Mexico

Mostly I remember the women. In Florida the women had been hard, tight and full of angles. In Mexico they were soft, plump and full of curves; they reminded me of ripe peaches. In Key West I would fall into a bar, sink a rum cocktail, hoping I would find some of Hemingway’s spirit at the bottom of the bottle. But all I got was drunk. Some nights I would stumble out of a bar with a woman, and in the morning I would have to feign an excuse why I had somewhere important to go. There was nothing wrong with them, but somehow there was nothing right with them either. In Mexico beautiful women surrounded me like pebbles on the beach. I was spoilt for choice and they spoilt me rotten. But in the end they all faded, all except one. Carmelita.

Carmelita had been my maid, she came with the house and I barely noticed her. But over time I began to notice the little things she did. Every morning she’d come over, make my coffee, lay out my breakfast, straighten my rooms, sweep my verandah, wash my clothes; singing. She was always singing; softly, sweetly, it was like having a hummingbird around the place. If I’d brought a woman back the night before, Carmelita was very discreet, her singing reduced to the merest hum. Any offending clothing discarded on the lounge floor would be rescued and folded neatly in a pile and placed on the arm of the sofa for the lady to retrieve when she awoke. Coffee for two would be left keeping warm in the pot and two breakfasts laid out on the table. Then she would leave and finish her work the next day.

One particular moment is etched on my mind. Three years after I had first rented the beach house, she came to me as I worked at my desk and stood awkwardly by, waiting for permission to speak. I stopped typing. I was expecting her to ask for some money to buy polish and was about to pull open my drawer and take out some money, when something about the way she was looking at me made me stop.

“Carmelita?”
“Si Senor.”
“Do you have something you wish to say to me?”
“I am leaving you Senor. My sister has got me a job in the city.”
“Oh.” I had not expected this. “Do you want to go and work in the city?”
“The job pays good money.”
“Don’t I pay you good money?”
She laughed. “No senor you do not pay me good money!”
A smile played on her lips. I had no idea how much money she was paid, it was included in the rent. Her frankness caught me by surprise. Buying myself some thinking time I asked, “Do you like the city?”
“No senor. I like it here by the sea. This is my home. But there are no good jobs here. Only jobs like this. My sister works in an office with air conditioning.”
“Air conditioning?”
“Yes senor.” She said it very gravely.
Air conditioning clearly was something to be coveted. I had not realised. My beach house was equipped with ceiling fans, wide windows and doors that opened onto the sea. I had never even considered the idea of air conditioning.
“But I would miss you. You are a very good maid.”
“There are a dozen girls I can ask who would be happy to take my place. You will still have a maid.”
“But I like you. You know how I like my eggs in the morning. You let me sleep in, and don’t go making lots of noise and wake me up. I had a maid in New York who woke me up all the time with her hoovering outside my room.”
“Why didn’t you ask her to stop?”
“I did, but she said that was her routine. She always started with the hoovering. I had to fire her so I could get some sleep.”
“So shall I find you a new maid? My cousin Rosalinda is in need of a job.”
“But I don’t want Rosalinda. I want Carmelita.”
The smile that had been playing on her lips exploded into her mouth. It lit up her whole face. For the first time I noticed she had a dimple in her chin.
“How much is this job in the city paying you?”
“One hundred dollars. A month.”
“If I paid you one hundred dollars a month would you stay?”
“Of course. But that is a crazy amount of money for a maid. No-one would pay that much money.”
“I will.”
Her smile faltered.
“You’re teasing me senor?”
“No I’m not. I’m very serious.”
“Then you must be seriously loco!”
“Maybe I am. But I like having you around. I don’t want to change things. I like it just the way it is and I want to keep it that way. If it means I have to pay you one hundred dollars so I can have peace of mind, I’ll happily pay that. My word, a wife would cost me ten times more.”
“Ah but with a wife senor you get so much more.”
I looked her in the eye. She looked right back at me, she didn’t take her gaze from me.
“That depends on the wife.” I looked away. She had made me feel shy. I was more than a little intrigued. This was the longest conversation we had ever had. Normally it was strictly what would you like for breakfast, you’ve run out of polish...
“So do we have a deal Carmelita? I pay you one hundred dollars a month and you give up this idea of moving to the city and working in an air-conditioned office?”
“Estan loco.”
“Maybe I am, but I am also deadly serious. Do we have a deal?” I held out my hand.
She shook my hand ,“Si Senor we have a deal.” Her hand was small and warm in mine.

Carmelita went back to the kitchen singing. I went back to my typing. I was relieved, my life could now carry on without the ripples Carmelita leaving would have made. A little while later Carmelita called out that she was going to the market. When she came back she busied herself in the kitchen. Soon I could smell onions frying, then chicken, then spices. It was delicious and I couldn’t resist going to see what she was doing.
“What’s all this?”
“It’s my grandmothers recipe for chocolate enchiladas. You like enchiliadas?”
“But why are you cooking me dinner, you never cook me dinner?”
“I think for one hundred dollars you should let me cook you dinner.”
“Well if you cook like this, it wil be the best one hundred dollars I have ever spent.”
“Good.”
And it was all good. It was easily the best one hundred dollars I had ever spent and each month seemed better than the last.

Time is a curious thing. I should know I have had a lot of time to consider it. Sometimes it seems to concatenate, to shrink into a pocket portion. I know for a fact I spent two years in Florida. I barely remember five minutes of it. I can easily skip over those years as if they had never happened. But those years with Carmelita, they stretch out in my mind like an endless vista. Umpteen golden moments call out for my attention. The barest whisper of a sea breeze, palm fringed beach and white Caribbean sand. My house on the beach, the cool floors, the crazy colours of the tiles in the kitchen – hot orange, deep azure, burnt sienna, grasshopper green. The tiny lizards that would scurry across my verandah. Lying in the hammock that Carmelita had strung up for me in the garden, drinking margaritas in the sunshine, the Beach Boys playing on the radio. Her kisses hot and sweet in the morning like coffee, and just as invigorating. Her kisses in the evening, languid and cool like a good martini. I miss those kisses.

Sex. It changes everything. I always think it won’t. It always does. But hope is a funny thing. You cling on to it against all reason. I hoped that sleeping with Carmelita wouldn’t change things between us. But nothing was ever the same. You cannot go back to the innocence of the past. I knew what it felt like to have her naked skin against mine, and I craved it. Her young fresh breasts became my pillow, her fingers stroked my aching head and there was no going back. And in the beginning I wouldn’t have wanted to. And if I’m honest now, I wouldn’t ever have wanted to. Her youth refreshed me, her touch thrilled me and I remembered how good it was to be alive.

Carmelita was a watershed. She gave herself to me in a way no woman ever had and I fell harder than a stone dropped from the Empire State. Maybe it was because it was so unexpected. She had been part of my life so long, unnoticed, untroubling, she had weaved herself into the fabric of my existence. She was the still, calm centre in the whirlwind of my life. I had come to find the whirlwind exhausting. Carmelita unburndened me, unpeeled the layers that time had bound me by and exposed the truth of me. But therein lay the flaw. My truth was a lie and I desperately wanted to unravel the lie and lay down my final burden before her. I wanted to tell Carmelita everything. I wanted her to know the real me, who I really was, where I was really from. So at last I could stop running and just be.

But I didn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t think she would understand, she would have done, Carmelita had an emotional intelligence that allowed her to see deep into my heart. My fear, my real fear was that if I told her she would not love me anymore. And I couldn’t bear that. So I maintained the lie that was my life, knowing all the while, that the fear that gripped me some nights couldn’t be hidden from the woman who shared my bed.

Carmelita had long since ceased going home to her family. She had brought a few of her possessions with her and scattered the place with her flowers, her pillows, her pefume. Her perfume haunts me still. When I smell it on a woman, I think it must be Carmelita. Even though I know it cannot be, she is long gone now. But the smell of her sends me back to those days in Mexico on the beach. Truly the happiest I have ever been. A happiness that came along unexpectedly. I had been washed up on a distant shore, dazed and confused by the turn that events had taken. Still not comprehending why I was not content, when I had achieved the one thing that the whole world dreamed of.

Serendipity. The acquisition of an unexpected happiness. That was Carmelita. And through Carmelita I discovered why I was not content. Without someone to love, who loves you in return, life has no meaning. And when you find it you want to keep it. You want to cling on to it with both hands. But the tighter you hold it the more fragile it becomes. The more fragile you see it is, the harder you try not to break it. And in the end, it is that effort that breaks it. Because love cannot be held on to, only marvelled at and reverenced. God, how I loved that woman. Her kisses were filled with love and affection and somehow she found a way to transfer those emotions through my skin mainlining directly into my heart.

When I think of her my mind is infused with sunshine. I can be back there in an instant. The rest of my mind may be becoming muddled, but my memories of Carmelita are as clear and bright as her brown Spanish eyes. It was the eyes that did it. Searching for answers, lying in bed at night she would ask me to tell her about my past, my family, where I came from. I gave her the answers she had heard before. Answers well rehearsed over many years, in so many places. Drilled into me so I could never slip up or make a mistake, no matter how drunk I was.

I was from New York. I had no family. There had been a terrible accident, a fire. My parents and my brothers and sisters had all died. I was brought up in an orphanage. I remember very little of the orphanage. It was run by priests. My parents had been Irish Catholics like most people in our neighbourhood. I was lucky I was not a pretty boy. I studied hard, at eleven I got a scholarship, I got sent to a boy’s school upstate. I graduated high school and came back to the city. I worked in an insurance office, had a steady job, wrote stories in my spare time and invested my money in stocks. I got lucky, made a bundle of cash and came to Mexico to write full-time.

Somehow she could tell it was a pack of lies. Most people here had never asked me how I made my money, what I did for a living. They simply didn’t feel a need to know, but Carmelita did. She loved me, she knew me and she knew me well enough to know that she didn’t know everything about me. That I was keeping something from her, that I had a secret. She knew that the story I told of my life was just that, a story. And perhaps the best one I had ever written, for however hard I tried the rest were never as good. It ate away at her, like a worm in an apple.

“Patrick why don’t you want to go back to New York? All the other Americans go back home for Thanksgiving.”
“I’ve got no family there. You’re all the family I need. And you make a lovely roast turkey dinner my darling.”
“But surely you miss your hometown?”
What those New York winters shovelling snow off the street? Four foot drifts of wet brown slush at every intersection? The hustle, the noise, the dirt. What exactly do you think I should miss, when I am here with you, living in Paradise?”
“You could take me with you. Everybody misses home.”
“Well I don’t. This is my home now.” I silenced her with a kiss. But I knew she would ask me again. A different question maybe, but the same intention. To find out who I really was. The one thing I could never tell her.