The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (35)

But now, he danced with the melancholy out the hall. The front door was still open. Now, he could hear the night, an incandescent whisper that only ever happened once after his dad died. He heard the stars.

Or were those crickets?

Rey made his way into the living room where Gastón, Penny, and Juan Luis were setting the table while Orquídea grinned at the music. He picked up a red ceramic plate dotted in gold. None of the pieces matched, like they were missing parts of several sets.

“Watch it!” Penny said, arranging the center pieces of dried flowers in colored glass vases. “I’m not finished yet.”

Orquídea turned her head in Rey’s direction, the movement slow, like it pained her. “Pour me a drink, ni?o mío.”

Rey wasn’t a little boy, but he thought it was okay if he was her little boy for the rest of the night. For always. He went to the bar cart and fixed both of them drinks.

“What’s your poison tonight, Mamá Orquídea?”

“Bourbon, neat.”

He poured generously into two glasses and his grandmother accepted his offering. In the time he’d been cleaning the parlor, Orquídea’s roots had spread, growing thicker. She was like a mermaid whose legs were being bound together, only with bark instead of scales.

“Is it painful?” he asked.

“Not any worse than it was giving birth,” she said.

He almost pointed out that this would be like giving birth to herself, and how gross that image was, so for once, he kept that comment to himself.

“How’s your art?” Orquídea asked.

“I haven’t done anything since I sent you that painting,” he said, gaze traveling to the one hanging over the fireplace. Part of him had imagined that she’d put it in the shed or something. How funny that Orquídea would ask about his art, something he hadn’t let himself want in years.

“It’s my favorite. Make another.”

It was a portrait of Orquídea as she’d been as a young girl. Her hair was long and curly, and she wore a white dress. In her hand a fish and in the other a net. He’d found the picture between the pages of her favorite novel. Now he wondered if, like the photo of Marimar’s father, she’d let Rey find it.

“Work is crazy,” he said by way of explanation. “This one was a fluke.”

She let loose a gravely laugh. “Was it a fluke or was it that you couldn’t stop yourself?”

Rey shrugged. He remembered painting that over a week, locked in his room the summer after his first year at college. He’d been sick with adrenaline, red-eyed from not sleeping for days. Marimar was ready to break down the door, but he said he was fine. He ate the food she left at his door. And when he emerged, the painting was finished, he slept for another week and said never again.

“Why am I not surprised that you already know?”

“I only mean that you made a beautiful thing.” She looked into her glass, then at him. He tried not to jump when her eyes went milky-gray and then coffee-black. “Why did you choose that picture?”

He’d blacked out the event, but he did recall one thing. He’d walked all the way home from his last day of classes and stopped at the Met. He’d paid a one dollar suggested entry because he had to pee, and it was a cleaner bathroom than the ones in the park. He meant to go in and out, but he couldn’t help himself. He went to the reflecting pool in front of the Temple of Dendur and stared at the pennies in the water and even though it was impossible, he spotted his, bright and hopeful and unspent. On his way home, he stopped at an art supply store, bought a canvas, brushes, and paint at random, sweating like he was going home to assemble a bomb.

But as for why Rey had chosen that picture—He took a big drink and licked his lips. He scratched at the inside of his wrist and flashed a smile at his grandmother.

“You told us a story once about catching a river monster. It always stuck with me, I guess.”

She smiled and her wrinkles deepened. “He’s not a monster. The monsters look like us. He outlived me, so what does that say?”

“It says I need another drink.”

She reached out and grabbed his wrist. Her hand felt like rough, ridged bark. One of the stems protruding from her wrist was showing pink petals beneath the green, like it was going to start blooming.

“Paint me another.”

He shook his head and a sensation like a vice clutched his heart.

“Your heart is trapped, and this is the way it will be free. Mine was, too. That is why—It’s too late for me but not for you.”

“Mamá—”

“Promise, mi ni?o.”

“I will,” he promised then. “I will.”

It was a momentary relief when Penny ran back into the living room. “Mom says you need to light the candles because you smoke that trash porquería.”

“Charming,” he muttered, but dug his metal lighter from his back pocket. Did they need so many candles? He went through them one by one, running down the line of the dining table, lighting the ones on the windowsills.

“Don’t forget the altar,” Orquídea said.

So he lit those, too. The altar had changed slightly. There were more pictures of her family. Usually, people put up the photos of the people who were dead, but Orquídea had her whole family. Old Polaroids, new glossy photos developed at the pharmacy, and graduation portraits beside small sepia portraits of faces he didn’t recognize. A ticket drew his eye. Rey had stood before this altar a million times. He’d memorized the placement of every trinket. Tatinelly’s wedding announcement and Caleb Jr.’s ad in Vogue were new additions, but so was this ticket. Rectangular, like from an old-timey theater. The ink was faded but he made out the word Spectacular! And an eight-pointed star.