, if not your ancestors, were a bit of the elitist stereotype, no?” Claudia asked.

”My parents were the third generation, and that's when the fruit starts to rot,” Alma said. ”My parents didn't exploit the workers on our properties-at least not by local standards-but they were cold in their hearts, so removed were they from the humility of the poor. And as the sea carried me that day, I remembered exactly what drove Max to fight against the status quo. Everything came down to a memory, the story of which he retold many times. On the day of my seventh birthday party, he stood in line behind the other kids waiting for his turn at an enormous yellow pinata shaped like an airplane. Several kids took a turn at whacking it, and still n.o.body could break it open. Max grew more and more excited as his turn approached. When someone finally pa.s.sed the club to him, my mother stepped forward and said, in front of everyone, 'These games aren't for you, Maxito. Go get a garbage bag from the kitchen and help your mother pick up all this trash.'

”I never forgot the humiliation and frustration in his face,” Alma said. ”Turns out that the expression on his face foreshadowed the feelings of an entire nation.” She folded her arms and shook her head. ”I never understood how you could work for the military, Claudia.”

Claudia shrugged. ”Some of us need jobs, Alma. I didn't have a trust fund waiting for me in Miami.”

Alma bowed her head, conceding the point. ”We each make our decisions based on what we need at the moment, don't we?”

”That we do.” Claudia slid her sungla.s.ses over her eyes and folded her hands together. She looked at Monica and smiled.

”So, Monica?”

Monica looked at all of them self-consciously. ”So Claudia?”

”So is everything resolved between you two?”

Monica shook her head at the boldness and indiscretion of the question. While she really wanted to say something cutting, she knew it was a cultural quirk and was completely unintentional. She searched to find more gentle words. Alma seemed to sink into her own shoulders. ”I feel more in control of my past, and therefore my life, Claudia.”

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