Haunted Legends (18 page)

Already, on her first afternoon, she’d bought three little boxes with crosses and Marys on the lids, a pair of long silver earrings with Mayan gods carved into them, and an array of Day of the Dead figurines—dancing mermaid skeletons and glass frames filled with tiny dried rosebuds—to place around her apartment back in New York. She’d put on a summer dress and sandals, right in the middle of December, and treated herself to dinner at the place the hotel manager, Marco, said was the best in town. She’d had a plate of fish with sliced avocado on the side, trying not to feel strange or self-conscious as the lovers murmured around her, as the waiters looked at her sadly and brought her extra sweets. In this place so full of couples walking down the street wrapped around each other, their arms a-tangle, she knew she was a spectacle: a lone thirty-five-year-old woman wearing a bright red shoulder-baring dress, her dark hair pulled back and fastened with pins, her nails the color of berries. She’d wanted to feel alive, beautiful, and she ate slowly, sipping her cocktail. Wondering if this is how it would be from now on, wondering if she could live with that, if she could maybe even be happy alone.

But it was her dreams that would not let her forget, and that first night she woke up choking, sure that water was filling her lungs. The white sheets twisted around her.

She shot up in bed, gasping for air, and it took several long moments for her to remember where she was, for the room to appear faintly around her. The tile floor gleaming in the moonlight, the outline of bougainvillea and gardenia outside her open window. The sound of the surf.

Slowly, Karen got out of bed, went to the window, and leaned out. The sky was a clear inky black and smattered with stars. The perfumed air was warm on her face. She stared out at the water, black like oil in the night. And there, on the sand, she saw a woman walking slowly along the edge of the water, wearing a white dress that hung to her ankles. She stood for a while, watching the woman, letting the tears stream down her face. Feeling strangely soothed.

•  •  •

On her second day she took a tour to some Mayan ruins nearby. She signed up on a whim after overhearing a waiter telling a young Japanese couple about it at breakfast. Why not. She was up for anything. And it seemed wonderful, an adventure, sitting on the rickety bus with a thick romance novel clutched in her hand, about to be immersed in an ancient culture that had nothing to do with her own life. In front of her, the Japanese couple sat, the man’s dark hands stroking the woman’s bleached blond hair. His thick fingers moved through the bright strands as they chatted on in their own language, light and sweet-sounding, between the bus’s loud rumbling and the tour guide’s occasional instructions to the group.

She tried not to think about her last trip with Tim, when the two of them had taken a bus from Florence to San Gimignano. That had been a different kind of immersion—the pair of them throwing themselves into medieval Italy as a way to come closer together, to save themselves, what was left of them. Of course, by then it had been too late. She’d been in a haze of grief the whole time, both of them had, and not even the gorgeous landscape, the grapevines and the hills and the crumbling pathways, could tear them out of it.

Karen stayed at the edge of the tour group and only half listened, preferring to let the sun sink into her skin, to imagine herself in this other time, other universe. She bought a glass of
horchata
at one of the food stands lining
the site, and a hot
churro
wrapped in waxed paper. She sipped slowly—it was like drinking rice pudding—and took in the ancient stones, the grass and dirt surrounding the crumbling structures. What would it have been like, to live here, then, and not now? She ate the churro, let the hot sugared dough melt against her tongue, and wondered: Would this loss have felt different, then? Imagined all the other lives she could have had, selves she could have been. How many others had gone through what she had? It was as basic as these stones, this grass. This sun that felt so good against her skin.

They returned to the hotel in late afternoon. Other tours were returning then, too, and Karen found herself looking for the woman in white from the night before, but there was no sign of her amid all the laughing couples.

She was sleepy from the sun and the walking when she made her way down to the spa for the massage appointment she’d scheduled when she signed up for the tour. She was going all out today, she’d decided, a massage followed by a long, beautiful dinner—
carnitas,
maybe
mole
or
tamales,
more of that perfect soft avocado, that perfect
salsa verde,
a bottle of wine.

The masseur was young and handsome, a strong Mexican boy with white white teeth. She was almost nervous as she slipped off her clothes and under the thin sheet, and at first she curled inward at the feel of his palms on her shoulders. This was the most intimate she’d been with another person in at least a year. His fingers pressing into her back, rubbing warm oil down the line of her spine. A bliss unfurled from deep in her body.

She’d forgotten what this was like, the pleasure of being touched.

•  •  •

Later, the same dreams woke her. Her lungs filling, clawing and clawing for breath, at a surface that seemed miles away.

She sat up and the grief came at her like a fist. Like a boulder landing right on her chest. It could still be like this, now: his face in front of her, his tiny hands, the long eyelashes she used to run her fingertips along. Back and forth, back and forth.

What was she doing here, wandering around the ruins of cultures she knew nothing about? Eating avocado and getting massages from handsome young Mexicans? How could she do anything at all, when her son was dead?

She stood up, stumbled to the window. The grief came over her in waves, and she knew she just had to grit her teeth and get through it.

After a while, she saw movement down by the water, a flash of white. It was the woman again, from the night before, in the same white dress, her straight black hair flowing down her back.

The moment Karen saw her, a strange calm entered into her, as it had the night before. Maybe it was because this woman, too, had lost something. Karen could feel it, as if this feeling connected them as surely as a wire stretched between them.

She squinted, tried to make out more details of the woman. Something told her the woman in white was alone, even though the likelihood of that, here, was slim. Probably she was just a tourist with a touch of insomnia. Any minute now she would turn back to the hotel, join her lover in bed.

•  •  •

Breakfast was served out on the veranda, overlooking the water. Piles of fresh fruit—bananas, mangoes, papaya—and fresh juice and
huevos a la mexicana
and
chilaquiles
and
cornettos con dulce de leche
and
café con leche
and
licuado de batata
laid out on long tables.

Karen sat alone, looking for the woman in white. The veranda was crowded with people. A handsome older Mexican couple, the woman with that Sophia Loren quality Karen had always wished she could pull off, the low-cut top and a scarf around her neck. The Japanese couple from the tour, sitting with another couple now, probably American. A redhead with a much older man, obviously wealthy and definitely not her father. A very blond, very German family.

Then a young woman with long black hair entered, wearing a white top and a pair of loose cotton pants.

Karen stood up immediately, and went to her. “Excuse me,” she said to the girl, “were you walking down by the water late last night?”

The girl drew back in surprise—
how strange,
Karen thought—and then vigorously shook her head. “Oh no, señora,” she said. “No.”

“Well, I was—”

Before she could finish her sentence, the girl whispered an apology in Spanish and quickly darted back into the hotel.

Karen stared after her, confused. She noticed the Sophia Loren couple staring at her. The moment she looked back at them, they shifted their eyes, almost in unison, and didn’t look at her again.

She shook it off, the strangeness, and returned to her breakfast. She was
too used to New York, she thought. One thing was certain: she couldn’t be farther from New York now.

She spent the day at the beach, reading her romance novel, getting lost in a world of kings and queens and secret, passionate affairs. Around her, people laughed and rubbed lotion onto each other’s backs, couples ran into the water hand in hand, women walked around topless in bikini bottoms. She was starting to feel oppressed by all this physical affection and display. She felt much lonelier than she had before, and thought of another massage before deciding there was something distasteful in it. Pathetic. What she really needed, she thought, was to get laid.

She laughed out loud. She couldn’t even imagine it.

•  •  •

Early that evening Karen returned to her room, determined to talk to the woman in white tonight, at least see her up close. After a few pages of her novel she got up and checked the window, but all she saw was the moon, the sky, the black water, the outline of the bougainvillea and gardenia, swaying back and forth. Finally, just after midnight, the woman appeared. Again in the white dress, walking slowly up and down the deserted beach.

Karen rushed out of bed and ran out to the hallway, out the door, across the tile veranda that led to the beach. The air was surprisingly cool, and she shivered slightly. The night was gorgeous. She stopped just to take it in: the velvet sky strewn with stars and a moon full to bursting, the silvery dark water reflecting the moon back up to the sky.

For a moment Karen felt pure joy.

Then she snapped to, and hurried down to the sand. She walked right up to the water, letting it run over her bare feet, and looked up and down the beach. There was no one there. It was completely deserted. Not even footprints in the wet sand.

She stayed by the water for a while. Running her hands through the water, imagining what lay within it, underneath the black surface.

But the woman did not return.

•  •  •

The next morning, as Karen was stepping out of the shower, there was a knock at the door. She wrapped herself in one of the plush hotel robes, went and opened the door a sliver, and peeked out. The maid, Irene, was standing in the hall.

“Oh, I’ll be leaving in a few minutes,” Karen said, smiling. “Thank you.”

“Yes, señora,” Irene said. “But . . . I have something to tell you.”

“Yes?” Karen looked at her.

“Forgive me, señora. But you need to be careful, not walk alone at night.”

“What do you mean?” She was aware of the sharp edge to her tone, and immediately felt guilty. “Here, come in.”

Irene walked into the room, clearly uncomfortable. She stood by the bed, stiff in her pink uniform, and looked up at Karen. She was at least half a foot shorter than she was, Karen thought.

“I jus—I, my husband, he saw you last night, by the water, and it’s not good. He wanted me to tell you. None of us here, we all stay away, at night. Believe me, it’s better to stay here at night, inside.”

Karen laughed. “Oh, but the beach is so beautiful at night, Irene. It’s so crowded in the daytime, and at night it’s like another world.” She couldn’t help thinking:
I’m from New York.
This was a pristine little beach town in Mexico. How dangerous could it be?

“No,” Irene said. “It’s no good. Believe me, señora. Bad things have happened. I tell you this from my heart.”

Karen was about to respond, and then just nodded. Maybe there had been a few crimes down by the water. Maybe she shouldn’t be so cocky. She knew the woman meant well. “Thank you,” she said, smiling. “I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome.”

Irene smiled back at her, her face a mass of wonderful lines. She turned, and Karen watched her tiny, strong frame as she moved out of the room.

Things are certainly strange here,
she thought as she pulled on a tank top and leggings. Today she’d decided to take a Pilates classes at the spa. It would be good for her. Exercise was another thing she’d abandoned, since even before Ethan was born. She’d never lost all the baby weight, either.

Heading to the spa, she noticed a few people giving her strange looks. The Sophia Loren woman from the day before, the dark-haired woman who was clearly a hotel employee, and a few scattered others. Karen was used to this by now, of course, being a woman alone, but now she saw something menacing in their looks she hadn’t noticed before. Even a hint of fear?

Didn’t she?

She shook her head. She was getting paranoid.

The Pilates class was challenging but she was able to get through it.
Afterward she felt relieved and proud of herself. She’d be able to lose this weight when she returned to New York. She
would
lose it, she decided. And maybe, eventually, start dating again. When she was ready.

For the first time in a long while, it seemed like there might be a day when Karen would be ready.

That afternoon, she put on a floppy hat and just wandered. Past the shops and town, past a few churches, into some side roads. She liked the little houses here, the colorful shrines in the front yards filled with Marys and candles and garlands and saints, the bursting flowers. She passed a group of young children playing at the end of the street and she paused for a moment, smiling. For a second she imagined Ethan there with them, kicking the ball to the tiny girl in braids. She let herself imagine what he might have been like at five, six, ten. Would his lashes have stayed long, like a girl’s? Little Elizabeth Taylor eyes, her mother had called them.

The thoughts were strangely comforting, as if he were somehow close by, as though there was a part of him really there, playing in the dusty street. What if she just stayed in this town, this part of Mexico, she thought suddenly. Just dropped out of her life and stayed here? Wasn’t it possible? Sometimes people just dropped out of their lives and started new ones, didn’t they? In New York she made well into six figures, had a sweeping loft in Tribeca. What if she sold the loft, cashed in the 401K, emptied her bank account? She’d never have to work again.