North of Boston (20 page)

Caridad's face goes slack. With a strange sinewy motion, she turns her back to the woman as if she didn't hear.

“I'm remodeling,” I tell the cashier with a quick, businesslike smile. “A cottage on the beach. I need an entire kitchen—all the appliances and so forth. This young woman is being very helpful.”

The cashier's sweatpants are pooling around her ankles. Her feet seem impossibly small under the wide inverted rotunda of her hips. She grunts, hitches up her pants, and leaves.

“Is there somewhere private we can talk?” I say to Caridad.

“About what?” Sullen, like a punished child.

“Please. I think we could help each other.”

She presses the gold cross between two fingers, murmurs, “How is Alejandro?”

“He was fine when I saw him last night, but he's in danger. Some people are looking for him. I want to help him, but I need to know more about what's going on with the whales. He won't tell me, and I know now, after meeting you, that it's because he doesn't want you to be hurt.”

She says nothing, just takes it in, all the while worrying the cross, pulling it from left to right and back on its chain. Finally she says, “My sister will pick me up soon and take me to the house. She has the big bedroom; I have the small one. I leave the house at night sometimes alone. But it's dark, and I don't know where to go. She's not my real sister. I'm a child of God.” She wanders down the aisle to a stove, places her hand flat on the burner. “Do you want a stove?”

“No,” I say, following.

She waltzes a few more feet to another stove, opens the door on the front, which squeaks on a rusty hinge. “An oven?”

“No, thank you.”

“No. You wouldn't need an oven.” She closes the door slowly, with something like regret.

We stand in the aisle looking at each other. I have no idea what's going on in her mind. “You don't have to tell me, Caridad. I think I know. A few years ago, you made some allegations against your husband, and it was discovered that you were sick. Alejandro came here to do a story on your treatment. He met you and guessed that what had happened to you was not so simple. It wasn't so simple, was it, Caridad? You were trying to say something. Something true.”

“I don't know. I can't remember anything.” Her eyes are quickly filling with tears.

“Think, Caridad. What you said about your husband. Did you talk to Alejandro about that?”

She wipes her tears before they fall with the back of her hand. “He said he'd find out if it could be proved.”

“I think that's what he's trying to do. I wasn't sure exactly why until now. If he can show that what you said was true, you'll be vindicated, right?'

“I wish he'd come back soon.”

“Where can we go to talk?” I say.

Her head drops as her eyes slide sideways. It's a sly, unattractive gesture, the mark of a person who has shameful secrets, or who is trying to hide her chronic contempt. I run back to the refrigerators, retrieve the whale book, stuff it in my satchel, and follow her. In the back corner of the building, near a door marked Emergency Exit Only, she stops. The area is poorly lit and empty but for some folding banquet tables stacked on end, leaning against the wall.

“Bob took me to India on our honeymoon,” Caridad says. “Far out in the country. Four or five other couples were there. We stayed in tents with native people cooking and getting firewood. The men played soccer in the evenings. During the day we went in jeeps through the forests on narrow roads. I didn't know where we were exactly. But it was beautiful, like being in a secret part of the world where no one had ever been. We found an elephant herd and followed it for days. Every day the men shot two or three. Mothers, babies—it didn't matter. The elephants would roar. Scream just like people do, and stampede right into the guns. But the jeeps were faster, and we always got away. Everyone would be laughing with their mouths wide open, the women, too.

“After a few days, I stayed inside the tent. I could barely move. I kept seeing the elephants in my mind, hearing the sounds they made. When I went outside the tent, the Indians pointed at me, yelling
Sanaki, sanaki
. Crazy. I wanted Bob to take me home, but of course he didn't. Men like him don't listen to anyone. I didn't know marriage would be like that. I thought it would be better.” She sighs briefly at her own naïveté, stiffens, continues her story. “He came back to the tent at night smelling of blood, and wanted me to make love to him. I couldn't, and he said I was worthless. I had no one to talk to.”

She cranes her head as if she sees someone coming. I look, too, but no one's there. Caridad crosses her elbows across her chest. “I hate that woman. Carla.”

“The cashier.”

“Yes. What time is it?”

I check my watch. “Ten to twelve.”

“My sister will be here soon.”

“You have time.”

She leans back against the fire door. I'm worried she's going to pop it open and set off the alarm, but I don't say anything. Her head tilts up toward the ceiling, and she continues her story in a monotone. “I found out that Bob and his friends went on safaris, hunting trips, whatever you want to call them, all the time. They called themselves something . . . some kind of club . . . I forget the name. There was scoring, and betting, and money involved. They didn't always go together. Sometimes just two or three of them would go somewhere. They took movies and showed them at our house.

“Then Bob came up with the idea of hunting whales. He talked about it to his friends a lot. He owned a company. Sagga, Santi—I don't know.” She's looking over her shoulder at an artificial Christmas tree.

“Soga.”

“Maybe. Anyway, I went to the police to tell them about the elephants and whales. They said they'd look into it, but weeks went by and nothing happened.”

“What about the fire, Caridad? The fire you set.”

“Oh, right.” She laughs hollowly. “I don't remember setting it. I only remember waking up and all the smoke in the bedroom. Bob wasn't next to me. I ran out to the living room—flames everywhere, right to the ceiling. I got outside, and Bob came—he put a coat around me—we watched until the fire trucks came. Then an ambulance arrived, and I was put inside it and taken to a hospital. I told people again and again what was happening to the animals, but no one cared.”

She steels herself and smiles slightly, coldly. “Tell Alejandro to do what's best for himself and not worry about me. Tell him I'm fine. My loving God takes care of me.”

“Are you being treated badly?”

She blinks rapidly, as if she doesn't understand the question. “They tell me I'm OK when I take my meds. I want to go home, but I don't have one. When is Alejandro coming back?” She presses the cross hard into the base of her neck.

I
'm back from Falmouth in time to pick up Noah from school so that Thomasina and Max can have their long weekend at Foxwoods. Thomasina packed pajamas for him, but he goes to bed on the living room couch wearing his dirty school clothes minus the pants. I figure it's not my job to make him wear certain things, or eat certain things, or think or feel any particular way. This attitude is why I would be either a horrible mother or a really good one. With any luck, I won't find out.

At seven on Saturday morning I slog sleepily to the kitchen for coffee, expecting to tiptoe through the living room so as not to wake my young guest. The first thing I encounter is a black snake of meticulously placed dominoes stretching across the floor. It begins in the middle of the raised slate platform in front of the fireplace, extends to the edge, resumes on the hardwood floor, travels parallel to the Turkish carpet, undulates down the hallway, makes several sharp geometric shapes as it enters the dining room, and (I follow it to see) branches out into paired trails that crisscross several times before merging into a tight double strand that ends in a spiral four or five circles deep under the table.

The dominos are kept in a trunk next to the bookcase. For Noah's amusement I have been adding to them for years and have amassed a staggering number. This particular design must have come close to using them all. It's one of his best. He must have been up for several hours in the middle of the night, and now he's conked out on the couch with the pillow on the floor and the sheets and blankets helter-skelter as if a small gale blew through.

I go into the kitchen, start making French toast. In a few minutes, I turn from the stove to find him standing in the doorway.

“Nice work,” I say.

“You want to do it?”

“You want to eat first?”

He shakes his head.

I turn off the stove, and follow him into the living room. We stand ceremoniously before the first domino on the lip of the fireplace. I'm worried about the bumpiness of the slate, the precipitous drop to the floor, the right-hand angle as the trail enters the dining room. The energy will have to flow at exactly the same rate along the paired lines in order for them to merge without incident, and one domino slightly out of place will stop the tight spiral in its tracks.

Coolly, like a pilot preparing for takeoff, Noah asks if I'm ready.

“Ready,” I say.

Gently, he pushes the first domino with his finger. The plastic tiles fold at a steady pace; each makes a distinct click, which flows into the next to make a rapid-fire
rat-tat-tat
. There is a split second of silence while the domino at the end of the fireplace falls precisely onto the edge of the domino on the floor, then the efficient clicking resumes. Noah and I can't take our eyes from the spectacle of controlled collapse that is proceeding without apparent agency across the room. We follow the motion into the foyer, then the dining room, until the last domino is flattened and the clicking suddenly stops.

Noah breathes a happy sigh of accomplishment, and I beam with pleasure. The start of a good day. I serve the French toast; he gobbles the first helping and asks for more. He downs two glasses of orange juice, belches, and gives me one of his rare and glorious smiles.

I know better than to ask why he, who's spent a mere decade on this earth, much of it below the age of reason, was awake and obsessively lining up hundreds of little black squares for hours in the dark of night. We all have our methods for getting through this life. Noah's defenses may be more elaborate than other children's, but then they have a lot more work to do. After a long discussion of the probability of life on other planets, and another about the challenges of building tunnels underwater, after a banana, hot chocolate, and a game of hangman, he goes off to lose himself in his laptop.

A few minutes later, he's back. “You found it!” He's holding up his cell phone.

“Oh, right. It was in the couch cushions. It must have fallen out of your pocket the last time you were here. Sorry. I meant to call.”

“Now I can tell Max I was right. It
was
here!”

“You told Max you left your cell phone here?”

“Uh-huh. He kept asking. He's a wicked control freak.”

“Control freak?” Odd to hear this term from a fifth grader.

“That's what Mom says.”

“Really? She says that about Max?”

“No,
I
say it about Max. She says it about anyone she doesn't like.”

“Oh, I see. I guess you don't like Max. Why?”

“He takes a long time in the bathroom, and my mom acts weird when he's around. Plus, he smells bad.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. All three of those things, actually.” Pause. “Is he nice to you?”

“I guess.”

“I wonder why he'd care so much about your cell phone.” The minute the words leave my mouth, I recall that he was talking to Noah about his cell phone at the funeral. What could he have wanted? Then I remember something else—Noah's whalebone. I can't believe I didn't think of it as soon as Parnell showed me the whale book. Is it possible that the story Ned told his son was true, at least in part?

“Noah, you didn't show Max your whalebone, did you?”

“No way. I hid it in the box, remember? And I'm not going to show him my pictures either.”

“What pictures?”

“The ones my dad sent me. Look, they're really weird.” He presses some things on his phone, hands it to me, and hovers over my shoulder while I look.

There's a grainy, gray, indistinct image on the screen. I peer closely and see that it's a beach shrouded in mist. A scattering of smoothly mounded boulders half-submerged in wet, dark sand. No people, no landmarks. Just a bunch of white things sticking up. Some straight, some warped. Some come to a point on the end; some don't. I can't judge height because there's nothing in the frame to compare them with. I have no idea what they are. Best guess: leafless birch saplings planted in rows—a grid, actually. I count seven across, but that's just how wide the camera angle is.

“From your dad, huh?”

Noah nods. “From his cell phone camera.”

“Any more?”

He shows me two more that are substantially the same. I can't make out any details that would help explain the images. But there is a date—August 7. That's shortly before Ned left Ocean Catch. The photos were snapped a few seconds apart.

Some weird, random things hook up in my brain, and drag me toward a question. “Noah, when you say Max smells bad, do you mean he smells like Old Spice? Or something else?”

“What's Old Spice?”

Of course he wouldn't know. But I want to, right away. “Let's go to the pharmacy. Come on, get your coat. I'll buy you a hamburger on the way home.”

“I just had French toast.”

“Oh, right. Then let's just go.”

—

At Walgreens, I grab the iconic buoy-shaped bottle off a shelf, pay for it, open it in the car, stick it under Noah's nose.

“Euuii,” he says, and waves his hand under his nostrils.

“Max?” I ask.

“Yeah. That's him in the morning. The really gross smell is at night.”

“A different gross smell than this?”

“Way different.”

Looks like our Max is a two-cologne man. “One more stop, then. You up for this? Think your nose can handle it?”

He laughs. He's having fun. “Sure, Pirio. Let's go smell things.”

There's an essential oils shop in Allston. A long, narrow place with a bead curtain to a back room, New Agey posters on the walls, and shelves of little glass vials containing oils from all over the world. I visited the place once when I was trying to reconstruct my mother's private fragrance. The oils were cheap, probably diluted. Some clearly past their prime. But they're good enough for this venture.

The proprietress behind the counter is wearing purple velour pants and a tank top. She has the aura of someone who has spent years trying to be spiritual, but has nevertheless failed to even slightly alleviate her constant irritated disgust with the entire human race. I say that my friend and I are interested in sampling four different oils: rosewood, sandalwood, oud wood, and oak moss. There's enough similarity here to make discrimination necessary, enough difference to make identification by the untrained possible. The woman sets the vials on the glass counter about four inches apart. Pulls out the corks and gives me a look that says she's not enjoying the game.

“Is Max in one of these?” I ask Noah.

Dutifully, he brings each vial to his nose and experiences his reaction. A shaking of the head, a nose scrunch, a second sniff, a frown or smile. At the third vial, he says, “This is him.” I ask him to take his time, to be sure. Dutifully, he sniffs the fourth vial, goes back along the row. “It's definitely this one,” he says. Oud wood.

Great. Now I know. Max is the one who broke into my apartment, leaving a trace of his heavy-on-the-base-notes cologne. No doubt he was sent by Johnny, who knew exactly where I'd be for an hour or so. No wonder Johnny was so eager to invite me to his home. But Max didn't find the phone, and now it's in my possession, and only Noah and I have seen the photos stored on it—evidence of I don't know what. I'm guessing that in the process of tracking the phone, Max stumbled across Thomasina and her trust fund, and decided to dally.

I try not to act alarmed, but I can't keep the urgent edge out of my voice. “Come on, Noah. Let's go home.”

“Wait. Can I smell some more?”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, of course you can.” He deserves a little fun for his patience, and a few more minutes isn't going to make much difference at this point.

I manage to smile sweetly at the proprietress. “Can we sample a couple of florals? Maybe rose and jasmine. And some fruits—grapefruit, orange, mango. How about patchouli, balsam, vanilla? Oh, and do you have any civet?”

The proprietress sullenly proceeds to assemble the throng.

Noah smells thoroughly and deliberately, like a connoisseur tasting wine. He's probably never fully experienced his nose before. Each scent gets a little nod. When he picks up the civet, his head snaps back. “Oh, geez!”

I smile. “Want to know something crazy?”

“Yeah.”

“That's from the anus of the civet cat.”

“Anus?”

“Bum.”

“Whoa!” Noah's eyes widen.

“No kidding, huh? It's a common ingredient in perfumes. Just think, all the fancy ladies dabbing Shalimar and Chanel No. 5 behind their ears are really dabbing cat bum.”

“Cool!”

The proprietress, nearly snarling, begins hastily recorking her bottles. But for Noah learning this arcane factoid has made the trip a huge success.

—

At home, I pour hot chocolate into two mugs. Noah dumps a handful of tiny marshmallows in his mug. I ask if I can send the pictures to my computer and delete them from his phone.

His eyes darken. “No, they're mine.”

“OK. Right.” Noah doesn't insist on his own will very often, but when he does, he's hard to budge, especially when he's right. The pictures were sent by his father. Of course he doesn't want to give them up. Better for me to duck and circle back later. Luckily, he changes the subject himself, though not to safer ground.

“Why did you want to know what Max smells like?” He touches the rim of his cup, but doesn't drink. He likes to wait for the marshmallows to get sticky.

“I guess . . . hmm.” I'm caught off guard, not knowing what to tell him. He's probably going to see more of Max, and I don't want him to be scared.

“Why, Pirio? Why did you want to know?” He's ramrod straight like Thomasina gets when she's about to blow.

I don't see a way around this. “I smelled his cologne in the apartment. I think he came here looking for your phone once when I wasn't home. That's why it would be better if we took the photos off it and sent them to my computer instead.”

His head dips away. He puts his mouth to the cup and slurps. The cocoa splashes onto the table. He's blowing bubbles in it, buying time. He knows there's a lot I'm not saying. He also knows that I can be stubborn, too. Direct questioning probably won't get him very far, and there are too many questions anyway. He doesn't know where to begin. He seems to come to a decision, picks up his head, drives to the question he really wants to ask. “Is my mom going to marry him?”

“It's hard to say. They've only just met. Sometimes grown-ups get all excited at the beginning of a relationship, then it peters out.”

“She keeps asking if I like him. Says he's really nice and I have to give him a chance. But I don't like him. I want him to go away.” His hands are clenched, but there's a catch of vulnerability in his throat.

“Oh, Noah. Right now everything's a mess. There's a lot that has to get sorted out. With Max, with your mother. With all kinds of stuff that's going on. We have to take one thing at a time right now. The pictures, for example. Would you please let me take them off your phone and put them on my computer, where you can see them anytime you want?”