Читать книгу The Amado Women - Désirée Zamorano - Страница 10

Jolene, that was the name of the waitress, Nataly recalled. Blonde, with thick eyelashes, heavy mascara and hot pink lipstick. It wasn’t just the way she touched him, but the way her father looked at Jolene. What did you do with that awful knowledge?

She certainly didn’t tell her mother.

Nataly went into her work room. She had been pleased with her model and was now making progress on her piece. Working on her loom, she got into a rhythm with the heddle and shuttle and fell to thinking of her father, always full of surprises. During the divorce, Nataly had pitied her father. It had been easy to do. The bluster of his well-tailored suits, the sheen of their fabric, never masked the doleful eyes he had when he spoke of Mercy. He was turning into a pathetic figure, and her mother remained beautiful. Once he had been gold, and her mother had been silver. Before Jolene. During the divorce he was a smoldering brown.

The divorce had proceeded without outward bitterness or acrimony. When Nataly talked to Celeste, Celeste was so cold, blaming their father for mismanagement, possibly malfeasance, practically accusing him of being a criminal! Then blaming their mother for being blind. When Nataly spoke to Sylvia, she, pregnant with Miriam at the time, was appalled that her mother had joined two dating services. All of the daughters had penciled the date the divorce was to be finalized into their agendas. Two against one, Nataly thought. Two for their mother, one for their father.

The surprise came on the day her parents’ divorce was finalized. That day Nataly had picked up a bottle of champagne and driven from Pasadena to their old home, now her mother’s alone, in Orange. She didn’t want her mother to be alone and depressed in that huge and empty house which had been remodeled while she lived there—five bedrooms, three baths, one inhabitant. She didn’t want her father to be alone either, but figured he was with one of those women of his. The glimpses she had caught told her they were of a type: white, lean, hungry. What a crock of shit marriage was if you could live together for thirty years and never know each other. Unless, of course, her mother did know her father and accepted him anyway. And what did that unpleasant information tell her about her mother?

She gnawed on this during the forty-five minute drive south on the 5, the ugliest highway in southern California. Past the dying factories, the industrial areas zoned for smog, noise and waste.

What did that tell her about her mother? Nataly was nauseated. It was a combination of the drive, the diesel fumes, the traffic and the thought that her mother was a willing participant in this marriage now dead. She put her hand on the bottle of champagne. It was warming up in the sunlight coming in the front window. She moved it into the back seat under a serape while she kept her eye on the road.

Nataly parked in the driveway. Her 1967 VW bug dripped oil and grease. Her mother would just have to deal with it. She should just sell the damn house anyway. Hadn’t Celeste told them all that already? To cover all the debt her father had run up.

Nataly rang the doorbell. Her mother didn’t answer. Maybe she had gotten caught in the afternoon traffic. She let herself in, stepped into the entry, punched in the security code. The house felt still, cold and clammy without her mother in it. Nataly put the champagne into the refrigerator, one of those high-end, oversized glossy models that her mother would have to sell with the house. Nataly stepped over to the phone to check for messages when she heard footsteps overhead.

“Mom?” Nataly hung up the phone and went upstairs. “Hey, Mom, I rang the bell but you must have been in the bath—” Nataly stopped. It was not her mother upstairs. It was her dad. His hair dark and thick, his unlined face smooth and guileless. Strong chin, jaw, the same brown skin tone as her own. He was wearing a very expensive suit with a tailored shirt. Why was he dressed like that in her mother’s bedroom? Something was very wrong. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. Her lower intestines started gurgling.

“Sweetheart,” he said in that soothing maitre d’ voice, the voice he had used in restaurants for decades. “I didn’t know you’d be here. I was waiting for your mother.”

He’s stalking her! Nataly thought. She still wasn’t able to say anything, but found herself backing her way downstairs. She could smell the alcohol. She wondered if it were possible that bottles were still hidden around the house. His right hand was clenched around something. Oh my God, it’s got to be a weapon.

He staggered down the steps towards her. He said, “I was in La Verne, thinking about your mother, thinking of our lives together.” She continued back down the steps. “She doesn’t know what she means to me,” he said.

Nataly stood in the entryway by the front door. Her father fell onto a sofa in the living room. He put his feet on the coffee table.

“Get me a drink, sweetheart, would you? It’s up in our room. Your mother’s room. It was always her room even when I lived here.” She exhaled. He wasn’t here to stalk her mother. He was here to cry and wail and gnash his teeth.

She went upstairs and found the bedroom as neat and tidy as her mother would normally leave it. But it smelled of him. On the dresser was a bottle of vodka and glass filled with melting ice. She grabbed it all and was about to head back downstairs when something caught her eye.

Nataly sucked her breath in quick, then stepped into the bathroom. On the counter were ten empty pill bottles. One was aspirin. Nataly knew you could overdose on aspirin alone, and that it was slow and painful. She leaned closer. The first container label read Prozac, the second Valium. She stared in the mirror at the store brand bottle of vodka that she held and put it down.

She walked over to the phone in the bedroom and dialed 911. As she waited on the line, Nataly told herself she would not scream. She would not cry. She would get help. She would get help for her father. She heard him call up to her. “Do you remember when I drove the Mustang?”

Nataly gave the dispatch her name and the house’s phone number. She held on. She would not scream. The dispatch came back on the line and told her paramedics were on their way. She walked downstairs. There he lay, looking up at her as if she were a marvel.

“Do you remember all those Sunday brunches? You, your sisters, your mom coming after church. Every one of you, so different, so beautiful.”

“Dad, it’ll be okay. You’re gonna be okay. I promise.” Please God, agree.

“You know, it’s a beautiful life. I was happy the way this house was, but your mother wanted more. I was happy in our first home, where you three were so tiny, so sweet. She’s a hard woman, Nataly. Nothing was ever enough, ever. And then she turned you all against me. Where’s that drink?”

The room swirled black, gray and brown around her. Nataly promised herself she’d scream at the hospital after he was checked in. Not now. Her father closed his eyes and lay still. Christ, was he dead? Was she going to watch him die?

“Daddy?” she said.

He opened his eyes, focused them on her, then continued, “I love your mother. I thought she was gonna be here. What are you doing here? But I don’t regret anything. I’m just sorry she had to take it out on me the way she does—sounds like someone’s in trouble.”

The piercing screams of the ambulance announced that it had pulled up in front of her mother’s house. Nataly opened the door to two men in uniform and pointed at her father. The taller man asked her father questions. The third paramedic, a small Asian woman, pulled Nataly aside and said, “What do you think he took?” Nataly led the woman upstairs and pointed at the empty bottles.

“Did he tell you he took these?”

Nataly shook her head. She sped downstairs and watched the paramedics strap her father into the stretcher.

“Tell your mother she’s the only woman I ever loved.”

Nataly sat up front with the driver while the other three rode in the back with her father.

“Nice place,” the driver said. Nataly caught the appraising glance from behind his wire-framed glasses.

“That your husband back there?” he said. Nataly shook her head.

“Real nice area.” The driver swung onto the highway towards the hospital. “Boyfriend?” I will scream, Nataly thought.

The ambulance pulled up to the emergency entrance of Hogue Hospital. The noise of four people jerking open doors and shuttling her father from car to doorways jarred Nataly. She trailed the gurney, spoke to an abrupt and cross nurse while she checked her father in. He disappeared into the hospital.

Nataly found a bathroom and wept. She scooped water from the sink faucet and washed her face. Outside of the hospital, the air was clammy, misty, scented with salt. Nataly felt like she was encased in gray rust. So here we are, she thought. I have no idea where my mother is. And my father just washed down a shitload of pills with half a bottle of vodka.

People die everyday, she told herself. They die in car accidents, of long illnesses, at the hands of someone else. They die in their sleep. They die surrounded by their loved ones. They die alone. Oh God, was her father dying in there?

After twenty minutes alone, she realized she needed to find a phone. First she checked her messages. There was her mother’s voice, bright and cheerful, “Nat, I’m going to be late getting home. A couple of women at work just, you know, Lynn and some others, well they insisted on taking me out for a drink, in celebration. I’ll be home about an hour late. Bye!”

Then another message. “Nat, this is your mother. I’m home.”

Then another message, “It’s your mom. Call me.”

Nataly punched in her phone card number. Her mother picked up after half a ring. “I’m at Hogue with Dad. We were at your house. He tried to kill himself.” Nataly said this with as little emotion as possible. And then, since her mother didn’t quite grasp what had happened, she repeated herself. “I’m at Hogue. With Dad. He tried to kill himself.” Silence.

“Sweet Jesus,” her mother said, followed by a sob. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Nataly punched in Sylvia’s number. As she was leaving a message on the answering machine, Sylvia picked up. “What?!” Sylvia demanded. “What?!”

“Dad tried to kill himself.”

Sylvia said, “Why?”

“Their divorce was finalized today?”

“Is he going to be all right? Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t say anything to me. Can you…can you call Celeste? I don’t think I’m up to it.”

Nataly waited at the emergency entrance. She sat down, closed her eyes and was flooded with gray. A wall of gray nausea slammed into her so hard, she opened her eyes. A halo of maroon approached her. It was her mother.

At nine o’clock, the emergency doctor attempted to take Mercy aside, but Nataly refused to budge.

“He’s going to spend the night here, recovering. Worst-case scenario, there may be possible long-term liver damage.”

“He’s not going to die,” Mercy said, clutching Nataly.

“No, ma’am,” the doctor replied.

“Thankgodthankgodthankgod,” Mercy murmured to Nataly.

Nataly stood in the hallway corridor while her mother went into her father’s room. Nataly peered in. There was her father, looking at her mother, looking like he really did love her. She waited a moment. Mud. That room, her father, were the color of mud, not gold, and her mother still shimmered silver. Did her mother still love him? It appeared she did, and it was a mass of tangled knots and threads within her, a malevolent tumor growing within. She stepped inside the room, patted her dad’s arm and said, “I’m glad you’re going to be all right.”

Nataly and Mercy waited for Celeste and Sylvia in the hospital cafeteria. The empty chrome counters gleamed, the display cases shone light. There were vending machines for coffee, soda, candy, chips, wrapped sandwiches. Nataly could see that her mother had been especially beautiful for today, her hair and nails recently done. She still wore the makeup she had put on this morning. Nataly picked up her mother’s hand and held it between her own.