A Life in Men: A Novel (22 page)

Two months later, when Daniel tells this story to his artist friends in San Miguel, he will transpose the facts so that it was
Eli
who called Esther Daniel’s concubine, and Esther, standing by, flushed with wine, will not contradict him as everyone laughs. Six years later, when Mary tells the story to Sandor over an Indonesian
rijsttafel,
she will say that it occurred to her only later that maybe Daniel was lying and Gabriella
was
completely in the dark—there was no way, after all, that either she or Eli would go up to her and ask or ever mention Esther’s name. Thirty years later, when Diane is at last succumbing to an epic, two-decade battle with cancer and Eli is unburdening his soul, he will tell the story in such a way that it was his own guilt talking—that Gabriella, beautiful, loyal, and kind Gabriella, had reminded him of Diane, and that he realized in that moment of Daniel’s smug, self-entitled treachery what a fool he himself had been and how he needed to make it up to his wife for his lies. He will not mention that in the five years following the end of his affair with Mary, he had two other lovers, one a seventeen-year-old student, before developing prostate troubles that changed his body’s virility, and that finally at fifty, extramarital sex began to seem like more trouble than it was worth. When Esther, that night on the phone, tells the story to her twenty-year-old sister, her son’s birth mother, in Spain, she will say only, “It was horrible. They never considered that maybe
I
was the wronged party! That witch Gabriella, who has never worked a day in her life, gets the big house, and everyone considers her his wife. They stood up to defend her territory as though I were a common whore!”

In the moment, though, Eli and Mary are cowed like children following a tantrum. Without looking at each other, they sit back in their seats. Eli immediately downs the last of his margarita, comforted by the dizzy spin of the terrace brought on by tequila mixed with an hour of inhaled bus exhaust fumes. He says, “Hey. Let’s start over! We just got off on the wrong foot. Esther, you should show us your work—we love art!” He is aware that making art sound like a homogeneous thing one can love in an indiscriminate, all-encompassing way makes him sound even more of an unsophisticated American buffoon, but he has given up, settled into his role as the inappropriate jester of the day. He searches for the waitress so he can order another drink.

I
T IS NEARLY
10 p.m. by the time they get back to Querétaro. Eli is already hungover from the earlier onslaught of alcohol, and Mary is coughing furiously and seems to be running a low-grade fever, though she denies it, like all young people who think they’re invincible. Eli’s starting to feel acutely homesick, though it’s sure as hell not Columbus he wants but his wife, and his sons wrestling each other, and his quietly moody daughter practicing her guitar with her door closed. He wants
family,
in all its normal imperfections, and not this swinger’s melodrama from a fricking Updike novel!

Daniel, on the other hand, seems none the worse for wear, and spent the bus ride chatting boisterously about his budding side career as a shaman. At first Eli thought he’d heard him wrong—Daniel and Mary were sitting next to each other, and Eli was behind them—but no, there he was, regaling Mary with how he and Esther were considering opening their own healing center in San Miguel, where, according to Daniel, people were coming from all over the world to “detoxify.” Eli could not see the expression on Mary’s face as he listened to her father detailing how he first realized he was a “channeler” for “voices of the other world” while at Esther’s art studio, watching her work on a series of paintings of her dead relatives. “They just started talking to me,” he said. “I was able to give her a message her aunt had for her mother, something she’d never said in life that finally gave the family peace.” Eli felt his mouth gape and wanted to kick the back of Mary’s chair. He heard only her coughing in response.

Now, at the bus station, he whispers to her, “A
shaman
! The guy’s a crackpot! Here we were, worked up over the fact that he was lying to a nice dame like Gabriella, when the truth is he’s out of his fucking mind!” But Mary’s feverish hand only holds his wanly, with the air of someone who does not care anymore.

“You should see a doctor,” Eli says in the cab, loudly enough for Daniel to hear. “You don’t sound well. We have to leave day after tomorrow—you don’t want to travel sick.” He jabs Daniel in the shoulder, since Daniel is sitting in the taxi’s front seat. “Hey, there must be a doctor in this town, right?”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Daniel says indifferently. “Nothing’s open.”

“It’s all right,” Mary says in an exhausted voice. “I have some antibiotics with me. I’ll start them as soon as I get home.”

“Great,” Daniel says, but Eli narrows his eyes.

“Why are you carrying antibiotics around?” he asks. “Where’d you get them?”

Mary sighs. “They’re not three-year-old black market antibiotics from Africa or something, Eli—I got them from my doctor. I get lung infections sometimes, because of my asthma. I never travel without antibiotics.”

“Oh,” Eli says, cowed again.

The street is dark when they reach Hidalgo. Daniel fumbles in his pockets for a key. He swings back the giant door to reveal the dungeon-like foyer and the majesty of the courtyard, all dark, too, and they step inside. Their voices bounce off the plastic ceiling forty feet above; the closing door echoes in Eli’s chest like a punch. From the house’s rooftop you can count churches in every direction. He’s wanted to take Mary up there and bend her over the edge, to slam into her doggie-style while her wild hair blows over the side of the building into the nothingness, but they haven’t managed it yet. Getting to the roof involves opening a small door near the back of the house and creeping up an impossibly narrow, spiral stone staircase. At the top of the stairs, just before the door they must push open to enter the roof, is a small pile of cat shit. Gabriella has three cats, all of whom seem to be named Mami. Gabriella is afraid of heights, so she never goes on the roof or up the stairs to clean away the shit. Daniel claims to like to sit on the roof and read, but obviously he does not mind stepping over fossilizing feces to do so.

All the lights in the house seem to be snapping on at once. Eli hears Gabriella cry, “They’re back!” Caught in the cavernous courtyard, Eli, Mary, and Daniel look up. Gabriella rushes from the direction of the kitchen, a man—obviously American and about Daniel’s age—following. Maybe Daniel has a gay lover, too, whom they are about to meet? Eli chortles a little under his breath at the thought. Then Mary cries out, “Dad!”

D
ANIEL THINKS HE
may have a heart attack. Already the whole way home he’s been having palpitations, panicking that this joker Eli, who is at least twenty years older than Daniel’s daughter, might tell Gabriella about Esther, just for the malicious hell of it. Now, here in the courtyard is this white-bread, middle-aged man rushing down the wide stairway with Gabriella. Daniel knows he’s in for it for sure. His daughter is shouting, “Dad!” with such a clear relief that it sounds like she’s just been sprung from prison.

And suddenly Daniel just wants out of this whole comedy of errors. Fuck Esther; he should never have written the letter. He
can’t
have a heart attack now, though. It’s late Saturday night, and as he told his daughter, no good doctors ever work on Sundays.

“I’m sorry to just show up this way,” the interloper tells him. “Your wife was kind enough to let me in. I don’t speak any Spanish, I’m afraid, but we were able to communicate just fine. Her English is great!”

Like anybody asked you, farmer
.

“Daddy,” Mary whines like a six-year-old. “I told Mom not to let you come!”

“I know, honey, I know,” says Mary’s dad—
Dad II, Dad Squared
, Daniel thinks, and he almost laughs, despite the stabbing in his chest. “But this is such a valuable opportunity. Mom and I, we never expected a chance like this.” He looks at Daniel then, as though beseeching validation. “A health history,” he says simply, “might mean a lot.”

“It doesn’t,” Mary says between clenched teeth that spring from nowhere, “mean
anything
.”

“You don’t know that, sweetheart.”

“Yes,” she hisses. “Yes, I do.”

Dad puts his hands up in mock surrender. His every gesture is full of a folksy hokiness.
This
? Daniel thinks. He and Rebecca gave up their daughter, their flesh and blood, to
this
? “I knew she’d say that,” Dad says to Daniel, like one good old boy to another, over the head of the little woman. “That’s why, you see—why I
had
to come.”

It’s around this time that Daniel notices Eli is trying to disappear right into the floor.
Yeah,
how do you like it when the shoe’s on the other foot, asshole? Who’s the big, bad sexual perpetrator now, old man?

“Uh,” Daniel says, forcing himself to stop gripping his chest like a grandma and striding over to shake Dad’s hand. “It’s great that you’ve come. One big happy family, right?” Then, at the alarm on Dad’s face, he amends, “I mean, it’s good to see that my . . . that Mary’s been cared for, that her father loves her and is concerned about her. That’s what anyone who has to give up a baby hopes for. For your child to be loved.” And then, ready to shoot himself in the head, he adds simply, “Welcome.” He darts a desperate look at Gabriella, whose smile is frozen on her face in the way it gets when she’s not following everything being said. Where, for fuck’s sake, is the cognac when you need it? Why didn’t Gabriella lubricate Dad with some good booze?

“I, um, don’t want to interrupt any reunions,” Dad says. “I can stay at a hotel, I just—do you think we could sit down somewhere?” He glances around the courtyard as though mystified. “And have a nice talk before I’m on my way?”

No, Daniel’s heart will not have the good grace to give out on him just now. Instead he’s going to have to sit down and answer questions asked by Mary’s good cop and Dad’s bad, just like in his old radical-junkie interrogation-room days. He gestures with his head at Gabriella, who somehow miraculously seems to understand that this is a plea for alcohol and scurries away toward the kitchen. It’s then that he sees Eli backing slowly away.

Daniel throws his arms open, does a half-mad dance around the courtyard while Mary and Dad stand stupefied, and finally arrives at his target—Eli—and clamps his hand on his arm, patting him with naked, jocular aggression on the back. “Absolutely!” he booms. “Let’s all go for a good chat, shall we? Gabriella will bring us some drinks. Let’s go to the sitting room.” He smiles widely at Dad, a smile he hopes doesn’t come off as a smirk. “It’s right next to the chapel!”

I
T’S LIKE ROCKET
science, getting everyone in one room at the same time. First, Mary rushes off to take her antibiotics, which seems to alarm Dad, who rushes off after her but returns—solo—a couple of minutes later. Then Gabriella appears with small, heavy cognac glasses on a tray, only to be told, “I’m not much of a drinker, but I wouldn’t say no to a beer,” by Dad, and she glides from the room again. Finally Mary returns, downing her cognac in a single sip, Daniel notices. And eventually Gabriella, who may wisely have paused to pop a Valium on the way, produces Dad’s beer and stands next to the loveseat where Daniel is sitting, until Eli, who has been dragged to the seat by Daniel like a hostage in a robbery, hops up and moves as far away from Daniel as possible, allowing Gabriella to take his place. And then things get off to the best possible start, all stars aligning in Daniel’s favor. Dad looks at Eli square in the face and says, all folksiness gone from his preacher’s voice, “So who exactly are you?”

“This is Eli.” Mary’s words are rushed. “We work together in Columbus.”

“I see,” Dad says, not even glancing at Mary. “Ohio’s a long way from here.”

“I . . . uh . . .” Eli seems to be weighing his words carefully. “I didn’t think Mary should come alone.”

“Oh, you didn’t, did you?” Dad says, his voice flat, innocuously menacing. “You two dating, are you?”

“Um,” Mary says, “Dad. Yes. Sort of.”

“Oh!” Dad cries, with a glance at Daniel, who obligingly raises an eyebrow. “Sort of !” Dad spreads his paws wide in exaggerated confusion. “You’ll have to enlighten me—I’m just a simple, old-fashioned man. Back when I was dating, we didn’t have a kind called ‘sort of.’ ”

Sure you did,
Daniel thinks.
You just didn’t get out enough.

“Dad,” Mary says again, warning. “There’s no need to be rude. Eli and I aren’t seriously involved, is what I meant. We’re friends. We sometimes date. He came to help me. He didn’t think I should come alone, that’s all.”

“Yep, so he tells me. That’s real considerate of you—Eli. So . . .
Eli
. How old are you, Eli, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Believe me,” Eli says, almost meek, “I get your concern. Mary and I are aware of the large age discrepancy between us. That’s why our relationship—that’s why we aren’t . . .”
Yeah, no good way to put ‘ That’s why I’m just fucking her and not marrying her,’ is there, Casanova?
“I care about Mary. I didn’t think it was wise for her to come on such an emotional trip alone.”

“I seem to remember offering to come on the trip myself,” Dad says, looking at Mary for the first time. “And—bingo—here I am.”

“I appreciate it, Dad,” Mary says, another meek lamb just like Eli.
Where were all these meek lambs when these two were eating Esther for breakfast?
Daniel wonders, less amused now.

But then, to Daniel’s chagrin, something shifts. Dad’s eyes soften as he looks at their daughter, and he turns to Eli and out of nowhere there are tears in his eyes. “Thank you,” he says. “I’m not saying that I approve of my daughter being involved with a man so much older than herself. For the record, I don’t. But her mother and I worry about her to no end, running around the world alone, and it’s good to know somebody cares about her enough to accompany her, so that if she were to get sick”—he gives Mary a stern, forbidding look—“yes, Mary, if you were to have an incident, hemoptysis or worse, even on the airplane before you got here—you can’t stop Mom and me from worrying about that, you can’t forbid us to care about you. It’s good to know there was a competent adult with you, in case anything went wrong.”