Mexican Gothic (13 page)

“None can be sure what happened, but they said she put a sleeping draught in their food. I don’t know where she got it from. She was clever, she knew many things about plants and medicine, so it could be she mixed the draught herself. Or perhaps her lover had procured it for her. Maybe in the beginning she had thought to put them to sleep and run away, but afterward she changed her mind. Once Benito disappeared. She shot her father while he slept, because of what he’d done to her lover.”

“But not just her father,” Noemí said. “She shot her mother and the others. If she was avenging her dead lover, wouldn’t she have only shot her father? What did the others have to do with that?”

“Maybe she thought they were also guilty. Maybe she’d gone mad. We can’t know. They’re cursed, I tell you, and that house is haunted. You’re very silly or very brave living in a haunted house.”

I’m not sorry
, that’s what the Ruth in her dream had said. Had Ruth been remorseless as she wandered through the house and delivered a bullet to her kinfolk? Just because Noemí had dreamed it, it didn’t mean it had happened that way. After all, in her nightmare the house had been distorted and mutated in impossible ways.

Noemí frowned, looking at her cup of coffee. She’d taken few sips. Her stomach was definitely not cooperating that morning.

“Trouble is there’s not much you can do about ghosts nor hauntings. You might burn a candle at night for them and maybe they’d like that. You know about the mal de aire? Your mama ever tell you about that in the city?”

“I’ve heard one thing or another,” she said. “It’s supposed to make you sick.”

“There’re heavy places. Places where the air itself is heavy because an evil weighs it down. Sometimes it’s a death, could be it’s something else, but the bad air, it’ll get into your body and it’ll nestle there and weigh you down. That’s what’s wrong with the Doyles of High Place,” the woman said, concluding her tale.

Like feeding an animal madder plants: it dyes the bones red, it stains everything inside crimson,
she thought.

Marta Duval rose and began opening kitchen drawers. She grabbed a beaded bracelet and brought it back to the table, handing it to Noemí. It had tiny blue and white glass beads, and a larger blue bead with a black center.

“It’s against the evil eye.”

“Yes, I know,” Noemí said, because she had seen such trinkets before.

“You wear it, yes? It might help you, can’t hurt. I’ll be sure to ask my saints to watch over you too.”

Noemí opened her purse and placed the bottle inside. Then, because she didn’t want to hurt the old woman’s feelings, she tied the bracelet around her wrist as she’d suggested. “Thank you.”

Walking back toward the town center, Noemí considered all the things she now knew about the Doyles and how none of it would assist Catalina. Ultimately even a haunting, if you accepted it as real and not the result of a feverish imagination, didn’t mean anything. The fear of the previous night had cooled away, and now all there was left was the taste of dissatisfaction.

Noemí pulled her cardigan’s sleeve up, scratching her wrist again. It itched something awful. She realized there was a thin, raw, red band of skin around her wrist. As though she’d burned herself. She frowned.

Dr. Camarillo’s clinic was nearby, so she decided to stop by and hope he didn’t have a patient. She was in luck. The doctor was eating a torta in the reception area. He didn’t have his white coat on; instead he wore a simple, single-breasted tweed jacket. When she stopped in front of him, Julio Camarillo quickly set the torta on a table next to him and wiped his mouth and hands on his handkerchief.

“Out for a walk?” he asked.

“Of a sort,” she said. “Am I interrupting your breakfast?”

“It’s not much of an interruption, seeing as it’s not very tasty. I made it myself and did a bad job. How’s your cousin? Are they finding a specialist for her?”

“I’m afraid her husband doesn’t think she needs any other doctor. Arthur Cummins is enough for them.”

“Do you think it might help if I talked to him?”

She shook her head. “It might make it worse, to be honest.”

“That’s a pity. And how are you?”

“I’m not sure. I have this rash,” Noemí said, holding up her wrist for him to see.

Dr. Camarillo inspected her wrist carefully. “Odd,” he said. “It almost looks like you came in contact with mala mujer, but that doesn’t grow here. It’s a sure recipe for dermatitis if you touch the leaves. Do you have allergies?”

“No. My mother says it’s almost indecent how healthy I am. She told me when she was a young girl everyone thought it was very fashionable to suffer a bout of appendicitis and girls went on a tapeworm diet.”

“She must have been joking about the tapeworm,” Dr. Camarillo said. “That’s a made-up story.”

“It always did sound quite horrifying. Then I’m allergic to something? A plant or shrub?”

“It could be a number of things. We’ll wash the hand and put on a soothing ointment. Come in,” he said, directing her into his office.

She washed her hands in the little sink in the corner, and Julio applied a zinc paste, bandaged her wrist, and told her she should not scratch the affected area because it would make it worse. He advised her to change the bandage the next day and apply more zinc paste.

“It’ll take a few days for the inflammation to go away,” he said, walking her back toward the entrance, “but you should be fine after a week. Come see me if it doesn’t improve.”

“Thanks,” she said and placed the tiny jar of zinc paste he’d gifted her inside her purse. “I have another question. Do you know what could cause a person to begin sleepwalking again?”

“Again?”

“I sleepwalked when I was very young, but I haven’t done it in ages. But I sleepwalked last night.”

“Yes, it’s more common for children to sleepwalk. Have you been taking any new medication?”

“No. I told you. I’m scandalously healthy.”

“Could be anxiety,” the doctor said, and then he smiled a little.

“I had the oddest dream when I was sleepwalking,” she said. “It didn’t feel like when I was a kid.”

It had also been an extremely morbid dream and then, afterward, the chat with Virgil had not helped soothe her. Noemí frowned.

“I see I’ve failed to be helpful once again.”

“Don’t say that,” she replied quickly.

“Tell you what, if it happens again you come and see me. And you watch that wrist.”

“Sure.”

Noemí stopped at one of the tiny little stores set around the town square. She bought herself a pack of cigarettes. There were no Lotería cards to be had, but she did find a pack of cheap naipes. Cups, clubs, coins, and swords, to lighten the day. Someone had told her it was possible to read the cards, to tell fortunes, but what Noemí liked to do was play for money with her friends.

The store owner counted her change slowly. He was very old, and his glasses had a crack running down the middle. At the store’s entrance sat a yellow dog drinking from a dirty bowl. Noemí scratched its ears on the way out.

The post office was also in the town square, and she sent a short letter to her father informing him of the current situation at High Place: she’d obtained a second opinion from a doctor who said Catalina needed psychiatric care. She did not write that Virgil was extremely reluctant to let anyone see Catalina, because she did not want to worry her father. She also did not mention anything about her nightmares, nor the sleepwalking episode. Those, along with the rash blooming on her wrist, were unpleasant markers of her journey, but they were superfluous details.

Once these tasks were done, she stood in the middle of the town square glancing at the few businesses there. There was no ice cream shop, no souvenir store selling knickknacks, no bandstand for musicians to play their tunes. A couple of storefronts were boarded up, with
For Sale
painted on the outside. The church was still impressive, but the rest was really quite sad. A withered world. Had it looked this way in Ruth’s day? Had she even been allowed to visit the town? Or was she kept locked inside High Place?

Noemí headed back to the exact spot where Francis had dropped her off. He arrived a couple of minutes later, while she sat on a wrought-iron bench and was about to light a cigarette.

“You’re quick to fetch me,” she said.

“My mother doesn’t believe in tardiness,” he said as he stood in front of her and took off the felt hat with the navy band he’d put on that morning.

“Did you tell her where we went?”

“I didn’t go back to the house. If I had, my mother or Virgil might have started asking why I’d left you alone.”

“Were you driving around?”

“A bit. I parked under a tree over there and took a nap too. Did anything happen to you?” he asked, pointing at her bandaged wrist.

“A rash,” Noemí said.

She extended her hand so that he might help her up, and he did. Without her monumental high heels, Noemí’s head barely reached his shoulder. When such a height difference presented itself, Noemí might stand on her tiptoes. Her cousins teased her about it, calling her “the ballerina.” Not Catalina, because she was too sweet to tease anyone, but cousin Marilulu did it all the time. Now, reflexively, she did that, and that little meaningless motion must have startled him, because he let go with the hand that had been holding his hat, and a gust of wind blew it away.

“Oh, no,” Noemí said.

They chased after the hat, running for a good two blocks before she managed to get hold of it. In her tight skirt and stockings this was no small feat. The yellow dog she’d seen at the store, amused by the spectacle, barked at Noemí and circled her. She pressed the hat against her chest.

“Well, I suppose now I’ve done my daily calisthenics,” she said, chuckling.

Francis seemed amused too and watched her with an unusual levity. There was a sad and resigned quality to him that struck her as odd for someone his age, but the midday sun had washed his melancholy away and gave color to his cheeks. Virgil was good looking, Francis was not. He had an almost nonexistent upper lip, eyebrows that arched a little too much, heavy-lidded eyes. She liked him nevertheless.

He was odd and it was endearing.

She offered him the hat, and Francis turned it in his hands carefully. “What?” he asked, sounding bashful, because she was looking at him.

“Won’t you thank me for rescuing your hat, dear sir?”

“Thank you.”

“Silly boy,” she said, planting a kiss on his cheek.

She was afraid he’d drop the hat and they’d have to chase it again, but he managed to hold on to it and smiled as they walked back to the car.

“You finished the errands you needed to run in town?” he asked.

“Yes. Post office, doctor. I was also talking to someone about High Place, about what happened there. You know, with Ruth,” she told him. Her mind kept going back to Ruth. It really should be no concern of hers, this decades-old murder, but there it was, the nagging thought, and she wanted to talk about it. Who better than him?

Francis tapped the hat twice against his leg as they walked. “What about her?”

“She wanted to run away with her lover. Instead, she ended up shooting her whole family. I don’t understand why she’d do what she did. Why didn’t she run away from High Place? Surely she could have simply left.”

“You can’t leave High Place.”

“But you can. She was an adult woman.”

“You’re a woman. Can you do anything you want? Even if it upsets your family?”

“Technically I can, even if I wouldn’t every single time,” Noemí said, though she immediately remembered her father’s issues with scandals and the fear of the society pages. Would she ever risk an outright rebellion against her family?

“My mother left High Place, she married. But she came back. There’s no escaping it. Ruth knew as much. That’s why she did what she did.”

“You sound almost proud,” she exclaimed.

Francis placed the hat on his head and looked at her gravely. “No. But truth be told Ruth ought to have burnt High Place to the ground.”

It was such a shocking pronouncement that she thought she must have heard him wrong, and she would have been able to convince herself this was the case if they had not driven back to the house in a bubble of silence. That piercing silence more than anything affirmed his words. It underlined them and made her turn her face toward the window. In her hand she held her unlit cigarette, watching the trees, light streaming through the branches.

Noemí decided they’d have themselves a mini casino night. She’d always loved casino night. They’d sit in the dining room, and everyone dressed the part, using old clothes picked from their grandparents’ trunks, pretending they were high rollers in Monte Carlo or Havana. All the children played, and even when they were way too old for games of pretend, the Taboada cousins would gather around the table and put the record player to good use, tapping their feet to a snappy tune and carefully laying down their cards. It couldn’t be quite like that at High Place since they had no records to play, but Noemí decided the spirit of their casino nights could be captured if they tried.

She slipped the deck into one large sweater pocket and the little bottle into the other, and then she peeked her head inside Catalina’s room. Her cousin was alone and she was awake. Perfect.

“I have a treat for you,” Noemí said.

Catalina was sitting by the window. She turned and looked at Noemí. “Do you, now?”

“You must choose, the left or right pocket, and then you’ll have a reward,” Noemí said, approaching her.

“What if I choose the wrong one?”

Catalina’s hair fell loose past her shoulders. She had never taken to short hairstyles. Noemí was glad. Catalina’s hair was sleek and lovely, and she had fond memories of brushing it and braiding it when she was a little girl. Catalina had been so patient with her, allowing Noemí to treat her like a living doll.

“Then you’ll never know what was in the other pocket.”

“You silly girl,” Catalina replied, smiling. “I’ll play your game. Right.”

“Ta-da.”

Noemí placed the pack of cards on Catalina’s lap. Her cousin opened the pack and smiled, taking out a card and holding it up.

“We can play a few hands,” Noemí said. “I’ll even let you win the first one.”

“As if! I never met a more competitive child. And it’s not like Florence would let us play late into the night.”

“We might still play at least a little.”

“I have no money to bet, and you don’t play if there’s no money on the table.”

“You’re looking for excuses. Are you afraid of that dreadful, nagging Florence?”

Catalina stood up quickly and went to stand by her vanity, tilting its mirror and setting the pack of cards next to a hairbrush while she looked at her reflection. “No. Not at all,” she said, grabbing the brush and running it through her hair a couple of times.

“Good. Because I have a second present for you, and I wouldn’t give it to a scaredy-cat.”

Noemí held the green bottle up. Catalina turned around, wonder in her eyes, and carefully grabbed the bottle. “You did it.”

“I told you I would.”

“Dearest, thank you, thank you,” Catalina said, pulling her into an embrace. “I should know you would never abandon me. We thought monsters and ghosts were found in books, but they’re real, you know?”

Her cousin released Noemí and opened a drawer. She took out a couple of handkerchiefs, a pair of white gloves, before finding her prize: a small silver spoon. Then she proceeded to pour herself a teaspoon, her fingers trembling a little, then another and a third. Noemí stopped her at the fourth, taking the bottle from her hands and setting it on the dresser, along with the spoon.

“Jeez, don’t have so much. Marta said you might have one tablespoon and that would be enough,” Noemí chided her. “I don’t want you snoring for ten hours straight before we even get a chance to play a single hand.”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Catalina said, smiling weakly.

“Now, shall I shuffle or will you do the honors?”

“Let me see.”

Catalina slid a hand across the deck. Then she stopped; she lifted her hand and her fingers remained hovering above the pack of cards, as if she’d been frozen in place. Her hazel eyes were open wide and her mouth was closed tight. She looked so strange. Like a woman who has gone into a trance. Noemí frowned.

“Catalina? Are you unwell? Do you want to sit down?” she asked.

Catalina did not reply. Noemí gently grabbed her by the arm and attempted to maneuver her toward the bed. Catalina wouldn’t move. Her fingers curled into a fist, and she continued to stare forward, those large eyes of hers looking wild. Noemí might as well have attempted to shove an elephant. It was impossible to get her to budge a single inch.

“Catalina,” Noemí said. “Why don’t—”

There was a loud crack—dear God, Noemí thought it might be a joint cracking—and Catalina began to shiver. She shivered from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, one sweeping, rippling motion. Then the shiver became more frenzied, and she was convulsing, she was pressing her hands against her stomach and shaking her head, and the most vicious scream escaped her lungs.

Noemí attempted to hold her, to drag her toward the bed, but Catalina was strong. It was amazing how strong she was considering how frail she looked, yet she managed to resist Noemí, and they both ended up on the floor, Catalina’s mouth opening and closing spasmodically, her arms rising and falling, the legs shaking wildly. A trail of saliva slid down the corner of her mouth.

“Help!” Noemí yelled. “Help!”

Noemí had gone to school with a girl who had epilepsy and although the girl never had a fit on school grounds, she remembered how she once told her she carried a little stick in her purse so that she might place it in her mouth if she had a seizure.

With Catalina’s attack growing in intensity—which seemed impossible yet was undeniably happening—she snatched the silver spoon from the dresser and placed it in Catalina’s mouth to keep her from biting her own tongue. She knocked down the card deck, which had also been resting on the dresser. The cards spilled and fanned out on the floor. The knave of coins stared at Noemí accusingly.

Noemí ran to the hallway and began yelling, “Help me!”

Had no one heard the commotion? She rushed forward, banging on doors, and yelling as loud as she could. Suddenly Francis appeared and behind him came Florence.

“Catalina is having a seizure,” she told them.

They all ran back to the room. Catalina was still on the floor; the tremors had not stopped. Francis sprang forward and sat her up, placing his arms around her, attempting to subdue her. Noemí was going to help him, but Florence stood in her way.

“Get out,” she ordered.

“I can help.”

“Out, out now,” she ordered, shoving Noemí back and slamming the door in her face.

Noemí knocked furiously but no one opened. She could hear murmurs and once in a while a loud word or two. She began pacing the hallway.

When Francis came out he quickly closed the door behind him. Noemí hurried to his side.

“What’s happening? How is she?”

“She’s in bed. I’m going to fetch Dr. Cummins,” Francis said.

They walked briskly toward the stairs, his long stride meaning she had to take two to keep up with him.

“I’ll go with you.”

“No,” Francis said.

“I want to do something.”

He stopped and shook his head before clutching her hands together. He spoke softly. “You come with me, it’ll be worse. Go to the sitting room, and when I return, I’ll fetch you. I won’t be long.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

He dashed down the stairs. She rushed down the staircase too and pressed her hands against her face when she reached the bottom, tears prickling her eyes. By the time she walked into the sitting room, the tears were falling hard, and she sat on the carpet, clutching her hands together. The minutes ticked by. She wiped her nose with her sweater’s sleeve, wiped her tears with the palms of her hand. She stood up and waited.

He lied. It was a long time. What was worse, when Francis returned it was in the company of Dr. Cummins and Florence. At least there had been enough time for Noemí to compose herself.

“How is she?” Noemí asked, swiftly walking up to the doctor.

“She’s asleep now. The crisis has passed.”

“Thank God,” Noemí said, and she sank onto one of the settees. “I don’t understand what happened.”

“What happened was
this
,” Florence said sharply, holding up the bottle Noemí had fetched from Marta Duval. “Where did you get it?”

“It’s a sleeping tonic,” Noemí said.

“Your sleeping tonic made her sick.”

“No.” Noemí shook her head. “No, she said she needed it.”

“Are you a medical professional?” Dr. Cummins asked her. He was distinctly displeased. Noemí felt her mouth go dry.

“No, but—”

“So you have no idea what was inside this bottle?”

“I told you, Catalina said she needed medicine to help her sleep. She asked me for it. She’s taken it before, it couldn’t have made her ill.”

“It did,” the doctor told her.

“An opium tincture. That’s what you shoved down your cousin’s throat,” Florence added, pointing an accusing finger at Noemí.

“I did no such thing!”

“It was very ill-advised, very ill-advised, indeed,” Dr. Cummins muttered. “Why I couldn’t begin to understand what you were thinking, procuring a filthy potion like that. And then, attempting to put a spoon in your cousin’s mouth. I suppose you heard that silly tale of people swallowing their tongues? Nonsense. All nonsense.”

“I—”

“Where did you get the tincture?” Florence asked.

Tell no one
, Catalina had said, and so Noemí did not reply even if the mention of Marta Duval might have shifted the burden of her guilt. She gripped the back of the settee with one hand, digging her nails into the fabric.

“You could have killed her,” the woman said.

“I wouldn’t!”

Noemí felt like crying again but could not allow herself this release, not in their presence. Francis had moved to stand behind the settee, and she felt his fingers upon her hand, almost ghostly. It was a comforting gesture, and it gave her the courage to clamp her mouth shut.

“Who did you procure the potion from?” the doctor asked.

Noemí stared at them and kept on gripping the settee.

“I should slap you,” Florence said. “I should slap that disrespectful look off your face.”

Florence stepped forward. Noemí felt that perhaps she really did mean to slap her. She pushed Francis’s hand aside, ready to stand up.

“If you could please go check on my father I would be very grateful, Dr. Cummins. All the noise tonight has him a little anxious,” Virgil said.

He had strolled rather casually into the room, and his voice was cool as he ventured toward the sideboard and inspected a decanter, as if he were alone and pouring himself a drink like any other evening.

“Yes. Why yes, of course,” the doctor said.

“It’s best if you two go with him. I wish to speak to Noemí alone.”

“I am not—” Florence began.

“I wish to be alone with her,” Virgil replied acridly. The smooth silk of his voice was now sandpaper.

They left, the doctor mumbling a “yes, at once,” Florence walking in a somber silence. Francis was the last to step out, slowly closing the doors of the sitting room before throwing her one nervous glance.

Virgil filled his glass, swirling the liquid in it, staring at its contents, before approaching her and taking a place on the same settee she occupied. His leg brushed against hers when he sat down.

“Catalina once told me you were a very strong-willed creature, but I didn’t quite understand how strong-willed until now,” he said, setting the drink down on an oblong side table. “Your cousin is a bit of a weakling, isn’t she? But you have a certain mettle in your bones.”

He spoke so blithely it made her gasp. He talked as if this were a game. As if she were not sick with worry. “Have a little respect,” she said.

“I think it’s another person who should be showing respect. This is my home.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry at all.”

She could not read the expression in his eyes. Perhaps it was contempt. “I
am
sorry! But I was trying to help Catalina.”

“You have a funny way of showing it. How dare you constantly upset my wife?”

“What do you mean I constantly upset her? She is glad to have me around, she told me so.”

“You bring strangers to look at her and then you bring her poison.”

“For God’s sake,” she said and stood up.

He immediately grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her down. It was her bandaged wrist, and it hurt when he touched her; the skin burned for a second and she winced. He tugged at her sleeve, revealing the bandage, and smirked.

“Let go.”

“Dr. Camarillo’s work, perhaps? Just like the tincture? Was it him?”

“Don’t touch me,” she ordered.

But he did not release her; instead he leaned forward. He clasped her arm tight. She thought Howard looked like an insect and Florence was an insectivorous plant. But Virgil Doyle, he was a carnivore, high up the food chain.

“Florence is right. You deserve to be slapped and taught a few lessons,” he muttered.

“If anyone is slapped in this room, I assure you, it won’t be me.”

He threw his head back and laughed a loud, savage laugh, and he reached blindly for his drink. A few dark drops of liquor spilled on the side table as he lifted the glass. The sound of his voice practically made her jump. At least he had released her.

“You’re mad,” she said, rubbing her wrist.

“Mad with worry, yes,” he replied, downing the wine. Rather than placing the glass on the table again, he carelessly tossed it on the floor. It did not shatter, but rolled across the carpet. But what if it had shattered? It was his glass. His to break if he wanted. Like everything else in this house.

“Do you think you are the only person who cares what happens to Catalina?” he asked, his eyes fixed on the glass. “I imagine you do. When Catalina wrote to your family, did you think, ‘ah, at last we can pry her away from that troublesome man’? And right now you must think ‘I knew he was bad.’ Your father certainly didn’t like me for a groom.

“When the mine was open, he would have been glad to see Catalina married to me. Back then I would have been worthy. He wouldn’t have thought me inconsequential. It must still irk him, and you, to know Catalina picked me. Well, I’m no two-bit fortune hunter, I’m a Doyle. It would be good of you to remember that.”