"What was the saint's name?" the little girl with pigtails kept asking.
"Saint Ignatius Loyola," Juan Diego heard Clark French tell the children.
The giant gecko moved as fast as a small one. Maybe Clark's voice had been too confident, or just too loud. It was amazing how the big lizard could flatten itself out--how it managed to fit behind the painting, although it had moved the painting slightly. The painting now hung a little crookedly on the wall, but it was as if the gecko had never been there. Saint Ignatius himself had not seen the lizard, nor was Loyola even looking at the children and adults.
From all the portraits of Loyola that Juan Diego had seen--in the Templo de la Compania de Jesus, at Lost Children, and elsewhere in Oaxaca (and in Mexico City)--he couldn't recall the bald but bearded saint ever looking back at him. Saint Ignatius's eyes looked above; Loyola was looking, ever-beseechingly, toward Heaven. The Jesuits' founder was seeking a higher authority--Loyola wasn't inclined to make eye contact with mere bystanders.
"Dinner is served!" an adult's voice was calling.
"Thank you for the story, Mister," Pedro said to Juan Diego. "I'm sorry about all the stuff you miss," the little boy added.
Both Pedro and the little girl with pigtails wanted to hold Juan Diego's hands when all three of them got back to the top of the stairs, but the stairs were too narrow; it wouldn't have been safe for a crippled man to go down those stairs holding hands with two little children. Juan Diego knew he should hold the railing instead.
Besides, he saw Clark French waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs--no doubt the new seating plan had given a few of the most senior family members fits. Juan Diego imagined there were women of a certain age who'd wanted to sit next to him; these older women were his most avid readers--at least they were usually the ones who weren't shy about speaking to him.
All Clark enthusiastically said to him was: "I just love listening to how you tell a story."
Maybe you wouldn't love listening to my Virgin Mary story, Juan Diego was thinking, but he felt inordinately tired--especially for someone who'd slept on the plane and had a nap in the car. Young Pedro was right to feel sorry about "all the stuff" Juan Diego missed. Just thinking about all the stuff he missed made Juan Diego miss everyone more--he'd hardly scratched the surface with that dump story for the children.
The seating plan had been very carefully worked out; the children's tables were at the perimeters of the dining room, the adults clustered together at the center tables. Josefa, Clark's wife, would be seated to one side of Juan Diego, who saw that the other seat beside him was empty. Clark took a seat diagonally across the table from his former teacher. No one wore a party hat--not yet.
Juan Diego wasn't surprised to see that the middle of his table was, for the most part, composed of those "women of a certain age"--the ones he'd been thinking about. They smiled knowingly at him, the way women who've read your novels (and assume they know everything about you) do; only one of these older women wasn't smiling.
You know what they say about people who look like their pets. Before Clark commenced making a ringing sound with a spoon against his water glass, before Clark's garrulous introduction of his former teacher to his wife's family, Juan Diego saw in an instant who Auntie Carmen was. There was no one else in sight who even slightly resembled a brightly colored, sharp-toothed, voracious eel. And, in the flattering light at the dinner table, Auntie Carmen's jowls might have been mistaken for a moray's quivering gills. Like a moray, too, Auntie Carmen radiated distance and distrust--her aloofness disguising the biting eel's renowned ability to launch a lethal strike from afar.
"I have something I want to say to you two," Dr. Quintana said to her husband and Juan Diego, when their table had quieted down--Clark had finally stopped talking; the first course, a ceviche, had been served. "No religion, no Church politics, not a word about abortion or birth control--not while we're eating," Josefa said.
"Not while the children and teenagers are--" Clark started to say.
"Not while the adults are here, Clark--no talking about any of it unless you two are alone," his wife told him.
"And no sex," Auntie Carmen said; she was looking at Juan Diego. He was the one who wrote about sex--Clark didn't. And the way the eel woman had said "no sex"--as if it left a bad taste in her wizened mouth--implied both talking about it and doing it.
"I guess that leaves literature," Clark said truculently.
"That depends on which literature," Juan Diego said. As soon as he'd sat down, he felt a little light-headed; his vision had blurred. This happened with Viagra--usually, the feeling soon passed. But when Juan Diego felt his right-front pocket, he was reminded that he hadn't taken the Viagra; he could feel the tablet and the mah-jongg tile through the fabric of his trousers.
There was, of course, some seafood in the ceviche--what looked like shrimp, or perhaps a kind of crayfish. And wedges of mango, Juan Diego noticed; he'd slightly touched the marinade with the tines of his salad fork. Citrus, certainly--probably lime, Juan Diego thought.
Auntie Carmen saw him sneaking a taste; she brandished her salad fork, as if to demonstrate that she'd restrained herself long enough.
"I see no reason why we should wait for her," Auntie Carmen said, pointing her fork at the empty chair next to Juan Diego. "She's not family," the eel woman added.
Juan Diego felt something or someone touch his ankles; he saw a small face looking up at him from under the table. The little girl with pigtails sat at his feet. "Hi, Mister," she said. "The lady told me to tell you--she's coming."
"What lady?" Juan Diego asked the little girl; to everyone at the table, except for Clark's wife, he must have looked like he was talking to his lap.
"Consuelo," Josefa said to the little girl. "You're supposed to be at your table--please go there."
"Yes," Consuelo said.
"What lady?" Juan Diego asked Consuelo again. The little girl had crawled out from under the table and now endured Auntie Carmen's cruel stare.
"The lady who just appears," Consuelo said; she tugged on both her pigtails, making her head bob up and down. She ran off. The waiters were pouring wine--one of them was the boy driver who'd brought Juan Diego from the airport in Tagbilaran City.
"You must have driven the mystery lady from the airport," Juan Diego said to him, waving the wine away, but the boy seemed not to understand. Josefa spoke to him in Tagalog; even then, the boy driver looked confused. He gave Dr. Quintana what sounded like an overlong answer.
"He says he didn't drive her--he says she just appeared in the driveway. No one saw her car or driver," Josefa said.
"The plot thickens!" Clark French declared. "No wine for him--he drinks only beer," Clark was telling the boy driver, who was a lot less confident as a waiter than he'd been behind the wheel.
"Yes, sir," the boy said.
"You shouldn't have provided your former teacher with all that beer," Auntie Carmen said suddenly to Clark. "Were you drunk?" Auntie Carmen asked Juan Diego. "Whatever possessed you to turn off the air-conditioning? No one turns off the air-conditioning in Manila!"
"That's enough, Carmen," Dr. Quintana told her aunt. "Your precious aquarium is not dinner-table conversation. You say 'no sex,' I say 'no fish.' Got it?"
"It was my fault, Auntie," Clark started in. "The aquarium was my idea--"
"I was freezing cold," Juan Diego explained to the eel woman. "I hate air-conditioning," he told everyone. "I probably did have too much beer--"
"Don't apologize," Josefa said to him. "They were just fish."
"Just fish!" Auntie Carmen cried.
Dr. Quintana leaned across the table, touching Auntie Carmen's leathery hand. "Do you want to hear how many vaginas I've seen in the last week--in the last month?" she asked her aunt.
"Josefa!" Clark cried.
"No fish, no sex," Dr. Quintana told the eel woman. "You want to talk about fish, Carmen? Just watch out."
"I hope Morales is okay," Juan Diego said to Aun
tie Carmen, in an effort to be pacifying.
"Morales is different--the experience changed him," Auntie Carmen said haughtily.
"No eels, either, Carmen," Josefa said. "You just watch out."
Women doctors--how Juan Diego loved them! He'd adored Dr. Marisol Gomez; he was devoted to his dear friend Dr. Rosemary Stein. And here was the wonderful Dr. Josefa Quintana! Juan Diego was fond of Clark, but did Clark deserve a wife like this?
She "just appears," the little girl with pigtails had said about the mystery lady. And hadn't the boy driver confirmed that the lady just appeared?
Yet the aquarium conversation had been intense; no one, not even Juan Diego, was thinking about the uninvited guest--not at that moment when the little gecko fell (or dropped) from the ceiling. The gecko landed in the untouched ceviche next to Juan Diego; it was as if the tiny creature knew this was an unguarded salad plate. The gecko appeared to drop into the conversation at the only empty seat.
The lizard was as slender as a ballpoint pen, and only half as long. Two women shrieked; one was a well-dressed woman seated directly opposite the mystery guest's unoccupied seat--she had her eyeglasses spattered with the citrus marinade. A wedge of mango slipped off the salad plate in the direction of the older man who'd been introduced to Juan Diego as a retired surgeon. (He and Juan Diego sat on either side of the empty seat.) The surgeon's wife, one of those readers of "a certain age," had shrieked more loudly than the well-dressed woman, who was now calm and wiping her eyeglasses.
"Damn those things," the well-dressed woman said.
"Just who invited you?" the retired surgeon asked the little gecko, who now crouched (unmoving) in the unfamiliar ceviche. Everyone but Auntie Carmen laughed; the anxious-looking little gecko was no laughing matter to her, apparently. The gecko looked ready to spring, but where?
Later everyone would say that the gecko had distracted all of them from the slender woman in the beige silk dress. She had just appeared, they would all think later; no one saw her approaching the table, though she was very watchable in that perfectly fitted, sleeveless dress. She seemed to glide unnoticed to the chair that was waiting for her--not even the gecko saw her coming, and geckos are acutely alert. (If you're a gecko and you want to stay alive, you'd better be alert.)
Juan Diego would remember seeing only the briefest flash of the woman's slim wrist; he never saw the salad fork in her hand, not until she'd stabbed the gecko through its twig-size spine--pinning it to a wedge of mango on her plate.
"Got you," Miriam said.
This time, only Auntie Carmen cried out--as if she'd been stabbed. You can always count on the children to see everything; maybe the kids had seen Miriam coming, and they'd had the good sense to watch her.
"I didn't think human beings could be as fast as geckos," Pedro would say to Juan Diego another day. (They were in the second-floor library, staring at the Saint Ignatius Loyola painting, waiting for the giant gecko to make an appearance, but that big gecko was never seen again.)
"Geckos are really, really fast--you can't catch one," Juan Diego would tell the little boy.
"But that lady--" Pedro started to say; he just stopped.
"Yes, she was fast," was all Juan Diego would say.
In the hushed dining room, Miriam held the salad fork between her thumb and index finger, reminding Juan Diego of the way Flor used to hold a cigarette--as if it were a joint. "Waiter," Miriam was saying. The lifeless gecko hung limply from the glistening tines of the little fork. The boy driver, who was a clumsy waiter, rushed to take the murder weapon from Miriam. "I'll need a new ceviche, too," she told him, taking her seat.
"Don't get up, darling," she said, putting her hand on Juan Diego's shoulder. "I know it hasn't been long, but I've missed you terribly," she added. Everyone in the dining room had heard her; no one was talking.
"I've missed you," Juan Diego said to her.
"Well, I'm here now," Miriam told him.
So they knew each other, everyone was thinking; she wasn't quite the mystery guest they'd been expecting. Suddenly, she didn't look uninvited. And Juan Diego didn't seem exactly neutral.
"This is Miriam," Juan Diego announced. "And this is Clark--Clark French, the writer. My former student," Juan Diego said.
"Oh, yes," Miriam said, smiling demurely.
"And Clark's wife, Josefa--Dr. Quintana," Juan Diego went on.
"I'm so glad there's a doctor here," Miriam told Josefa. "It makes the Encantador seem less remote."
A chorus of shouts greeted her--other doctors, raising their hands. (Mostly men, of course, but even the female doctors put up their hands.)
"Oh, wonderful--a family of doctors," Miriam said, smiling to everyone. Only Auntie Carmen remained less than charmed; no doubt, she'd taken the gecko's side--she was a pet person, after all.
And what about the children? Juan Diego was wondering. What did they make of the mystery guest?
He felt Miriam's hand graze his lap; she rested it on his thigh. "Happy New Year, darling," she whispered to him. Juan Diego thought he also felt her foot touch his calf, then his knee.
"Hi, Mister," Consuelo said, from under the table. This time, the little girl in pigtails was not alone; Pedro had crawled under the table with her. Juan Diego peered at them.
Josefa had not seen the children--she was leaning across the table, involved in some unreadable sign language with Clark.
Miriam looked under the table; she saw the two children peering up at them.
"I guess the lady doesn't love geckos, Mister," Pedro was saying.
"I don't think she misses geckos," Consuelo said.
"I don't love geckos in my ceviche," Miriam told the children. "I don't miss geckos in my salad," she added.
"What do you think, Mister?" the little girl in pigtails asked Juan Diego. "What would your sister think?" she asked him.
"Yeah, what would--" Pedro started to say, but Miriam leaned down to them; her face, under the table, was suddenly very close to the kids.
"Listen, you two," Miriam told them. "Don't ask him what his sister thinks--his sister was killed by a lion."
That sent the kids away; they crawled off in a hurry.
I didn't want to give them nightmares, Juan Diego was trying to tell Miriam, but he couldn't speak. I didn't want to frighten them! he tried to tell her, but the words wouldn't come. It was as if he'd seen Lupe's face under the table, although the girl with pigtails, Consuelo, was much younger than Lupe had been when she died.
His vision suddenly blurred again; this time, Juan Diego knew it wasn't the Viagra.
"Just tears," he said to Miriam. "I'm fine--there's nothing wrong. I'm just crying," he tried to explain to Josefa. (Dr. Quintana had taken his arm.)
"Are you all right?" Clark asked his former teacher.
"I'm fine, Clark--there's nothing wrong. I'm just crying," Juan Diego repeated.
"Of course you are, darling--of course you are," Miriam told him, taking his other arm; she kissed his hand.
"Where is that lovely child with the pigtails? Get her," Miriam said to Dr. Quintana.
"Consuelo!" Josefa called. The little girl ran up to them at the table; Pedro was right behind her.
"There you are, you two!" Miriam cried; she let go of Juan Diego's arm, hugging the children to her. "Don't be frightened," she told them. "Mr. Guerrero is sad about his sister--he's always thinking about her. Wouldn't you cry if you never forgot how your sister was killed by a lion?" Miriam asked the children.
"Yes!" Consuelo cried.
"I guess so," Pedro told her; he actually looked like he might forget about it.
"Well, that's how Mr. Guerrero feels--he just misses her," Miriam told the kids.
"I miss her--her name was Lupe," Juan Diego managed to tell the children. The boy driver, now a waiter, had brought him a beer; the awkward boy stood there, not knowing what to do with the beer.
"Just put it down!" Miriam told him, and he did.
Consuelo had climbed into Juan D
iego's lap. "It'll be okay," the little girl was saying; she was tugging on her pigtails--it made him cry and cry. "It'll be okay, Mister," Consuelo kept saying to him.
Miriam picked up Pedro and held him in her lap; the boy seemed somewhat uncertain about her, but Miriam quickly solved that. "What do you imagine you might miss, Pedro?" Miriam asked him. "I mean, one day--what would you miss, if you lost it? Who would you miss? Who do you love?"
Who is this woman? Where did she come from? all the adults were thinking--Juan Diego was thinking this, too. He desired Miriam; he was thrilled to see her. But who was she, and what was she doing here? And why were they all riveted by her? Even the children, despite the fact that she'd frightened them.
"Well," Pedro started to say, frowning seriously, "I would miss my father. I will miss him--one day."
"Yes, of course you will--that's very good. That's exactly what I mean," Miriam told the boy. A kind of melancholy seemed to descend on little Pedro; he leaned back against Miriam, who cradled him against her breast. "Smart boy," she whispered to him. He closed his eyes; he sighed. It was almost obscene how Pedro looked seduced.
The table--the entire dining room--seemed hushed. "I'm sorry about your sister, Mister," Consuelo said to Juan Diego.
"I'll be okay," he told the little girl. He felt too tired to go on--too tired to change anything.
It was the boy driver, the unsure-of-himself waiter, who said something in Tagalog to Dr. Quintana.
"Yes, naturally--serve the main course. What a question--serve it!" Josefa said to him. (Not a single person had put on one of the party hats. It was still not party time.)
"Look at Pedro!" Consuelo said; the little girl was laughing. "He's fallen asleep."
"Oh, isn't that sweet?" Miriam said, smiling at Juan Diego. The little boy was sound asleep in Miriam's lap, his head against her breast. How unlikely that a boy his age could just drop off to sleep in the lap of a total stranger--and she was such a scary one!
Who is she? Juan Diego wondered again, but he couldn't stop smiling back at her. Maybe all of them were wondering who Miriam was, but no one said anything or did the slightest thing to stop her.
* 18 *
Lust Has a Way
For years after he'd left Oaxaca, Juan Diego would stay in touch with Brother Pepe. What Juan Diego knew about Oaxaca since the early seventies was largely due to Pepe's faithful correspondence.