Heart of the World (5 page)

“Marta, sorry if I woke you.”

“You don' wake me,” she said. “But I don' got no time.”

“Marta, I need to look at her room.”

“I'm goin' out, soon as I fix my face.” She was a small, curvy woman, still attractive, I supposed, still sexy, provided you liked your women predatory. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I'd seen her without heavy-duty makeup. “You know as well as I know, she goes with some boy,” she went on. “Always the same thing, some boy.

She don' care about me, about her family. She don' care about you, neither. We can die from worry, she don' care.”

It didn't look like Marta was going to die from worry any time soon.

“I'll just take a look.” I pushed the screen door open a little harder than I needed to and stepped inside. “You go ahead with whatever you have to do.” I didn't want her company, didn't want her hovering over me, detailing Paolina's failures as a daughter. If she insisted, I'd be tempted to detail her failings as a mother and then I'd get kicked out of the house.

She stared up at me, taking a moment to decide that this was a fight she couldn't win. “Go on, then. Go ahead,” she muttered.

I didn't need directions. I'd been there often enough, picking up Paolina for Saturday volleyball followed by our continuing search for the perfect ice cream cone, a quest that took us out to Kendall's in Littleton in summer, to Toscanini's in Cambridge, and Herrell's in Brighton. The hunt was less fervent in winter, but we soldiered on, my little sister in search of the ideal strawberry; me, mocha, sometimes mocha chip.

The house was small and Paolina's room tiny. The family that lived there previously had used it as a laundry room, and the washer-dryer hookup remained, enclosed now by a pair of slatted wooden blinds that hung from the ceiling. My sister's bed was a couch, and Marta referred to the place as the den, declaring she did so only so the boys wouldn't be jealous that Paolina had a room of her own.

Room of her own, Paolina scoffed. Sure, and every time she wanted to be alone her mother decided to do the laundry.

The blinds were up, the washer and dryer covered with dirty clothes that hadn't made it into any laundry hamper.

How does a teenager organize life in a laundry room? When I found myself checking my cell phone to make sure the battery was charged, I realized how much I was hoping for a call, a message, a reprieve.
I've got her
, Roz or Gloria would say;
she just showed up
—and then I wouldn't need to paw through the debris.

I sucked in a deep breath and told myself I was goddamn lucky. If Marta had rigorously cleaned every surface, tossed every scrap, I'd have nowhere to turn. The woman's dislike of organization, not to mention mops, sponges, and dusters, was in my favor.

The laundry room didn't boast a closet. Instead there was one of
those steel tubing coat racks, the kind you see at the door when somebody throws a big party. I went through Paolina's hanging items quickly, marveling at the lack of pockets in modern girls' attire. I can't say the majority of clothing in the room was hung on the rack. Much of it was scattered on the floor. I folded items haphazardly, more to distinguish them from the stuff I hadn't yet fingered than to make things neater. I searched shirts and sweaters, summer tees, dungarees, cut-offs, read penciled notes to girlfriends, homework reminders, a history quiz graded C+.

What did Paolina do with stuff she didn't want her mother to see? I'd expected a hidden stash of secret items at my house, but I'd already been through the bedroom she uses two nights a week and found it disappointingly bare, although pretty enough on the surface, with bright posters of Colombia on the rose-colored walls.

Colombia…where guerrilla troops shot down coca-spraying crop-dusters. When Paolina ran off before, it was a single half-assed effort, a kid's fairy-tale journey to meet her long-lost dad, to find the father she'd never met. She'd made it as far as the airport. I'd found her there, crying in a toilet stall. Was Colombia still her dream, her father a martyred hero despite his unsavory reputation?

I had a photo of the man, Carlos Roldan Gonzales, cut from an aged copy of
Newsweek
, folded in a bureau drawer. It was a group shot, five men, high mountains in the background. The caption listed five names, all leaders of drug cartels. They'd been photographed brandishing automatic weapons, young and defiant. At least three of the five were dead now.

The small four-drawer pine dresser was packed to overflowing, the top drawer devoted to old birthday cards, postcards, bits of wrapping paper and ribbon. I fumbled inside and came out with a hard Plexiglas cube. A music box. I twisted the silver key and listened to the raggedy metallic melody—”Teddy Bears' Picnic,” a tune I always associate with the gruff, bluesy vocals of Dave van Ronk. I remembered Paolina winding the key and stomping her feet to the rhythm till the people in the downstairs apartment started smacking the ceiling with a broom handle. I swallowed and inhaled the scent of stale cologne.

Second drawer: underwear and scarves. Third drawer: socks and tights jammed in with smelly sweaters. Bottom drawer: stuff. Old gift
boxes and school notebooks from the fourth grade. Class photos. A pair of holey socks. A beaded bracelet with half the beads fallen off. Going through the bottom drawer felt like excavating an old cache. This wasn't where she stored her current treasures, and there was no sign of her backpack. I couldn't tell from the disorganized drawers whether underwear was missing or not. I didn't see her favorite sweater, but she could have left it at a friend's house or in her locker.

A flickering shadow on the drapes told me someone was watching. I turned and found Marta standing in the doorway. She'd changed into a short cranberry-colored skirt, a tight print blouse with a low-cut
V
.Her face was carefully made up; eyeliner dark around shadowed eyes.

“You done yet?”

“Marta, let me make you a cup of coffee.”

“I have to go.”

I raised an eyebrow. Her job doesn't start till late afternoon and she knows I know it.

“I have a hair appointment,” she said. “What time?”

“I thought if I get there early, maybe they can do my nails.” The excuse sounded lame even as she gave it. “I guess I— You want coffee, I'll make it.”

I followed her into the kitchen, thinking that I couldn't possibly choke down more caffeine, thinking that maybe if I sat in a chair with a coffee cup in front of me, she wouldn't be so quick to toss me out the door, thinking I needed to ask questions she wasn't going to want to answer. I watched while she flicked on the burner under the kettle, quickly rinsed two ceramic mugs in the sink, and plunked teaspoons of instant coffee into them.

“It's all I have, this powdered stuff. You'd probably rather have tea,” she said.

“Instant's fine.”

She gave me a look. I suppose she feels constantly criticized by me in the same way I feel constantly criticized by her; we'd made choices about our lives as different as our preference in clothing, as different as our hair and makeup. I tried small talk, commenting on the nasty weather, anything I could find to set her at ease, reminding myself that at bottom we were both women who loved the same child.

“Maybe she's better off on her own,” Marta said as she sat, unable to find sugar or milk, angry with me for the shambles of her kitchen. “She's fifteen.”

“When I'm her age, I'm on my own. I'm working all the time, living away from home, making money.”

And in no time, pregnant. The way I'd heard the story, she'd been a servant in Paolina's father's house, a uniformed housemaid. Whether it had been a teen love affair or rape, I didn't know. There had been no marriage.

Marta took a quick sip of coffee and placed the cup back on the table with emphasis. “She's like a baby, playing hide-and-seek, that's what I think. And she wants
you
to find her, not me. When she's a real baby, when she's sick on the floor, I'm the one cleans up after her, I'm the one stays home with her, can't find a good job or a new man. And now, now you gonna find her. You gonna step up, be some kind of hero, find her and save her. But I'm the one has to take care of her when nobody else will. I'm the one has to wipe her nose when it runs.”

The coffee was lukewarm and grainy, but I didn't care.

She said, “What do you want?”

I want my little girl back. I want this headache to stop. I want to go home and pull the covers over my head
. “Just the answers to a few more questions.”

No, she didn't know her daughter had broken up with Diego. As far as she knew, or as far as she would admit, there were no new boys, no new friends, no school troubles. I wondered whether mother and daughter ever spoke.

I drank bad coffee.

“Is that all?”

“Marta, are you in touch with her father?”

“With Jimmy, you mean?”

“With Roldan. Have you asked his family for money, done anything that might bring Paolina to their attention?” “What are you getting at?”

Custodial kidnapping was what I was getting at. Until she was ten years old, my little sister believed her father was the man who'd lived in her house till she was six, the father of her younger brothers, a Puerto Ri-can drunk named Jimmy Fuentes. Why not believe it? She had his name.

And then, at ten, her mother had flown with her to Bogota, driven to a big house with servants, and presented her to a man she was told to call “Grandpa.”

“The Roldan family,” I said. “They know about her. Is it possible they took her?”

“The old man's dead.” She stared into her cup and I wondered if she was deliberately avoiding my eyes. “And his son?”

“Dead, too. Even if he's alive, what would he want with a daughter, a man like that, who lives in the hills and hides from the law? He never even saw her. He never tried to get in touch with her.”

I didn't contradict her, but I knew her statement wasn't true. Years ago, on five separate occasions, Roldan had sent Paolina money, through me. The Watertown house had been paid for with Roldan's money.

“You haven't tried to get in touch with him?” I repeated.

“I told you. He's dead, as far as I'm concerned.”

“Has Paolina said anything about Colombia?”

“We don't talk about it here. She's the boys' sister here.” She stood and walked to the sink, emptying her cup, watching the murky liquid disappear down the drain.

“And you said you still have her passport.”

“I said it's here, somewhere.” She glanced around the tiny kitchen as if the cupboards and closets had magically appeared out of nowhere, as if she had no knowledge of their contents.

“Marta, have you
seen
her passport since she disappeared?”

“It's here, okay. I'm just not sure where I put it.”

“Let's look for it. Now. It's important.”

“Don' tell me what's important. What's important is I need to leave here in two minutes.” She looked at me with a challenge in her eyes.

I took it. “You have a new man in your life? Somebody you're getting your hair fixed for?”

“What if I do?” she said, stung. “What's wrong with that? I got a right to a life, I think.”

“You meet him at work?”

Marta's a part-time hostess at a bar/restaurant called McKinley's, a pick-up joint in Waltham.

“So I meet somebody at work, so what? You know it's a good job for
that. Nice men, businessmen. Most of them married, but some divorced. This guy's real nice. He's got no ring, and I think maybe it's gonna work out.”

“What's his name?”

“Why you wanna know?”

“Have you been seeing him long?”

“A month, maybe. I don't hide him. The boys like him.”

“And Paolina?” She hadn't mentioned a new man to me.

Marta's not dim. She makes lightning leaps sometimes and she made one now. Her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. You trying to say my boyfriend is doing something with my daughter?”

“Marta, she's gone. Somebody knows something.”

“Not
him
. Not me. You can leave anytime. Matter of fact, you can leave now.”

“What's the guy's name, Marta?”

“You gonna turn him in to the cops, right? That's gonna make it real nice for me.”

“I'm going to make sure he doesn't have a record, Marta. That's all. Better you should know now than later.”

I insisted on the name, and desperate to leave, she finally gave me one: Gregor Maltic, but the way she said it I wasn't sure whether that was really the guy she was dating or some waiter at the restaurant she wanted to get in trouble.

“Where's he from?”

“Someplace in Russia, what you think?”

“U.S. citizen?”

That's the sort of thing Marta would always know about a guy she's going out with, what's his citizenship status, how much money he makes, is he married. She wet her lips and said she didn't know.

“Look, I'm gonna be late. They'll take somebody else.”

“You go. I'm staying till I find Paolina's passport.”

“I don't want you going through my things.”

“Then go through them yourself. I'm in no hurry.”

“But I don't remember where I put it.”

“I'll look in the likely places. I know what I'm doing.”

She shot a glance at her bedroom door. “It would be in the kitchen,” she said. “Maybe in the living room.”

I could almost see her thoughts: Was I planning to search the place for drugs, for evidence that she was an unfit mother? I could see her waver, decide that I was probably more concerned with finding Paolina than with seeing her serve time.

“You're going to be late,” I said.

“I want you to leave.”

She's stubborn, but so am I. She had something else to do and I didn't, so I won the round. I promised to lock the front door and drop the spare key through the mail chute.