Mexican Gothic(49)

“Thank you. There are many things you cannot understand, Noemí. But let me make it clear that Catalina’s well-being is of the utmost importance to us. You’ve harmed her and in harming her you’ve harmed me.”

Noemí turned her head away. She thought he’d leave. Instead, he lingered at her side. Then, a small eternity later, he stepped away from her and out of the room.





14

I n a sense all dreams foretell events, but some more clearly than others.

Noemí circled the word dreams with her pencil. She enjoyed writing in the margins of her books; she loved reading these anthropological texts, sinking into the lush paragraphs and the forest of footnotes.

But not now. Now she couldn’t concentrate. She rested her chin on the back of her hand and placed the pencil in her mouth.

She had spent hours in waiting, trying to find things to do, books to read, perfecting tricks to distract herself. She checked her watch and sighed. It was close to five o’clock.

She had attempted to speak to Catalina early in the morning, but Florence had told Noemí that her cousin was resting. Around noon Noemí had tried again. She had been dismissed a second time, and Florence had made it clear there would be no visits with the patient until nighttime.

Noemí must not push and pry and attempt to wedge her way into that room, as much as she wanted to. She simply couldn’t. They’d toss her out if she did, and besides, Virgil was correct. She’d done wrong and felt ashamed.

How she wished there were a radio around the house. She needed music, conversation. She thought of the parties she attended with her friends, leaning against a piano with a cocktail in her hand. Also her classes at the university and the lively discussions at the cafés downtown. What she now had was a silent house and a heart riddled with anxiety.

…and dreams about ghosts, not recorded in this book, inform people about happenings among the dead.

She took the pencil out of her mouth and put the book aside.

Reading about the Azande did her no good. It offered no distraction.

She kept remembering her cousin’s face, her contorted limbs, the hideous episode of the previous day.

Noemí grabbed a sweater—the one Francis had given her—and stepped outside. She thought to smoke a cigarette, but once she stood in the shadow of the house she decided she needed a bit more distance from it. It lingered too close; it was hostile and cold and she did not wish to parade before its windows, which felt, to her, like lidless, eager eyes. She followed the path that snaked behind the house and led up to the cemetery.

Two, three, four steps, it seemed it didn’t take her long until she stood before the iron gates and walked inside. She’d been utterly lost in the mist before, but she did not bother to consider what she’d do if she should lose her way again.

In fact, a part of her very dearly wished to be lost.

Catalina. She’d hurt Catalina, and even now she did not know how her cousin was faring. Florence was tight-lipped; she’d seen nothing of Virgil. Not that she wished to see him very much.

He’d been beastly.

You almost made me a widower tonight, Noemí.

She hadn’t meant it. But, intent or not, what did it matter? What mattered were the facts. That’s what her father would tell her, and now Noemí felt doubly ashamed. She’d been sent to fix a problem, not to make an even bigger mess. Was Catalina angry with her? What might Noemí say when they finally saw each other? Sorry, dear cousin, I almost poisoned you, but you’re looking better.

Noemí walked among tombstones and moss and wildflowers, her chin lowered, tucked close against the folds of the sweater. She saw the mausoleum and in front of it the stone statue of Agnes. Noemí peered up at the statue’s face and her hands, which were weathered with speckles of black fungus.

She had wondered if there was a plaque or marker with the name of the deceased on it, and she saw that there was. Noemí had overlooked it during her previous visit, although she could hardly be blamed for missing it. The plaque was hidden by an overgrown clump of weeds. She plucked the weeds away and brushed the dirt off the bronze plaque.

Agnes Doyle. Mother. 1885. That was all Howard Doyle had chosen to leave behind to commemorate the passing of his first wife.

He had said he had not known Agnes well, that she’d died within a year of their marriage, yet it seemed odd to have a statue carved of her and then not even compose a proper line or two about her passing.

It was the nature of the one word etched beneath the woman’s name that bothered her too. Mother. But as far as Noemí knew, Howard Doyle’s children were born of his second marriage. Why choose “mother” as the epithet, then? Perhaps she was making too much of this. Inside the mausoleum, where the woman’s body rested, there might be a proper plaque and a proper message about the deceased. Yet it was unsettling in a way she could not define, like noticing a crooked seam or a tiny stain on a pristine tablecloth.

She sat there, at the statue’s feet, and tugged at a blade of grass wondering if someone ever bothered setting flowers inside the mausoleum or at any of the graves. Could the families of everyone buried in the cemetery be gone from the area? But then, most of the English folk must have come alone, and therefore there had been no kin to bother with such things. There were also unmarked graves for the local workers and with no gravestone to their name, there could be no crowns of flowers for them.