She screamed and tumbled to her knees. She covered her face with her hands and imagined that she could splice time so that this moment would never have happened. She might rewind to a few hours before, and tell him, No, let"s not go to El Trovador, tell your patients to meet us at your home instead. No, let"s not go to El Trovador, tell your patients to meet us at your home instead. Something, anything but this. Max dead? She peeked at the smoldering raft floating away in the current, heading in the direction of Negrarena. Something, anything but this. Max dead? She peeked at the smoldering raft floating away in the current, heading in the direction of Negrarena.
The four soldiers laughed and cheered, complimenting the shooter with a string of obscenities. One of the soldiers held up a finger and hushed the others. In the distance, the sound of another truck. They c.o.c.ked their heads to listen, then smiled at each other and nodded their heads. "More comunista comunista vermin," one of them said. "Lopez, you secure the woman in her car. Chucho, you"ll drive the truck when we"re done," the leader said, and they crouched down and clutched their weapons as they headed toward the house. vermin," one of them said. "Lopez, you secure the woman in her car. Chucho, you"ll drive the truck when we"re done," the leader said, and they crouched down and clutched their weapons as they headed toward the house.
The chaperone soldier made her get inside the pa.s.senger side of her Land Rover. "Te gustaba el comunista?" "Te gustaba el comunista?" he asked, licking his lips. Alma noted he used the familiar he asked, licking his lips. Alma noted he used the familiar tu tu instead of the formal and respectful instead of the formal and respectful usted usted that every civil servant who knew his place would use to address a member of the country"s oligarchy. that every civil servant who knew his place would use to address a member of the country"s oligarchy.
She could tell him who she was-but, no, she thought bitterly, she couldn"t use her family name to get out of this situation. She could never live with herself if she said, Do you know who you"re talking to? Do you know who you"re talking to?
As if he had read her mind, the soldier said, "Your mother told el general el general that Maximiliano Campos was here at El Trovador." that Maximiliano Campos was here at El Trovador."
"My mother sent you after me?"
"Not after you," he said, pointing at the water. "Him."
Alma covered her face and began to weep. But her sobs ebbed almost as soon as they"d begun. The soldier was looking at her, narrowing his eyes in voyeuristic pleasure at her display of emotion. She couldn"t cry in front of him. She stared straight ahead, ignoring his greasy stare.
Monica. Monica was the only one who knew where she really was, or who knew the exact location of Hacienda El Trovador. Monica must have finally blown the whistle. She had told either Bruce or Magnolia or both of them or one had told the other, it didn"t matter. Maximiliano was dead because of it. Max, whom she"d known all her life, a boy who had grown up beside her, climbing trees, collecting bugs, and riding horses at Negrarena. A man who just twenty-four hours ago had woken her up from a lazy afternoon nap by dragging the tail feather of a quetzal across her belly. Max, her Max, speeding away, leaving her in the hands of the enemy. What had gone through his mind at that moment? Had he figured that she was bulletproof because of her last name? Did he still think of her as one of them? Perhaps it had come down to pure survival instinct. The latter was the only explanation she could live with, and so it was the one she chose.
With Max dead, Alma now felt completely and utterly alone in the world. She could trust no one in her family, not even her own child. Alma understood that she too had done more than her share of betraying, but she had always expected that an enormous good would come of it, eventually. What a mistake.
She looked out the window of the truck. In the distance, the soldiers were lining up the peasants who had just arrived in a truck full of sugarcane, which included two young boys and a pregnant woman. "No," she lamented, and turned away, because she knew what was going to happen next. She balled her hands into fists and paid homage to the last slice of time that those six people would be alive in this world. She began to shake, digging her nails into her skin as she pressed her fists together tighter and tighter, until the nails broke through the skin of her palms.
Time seemed to pa.s.s slowly, although it was probably less than five minutes before she heard the sound of the rifle shots. The sound traveled cleanly to a chamber within her mind that swelled open to contain them. The six echoes were swallowed and quarantined in a cold, anesthetized place that would allow her to keep them separate from all other memories. This would allow her to store them safely, until she had the courage, years later, to open the box and peer in.
Inside the Land Rover, the soldier next to her placed his hand on her knee, leering at her, exposing a row of decaying teeth. He was too stupid and arrogant to care whose daughter she was. Alma looked down. Peeking out from under her seat was the edge of the red dishpan. As the soldier leaned over to grab her breast, she reached down with the hand closest to the door and grabbed the cone between her index finger and her thumb, holding the base away from her hand. The soldier had a lurid half-smile on his face as he mashed at her breast. She turned and leaned into him, placing the creature as gently as she could on his lap.
The snail felt its way around the strange new environment of army-issue cotton. It took exactly four seconds for the soldier to cry out. He stiffened his limbs, raising his pelvis up so it crashed into the steering wheel. His hand flew to his crotch, where he picked up the innocuous-looking sh.e.l.l, examined it, confused, not connecting it with the coldness that was already spreading up his abdomen. Alma remembered hearing that the sting of some cones mimicked the sensation of flesh being ripped away from the grip of dry ice.
Alma tore off her sandals and leaped out of the car. She bolted across the sand, not looking back, and headed in the direction of the beach. She knew enough about the paralyzing effects of that venom to know that the soldier would be too shocked and numb to do anything, much less fire a gun. Behind her, the other soldiers saw her run. They shouted at her and fired their guns in warning. She ran across the desolate beach, then over a stretch of rocks that ripped up the soles of her feet. When she stepped into the surf, she felt the searing pain of the salt entering open flesh. She dove into the water, pumping her arms and kicking her feet up with every last bit of energy she had, propelling herself forward, deeper and deeper into the restless waters. Only a few yards out she could already tell that the currents were exactly what she had hoped for. She filled her lungs with air and dove under, calculating her every motion to take advantage of the water"s drag, keeping in mind the direction that she had seen the flaming boat drift. She dove down deep, eyes open, and saw the shots being fired into the water around her. A foot away, a beefy parrot fish exploded into bits.
A great undertow swept her deep and far across the gloomy landscape of black sand and swaying aquatic plants. Just as she felt she was going to pa.s.s out, the water spit her up long enough for her to fill her lungs again, then pulled her down again. The current carried her like that-up and down, concealing her yet letting her breathe, like a needle that dips into cloth and rises, st.i.tching its way across a great distance.
SHE RODE THE CURRENT all the way to Negrarena. The gate was locked, since her mother was in San Salvador. She scaled the wall, cutting up her legs and elbows on the razor wire, and dropped, bleeding and exhausted, into a den of rottweilers. They greeted her with whimpers and licks, all of them offspring of a puppy she had brought back with her from college. all the way to Negrarena. The gate was locked, since her mother was in San Salvador. She scaled the wall, cutting up her legs and elbows on the razor wire, and dropped, bleeding and exhausted, into a den of rottweilers. They greeted her with whimpers and licks, all of them offspring of a puppy she had brought back with her from college.
She snuck into Caracol undetected. The caretakers lived in the front part of the hacienda, but it was such a large property, and Alma succeeded in quickly hushing the well-trained dogs with belly rubs and baby talk. She limped over to the villa and retrieved a hidden spare key. She spent the evening alone, in one of the back guest rooms, nursing her cuts with trembling fingers. She curled up into a ball and contemplated the truth she had always known: that the ocean claims that which is sick and no longer functional. She now fit that description, and yet the sea had concealed her, carried her on the magic carpet of its currents, unharmed by sharks or rocks or jellyfish, then gently spit her back to safety. The sea had handed her a rare second chance at life, and she had not missed its significance. She would always be a daughter of privilege, she could see that now. Even the ocean made an exception for Alma Borrero. The only thing left for her to do was to give herself over to it completely, an act of grat.i.tude and worship.
Before dawn the next morning, she let herself out of Caracol, with a pocketful of spare cash she kept locked in one of the closets. She walked to the nearby town, stopped in front of Tienda La Lunita to wait for the early bus, wearing a big sugarcane cutter"s hat to shroud her face.
Forty minutes later, she was rapping on Francisca Campos"s bedroom window in her hometown. Alma told her the whole story, minus the detail of Magnolia"s involvement. The two women wept together, and Francisca offered Alma an even more comforting explanation for his abandonment: that he presumed she would be safer alone than with him. And he had been right-after all, if she had been on the boat with him, she would have died too. Two hours after leaving Francisca, Alma was at a guerrilla camp, where she found some of Max"s friends. They helped her sneak into Honduras. The next day she placed a phone call to one of the newspapers, La Prensa Grafica La Prensa Grafica, and said, "I witnessed four soldiers murder six peasants, Maximiliano Campos, and Alma Borrero Winters at El Trovador, one hundred kilometers east of La Libertad. I wish to remain anonymous."
"THE MONTHS THAT FOLLOWED were a blur," Alma told Monica and Bruce. "I discovered that I"m not communist or socialist, that I am in fact quite apolitical without Maximiliano to fuel my interest. I knew I had to get back to the only thing that was really mine-the sea." were a blur," Alma told Monica and Bruce. "I discovered that I"m not communist or socialist, that I am in fact quite apolitical without Maximiliano to fuel my interest. I knew I had to get back to the only thing that was really mine-the sea."
Bruce stared up into an almond tree, listening, unnaturally still and unblinking. "The press was all over it," he said without looking down. "I was sick with grief, and on top of that, everyone knew I was the cuckold."
Alma looked at him, almost apologetically, then looked at Monica. "I had squirreled away some money in an account in Miami, a good sum my father had left me. No one knew about it, and that"s how I funded my escape. It"s sad and ironic. ..." She shook her head. "I went back to school. I got a Ph.D. in marine science. I began to do research on the effects of thermovolcanic changes on the environment of mollusks, and I"ve been doing research all over the globe-Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Brazil, California, Mexico, the Philippines. At one point during a graduate project, I was at Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst.i.tution on Cape Cod."
"You never thought to come see us?" Monica asked.
Alma smiled crookedly, then looked at her daughter. "I was in the audience when you were in Carousel Carousel in the tenth grade. I saw you graduate from high school, my dear." in the tenth grade. I saw you graduate from high school, my dear."
Monica drew in her breath, and a little gasp of wonder escaped from her lips as she rolled up her eyes and searched her visual memory-in vain, of course-for confirmation. She frowned. "You did that for yourself, Mom. It did nothing for me. I didn"t know you were there."
Monica turned to her father, narrowing her eyes a bit. "Mom was at my high school play, publishing, and teaching, and you had no idea no idea that she was alive all this time?" that she was alive all this time?"
Bruce shook his head and turned his gaze on Alma. "There was a war going on, and in 1985 El Salvador, people weren"t trackable like they are in the States. ..." He scratched his head, looked down, then up again at Alma. "What is your citizenship?"
"I am a citizen of Costa Rica. It was important to me, at the time that I left El Salvador, to cut all ties. I surrendered my Salvadoran citizenship, and thanks to some old connections, I secured a university job in Costa Rica."
"So why didn"t you change your name?"
"I did. It was Alma Winters, and I reverted to Alma Borrero."
"An ironic choice, no?"
"Not at all. I wanted to be myself before I lost control of my life. I counted on the fact that once everyone thought I was dead, no one would be looking for me. Years later, I went ahead and published articles in my real name because my field is extremely obscure. I knew that even my mother, a sh.e.l.l collector, would never read a science journal about mollusks." Alma smiled weakly. "Besides, I"m a marine biologist and my given name is Alma Marina. Soul of the Sea. How could I give that that up?" up?"
Bruce nodded, then cupped his chin with one hand. "You still haven"t answered the question of why ..."
Now Alma stood, looking down at Bruce, and she spoke more softly; they could tell she was struggling to face the core of truth. "When the shock and grief wore off, all that was left was disgust at myself and a loss of hope for being able to pull off the dream without Max, without the furiosus furiosus, for that matter. I sank into a deep depression." She looked off to the distance. "No one believed the soldiers" story about me running off into the water, everyone thought they killed me along with Max. I heard there was a search, initiated by my mother."
"Even Claudia didn"t believe the soldiers," Bruce said. "But we settled on drowning as the cause of death."
Alma nodded her head. "Two of the people who were murdered at El Trovador were under the age of twelve. Another victim was a girl I knew named Maria del Carmen. Remember her, Monica? We had delivered her baby at El Trovador a few years before. She was pregnant again, and they killed her, just like that."
Monica blinked in disbelief. "They killed Jimmy Bray"s mother?"
Alma nodded. "Makes you sick, doesn"t it? Such a senseless waste. I was beside myself with rage at my mother for unleashing something she couldn"t control. My guess is that when she placed that call, she thought they"d put Max in prison, rough him up, and stop us from tainting the family name. But those thugs weren"t capable of keeping it reasonable. What I saw was four men becoming giddy with bloodl.u.s.t after they blew Max away."
Bruce let out a great breath and shook his head. "And do you feel you were responsible in any way for these events, Alma?"
"Of course I do, Bruce. That was the hardest part of all. It"s why I left my family," Alma said, looking at Monica. "Because I was driven to punish my mother and exile myself to keep from doing any more harm to anyone."
Monica sat with that for a moment, running her mind"s fingers over the surface of her mother"s words, searching for the rough edges of an excuse. For now, it all rang true emotionally, but she would give herself time to evaluate it, to let it all sink in. Monica spoke the truth that lay before her: "I told Dad the location of the hacienda, Dad told Abuela, and Abuela made the phone call that put it all in motion. All of us have blood on our hands." Monica looked at her father, then down at her own hands, as if indeed she expected to find them to be coated and dripping with red. "I guess this is what you"ve been protecting me from all these years, Dad."
"Except I believed that we caused your mother"s death," he said, looking as if he was about to cry. "I didn"t want you to live with that guilt, as I had. Imagine ...," he whispered, shook his head a little, and let the sentence trail off as he looked away from them.
Monica looked at Alma and said, "I don"t understand how you could walk away from me. That"s the one part that defies my understanding. When the dust settled, you were alive and could have stayed at Caracol for as long as you needed. You could have come home. You could have divorced Dad, and we could have all moved on, in separate directions if that"s what you wanted. But instead you vanished from my my life. Help me with that part, Mami." life. Help me with that part, Mami."
Alma turned to look at her, stared at her wide-eyed, her eyes gleaming with memory. "I felt that I didn"t deserve you, and that you would be better off in the sole care of your father. I don"t have any other answer than that, Monica. I wanted to sever all ties with my former life. A life of research and study was the only anesthesia I knew. I had always wanted to find a painkiller from the sea and I found it-in the achievements of my students, in scholarly journals, on dives, under microscopes, and aboard a research vessel. After a while, the decision to let everyone back home believe I was dead became a way of life, and it became harder and harder to undo. Two years later, I had essentially become someone new."
Monica nodded to acknowledge that she had heard. Thick, hot tears spilled down her face. "You"re the most selfish person I"ve ever known," she said, waiting for the shocked look to rise in her mother"s face, but it didn"t. Alma just looked at her with eyes that were hungry for anything Monica had to say, so Monica tried harder to shake her. "You figured your role of scientist was so much more important than the simple job of being a mother to one child." Monica held up a finger. "One quiet girl who didn"t take up much room or eat much or ask for anything but love. You didn"t even bother to say good-bye. Your heart belongs entirely to something that will never love you back."
Alma stared into her own hands and nodded her head. "I disagree with the last part. The sea does love me back. But, Monica, all I can say is that I thrive on my work-I buried myself in it-although I admit there are days that I can"t keep it all from seeping in. On those days, I lock the door and take a little blue pill that dulls the ache of my regrets. I had always told myself that I"d contact you when you became an adult, but when I thought about it over the last few years, it seemed like such an intrusion, such a shock, I figured you would never forgive me. And yet, here we are. You found me, you did all the work."
"And here we are," Monica echoed.
Alma sat down next to Monica again and grabbed Monica"s hand, squeezing it until her own knuckles turned white. "You can"t imagine how happy I am that you found me, Monica. I"m still as marooned as ever, somewhere out at sea. I"ve never found my way home, I"ve never learned to trust anyone. I never remarried. I never had any more kids. But I would like to have something on land worth coming home for."
Monica looked into her mother"s eyes then, looked at her as an adult for the first time. She didn"t intend to judge, at least not in that moment-but rather to understand her mother from the perspective of a woman, a grown woman who was now entangled in her own morally dubious relationship. In those dark, terribly familiar eyes she saw Alma"s shame at using Monica, at asking her own child to lie to her father, at failing to shield her from l.u.s.t, from disaster, from pain and war and death. Perhaps she had been right to go away, Monica thought. She was indeed unfit.
Monica stood. "If you really want peace, Mom, then begin with Dad," she said, remembering Marcy"s words on the Fourth of July about Alma"s ghost. The entire family needed this exorcism, this purging of the past, and Monica knew that her father had been the one most haunted. Monica briefly grabbed her father"s hand and said, "This man spent the last fifteen years thinking that he killed the woman he loved."
Now Alma was looking at her husband, her eyes heavy, her lips pressed together. With as much delicacy as she could muster, Monica said, "You let Dad and Abuela both live with that awful burden, Mom. It"s time for you two to talk about that. If my father can forgive you, Mother, then I can." Monica turned and bear-hugged her father at the shoulders. She could see sweat beaded up on his scalp and his skin looked pale. "I"ll be up at the station with Claudia and Will. Call to me when you"re ready." She got up and walked away, leaving her parents alone for the first time in fifteen years, the tension between them broiling in the thick, salt-laden air.
BRUCE LEANED FORWARD. He pointed at his own heart. "She"s right-you could have saved us a lot of trouble by just asking me for a divorce." He pointed at his own heart. "She"s right-you could have saved us a lot of trouble by just asking me for a divorce."
Alma had her arms folded in front of her, a defensive position. "You just didn"t do that back then, in Salvadoran society. It wasn"t even an option."
"Bulls.h.i.t. You weren"t a convent novice. You were a selfish coward."
"I blamed you and my mother. I wanted something far worse than a divorce."
"Ah, now we"re getting to the truth." Bruce scratched his scalp and c.o.c.ked his head to the side. "I understand punishment. I wanted to punish you for cheating. But I wasn"t going to take it out on Monica."
Alma pointed her finger at him. "I didn"t take it out on Monica, I spared her. That"s how I saw it at the time. You were a good father, and I was a bad mother. After I felt strong enough to resume my life and recognize my mistakes, I no longer had any right to her. Am I wrong?"
Bruce raised an eyebrow. "No, you"re absolutely right. And I am the better parent. Take just now, for instance. All these years I"ve been trying to shield her from the knowledge that what she told me that day triggered your death, and you just blurt it all out."
Alma shook her head. "But I"m not dead."
"But others did die."
"Putting everything on the table is the best thing. She"s almost thirty, for G.o.d"s sake."
Bruce exhaled slowly. Alma gripped the edge of the bench with both hands and said, "I"m so sorry I ruined your life, Bruce. I never loved you, you know that. I should have been braver, I should have defied my parents and just followed my heart from the beginning." She made a cutting motion with her hand. "I don"t expect you to forgive me. But I do want to say I"m sorry for my actions, because I am."
He stood. "Feel sorry for yourself. You"ve ruined every chance life gave you to be loved."
She looked down at her toes, pushed the sand about. When she looked up, he saw himself reflected in those impossibly dark eyes. Eyes were supposed to be the mirror of the soul, he thought. They weren"t supposed to reflect back your own image. He remembered suddenly that there had always been something terribly lonely about loving Alma, and that was it. You only saw yourself reflected back, you never got a glimpse of what was inside. She pulled at his wrist and said, "Don"t go."
He sat. "Why?"
"Because," she said, lifting her fringed eyelids to reveal those black-mirrored irises with no pupil, no center, no heart of vision.
But she was right, there was more to say. He looked into her face, taking in the eternally swollen lips, the double accent marks of her eyebrows, the high swell of her cheekbones, and for a moment, he spoke to the face, not to the woman. "I accept responsibility for getting caught up in your beauty. I chose chose you despite the fact that you told me over and over you didn"t want to marry me or have my child. I saw you and Maximiliano together that first weekend your mother invited me to the beach and I chose to ignore it. When your father sent Max away to keep you apart, I seized the chance. That"s my contribution to the baggage than ended up on Monica"s lap. All I ask of you now is that you make sure that Monica never knows that you didn"t want to have her." you despite the fact that you told me over and over you didn"t want to marry me or have my child. I saw you and Maximiliano together that first weekend your mother invited me to the beach and I chose to ignore it. When your father sent Max away to keep you apart, I seized the chance. That"s my contribution to the baggage than ended up on Monica"s lap. All I ask of you now is that you make sure that Monica never knows that you didn"t want to have her."
Alma winced, remembering the pain of that failed attempt at an abortion. "That was destiny. That child was meant to live." She nodded her head and looked away. "I"ll do whatever you say, Bruce. I feel as if life is granting me another chance, if only to seize the peace that honesty can bring."
Bruce pursed his lips and nodded. "Good."
They sat in silence for a moment, then Bruce said, "I have some things to ask of you if you"re serious about starting a clean slate."
Alma just raised an eyebrow and looked at him.
Bruce said, "First, you"re going to have to come out from under your rock. We"re going to get a good lawyer and you"re going to strip the Borreros of everything that belonged to your parents." He held his hand up just as she began to protest. "I don"t care if it"s uncomfortable for you. I don"t care what your feelings about money are these days. You"re going to force your relatives, and the law, to recognize Monica as the rightful heir to whatever is left of her grandparents" a.s.sets, which by now have tripled. You can start there."
Alma opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, then closed it. She held her chin up. "What else?"
"And then you"re going to sit down with Claudia Credo"-he pointed toward the marine station-"and tell her everything you know about cone-venom-based drugs and that clinic. Let the health department know who you are and why you"re here and what concerns you have with what"s going on at Clinica Caracol."
Alma bit her lip and finally nodded. "Okay."
"And no disappearing act. Alma, you had better be reliable and available for this."
She put up her hands. "I promise."
He raised his chin and squinted at her. "I was married to you for thirteen years. I don"t trust you."
"Technically, you still are."
He frowned. "Well, I guess that"s the third thing. I"m going to need a divorce."
Alma nodded and stood. She picked up the dried seed of an almond fruit and tossed it at the spider monkey. "It"ll be my gift to you, Bruce."
Bruce kicked at the sand. "I won"t be seeing much of you again, but Monica is an adult and I"m not going to interfere with whatever she decides to do. You"re on your own with her, Alma."
"If I do these three things ..." Her voice trailed off.
Bruce nodded. "Then she"ll forgive you."
chapter 19 EMERGING.
To keep his hands busy and calm his increasingly frazzled nerves, Will began to play with the baby sea turtles. He was encouraging a wrestling match between the two most aggressive ones. While everyone else kneeled on the sand and played with the tiny creatures, Claudia sat with Alma on a cement bench nearby. Alma said, "As I moved from guerrilla camp to camp, I discovered that the poor and the idealistic can be just as arrogant and dishonest as the rich. I came to realize that my ancestors worked hard to obtain their money. They were intelligent, focused people who didn"t exploit anyone, and they deserved what they accrued."
"But your parents, if not your ancestors, were a bit of the elitist stereotype, no?" Claudia asked.
"My parents were the third generation, and that"s when the fruit starts to rot," Alma said. "My parents didn"t exploit the workers on our properties-at least not by local standards-but they were cold in their hearts, so removed were they from the humility of the poor. And as the sea carried me that day, I remembered exactly what drove Max to fight against the status quo. Everything came down to a memory, the story of which he retold many times. On the day of my seventh birthday party, he stood in line behind the other kids waiting for his turn at an enormous yellow pinata shaped like an airplane. Several kids took a turn at whacking it, and still n.o.body could break it open. Max grew more and more excited as his turn approached. When someone finally pa.s.sed the club to him, my mother stepped forward and said, in front of everyone, "These games aren"t for you, Maxito. Go get a garbage bag from the kitchen and help your mother pick up all this trash."
"I never forgot the humiliation and frustration in his face," Alma said. "Turns out that the expression on his face foreshadowed the feelings of an entire nation." She folded her arms and shook her head. "I never understood how you could work for the military, Claudia."
Claudia shrugged. "Some of us need jobs, Alma. I didn"t have a trust fund waiting for me in Miami."
Alma bowed her head, conceding the point. "We each make our decisions based on what we need at the moment, don"t we?"
"That we do." Claudia slid her sungla.s.ses over her eyes and folded her hands together. She looked at Monica and smiled.
"So, Monica?"
Monica looked at all of them self-consciously. "So Claudia?"
"So is everything resolved between you two?"
Monica shook her head at the boldness and indiscretion of the question. While she really wanted to say something cutting, she knew it was a cultural quirk and was completely unintentional. She searched to find more gentle words. Alma seemed to sink into her own shoulders. "I feel more in control of my past, and therefore my life, Claudia."