I nodded quickly, aware that this was the first time she had acknowledged that I would be staying for a time. At the hut, Tony had made suggestions as to where I would stay, what I could do. My mother had simply agreed.
‘I didn’t know that it would be this hot,’ I said.
‘Sometimes it’s not,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it’s hotter.’ She flashed me a quick smile, so quick that when it was gone I could scarcely believe I had seen it at all. ‘When the rains come, it gets stickier, but stays just as hot.’ She lifted off her hat and ran a hand back through her hair without hesitating or breaking stride.
I had seen pictures of the ruins at Chichén Itzá, Copán, and Palenque: great crumbling heaps of blocky stones, nearly hidden beneath tropical bromeliads and drooping vines; massive pyramids and sculpted facades; tremendous stone heads that glowered from the lush vegetation. I had expected gloom and mystery, the promise of secrets. Here, the sun was too bright for secrets. I could see no pyramids.
At the end of the path we followed, a small building constructed of sand-colored stone stood atop a low platform. The building was a box with a flat roof. On top of the box was another smaller box. On top of that, a third box. Like a stack of three building blocks: big, medium, and small. Except for the roof, the building looked like a child’s drawing of a house: a neat flat wall with a dark rectangle for the door, two square windows.
‘…Temple of the Seven Dolls,’ my mother was saying. ‘Only building that’s been reconstructed. We’re working on some of the outlying temples over that way.’ Another vague wave of her hand toward the setting sun.
I followed her up the steps of the Temple of the Seven Dolls. Two pigeons flew away as we approached the top. ‘You’ll see some bees,’ my mother said. ‘They have a hive in one of the beams.’
We reached the top. My mother sat down on the top step on one side of the open door where the building shaded her from the sun. ‘Take a rest,’ she suggested. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if this were some kind of test. Maybe I should want to explore the building before I rested. Maybe I should ask questions, not just sit.
I sat on the other side of the doorway and looked out in the direction of camp.
My mother lifted a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, tapped one out, and offered me the pack. I shook my head and she set it on the steps beside her.
‘Bad habit, I know,’ she said, lighting the cigarette and leaning back against the side of the door. ‘Tony’s been trying to get me to quit for the last five years.’ She shrugged. ‘At my age, it doesn’t seem worth it.’
3
Elizabeth
On the steps of the Temple of the Seven Dolls, an elderly diviner was casting the mixes, the sacred red beans that told the future. His customer was a merchant, a sharp-faced man whose arms and face were tattooed with patterns of swirling lines. A woven bag filled with cacao beans lay on the steps beside him. The old diviner pointed at the red beans that lay on the cloth before him and spoke softly. I could not make out the words.
I took a long drag on my cigarette and wondered what I could say to this young woman who had dropped into my life so unexpectedly. What did she want of me?
She sat with her back to the open doorway; her knees were bent and her arms were wrapped around them. She was prettier than any child of mine had a right to be: her red hair, fair skin, and slim build marked her as Robert’s daughter. She wore jeans and an open-necked white shirt. Her eyes were hidden by dark glasses and her hair was tied back in a single braid. ‘Is it what you expected?’ I asked her, waving the cigarette at the camp, the jungle, the overgrown mounds, the diviner and his customer.
‘I didn’t really know what to expect,’ she said cautiously.
Robert’s daughter: he had probably trained her to be careful, to admit to little. That had been his style: he was careful; he always had to be the one in the know. He had kept himself in check, always carefully controlled.
‘Do you want to tell me about how Robert died?’ I asked. I tried to speak gently, but the words sounded harsh. I am not good at these things; I deal with dead people better than I do with live ones.
Diane was looking out toward the camp, her chin up, her jaw set. ‘He died of a heart attack… his third one. He was playing tennis at the club.’
It seemed an appropriate way for Robert to die. I hadn’t seen him for at least five years, but I could imagine him at fifty: out on the court in his tennis whites, smiling his pleasant professional smile, his hair touched with gray at the temples, but nowhere else. I wondered who he had been playing: a colleague from the hospital, a pretty young woman. It didn’t matter. I could not manage much sorrow over his death. During divorce proceedings, Robert and I had come to treat each other with a hard-edged polished courtesy. Over the past twenty-five years, that glossy politeness had marked all our infrequent contacts, until at last it seemed like the natural relationship between us. He was a stranger, a vague acquaintance I had once known better. I did not hate him, did not even dislike him particularly, though I did find him dull and opinionated. I could remember the distant times when arguments with him had made me furious, but the fire had burned to ashes and the ashes had blown away on the evening wind. I was indifferent toward him.
‘The funeral was two weeks ago,’ she said. ‘Aunt Alicia set it up. I guess she didn’t let you know.’
I remembered Alicia, Robert’s older sister, a widow with a smooth, uncrackable personality. I tapped the ash off the end of my cigarette and nodded. ‘Alicia and I were never exactly friends.’
‘I know it must be really strange, my turning up out of the blue like this. It’s just that Dad never wanted me to talk to you. He never wanted me to know anything about you.’ She spoke quickly, as if she had to say this quickly or not at all. Her voice had an edge of urgency. ‘I’ve read all your books.’ When she said the last few words, her voice softened and took on a pleading note. She wanted my approval; she wanted me to like her.
I could not look at her. If Diane were crying, I did not want to know. Not now. The jungle was a restful stretch of dirty green. On the steps, the merchant leaned toward the diviner, questioning him closely on a particular point. ‘So what do you think you’ll find here?’ I asked her. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was hesitant. ‘I guess I just want to dig up the past and figure out what’s under all the rubble. That’s all.’
The diviner waved his hand to the east, the direction governed by Ah Puch, the god of death. Beneath the tattoos, the merchant’s face looked mournful.
‘You may just find broken pots,’ I said to Diane. ‘Nothing interesting at all.’
‘I’ll take my chances on that.’
I glanced at her, but I could not read her expression. Her sunglasses hid her eyes. Her back was straight; her arms were still wrapped around her knees, her right hand gripping her left wrist, perhaps just a little too tightly. But she spoke calmly enough. ‘Right now, all I know is what I remember, and that’s just bits and pieces.’
The sun was low, and the Temple of the Seven Dolls cast a shadow that stretched away from the camp. The lines of tumbled stones that marked the position of ancient walls stood out in sharp relief. I felt comfortable in the ruins, in the company of dead people and broken buildings. The light of the setting sun shone on my face, warm and soothing. I belonged here among the fallen temples and long-abandoned homes. I watched the merchant pay the diviner in cacao beans, hoist his bag to his back, and trudge down the steps. The diviner faded as the merchant strode into the distance.