Mexican Gothic(17)

“No, I won’t excuse you yet. Catalina is very odd. When I was a little girl, I remember my aunt Brigida had tuberculosis and she did not act like Catalina at all.”

“Every patient is different.”

“She wrote a very uncharacteristic letter to my father, and she seems unlike herself,” Noemí said, trying to put her impressions into words. “She has changed.”

“Tuberculosis doesn’t change a person, it merely intensifies the traits the patient already possesses.”

“Well, then, there’s definitely something wrong with Catalina, because she’s never possessed this listlessness. She has such an odd look about her.”

The doctor took out his glasses and put them on again. He must not have liked what he saw and frowned.

“You did not let me finish,” the doctor muttered, sounding snappish. His eyes were hard. She pressed her lips together. “Your cousin is a very anxious girl, quite melancholic, and the illness has intensified this.”

“Catalina is not anxious.”

“You deny her depressive tendencies?”

Noemí recalled what her father had said in Mexico City. He’d called Catalina melodramatic. But melodramatic and anxious were not the same thing at all, and Catalina had definitely never heard voices in Mexico City, and she hadn’t had that bizarre expression on her face.

“What depressive tendencies?” Noemí asked.

“When her mother died, she became withdrawn,” Virgil said. “She had periods of great melancholy, crying in her room and talking nonsense. It’s worse now.”

He had not spoken until then, and now he chose to bring that up, and not only to bring it up but to speak with a careful detachment, as if he were describing a stranger instead of his wife.

“Yes, and as you said her mother had died,” Noemí replied. “And that was years and years ago, when she was a girl.”

“Perhaps you’ll find certain things come back,” he said.

“Although tuberculosis is hardly a death sentence, it can still be upsetting for the patient,” the doctor explained. “The isolation, the physical symptoms. Your cousin has suffered from chills and night sweats; they’re not a pretty sight, I assure you, and codeine provides temporary relief. You cannot expect her to be cheery and baking pies.”

“I’m concerned. She’s my cousin, after all.”

“Yes, but if you begin to get agitated too, then we won’t be better off, will we?” the doctor said, shaking his head. “Now, I really must be going. I’ll see you next week, Virgil.”

“Doctor,” she said.

“No, no, I will be going,” the doctor repeated, like a man who has become aware of an impending mutiny aboard a ship.

The doctor shook Noemí’s hand, grabbed his bag, and off he went, leaving her upon the grotesque settee, biting her lips and not knowing quite what to say. Virgil took the spot the doctor had vacated and leaned back, aloof. If there ever was a man who had ice in his veins, it was this one. His face was bloodless. Had he really courted Catalina? Courted anyone? She could not picture him expressing affection toward any living thing.

“Dr. Cummins is a very capable physician,” he said with a voice that was indifferent, a voice that indicated he would not have cared if Cummins was the best or worst physician on Earth. “His father was the family’s doctor, and now he watches over our health. I assure you, he has never been found lacking in any way.”

“I’m sure he is a good doctor.”

“You do not sound sure.”

She shrugged, trying to make light of it, thinking that if she kept a smile on her face and her words were airy, he might be more receptive. After all, he seemed to be taking this whole matter lightly.

“If Catalina is ill, then she might be better off in a sanatorium close to Mexico City, somewhere where she can be tended to properly.”

“You don’t believe I can tend to my wife?”

“I didn’t say that. But this house is cold and the fog outside is not the most uplifting sight.”

“Is this the mission that your father gave you?” Virgil asked. “That you would come here and snatch Catalina away?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“It feels like it,” he said briskly, though he did not sound upset.

The words remained cold. “I realize that my home is not the most modern and most fashionable there is. High Place was once a beacon, a shining jewel of a house, and the mine produced so much silver that we could afford to cram armoires with silks and velvet and fill our cups with the finest wines. It is not so anymore.

“But we know how to take care of ill people. My father is old, he’s not in perfect health, yet we tend to him adequately. I wouldn’t do any less for the woman I’ve married.”

“Still. I would like to ask, perhaps, what Catalina needs is a specialist in other matters. A psychiatrist—”

He laughed so loudly she jumped a little in her seat, for until now his face had been very serious, and the laughter was unpleasant. The laughter challenged her, and his eyes settled on her.

“A psychiatrist. And where might you find one around these parts? You think he might be summoned out of thin air? There is a public clinic in town with a single doctor and nothing more. You’ll hardly find a psychiatrist there. You’d have to head to Pachuca, maybe even to Mexico City, and fetch one. I doubt they’d come.”