“You shouldn’t have waited so long,” said Olga, palpating Carmen with expert hands. “It’s no problem during the first weeks, but now. . . .”
“And it’s not a problem now. You have to do it.”
“It’s very risky.”
“I don’t care. Please help me,” and she burst out weeping hopelessly in Olga’s arms.
Olga had known Carmen since she was a child, and the Moraleses were like her own family; she had also lived in the barrio long enough to know what awaited the girl from the minute someone noticed her burgeoning belly. She set an appointment for the next night, prepared her instruments and medicinal herbs, and vigorously rubbed her Buddha, because both she and Carmen were going to need a great deal of luck. Carmen told her parents that she was going to the beach with a friend and would be gone a couple of days, and she moved in with Olga. Nothing remained of the girl’s cheerful self-assurance; fear of imminent pain overshadowed any other fears, and she could not consider the possible risks or consequences; all she wanted was to sink into a deep sleep and wake liberated from her nightmare. Despite Olga’s potions, however, and the half bottle of whiskey she drank straight down, she did not lose consciousness, and no merciful dream floated her through this crisis. Bound by wrists and ankles to the kitchen table, a rag stuffed in her mouth to prevent her screams from being heard outside, she bore the pain until she could stand no more and made signs that she would prefer anything to this torture. Olga’s response was that it was too late for second thoughts; they must follow the brutal procedure to the end. After it was over, Carmen, with an ice pack on her belly, lay weeping uncontrollably, curled in a ball like a baby until she was overcome by exhaustion, the calming herbs, and the alcohol, and fell asleep. Thirty hours later, when she still had not awakened but seemed to be wandering in the delirium of a different world, while a thread of blood, thin but constant, was staining the sheets red, Olga knew that for once her lucky star had failed her. She struggled to lower Carmen’s fever and stop the hemorrhaging, but the girl was growing steadily weaker; it was clear her life was draining away. Olga realized she was trapped. Carmen could die beneath her roof, which would mean her ruin; on the other hand, she could not put her out in the street, nor could she advise the family. As she held Carmen’s head to force some water down her throat, she thought Carmen murmured Gregory’s name, and immediately she realized that he was the only person she could turn to for help. Her call waked him from his sleep. Come this minute, was all she said, but from the tone of her voice Gregory grasped her urgency and asked no questions; he took the first morning plane and within hours was holding Carmen in his arms. He took her by taxi to the nearest hospital, cursing because through all those horrible weeks she had not confided in him. Why did you shut me out? I should have been with you. I told you, Carmen, Tom Clayton is a selfish sonofabitch, but all men aren’t like that; not every man wants to bed you and then dump you, the way your father always warned you they would. I swear there are better men than Clayton. Why didn’t you let me help you earlier? Maybe the baby would have lived. You shouldn’t have gone through this alone. What are friends for? Why are we brother and sister if it isn’t to help each other? Life can get so fucked up, Carmen; don’t die, please don’t die.
While the surgeons were operating, the police, notified by the hospital of the condition in which the patient had arrived, were trying to extract information from Gregory Reeves.
“Let’s make a deal,” the exasperated officer proposed after three hours of fruitless interrogation. “You tell me who performed the abortion, and I’ll let you walk out of here a free man; you won’t even be booked. No more questions. Nothing. You’ll be free and clear.”
“I don’t know who did it, I’ve told you a hundred times. I don’t even live here; I came on the morning plane—here’s my ticket. My friend called me, and I brought her to the hospital. That’s all I know.”
“Are you the father?”
“No. I haven’t seen Carmen Morales in more than eight months.”
“Where did you pick her up?”
“She was waiting at the airport.”
“No way! She can’t even walk! Tell me where you picked her up, and I’ll let you go. Otherwise I’ll book you as an accomplice and accessory after the fact.”
“That’s something you’ll have to prove.”
And once again the same cycle of questions, answers, threats, and evasions. Finally the police released Gregory and went to the Morales home to question the family. That was how Pedro and Inmaculada found out what had happened, and though they suspected Olga they did not say so, partly because they knew her intentions were good and partly because in the Mexican barrio informing was an unthinkable crime.
“God has punished her, so I won’t have to,” said Pedro Morales, his voice thickening when he learned of the gravity of his daughter’s condition.
Gregory Reeves stayed with his friend until she was out of danger. For three nights he slept upright in a chair at her bedside, waking frequently to be sure she was still breathing. On the fourth morning, Carmen awakened without fever.
“I’m hungry,” she announced.
“Thank God!” Gregory smiled and pulled a tin of condensed milk from a bag. Together they slowly drank the thickly sweet liquid, holding hands, as they had so often done as children.
Olga, meantime, had packed her suitcase and flown to Puerto Rico, the farthest place she could think of, telling everyone in the barrio that she was going to try her luck at the Las Vegas casinos because the ghost of an Indian had come and whispered in her ear a system for beating the house at faro. Pedro Morales put on a black armband. Publicly he said a relative had died, at home he made it known that his daughter had never been born and that it was forbidden to mention her name. Inmaculada promised the Virgin she would say a rosary every day for the rest of her life if She would forgive Carmen’s sin; she collected the money she kept hidden beneath a floorboard and, behind her husband’s back, went to visit her daughter. She found her in a coarse green hospital gown, sitting in a chair and staring out the window toward the brick wall of the building across the street. She looked so miserable that Inmaculada swallowed her reproaches and her tears and simply put her arms around her daughter. Carmen hid her face in her mother’s bosom and, as she was hugged and rocked, breathed in the scent of clean clothes and cooking that always recalled her childhood.
“Take these savings, daughter. It would be best for you to go away for a while, until your father misses you so much that his heart softens. Write me—not at the house but through Nora Reeves. She is the most discreet person I know. Take good care of yourself, and may God be with you. . . .”
“God has forgotten I exist, Mama.”
Inmaculada cut her off. “Don’t say that, even as a joke! Whatever happens, God loves you . . . and so do I. We will always be beside you, do you understand?”
“Yes, Mama.”
When Gregory Reeves first saw Samantha Ernst she was on the tennis court; she was playing, and he was trimming the shrubbery. One of his jobs was supervising the dining room in a women’s dormitory across from where he lived. Two cooks prepared the food, and Gregory oversaw a crew of five students who served the meals and washed dishes, a position much to be envied since it gave him free access to the building and to the girls. In his off-hours, he worked as a gardener. Except for cutting grass and pulling weeds, he knew nothing at all about plants when he began, but he had a good teacher, a ferocious-looking but tender-hearted Romanian named Balcescu, who shaved his head and then rubbed his scalp to a rosy glow with a scrap of felt. He spoke a dizzying mélange of languages and loved flowers as he loved himself. In his country he had been a border guard, but the moment the opportunity presented itself, he capitalized on his knowledge of the terrain and escaped; after wandering a long while he had entered the United States from Canada, on foot, with no money, no papers, and two words in English: “money” and “freedom.” Convinced that that was what America was all ab
out, he made little effort to enlarge his vocabulary and got along principally through mime. He taught Gregory how to battle worms, whiteflies, slugs, ants, and other enemies of vegetation, and to fertilize, graft, and transplant. More than work, those hours in the open air were a pleasant pastime, and Gregory learned to decipher his boss’s instructions by constant exercise of intuition. The day he was trimming the hedge, one of the tennis players caught his eye; he stood watching a few minutes, not so much because of the girl’s looks, which off the court might not have warranted a second glance, as for her precision as an athlete. She had firm muscles, quick legs, a long face with aristocratic bones, short hair, and the slightly earth-colored tan of people who are always in the sun. Gregory was attracted by her animal health and agility; he waited until she finished the match and then stationed himself at the gate to the court to wait for her. He could not think what to say, however, and when she walked by with her racket over her shoulder and her skin glistening with sweat, he still could think of nothing clever to say. He followed her far enough to see her get into an expensive sports car. That night, in a tone of studied indifference, he told Timothy Duane about her.
“You wouldn’t be so stupid as to fall in love, Greg.”
“Of course not. I like her, that’s all.”
“She doesn’t live in the dormitory?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen her there.”
“Too bad. For once, the key would have been of some use.”
“She doesn’t look like a student; she has a red convertible.”
“She may be the wife of some executive.”
“I don’t think she’s married.”
“Then she’s a whore.”
“When have you seen whores playing tennis, Tim? They work at night and sleep during the daytime. I don’t know how to talk to a girl like that—she’s very different from the girls I’ve known.”
“Well, don’t talk. Invite her to play tennis.”
“I’ve never had a racket in my hand.”
“I can’t believe that! What have you been doing all your life?”
“Working.”
“What the hell do you know how to do, Greg?”
“Dance.”
“Then take her out dancing.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“Do you want me to talk to her?”
“You stay away from her!” Gregory exclaimed, not wishing to compete with his friend for anyone’s favor, especially this woman’s.
The next day he spied on her while pretending to work on the shrubs and when she walked by made a move to stop her but again was overcome by shyness. That scene was repeated until finally Balcescu noticed that the shrubs had been trimmed to the nub and decided to intervene before the rest of the landscaping suffered the same fate. His solution was to walk onto the court, interrupt the game with a torrent of words in his Transylvanian tongue, and, when the terrified girl did not obey his urgent gesticulating in the direction of her admirer, who was watching with stupefaction from the other side of the fencing, take her by the arm and, muttering something about money and freedom, lead the greatly confused woman to his assistant. That was how Gregory Reeves found himself face-to-face with Samantha Ernst, who, to escape Balcescu, turned to Gregory with relief; with the approval of the colorful master gardener, they went off together to have a cup of coffee. They took a wobbly table in the most popular café in the city, an overcrowded hole-in-the-wall in a state of constant disrepair where several generations of students had written volumes of poetry and argued every theory known and where many couples, like themselves, had cautiously begun the process of getting to know one another. Gregory had thought he would impress Samantha with his knowledge of literature, but when she seemed distracted he quickly abandoned that tactic and began casting about for common ground. She exhibited no enthusiasm for civil rights or the Cuban revolution; in fact, she seemed to have no opinions about anything, but Gregory confused her passivity with depth of spirit and tightened his clutch on his prey.
Outside of tennis, Samantha Ernst had few interests—although more than the girls in Gregory’s high school or the barrio had evidenced. She had thought of becoming an archaeologist; she liked the idea of working in the fresh air in her shorts and exploring exotic places in search of ancient civilizations, but when exposed to the discipline that was required, she had renounced that career. She was not cut out for meticulous classification of crumbling bones and shards of unserviceable pitchers. Then came a few unsettled years that affected many aspects of her life. The daughter of a Hollywood producer, she had grown up in a beautiful house with two swimming pools; her father married four times and lived surrounded by nymphs just out of the cocoon, to whom he promised instant stardom in exchange for small personal favors. Her mother, a Virginia aristocrat with the hauteur of a queen and the prim manners of a governess, stoically endured her husband’s philandering with the help of an arsenal of drugs and a variety of credit cards—until the day she looked into the mirror and could not see her own face; it had been eroded by loneliness. They found her floating in the rosy foam of the marble bathtub where she had slit her wrists. Samantha, who by then was sixteen, managed to pass unnoticed in the paternal mansion among the tumult of stepbrothers and stepsisters, ex-wives, current girlfriends, servants, friends, and pedigreed dogs. She continued to swim and play tennis with her usual tenacity, without indulging in useless nostalgia and without ever judging her mother. She did not miss her; they had never been close, and she might have forgotten her completely had it not been for recurrent nightmares of rosy foam. Like so many others, Samantha had come to Berkeley because of its reputation for liberalism; she had had her fill of both the bourgeois etiquette imposed by her mother and her father’s revels with ephebes and maidens. Her car stood out among the wrecks driven by other students, and her house—provided by her father—was a bohemian refuge hidden among trees and gigantic ferns and commanding a superb view of the bay. Gregory Reeves was intimidated by Samantha’s refinement; he had never known anyone who could master the intricacies of a six-course dinner or determine the authenticity of a cashmere jacket or Persian rug at a glance—except Timothy Duane. Duane, however, made fun of everything, especially cashmere jackets and Persian rugs. The first time Gregory invited Samantha to go dancing, she looked radiant in a low-cut yellow dress and pearl necklace. Feeling ridiculous in the suit Duane had lent him, he knew he would have to take her to a much more expensive place than his budget could afford. Samantha danced badly, listening carefully to the music and counting steps, two, one, two, one, stiff as a broom in her partner’s arms. She drank fruit juice, had very little to say, and had a cold and distant air that to Gregory seemed laden with mystery. He clung to his love obstinately and convinced himself that shared tastes and passion were not indispensable requisites for forming a family. For that was exactly his intention, even though he had not yet admitted it in his heart of hearts—much less put it in words. All his life he had wanted to be part of a real family, like the Moraleses, and he was so in love with that dream of domesticity that he was determined to carry it out with the first available woman, without bothering to ask whether she shared the same plans.