she told him, then turned to Carey. “My brother.”
“You look alike,” Carey said. Elena made a face.
Carey had never waited tables or worked in a restaurant, not even fast food. But she needed work. She needed to know what the whispers meant, even though she could translate: Yo lo conozco. I know him.
“Can I fill out an application?” Carey asked.
“Claro que si,” Elena said, retreating behind the cash register. Juan smiled, waved. The one with the dark hair in his eyes examined Carey’s plain black boots.
“Here you are.” Elena pushed a piece of white paper across the counter and handed Carey a pen. The woman had written:
Name/Nombre: _____________________________
Phone/Teléfono: ____________________________
Carey completed the makeshift application, thinking they’d never call. Or worse, that they would.
When she arrived home, her mother was hovering over the answering machine, looking puzzled. She glanced up at Carey, taking in her jeans and black sweater.
“It’s the temping service. They said your final pay sheet still needs to be signed. And that they’re mailing a severance of contract form.”
“I was going to tell you.”
“So, tell.” She pursed her lips, half concerned, half suspicious.
“The woman I replaced, Felicia? Who had cancer? She’s better!”
“So now you’re out of work. The agreement was you’d pay us back for helping with the credit cards.”
“I will.”
“Without a job?”
“I’m looking. I’ve got leads, maybe an interview.”
Now her mother smiled, surprised. “Well, then. You’re being proactive.”
Carey stood up straighter.
“Hey, what do you think about my hair?” Gwen brushed a few strands off her forehead. It looked the same as always. “What if I changed it? What if I went super short?”
“That might work,” Carey hedged. She imagined diet guru Susan Powter’s close-cropped hairdo. Gwen sniffed—Carey should have been more enthusiastic—and headed to the living room. When Carey heard the sound of the television, she pressed play on the answering machine, listening to the nasal voice. She deleted the message. They had her address; they’d send the forms.
She grabbed the cordless handset and slinked upstairs to her bedroom, positioning herself on the floor of her bedroom closet. Growing up, she’d had the whole second floor to herself; still, she often retreated to the closet for phone calls. Wrapped in two sets of walls, two kinds of dark.
Dialing Mike’s number felt like programming a time machine. He answered on the second ring. She pushed away the hem of her midnight blue prom dress, as if Mike could see her.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s Carey.”
He inhaled quickly. “Hi,” he said, a single syllable loaded with anxiety and excitement. Did she hear all that, or want to hear it?
“How are you?” he asked, just as she was saying, “It’s been a long time.” They finished tripping over each other, laughed, then fell silent.
“I’m glad you called,” he said finally. “I’ll be down in Indy, day after tomorrow. You free this weekend?”
“I could do Friday,” she said.
“I’m having dinner with the Williamsons. Ben’s parents.”
She resented his explication, and the possessiveness she felt. She knew who the Williamsons were. They had never invited her to dinner. All she said was, “I have to work Saturday.” A lie, albeit an optimistic one.
They agreed on meeting Sunday evening, and she suggested a bar in Broad Ripple. Her nails made tiny half moons in the flesh of her palms. She paused only a fraction of a second when he requested her email address. After Mexico, she’d cut him off, told him to stop writing, a decision she’d regretted yet could not undo.
“Hey, Carey?”
“Yes?” She stood and knocked her head against a tangle of wire hangers, the tinny clatter like wind chimes.
“What was that?” Mike asked.
“Nothing.” Just hiding in the closet. As you do in your late twenties.
“I’ve wanted to get in touch before, plenty of times,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m going to see you again.”
She could not let herself respond in kind. “So, see you Sunday.”
“Right,” he said. “Sure.”
They were both quiet for a moment. “You still there?” he asked. “Where’d you go?”
There were so many ways to answer that question. She merely apologized. “Gotta run,” she said. “My mom needs the phone.”
She hung up the phone and smacked her forehead with it. My mom needs the phone, she thought to herself. Because I live with my parents. And don’t have my own phone. Which is fantastic at age twenty-eight.
The answer to his question of her whereabouts was simple: she’d returned to that familiar retreat, the folds of her memory, to Mexico and the last time they’d laid eyes on one another.
Mike had come by the Alarcón house three times. She refused to see him. Ben had been shot and killed in an alleyway. Random violence, horrible, the Intercambio teachers said, skepticism tingeing their voices. Probably a robbery, said the old cop with the sad eyes, though Ben had little to steal. He worked as many shifts as he could get, and Carey assumed his money went toward bills. Besides pesos, he kept a superstitious nineteen dollars American in his wallet. He had a single credit card she’d never seen him use.
When the phone rang, she expected her host mother to summon her. Lupe, who pressed a wet washcloth to Carey’s forehead, who rocked her when she woke up screaming, who couldn’t watch when Bartolo had to restrain Carey’s flailing limbs with his soft jeweler’s hands.
She says nothing, Lupe had told other callers. She stares at the wall or the ceiling. No sleep. Yes, she eats a little toast or tortilla. But it comes back up, always. Her color is poor. Her eyes do not focus. Her body is sick, not just her heart.
The maid, Maria, had begun crossing herself in Carey’s presence. As if La Americana was possessed. Lupe admonished Maria in the hallway outside the bedroom: No. Está rota. She is broken.
Sometimes Carey rocked on the bed, but mostly she was still. She imagined a computer screen swept blank by the delete key. The Alarcóns might’ve felt punished, though they were not to blame. She would speak to them if they asked the right questions. But no one asked who she was before she came to Mexico, or who she was before Ben. An unrecognizable woman, now. Nobody asked why she’d stopped showering and picked her scalp until it bled. She let a scab form, then scraped the hard shell away. Unconsciously marking the place Ben had touched her, hidden beneath her long brown hair, a place no one could see.
When the phone rang that day, Carey silently lifted the receiver on the upstairs extension. It was Andrea Cunningham, who told Lupe about the weekend memorial service. Lupe spoke on the phone in a hushed voice, the small click click click of her polished nails tapping the plastic receiver. A nervous habit.
The Williamsons were flying in from Indianapolis. Ben’s parents had chosen Carey to give a reading. They were bringing a copy of scripture they thought Ben had liked, Andrea said.
Who did they think their son was? The Williamsons were Catholic, but Ben had never mentioned the Bible. Not once.
Carey managed to get dressed. She