Mexican Gothic (16 page)

“My father is ill. He is, in fact, dying. Before passing away, he wanted to see me married. He wanted to know I would have a wife and children; that the family line would not die out. It was not the first time he asked this of me, and it was not the first time I complied. I was married once before.”

“I did not know that,” Noemí said. It quite surprised her. “What happened?”

“She was everything my father thought an ideal wife should be, except that he forgot to consult me on the matter,” Virgil said with a chuckle. “She was, in fact, Arthur’s daughter. My father had gotten it in his head since we were children that we would marry. ‘One day, when you’re married,’ they’d tell us. Such repetition didn’t help. It had the opposite effect. When I turned twenty-three we were wed. She disliked me. I found her dull.

“Nevertheless, I suppose we might have managed to build something of value between us if it hadn’t been for the miscarriages. She had four of them, and they wore her down. She abandoned me.”

“She divorced you?”

He nodded. “Yes, and eventually, implicitly, I realized my father wanted me to remarry. I took a few trips to Guadalajara and then to Mexico City. I met women who were interesting and pretty, who would have no doubt pleased my father. But Catalina was the one who really caught my attention. She was sweet. It’s not a quality that is in great abundance at High Place. I liked that. I liked her softness, her romantic notions. She wanted a fairy tale, and I wanted to give her that.

“Then, of course, it all went wrong. Not merely her illness, but her loneliness, her bouts of sadness. I thought she understood what it would mean to live with me and I understood what it would be like living with her. I was wrong. And here we are.”

A fairy tale, yes. Snow White with the magical kiss and the beauty who transforms the beast. Catalina had read all those stories for the younger girls, and she had intoned each line with great dramatic conviction. It had been a performance. Here was the result of Catalina’s daydreams. Here was her fairy tale. It amounted to a stilted marriage that, coupled with her sickness and her mental tribulations, must place an exhausting burden on her shoulders.

“If it’s the house she dislikes, you could take her somewhere else.”

“My father wants us at High Place.”

“You must make your own life one day, no?”

He smiled. “My own life. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but none of us can have our own lives. My father needs me here, and now my wife is sick, and it is the same story. We have to stay. You do realize the difficulty of the situation?”

Noemí rubbed her hands together. Yes, she did. She didn’t like it, but she did. She was tired. She felt like they kept going in circles. Perhaps Francis was correct, and it was best to pack her bags. But, no, no, she refused.

He turned his gaze on her. Blue and intense, the blue of lapis lazuli, carefully ground. “Well, we seem to have drifted from the topic I had in mind when I called you here. I wanted to apologize to you for my words the last time we met. I was not in a good frame of mind. I still am not. Anyway, if I’ve upset you then I am very sorry,” Virgil said, quite surprising her.

“Thank you,” she replied.

“I hope we can be friendly. There is no need to act as though we are enemies.”

“I know we aren’t.”

“We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, I’m afraid. Perhaps we might try again. I promise I’ll ask Dr. Cummins to begin asking about psychiatrists in Pachuca, as an option down the line. You can help me pick one; we might even write to him together.”

“I’d like that.”

“A truce, then?”

“We’re not at war, remember?”

“Ah, yes. Nevertheless,” he said, extending his hand. Noemí hesitated, then stepped from behind the chair and shook it. His grip was firm, the hand large, covering her own tiny one.

She excused herself and left. When she was walking back to her room she saw Francis standing in front of a door, opening it. Her footsteps made him halt, and he looked at her. He inclined his head, in a mute greeting, but said nothing.

She wondered if Florence had chided him for doing Noemí’s bidding. Maybe he would be summoned to stand before Virgil, and he’d tell Francis the same thing he’d said to Noemí: It seems you spend most of your time with her. She pictured a quarrel. Muted. Howard didn’t like loud noises, and confrontations must take place in whispers.

He won’t help me again
, she thought as she gazed at his hesitant face.
I’ve exhausted his goodwill
.

“Francis,” she said.

He pretended not to hear her. Gently the young man closed the door behind him and disappeared from sight. He was swallowed by one of the many chambers of the house, into one of the bellies of this beast.

She pressed a palm against the door, thought better of it, and kept on walking, keenly aware that she had already caused too much trouble. She wanted to make it better. She decided to seek out Florence and found her talking with Lizzie in the kitchen, their voices a whisper.

“Florence, do you have a minute?” she asked.

“Your cousin is napping. If you want—”

“It’s not about Catalina.”

Florence gestured toward the maid, then turned to Noemí and motioned for her to follow her. They went into a room she had not visited before. It had a large, solid table with an old-fashioned sewing machine set atop it. Open shelves held sewing baskets and yellowed fashion magazines. On a wall you could see old nails, signaling the spot where there had once been paintings and now there were smudges, faint traces of frames. But the room was very tidy, very clean.

“What do you need?” Florence asked.

“I asked Francis to take me to town this morning. I know you don’t like it when we leave without speaking to you. I wanted you to know it was my fault. You shouldn’t be angry at him.”

Florence sat down on a large chair that was set next to the table, her fingers laced together, and stared at Noemí. “You think me harsh, don’t you? No, don’t deny it.”

“Strict would be the most appropriate word,” Noemí said politely.

“It is important to maintain a sense of order in one’s house, in one’s life. It helps you determine your place in the world, where you belong. Taxonomical classifications help place each creature atop its right branch. It’s no good to forget yourself, nor your obligations. Francis has duties, he has chores. You pull him away from those chores. You make him forget his obligations.”

“But surely he doesn’t have chores all day long.”

“Doesn’t he? How would you know? Even if his days are made of leisure, why should he spend them with you?”

“I don’t mean to take up all his time, but I don’t see—”

“He’s silly when he is with you. He completely forgets who he’s supposed to be. And do you think Howard would let
him
have
you
?” Florence shook her head. “The poor boy,” she muttered. “What do you want, hmm? What do you want from us? There’s nothing left to give.”

“I wanted to apologize,” Noemí said.

Florence pressed a hand against her right temple and closed her eyes. “You have. Go, go.”

And like the wretched creature that Florence had mentioned, that does not know its place nor how to find it, Noemí sat on the stairs for a while, staring at the nymph on the newel post and contemplating the motes of dust dancing in a ray of light.

Florence would not let Noemí sit alone with Catalina. One of the maids, Mary, had been ordered to stand guard in a corner. Noemí was not to be trusted ever again. Nobody said that was the case, but while she approached her cousin’s bed the maid moved slowly around, arranging the clothes in the armoire, folding a blanket. Needless tasks.

“Could you do that later, please?” she asked Mary.

“No time for it in the morning,” the maid replied, her voice even.

“Mary, please.”

“Don’t worry about her,” Catalina said. “Sit.”

“Oh, I…Yes, it doesn’t matter,” Noemí said, trying not to be upset about this. She wanted to maintain a positive façade for Catalina. Besides, Florence had said she could have a half hour with Catalina, nothing more, and she wanted to make the best of it. “You look much better.”

“Liar,” Catalina said, but she smiled.

“Should I fluff your pillows? Hand you your slippers so tonight you can dance like one of the Twelve Dancing Princesses?”

“You liked the illustrations in that book,” Catalina said softly.

“I did. I admit I’d read it right now if I could.”

The maid began fussing with the curtains, turning her back to them, and Catalina gave Noemí an eager look. “Maybe you’d read me poetry? There’s my old book of poems there. You know how I like Sor Juana.”

She did remember the book, which rested on the night table. Like the tome packed with fairy tales, this was a familiar treasure. “Which one should I read?” Noemí asked.

“ ‘Foolish Men.’ ”

Noemí turned the pages. There it was, the well-worn pages as she remembered. And there too was an unusual element. A yellow, folded piece of paper tucked against the pages. Noemí glanced at her cousin. Catalina said nothing, her lips were pressed tight, but in her eyes Noemí read a naked fear. She glanced in Mary’s direction. The woman was still busy with the curtains. Noemí pocketed the piece of paper and began reading. She went through several poems, keeping her voice steady. Eventually Florence arrived at the doorway carrying a silver tray with a matching teapot and a cup and a handful of cookies on a porcelain plate.

“It’s time to let Catalina rest,” Florence said.

“Of course.”

Noemí clapped the book shut and docilely bid her cousin goodbye. When Noemí reached her room, she noticed that Florence had been in there. There was a tray with a cup of tea and the handful of cookies, like Catalina’s.

Noemí ignored the tea and closed the door. She didn’t have an appetite and had forgotten to smoke a cigarette in ages. This whole situation was souring her to everything.

Noemí unfolded the piece of paper. She recognized Catalina’s handwriting on a corner. “This is proof,” she said. Noemí frowned and unfolded the letter a second time, wondering what Catalina had written. Would it be a repeat of that strange missive she had sent to Noemí’s father? The letter that had started it all.

The letter, however, was not her cousin’s as she’d thought. It was older, the paper brittle, and it seemed to have been torn from a journal. It was not dated, although it seemed to be the page of a diary entry.

I put these thoughts down on paper because it is the only way to remain firm in my resolve. Tomorrow I may lose courage but these words should anchor me to the here and now. To the present moment. I hear their voices constantly, whispering. They glow at night. Perhaps that might be endurable, this place would be endurable, if not for him. Our lord and master. Our God. An egg, split asunder, and a mighty serpent rising from it, expanding wide its jaws. Our great legacy, spun in cartilage and blood and roots so very deep. Gods cannot die. That is what we have been told, what Mother believes. But Mother cannot protect me, cannot save any of us. It is up to me. Whether this is sacrilege or simple murder, or both. He beat me when he found out about Benito but I swore there and then that I would never bear a child nor do his will. I believe firmly this death will be no sin. It is a release and my salvation. R.

R, a single letter as a signature. Ruth. Could this truly be a page from Ruth’s journal? She didn’t think Catalina would have faked such a thing, even if it bore an uncanny resemblance to the rambling letter her cousin had penned. But where would Catalina have found it? The house was large and old. She could picture Catalina walking the darkened hallways. A loose floorboard lifted, the elusive diary fragment hidden beneath the wooden plank.

Head bent over the letter, she bit her lips. Reading this scrap of paper with those eerie sentences could make anyone start believing in ghosts or curses or both. Of course, she’d never given credence to the idea of things that go bump in the night. Fantasies and fancies, that’s what she told herself. She’d read
The Golden Bough
, nodding at its chapter on the expulsion of evils, she’d curiously leafed through a journal detailing the connection between ghosts and sickness in Tonga, and been amused by a letter to the editor of
Folklore
detailing an encounter with a headless spirit. She was not in the habit of believing in the supernatural.

This is proof
, Catalina had said. But proof of what? She laid the letter on the table and smoothed it out. She read it again.

Put the facts together, you fool
, she told herself, chewing on a nail. And what were the facts? That her cousin spoke about a presence in this house, including voices. Ruth also described voices. Noemí had heard no voices, but she’d had bad dreams and sleepwalked, which she hadn’t done in years.

One could conclude this was a case of three silly, nervous women. Physicians of old would have diagnosed it as hysterics. But one thing Noemí was not was hysterical.

If the three of them were not hysterical, then the three of them had truly come in contact with
something
inside this house. But must it be supernatural? Must it be a curse? A ghost? Could there be a more rational answer? Was she seeing a pattern where there wasn’t any? After all, that’s what humans did: look for patterns. She could be weaving three disparate stories into a narrative.

She wanted to talk to someone else about this because otherwise she was going to wear the soles of her shoes off walking back and forth in her room. Noemí slid the paper into her sweater’s pocket, grabbed her oil lamp, and went to find Francis. He had been avoiding her for the past couple of days—she assumed Florence had also given him the speech about chores and duties—but she didn’t think he’d slam the door in her face if she went to him, and, anyway, it wasn’t as if she was going to ask him for a favor this time. She simply wished to chat. Emboldened, she sought him out.

He opened his door, and before he could properly greet her she spoke. “May I come in? I need to talk to you.”

“Now?”

“Five minutes. Please?”

He blinked, unsure; cleared his throat for good measure. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

The walls in his room were covered with colorful drawings and prints of botanical specimens. She counted a dozen butterflies carefully pinned under glass and five lovingly painted watercolors of mushrooms, their names in tiny print beneath them. There were two bookcases laden with leather-bound volumes and books stacked on the floor in tidy piles. The smell of weathered pages and ink permeated the room, like the perfume from an exotic bouquet.

Virgil’s room had a sitting area, but Francis’s did not. She could see the narrow bed with a dark green coverlet and a richly carved headboard festooned with leaves, the pervasive motif of the snake eating its tail at the center. There was a matching desk, covered with more books. On a corner of the desk, an empty cup and a plate. That is where he must have his meals. He didn’t utilize the table in the middle of the room.

As she walked next to it, she realized why: the table was covered with papers and drawing instruments. She looked at the sharpened pencils, the bottles of india ink, and the nibs of pens. A box with watercolors, the brushes sitting inside a cup. There were many charcoal drawings, but others were inked. Botanical sketches, the lot of them.

“You’re an artist,” she said, touching the edge of a drawing showing a dandelion while she held the oil lamp with her other hand.

“I draw,” he said, sounding abashed. “I’m afraid I have nothing to offer you. I’ve finished my tea.”

“I despise the tea they brew here. It’s terrible,” she said, looking at another drawing, this one of a dahlia. “I tried my hand at painting once. I thought it made sense, you know? My father being in the dye and paint business, after all. But I was no good. Plus, I like photos better. They capture the thing in the moment.”

“But painting is the repeated exposure to a thing. It captures the essence of the object.”

“You’re poetic too.”

He looked embarrassed. “Let’s sit,” he said, taking the lantern from her hand and setting it down on the desk where he had already placed a few candles. Another oil lamp, very much like her own, larger, rested on his night table. The glass on it was tinted yellow, and it varnished the room in warm amber tones.

He pointed her to a large chair covered with an antimacassar showcasing a pattern of rose garlands and quickly shoved off a couple of books that he’d left there. He grabbed his desk chair, sitting before her and lacing his hands together, leaning forward a little.

“Do you get to see much of your family’s business?” he asked.

“When I was a kid I’d go to my father’s office and pretend to type reports and write memos. But I’m not so interested in that anymore.”

“You don’t want to be involved with it?”

“My brother loves it. But I don’t see why if my family has a paint company I should be in paint. Or worse: marry the heir of another paint company so we can have a larger company. Maybe I want to do something else. Maybe I have an amazing secret talent which must be exploited. You could be talking to a top-notch anthropologist here, you know.”

“Not a concert pianist, then.”

“Why not both?” she asked with a shrug.

“Of course.”

The chair was comfortable, and she liked his room. Noemí turned her head, looking at the watercolors of the mushrooms. “Are those yours too?”

“Yes. I did them a few years ago. They’re not very good.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“If you say so,” he replied, sounding dignified and smiling.

He had a plain face, mismatched even. She had liked Hugo Duarte because he was a pretty boy, and she appreciated a fellow with a certain slickness, who could dress well and play the game of charm. But she liked this man’s quirks and imperfections, the lack of playboy smarts coupled with a quiet intelligence.

Francis was wearing his corduroy jacket again, but in the privacy of his room he walked around barefoot and had donned a rumpled old shirt. There was something lovely and intimate when he looked like this.

Noemí was struck with the desire to lean forward and kiss him, a feeling like wishing to light a match, a burning, bright, and eager feeling. Yet she hesitated. It was easy to kiss someone when it didn’t matter; it was more difficult when it might be meaningful.

She didn’t want to make a further mess of things. She didn’t want to play with him.

“You haven’t come to compliment my drawings,” he said, as if he could sense her hesitation.

She hadn’t. Not at all. Noemí cleared her throat and shook her head. “Have you ever thought your home might be haunted?”

Francis gave her a weak smile. “That’s an odd thing to say.”

“I’m sure it is. But I have a good reason for asking. So, have you?”

There was silence. He slowly slid his hands into his pockets and looked down at the rug under their feet. He frowned.

“I won’t laugh at you if you tell me you’ve observed ghosts,” Noemí added.

“There’re no such thing as ghosts.”

“But what if there were? Have you ever wondered about that? I don’t mean ghosts under bedsheets, dragging chains behind them. I read a book about Tibet once. It was written by this woman called Alexandra David-Neel, who said people there were able to create ghosts. They willed them into existence. What did she call them? Tulpa.”

“That sounds like a tall tale.”

“Of course. But there is this professor at Duke University, J. B. Rhine, who is studying parapsychology. Things like telepathy as a kind of extrasensory perception.”

“What are you saying, exactly?” he asked, a terrible caution lacing his words.

“I’m saying maybe my cousin is perfectly sane. Maybe there is a haunting in this house, but it can be explained logically. I don’t know quite how yet, maybe it’s got nothing to do with parapsychology, but take that old saying: mad as a hatter.”

“I don’t understand.”

“People said hatters were prone to going crazy, but it was the materials they worked with. They inhaled mercury vapors when they made felt hats. You still have to be careful with that stuff nowadays. You can mix mercury into paints to control mildew, but under the right conditions the compounds give off sufficient mercury vapor to make people sick. You could have everyone in a room going mad and it’s the paint job.”

Francis stood up suddenly and gripped her hands. “Don’t speak another word,” Francis told her, his voice low. He spoke in Spanish. They’d stuck to English since she’d arrived at the house; she didn’t recall him using one word of Spanish at High Place. She couldn’t remember him touching her either. If he had, it hadn’t been deliberate. But his hands were steady on her wrists now.

“Do you think I’m mad like those hatters?” she asked, also in Spanish.

“Dear God, no. I think you’re sane and clever. Much too clever, perhaps. Why won’t you listen to me? Really listen. Leave today. Leave right this instant. This is no place for you.”

“What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”

He stared at her, his hands still gripping her own. “Noemí, just because there are no ghosts it doesn’t mean you can’t be haunted. Nor that you shouldn’t fear the haunting. You are too fearless. My father was the same way, and he paid dearly for it.”

“He fell down a ravine,” she said. “Or was there more to it?”

“Who told you?”

“I asked a question first.”