Gaudi Afternoon (20 page)

It was about one o'clock, and the heat was building steadily. I left Ben and Frankie at La Pedrera with strict instructions to rest a little, and promised to call them if and when I came up with anything. Then I walked up to the Diagonal metro station and got on the green line going north.

If I started from the premise that April, who didn't like children much, had indeed taken Delilah last night, what would she be doing with her today? She certainly wouldn't be inside playing cards. She might, in fact, be at the most obvious place of all.

When I found April she was sitting on the serpentine bench that wriggled around the elevated plaza at the Parc Güell. The bright fragments of mosaics glittered in the sun, a tile kaleidoscope of Mozarabic hexagons and romantic
fleurs de lis
, of diamond shapes and spirals, blues, yellows, oranges, discarded slivers from the tile factory pieced lovingly together again. Rumor had it that Gaudí had formed the curvatures of the benches by asking workmen to sit bare-assed on the wet cement, and something of that erotic request remained in the shape of the seats.

April was in pale yellow rayon, like a luscious jonquil. Her black hair coiled and curled over the ample shoulders of her tunic and her broad legs were softly encased down to her buttery socks and ever-present Birkenstock sandals. She looked like spring, except for the expression on her face, which was infinitely melancholy. She was reading deeply in a book entitled, in large letters,
STRUGGLE FOR INTIMACY.

There was no sign of Delilah playing with the other children.

I slid into a warm mosaic seat next to her.

“April,” I said. “Where have you been? All my life, I mean?”

“Oh Cassandra,” she said, right on cue. “I was hoping to see you before my plane left.”

“What do you mean, before your plane leaves?”

Her big black eyes were like blackberries, wet with a hint of purple.

“I have a flight to London tonight. Then I'll be flying back to San Francisco.”

“I don't understand.”

“No,” she sighed. “Don't try to. Just accept.”

“But Ben? And what about Delilah?”

“It wasn't working out. However much Ben wanted it to, we couldn't manage it. I need to be careful of women who want to sweep me off my feet. I'm an Adult Child,” she confided.

I looked at her book. It was well-thumbed.

“You too?” she said.

“If you mean was my dad a sweet old Irish lush before his heart attack, yes; I am the grown-up child of this man. But I have good memories of him.”

“You have intimacy problems, don't you Cassandra?”

This conversation wasn't going the way I wanted it to. “My life is a series of one-night stands and that's the way I like it,” I said. “Now back to you, Miss Schauer. You're obviously not into casual sex, you're into commitment. So why are you really leaving your lover and her little girl?”

“Because Ben's true relationship is with Frankie, not me.”

“Don't be daft. They're always fighting.”

“They fight because they care a lot about each other. They always have.” April stroked the cover of her book. “Frankie and Ben share a child. They both love her very much.”

“They've got some funny ways of showing it.”

“I did my best to find a place for myself in Ben's life. But I couldn't get along with Delilah. I don't like Delilah. And I was jealous of the relationship that Frankie and Ben had.”

“Is that why you kidnapped Delilah? To punish them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don't give me that, April. Delilah disappeared from the jazz club last night. Ben and Frankie didn't know she was there. You're the only one who could have known.”

“But, but… No! I didn't know! I mean, I knew Hamilton knew that Frankie had taken her to that hotel and I guessed that he kidnapped her the next morning. But I didn't know… oh my god. Where could she be?”

“Let me see your plane ticket.”

She pulled out her straw bag and fumbled through it. It was a single one-way fare to San Francisco by way of London.

And it occurred to me that April would have the same problem absconding with Delilah that Frankie would have had. Delilah was on Ben's passport, and April knew that.

“All right,” I said. “Let's leave Delilah aside for the moment. Tell me about Hamilton.”

Her dark eyes blinked. “What about him?”

“How did you meet him? The real story.”

April paused. “He's my stepbrother.”

“Your father was the one who married his mother? The mother in the Village?”

“Yes.” April paused. “My mother and father met in Barcelona in the '30s. My mother was Czech, my father German. Jews. They thought Spain was safe, they bought an apartment—”

“In La Pedrera!”

April nodded. “But in 1942 they got out again. To New York. I was born a few years later, the only child. My mother died. My father married Nerissa Kincaid, Hamilton's mother. She's an alcoholic. It… it bound us together.”

“He said you met in high school. Why didn't he just say that you were his stepsister? Why haven't you said anything before? Why doesn't Ben know?”

April stared at her book. “Hamilton and I both have a problem around telling people about certain things. We have Shame Issues.”

“He told me about the struggle between his parents for custody. But he never mentioned you.”

“I… we… what I'm saying is that we were close in adolescence, but we lost touch. He stayed in New York and went to school while I moved out to San Francisco and… came out. That's when we got in contact again. But he wanted to live abroad. So I sublet him the apartment.”

“The apartment is actually yours then?”

“Yes.”

“Oh April, April, you've made things so complicated,” I said. “Yesterday you said you had something to tell me. Was this it? About Hamilton?”

She looked out at the sea. “Yes and no. Today I've realized that nothing is as important as we make it. You might understand, but you might not. Let's just cherish the time we've had together and thank the Goddess that we're still alive to struggle and change.”

I took out
Stories the Feet Can Tell
. “Well, anyway, thanks for loaning this to me. I picked up a couple of useful tips.”

I stood up, a little disappointed, but not really. In my profession you meet a lot of people. You can have them for a little while, but not forever.

“I'm sure we'll run into each other again, April,” I said. “I don't mean in another life. But maybe at a march sometime.”

“You have a good aura, Cassandra,” April said, clutching her book. “Blessed be.”

I always associate the end of the
siesta
in Spain with the sound of aluminum shop doors being rolled up again and fastened. The traffic picks up and people who have been sitting on benches along the streets or in cafés reading the newspapers reluctantly get up and go back to work.

I headed back to Ana's apartment, but she still wasn't there. On the answering machine were messages from Ben saying they hadn't found Delilah, from Frankie saying they hadn't found Delilah and from Hamilton saying he'd like to talk to me. I wondered when April was planning to tell them all she was leaving. To be on the safe side, I thought, at least one of us should be at the airport.

I was tired but reluctant to lie down after my nightmare the day before. I wandered into Ana's workroom to take another look at her progress with the houses, especially her amoeba shapes. I saw that she had lined one of them with velvet and experimented with joining them together. I bent down to investigate further and saw a bright blue sock and a white sneaker protruding from the fiberglass shape.

There was a small girl coiled in one of the ovular forms, like a mollusk in a shell. She had thin blond hair and glasses and was quite asleep.

I
HEARD ANA COME IN
the front door.

“You have some explaining to do,” I told her when she appeared in the workroom.

“It was just for a little while,” Ana said nervously.

“That's what they've all said.”

“Well, you disappeared so quickly yesterday and I thought of the poor kid sitting in the kitchen playing cards all night… And I wanted very much to show her my houses and—”

“But why is she still here? Why didn't you contact her mothers?”

“She asked me not to.”

“That's hard to believe.”

Ana grew defensive. “She did. She said she didn't want to go back to everybody fighting over her. So I took her around Barcelona today, we went up to Poble Espanyol and took the funicular and then rowed a boat on the little lake in Ciutadella. You know, they hadn't really taken her anywhere, those mothers, they'd been too busy with their own affairs. And it was nice for me too, so nice being with a child.”

I saw the white sneaker moving slightly.

“Are you awake, Delilah?”

“Uh-hmm,” the mollusk answered.

I went over and looked at her. She wasn't a pretty child, but she had a sense of herself that I liked.

“Well, I don't need to tell you that everybody has been looking like crazy for you.”

“Except April.”

“I don't think April is going to be in the picture much anymore,” I said. “If that makes you feel better. She's going back to America tonight by herself.”

“That's good,” Delilah said, and for the first time she looked happy. “So it will just be me and Ben and Frankie?”

“Yes, if they can work something out.”

“I
hope
so,” Delilah said, and began to crawl out of her shell. She stopped and looked at me. “You know the real reason that April didn't like me?”

“Well…”

“'Cause I figured out she was a boy.”

“What!” both Ana and I said.

Delilah nodded sagely. “She was. Just like Frankie. A boy that turned into a girl.”

“That's impossible, Delilah, you're confused. I mean, it's understandable that you would be confused, the way you've grown up. But I can assure you that April is not and never was a boy.”

“Was too.” Delilah made as if to curl back up in the shell.

“Okay, if you say so.” Jeez, this kid needed counseling. And fast.

Delilah reluctantly climbed out.

“You ready to go back to Ben and Frankie?”

“Yeah. I guess.” She turned to Ana. “Will you come with us?”

Ana was touched. You could tell she was having a struggle not to kidnap Delilah forever.

“I'll take you on the
moto
,” she said.

“What about me?”

“It's just two blocks, Cassandra.”

So I followed them on foot. Soon, soon, soon this would be all be over and I'd be on my way to London and then Bucharest. Tomorrow perhaps, after one last passionate night with Carmen. Anymore and she'd be demanding that I move here. She was already demanding that I let my hair grow again.

The white waves of La Pedrera gushed around the corner and I saw Hamilton coming towards me from the Provença door.

“I met Ana and Delilah at the elevator,” he said. “I'm so glad she's safe. It was a stupid thing for me to do, to take her from Frankie's hotel. It just made things more complicated.”

There was no need to respond to that. I gestured to one of the white mosaic benches that seemed to emerge whole from the sidewalk of the Passeig de Gràcia. We sat.

“Hamilton,” I said. “Why didn't you tell me that April was your stepsister?”

He started. “You've seen April?”

“At the Parc Güell. She told me the whole story of your childhood. She's on her way back to San Francisco tonight. She said she realized it would never work with Ben.”

He was silent for an instant. “She told you the whole story?”

“Well, I think so. About her parents and your mother and the drinking and everything.”

“Not the whole story then.”

“What's the mystery here? Lots of people come from broken homes, lots of people come out, what's the big deal?”

Hamilton stared across the street at the rippling bulk of La Pedrera.

“April wasn't my stepsister.”

“Oh god. Don't tell me she made that all up.”

“Not exactly.”

“What then?”

“She was my stepbrother.”

“Stepbrother as in boy-brother?”

“Albert.”

I leaped up and then sat back down again. “So Delilah was right.”

Hamilton just nodded.

“Jesus Christ Almighty,” I swore. “Does Ben know? No, of course Ben doesn't have a clue. Frankie must not either. Je-sus Christ.”

“I'm not sure, but my guess is that when April got involved with Ben she didn't know about Frankie. Ben wasn't so eager for anyone to find out that she'd been married to a male-female transsexual. April may have thought that Delilah had a father she visited every weekend. But at some point she realized that Ben had huge problems with Frankie's transsexuality. Would April tell her if she thought that? Would you?”

“Probably not,” I admitted.

“And the longer their relationship went on the more impossible it probably felt to discuss it. And then there was Delilah. Maybe Delilah said something to her. Maybe that's why she didn't like Delilah. I'm almost certain that's why she left San Francisco for Barcelona.”

The hot spring afternoon was turning now to evening as Hamilton and I sat on the white bench looking at La Pedrera. A tinge of pink and peach from the sunset colored its porous surface, and it pulsed with undulant vitality, an expanding space rather than a static geometric configuration. It was wonderful—even so, if I'd only seen the outside I wouldn't have known that the real beauty of the building lay in the finely finished interior details, in its swirls of plaster and curves of dark woods, in the shapes of its rooms and the coils of its stairways.