Hot Sur (19 page)

“Parallel fates,” Socorro declared, “Bolivia’s and mine. But at the same time not so much, don’t believe it, Mr. Rose. More like crossed fates. You be the judge.”

Bolivia and Socorro had both been born in Colombia in the same town and in the same year. They went to the same grade school run by Salesian nuns and were friends from the very first. A bit later, Socorro’s family, which was better off, moved to the capital, and this left Bolivia trapped in her little provincial sinkhole. Socorro graduated from grade school and the family celebrated with a black-tie affair at the local social club.

“I had a silk shantung dress in the imperial style custom-made,” she said, “and my hair was put up in a loop bun, that was the style then, the loop bun, very big ones, and I complemented it with aquamarine earrings I was given for the occasion. By this point, Bolivia had decided to start working, you see, she had decided to forsake her studies before the third year of high school. She became a stylist, manicurist, and a beautician and was hired to work mornings at the D’Luxe Salon and during the afternoons as an assistant at a dress shop.”

But they spent the Christmas vacations together, like when they were girls, and they couldn’t wait to meet up in their old neighborhood and go to festivals or attend services, always sharing their dreams of one day leaving the country, looking for their destinies elsewhere. They’d fly off very far away. And their dream came true. They both ended up in New York, Socorro first and Bolivia seven years later. In New York, they soon reunited, didn’t even have to search each other out, because Socorro had already made herself a home in America, how could she not help the other, who was a sister recently arrived. She assured her: “
Mi casa es tu casa
, stay with me until you can get settled” and “This is the land of open paths, just walk the paths and all paths lead to Rome; it’s not about getting there, it’s about getting on the path.” She repeated these motivational maxims and others as she emptied three of her drawers and helped her unpack. Everything was fine up to that point, two friends who loved each other and a dream realized. But later the divergences began, the little misunderstandings in spite of their great partnership, and Socorro began carelessly unleashing other sayings such as “To each his own home” and even this other one, “Guests are like fish; they stink after three days.”

“I’m telling you step-by-step,” Socorro clarified, “so you understand. Bolivia had always been a beautiful woman, short but lively, with dreamy eyes and eyelashes like a doll, but not me so much, my beauty was more inside, like my husband said. You will judge on your own; I have never been a beauty. I’m what is known as a woman of intellect.”

And yet Socorro had married a man who was well off, or at least established. He was a plumber, did his work professionally, made good money, wanted to have a family, and immediately fell in love with the Colombian woman he met at Coney Island, on line for the Wonder Wheel, then the tallest Ferris wheel in the world. It happened that they shared the same coach—how frightened Socorro had grown with such heights, how she covered her eyes and screamed—and that was enough for him to know that this woman was destined to become his wife. On the second date, he brought her a leather-bound copy of Kahlil Gibran’s
The Prophet
, which Socorro pulled out of a box to show Rose, proud of the dedication that said in green ink, “To Socorro who loves me so much,” and signed Marcus Clancy Salmon. Rose found the dedication strange, thinking that perhaps it should have said, “To Socorro, whom I love so much,” but Salmon had his own methods, and it was evident they worked for him, for on their third date, during a stroll in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, by the Japanese pond, he triumphantly proposed marriage to Socorro, who delightedly accepted the two-carat diamond that would seal their union.

“He was Jamaican and I was Colombian, and God knows how we communicated because he didn’t speak Spanish and I didn’t understand his English. Maybe that’s why the whole thing worked; you know how it is,” Socorro winked again. “The language of caressing and spoiling is more beautiful than the one of reason and logic, am I not right?”

At that level of intimacy, Rose dared to ask her why Bolivia who was so pretty never married.

“She did try at least three times,” Socorro responded. “But she always ran away from it. Maybe her own beauty did her in. Look, I was always satisfied with my little Jamaican, always satisfied and proud to be Mrs. Salmon, although as you can tell it’s not the best last name, in English or Spanish, a fish. But Bolivia? Bolivia was always looking for something different, another thing, someone else. I was never able to understand the sense of dissatisfaction that made her chase illusions, whatever they may have been.”

And so went the story of those two destinies that at times met only to bifurcate again, Socorro happily married, and Bolivia not, although Bolivia had been a mother and Socorro had not.

“Bolivia had her two daughters,” Socorro said, “and I’m not going to deny that I envied her that, and in turn loved them as if they were mine, especially Violeta, the younger one. They’d come here to visit and that girl loved my porcelain collection, could spend hours looking at them, liked cleaning them with a wet rag, and I allowed it, as long as she was careful. Of course, she had her psychological issues, my girl Violeta, maybe bipolar, they’d say now, or anxiety-ridden, they didn’t know for sure; but she was a doll regardless, with that blondish hair and green eyes that lit the way like two lanterns. And really, it was just knowing how to deal with her, how to interact with her on her level. To calm her down, you know.

“On the other hand, with María Paz things have always been complicated. If the younger one was rebellious and difficult, the older one was worse. Let’s just say that she’s a temperamental girl and leave it there not to judge. My husband warned me from the beginning: ‘Watch that older daughter, she’s trouble, you’ll see, she’ll go from bad to worse, it’s a bad week coming if they hang you on Monday.’ Maybe it was just his paranoia, you know how we immigrants live in this country, so frightened to do something wrong, to behave improperly, to have the neighbors or the law come after us, that we panic when someone looks at us funny. Maybe it’s just a mental thing, up here, you know? An issue with the noggin. But we get psyched out anyway, can’t be helped. The lawn looks a little patchy and we think they can deport us for that. But, Mr. Rose, don’t judge my Marcus, he’s been good to me. Although he does impose certain conditions, and in that he is unequivocal and there’s no room for argument.”

Salmon had been pleased when María Paz decided to marry an American cop. He told Socorro that maybe the girl was rehabilitating herself and agreed to spend a large sum on the wedding present, a set of Czech glassware. When she went to jail, Salmon ordered that Bolivia’s oldest daughter could not set foot in their house again. “What if she’s not guilty?” Socorro had dared to ask. “She must have done something” was Salmon’s final answer.

“But tell me, when they were younger, did the girls ever live in this house in Staten Island?” Rose asked.

“No. It was a long time before Bolivia could send for her girls. And when they finally came, she was no longer living here. But they came to visit now and then, and sometimes would stay for the weekend, and we tried to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas together. You have to understand, Bolivia and I continued to be friends. But something invisible and sharp inside, like an icicle, had cooled what had been our sisterhood. And then later she died, and perhaps I haven’t behaved very well with the older daughter, I admit that. I just hope that Bolivia doesn’t hold it against me from the beyond.” Socorro glanced down in a gesture of confession, fixing her eyes on her leather sandals. “But don’t blame me entirely; you have to understand my husband’s convictions.”

“I imagine that this visit, the fact that I’m here, is something you are hiding from your husband,” Rose said.

“Well, you have come to revive phantoms that annoy my husband. I’m sorry, but it would not be good to shake the dust of certain events that put my marriage in jeopardy. Marcus is a man who does things by the book, and in spite of his generosity doesn’t forgive delinquency or bad conduct, or anything that is a threat to order and security, not to mention morality.”

“But you yourself admitted that it was possible María Paz wasn’t guilty.”

“But you try to explain it to Marcus, whose principles are unshakable. He’d never forgive me something like that.”

“Something like what?

Socorro began to trip over her words, said she regretted her lack of character, her submission to her husband, felt as if she had to justify her behavior to this stranger who had come to question her. She had always been weak, she said, with high blood pressure and frail health. What ills had she not been afflicted with, at least a dozen of the ones listed in
Medical Care
, and she went on to list all of them for Rose, counting them on her skinny fingers with the long fingernails: breast cancer, sinusitis, allergies, skin breakouts, hiccups that sometimes lasted for weeks. With all the visits to the doctor, all the hospital stays, the chronic fatigue, she had not been able to work or bear children. On the other hand, Bolivia was tireless when it came to work and strong as an ox, never taking a single day off, and not once in her life did she even have a cold. But Socorro was still alive and Bolivia was dead and buried before she turned fifty-two. Socorro had never had to work, but was never short of money. Bolivia, who never stopped working, was the type who never had enough for the rent. In the intensive care unit at Queens Hospital Center, a few hours after a sudden stroke had fried Bolivia’s brain, Socorro stood by the bed of her friend who was unconscious but still alive, and swore to her on the Most Holy Virgin that from that moment on she, Socorro Arias de Salmon, would take care of Bolivia’s daughters. “You can die in peace, my friend, I will watch over your daughters.” And up to now she had kept her promise, not entirely but well enough, or let’s say well enough when it came to Violeta and not so well with respect to María Paz. She confessed to Rose that she had set up a special trust fund so that she could continue to keep her promise to Bolivia concerning Violeta when she and Mr. Salmon were no longer alive.

“Almost all these porcelain pieces are Royal Doulton,” she said. “They’re worth a fortune. Look, this one is one of a kind. It will be worth almost seven thousand dollars when it is sold for Violeta.”

Under lock and key, behind glass, she had another half dozen Capodimonte pieces, and she asked Rose if he knew what they were worth, if he could tell they were originals, with seals of authenticity and everything, and in perfect condition.

“Look, with just this one here, Bolivia’s sick daughter has enough to live on for the rest of her life. I’ll show you,” Socorro said.

Rose examined it. It was a good-sized piece, made up of two figures on a sort of cloud, a man and a woman, the woman with an imperial air, a Marie Antoinette or Madame de Pompadour, wearing a tulle flounce dress and leaning down over a beggar at her feet. The beggar, or character down on his luck, gazed with an almost mystical rapture at the sumptuous cleavage of the lady. It could be said that he was gorging on that pair of porcelain breasts with his eyes, and Rose was annoyed with him, that beggar, because there was something base about him.

“Pretty piece,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“Since Marcus and I don’t have kids,” Socorro explained with a hint of frustration, “Violeta will be the sole heir of all these treasures. It’s a debt I owe to Bolivia, my dear Bolivia, because I didn’t always do right by her, didn’t always do right. Perhaps because I was jealous, or envious, and no one is perfect, we know, certainly not me. And neither was Bolivia; she was no pot of honey, my friend Bolivia, you can be sure of that.”

Although Socorro had not admitted it, Rose had come to the conclusion that this woman had not been able to stand the way her husband looked at Bolivia, that Bolivia was fertile and she wasn’t, and that it was painful to compare her sickly lean figure with the brimming roundness and spectacular smile of her rival. No doubt Bolivia had noticed, sensed something was wrong, that the tension as the months passed had become way too evident, almost tangible, as Socorro had mentioned.

Socorro told him that one night, when she and her husband returned from a party, they noticed that Bolivia had packed up her suitcase and gone, leaving a note that said, “Love you, thank you very much for everything, thank you and see you soon and may God give you many years of wedded happiness.” From then on, Socorro only saw her once in a while, and of her life and adventures only learned fragments. “She was a survivor, that’s what Bolivia was, a survivor,” Socorro repeated various times to Rose, and he remembered reading the same phrase in María Paz’s manuscript, and asked himself what it meant exactly, and if perhaps it had to do with the seventeen pages that were missing from the manuscript.

“There’s seventeen pages missing?”

Socorro pretended she didn’t know, but she turned red and drops of sweat moistened the bleached fuzz under her nose.

“Do you know by any chance what happened to those seventeen pages?”

“Sometimes things get lost, you know . . .”

“Mrs. Salmon, I’d appreciate it if you told me the truth.”

“You have to understand, Mr. Rose, those pages were the most compromising part of the story. I was afraid that . . . in the end . . . Look, the truth is I burned them, Mr. Rose.”

“You burned them.”

“Yes. I admit it. There were revelations about things that were too personal and serious and that affect me directly. Painful things for me. And others that I don’t remember. Things that would damage the memory of my best friend, you know what I mean. Let’s drop this topic, please, Mr. Rose.”

“Of course, we’ll leave it there. Just one more question before I say good-bye. What made you decide to finally send off the manuscript?”

“That’s an easy question. I did it because María Paz asked me to, and I didn’t feel I could deny her request.”