I dial Mrs. Gutierrez’s number and say I have questions concerning my cousin. What kind of questions? she wants to know. Oh, about her life, how she came to America. Pleased that I am showing interest in my
Of course that stuff about Violeta is a lie, what I’m really after is information on her employer. Hanging up I glance smugly at the Bank Dick’s Undercover Disguise, but sense disapproval: it knows I am lying only to myself.
• • •
Sunday afternoon we get a break in the rain and although it is overcast and fifty degrees I grab the opportunity to put the top down on the Barracuda, bundling up in boots, a leather bomber jacket, aviator sunglasses, and a Dodgers cap turned backward. When I pull up in front of Violeta Alvarado’s apartment building, Mrs. Gutierrez is already waiting out front with Teresa and Cristobal.
The children barely murmur a response when I say hello. I thought they’d get a kick out of riding in the convertible but they say nothing. The wind whips their glossy black hair but their faces remain blank.
Mrs. Gutierrez and I exchange a few words in the front seat about whether it will rain again tomorrow. As I accelerate down Sunset Boulevard she clutches a large white pocketbook to her bosom, cupping the other hand over her ear as if to stop her lacquered hairdo from blowing.
What now? Do I try my few words of Spanish to get a conversation going? Put on a Latino station? Would they enjoy that or be insulted? Finally the uneasy silence is more than I can take and I shove in an old Springsteen tape, withdrawing to my own space — my car, my Sunday, my music — for the twenty minutes it takes to get on the freeway and off again at Traveltown in Griffith Park.
The damp, smoggy air on the other side of the Hollywood Hills smells like cigar smoke and old rust. Despite the uncertain weather the parking lot is half full. We pass beneath some frail eucalyptus trees and through the gate, finding ourselves at a tiny railway station where a tiny steam-driven train has just rolled in.
“Do they want to go for a ride?” I ask Mrs. Gutierrez.
Teresa shakes her head no. Her brother simply holds her hand. He is wearing a new Ninja Turtle sweat suit.
I notice some outdoor tables. “Are they hungry?”
“They have lunch but maybe they like to eat.”
We make an unlikely contingent, me in my leather and baseball cap, Mrs. Gutierrez who is wearing turquoise flowered leggings and a big red sweater the size of a barrel, and the two orphans.
I buy nachos and microwaved hot dogs. We are surrounded by birthday parties, mostly Hispanic. Teresa and Cristobal eat slowly and carefully, as if they had been taught to appreciate each bite, staring at the wrapped presents, a pinata hoisted into a tree, a portable grill laden with smoking pieces of marinated meat and long whole scallions, releasing the aroma of roasted garlic and lime. Each group seems to include ten or twenty family members, good humored and relaxed. The birthday cakes are elaborate, store bought. Teresa is watching without envy. Without any discernible emotion at all.
“He think that lady look like his mother.” Mrs. Gutierrez strokes his head.
A pretty young woman, who might in fact resemble a reconstruction of the decimated corpse I saw in the autopsy photos, is holding a baby while unwrapping aluminum foil from a tray of fruit. She laughs and nuzzles the baby, who grips the wavy black hair that falls to her waist.
“Does Cristobal understand …?” I find it hard to finish.
“He know his mommy isn’t coming back.”
Cristobal tugs at his sister’s arm. She continues to chew uninterestedly as if he were pointing out a passing bus.
“Do you remember if Violeta ever talked about a friend of Mrs. Eberhardt’s named Theodora Feign?”
“You mean Mrs. Teddy?”
“Could be.”
“Oh yes, Mrs. Claire and Mrs. Teddy were very close. And Mrs. Teddy’s housekeeper, Reyna, was also close with Violeta.”
“So the four of them got along.”
“Not so much anymore.”
“No?”
“Mrs. Teddy is very mad with Mrs. Claire.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know, but Violeta was sad that she didn’t get to see Reyna anymore. And the two little girls liked to play together.”
“What happened? Did Teddy and Claire have a fight?”
“Oh, yes. They don’t talk to each other anymore.”
This is good news. It means I can approach Theodora Feign with confidence. As far as I’m concerned, the afternoon is over. I get up and stretch my back, staring idly at a dense rose garden sprinkled by a few light drops of rain. Returning to Mrs. Gutierrez I inquire politely,
“Did Dr. Eberhardt send you that check?”
“Yes, he do, and I buy new clothes for the children.” She nods proudly toward Cristobal’s bright green sweats. “Then I write to the grandmother to ask what she want to do. Maybe she come here, maybe the children will go back to El Salvador and live with her and their big brother.”
“Violeta had another child?”
“Yes, you saw him in the pictures. The baby that the grandmother is holding, that is Violeta’s oldest son. She left him to come to this country.”
“How could she leave a little baby?”
“To make a better life,” Mrs. Gutierrez explains with an ironic lift of the eyebrows. “She work to send money home to take care of the son and the grandmother. Inside”—she taps her heart—“she miss her mommy.”
She clicks her purse open, discharging the scent of face powder, and removes a fat roll of folded tissues.
“Now the boy must be eight or nine years old. He doesn’t even know he lost his mommy yet.”
There is nothing between us but a gentle splatter of raindrops — on our hair, the bench, on a hundred fading roses.
Mrs. Gutierrez bends her head forward and presses two tissues against the corners of her eyes. It is as if Grief himself has taken a seat between us on the cold concrete and put his mossy arms around both of our shoulders. I can feel the weight of the children’s loss. My own heart tightens with the same bereavement, the kind that bubbles up from time to time and overwhelms you in an instant. Within myself it remains mysterious, an underground spring without a source.
“It was Violeta’s dream for the family to be together.”
“Were Teresa and Cristobal born in this country?”
“Yes,” says Mrs. Gutierrez. “The father left.”
She sniffs and snaps the pocketbook shut.
“If they were born here, they are American citizens, wards of the U.S. government. That means the government will take care of them.”
Mrs. Gutierrez is as immovable as the poured cement table. “That is wrong.”
“It’s not up to us. It’s the law.”
“The law is wrong.”
I take a sip of sugary lemonade. I don’t want to get into an emotional argument. I am an agent of the federal government — obviously I believe that society has the obligation and compassion to care for those of us who are lost, or damaged like Teresa, with the face of a pupilless angel carved in stone. The drizzle has passed, the burn of the sun presses through a thick layer of cloud. I can see it is painful for her just to be sitting here outside
