Gaudi Afternoon (16 page)

“Maybe I could have helped them,” April said, as if to herself. “Maybe I could have gotten them to reconcile. But that would have meant committing myself to the relationship.”

“And you couldn't,” I said, “because there was Delilah.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“But then why did the three of you come to Barcelona to get away from Frankie?”

April had finished her
ensaimada
and was dabbing delicately at the plate with a finger. “That's what everyone thinks,” she said. “But I came here by myself. Ben followed me. And let me tell you, it's been very difficult. I haven't had a moment's peace for a week.”

Ana was struggling to fit the body's head into the passenger seat, where it sat, smiling benignly, like a totemic goddess. Something snapped into place. I stared at April in her rather tired caftan/bathrobe and for the first time her musky scents and freckled cleavage didn't overwhelm me.

“You drugged Delilah with some kind of herbal knock-out drops, didn't you? Then let Frankie in so she could kidnap her, didn't you? And then when I turned up at seven-thirty, you kept me occupied so you'd have an alibi, didn't you?”

April stared at me sadly. Her black hair looked grayer in the sunlight and her vibrant voice quavered. “I'm not a bad person. I'd never want you to think I'm a bad person.”

“Didn't you think about how frightened Ben would be?”

“It was only going to be overnight, Frankie said. She wasn't going to take Delilah out of the city. It was a negotiating tool. I thought, I guess I thought that Ben needed to be scared. I guess I thought they'd all go back to San Francisco.”

“How did Frankie persuade you? I thought you didn't like Frankie.”

“I don't know if I do like Frankie,” April said unhappily. “But it's not because of who she is or what she's become.” She started to cry. “It's all so complicated. You'd never understand. And now Delilah's really gone.”

“Then there's no possibility that Ben really did steal Delilah out of the hotel this morning?”

“Ben and I slept until nine-thirty. We were exhausted, we'd been up half the night.”

“But Frankie sent a message that Delilah was safe.”

“That's a message we never got.”

“Why
is
Hamilton so suspicious of you?”

That shook April up. “What makes you think he's suspicious of me?”

“He didn't want to let you out of his sight all last night.”

“He's not suspicious of me. We're old friends.”

“Since when?”

“Since high school. We… played in the orchestra together.”

“Where was that?”

“Just what is your point, Cassandra?” A harshness I'd never heard before came into April's voice. She set her cup of tea down with a clatter.

“My point is that there's something funny going on between you and Hamilton.”

“You're the one who's suspicious,” she turned it on me. “Working for Frankie, hounding us to Barcelona. You'd be the likeliest to have taken Delilah this morning. It's something Frankie cooked up, I'm sure of it. Pretending that Delilah was kidnapped when Frankie has just got her stashed somewhere.”

For a second her guess rang true. God, it was just the kind of thing that Frankie might do. But then I remembered Frankie's anguish in the hotel. She couldn't fake that, could she?

“Are you ready to go back to La Pedrera and talk about this sensibly?” I asked instead.

“You go,” she said, struggling for serenity. “I need a little time alone. This fighting between Frankie and Ben may not be old to you, but it is to me. I can't face it.”

“You can't pretend all this isn't happening, April,” I said. “Delilah is gone, and naturally Frankie and Ben are upset. They're her parents.”

“I know,” she said. After a minute she added, “There's something I'd like to tell you, but not right now. Could you give me a couple hours to work up to it? We could meet for lunch at the market off the Ramblas, the Mercat Sant Josep. There's a restaurant there, Hamilton took me once.”

“I'm not sure I should let you out of my sight,” I said. “Why can't you tell me now?”

“Because…” Her voice changed. “What's that? Somebody is running down the street with a… a head.”

I followed her pointing finger. Ana had left the car unlocked while she went back upstairs to get more body parts and someone, a young boy, was indeed dashing across the Rambla de Catalunya with the peacefully smiling red and yellow papier-mâché head of Ana's birthing house.

I jumped up from my chair and tore after him, but he was too quick for me. I chased him down the center walkway, but lost him in the end down a side street.

Ana was standing by the car when I returned empty-handed. A small crowd of passersby and neighbors had gathered to tell her what had happened and to discuss, in very loud voices, how things were going to the dogs in Barcelona. Now they were stealing art, right out of cars!

“The head's not the important bit,” I tried to reassure Ana. “Many women become mothers without using their heads.”

“I'm late,” Ana snapped, slamming the door of the car and driving off in a temper.

I turned back to the café and the foot masseuse of my dreams. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised.

April was gone.

I
WAS ON MY WAY
through the Pasaje de la Concepción back to La Pedrera when I recognized Ben and Frankie coming towards me. Ben had pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt with the name of some gym in San Francisco, and she was marching ahead of Frankie through the little pedestrian street. They were still quarrelling.

“I don't understand how you could accept me once with all my quirks and eccentricities and then go so judgmental on me,” Frankie was saying. In contrast to Ben who set each high-top sneaker down as if it were a dumbbell, Frankie bounced and slid along in her pointed shoes.

“We didn't have anybody else in Iowa,” Ben said glumly. “We had to accept each other.”

“I'm no different than what I was ten years ago.”

Ben turned on her. “You're completely different, Frankie. How can you say you're not different?”

Frankie stopped too. “Aren't you ever going to understand? I never was a man. Never felt like one, never looked like one, never was one inside. I was always a woman.”

“You didn't feel to me like a woman.”

“What do you know and what does it matter anyway?” Frankie's triangular face twisted sadly. “I thought you loved me for the person I was and am. My qualities have never changed even though my body did.”

“I do care about you, Frankie,” Ben said, after a minute. “But I don't know how to deal with you anymore.”

“Sometimes I think that my caring about Delilah throws your whole self-concept of motherhood in doubt. If I can be a mother too, what does your motherhood mean?”

“There's always one biological mother,” Ben said. “That's the way it is. And the biological mother always feels different than the other parent.”

“I don't believe that,” said Frankie. “Motherhood isn't about biology, it's about love.”

“Don't talk to me about biology meaning nothing,” Ben snapped, starting to walk away again. “We are our bodies, our bodies make us who we are. You can't just play fast and loose with biology.”

“Says the great bodybuilder,” Frankie said snidely.

They both saw me.

“Where's April?” Ben demanded.

“I… well… I don't know exactly.”

Frankie looked closely at me and then rolled her eyes nervously.

“What's wrong, where's April?” Ben repeated, advancing on me threateningly, “I know you've been seeing her. What's going on between you?”

It's hard to tell someone that their lover has betrayed them, no matter what that betrayal consists of.

But Frankie took the initiative. “Look, Ben, you had to know sometime. April helped me with Delilah last night.”

“I don't believe you!”

“It's true, Ben,” I said. “Frankie set it up with April to let her into the apartment while I was there, so that she'd have an alibi. But Hamilton came home and then you did, and… you know the rest.”

“I don't believe you,” Ben said again, her solid face anguished. “Why would April do such a thing to me? She loves me, she loves Delilah, she was the one who set up this whole trip to Barcelona… Cassandra, you're in on this with Frankie, you're making this up.”

Frankie's voice shook, “Can't you get it through your head that April doesn't like kids?”

“I'm afraid it's true, Ben,” I said. “April told me as much out on the street. She doesn't feel comfortable around kids. And she says you followed her to Barcelona.”

“April would never say that!”

“Is it or isn't it true?” Frankie demanded. “Is that why you took Delilah out of school, quit your job and disrupted all our lives? Because of some half-baked infatuation with a foot therapist?”

“Oh, what does it matter,” Ben wailed, “when Delilah's gone.” She turned on Frankie. “It's all your fault. If you hadn't come here and stirred up trouble, none of this would have happened. April and I were making progress on our relationship. Now she's gone.”

“She's gone and she's taken Delilah with her,” said Frankie portentously. “She stole our daughter from the hotel this morning.”

“How do you know that, Frankie?”

“Who else could it be?”

I tried to get things back to a level of rationality. “What reason would April have for taking Delilah, Frankie?”

“You think she did too, admit it!”

“Well, she did say she had something to tell me. We agreed to meet in an hour at the restaurant inside the Mercat Sant Josep. Maybe she felt bad about having helped last night.”

“But she fainted today when you two showed up without Delilah,” Ben said. “Doesn't that prove she's innocent?”

“Maybe she's just high-strung,” Frankie said. “Those spiritual types often are.”

“April told me you slept in until nine-thirty, Ben. Wouldn't you have noticed if she'd gone out?”

“She's been sleeping in a different room,” Ben said painfully. “We don't sleep together.”

But that admission must have been too much for her. Because right after she made it she ran back the way she'd come to the Passeig de Gràcia and jumped into a passing cab.

“Come on,” Frankie said, taking my arm, “Talk to me.”

We sat down at April's and my old seats at the outdoor table, and ordered
cafés con leche.

“Do you really think April has Delilah then?” Frankie said anxiously, lighting up a Camel.

“I hope so.”

Frankie sighed. “Ben and her girlfriends! And she says
I'm
unstable.” She crossed her legs and struck a wounded pose. “She talks about my lying! I'm an amateur next to her. Can you believe we're all here in Barcelona because Ben has a
crush
on someone?”

I had to smile. “So what did you say to April yesterday afternoon to persuade her to help you?”

Frankie put a finger to her red lips. “I have my ways.”

“Did you offer her money? Did you blackmail her?”

“Did I threaten to expose her as practicing Reflexology under false pretenses? No, I simply suggested that I could take Delilah off her hands for a while. You see, even in San Francisco I'd noticed that April was never very happy to see Delilah when I dropped her off after a weekend.”

The waitress crossed the street from the bar on the corner with our coffee.

Frankie was already wired. She kept talking. “To hear Ben go on you'd think it was totally her idea to have Delilah and totally her responsibility. But it was my idea. I was the one who wanted a child.”

“Ben said you met in college.”

“We did, we were inseparable. We were roommates for two years and then we got married. You couldn't pry us apart.”

“How could she have not known about you? How could you have not known about each other?”

“I said we were
close.
I didn't say we ever
talked.
For christssake, we were eighteen when we met, twenty-one when we had Delilah. I didn't have a clue who I was. Yes, I had these
feelings
but I thought they'd go away. They didn't and I'm happy they didn't. I'm just starting my life in some ways and it's exciting. I'm living my life finally as I want to live it. But that doesn't mean I don't have a right to be a mother. I am a parent. I have a child. And nobody can take her away from me.”

“Frankie, you and Ben have to work this stuff out. It isn't good for Delilah.”

“Ben and her girlfriends aren't good for Delilah,” she said stubbornly. “Delilah and I are fine together.”

“What about you, don't you have a relationship?”

“Not at the moment,” she said. “Someday I'll find the right man. I'm not like Ben. When I get attached, I stay attached.”

Speaking of attachments…

The head was coming down the street on two blue-jeaned legs. She was still smiling implacably.

“Excuse me,” I said, and pelted across the street. It wasn't my physical prowess but luck and caffeine that enabled me to grab the teenage boy. Plus the fact that he wasn't running.

“Where do you think you're going,
ladrón
?” I shouted.

But he wasn't really a pickpocket, just a university student who'd been having second thoughts.

“I thought it might look good in my room,” he apologized. “I'm really very sorry. I wanted to bring it back to where I took it from.”

He handed it over to me with a sheepish look and I hadn't the heart to scold him.

“Mom's back!” I turned to call to Frankie, but she was no longer there.