“Hello,” she said shyly. “I’m glad to meet you.” Her English was very good. She motioned with her head toward the hallway, where Anne’s bedroom was. “Did she sleep? She has been sleeping a lot in the afternoon these days.”
“We woke her up when we came in. She was embarrassed about not being up.”
Felice shook her head and the glossy tail shifted like prairie grass. “She says naps are for babies. But they help, you know? She is refreshed.”
Rikki said to me, “The thing about her disease is that you need a lot of rest. You can’t push yourself too hard or you get worse faster. And she was so active—she’d want to scramble all over the pyramids, even after she couldn’t hold her balance. But the heat in the jungle wore her out.”
“And she was sick already when you spent the night on Temple IV?”
“That’s what I mean. Dad could have killed us. Her right leg was all goofed up by then, and she was always losing her grip on things, dropping coffee cups and forks. And there she was, going up that crazy ladder. Luckily, I was too young to realize how nuts we were. I just thought it was the coolest thing any kid ever did with his mom, especially since they never caught us.”
“She had her ladies this morning,” said Felice. “There are twelve of them in that group now, and five in the men’s, but she does the men’s at night because of their jobs.”
Rikki said, “So she hasn’t cut back any yet.”
“Not yet,” said Felice cheerfully. “Not Señora Anne.”
Meanwhile, the two of them were laying out queso and chilies and fresh tortillas, and Felice took a big bowl covered with plastic wrap out of the refrigerator and poured it into a pan on the stove. “Mole,” said Rikki. “How’d you know I was dying for mole?”
“You are always dying for mole, muchacho.”
I watched them working together at the chopping block, the tall young Dutchman and the Mexican girl with her sad eyes and sweet smile. They bantered like siblings. The affection clearly went both ways, but without any apparent sparks. That’s nice, I thought, that brotherly, sisterly stuff—and of course thought immediately of Stefan.
“Felice,” I said. “Señora Anne—she used to teach her classes at the Catholic church?”
“Yes. But it is very hard for her to go out now. So her students on their own say no, they will come here instead, she can teach them in her house.”
“But you know the priest at the church?”
“Oh, yes, si. Padre Miguel. He is not the real priest, but he is here for a while so that Padre Gilberto can travel to la Ciudad.”
“If I want to go to Mass, what time would that be?”
“You are Catholic,” said Felice happily.
“Well, not really. Well, I am but I haven’t been for a while. But I might want to go while we’re here. You know. Christmas and everything.” Rikki was giving me an odd look, and Felice was trying her best to comprehend. Nominal Catholics, I took it, were rare in these parts; you either were or you weren’t. “Anyway, Fr. Miguel, right?”
She nodded.
“Okay. Maybe tomorrow, if we’re not out at the ruins.” I glanced at Rikki.
“Not tomorrow. We’ve got the day off, Dad said.”
“Early Mass is at seven in the morning,” said Felice, “and another one at nine.”
Jan came down the hall and into the kitchen. He looked old. “Felice,” he said, “good to see you. How have you been?”
“She looks fine, doesn’t she, Señor? Good spirits.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “She seems in very good spirits. Has she been sleeping more? It seems to me she has been sleeping more, and not up so much.”
“Not so much,” said Felice. “But her spirits are good.”
“You are doing a fine job, Felice. I am grateful to you.” He had not yet looked in my direction. I felt like the only person in the room without a reason for being there. Here they were, all united in their common cause, Señora Anne, and I couldn’t even look her in the face. This was a test and I wasn’t passing.
“Is there anything she needs right now?” I said. “Something to drink, maybe? Water? I’ll just trot it down the hall, if you want.”
All three of them turned and stared at me.
“No problem,” I said. “You all need to catch up with each other. So I’ll just . . . go check up on her or something.”
“She’s sleeping now,” said Jan.
“Oh.”
“But after she wakes up,” he said very slowly, “it might be a good idea for you to chat with her for a few minutes.”
“Okay,” I said. “After she wakes up. No problem.”
“She doesn’t see many American women. She was looking forward to this.”
“Well, then, that’s what we’ll do. A little chat.”
“Eva,” he said, right in front of everybody. “Don’t patronize my wife.”
A cold knife slipped between my ribs. It was the first time I could see how angry he was, much angrier than Rikki had been after I went plunging out of the room. Rikki was transparent. Jan could hold it in, but it was in his voice. And I knew I would not be forgiven soon.
“All right,” I said, putting my chin up, which was what I always did when I was caught out. “I wouldn’t do that, though. I might not be great in the sickroom, but at least I don’t put on some act. If you knew me, you’d know I wouldn’t do that.” And then I turned and went out the front door and took a long walk through streets that were filled with the clamor of barnyard animals. All I could think of was that Stefan would have handled everything differently. He wouldn’t have been thinking of himself, for starters, and he wouldn’t have let the hospital atmosphere get to him. He would have walked right by the wheelchair like he never even noticed it and sat down beside her and taken her bony hand in his. And then he would have listened to her for as long as she wanted to talk.
But it was no good comparing us. It never had been. I was no more like my brother than Bruno was like Jesus Christ.
I didn’t sleep much that night even though I was plenty tired. It was raining hard, for one thing, and the wind was blowing in gusts around the stucco house. I was on the sofa in my sleeping sheet with an extra blanket on top, feeling just about as blue as I ever had. It wasn’t loneliness, exactly, though if you’d asked me right then, I would have said that the one thing I could take to the bank was that I was all by myself in this world, even before Stefan disappeared. Whatever it was, it had started in Flores, and Palenque was making it worse.
I must have finally dropped off about 3:30 and was awakened after an hour or so by the clacking of the wheelchair rolling down the hall. Jan, helping his wife to the bathroom. They said a few words I couldn’t hear, the light went on briefly, the door closed, and he waited in there with her until she was done. What a life, I thought. Did they actually sleep in that sickbed together? Did he ever feel like touching her, except in the way a caregiver would? And yet he’d bitten off my head to defend her honor.
I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep. I waited until he had rolled her back down the hall, and then I got up and turned on the living room light. My pack was propped against the wall, and I sat down on the floor in front of it in my black T-shirt and underwear and white socks and dug around until I found the packet of Stefan’s letters. Then I began to read from where I’d left off in Tikal. Letter #3 was dated February 16, 1992.
Dear