you obviously enjoy being. A monkey that enjoys hanging from trees.”
I scrambled down to a lower limb, but remained concealed by the thick foliage. “You don’t have to shout now.”
Taking a deep breath, he leaned back against the tree’s wide trunk and began softly, “When I was a boy, just outside the town of Sant Quirze the woods were thick with oak. There was one tree that was the king of all the trees. It was older and taller and its gnarled branches spread out wider than any of the others in the forest. We called it Old Father Tree. When we wanted the highest vantage point in the region, that was the tree we climbed.”
“Can’t you speak louder?”
“I used to spend the hot summer afternoons within the shade of Old Father Tree. It was the place where I felt the safest.”
“I thought you were going to tell the story of the robins.” I had climbed down to a branch just above his head.
“This love of heights was true of the birds, too. Since the children of the village loved to hunt them down with sling shots, it was only in the depths of Old Father Tree that a bird was safe.”
“Is that where you discovered the nest with the robins’ eggs?”
“I looked down on the nest that was secured just below the branch where I was sitting. The eggs were like jewels,” he said, hardly above a whisper. “The most elusive color of blue. Blue like lilacs at the time of their blooming, blue like some girls’ eyes when the light strikes them just right, or blue like a certain star that appears sometimes in the midwinter sky. I hardly dared breathe for fear of disturbing them. And they were so lonely. I thought I had scared their mother away. By six o’ clock a wind that smelled of rain started to blow, and fat, cool drops were falling down on us. At first it was dry within the foliage, but as the leaves began to drip, the nest got wet.
“I laid my felt cap over the eggs to protect them and went home. I thought about those eggs all through the storm. In my thoughts I kept blowing my breath on them and hoping the mother robin would return finally and lift the edge of the cap like a blanket to reveal her eggs awaiting safe and cozy.”
“Did she?”
“When I returned the next morning, the cap, soaked now from the rain, remained undisturbed over the eggs. I was happy to see that the wool had kept the eggs dry and warm through the night.”
“Then what happened?”
“The mother bird never returned. I figured she lost track of her nest because it was hidden by my cap.”
“That is so sad.”
“The story has a happy ending.”
“Then tell me,” I demanded.
“I will, at my own pace. After all, not everything took place at once. There was first one thing, then the other and the other and so forth.”
“What. Happened. Next!”
Pep Saval laughed out loud. “I put my sweater over the eggs to keep them warm. I wanted to be there when the chicks were born.”
“What, for days?” I asked in disbelief.
“For a few hours, as it turned out. Sometime around two in the afternoon, when the heat of the day was crowding in through the still air, I sensed a stirring under the sweater. I lifted up a corner to peek at the eggs. Imagine my surprise when I saw that from one of them, a tiny brown beak was breaking through the shell. Then some chipping started on the other one and finally, by the time the last egg was starting to break, a hole had opened up in the shell of the first one and the head of a wet chick was poking through. It was a scrawny thing that began chirping crazily as soon as it was able to climb out of the egg. A minute later, the bird was joined in the chirping by his two siblings. I can see them still, their eyes closed and filmed over with viscous tears. Their feathers all sticky and matted down. Their beaks opening and closing like tiny pincers as if trying to bite some sustenance out of thin air. Birds are born hungry just like humans. Fortunately I had a jar with a few worms that I’d dug out of the garden that morning.”
“You didn’t say you had worms with you,” I was quick to point out.
“I can’t tell you everything at once,” he argued. “I am telling you now, that when I went up to check on the eggs, I had an inkling that they could be born anytime, and that if their mother was not around to feed them, I would have to provide worms.”
“You are telling me now because you hadn’t thought of it sooner.”
He threw his arms up. “I will not continue the story.”
“Go on, but I won’t believe it.”
“Why would you want hear a story that you don’t believe?”
“Because I want to know how it ends.”
“Come now,” he called up. “It’s getting late.”
“Where are you going?” I asked, suddenly worried I would be left behind.
“I want us to get to Planell before dark.”
“But the story is not over yet.”
“You’ll get the rest of it as we walk.”
THERE IS SUCH A WEIGHT TO WEDNESDAY . . .
After Dr. Velasco had signed the death certificate—cardiac arrest causing drowning in bathtub—and Mercè Casals’ body had been turned over to two beach-bum-blond fellows from the Rossini Fratelli Mortuary, Perla gave in to a sudden rush of tears. After eighteen months of service to the Señora, her charge was being lifted from her hands and carried off to be dressed and made up for her final appearance.
She had changed out of her white uniform into her street clothes—black jeans, a black halter top, and a black biker jacket, all steel studs and shiny zippers on buttery-soft leather. Lockwood, in his rumpled khakis and pocket t-shirt, felt he was in the presence of a dark angel angling for nurse duty in the afterlife.
She sat at the Señora’s writing table, filling out her time sheets. This last bureaucratic chore took on the weight of ritual. Lockwood feared the moment when Perla would disappear, their paths never to cross again.
There were a few things left to settle with Dr. Velasco besides the last accounting of her billable hours; she would have to write a statement of how and when the body had been discovered and compile a list of people who had to be informed of the Señora’s passing.
Heading the list would be the husband, Nolan Keefe, who at this time tomorrow afternoon would be sitting in the parlor at the Villa Age d’Or with tea service for two. At the end of the hour he would know something was wrong, that the love of his life would not visit him the following Wednesday either.
He had to be given the news gently. Perla would do it with all the kindness that Mercè Casals’ most special friend and husband was entitled to. Lockwood would go along since it was part of his research and he had not yet met Nolan Keefe; this chapter in the Señora’s life, the visits with her husband, which she had not wanted to discuss, were an important part of her story.
Lockwood got Wednesday afternoons off. At first there had been no explanation for the Señora’s suddenly ending their conversation on that day each week. He just assumed she had a regular medical appointment. It was Perla who piqued his curiosity. She teased him by asking what kind of a researcher he was when this small but significant quirk was going uninvestigated. “Ask her, Mr. Escritor.”
He did. “Where are you going this afternoon, Señora?”
She acted startled by the question, although she must’ve been expecting it. “There is such a weight to Wednesday,” she began. “It’s a day which, from the moment I get up and Perla brings me my tea and fruit, presses on my heart like lead. Of course, Wednesdays are another of my secrets,