The Paper Palace(12)

A colonnaded terrace connected the living room to the kitchen, where every morning the cook prepared the masa for tortillas and crushed green tomatoes into salsa verde. Gilded birdcages filled with brilliant-colored parrots and cockatiels were strung between the terraced arches. Wallace and Austin would eat alone at the long dining table, feeding the birds bits of their fried plantains while the parrots chattered to them in Spanish. Mum has always claimed this was how she learned to speak Spanish. Her first words were “Huevos revueltos? Huevos revueltos?”

For three months, the children never went to school. Granny Nanette had no idea how to arrange it. (My mother loves to tell me this any time I express worry over my children’s education. “Don’t be so ordinary, Elle,” she says. “It doesn’t become you. Slide rules are for the meager.” An attitude largely informed by the fact that she can barely add, as I like to point out.)

Austin was afraid to leave the grounds, so Mum wandered around on her own with an old Leica her father had given her, taking photographs of white bulls in the empty fields; wild horses in dry riverbeds, their rib cages swollen from hunger; scorpions hiding in the shade of the woodpile; her brother drinking Limonada by the pool. Her favorite place was the graveyard outside the village. She loved the caged madonnas, the spicy marigolds brought in armfuls by the villagers, the pink-stucco tombstones that looked like dollhouse cathedrals, the paper flowers draped over painted crypts—turquoise, tangerine, lemon-yellow—whatever was the favorite color of the deceased. She would go to the cemetery to read, curled up in the shade of a tomb, comforted by the souls of the dead.

Most afternoons, my mother rode her favorite horse across the valley and over a steep hill into Antigua. She would tie her horse to a post and wander the cobbled streets, explore the ruins of the ancient churches and monasteries, long ago destroyed by earthquakes, still scattered throughout the city. She loved the milagros that the old women sold in the main square to hang on silver chains—tiny charms: amputated legs and arms, eyes, a pair of lungs, a bird, a heart. Afterward, she would go into the cathedral and burn incense, praying for nothing.

One evening, as she was riding home to the valley down a steep trail that narrowed between two boulders, a man stepped out from behind the rocks, blocking her way. He took the reins of her horse and told her to get down. He put his hand on his machete, stroked his crotch. She sat there, cowlike, mute. Enough of this, she thought. She kicked her horse hard in the gut and ran straight over the man. She says she still remembers hearing the crack of his leg bone, the squelch of the horse’s hooves in his stomach. That night at dinner, over a bowl of turkey soup, she told her mother what she had done.

“I hope you killed him,” Granny Nanette said, dipping a tortilla into her soup. “But Wallace, dear,” she added, “that sort of behavior is unbecoming in a girl.”

10:15 A.M.

The shock of being called an asshole by his grandmother has gotten Jack up off the sofa. I should try it, but it would only devolve into a hideous shouting match that would leave me in tears and Jack in adolescent triumph. I don’t have my mother’s haughty gravitas.

My cell phone buzzes. Peter reaches across the table and picks it up before I can get to it. “Jonas is texting you.” He clicks on the message.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. My heart stops beating.

“They want to meet us at Higgins Hollow. They’re saying eleven. They’ll bring sandwiches.”

Thank you, God.

“I have a horrible feeling I made a plan with Gina last night before I passed out,” Peter says.

“Do we really want to spend hours on the beach? I’d rather lie in the hammock in a heap.”

“I don’t want to be rude. Gina can get a bit chippy.”

“She won’t care. We’re all nursing hangovers.” But I sound disingenuous even to myself.

Peter drains his coffee. “It has forever amazed me. Jonas is a brilliant painter. Successful. Looks like a bloody screen idol. He could have married Sophia-fucking-Loren. I think he hooked up with Gina just to irritate his mother.”

“Well, that was a worthy cause, anyway,” my mother says.

Peter laughs. He loves it when my mother is bitchy.

“The two of you,” I say. “Enough.”

“So, chickadees? You up for the beach?” Peter says.

“When’s low tide?” Maddy asks.

Peter turns the local paper over and runs his finger down the tide chart. “1:23.”

“Can we bring the boogie boards?” Finn asks.

“May we,” my mother corrects him.

“I’m not coming,” Jack says. “I’m meeting Sam at the Racing Club.”

“How are you planning to get there?” I ask.

“I’ll take your car.”

“Not happening. You’ll have to take your bike.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s, like, fifteen miles.”

“Last time you drove my car you forgot to fill it and I almost ran out of gas. I limped to the Texaco station.”

“We already made the plan. He’ll be waiting.”

“Text him. Tell him the plan’s changed.”

“Mom.”

“End of subject.” My cell phone buzzes again. This time I get there first. “Yes to beach?” Jonas is asking. I can feel him there at the other end holding his phone, touching me through it, feel his fingers typing, each word a hidden message to me. “I need to text Jonas back, Pete. What time should I say?”