Mexican Gothic(19)

Well, she definitely did not feel liked in this house, but Francis was friendly enough. She found him near the kitchen, looking more washed out than the previous days, a slim figure of ivory, but his eyes were energetic. He smiled at her. When he did, he wasn’t bad looking. Not quite like his cousin—Virgil was terribly attractive—but then she thought most men would have had a hard time competing with Virgil. No doubt that’s what had hooked Catalina. That pretty face. Maybe the air of mystery he’d had about him too had made Catalina forget about sensible matters.

Genteel poverty, Noemí’s father had said. That’s what that man has to offer.

Apparently also a rambling, old house where you were liable to have bad dreams. God, the city seemed so far away.

“I’d like to ask you for a favor,” she said after they’d exchanged morning pleasantries. As she spoke she linked her arm to his with a fluid, well-practiced motion, and they began walking together. “I want to borrow one of your cars and go into town. I have letters I’d like to post. My father doesn’t really know how I’m doing.”

“You need me to drive you there?”

“I can drive myself there.”

Francis made a face, hesitating. “I don’t know what Virgil would say about that.”

She shrugged. “You don’t have to tell him. What, you don’t think I can drive? I’ll show you my license if you want.”

Francis ran a hand through his fair hair. “It’s not that. The family is very particular about the cars.”

“And I’m very particular about driving on my own. Surely I don’t need a chaperone, and you’d make a terrible chaperone, anyway.”

“How so?”

“Who ever heard of a man playing chaperone? You need an insufferable aunt. I can lend you one of mine for a weekend if you’d like. It’ll cost you a car. Will you help me, please? I’m desperate.”

He chuckled as she steered him outside. He picked up the car keys hanging from a hook in the kitchen. Lizzie, one of the maids, was rolling bread upon a floured table. She did not acknowledge either Noemí or Francis even one bit. The staff at High Place was almost invisible, like in one of Catalina’s fairy tales. Beauty and the Beast, that had been it, had it not? Invisible servants who cooked the meals and laid down the silverware. Ridiculous. Noemí knew all the people who worked in her house by name, and they certainly were not begrudged their chatter. That she even knew the names of the staff at High Place seemed a small miracle, but she’d asked Francis, and Francis had obligingly introduced them: Lizzie, Mary, and Charles, who, like the porcelain locked in the cabinets, had been imported from England many decades ago.

They walked toward the shed, and he handed her the car keys.

“You won’t get lost?” Francis asked, leaning against the car’s window and looking down at her.

“I can manage.”

True enough. It wasn’t as if one could even attempt to get lost.

The road led up or down the mountain, and down she went, to the little town. She felt quite content during the drive and rolled her window open to enjoy the fresh mountain air. It wasn’t such a bad place, she thought, once you got out of the house. It was the house that disfigured the land.

Noemí parked the car by the town square, guessing both the post office and the medical clinic must be nearby. She was right and was quickly rewarded with the sight of a little green-and-white building that proclaimed itself the medical unit. Inside there were three green chairs and several posters explaining all matter of diseases. There was a receiving desk, but it was empty, and a closed door with a plaque on it and the doctor’s name in large letters. Julio Eusebio Camarillo, it said.

She sat down, and after a few minutes the door opened and out came a woman holding a toddler by the hand. Then the doctor poked his head through the doorway and nodded at her.

“Good day,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“I’m Noemí Taboada,” she said. “You are Dr. Camarillo?”

She had to ask because the man looked rather young. He was very dark and had short hair that he parted down the middle and a little mustache that did not really age him, managing to make him look a bit ridiculous, like a child mimicking a physician. He also wasn’t wearing a doctor’s white coat, just a beige-and-brown sweater.

“That’s me. Come in,” he said.

Inside his office, on the wall behind his desk, she indeed saw the certificate from the UNAM with his name in an elegant script. He also had an armoire, the doors thrown open, filled with pills, cotton swabs, and bottles. A large maguey lay in a corner in a yellow pot.

The doctor sat behind his desk and Noemí sat on a plastic chair, which matched the ones in the vestibule.

“I don’t think we’ve met before,” Dr. Camarillo said.

“I’m not from around here,” she said, placing her purse on her lap and leaning forward. “I’ve come to see my cousin. She’s sick, and I thought you might take a look at her. She has tuberculosis.”

“Tuberculosis? In El Triunfo?” the doctor asked, sounding quite astonished. “I hadn’t heard anything about that.”

“Not in El Triunfo proper. At High Place.”

“The Doyle house,” he said haltingly. “You are related to them?”