All About Jane's Ranch

CHAPTER SIX

Lili paced the living room floor, peering out of the front windows at the park and the strip of road that ran in front of the house. She’d been expecting Hellmann’s secretary for over an hour now, and she stood at the window looking for someone—she didn’t know who. The chic woman with the cell phone? The man with the satchel? No, neither of them. What could be holding things up? she wondered, and of course, the answer was any number of things—an urgent call, traffic. She ran through last evening’s conversation with Hellmann. “No need to come out here,” he’d said when she’d told him she was ready to sign. “I’ll send my secretary around at ten in the morning.” He had said in the morning she reassured herself. Hellmann hadn’t changed his mind; she shouldn’t change hers. This was not a bad omen.

After she had phoned Hellmann to tell him of her decision, she had tried to sleep, but each time she closed her eyes the image of Vivienne lying dead on the gurney appeared. She spent the night wide-eyed, it seemed, neither awake nor dreaming, just tossing the covers off, pulling them on. Now woozy from fatigue and from everything else, really, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She had been so focused on finding Vivienne, and now that was over. Would she feel less frozen once she had signed the papers? Would she be able to come up with some plan? She hoped so. Otherwise, she shouldn’t do it. She should change her mind, but no sooner did she think that than she knew she would not go back.

She got up walked to the door, stepped out into the landing, but no one was there. What if Hellmann had changed his mind? But he couldn’t, right? Hadn’t he said it was the law? She walked down the stairs and peered toward the park from the open doors of the house. Lili had been a fool to hesitate. She climbed the stairs again, sat on the sofa, each minute seeming like an hour.

Finallly, she heard the sound of voices in the courtyard, footsteps on the marble stairway. Lili jumped up, opened the door. Fatima stood there scowling, Hellmann’s secretary at her side.

“Hey there,” he said, in too loud English. “I’m Guillermo Garcia. Bill in America, right?”

Fatima raised an eyebrow Lili’s direction.

“Esta bien, Fatima,” Lili told the scowling maid.

Lili watched her walk down the stairs, bearing the cross of her suspicions. After all this was done, Lili would have to tell Fatima and the others. She should have done it yesterday, but when, how? She had been is such a daze. Lili was grateful Hellmann’s secretary hadn’t said anything before she’d had the chance. “Please, come in,” she told him.

He settled himself on the sofa in Vivienne’s living room, chatting all the while. He’d gone to Duke Law School, he said. “Go Blue Devils,” he punched the air enthusiastically before opening his leather writing case and pulling out a legal-sized document. He set the page on the glass coffee table. “This is where you need to sign.” He pointed to a highlighted line, her name typed underneath it.

“This is it?” Lili asked, remembering sitting in the title company office for over an hour when she bought her house, signing page after page.

“Yep, that’s it. This is a simple transfer between,” he hesitated a minute. “Friends.”

Lili read the flowery Spanish. Yo, Licenciado Carlos Hellmann, etc.,etc., it began. Lili signed and dated. “Anything else?” she asked, hoping he would say no, leave her alone.

“The funeral arrangements,” Bill said.

It turned out they presented certain problemitas, more than even Senor Hellmann could solve. “First of all, there is the question of documentation,” Bill told Lili. “The rabbis want proof that her mother—your mother—was really Jewish. Without papers she can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Would Vivienne have really cared, Lili wondered. Wouldn’t she rather have been lifted on a bier to the top of a pyramid?

“And then of course,” Bill continued. “There are the new laws governing how long the body can reside in the grave.” Seven years only, he told Lili. After that, they could pay for an extension for another seven years. “We have so many people in Mexico City. Unfortunately, they all die, and there is no space to bury them. There are some large buildings for the,” he paused, “cenizas?”

“Ashes.” Lili told him.

“Ashes, yes, but,” he paused again.

“Cremation is against Jewish Law.”

“As we understand.” He straightened the papers Lili had signed and tucked them away in his writing case. “As it turns out, the burial is the only problem. A rabbi can officiate a service and burial in a privately owned place without proof of your mother’s religious status, so Senor Hellmann has graciously offered to bury Vivienne on his estate, where no gravediggers will disturb her, and the government cannot force you to cremate her fourteen years from now.”

“He can do this?” Lili asked.

“Senor Hellmann has made all the necessary arrangements—the rabbi, the obituary, everything, todito de todo,” Bill told Lili. “He doesn’t want you to worry about anything.”

Her head spinning, Lili realized she hadn’t even thought of the funeral since Alejandro had given her the news of Vivienne’s death. Relief and gratitude flooded her now. Hellmann would see to it all—she could just show up.

“Thank you,” she said.

“It will be a closed ceremony, you understand. A man in Senor Hellmann’s position cannot open his house to the public.”

“Of, course,” Lili said.

She stood at the front door and waved to Hellmann’s secretary. He waved back, got in his car, drove around the park and up Calle Niza to the periferico. So it was done, she thought. She touched the thick wall, relishing the feeling of stucco, cold against her palm. It was solid, not a dream at all.

She stepped over the threshold into the dark entry and heard Fatima’s radio from her apartment. Lili could smell the steam from the iron, the clean smell of starch. “Fatima?” she asked gently, peering around the corner, knowing what she had to say, hesitating a moment. Was this the right time she wondered, but what time would be good? When would the blow be easier to bear? “Se puede,” she asked. Can I come in?

“Pasa, pasa. Dejame bajar la radio,” Fatima said, turning down the volume until Lili could hear the old woman in her wheelchair, humming tunelessly

Lili pulled a chair from the table and sat down. “Fatima,” she said. “Please sit. I have to tell you something.”

Lili stayed with Fatima a long time while the woman wept. Lili told her that things in the house would go on as before, that she and her mother wouldn’t be on the street. Lili would take care of them now. Eventually Fatima’s sobbing slowed, and she dabbed her eyes with the tablecloth.

“I have to tell the others,” Lili said.

“No one but the gringa is upstairs.”

“Well, then.” Lili rose to leave, her mind already on what she would have to tell Hanes, the phone call she would have to make to Gabi at the gallery, to Joel in the States, but Fatima held onto her arm.

“No te preocupes,” Fatima said, leaning close to Lili. “God takes care of the dead.”

“I know,” Lili said, not believing it, but letting the maid have what comfort she could.

Lili climbed the stairs, knocked on Hanes’s door.

“Voy,” Hanes called from inside the apartment.

Lili looked down over the railing and saw Fatima standing there, her arms crossed.

“Si,” Fatima said, her voice echoing, just as Hanes opened the door. “God takes care of the dead. Son los que viven que siguen sufriendo.” It’s the living who go on suffering.

“And the living dead?” Hanes asked. “What about them?” she joked, laughing until she saw Lili’s face. “What’s wrong? What happened?” she asked.

“Can I come in?” Lili asked, and Hanes stepped aside. Lili looked down into the courtyard once more before she entered, but Fatima was gone.

The next day, in the early morning hub-bub of the airport, Lili ran through these events again as she waited for Joel’s flight to arrive. He had taken the red-eye from San Francisco, due in at eight a.m..

Leaning her shoulder against the glass door of one the airport’s closed boutiques, she sipped the flat-tasting coffee she’d bought from a cart and waited for Joel to push through the doors. She had told him it wasn’t necessary for him to come—she knew he was still grading mid-terms—so why was he insistent on being with her? The worst part was over. Had he been there for that? She wondered if he might suspect something, that she was slipping away, that there was someone else. Well, it was more than that.

Or was it? Lili remembered how disoriented she’d felt when Alejandro had appeared at the door last night, true to his word, to check on her. “How are you? he’d asked, lifting her hand, kissing it. “Estas bien?”

Lili had sent him away with some lame excuse. “Tired,” she’d said. “Long day.”

Lili swallowed some more coffee, trying to drown the feelings Alejandro stirred up, and stared at the aduana sign. She’d have to tell Joel something, but what exactly? She would rather have left Hellmann altogether out of the information she had to give Joel, but that wouldn’t be possible with the burial in his backyard. As if Vivienne were a pet, Lili couldn’t help thinking.

The swinging doors from the aduana exit thwapped back and forth, but no Joel. The relief she felt alarmed her. It meant something she didn’t want to face, like a breast lump, a strange cough. The doors thwapped again, and when she didn’t see his face in the crowd, her ribcage unclenched and she could breathe.

What part of the story would she tell? Joel knew all the details she’d wanted to give him—Vivenne had been hit by a car in another town. Such an ordinary tragedy, an easy explanation. But now, there was to be a service at Hellmann’s. Lili would have to keep up the lie. She would say Hellmann was a wealthy art patron who’d extended this gesture of friendship. She imagined Joel’s sneer, his certainty of a clandestine affair. Still, it would get him off the trail for now. The doors thwaped again. Looking up, Lili spotted a silver- haired, bespectacled man who had just pushed through the doors and was looking around. The faded corduroys, worn at the knee, the leather laptop case— Joel. She took a deep breath, waved.

“Jesus,” Joel said, pecking Lili’s cheek, switching his laptop and carry-on to the other shoulder. She could feel his unshaved face, smell the cooped-up plane air on him.

“The flight was God-awful—a flying day-care center, screaming babies to the right and left. You look beat,” he said,

How did he expect her to look? “I am,” Lili said, leading the way to the taxi line, queing up to pay for a ratty cab. After they’d arranged themselves in the back of the cab and rumbled off, she found herself without any words.

Joel filled the vacuum between them, and Lili listened to him prattle on. Did she realize Mexicans brought washing machines home on planes? Washing machines?

Lili wondered why he didn’t ask her about Vivienne, why he couldn’t just hold her hand, stroke her hair, say he was sorry. And then she realized she didn’t want him to, that she, as well as he, was used to this kind of banter. In the past, she would have said it was their way of being affectionate. Now given all that had happened and all she was hiding, the word their seemed out of place. For a moment, she felt grateful to him for chattering on like nothing had changed, and then she wondered how he could be so blind.

“Imagine what the trade deficit would be without Mexicans,” he said, embarking on an elaborate description of how Mexicana Airline officials shrinkwrapped large appliances right at the ticket counter. He changed the subject to his Wednesday seminar, wanting to know what in the hell they taught in high school. “Commas might as well be obsolete.”

Lili knew Joel wasn’t stupid, and she began to sense he was willing himself to be blind. If he didn’t admit a rift or a change, then it didn’t exist or would blow over. How many times had they both done this in the past, simply turned the other way until the problems between them got submerged in the clutter of daily life?

“So,” he asked after he finished his rant. “What’s the plan?”

Lili took a deep breath. “A friend,” she said, “is holding the funeral at his house.” She made a joke about the shortage of burial space, about the old folks who died before the new laws being grandfathered in, so to speak, how their relatives were not to be trusted. “I gather they’ll dig you up and sell the space again. The plots are worth a fortune.” Lili could see Joel relaxing into her tale—his blindness intact. “They’ve already dumped Grandma in the garbage, so imagine how much time Vivienne would be resting in peace,” Lili babbled on.

“This is legal?” Joel asked. “Burying somebody in the garden like a dahlia?”

“Legal is relative down here, Joel.

“The United States has to stop being a dumping ground for Mexico’s social problems,” he began and was off and running on one of his old sawhorses. Finally, he came to a halt, sniffed his shirtsleeves. “I could use a goddamn shower, ” he said.

Lili sat in the dining room listening to the water run in the bath, staring at her shoes, the ones she’d asked Joel to bring along with her black St. John’s suit. The shoes were Prada, patent leather, pointed toes. Lili remembered her frequent trips to Stanford shopping center, picking up items without any thought of price. All that was going to change. Not that she was poor, but she couldn’t afford to be careless anymore, not here.

She heard Joel yell something from the bathroom.”What?” she called back.

“I said is this clean?” Joel asked again.

Lili got up, went to the bathroom. Joel was standing in the tub, holding a towel.

“Of course, it’s clean.” Lili said, but she was not thinking of the towel. She was looking at Joel, pale as a fish belly, and remembering Alejandro, his long athletic legs, the thumbprint of his belly-button on his flat, brown stomach, the swatch of black hair falling over his deep set eyes. It really wasn’t fair of her, was it? She had aged as well, she supposed.

“It smells weird,” Joel continued, wrinkling his nose.

“It’s the detergent,” Lili sighed, leaving the room.

“That crap the illegals are bringing in? You know they banned it in Washington state. It was killing the fish,” Joel yelled after her.

Lili walked down the hall, heading for the sunlight in the living room when she heard familiar footsteps outside her door. Alejandro, she panicked, as if she’d conjured him. God no, not now, she pleaded, but there was the unavoidable knock just as Joel came out of the bathroom, naked.

“Company?” He tossed the towel on the bathroom floor, went into the bedroom, shut the door.

Lili heard the knock again, opened the door. “Alejandro.”

“Do you need anything?” he asked. “Te ayudo con algo?” Can I help.

She felt almost weak at the sound of his voice, the softness of the intimate word for you, tu. “My…” Lili searched for a word. “A friend is here,” she blurted.

“I see,” Alejandro said. “But, if I can help.”

Lili stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her. “Alejandro,” she fumbled. “I wasn’t myself the other night. I …”

Alejandro interrupted her, “Senora,” he said, head high, his mouth a proud, bitter smile. “A true gentleman has no memory. Something my very conservative father told me, and I’ve found the advice useful. ” He bowed and walked along the balcony to his apartment.

Lili turned quickly and shut her door hard.

“Lili,” she heard Joel calling. “Who’s here?”

She wiped her tears on the back of her hands. “Just a neighbor,” she replied, heading toward the bedroom door. “Offering condolences. He’s gone.”

They were well into San Angel before Joel reached over and patted her shoulder. “I’m sorry about Vivienne.” He said it so blandly, so matter-of-factly— as if he were commiserating about missing the bus, or not having enough gin for a martini, some trivial thing. Lili wondered why he couldn’t fake some feeling for Vivienne, at least for her sake.

“It’s probably a terrible thing to say,” Joel’s voice softened. “But at least you’ll be free of all of her problems once and for all. It’s been hard on you.”

“I know,” Lili said, wondering if Joel ever considered he might be rubbing salt in a wound or even knew how far he was from being right. Still, she was glad for the chance to look out the window in silence. Joel certainly didn’t have much else to say about the loss of Vivienne. She knew he wouldn’t probe.

The cab driver turned down the cobblestone street leading to Hellmann’s estate. With all the jostling, Lili fell onto Joel’s shoulder. They had been sitting side by side the whole trip like opposing sides of magnets, repelled. Some external force had to push them together. Don’t think about it, not now, Lili told herself. She couldn’t open up her life with Joel to scrutiny, not today, but her discontent was gnawing inside her, determined to get out. She tried to shake off the memory of her awkward encounter with Alejandro, tried to stop herself from wishing she had run after him as he walked away.

The cab stopped at the wall outside Hellmann’s. “Lo hago,” Lili said to the cab driver. “I’ll push the buzzer.” She immediately regretted the offer. The gesture seemed too familiar. Why had she given herself away like that to Joel? A voice from the intercom said a car would fetch them.

“The cab doesn’t get into see the wizard,” Lili joked when she got back into the cab. “They’re sending someone down.”

A bodyguard opened the metal door in the wall and motioned Lili and Joel inside. Lili reached into her bag and handed the driver some pesos as Joel had stepped through the gate.

“Holy shit,” Joel said as the Mercedes swept up the drive past lawns and trees on the long, lovely ride to the mansion. “This does look like a cemetery. Who is this guy?”

Lili waved her hand, hoping it looked like a casual movement. “Vivienne,” she said, as if that were some kind of answer.

“Esperen aqui,” the maid said, leading Joel and Lili into the overheated salon where floor to ceiling windows framed the back lawn.

“Oh dear,” Lili said looking at Vivenne’s casket set under a tent on the lawn, white flowers draped over it in bundles. A rabbi stood motioning to a handful of servants, his tallis waving with his agitation. The servants lifted the roses and stephanotis, the ferns and the lilies as fast as they could. Hellmann stood back, his face impassive.

“What?” Joel stepped up behind her. “Uh oh. Faux pas,” he said

“He couldn’t have known Jews don’t do flowers at funerals.” Lili sighed.

Lili waited for his snide remark, like the tick of a clock.

“Gotta draw the line somewhere. Apres moi le goyim,” Joel said.

Lili felt herself smile. Maybe they could work it out. Wasn’t sense of humor supposed to be the thing that welded couples? She turned around in time to see Joel lift his sleeve, check his watch.

Lili turned back to her sister’s coffin, watched as the servants continued to remove the veil of flowers.

An hour later the funeral was over. Kaddish had been read, the rabbi had said a few words, and the four of them turned and walked across the green lawn, back into the overheated rooms.

“My cook,” Hellmann coughed,” has prepared a repast.” He led them into the large colonial dining room. The offending flowers had been arranged in copper urns on the sideboards, the table set with Limoges and Waterford.

Lili panicked at the thought of a long meal. What if Hellmann mentioned the house, the gallery? What if Joel pushed his food around on the plate, eating nothing, convinced it was unsanitary.

“Just tea, please,” the young rabbi said, saving the day.

Of course, Lili thought. He’s kosher. He can’t eat here.

“Tea would be great,” Joel agreed, pulling out a chair without being asked.

Hellmann seemed taken aback—by Joel’s lack of manners? Or was she the one who was surprised? Maybe she was getting accustomed to Mexican formality, having doors opened for her, men rise when she walked into a room.

“Please,” Hellmann pulled out the chair for her.

A flurry of servants appeared, carried off the crystal and china, leaving only the cups and small desert plates.

Hellmann lifted his linen napkin from the table and shook it, placed it on his lap. “Lili tells me you are an art historian, Professor Brockman.”

Thank god, Lili thought. We are going to stay on safe subjects, nothing personal.

“What do you think of Mexican art?” Hellmann continued.

“Not really my area, sir,” Joel answered.

“And your area is?” Hellmann continued, but was interrupted when the butler arrived with a cart laden with small teapots, cakes, fruit for the rabbi, a silver samovar of hot water. “I think the English tea ritual is so very soothing,” he said. “ Especially after such a trying morning. Thank you, Rabbi, for suggesting it. I’m having Earl Grey with lavender, and you?” He nodded to Lili.

“The same,” Lili said. She felt dizzy from anxiety, shock, grief, the realization that her relationship was dissolving, that she was sitting in a room with a Mexican potentate who had just given her a mansion and an income, about which her long-term-companion knew nothing. In the background, she heard teacups clinking, smelled the smoky brew poured into her own cup. “Thank you,” she said.

“Fifteenth century Flemish masters,” Joel announced.

“Ah,” Hellmann stared out the window. “About suffering they were never wrong, the old masters; How well they understood its human position.”

“Excuse me?” Joel frowned, confused.

“The young rabbi beamed toward Hellmann in recognition. “In Breughel’s Icarus for instance: how everything turns away, Quite leisurely from the disaster.”

Joel set down his cup. “Van Eyck is my specialty, not Breughel.”

“That’s not the point, Joel,” Lili snapped. “It’s a poem.”

“Auden’s Musee des Beaux Artes,” Joel snapped back. I‘ve been to the museum as an historian,” he addressed this comment to the men.

“Have you,” asked Hellmann. “More tea?”

Lili felt her face burn with anger at Joel’s boorishness. Had she never noticed this before? Hellmann smoothed things over, asking Joel about Belgium, offering his own observations of that small country.

Lili let herself drop out of the conversation, tried to go over the ways she could tell Joel about Hellmann, the house, the money she’d inherited from Vivienne. Should she tell him in the car on the way home, tonight at dinner, in bed? She flinched. Joel wouldn’t expect sex, would he? She could claim grief certainly, or she could bring up the Hellmann subject then.

She became aware of chairs moving, the men standing. She heard Joel telling them he had a plane to catch.

“You do?” Lili asked.

Hellmann offered his driver for the afternoon, probably relieved to be rid of them, Lili thought. “For as long as you like,” he said, walking them through the courtyard to the circular drive. The car was waiting for them when they reached the portico.

Lili settled herself in the back seat of the car, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “When does your flight leave?” she asked.

“Not until this evening, but I had to get out of there,” he said.

Lili could sense him sulking in the seat next to her. She had committed the ultimate betrayal—she had corrected him in public.

“Look, Lili. I’m beat.” He finally consented to speak to her. “I have a couple of hours before we need to head to the airport, so I’m going to stretch out for a while when we get back to that mausoleum of your sister’s. Why don’t you pack up your things, and we can get out of here together? You can get on the flight—I checked last night.”

The cars whizzed by outside the window. The driver turned on the raido— a classical station. Lili paused, searching for the words to tell Joel about her decision, but she was too tired, too frightened. She heard herself say, “I can’t just leave, Joel. There are things I have to take care of.”

“Have it your way.” Joel turned away, leaned against the window and shut his eyes.

Lili told Joel she needed some air, that she was too wired to lie down and within a few minutes she heard him snoring away in Vivienne’s bedroom. She went outside and walked aimlessly through the dappled light under the jacaranda trees. Her thoughts—jumbled and noisy—reverberated inside her head. Maybe she didn’t have to tell Joel. Maybe she could extend the lie a little longer. No, she realized, something had to be said, the sooner the better.

“Hello,” Hanes called from the sidewalk.

Lili looked up as he opened the gate and walked toward her.

“How did it go?” she asked, pulling out a cigarette.

Lili shrugged. “As these things go, I suppose.”

“Gabi is upset he wasn’t included.” Hanes fumbled for a match.

“Tell him we’ll do something—a memorial—later. Tell him it was Hellmann’s decision, not mine. Anyway, he didn’t miss much.”

“Yes, well…” Hanes hesitated. “I was thinking I should take Madame de Gaulle over there to the carwash and have her waxed. I’ve been told in Switzerland they give you tickets if your car is rusty. Anyway, I could use a car to pick up groceries.”

“Do whatever,” Lili said. “I have to go back up. A friend is here. I have to take him to the airport. ” Lili walked to the gate.

“Well, you’ll se a lot of rusted cars on the drive to the airport. Of course, Mexico isn’t Switzerland is it?” Hanes called to her.

“Hardly,” Lili called back.

At the airport restaurant table, Lili sat across from Joel, turning a spoon around on her paper placemat, pushing herself to say something. She was running out of time. She took a deep breath. “Joel, she said, and the words tumbled out of her mouth like pebbles—she had inherited the house, had to settle that. It would take time, she rushed on, as the expression on Joel’s face changed from puzzlement to stunned disbelief. She realized she couldn’t tell him about the gallery, the trust fund, how it was all from Hellmann, not here, not now. “I just want to walk in my sister’s footsteps for a while,” she finally said, trying to come up with some explanation that would mollify him.
“You’re kidding.” Joel stopped eating the Cheerios he’d ordered. He never ordered real food down here. He was certain anything made in Mexico would poison him. He pointed his spoon at her. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

Lili tried to wipe a soggy bit of cereal off the side of his mouth, but he pushed her hand away. “I just owe her this.”

“Excuse me? You don’t owe that nutcase anything.”

Lili noticed the pink color of Pepto-Bismal tablets still on the corners of his mouth. She tried to excuse Joel’s harshness. She told herself mid November was a bad time for him—all those students flipping out about midterm grades—but the membrane of disbelief that had cocooned her in a dull haze ever since she’d found out about Vivienne began to disintegrate with Joel’s voice. She saw all the sharp edges of her life that she had to climb over, a fence made of broken bottle shards.

Joel attacked his cereal, the spoon more a spear than an eating utensil. “Okay. You’re not in your right mind. Tell me it’s the shock. Tell me you are not as batty as your nutcase sister. ”

“I just want to understand how she ended this way. I need to learn from this.” Lili had told him the truth, but not whole truth, not by a long shot. “I just need some time to think, Joel.” She squared her shoulders.

“Fine, so why don’t you spend some time thinking about me?” He stood and grabbed his bag, not waiting for an answer.

Lili waved at the waitress and threw some pesos on the table. She caught up with Joel at the security line.

Joel handed his bag to the guard.” Just don’t call me to get you out of this meshugash.”

She watched the security guard zip up Joel’s carry-on and hand it to him, then Joel pointed his finger at her. “You’re going to end up just like her you know. Dead. In some ditch.” He turned his back and walked through the security portal. For a while, she was able distinguish him from others in the crowd, but soon he merged into the rest, just one more figure.

Lili sank into one of the plastic chairs in the main airport lobby, her legs weak, her knees shaking. Joel’s attack kept ringing in her ears, and she lost track of time, was only vaguely aware of the airport announcements, the arriving and departing flights. “Que pendejo,” she muttered, feeling horrified and relieved to have finally said it. What an asshole. Then, she jumped up, remembering where she was and that Hellmann’s driver had been waiting for her.

Lili sped down the Reforma in Hellmann’s Mercedes, past the Diana Fountain, the gold Angel of Independence—no water main disaster, no blackout. The November twilight had turned the buildings rose-gold and deepened the green of the leaves. When the driver turned around Rio de Janeiro Park, Lili saw city workers sweeping the pavement, clipping shrubs, emptying the trash bins. Behind the wrought iron gate, she glimpsed Vivenne’s vintage automobile, its faded, rusted verdigris now waxed, and next to it— Alejandro’s car. Lili felt lifted by a sudden wave of joy so inappropriate, so wrong. Where had it come from? The joyful lightness shocked her as much as anything else that had happened. She had the strange feeling she was being lifted up by Vivienne, carried by her spirit. And certainly all the decisions she had made recently had a Vivienne-like quality; they were so unlike her dutiful nature. The driver opened the car door for her and held out his hand. She watched him ring the bell in front of the grand oak doors and then surveyed her new surroundings with an air of propriety. She told herself the nonsense about Vivienne’s spirit was just that—nonsense—and she stepped over the threshold into her new home almost forgetting Joel’s threatening words.

You’re going to end up like her, you know. In some ditch. Dead.