A Life in Men: A Novel (21 page)

“She’s dead,” Daniel says. “She died only about a week after you were born. It was an infection she caught in the hospital. They tried to save her but they couldn’t. The antibiotics didn’t work. After she died, no one on her side of the family ever talked to me anymore. They didn’t like me. I had a drug problem, like I said, and they held me responsible. I got her pregnant when I had no way of supporting a child. But we were
happy
. We were happy while it lasted. She loved being pregnant. She told her parents to go screw themselves. We had a good thing going, for what it was. You have to understand, the drugs, our problems—that shit was common for the time period. It’s not an excuse. Or maybe it is an excuse. We weren’t so bad. At least we weren’t over there raping village girls in Vietnam. Your mother was a real looker. You look just like her.”

His daughter’s eyes pool over. Her mother is dead. No, her
mother
is back in Ohio, but the owner of this doll (which Daniel knows Rebecca didn’t even buy, though he’s not sure where it came from) is dead, and this makes his daughter sad. She stares at him, and the longer it lasts, the more he sees himself—Leo, too—in her.
This is it,
he thinks,
this is the moment
. He did not have twenty-six years with her; he does not have much to carry forward into his old age, but he has this: his daughter standing in woolly socks on these cold, formidable tiles, clutching a doll to her chest and crying for the loss of her mother. This is the moment he will remember whenever he thinks of her from here on out. In the remaining years before his death, he will never think of his daughter again without conjuring this image in his mind. Soon enough—within the next twenty-four hours—the memory will be tainted by the discovery of its falseness. Still, it will remain a moment frozen in time, and as such it is beautiful; it is perfect. Her grief for his tall tale. Her resemblance to Rebecca, who was always too good for him and finally figured that out. And to
him
, reflecting back out to the world like a piece of history, like the living, breathing pages of a book. Like something that will carry into the future.

H
E DOES NOT
yet know that he will outlive her. Why would he know this? She is duplicitous, like the woman who bore her, and she has not yet told him.

He does not know, either, that out of his bullshit tale she has constructed one of her own.
An infection
. Yes, she has had plenty of these. The antibiotics didn’t work, and no, of course they didn’t, for this, too, is what will happen to her someday; it is what happens to almost all of them in the end, as the bacteria in their lungs grows ever more aggressive and drug resistant. She knows that of course women with CF are generally advised against having children because of what it can do to their health, the stress on an already broken system. Of course her mother’s family would have blamed Daniel for knocking her up—her very life was at stake! And she—she
killed
her own mother! Tears roll down her face, and Daniel stands wrapped in his touching moment which is already becoming a memory, and she cannot speak, cannot break the news to him: that she is sick, too, that her life is equally doomed. She cannot tell him that her mother died for nothing.

And so they stand, cold footed and lying and both lost in their own beautiful myths. Daniel watches the emotion on his daughter’s face, and he feels
love
and swells with pride at himself, with the thrill of watching himself from the outside as he watches his poetically weeping daughter and experiences love for her. If he had never given her up, she would probably be a ridiculous crack whore by now. Instead, he has this moment, this shimmery moment to cherish forever. It is transcendent.

E
LI COULD GET
used to this. Every morning, no matter what time he rises, Gabriella has empanadas laid out on the tiled kitchen counter and coffee brewing in the percolator. She is like a hotter Latina version of Diane. Eli can understand the attraction, why a man like Daniel—only seven years older than he is—would chuck everything and move to Mexico (not exactly a hardship with this house!) for a babe like that. He grudgingly has to admit that Daniel is a pretty decent-looking old guy, no hair loss, no sign of a gut, Jewy in that feral way women find sexy instead of in the nebbishy way that plagued Eli’s youth. Plus, Daniel has money and a taste for the good life.

Eli shares that taste. He loves shit like this. Drinking coffee with a group—coffee should be legally mandated as a group activity, as should smoking weed. It’s just not as pleasurable alone. In a rocking chair on the back patio, surrounded by pots filled with exuberantly blooming purple flowers, he and Gabriella and Daniel smoke cigarettes while Mary sits, one leg tucked under her, in her robe, the sinews of her bare foot breathtaking as she uses that one foot to push off the ground again and again, rocking. He stares at that foot and feels blood rush to his head, like a stroke coming on. She has some crazy magnetic beads wound around her ankle several times like an African princess. The bones of her foot stand out; her blackberry toenail polish is beginning to chip. Oh, the pleasure! Who are these people, Gabriella and Daniel and even Mary? Why should it feel so perfect here at one moment, at a moment like this, and so foreign the next?

Gabriella has family obligations on their fourth day, so Daniel is taking them alone to San Miguel de Allende. In freaky expat logic, although he is a count and lives in a virtual castle, the man has no car, so they take a taxi to the bus station (replete with shrine to the Virgin Mary next to the ticket booths) and eat knockoff Ritz crackers while they wait to pile onto a crowded bus, stifling hot and full of squalling babies and backed-up exhaust fumes. Somehow Mary falls asleep, like the near child that she is, then wakes in a coughing fit, grabbing that asthma inhaler out of her cheap bag and shaking it with a bony, floppy wrist, sucking its fumes down like a bong hit. It makes Eli stiff just watching her suck on that little apparatus, her silver-ringed fingers clutching it like she might a lover’s prick. If the exhaust fumes weren’t nauseating him, he’d try to slip his hand under her skirt when her father wasn’t looking.

San Miguel de Allende looks like a painting. All terra-cotta and cathedral spires and old men peddling cartoon-character-shaped balloons and beggars hiding small, weary children under their shawls and Americans everywhere, tanned, trendily dressed American twentysomethings and older artist types, old bohos who look like Daniel, that hiply rumpled look Eli can never quite achieve, even though he’s an old boho if anyone is. Eli would like to wander the shops and galleries, maybe pick up some Day of the Dead art for Diane, who is into skeletons and Frida Kahlo and all feminine dead things. Except how could he pass off some handmade dead figurines in a brightly painted wooden box as something he picked up in Longboat Key? Diane is not a part of this day’s agenda. He’s never—in two decades—spent this long in the company of another woman; usually he can barely stand to spend an hour with a mistress after sex without rushing back to familiar, smart Diane, who can talk politics with the big boys, who can still blow him with the best of them, even if her breasts sag some with wear and tear. Yeah, being with Diane isn’t so rough. But—forgetting the kids for a minute—he can, maybe for the first time in his life, imagine what it might be to lead a life
without
Diane. There are Dianes everywhere; look at Gabriella. You could lead a life, a comfortable life with coffee and warm bread and good sex and love—yes, love—anywhere, couldn’t you? You could lead it with Mary. Something about her is harder to place, though, less dime-a-dozen in both good ways and bad, and this makes her less reliable. He can imagine staying here, staying with
her,
traveling around Central America all summer with his kids instead of wasting his dad hours chauffeuring them all over bland Columbus, going to Little League and soccer games. Who can say the quality of their relationship would be less if he gave them something like that to remember instead of just being the body behind the wheel of a minivan? But if he did anything that rash, who can say how long it would be before he woke one day to find Mary gone?

Daniel ushers them right away to a café. It’s on the main square, and Eli suspects they’ll charge too much, but what the hell, a margarita will do everybody good. They sit at a small purple table on a shaded terrace, and Eli thinks that they make a glamorous enough entourage of three, that Mary’s young presence adds an air of illicit mystery. He feels like a spy, and this sensation, mixed with the tequila, is pleasing. They fend off vendors selling foam-rubber puzzles and cheaply strung necklaces with waves of their hands and “No, gracias,” but hand pesos to a few ragged children who seem numb and not at all grateful. It is strange that solicitors are permitted on the actual terrace, but that’s what they get for eating on the main square. They order another round of margaritas.

Suddenly a pretty woman is approaching. She might be Mexican, but Eli can’t tell. She’s got long, dark hair, but she’s tall and her skin is fair, and she’s dressed in couture (it may be imitation) like a woman in a magazine, as if she’s striding toward them with a photographer following her, though she’s too old to be a model, thirty-five, maybe thirty-nine. There is such a purpose in her stride that it never occurs to Eli she is not headed for their table. Mary, of course, is oblivious to her. Soon enough, though, the knockout leans over, kisses Daniel on the cheek twice, Spanish-style, and sits down at the table’s fourth chair, beaming. Eli feels almost dizzy. What’s with all these gorgeous women? As if his luck in having a lover half his age weren’t enough, there’s Gabriella waiting on him at the castle and now
this,
sitting here at his table, cleavage beckoning. Who the hell is she?

“This might be awkward,” Daniel begins, standing up for some reason as though giving a wedding toast. “Or maybe not. This is Esther. She’s a wonderful artist. We’ve been together for seven years. She lives here, in San Miguel. We have a five-year-old son—actually, he’s Esther’s sister’s baby, but her sister was unable to care for him, so Esther adopted him. We’re raising him together—you’ll meet him later today.”

Eli chokes on a long swig of margarita. The sour properties of the drink suddenly seem overwhelming and burn his throat in a mad tickle. He coughs maniacally. Mary, sensitive to fits of coughing given her asthma, pounds him on the back.

“I’m so happy to meet you,” Esther says, looking at Mary as though Eli is invisible. The accent, yes, is Spanish. “I’ve been telling Daniel for years to write to you! He never does what I say. I’m so happy that for once, he listens!”

Eli does not know what to make of the look on Mary’s face. Her hand drops from his back with a clunk. She gazes at Daniel, and something about the devastation of her expression . . . he is speaking before he knows it.

“I don’t mean to be offensive,” he blurts out, like somebody about to say something offensive, “but does Gabriella know about this?”

“Gabriella and I are not married,” Daniel says smoothly. “We’re all free agents.”

Eli snorts so loudly that Mary must think he is coughing again, and she turns to pound him on the back. He shrugs her off. His own agitation surprises him, but there it is; he’s on a roll. “Look—” He gestures clumsily at Esther, nearly knocking over his margarita. “You seem like a nice person. I realize I’m acting like a prick. But for Christ’s sake, Daniel, why would you bring your
daughter
to meet your . . . whatever the hell she is? Haven’t you ever heard of
discretion
?”

Esther draws herself up tall in her seat, flipping her curtain of dark hair over her shoulder. “I do not dignify this with response,” she says. And to Daniel, “Who is this man? You tell me your daughter is visiting, and I come with an open heart. You did not say she brings an old man with her who will yell at us about things that are not his business. He is, what, her other father?”

Eli stands. His (apparently old) face burns. “This is bullshit. I’m out of here.”

To his surprise, Mary stands, too. He is not sure what she’s doing. He’s made a complete asshole of himself, and even if Daniel and Esther don’t know him for the utter hypocrite he is, Mary certainly does. Maybe she’s standing for a better angle from which to toss her margarita in his face? But shockingly she puts her hand on his wrist, exerts the mildest of pressures to pull him backward, away from the table. She turns to Daniel and says apologetically, “You’re right, you’re absolutely correct, if you and Gabriella aren’t married—even if you were—what goes on between you is your own concern. Eli and I are in no position to judge anyone. But it makes us uncomfortable, after Gabriella brought us into her home and has been waiting on us hand and foot, to be party to something that may be being kept from her, that could be hurtful to her. We would rather you not have involved us. This isn’t personal against you, Esther. We don’t know you. I would like to meet your son and see your artwork. But not like this. I’m sorry.”

The corners of Daniel’s mouth twitch with bemusement. If Eli knew how to hit him over the head in a way that would knock him unconscious without killing him, he would do it, even if it landed his own philandering ass in a Mexican jail. Daniel puts his hand on Mary’s, so that they form a near circle: Daniel, Mary, Eli, all holding hands. Other patrons stare.

“Look,” Daniel says, “you two have the wrong idea. Gabriella knows! She’s well aware. How do you think I spend almost half my time in San Miguel with Esther and my son? Do you think she’s blind and retarded and doesn’t notice I’m gone? I pay her the respect of not talking about Esther at length in her presence—did you expect me to tell anecdotes about my other family over dinner with Gabriella sitting right there? You’ve made a mountain out of a molehill! We have a situation that works for everybody, including both Gabriella’s and Esther’s families, whom, incidentally, I support. If you two want to sit here and vilify me, knock yourselves out, but you’re just showing how American you both are, and how little you understand of the complexities of human relationships. Now, I’d like you to stay, but not if you’re going to insult Esther and treat her like my
concubine
or something. Esther is a successful artist—she’s an educated woman! She’s made her own choices that work for her and I won’t sit here and have her demeaned.”