A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

Fool to Cry

Solitude is an Anglo-Saxon concept. In Mexico City, if you’re the only person on a bus and someone gets on they’ll not only come next to you, they will lean against you.

When my sons were at home, if they came into my room there was usually a specific reason. Have you seen my socks? What’s for dinner? Even now, when the bell on my gate rings it will be Hi, Ma! let’s go to the A’s game, or Can you babysit tonight? But in Mexico, my sister’s daughters will come up three flights of stairs and through three doors just because I am there. To lean against me or say, Qué honda?

Their mother, Sally, is sleeping soundly. She has taken pain pills and a sleeping pill. She doesn’t hear me, in the bed next to hers, turning pages, coughing. When Tino, her fifteen-year-old son, comes home he gives me a kiss, goes to her bed and lies next to her, holds her hand. He kisses her good night and goes to his room.

Mercedes and Victoria live in their own apartment across town, but every night they stop by even though she doesn’t wake up. Victoria smooths Sally’s brow, arranges her pillows and blankets, draws a star on her bald head with a felt-tip pen. Sally moans in her sleep, wrinkles her brow. Hold still, Amor, Victoria says. About four in the morning Mercedes comes to say good night to her mother. She is a set designer for movies. When she’s working she works day and night. She too lies against Sally, sings to her, kisses her head. She sees the star and she laughs. Victoria has been here! Tía, are you awake? Sí. Oye! Let’s go smoke. We go into the kitchen. She is very tired, dirty. Stands staring into the refrigerator, sighs and closes it. We smoke and share an apple, sitting together on the only chair in the kitchen. She is happy. The film they are making is wonderful, the director is the best. She is doing a good job. “They treat me with respect, like a man! Cappelini wants me to work on his next movie!”

In the morning Sally and Tino and I go to La Vega for coffee. Tino carries his cappuccino with him as he goes from table to table, talking with friends, flirting with girls. Mauricio the chauffeur waits outside, to take Tino to school. Sally and I talk and talk, as we have since I arrived from California three days before. She is wearing a curly auburn wig, a green dress that enhances her jade eyes. Everyone stares at her, fascinated. Sally has come to this café for twenty-five years. Everyone knows she is dying, but she has never looked so beautiful or happy.

Now, me … if they said I had a year to live, I’ll bet I would just swim out to sea, get it over with. But Sally, it is as if the sentence had been a gift. Maybe it’s because she fell in love with Xavier the week before she found out. She has come alive. She savors everything. She says whatever she wants, does whatever makes her feel good. She laughs. Her walk is sexy, her voice is sexy. She gets mad and throws things, hollers cusswords. Little Sally, always meek and passive, in my shadow as a girl, in her husband’s for most of her life. She is strong, radiant now; her zest is contagious. People stop by the table to greet her, men kiss her hand. The doctor, the architect, the widower.

Mexico City is a huge metropolis but people have titles, like the blacksmith in a village. The medical student; the judge; Victoria, the ballerina; Mercedes, the beauty; Sally’s ex-husband, the minister. I am the American sister. Everyone greets me with hugs and cheek kisses.

Sally’s ex-husband, Ramon, stops in for an espresso, shadowed by bodyguards. Chairs scrape back all over the café as men stand to shake his hand or give him an abrazo. He is a cabinet member now, for the PRI. He kisses Sally and me, asks Tino about his school. Tino hugs his father good-bye and leaves for class. Ramon looks at his watch.

Wait a little bit, Sally says. They want so badly to see you; they are sure to come.

Victoria first, in a low-cut leotard on her way to dance class. Her hair is punk; she has a tattoo on her shoulder. For God’s sake, cover yourself! her father says.

“Papi, everybody here is used to me, no, Julian?”

Julian, the waiter, shakes his head. “No, mi doña, each day you bring us a new surprise.”

He has brought us all what we wanted without taking an order. Tea for Sally, a second latte for me, an espresso, then a latte, for Ramon.

Mercedes arrives, her hair wild, her face heavily made up, on the way to a modeling job before going to the movie set. Everyone in the café has known Victoria and Mercedes since they were babies, but stares at them nonetheless because they are so beautiful, so scandalously dressed.

Ramon starts his usual lecture. Mercedes has appeared in some sexy scenes for Mexican MTV. An embarrassment. He wants Victoria to go to college and get a part-time job. She puts her arms around him.

“Now, Papi, why should I go to school, when all I want to do is dance? And why should I work, when we are so rich?”

Ramon shakes his head, and ends up giving her money for her lessons, more for some shoes, more for a cab, since she’s late. She leaves, waving good-byes and blowing kisses to the café.

Ramon groans. “I’m late!” He leaves too, weaving through a gauntlet of handshakes. A black limousine speeds him away, down Insurgentes.

“Pues, finally we can eat,” Mercedes says. Julian arrives with juice and fruit and chilaquiles. “Mama, could you try something, just a little?” Sally shakes her head. She has chemo later, and it makes her sick.

“I didn’t sleep a wink last night!” Sally says. She looks hurt when Mercedes and I laugh, but she laughs too, when we tell her all the people she slept through.

“Tomorrow is Tía’s birthday. Basil Day!” Mercedes said. “Mama, were you at the Grange Fête, too?”

“Yes, but I was little, only seven, the time it fell on Carlotta’s twelfth birthday, the year she met Basil. Everybody was there … grown-ups, children. There was a little English world within the country of Chile. Anglican churches and English manors and cottages. English gardens and dogs. The Prince of Wales Country Club. Rugby and cricket teams. And of course the Grange School. A very good Eton-type boys’ school.”

“And all the girls at our school were in love with Grange boys…”

“The Fête lasted all day. There were soccer and cricket games and cross-country races, shot-put and jumping events. All kinds of games and booths, things to buy and to eat.”

“Fortune-tellers,” Carlotta said. “She told me I would have many lovers and many troubles.”

“I could have told you that. Anyway, it was just like an English country fair.”

“What did he look like?”

“Noble and worried. Tall and handsome, except for rather large ears.”

“And a lantern jaw…”

“Late in the afternoon was prize-giving, and the boys my friends and I had crushes on all won prizes for sports, but Basil kept getting called up to get prizes for physics and chemistry and history, Greek and Latin. Tons more. At first everybody clapped but then it got funny. His face got redder and redder every time he went up to get another prize, a book. About a dozen books. Things like Marcus Aurelius.

“Then it was time for tea, before the dance. Everyone milling around or having tea at little tables. Conchi dared me to ask him to dance, so I did. He was standing with his whole family. A big-eared father, mother and three sisters, all with that same unfortunate jaw. I congratulated him, and asked him to dance. And he fell in love, right before my very eyes.

“He had never danced before, so I showed him how easy it was, just making boxes. To ‘Siboney.’ ‘Long Ago and Far Away.’ We danced all night, or made boxes. He came to tea every day for a week. Then it was summer vacation and he went to his family’s fundo. He wrote to me every day, sent me dozens and dozens of poems.”

“Tía, how did he kiss?” Mercedes asked.

“Kiss! He never kissed me, didn’t even hold my hand. That would have been very serious, in Chile then. I remember feeling faint when Pirulo Diaz held my hand in the movie Beau Geste.”

“It was a big deal if a boy should address you as tú,” Sally said. “This was long, long ago. We rubbed alum rocks under our arms for deodorant. Kotex wasn’t even invented; we used rags that maids washed over and over.”

“And were you in love with Basil, Tía?”

“No. I was in love with Pirulo Diaz. But for years Basil was always there, at our house, at rugby games, at parties. He came to tea every day. Daddy played golf with him, was always asking him to dinner.”

“He was the only suitor Daddy ever approved of.”

“The worst thing for romance,” Mercedes sighed. “Good men are never sexy.”

“My Xavier is good! So good to me! And he’s sexy!” Sally said.

“Basil and Daddy were good in a patronizing and judgmental way. I treated Basil horribly, but he kept coming back. Every single year on my birthday he has sent roses or called me. Year after year. For over forty years. He has found me through Conchi, or your mother … all kinds of places. Chiapas, New York, Idaho. Once I was even in a lockup psych ward in Oakland.”

“So what has he said, in those phone calls all these years?”

“Very little, actually. About his own life I mean. He is president of a grocery chain. Usually asked how I was. Invariably something terrible had just happened … our house burned down or a divorce, a car wreck. Each time he calls he says the same thing. Like a rosary. Today, on November 12, he is thinking of the most lovely woman he ever knew. ‘Long Ago and Far Away’ plays in the background.”

“Year after year!”

“And he never wrote to you or saw you?”

“No,” Sally said. “When he called last week to ask where Carlotta was I told him she would be in Mexico City, why not have lunch with her. I got the feeling he didn’t really want to meet her tomorrow. He said it wouldn’t do to tell his wife. I said, why not bring her along, but he said that wouldn’t do.”

“Here comes Xavier! You are so lucky, Mama. You get no sympathy from us at all. Pilla envidia!”

Xavier is at her side, holding both her hands. He is married. Supposedly no one knows about their affair. He has stopped by, as if by chance. How can everyone not feel the electricity? Julian smiles at me.

Xavier has changed too, as much as my sister. He is an aristocrat, a prominent chemist, used to be very serious and reserved. Now he laughs too. He and Sally play and they cry and they fight. They take danzón lessons and go to Merida. They dance the danzón in the plaza, under the stars, cats and children playing in the bushes, paper lanterns in the trees.

Everything they say, the most trivial thing like “good morning, mi vida,” or “pass the salt” is charged with such urgency that Mercedes and I giggle. But we are moved, awed, by these two people in a state of grace.

“Tomorrow is Basil Day!” Xavier smiles.

“Victoria and I think she should dress up as a punk, or as an old old lady,” Mercedes says.

“Or I could have Sally go in my place!” I say.

“No. Victoria or Mercedes … And he’ll think you are still back in the forties, almost as he remembers you!”

* * *

Xavier and Sally left for her chemo treatment and Mercedes went to work. I spent the day in Coyoacán. In the church the priest was baptizing about fifty babies at once. I knelt at the back, near the bloodiest Christ, and watched the ceremony. The parents and godparents stood in long rows, facing each other in the aisle. The mothers held the babies, dressed in white. Round babies, skinny babies, fat babies, bald babies. The priest walked down the middle of the aisle followed by two altar boys swinging incense censers. The priest prayed in Latin. Wetting his fingers in a chalice he held in his left hand, he made the sign of the cross on each baby’s forehead, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. The parents were serious, prayed solemnly. I wished that the priest would bless each mother, too, make some sign, give her some protection.

In Mexican villages, when my sons were infants, Indians would sometimes make the sign of the cross on their brows. Pobrecito! they would say. That such a lovely creature should have to suffer this life!

Mark, four years old, in a nursery school on Horatio Street in New York. He was playing pretend house with some other children. He opened a toy refrigerator, poured an imaginary glass of milk and handed it to his friend. The friend smashed the imaginary glass on the floor. Mark’s look of pain, the same I have seen later in all my sons during their lives. A wound from an accident, a divorce, a failure. The ferocity of my longing to protect them. My helplessness.

As I leave the church I light a candle beneath the statue of our Blessed Mother Mary. Pobrecita.

* * *

Sally is in bed, worn out and nauseated. I put cloths cooled in ice water on her head. I tell her about the people in the plaza at Coyoacán, about the baptism. She tells me about the other patients at chemo, about Pedro, her doctor. She tells me the things Xavier said to her, the tenderness of him, and she cries bitter, bitter tears.

When Sally and I first became friends, after we grew up, we spent several years working out our resentments and jealousies. Later, when both of us were in therapy, we spent years venting our rage at our grandfather, our mother. Our cruel mother. Years later still, our rage at our father, the saint, whose cruelty was not so obvious.

But now we speak only in the present tense. In a cenote in the Yucatán, atop Tulum, in the convent in Tepoztlán, in her little room, we laugh with joy at the similarities of our responses, at the stereo of our visions.

* * *

The morning of my fifty-fourth birthday we don’t stay long at La Vega. Sally wants to rest before her chemo. I need to dress for lunch with Basil. When we get home Mercedes and Victoria are watching a telenovela with Belen and Dolores, the two maids. Belen and Dolores spend most of the day and night watching soap operas. They have both been with Sally for twenty years; they live in a small apartment on the roof. There is not that much for them to do now that Ramon and the daughters are gone, but Sally would never ask them to leave.

Today is a big day on Los Golpes de la Vida. Sally dresses in a robe and comes to watch. I have showered and put on makeup, but stay in my robe too, don’t want to wrinkle my gray linen.

Adelina is going to have to tell her daughter Conchita that she can’t marry Antonio. Has to confess that Antonio is her natural son, Conchita’s brother! Adelina had him in a convent twenty-five years ago.

And there they are in Sanborn’s but before Adelina can say a word Conchita tells her mother that she and Antonio have been secretly married. And now they are going to have a baby! Close-up of Adelina’s grief-stricken face, her mother’s face. But she smiles and kisses Conchita. Mozo, she says, do bring us some champagne.

Okay, so it’s pretty silly. What was really silly was that all six of us women were bawling our eyes out, just sobbing away when the doorbell rang. Mercedes ran to open the door.

Basil stared at Mercedes, aghast. Not just because she was crying, or wearing shorts and a bra-less top. People are always taken aback by the sisters’ beauty. After you are around them awhile you get used to it, like a harelip.

Mercedes kissed him on the cheek. “The famous Basil, wearing real English tweeds!”

His face was red. He stared at us, all of us in tears, with such confusion that we got the giggles. Like children do. Serious, punishable giggles. We couldn’t stop. I got up, went to give him an abrazo too, but again he stiffened, held out his hand for a cool shake.

“Forgive us … we’re watching a tearjerker of a telenovela.” I introduced him to everyone. “Of course you remember Sally?” He looked aghast again. “My wig!” She ran to put on her wig. I went to dress. Mercedes came with me.

“Come on Tía, dress up real whorish and trashy … he is so stuffy!”

“There is no place to eat around here, surely,” Basil was saying.

“Surely, there is. La Pampa, an Argentinian restaurant, just across from the clock of flowers in the park.”

“The clock of flowers?”

“I’ll show you,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I followed him down the three flights of stairs, chattering nervously. How good it was to see him, how fit he looked.

In the downstairs foyer he stopped and looked around.

“Ramon is a minister now. Surely he can afford a better place for his family to live?”

“He has a new family now. They live in La Pedregal, a lovely home. But this is a wonderful place, Basil. Sunny and spacious … full of antiques and plants and birds.”

“The neighborhood?”

“Calle Amores? Sally would never live anyplace else. She knows everybody. I even know everybody.”

I was greeting people all the way to his car. He had paid some boys to watch it, keep it safe from bandits.

We buckled up.

“What is the matter with Sally’s hair?” he asked.

“She lost it because of chemotherapy. She has cancer.”

“How terrible! Is the prognosis good?”

“No. She’s dying.”

“I’m so sorry. I must say, none of you seem particularly affected by it.”

“We’re all affected by it. Right now we are happy. Sally is in love. She and I have become close, sisters. That’s been like falling in love too. Her children are seeing her, hearing her.”

He was silent, hands gripping the wheel.

I directed him to the park on Insurgentes.

“Park anywhere, now. See, there is the clock of flowers!”

“It doesn’t look like a clock.”

“Of course it does. See the numbers! Well, hell, it looked like a clock the other day. The numbers are marigolds, and they’ve just grown a little leggy. But everybody knows it’s a clock.”

We parked a long way from the restaurant. It was hot. I have a bad back, smoke a lot. The smog, my high heels. I was faint with hunger. The restaurant smelled wonderful. Garlic and rosemary, red wine, lamb.

“I don’t know,” he said, “it’s very rowdy. It will be hard to have a proper conversation. It’s full of Argentines!”

“Well, yeah, it’s an Argentine restaurant.”

“Your accent is so American! You say ‘yeah’ all the time.”

“Well, yeah, I’m an American.” We walked up and down the street, peering into the windows of one wonderful restaurant after another, but none were quite right, one was too dear. I decided to use the word dear instead of expensive from now on. Oh, look, here’s my dear phone bill!

“Basil … let’s get a torta and go sit in the park. I’m famished, and want to spend time talking with you.”

“We’re going to have to go downtown. Where I am familiar with the restaurants.”

“How about I wait here while you go get the car?”

“I don’t like to leave you unescorted in this neighborhood.”

“This is a swell neighborhood.”

“Please. We will go together and find the car.”

Find the car. Of course he didn’t remember where he had parked the car. Blocks and blocks. We circled back, out, around, ran into the same cats, the same maids leaning on gates flirting with the mailman. The knife sharpener playing a flute, driving his bike with no hands.

I sank back into the cushioned seat of the car, kicking off my shoes. I took out a pack of cigarettes but he asked me not to smoke in the car. Tears were streaking down both of our faces from the Mexico City smog. I said I thought smoking might form a sort of protective screen.

“Ah, Carlotta, still flirting with danger!”

“Let’s go. I’m starving.”

But he was taking photos of his children from the glove compartment. I held the pictures in their silver frames. Clear-eyed, determined young people. Lantern-jawed. He was talking about their brilliance, their achievements, their successful careers as physicians. Yes, they saw the son, but Marilyn and her mother didn’t get on. Both very headstrong.

“She is quite good with servants,” Basil said about his wife. “Never lets them step out of bounds. Were those women your sister’s servants?”

“They were. They’re more like family now.”

We turned the wrong way on a one-way street. Basil backed up, cars and trucks honking at us. On the periférico then, speeding along, until there was an accident up ahead and we came to a standstill. Basil turned off the motor and the air-conditioning. I stepped outside for a smoke.

“You’ll get run over!”

Not a car was moving for blocks behind us.

We arrived at the Sheraton at four thirty. The dining room was closed. What to do? He had parked the car. We went into a Denny’s next door.

“Denny’s is where one ends up,” I said.

“I’d like a club sandwich and iced tea,” I said. “What are you going to have?”

“I don’t know. I find food uninteresting.”

I was profoundly depressed. I wanted to eat my sandwich and to go home. But I made polite conversation. Yes, they belonged to an English country club. He played golf and cricket, was in a theater group. He had played one of the old ladies in Arsenic and Old Lace. Great fun.

“By the way. I bought that house, in Chile, with the pool, off the third hole of the golf course in Santiago. We rent it out, but plan to retire there. Do you know which house I mean?”

“Of course. A lovely house, with wisteria and lilacs. Look under your lilac bushes, you’ll find a hundred golf balls. I always sliced my first shot into that yard.”

“What are your plans for retirement? For your future?”

“Future?”

“Do you have savings? IRA, that sort of thing?”

I shook my head.

“I have been very concerned about you. Especially that time when you were in the hospital. You have knocked about a bit … three divorces, four children, so many jobs. And your sons, what do they do? Are you proud of them?”

I was irritable, even though my sandwich had arrived. He had ordered an untoasted cheese sandwich and tea.

“I hate that concept … being proud of one’s children, taking credit for what they have accomplished. I like my sons. They are loving; they have integrity.”

They laugh. They eat a lot.

He asked again what they did. A chef, a TV cameraman, a graphics designer, a waiter. They all like what they do.

“It doesn’t sound as if any of them are in a position to care for you when you’ll need it. Oh, Carlotta, if you had only stayed in Chile. You would have had a serene life. You would still be queen of the country club.”

“Serene? I would have died in the revolution.” Queen of the country club? Change this conversation, quick.

“Do you and Hilda go to the seashore?” I asked.

“How could anyone, after the coast in Chile? No, there are such throngs of Americans. I find the Mexican Pacific boring.”

“Basil, how can you possibly find an ocean boring?”

“What do you find boring?”

“Nothing, actually. I’ve never been bored.”

“But then, you have gone to great lengths not to be bored.”

Basil moved his almost uneaten sandwich aside and leaned toward me solicitously.

“Dear Carlotta … however will you pick up the pieces of your life?”

“I don’t want any of those old pieces. I just go along, try not to do any damage.”

“Tell me, what do you feel you have accomplished in your life?”

I couldn’t think of a thing.

“I haven’t had a drink in three years,” I said.

“That’s scarcely an accomplishment. That’s like saying, ‘I haven’t murdered my mother.’”

“Well, of course, there is that, too.” I smiled.

I had eaten all my triangles of sandwiches and the parsley.

“Could I have some flan and a cappuccino, please?”

It was the only restaurant in the Republic of Mexico that didn’t have flan. Jello, sí. “What about you, Basil, what of your ambition to be a poet?”

He shook his head. “I still read poetry, of course. Tell me, what line of poetry do you live by?”

What an interesting question! I was pleased, but perversely unacceptable lines came to mind. Say, sea. Take me! Every woman loves a fascist. I love the look of agony! Because I know it’s true.

“Do not go gentle into that good night.” I didn’t even like Dylan Thomas.

“Still my defiant Carlotta! My line is from Yeats: ‘Be secret, and exult.’”

God. I stubbed out my cigarette, finished the instant coffee.

“How about ‘miles to go before I sleep’? I’d better get back to Sally’s.”

Traffic and smog were bad. We inched along. He recited all the deaths of people we had known, the financial and marital failures of all my old boyfriends.

He pulled up at the curb. I said good-bye. Foolishly, I moved to give him a hug. He backed away, into the car door. Ciao, I said. Exult!

The house was quiet. Sally was asleep, after her chemo. She stirred fitfully. I made some strong coffee, sat by the canaries, near the fragrance of tuberoses, listening to the man downstairs playing his cello badly.

I crept into bed next to my sister. We both slept until it was dark. Victoria and Mercedes came to find out all about the lunch with Basil.

I could have told them about the lunch. I could have made it a very funny story. How the marigolds grew out and Basil couldn’t tell it was the clock of flowers. I could have impersonated him acting one of the old ladies in Arsenic and Old Lace. But I lay back against the pillow next to Sally.

“He won’t ever call me again.”

I cried. Sally and her daughters comforted me. They did not think I was a fool to cry.