“Well, I did.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Some other time.”
The idea of showing her the letter and watching her reactions appealed to his sense of dramatic irony. But the references to herself were decidedly unflattering, and he was afraid to take a chance on making her angry again. Besides, the letter was, in its way, a very special one. Of all the times that Daisy had written to him, this was the only time she had ever expressed genuine and deep emotions.
Dear Daddy, I wish you were here tonight so you and I could talk about things the way we used to. Talking to Mother or Jim isn’t the same. It always ends up not as a conversation, but as their telling me.
Christmas is nearly here. How I’ve always loved it, the gaiety and the singing and the wrapping of presents. But this year I feel nothing. There is no good cheer in this childless house. I use that word, childless, with bitter irony: I found out a week ago today that another woman is giving — or has already given — birth to a baby fathered by Jim. I can almost see you now as you read this, and hear you saying, Now Daisy baby, are you sure you’ve got the facts straight? Yes, I’m sure. Jim has admitted it. And here’s the awful thing about it — whatever I’m suffering, Jim is suffering twice as much, and neither of us seems able to help the other. Poor Jim, how desperately he’s wanted children, but he will never even see this one. The woman has left town, and arrangements for her support have been made through Adam Burnett, Jim’s lawyer.
After this letter is written, I will do my utmost to forget what has happened and to go on being a good wife to Jim. It’s over and done with. I can’t change anything, so I must forgive and forget. The forgiving is easy; the other might be impossible, but I’ll try. After tonight, I’ll try. Tonight I feel like wallowing in this ugly thing like a pig in a mudhole.
I’ve seen the woman many times. (How the ironies pile up once they start! It’s as if they’re self-multiplying like amoebae.) She has been a patient at the Clinic for years, off and on. Perhaps this is where Jim first met her while he was waiting for me. I haven’t asked him, and he hasn’t told me. Anyway, her name is Juanita Garcia, and she’s been working as a waitress at the Velada Café, which is owned by a friend of her mother. She is married and has five other children. Jim didn’t tell me this, either; I looked up her file at the Clinic. Also from her file I found out something else, and if you aren’t already choking on ironies, try swallowing this one: Mrs. Garcia was arrested last week on charges of child neglect. I hope to God Jim never finds this out; it would only increase his misery to think of the kind of life his own child will have.
I haven’t told Mother, but I suspect Jim has. She’s going around with that kind of desperate, determined cheerfulness she puts on in emergencies. Like last year when I found out I was sterile, she drove me crazy counting blessings and pointing out silver linings.
One question keeps going through my mind: why did Jim have to tell me the truth? His confession hasn’t lessened his own suffering. It has, in fact, added mine to his. Why, if he never intended to see the woman again, and the child, didn’t he keep them both a secret? But I mustn’t dwell on such things. I have promised myself I will forget, and I will. I must. Pray for me, Daddy. And please answer this. Please.
He hadn’t answered it. At the time there were a dozen reasons why not, but as the years passed, he’d forgotten the reasons and only the fact remained: he hadn’t answered this simplest of requests. Every time he opened the old suitcase, that word please flew up out of it and struck him in the face...
Well, he was answering it now, and at a much greater risk than if he’d done it in the first place. It was a stroke of incredibly bad luck that the sister Camilla had referred to before he died had turned out to be Mrs. Rosario. And yet Fielding realized now that if he’d been thinking logically, he should have made some connection between Camilla, on the one hand, and Juanita, on the other. Daisy’s letter was dated December 9. In it she stated she’d first heard about Juanita’s child a week before, which would make it December 2. This was also the day Camilla had died and Juanita had left town. A connection between the two events was inescapable. And the link must be Mrs. Rosario, who, behind her crucifixes, madonnas, and shrines, seemed as devious an operator as Fielding himself.
“Ask your mother,” he said, “how she wangled that money.”
Juanita was stubborn. “Maybe someone gave it to her.”
“Why?”
“There’s some people that like to give away money.”
“They do, eh? Well, I hope I meet one before I die.”
They had reached Granada Street. It was lined on both sides with cars parked for the night; garages were a luxury in this part of town.
Fielding remembered the house not by number, but by its bright pink paint. As he braked the car, he noticed a new blue and white Cadillac pulling away from the curb with an anxious shriek of rubber.
“I’ll be back in two hours,” he told Juanita.
“You better be.”
“I give you my word.”
“I don’t want your word. I want my car.”
“You’ll have it. In two hours.”
He had no idea whether he’d be back in two hours, two days, or ever. It would all be a matter of luck.
18
I came here to see you, but I lack the courage. That is why I am writing, to feel in touch with you for a little, to remind myself that my death will be only partial; you will be left, you will be the proof that I ever lived at all. I leave nothing else...
The blue and white Cadillac was just as conspicuous on Opal Street as it had been on Granada, but there was no one around to notice. At the first drop of rain the sidewalks had emptied. Jim turned off the windshield wipers and the lights and waited in the cold darkness. Although he didn’t look either at his watch or the clock on the dashboard, he knew it was five minutes to seven. During this week of crisis he seemed to carry around inside him his own clock, and he could hear the seconds ticking off with ominous accuracy. Time had become a living, breathing thing, attached to him as inexorably as a remora to a shark’s belly, never sleeping or relaxing its grip, so that even when he awoke in the middle of the night, it would communicate to him the exact hour and minute.
Across the street the lights were on in Pinata’s office, and a man’s shadow was moving back and forth past the window. An overpowering hatred surged up Jim’s body like a bore tide up a river, roiling his reason, muddying his perceptions. The hatred was divided equally between Pinata and Fielding — Pinata because he had dredged up the business about Carlos Camilla, Fielding because he had, in his impulsive, irresponsible manner, caused the events of the past week. It was his seemingly innocent phone call on Sunday night that had triggered Daisy’s dream. If it hadn’t been for the dream, Camilla would still be dead, Juanita forgotten, Mrs. Rosario unknown.
He had questioned Ada Fielding thoroughly about the phone call from Fielding, trying to make her remember exactly what she’d said that evening that might have disturbed Daisy and started the train of thought that led to the dream. “What did you say to her, Ada?” “I told her it was a wrong number.” “What else?” “I said it was some drunk. God knows that part of it was true enough.” “There must be something more.” “Well, I wanted to make it sound realistic, so I told her the drunk had called me baby...”