She should have waited for Hector to come back with their parents. It was so obvious. She thought about the crocodile moving on the bank, but then she reminded herself that Hector was such a good swimmer. She wished she could talk to someone about it, but she hated Penny for leading them into the trees, away from the river. And Marcus was kind of weird, always watching her. And the little ones hadn’t seen the crocodile, so she couldn’t say anything in front of them.
Hector was probably safe with her parents, and they probably all thought she was dead by now. She wondered if Hector missed her. Or if, in his secret heart, he didn’t mind being an only child. She wondered if he was playing sad songs on the guitar. Having a dead sister was going to make him so romantic and interesting. Girls were probably falling all over him, wherever he was, at a nice hotel somewhere.
Her family had been getting along so well on the ship, where there was nothing to do but play tennis and swim. There were no dishes after dinner, or beds to make. Her friends weren’t around for her mother to have opinions about. When Isabel had puked off the back of the catamaran in Acapulco, her mother had kept her hair out of her face and rubbed her back. She’d found a ginger ale and held up a pareo as a sun shade, to keep people from staring at them. Isabel felt bad about some things she’d said to her mother before the trip.
The wind had started up again. Raúl was down at the stables below the house, where the white horse whinnied in protest. Isabel watched through the window as Raúl rubbed its nose and its neck. He must have been saying reassuring things, promising the wind would stop. But it didn’t. It tried to reach in through the cracks in the house, and shook the ceiling. Maria called it the Christmas wind. Isabel asked her—again—if she could please use a phone.
Maria shook her head. “No, mija.” She brought them a plate of cheese quesadillas, cut into triangles.
Penny and Sebastian finished their huddled business with the finger-sticking and the calculator, and the others waited to eat. Sebastian wanted to give himself the shot with the pen. “It hurts less if I do it,” he said.
June shuddered. “I couldn’t do that.”
“I thought you were going to be a pirate,” Penny said.
“I could be a pirate,” June said. “I just couldn’t give myself a shot.”
Then they all fell on the quesadillas like animals at the zoo. They were disgusting. None of them had showered since they arrived. There were no grown-ups to tell them to. The little ones smelled stale, in that musty, little-kid way. Isabel was getting grown-up body odor. She’d never gone this long without bathing. Her armpits smelled like vegetable soup. It had been interesting at first, but now it was kind of gross.
She crept downstairs, into the bathroom, and locked the door. She stripped off the ugly cotton clothes and made the shower as hot as she could stand. The shampoo smelled of orange blossoms, and she stayed under the water a long time. In the shower, she could be anywhere. She could be home.
She stepped out and stood in front of the mirror, with her hair wet and clean. She had boobs already, even if they were small ones. That was why Raúl looked at her the way he did. And she had a little triangle of hair. Some of her friends were already waxing, but her mother said it was ridiculous and she wouldn’t allow it, even though she had lasered off the hair on her own legs.
The television news, before the old man turned it off, had shown a photograph of Isabel on the ship, leaping into the pool. She’d just been playing, striking a pose in the air, but she looked so good, with one leg kicked up behind her, toes pointed, arms raised like wings, hair streaming out. It must have been on her mother’s phone. Her mother only showed her goofy pictures. Isabel had to steal the phone to see anything that looked halfway decent. But that photo was perfect, and it had been on TV. She tried to strike the pose now, but it wasn’t the same when you weren’t airborne. Her hair didn’t fly.
She sniffed the white shirt and put it back on, and pulled on the ugly red shorts. It was New Year’s Eve. Her friends at home would be out in shimmery dresses and heels, dancing and laughing at the boys who stared at them hungrily. She wondered what Hector was doing. Sitting with her parents? What would they talk about? She wrapped a towel around her hair and went upstairs, where the brothers were playing poker at the kitchen table. She took her corner of the couch.
George had a beer in front of him, and Raúl had something that looked like a rum and Coke. Maria kept bringing them drinks. Fresh ones before the last ones were finished.
“Marcus,” Isabel said. “Get me one of those drinks.”
Marcus looked at her, surprised.
“The old ones,” she said. “They won’t notice.”
He hesitated.
She nodded at him. “Go on.”
So he sidled over and snagged a half-finished glass and a beer bottle. The brothers didn’t pay him any attention. Marcus moved toward the sink, as if he was just clearing the table. He checked that Maria wasn’t looking, then doubled back to the couch where Isabel sat. He sank down next to her, breathing hard.
“Good work,” she said, and took the cocktail and sipped. Even with the ice melted, it was sweet and strong.
Marcus brought the half-filled beer bottle tentatively to his mouth. He drank, and something crossed his face: not dislike, but surprise. Maybe concern. He shifted the front of his shorts with his free hand.
Isabel laughed. “I get that feeling, too.”
His cheeks flushed.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said.
She’d never talked about the feeling, that twinge of unexpected pleasure that came with the first sip of alcohol, the heat in her underwear. From listening to her friends talk, she didn’t think everyone had it. It was oddly comforting that Marcus did.
“They’re having a competition, for us,” she told him.
“They are?”
“We need George to win.” She wondered if they could help him cheat. “Do you play poker?”
Marcus shook his head.
June spotted the beer bottle in her brother’s hand. Her mouth dropped open. “Marcus!” she said.
“Shhh,” Isabel said. “It’s okay.”
Marcus put the bottle on the floor.
Isabel sipped her drink and watched the poker game. George still had the bigger pile of chips. Nothing happened for a while. The brothers played in silence. Maybe they were so absorbed that she could get upstairs to a computer and send a message.
They had finished another game when George got up and went to the bathroom on the other side of the kitchen. Raúl put his head down on the table to rest, like he was taking a nap in school. Isabel stood, with a moment’s light-headedness from the drink, and moved toward the stairs. June was hunched over the bunny. Penny and Sebastian were playing tic-tac-toe on the floor. Maria was rummaging in the refrigerator. Marcus saw her, of course, but she put her finger to her lips. Raúl didn’t look up. She climbed silently.
Upstairs, there was a door immediately on the right. Isabel turned the doorknob and it opened. Inside were two big computer monitors and an open laptop. She eased the door closed behind her. One of the monitors had a screen divided into six parts, with grainy black-and-white images in each box. She recognized a shot of the door they had come in, from outside. And one of the gate at the end of the driveway. A shot of the stables with the white horse. It wasn’t even that fancy a security system. Some of her friends had better ones.
She slid into the chair and tapped the laptop keyboard to wake it up. The screen asked for a password. She blew the air out of her cheeks. Her dad always wrote down his passwords. She opened the drawer in the desk. There was junk, paper clips and pens, and a yellow sticky note. It said “panocha” in handwritten letters. She thought of her own triangle of hair and she blushed, but she entered it as a password and it worked. She guessed it was Raúl’s password. That guy was a dick. She opened a browser windo
w to message her brother.
The computer was slow and she was still waiting for it to open Facebook when she heard steps behind her on the stairs. Her heart started going twice its normal speed. She typed her login and password but then the door opened. She quit the browser before a hand grabbed her chair and swiveled it around. Raúl was standing behind her, leaning close. His hand was on the back of the chair, behind her towel-wrapped head.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
If she were a spy caught like this in a movie, she would kiss her enemy, to distract him. Then she would punch and kick and climb on his head to break his neck with her legs. But she didn’t know martial arts.
“You have to let us go,” she said.
“Do I?”
“Please,” she said.
A weird look had come into Raúl’s eyes. He wasn’t listening to her. He pulled the towel from her wet hair. She grabbed at it, but it dropped to the floor. He put a hand on her breast, through the white T-shirt, and she jumped.
“Please don’t,” she said.
“It’s okay.”
“Stop,” she said, pushing at his hand. “Stop!”
He pinned her arm to the chair and slid his free hand down over the T-shirt and moved the shorts aside. Then he slid a thumb inside her, as if investigating something. She tried to shove him away but he was so strong. His hand was locked over her pelvis. She couldn’t move him.
He lifted her out of the chair with one arm. He was so much stronger than she was. He kept his thumb inside her, fingers splayed across the front of her shorts. She felt frozen, paralyzed. Her throat constricted, and she couldn’t scream as he carried her down the hall. And if she did, what would the little kids do? Would Maria help? She felt like a bowling ball in his hand, with his thumb inside her.
They were in a bedroom. She had time to register its messiness, like a teenage boy’s room. And then she was face down on a bed and he was peeling off her shorts. She tried to kick him but he pressed her torso to the bed with one arm. She could barely breathe. He kneeled on her leg so her hamstring seized and cramped. She heard him undo his belt and his zipper.
“No!” she said.
He spread her legs, hard, and then there was only pain. It seemed to be ripping her apart. When she turned her head and cried out, there was the suffocating feeling of a pillow over her face, and the heavy weight of his body pushing her into the mattress again and again.
Then she lost track of time, and the next thing she knew another voice was swearing in Spanish. “Son of a bitch. What the fuck, Raúl.”
There was a stinging between her legs, and something sticky on her thighs, and she rolled painfully, trying to cover herself. George stood in the doorway. Isabel looked around the messy bedroom. There were clothes thrown over a chair, bottles and crumpled paper and trash on the bureau. Raúl lay on the other side of the bed, playing with his phone. She felt sick when she saw him. She pulled her legs up, edged away.
“She came onto me, maje,” Raúl said. “I swear it.”
“I did not.”
“She was wet as fuck,” Raúl said.
“I can’t leave you for five minutes?” George said, his voice high with fury. “I can’t go to take a shit? Do you know what you’ve done?”
“Had a first-class teenage fuck,” Raúl said. “Best sleeping pill there is.”
“I was trying to solve this!” George shouted. “You’ve completely fucked it up!”
“She was so ready,” Raúl said.
“She is a child!”
“I’m not a child.”
“See?” Raúl said.
“Just her saying that proves she’s a child!” George said.
Isabel looked under the sheet and saw blood on her thighs. “I have to throw up,” she said. She stumbled, half falling, off the bed.
She didn’t make it, but puked all over the rug.
“I’ll clean it,” George said, and he helped her to the bathroom.
She stepped into the shower and crouched under the water, and George left her there. She washed the puke out of her hair, and did a gingerly wash between her legs. It hurt. There was some blood but not a lot. She peed into the shower drain, watching the water between her feet become yellow and a little bit red. Then the water cleared and washed it all away. She pulled a clean towel around her shoulders like a tent, and sat hunched on the bathroom floor, trembling.
There was a knock, and George came in. “Are you okay?”
She stared up at him.
“My brother is a monster,” he said. “I’m sorry. Do you want to see the doctor?”
“No!”
“The doctor’s safe,” George said.
But she didn’t want any more hands, any more investigating. “I just want to go home.”
George closed the toilet and sat on the lid. He put his head in his hands. “I told you to stay away from Raúl,” he said. “I told you to stay with the little kids.”
She winced. “I was trying to help them.”
“This makes it so much harder. You understand that, right?”
“I won’t say anything.”
George laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“I promise!” she said. “I won’t let any doctors near me.”
“That will be proof enough.”
“You can’t keep us forever.”
“Yeah, I know.” He sighed. “Raúl says you were on the computer.”
“I wanted to send a message to my parents.”
“Did you?”
“I didn’t have time. Raúl came in.”
George looked at her, and she thought he was trying to tell if she was lying. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
“I want to go downstairs.”
“I don’t want you to scare the little kids.”
“It will scare them more not to see me,” she said. She didn’t know if that was true, but she couldn’t stay up here. She felt her stomach churn again.
George sighed. “I’ll go get your clothes.”
She put a cold, wet washcloth over her eyes. That was what her mother did after she cried a lot, to make the puffiness go down. George brought her yellow bikini from downstairs and she put that on first. Then she pulled on the too-big shorts, the cotton T-shirt. Her wet hair made the shirt stick to her back. Her legs were wobbly.
She walked down the hallway past a bedroom that was cleaner than Raúl’s, with a big framed baseball poster. George’s room. Then there was a bedroom that she could tell was the old man’s room, the father’s. It was neat, the bed was made, there were a few old leather books between bookends on the long low bureau. An upholstered chair with a little footstool.
Her legs shook on the stairs, but she made it to the bottom and slid onto the red couch beside Marcus. He was watching her, as usual. She knew her eyes were red. Penny had the cards back and they were playing Crazy Eights. How much time had passed? None? Had they heard her cry out? Had she cried out?
“What happened?” Marcus asked.
“Nothing.”
She was losing track of time again, because Raúl had come downstairs, and was yelling at George in Spanish.
“What are they saying?” Marcus asked.
But she couldn’t tell him, because George was shouting that he’d been going to take the children back, and now he couldn’t. Because now the cops were going to crawl up George’s ass and they were going to prison and it was all Raúl’s fucking fault, he was a fucking psychopath and a fucking idiot. George shouted other things, insults, curses.
Raúl took a beer bottle by the neck and smashed it on the table with a bright crash. He lunged at his brother with the jagged, broken end, but George stepped deftly away. When Raúl came at him again, George grabbed his brother’s arm and took the bottle, dropping it in the k
itchen sink, where it clattered. They grappled, clumsily.
The other children drew close to Isabel in the corner of the sofa. Marcus took her hand. The brothers looked like dancing drunks. There was broken glass on the floor, and spilled beer. Raúl hit George hard in the stomach and he wheezed and staggered. Isabel’s heart tripped over itself. Raúl couldn’t win.
But then George had his brother in a headlock, and Raúl’s face turned red as he struggled, his windpipe cut off. Raúl reached for the table, for anything to give him leverage. Her heart was pounding. She thought George might kill him.
Then George released his brother’s head. He told him to go to bed, to sleep it off, they would talk about it in the morning.
Isabel thought Raúl might take a swing, but he seemed to accept that he was beaten. He gave Isabel a long, reproachful stare. Then he staggered upstairs, wheezing, muttering something she couldn’t understand, except that “puta” was in there. George started to clean up the kitchen, picking up pieces of broken glass in a cupped hand. Maria appeared, and together they swept up the glass, and wiped away the spilled beer.
George seemed to notice the kids in the corner for the first time since the argument had begun. “Watch your feet in here,” he said.
23.
NORA WANDERED THE halls of the hotel in the middle of the night, taking the stairs from one floor to the next, thinking about depression.
Her mother had probably had a serious bout of postpartum, from her description of the time after Nora was born, although no one called it that at the time. It was just “feeling blue,” listening to too much Joni Mitchell, locking herself in the bathroom sometimes. Nora’s earliest memories were of sitting by the bathroom door listening to her mother cry, not knowing what to do.
As an adult, Nora had thought her mother’s problem was tricky brain chemistry, but now she wondered if the family depression was just a rational response to the facts on the ground. The brutality of the world. She was standing at the edge of the yawning pit of her hereditary sadness, and might slip in.
She’d been frantic after Liv busted her at the café. She wished she’d told Liv earlier what had happened, and trusted their friendship, instead of startling her into rage. She was sure Liv would go straight to Raymond, and he would never forgive her. He was a man of great moral clarity. Things were right or they were wrong; he had no patience for gray areas. It would be over now.