Plus, this thing with Ernesto, whatever it was, would distract me from my growing concern over my mother and brother. A tryst while I was here would be sublime.
I laid a towel over the lounge chair and sat down. He took the chair beside me and we made chitchat. He told me about his mother, a green-eyed blonde from Los Angeles who lost the part to Bo Derek in that awful movie Bolero, but got a walk-on part and met his father, also an aspiring actor. I was only half listening as I felt a gnawing animal attraction.
I asked him how he came to be a pool cleaner in Palm Springs. It was time to leave LA, he said, and shook his head. He didn’t offer more and I didn’t ask. I didn’t care.
I must have been nervous because I downed that wine like a ginger shot. I jumped up, padded inside, and grabbed the bottle.
When I sat back down, I said, “I’m curious. Have you seen my brother doing anything strange?”
“Strange?”
“Things are missing from the house.”
He pondered this and said, “One day as I was arriving, he was putting a black table into his car. He asked me for help.”
“Was it carved?”
“With dragons,” he said.
The Chinese table.
“Another time he carried out a cardboard box with frames.”
That Slim Aarons print.
Ernesto’s cell phone pinged with an incoming text. He looked at his phone and said, “Filter emergency.”
Huh? Who has filter emergencies in the late afternoon?
I got up with him. He went to shake my hand, or maybe kiss it, when I pulled him into a hug.
“How old are you?” I said, looking for a reason to stay away.
“What’s age?” he responded, and gave me his card: a little graphic of a diving board with his contact info.
“Call me if you want to talk,” he said, and with that, he pulled his trolley with bottles and hoses and disappeared through the side gate.
I went inside and changed. I vacuumed and cleaned the house. An hour later Ben showed up. My handsome little brother was losing his hair and had teeth in need of white strips. We side-hugged. I followed him outside. The sun had moved behind San Jacinto Peak, turning the sky a sulky violet.
He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and offered me one. I shook my head. I’d stopped smoking and didn’t want to start up again. My brother’s hands trembled slightly as he lit one for himself.
“I’m worried about Mom,” I said. “She called the other night about a noise. She’s getting worse.”
“She has her good days and her bad days,” he said, puffing away. The smoke hung in the windless air, our own personal smog alert. I hated wind but right now I longed for it.
I waved away the smoke. “She says things are missing.”
“She’s imagining. Sign of early-stage dementia. What kinds of things?”
“Art. Jewelry. The dragon table — where is it?”
“What table? I didn’t take a table. What am I going to do with a table?”
“It was worth a lot of money.”
“Lots of people go in and out of the house,” he said. “There’s no telling. Old people are hungry for friends.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Is it?” Ben set down the cigarette and pulled off his T-shirt.
“You’re growing a belly there,” I said.
He gave me the stink-eye.
Three crows perched on the branch of a huge ficus tree, complaining about something or other. He stamped out his cigarette, lit another, and offered me the pack.
“Stop doing that,” I said. “It took me forever to quit.”
He shrugged. “Whatever.”
“And the house is filthy. I found an empty milk carton beside her bed.”
“She was probably thirsty.”
I didn’t laugh. “You were supposed to look after her. Make sure she has food and a clean house.”
“I am!”
“You’re not doing a good job of it.”
“Why don’t you move back, then?” he said. “You can take care of all this crap.”
The underwater lights of the pool came on. Ben went into the house, returned a few minutes later in his trunks, and dove in.
I stood to stretch. My mother was on the other side of the slider, gazing out. I waved but she made no gesture to show she saw me and evaporated back into the darkened house.
“What’s up with all the darkness, Mom?” I said, stepping inside, sliding the glass door shut behind me.
“The bulbs burned out,” she said, and wandered back over to the slider. “Your brother thinks he’s a fish. Always swimming.”
When we were kids, my brother and I would swim as close to the bottom as we could, lie on our backs, and open our eyes. Above, the water became a stained-glass window to the world. Once, as we surfaced, I pushed Ben back under and held him there, wishing, in a way, that he’d drown so I’d get back the attention he took from me when he was born. I still had nightmares about it, only in my dreams he sinks to the bottom and my father dives in to save him. I always wake up before they surface.
By the light of my phone, I searched the drawers for bulbs. I replaced what I could and switched them on. Somehow, when all lit up, the house looked even dingier. I heated up a mac-and-cheese entrée in the microwave, made a salad, and as I set plates on the table, Ben hefted himself out of the pool, dried off, and came in.
“Are you hungry?” asked our mother, who was already at the table.
“Have an appointment.” He kissed her on the check, gave a little wave to me, and said, “Good to see you,” then scampered down the hallway and out the front door.
“Your brother always has meetings.”
“At night?”
“He’s a very busy man.”
She got up. I heard the bathroom door close. When she was back, she said, “I can’t find my ruby ring. It was in the bathroom drawer.”
“What was it doing in the bathroom?”
“That’s where I keep it.”
I went to look, riffled through her vanity drawers, and found it, wrapped in a tissue.
“Here,” I said, placing it in front of her plate.
She picked it up and studied it. “Where was it?”
“In the bathroom,” I said. Hard to know what she imagined and what was real.
I drained the bottle into my mug, but I needed more than wine. I needed Ernesto.
“C’mon, Mom, you have to eat.”
She took a bite. “He was such a sweet boy,” she said. “I used to dress him in the cutest outfits.” A bemused expression skittered across her face. “So smart.”
What I remembered was a smart-ass kid who always tattled on me, who pulled scary pranks, and who once almost got me killed when we were on our bikes at a busy intersection.
I tonged salad onto our plates.
“He must be gambling,” she said. “What else would he do with the money I withdraw from the bank?”
“The bank?”
“Sometimes we go to the bank so I can take out money. Last week it was two thousand. What does he do with it?”
“Dollars?”
“He says we need things. Repairs.” She gestured. “House is old.”
There goes my inheritance.
“I meant to ask: where’s your car?” I said.
She shrugged. “Ask your brother.”
“Oh my God. He doesn’t tell me anything useful and neither do you.”
She pushed back her chair, wandered over to the windows, and gazed out at the pool flashing blue in the darkness. “We used to have such parties. Frank would come by. He had a house a few streets over. This was before he married Barbara. Do you remember him? You were just a little girl. He’d come over and we’d sit by the pool and drink Jack Daniel’s. That was his drink, you know. He was a very nice man, always nice to you. I have all his albums. He gave them to me.”