Part 19 (1/2)
He nodded, finally breathing easy in the familiar, combative atmosphere he had expected. He almost sounded cheerful. ”Like Fernanda said, we were expecting this from you. My lawyers are ready, Monica. Go ahead and just try to touch our money.”
Despite her anger, Monica felt a string of sadness for this end. Bruce and Alma had been right, these people were unworthy. Still, she had seen that little trace of humanity at the mention of her grandmother-a little nugget of emotion, a pearl of love lost in a field of greed. It was all she needed. She could move on without the Borreros now.
chapter 23 THE ROAD BACK.
Alma and Claudia took Monica to the San Salvador airport. ”My guess is that it'll be a good six months before you have to come back,” Claudia said. ”We found the original will, before the family had Magnolia rewrite it. You could end up with one-third of Borr-Lac, the house in San Salvador, and Caracol. As for Fernanda and Marco, they both had their professional licenses revoked. That's the best we can expect, given their contacts and the network of muscle behind the family. The best possible scenario is getting the venom-trial family members back here to give testimony. I'd just advise you to be careful. Stay as far away from the Borreros as possible. You never know what they'd do to hold on to their money.”
Monica said, ”Will wants to help you shut them down at all cost. He said he'd fly back ten times if need be.”
”Who's picking you up at the airport?” Alma asked.
”My friend Paige,” Monica said, then, in a soft, chaste voice, ”and Will.”
”Not Kevin?” Claudia said.
”Kevin and I broke up a few days ago,” Monica said. ”He got asked out by our city mayor's daughter, a girl he knew from grade school. He said he was calling to give me a chance to stop him from going out with her. But I didn't. I threw that fish back into the water, as they say.”
”But why?” Claudia said. ”Why would you let a perfectly good man slip away?”
Monica smiled. ”Kevin ... Kevin was born in Milford and Kevin will die in Milford. He's very involved in town politics. In fact, a long time ago, he told me he'd like to be mayor of Milford, so whether he knows it or not, this is the girl he's going to marry. I took it as a sign.”
”You're okay then?” Alma said.
”Yeah.”
”And Will?” Claudia said, giving Monica a sideways look.
”I'm sure we'll be friends for life” is all Monica would volunteer for now. She turned to her mother. ”Mom, do you remember your credo on how to judge a man?”
Alma squinted. ”What credo?”
”You said that as women we should only choose men who can change the world, deliver justice, save what's precious, bring exceptional beauty to the world, or at the very least, deliver it of pain.”
Alma shook her head. ”I said that? Really? ... No wonder I'm still alone.” The flight attendant announced the seating groups. ”Christmas break,” she said, grabbing Monica by the elbows. ”Think about it. I know you would love Costa Rica.”
Monica felt a flood of relief as she walked down the Jetway and onto the aircraft that would transport her back home to Connecticut. She looked over her shoulder and saw the two women waving good-bye. She felt so emotionally raw that she longed to go home, to be alone for a few days to go grocery shopping, do her laundry, clean out the freezer-to examine the last few weeks' events from the safe perch of distance and solitude. Up in the air, Monica stared out the tiny window of the airplane. Below, the quilt of farms and the musculature of El Salvador's mountains and volcanoes pulled away from her vision and evaporated into mist.
Monica would tell Paige and Will, on the ride home, that she hadn't forgiven her mother yet, nor did she completely trust her. But she admitted that she had begun to feel something akin to peace after the ceremony on the boat. ”She looked so sad when she tossed the flowers in her mother's name,” Monica said. ”I saw a level of pain and regret in her face that made me turn away, like I was invading her privacy. Later, I thought, 'Good, it should should hurt. We used to be a family.' ” hurt. We used to be a family.' ”
NOW THAT THE FOG of mystery that had surrounded Alma's disappearance was cleared, Monica felt that it was her duty to correct all the mistakes of the past as best she could. Alma had rejected the role of heiress, and she obviously had no regrets. But Monica had so many loving memories of her grandparents and her childhood (an idyllic time she thought of as ”BA”-”before the affair”) that she didn't share the same repulsion toward inheriting her grandparents' property. Monica knew in her heart that her grandparents had never intended to disinherit their only granddaughter. They would gladly have skipped a generation and given it all to Monica had they foreseen the events that would follow Abuela's death. of mystery that had surrounded Alma's disappearance was cleared, Monica felt that it was her duty to correct all the mistakes of the past as best she could. Alma had rejected the role of heiress, and she obviously had no regrets. But Monica had so many loving memories of her grandparents and her childhood (an idyllic time she thought of as ”BA”-”before the affair”) that she didn't share the same repulsion toward inheriting her grandparents' property. Monica knew in her heart that her grandparents had never intended to disinherit their only granddaughter. They would gladly have skipped a generation and given it all to Monica had they foreseen the events that would follow Abuela's death.
The living Borreros were a formidable legal opponent-but between Bruce, Alma, and Claudia there was an impressive a.r.s.enal of contacts and long-buried friends.h.i.+ps in high places that could possibly level the battlefield. Monica was back home, putting away her folded laundry, when she started to plan what she would do with all that money.
Monica wanted to convert the land around Negrarena into a preserve. She wanted to re-create her paradise so that other children could experience it as she had. She wanted to travel back and forth as she pleased between her two worlds, Connecticut and El Salvador. To have a baby someday. To roam the beach and teach her child to identify sea creatures, to pa.s.s on the secrets that those seash.e.l.ls were still whispering in her ear.
Perhaps Negrarena's destiny was locked in the past, in the mire of mistakes and betrayals of the Borrero family. Perhaps it was no coincidence that her maternal great-grandfather had been a doctor and that she was a physical therapist. Maybe her destiny as the abandoned child was a cleansing of the family greed, a purification of the past into a future of simplicity-a return to the old values of land and sea, of family, community, and healing.
chapter 24 THE LANGUAGE OF WATER.
Several days after she arrived back in Connecticut, Monica put on a swimsuit and sat on the rock wall just outside her cottage, facing Long Island Sound. The sound of nearby voices made her turn her head. Her neighbors were on their patio preparing to barbecue. They waved and shouted, lifting their gla.s.ses to her. Monica waved but declined their invitation to join them. She turned back to the water. Her heart was heavy.
Since Monica had chosen to remain in El Salvador for an extra week, she had missed Yvette's burial. Two days after returning to Connecticut, Monica had cut an armful of blue hydrangeas from her garden, got in her car, and followed Sylvia's directions to the cemetery until she found the landmark she was looking for. She got out of her car and walked up a gra.s.sy, sloping hill. A short distance away, at the bottom of the slope, she saw Will. His back was to her, and he was seated on a white folding chair across from Yvette's marker. His head was bowed in grief or prayer, and Monica couldn't tell if his shoulders were shaking or if it was just the wind rippling across the light fabric of his s.h.i.+rt. Her first instinct was to comfort him; to shout his name and run down the hill to embrace him. Instead, she put the flowers down in the middle of the path and took a step back. She quietly slipped into her car and went home.
The gray water lapped at the edge of the rock wall and Monica dipped in a foot, then the other, and slipped off the wall into the knee-high water. She winced. Even in summer, the Sound was so much colder than Negrarena. The breeze sweeping over the water carried the scent of fresh seaweed, and Monica imagined the motion of their strands as they swayed in the liquid wind below. Once her feet no longer touched bottom, she filled her lungs, dropped her head, and kicked down into the dim silence. She immediately sensed the presence of a million mollusks gurgling and burrowing deeper into their hideaways just below the surface of the sand.
I'm becoming one of them, she thought, recalling the generational chain of sh.e.l.l seekers-Alma, Abuela, and the greatgrandfather who had studied the still-at-large furiosus. furiosus. Back in El Salvador, Alma had told Monica that her research into the family tree had yielded even more ancestral connections to the sea, and especially to seash.e.l.ls. ”Our bones are coated with mother-of-pearl,” Alma had said. ”Our aquatic intelligence is just the delay of our evolution, a mutant inability to forget our lives as lower forms.” Back in El Salvador, Alma had told Monica that her research into the family tree had yielded even more ancestral connections to the sea, and especially to seash.e.l.ls. ”Our bones are coated with mother-of-pearl,” Alma had said. ”Our aquatic intelligence is just the delay of our evolution, a mutant inability to forget our lives as lower forms.”
Monica had laughed and said, ”Where do do you get these ideas?” But she'd cast her eyes to one side because it also sounded perfectly true. you get these ideas?” But she'd cast her eyes to one side because it also sounded perfectly true.
Underwater, Monica opened her eyes, feeling the sharp sting of salt. She swam near the rocky bottom, following its gentle downward slope. She looked up at the wall of light floating above her. She saw the shape of a single maple leaf touch down on the surface. Monica was suddenly struck with a sense of deja vu-coupled with the certainty that what she was looking at somehow held an echo of Yvette Lucero's life, and even more so when she swam up toward the leaf and it hastened its drift away from her reach.
When Monica's foot touched bottom again, she lifted her face up to the sun, filling her aching lungs with the damp summer air. How strange and inexplicable How strange and inexplicable, she thought, for a human being to understand the language of water. for a human being to understand the language of water. And there, in the lackl.u.s.ter gray chop of the Connecticut sh.o.r.e, Monica received her inheritance-or perhaps just now fully recognized the rarity and wonder of that gift. In the curling symmetry of the waves all around her, she deciphered a kind of handwriting in motion. It told of the sea's precision, of its unbroken circling of the world, of its solemn duty to clean, kill, and create. She was astonished that her mother had been right about so many things. Now Monica saw the obvious parallel between the sea and the life span of a soul: it paraded across the horizon in a hurried and glimmering journey with no beginning and no end. And there, in the lackl.u.s.ter gray chop of the Connecticut sh.o.r.e, Monica received her inheritance-or perhaps just now fully recognized the rarity and wonder of that gift. In the curling symmetry of the waves all around her, she deciphered a kind of handwriting in motion. It told of the sea's precision, of its unbroken circling of the world, of its solemn duty to clean, kill, and create. She was astonished that her mother had been right about so many things. Now Monica saw the obvious parallel between the sea and the life span of a soul: it paraded across the horizon in a hurried and glimmering journey with no beginning and no end.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
I wish to thank my husband, Bob Barron, who gifted me with several invaluable commodities: time to write, a writer's sanctuary in our home, instant readers.h.i.+p, and great in-house editing. Thank you, Bob, for all your love and support.
I wish to thank the bookends of my life-my father, Juan A. Rodriguez, who taught me to love reading, and my mother, Yolanda del Cid de Rodriguez, whose job it was to make sure that this pa.s.sion didn't render me completely antisocial.
When the student is ready, the master will appear. And indeed, they did. A million thanks to John Dufresne for his superb coaching and infinite patience; to James W. Hall and Meri-Jane Rochelson for their editorial advice; and to the faculty and students at FIU who shaped my writing and made the MFA experience one of the highlights of my life.
For consultation on the scientific and medical aspects of the book, I would like to thank Dr. Jose H. Leal and the staff at the Bailey-Matthews Sh.e.l.l Museum in Sanibel, Florida, and Dr. Jeffrey L. Horstmyer, chief of neurology at Mercy Hospital in Miami, for taking the time to speak with me. I also wish to acknowledge my reliance on the cone sh.e.l.ls and conotoxins Web site maintained by Dr. Bruce Livett at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Any fabrications in these areas are my own and certainly not attributable to these sources.
I also wish to thank my aunt and uncle, Ana and Perry Pederson, for fond (and useful) memories aboard their sailboats, and for advising me on matters involving sailing off the New England coast.