Hillerman, Tony (2 page)

HIS MOTHER WAS ASLEEP. No, she was unconscious. Comatose. Or perhaps sedated. She lay in a position which no sleeping person would naturally choose: flat on her back, legs extended straight and parallel under the sheet, arms extended tight to the torso.

A transparent tube emerged from plugs in her nostrils. Feeding her oxygen, Moon assumed. Four insulated wires from monitoring machines disappeared under Victoria Mathias’s white hospital gown. One terminated under a patch of tape high on his mother’s rib cage. Another tube linked her left arm to a bottle hung above the bed. She looked smaller than Moon Mathias remembered her. Surprisingly small. She had always seemed to him the largest person in whatever space she had occupied. Now she seemed to have shrunken, as if all those tubes had drained away her substance.

Someone was standing behind him. It was a woman about Moon’s age, black, with a kind round face and a maze of wrinkles around her eyes. A nurse. What does one say under these circumstances? Moon could think of nothing that wouldn’t sound inane. He attempted a smile.

“You’re her next of kin?” the nurse asked. “Family?”

“I’m her son.”

“They think she’s going to be all right,” the nurse said. “It seems to be a problem with her heart. Dr. Jerrigan’s around here someplace. He can tell you about it.”

“A heart attack,” Moon said.

The nurse looked down at Victoria Mathias, up at the monitor, then at the bottle, and then at the chart. “Looks like they’re still waiting for test results,” she said. “Things are always slower on weekends. But when they brought her in here we were treating her for severe chest pains. It happened out at the airport, so the paramedics got there in a hurry. That helps.”

“I guess so,” Moon said. “Has she talked to you? Told you anything about what happened?”

“Not to me, she hasn’t,” the nurse said. “Maybe to the doctor. But it doesn’t look like she’s felt much like talking.”

“I don’t have any idea what she’s doing here,” Moon said. “Not the slightest idea. She lives in Miami Beach, three thousand miles away. Her husband’s an invalid. Lou Gehrig’s disease. Paralyzed. Stuck in a machine to help him breathe. She never leaves him alone. And she doesn’t even know anyone in Los Angeles.”

It occurred to Moon as he said it that he didn’t really know if that was true. He had no idea who his mother’s friends were these days. Or where they were. Or if she actually had any. Once she had had friends, of course, when they lived in Oklahoma. He remembered them from when he and Ricky were teenagers. Mostly they were neighbors, the parents of his own friends, people his mother did business with, people in St. Stephen’s parish at Lawton. But they were older people, of no interest to teenage boys.

Long, long ago. Before the army. Before Victoria Mathias had given up her business, and Oklahoma, and her independence, to give him, her disappointing elder son, a second chance to do something with his life.

“All I know is I heard the ambulance brought her in from the airport,” the nurse said. “Have you looked in her purse? Maybe that would tell you. A letter or something.”

Victoria Mathias’s purse was being held for her at the hospital business office. Moon showed his driver’s license, signed for it, and carried it into the lobby. He stopped there and sat for a moment, holding it in his lap. Some childhood inhibition kept him from breaking the tape that the airline’s security people had used to seal it. One doesn’t pry into one’s mother’s purse.

“It’s not something our family does,” his mother would have said, not criticizing those nosy people who invade privacy but putting her two sons on a level at which better performance is expected.

He turned the purse in his hands. It was made of polished pearl-gray leather. Big and expensive-looking. His mother would have been wearing a tailored suit exactly compatible with this color when her heart failed her. Her shoes would have been tasteful and perfectly buffed. He turned the purse in his hands again. A corner was worn. The leather almost imperceptibly frayed. Frayed? Could this be the purse of Victoria Mathias?

Moon fished his glasses from his shirt pocket and inspected the spot. It had been covered with some sort of transparent varnish. Fingernail polish, perhaps. Neatly and precisely applied, as his mother would have done it. He looked at the purse with new interest. Had it gained some sentimental value in the mind of Victoria Mathias? Was his mother less meticulous than his image of her? Was his mother short of money? He thought of the condo where she had moved with Tom Morick after their marriage. Lavish, with its tenth-floor roof garden and the long balcony looking down on the Atlantic surf. When he’d asked her about the rent she had looked embarrassed and said that Tom owned the building.

The scuff mark made opening the purse easier for him—as if it belonged to some stranger into whose affairs he had been somehow injected.

A faint smell came from the purse. Lavender? Lilac? Some flower that had grown in his childhood. They had taken her flowers, he and Ricky. Ricky had found them blooming in a field behind a neighbor’s hay shed and picked them. Just weeds, Moon had thought. But they had found a bottle for the stems, and when Victoria Mathias came home from work she had transferred them to a vase and kept them on the mantel until the petals fell off.

Moon sorted through the purse. Something in it surely would tell him what had brought his mother across the continent. He extracted a thick plastic folder bearing the name of a Florida bank. He tapped it against the back of his hand, opened it. Hundred-dollar bills. He glanced around the lobby. No one seemed to be watching him. He counted. Eighty of them, mostly new. Eight thousand dollars. Another mystery. He replaced the folder in the purse and removed two envelopes. One had a Manila return address: Castenada, Blake and Associates, Attorneys-at-Law. It would be something to do with Ricky, Moon knew. Perhaps the law firm Ricky’s company used. The other envelope was hand-addressed with no return. The stamp was a white heron in flight against a gaudy sky, canceled in Thailand. Then, he noticed it was not addressed to his mother but to Ricky Mathias at Ricky’s business address in Vietnam.

The letter inside was also handwritten, and as he unfolded it a photograph fell out. It was a black-and-white print of a woman in a white smocklike affair holding a baby dressed in what looked to Moon like pajamas. The woman was Asian—or perhaps Eurasian. Her face was turned slightly away from the camera. She was looking down, expression pensive. A pretty woman. The baby stared directly into the lens, eyes huge in a heart-shaped face. He felt a faint twitch of foreboding. There was something about the kid— Moon turned the photograph. The back was blank. The letter was dated March 12, 1975.

Dear Ricky:

I am writing this in Nong Khai and sending it out with George Rice, so do not attempt to reach me here because I’ll be long gone by the time you get it. Our business here is done, and none too soon either, because the Khmer Rouge have been raising hell up in the hills. I go by bus down to Bangkok and fly over to Saigon if the situation makes that possible.

If things are wrong at Saigon, as I expect them to be from what we are hearing about morale in the ARVN, then I will continue to try to deal with things from Thailand and can be reached, as always, at the Hotel Bonaparte de l’Ouest.

By the way, Eleth Vinh sends her love and says the baby is in fine shape and sent along a photo to prove it. As you guessed, she’s uneasy about the gains Pol Pot’s army (if you want to call it that) has been making and the dangers to her family. Considering what we’re hearing about the conduct of Pol Pot’s bandidos, that attitude is sensible. Frankly, I think you ought to get her out of there. Out of Nam, too, for that matter. I recommend that you pay close attention to this and forget the optimistic talk your high brass friends give you and what the U.S. ambassador has been saying on the radio. I’m hearing that certain people are already boarding flights from Saigon and taking with them very heavy luggage. Including, for example, valuable stuff out of the museums. I think time in Saigon is very short.

Moon skipped rapidly through the rest of it, which concerned details of shipping dates, billings, and other concerns of Ricky’s business, all of which were incomprehensible to him. So was the signature: a scrawl that might have been B. Yager, or G. Yeyeb, or almost anything with the proper number of letters. He refolded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope.

His mind focused on a single phrase. “Eleth Vinh sends her love and says the baby is in fine shape.” Who were they? The obvious guess was that Ricky had been attending to more than business. Had he fathered a child? If he had, that would explain what Victoria Mathias was doing. She was going to see the baby. Was this Vinh woman the mother or a nanny or what? And if Ricky had indeed become a parent, why hadn’t he proclaimed the news to Victoria? She’d be the kid’s grandmother, after all. Or perhaps Ricky
had
told Victoria. Why, then, had nobody told him? He would be the uncle. Uncle Moon. Why hadn’t
he
been told? But he didn’t want to think about that.

Not now. He remembered that Victoria Mathias had always wanted grandchildren. She’d let Ricky and him, her two bachelor sons, know that without exactly saying it.

He inspected the photograph again. The baby still stared out, heart-faced and somber, directly into the lens. Probably a girl. His niece? Her hair seemed to be black, as was Ricky’s. Maybe a trace of some of the facial structure Ricky had inherited from their mother. Nothing else, though. But then he rarely saw parental resemblances in any child. If she was Ricky’s daughter, the mother was definitely Asian. Thai or Cambodian or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or Malay, or— He slipped the print back in with the letter and opened the other envelope. This one was typed, neatly but on a machine with an imperfect
e
and a badly worn ribbon.

Dear Mrs. Mathias:

I am pleased to learn that the papers and other personal effects of your deceased son, my good friend and client Richard Mathias, have reached your hands safely and in good form. I agree with your analysis that these documents indicate that Mr. Mathias had been blessed with the birth of a daughter. I was not aware of this circumstance until I examined the papers which I sent along to you.

Pursuant to your instructions I have contacted your son’s employees in Vietnam and am assured that arrangements are being made for the child to be brought to Manila.

She will be received by the Sisters of Loretto Convent School here and cared for by the nuns until the proper papers can be obtained and her transportation to the United States arranged.

I regret to inform you that the deteriorating situation in the Republic of Vietnam has made travel difficult and expensive, with extraordinary means required, since many scheduled inbound flights are being canceled and outbound flights are fully booked many days in advance. Therefore I have taken the liberty of withdrawing from Richard Mathias’s account at the Bank of Luzon the amount of $2,500 American to cover what I will call “extraordinary expenses,” which I anticipate officials in Saigon may impose.

I am informed that arrangements to get a visa for the child and to place her on a flight from Saigon to Manila are being made by Ricky’s associates at R. M. Air in Vietnam. I do not yet know details of those arrangements and will advise you by telephone as soon as I learn when the child will arrive in Manila.

Most sincerely, your servant,
Roberto Castenada Bolivar

Moon was feeling better. Ricky seemed to have kept his paternity a secret from just about everyone. He resumed his exploration of the purse and found a folded note.

Mrs. Mathias:

Three phone calls for you. That man called from Manila and said he was returning your call and would try again and then there were two calls from a man who said his name was Charley Ming, but he was calling for somebody named Lum Lee. He called again about an hour later, and this time the other man talked and he said it was terribly important to get in touch with you and would you please call him at the Beverly Wilshire, room 612.1 will come in to help next week unless you contact me.

Ella

Two airline tickets were folded into an inside pocket. One was in the name of Mrs. Victoria Mathias Morick, a first-class round-trip to Manila via Honolulu. That was no surprise now. Nor was the second ticket, one-way from Manila to Miami International. The name on it was Baby Girl Lila Vinh Mathias. Victoria Mathias had been en route to rescue her granddaughter when her heart failed her.

WASHINGTON
, April 13 (UPI)—As much as $700 million in military supplies has been abandoned by the South Vietnamese army in its disastrous retreat from the Central Highlands, a well-placed Pentagon source estimated today.
    The officer, who declined to be identified, said, “It’s all in the hands of the North Vietnamese now. We might as well have shipped it directly to Hanoi and avoided the wear and tear.”

THE FIRST WORDS Victoria Mathias said were, “We have a granddaughter.”

“Yes,” Moon said. “I saw the letters in your purse. How are you feeling?”

“What day is it? How long have I been here?”

“Just one day,” Moon said. “It’s April thirteenth.”

“I’ve got to go get her,” Moon’s mother said. She was in a different room now, moved to a different floor, in a different bed. But the wires were still there, and the tubes. Her skin had the pale, waxy look of death and her eyes the glaze of those who can barely discern reality. Moon took her hand. A cold and fragile hand.

“Ricky’s dead, you know,” she said. “Dead. But he had this daughter.”

“I know,” Moon said. “I know about Ricky and the baby.”
My brother. My niece.
“Don’t talk if it tires you. You take it easy now.”

Victoria Mathias turned her head slightly and looked at him. She had said,
We have a granddaughter.

We.
There was that.

“I called Ricky’s lawyer,” she said. Her eyes closed. A long pause. Moon looked nervously up at the monitor screen. The lines on it still moved in a regular pattern, telling him only that his mother was still alive. She’s just asleep, he thought. Good. But then she was speaking again, her voice so weak he could hardly understand the words. “. . .that man in the Philippines with the Spanish name. I don’t think she ever got there.”