She felt comfortable with him and they talked a lot. Nick liked him. She didn’t love him, but when he had suggested they live together, after much hesitation she had agreed. They had obtained a mortgage and bought a little house in a working-class area of Queens that Elias had insisted on putting in her name.
Carmen smiled through her tears at the memory of that tender, innocent man.
Poor Elias. They had made love for the first time in their house. He was gentle and shy and inexperienced, and she’d had to take him by the hand like a child and show him, step by step, how to please her. A month later she had discovered she was pregnant, and exactly nine months after their first night together Allison was born.
So then she had a family. A son, a daughter and a partner who loved her, all sitting together at the same table. She wasn’t with the man she secretly wished was still there, and this wasn’t the wildly happy life she’d known with Mitch. A quiet life was what it was, the kind that, when you had it and were content with it, made you realize you were starting to get old.
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be her destiny to keep hold of a man.
Elias had gone, too, carried away by an acute form of leukaemia that had consumed him in a short time. She still remembered the grim expression on the face of Dr Myra Collins, an internist at the hospital where she was working then, who had taken her aside and explained what the results of the first tests meant. To Carmen’s ears, those clear, courteous words had already sounded like words of condolence.
And once again, she had been left alone. She had decided that was how she was going to live her life from now on. Alone with her children, just the three of them. Nick was a gentle, lovable boy and Allison a girl with a very strong character. Then one day Nick had confessed to her that he was gay. Carmen had already guessed that, but had been waiting for him to bring up the subject. As far as she was concerned, it changed nothing. Nick was and would always be her son. She considered herself a fairly intelligent woman and too much of a loving mother to allow a sexual preference to jeopardize the respect she had for him as a person. He had spent one whole afternoon talking about the humiliations he had suffered and the torments he had gone through before coming to terms with what he was, in a community where machismo was a way of life for most young men. Then he had told her that he and his companion would be going to live in the West Village.
Carmen stood up, went to the kitchen, took a sheet of paper from the roll on the worktop, and wiped her eyes. Now that she came to think of it, the full line spoken by the boy in that movie was that it isn’t easy to live in New York if you’re poor, Mexican, and gay.
She opened the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of apple juice.
Enough crying, she told herself.
She had shed sufficient tears in her life. Although Nick’s life hadn’t been easy at first, he was an assistant in a boutique in SoHo now, he was in love and he was happy. She, too, had a good job, she didn’t have too many money worries and for years she’d had a discreet relationship – no strings attached – with her boss, Dr Bronson. It could have been thought an acceptable life. True, Allison had turned from a lively child into a difficult teenager. Every now and again, without warning, she would stay out all night. Carmen knew she was with her boyfriend when he had his parents’ house to himself. Still, she would have preferred to be told when that happened. She was sure that, once they’d got past the inevitable generational conflicts, their relationship would get better with time. Over the years, Carmen had learned to understand people but, like everyone, she’d never really learned to understand herself or those she was emotionally involved with. Sometimes, she suspected that all her certainties about Allison were just self-delusion.
She was about to go back to her armchair and her Sudoku when the doorbell rang. She wondered who it could be. Her few friends rarely visited her without phoning first. And anyway, at this hour of the day they were all at work. She left the kitchen and walked down the corridor to the front door.
Framed in the glass-fronted door, visible through the blind, were the silhouettes of two people.
When she opened the door she found herself facing a determined-looking young woman, the kind who are always too busy to remember they’re also beautiful, and a tall man of about thirty-five, with dark hair, intense black eyes and two days’ growth of beard that gave him an engagingly bohemian look. If she were still young, Carmen thought, she’d have found the girl attractive enough to be considered a rival and the man sexy enough to be considered a quarry. But these were the foolish illusions of memory, a game she played with herself every time she met new people, whether young or old, but would never follow through on. At her age, she had no desire to play the game, because life had taught her how it was going to end in most cases. All things considered, it boiled down to numbers, yet again.
‘Mrs Carmen Montesa?’
‘Yes.’
The young woman held up her shield. ‘My name’s Vivien Light. I’m a detective with the 13th Precinct in Manhattan.’ She gave her time to check her photograph, then indicated the man beside her. ‘This is Russell Wade, my partner.’
Carmen felt a pang of anxiety. Her heart started beating faster, as always happened to her when she felt emotional. ‘What’s the matter? Is it Allison? Has something happened to my daughter?’
‘No, don’t worry. I just need to have a word with you.’
The relief was like balm to the soul. She was too excitable, she knew. She couldn’t help it – it was her nature. At work she was admirably cool and efficient, but when she went back to being a woman and mother she became vulnerable again.
‘All right,’ she said, relaxed now.
The young woman smiled and pointed inside the house. ‘I’m afraid this is going to take a while. Can we come in?’
Carmen stood aside, an apologetic expression on her face. ‘I’m sorry. I was so relieved, I forgot my manners. Of course you can come in.’
She held the door open. As the man passed her, it struck Carmen that he smelled nice. The woman, on the other hand, smelled of vanilla and leather. As she closed the door, she wondered what they would have thought of her if they could have heard what had passed through her mind.
She went past them and led them into the living room. She heard the young woman’s voice behind her.
‘I hope we’re not bothering you.’
Carmen was surprised that a police officer would apologize. Usually they were quite rude. Especially when they were gringos like these two and you were Hispanic. That was when she knew they hadn’t come to her house bearing good news.
They were all in the living room now. Carmen turned to look at the young woman so that she could see the words she was about to say weren’t simply said out of politeness.