Looking Down on the Moon

1

 

 

            The mud-colored adobe house grew out of the side of the mesa overlooking the river that snaked through the narrow canyon below.    The old woman, Lupe, the housekeeper, barked orders at Manuel, her husband, the caretaker, berating him for some probably unimportant chore he had forgotten or failed to complete, as more often than not he was likely to do these days.

            Dolores de Los Rios, the Señora of the hacienda for the past thirty-five years, picked up only words or an occasional phrase floating on the breeze through the kitchen and onto the patio where she sat sipping her tea and enjoying the early morning spring sun, her daily routine.

            The words, “…el hermano de la Señora, …  Vaya al aeropuerto.  Ahora!!”  however, brought her out of her reverie of nature and to her feet and into the cool dark kitchen.

            “Lupe.  What is this about my brother?  And the airport?”

            “ Lo siento mucho, Señora.  Dios mio!” Lupe searched her mind for the right word; her English, a language she had spoken for the past fifty plus years suddenly faltering, apparently,  which really annoyed Delores.  Especially so since she was almost as fluent as they were in Spanish, eventhough she was born and had lived her entire life in the US.

            “Your brother call me last night.  He is coming today.  It is supposed to be surprise for you.”

 

            Well.  If he was trying to surprise her, he was succeeding.  What could be bringing Paul from his comfortable climate-controlled Houston condo to “The Wilderness” (his description), with no advance warning?  True, he had not been for a visit in more than two years, and their last encounter had been less than pleasant;  so,  why now and why the secrecy.

            No time to worry about why, now.  There were things to do.  Almost unconsciously, she began checking off the mental list of things to be done with Lupe. Manuel had been dispatched to the airport at Albuquerque, some hundred and fifty miles away.  Open the windows; air the guest room; change the linens; order fresh flowers from the florist in town.

            “Damn.”  She said to no one in particular.   “This is so like my brother.  Trying to catch me off guard, unprepared.” 

            What was it he had said to her when he last visited.  “Dee.  I would love, just once before I die, to catch you just being yourself, whoever that might be, relaxed, doing absolutely nothing and with nothing to do on your mind.  You are a conundrum, you know.  A walking contradiction.  You live out here in the middle of nowhere, in the, the Wilderness, and yet you’re always busy, or  on the road.  To El Paso;  Albuquerque;  Dallas.  When do you ever stop?  When do you take time to just be you?”

            Well, he had almost gotten his wish, she thought.  But not this time!  She would be ready for him, as always.  She would not allow her brother to discover her weakness.  Her Achilles Heel would not be exposed for public viewing.  Not this time.  Not ever again.

 

            As she drove to town, she wondered when this rivalry between herself and Paul had begun.  She could no longer clearly remember the times when they were playmates.  Distant faint images sometimes entered her mind unbidden, but it was more like a memory of a book or movie than her own life.  Those times and places, so far removed from the past years of her adult life, were a part of someone else’s life, having nothing to do with Dolores de Los Rios, or even the life of Diedra Dyane Summers of Houston.

                The sun, now high in the sky over the New Mexico desert, shone down on the mud-splattered Explorer at just the right angle, flooding the front seat area with a rainbow of colors broken apart by the windshield prism.   She saw a scene from another time; a bedroom, a child on the floor playing in the field of color created by the Houston sun shining through the stained glass window.

The child, blond hair but very dark eyes and dark skin sang a song to herself.  The noises in the background; the yelling, the occasional crashing of some item, had nothing to do with her.  She got up, closed her door and returned to her artist’s palette floor, resuming her play.

They both loved her,  they swore.  But, they never had any time for Deedee as they called her.  Her only friends were the maid, Lupe, and her brother, Paul.  She didn’t like any of the Anglo children (as Lupe called them) on her street. 

She had begun trying to imitate the accent and broken English of her friend, Lupe.  She listened intently when Lupe was talking in her native tongue to someone, usually a maid or housekeeper from a neighbor’s house.  She loved the musical sound of the words, the rhythm of the speech pattern, the passion with which they spoke of events that had happened.

Of course, on the rare occasion when she and her brother had dinner with their parents, she was on her best behavior, speaking only to answer a question, and then in her best English.  

As a child, she was never really quite sure what her father did at work.  He had an office in a tall building in downtown Houston.  She had gone there once, with Lupe, to drop off some very important envelope he had forgotten.    A woman with stiff blond hair and too much red lipstick met them at the door, almost snatching the envelope from Lupe’s hand.

Noticing the little girl, she bent down and with a huge clown-faced grin, pinched a cheek saying, “Well, aren’t you just the cutest little brown-skin sweetie.  Did your mama bring you to the big city?”

Lupe, almost snorted, in perfect English, as the child retreated behind her, “This brown-skin sweetie is Mr. Summers’ daughter.”

“Oh!  I am so sorry,” the woman said in a quiet tone of confidentiality, looking around nervously, hoping no one had heard Lupe’s response or her comments.  Then ushering them out the door, and following to the elevator, she almost whined, “I am deeply sorry.  I didn’t know.  I mean, I knew he had a daughter, I just never saw her before.  You won’t tell anyone, will you?  I could lose my job.”

Lupe just glared at the woman as they entered the elevator, leaving her standing there with her mouth open, words and pleas going unanswered, unheard, as the door closed.  “Stupid Anglo!”   Lupe muttered almost spitting out the words.

            The taxicab, which was waiting as requested, sped away from the buildings and traffic and returned them to the quiet of River Oaks.  Lupe did not say a word on the ride home.  The child sensing something she could not quite understand placed her head against Lupe’s shoulder and slipped her small hand into the protective grasp of her best friend. 

That day was the beginning of her “real-world” education. It was her first encounter with prejudice, though far from her last.  She soon learned that brown skin and dark eyes, even with the blondest of hair, were a liability to you in Houston, in 1952.  However, many other things were becoming clearer:  Why her mother insisted that she not be allowed to play in the sun;  why the medicinal smelling shampoo was used on her hair once every week;  and why her mother said things to her like, “Deedee.  I think that hospital must have given you to the wrong family, you sweet little thing.”

She wasn’t sure what was wrong with brown skin.  Lupe’s skin was even darker than hers.  She guessed she would find out eventually.  But for the moment she was content, playing on her floor as the sun would soon move away, taking the colors with it. Oh, how she wished she could somehow stop the sun’s movement,  keeping  the colors on her bedroom floor forever. 

As she drove on toward the town, the colors having stayed only briefly on the seat of her car,  annoyed with herself for the mental digression from the task at hand, acquiring food  for her brother's visit, she forced herself to focus on  the harsh realities of life in this arid region.  Nothing grew without extensive irrigation and the backbreaking work of many peasants, the campesinos, mostly illegals.  W******s, a word she detested, they were called. 

On the positive side, Dolores de Los Rios fit in just fine here.  Almost everyone was dark skinned.

She parked the vehicle in the supermarket lot and went inside the modern building, which was strangely out of place in the small town of mostly flat-roofed adobe structures.  Normally,  Manuel would drive Lupe in for the shopping.  But this was anything but a normal day and Lupe who had almost conspired with her brother,  was left behind, working to prepare the hacienda for Paul.

There were only a few stares at the statuesque lady in dark glasses mixed in with the usual smiles and nods of recognition from the locals, as she steered the uncooperative grocery cart into the produce section.  She much preferred the produce from the market in Albuquerque, but this would have to do.  The avocados and the mangos were mostly hard.  The tomatoes, lettuce and asparagus were acceptable.  She was more than pleased by the selection of fresh peppers.  “The hotter the better,”  she instructed Lupe in preparing the menu of Mexican dishes.  She tried even in the food department to assault her brother’s being.  She felt slightly evil when Paul, tears welling in his eyes, would say,  “Delicious food,  Lupe.”

Her brother was four years older than she, much paler, though tanned, with green eyes and brown hair.  From the time she was six or seven, they were playmates, inseparable, contrary to her mother’s wishes and instructions to Lupe.  She wasn’t sure if their playing was supposed to be bad for her or bad for Paul. 

However, everything changed, when at seventeen, Paul graduated from high school, and went off to the University of Texas in Austin, leaving his sister behind, alone.   That’s when the memories started to fade as she consciously forced  thoughts of him from her mind.  She would never forgive his deserting her.

“Why can’t you go to Rice?”  she pleaded.  “We could still be together.”

His response, “Hey squirt.  I can’t be hanging out with my kid sister forever.  Now get outta here so I can change clothes.  I have a date tonight,”  hurt her more than his actual leaving.  She didn’t see why they couldn’t be best pals forever.

The house was quiet and lonely after that.  Even Lupe, who had two years earlier married the gardener, Manuel, was too busy for her,  and had even yelled at her, for which she apologized over and over afterward,  when one quiet afternoon she opened the door to Lupe’s room, an act she had done numerous other times.  At first, she didn’t understand what she saw from the doorway.  Manuel hovered over Lupe, his brown skin gleaming with sweat, as he made their bed  bounce up and down.

She remembered Lupe’s tone, when she saw her standing there;  not her usual soft musical voice.  “Dios mio, niña!  Vaya!  Vaya!  Go back to your room.” 

Startled by the reality that she  had been standing in front of the meat counter for quite some time, when the attendant asked  “Can I help you with something, Señora,”  she snapped back to the present, smiled and said, “No thank you.”

Since Paul had given Lupe no indication of how long he intended to stay,  they were at a disadvantage planning  meals and shopping lists.  But, Lupe would make her wonderful tamales, chicken enchiladas, and some type of standing roast if he stayed through till Sunday. 

She began to suspect she had perhaps bought too much as the young man loading the bags into the back of her vehicle opined, “Must be planning a big party.”

 

“No.”  she replied,  “Just a family visit.”

Then again, she thought, every time Paul visited, was sort of a party.  Though she wasn’t quite sure if it was in celebration of his visit or just her possibly misguided feeling of competition with her brother getting the better of her.

She loved her brother, she was sure of that.  And they had almost become close after the death of their parents, and again after Antonio.  Death seemed to have a way of doing that.  However, something, she still wasn’t quite sure what, had kept a distance between them.

It was well past noon when she arrived back at the hacienda.  She cursed under her breath at the number of things still to be done and all those groceries to be unloaded and carried inside.  Where was the help when you needed them.  Oh yes, gone to Albuquerque to fetch her sneaky weasel of a brother.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

 

 

 

Paul  Summers was the sort of man that everyone admired.  He was tall,  handsome, tanned and slender, though  well past fifty.   Popular in high school and at the University of Texas where he received a degree, graduating with honors, in Petroleum Engineering.  Successful in his business, he seemed to know exactly which oil ventures to invest in and which to avoid.  Everything  came  easy to him, with one exception – make that two exceptions.  His relationship with his sister frustrated the Hell out of him.  And his history of relationships with other women was less than great, having been twice divorced.  His current relationship  could only be described as weird.  But overall, as a person, he was friendly, a never-meets-a-stranger kind of guy, whom everyone liked immediately.   His sister was reserved, even cautious around other people.

This fact confused him, more than a little, especially since she chose to  live isolated from other people; and yet she was a busy person; socially conscious, giving of her time and money generously, perhaps, too generously, Paul felt, to any cause that caught her fancy. 

He had to smile to himself when he remembered the call from their accountant, telling him Dee wanted to give a hundred thousand dollars to some small college studying rare native-plant life in Kentucky. 

Paul’s response of , “It’s her money.  She can give it to whoever she wants,”  was not exactly the support he had been hoping to receive. 

“If she keeps giving it away, she won’t have any money,”  the man had snorted before hanging up abruptly.

Paul realized then that he had never liked the man and  resolved to contact his attorney about replacing him as the administrator of the trust his parents had left.  He was sure it wouldn’t be easy, but Sidney J. Stone had annoyed him once too often.

The flight from Houston to Albuquerque was routine, if not boring.  He still wasn’t sure why he preferred commercial air travel to obtaining and flying his own plane – he just never seemed to find the right time, and he usually had things to work on when he was flying.  Though on this trip, since he was traveling with Brittany, he decided it would be rude to ignore her in favor of work.  As it turned out, she ignored him, staring out the window like a child, trying to identify things on the ground below.

“Ooh!  Is that Dallas?”  She wondered aloud.  “ It looks so lovely from up here.  How high do you suppose we are, anyway?”

Looking around her head, Paul said, “It isn’t Dallas.  It’s probably  Midland or Lubbock.”

“Well, it certainly is beautiful.” 

And with that, she was quiet for most of the rest of the flight.  Paul then resumed his thoughts about his sister Dee, her life, and the purpose of this visit.  He  wasn’t sure if he was up to this visit, which had taken two years to make.  He asked Lupe not to inform her that he was coming; not really hoping to surprise her or catch her off guard, as he was certain she would assume, but merely wanting to avoid the usual round of questions regarding the real reason for his visit.

“Hey!  Can’t a guy visit his little sister without a reason?”  He had asked on many other occasions.

“Not this brother and sister.”  She always replied.

He had practiced his speech many times,  always beginning with:   “Dee.  There are some things of  importance that we need to discuss…”

Nope.  Won’t do.  Sounds like he is getting ready to hit her with some business proposition.  And this was certainly not going to be another business proposition.  He still could not believe that his parents could have kept such well-hidden and deeply buried secrets.  Had he been just naïve or stupid.  He was so angry with himself and his dead parents   The fighting.  The shouts of innuendo.  

He probably would never have known, never found out, if the bank hadn’t decided to tear down their old building in downtown Houston.  His lawyer had called, early one morning in July. 

“Paul?”  The voice on the phone had asked.

“Yes?”

“J. B. Street, Paul.  I have been contacted by Fidelity Bank, who is planning to demolish a location.  It seems your parents had a safety deposit box there with a lifetime paid rental and someone needs to remove the contents.  Would you like us to take care of it for you?”

Paul started to say, “Sure.”  But then it occurred to him that his parents, who  had been dead for more than thirty years had kept an inventory of every safe deposit box and its contents.  How had one been missed, he wondered?  Accident?  Deliberate?

At any rate his curiosity was aroused enough so that he said.  “No.  I’ll  do it.”

“Fine.  Just ask for Ms. Virginia Greene.  She is the person who contacted us.”

“Thanks.”

He wasn’t sure what he expected to find in the box.  Love letters to someone.  Forgotten bonds or stock certificates.  Forty or fifty-year-old yellowing papers of no particular value, he reasoned.  But why the lifetime rental?  Why was the box either forgotten or ignored?  These thoughts and more filled his mind as he drove in to downtown Houston.

Virginia Greene, a  pleasant, if somewhat officious woman, in her middle years, led him back to the vault area after scrutinizing the required identification and other papers relative to the estate of Howard and Ruth Summers. 

“We have actually been trying for some time to contact someone about these boxes.  There are only a few others that have been unclaimed.  I’m not sure what will happen to them.  I find it sad that people forget or no longer care about possessions which were once so important.  Don’t you?”

“Yes.  Yes, I do.”  Paul replied after too long a pause, when he realized a response was required.  His mind was already sorting through the contents of the yet unopened box, feeling strangely uncertain about this entire situation.  Perhaps he should have left it to the lawyers.

Nothing, however, could have prepared him for the contents of this box.  His head began spinning as he read what appeared to be some sort of contract between his parents, with its “In consideration of…  we do hereby agree and covenant…”

Was this a fifty-year-old joke?  His parents agreeing by contract to stay together, in spite of some event of the past.  Were they crazy?

“Oh, God!”  He uttered as he sank into a seat while he read on letting  the rest of the contract details and the other documents in the box sink in.

Miss Greene,  who reappeared unheard and unseen, asked,  “Mr. Summers?  Are you all right?  Can I get you something?  Some water?” 

He did not respond for some time, then he looked up, “Huh?  Yes.  Water.”

Virginia Greene had seen some strange reactions in her years of being officer in charge of security deposit boxes, but Paul Summers, whom she had been watching from her desk nearby,  actually scared her.  All color had left his face as he sat down on the chair beside the table.  She thought he was going to pass out or worse that he was having a heart attack.  So she responded to this gentleman with an offer of help.

Paul drank the cold water she offered, hoping it would stop his head from spinning, as he shuffled through the contents of the box again.  After signing  for the release of the documents and an authorization closing the box account,  he loaded all the contents into his brief case and headed for the door.

Having wished, dreamed, he would ask for her phone number, she simply said goodbye in a disappointed closure to the meeting.  “Good luck.”  She called after him.

Paul stepped out into the humid July air, finding it nearly impossible to breathe.  He considered briefly that he was having a heart attack.  His spinning head and resultant nausea and the pounding of his heart were all signs.  His hands trembled as he fumbled with his keys trying to start his car.  He sat for several minutes hoping the air conditioner would rescue him from his crisis.

How could they?  How could his parents be so deceptive, so deliberately cold and calculating as to sign a contract?  A contract which dictated the terms of life for  human beings.  A contract with clauses and stipulated penalties for the party who violated terms of the agreement.  How could they?

Paul was sickened by the whole dirty rotten mess and incensed by the fact that they left behind the pieces to be dealt with and cleaned up after their deaths.  The lives of others  had been irrevocably changed by the actions of his parents, two people whom he decided he really didn’t know at all.

“Oh, God.”  Paul said out loud.  How on earth would he break this to Dee?  Or, maybe, he thought, it would be best not to tell her at all.  No one, except himself,  knew anything about the contents of the box, and certainly no one knew about  the contract  He could burn the documents and take the sordid little secrets to his grave, the way his parents should have, he reasoned.  No one would ever know.

No, he thought a lifetime of deceit and lying was enough.  This had to be dealt with, otherwise, he could never forgive himself or his parents.  So, he began, trying to plan the best way to disclose this information to his sister.  He knew he could not do this by phone or letter, a visit to New Mexico would be necessary, to go over this with Dee in person.  Weeks turned into months of self-debate before he realized it had to be done without further delay. 

So many things had happened in the past several years, not the least of which was his sister had  not spoken to him since their last fight.  Surely she wasn’t still angry with him because her son decided to move to Houston.  That wasn’t really his fault.

Then he decided to take Brittany to meet his sister.  Though it was a bit unfair to Brittany, whom he had been dating for about two years.  She might get the wrong idea, thinking he was far more serious than he was.  He did like her, a lot.  She was fun to be with, young, uncomplicated.  Everything he and his sister weren’t.

Their lives had been odd from the very beginning.  Growing up in Houston’s wealthy River Oaks section, in a house with servants and full of things, but devoid of love, was hard on kids, any kids.  He knew it affected Dee more so than himself.  He had other friends.  She had no one except him and Lupe.

He would never forget the afternoon he told her that he was going to Austin.  She wept bitter tears and left his room screaming, “I hate you, anyway.  So go on off to Austin.  Who cares?”  He had tried writing letters and sending her cards almost every week, but she never responded.  When he had asked Lupe on the telephone, “Why?”  She had responded sadly, “Quien sabes, hijo...”  

Who knows?  Indeed.  Who knows what makes people do what they do?

 

Reviews

[DiamondNRough AKA Patty..]

OK...next Chapter Please!!!!

[Dianne]

Damn! This is an intriguing story. I hope I don't have to wait too long for the next piece. Send a read request please.

[ShadowWolf]

What an interesting story! Right from the very beginning it demands the reader continue reading until the very end and reaching that end simply begs for the next chapter. This is one of the best I have read in quite some time!