Tomorrow There Will Be Sun Page 18

  “I’ll get one for you.” Ingrid stands up and wraps a towel around her bikini. She wags a finger at him. “But I’m warning you it will be light on the sugar and free of alcohol.”

  “Fine, Nurse Ratched. Be that way.”

  “Ivan,” she calls. “Do you need anything from the kitchen?”

  “Don’t leave,” he says.

  “Don’t worry, love. I’ll be right back.”

  Solly and I are alone. Ivan is still in the pool with his array of rainbow-colored noodles, absorbed in his underwater world. I try to remember how I gathered the confidence and the courage to confront Solly last night. I was ready to unleash on him. It was only a matter of seconds. It was all right there, an itch on my tongue.

  Solly, I had said.

  And then: sirens.

  I know where at least some of last night’s confidence and courage came from; it came from the tequila. From that final drink in honor of Peter’s first fifty years. I have none of that tequila left in me. I’ve even slept my way through the hangover.

  “Solly,” I try again.

  “Yeah,” he says. He’s not paying attention to me; he’s watching Ivan. In Ingrid’s absence, he’s on high alert.

  I don’t follow up, and Solly seems to forget I’ve said his name.

  “Look at him.” He points at Ivan. “He’s part amphibian. I could swear he’s got gills.”

  The faint sirens still hover in the place between present and memory.

  “Are you worried?” I ask.

  “About Ivan? No. Not really. He’s got his quirks, sure. But who among us doesn’t? He’s a solid kid. A little sensitive. Maybe he’ll be an artist or a poet.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I say, though I’m surprised to hear Solly acknowledge that his son is anything but perfect. “I mean about whatever is happening out there. Whatever it is that’s keeping the staff away. Do you think we’re safe? Do you think we should consider leaving early?”

  He lowers his sunglasses and takes a long look at me. “Are you serious?”

  “I’m just wondering.”

  “Jenna. We’re on the vacation of a lifetime. We’ve got everything we need right here. Sand, sun, surf. We’ve even got a volcanic tub! So maybe things are a little sketchy in town. We don’t have to go into town again. We can stay right here. And if it comes down to it, I’ll make the margaritas.”

  “Solly, Officer Delgado told us to stay here, to stay away from town, so that’s hardly a choice we’re making for ourselves. We’re following an order. From the fucking police.”

  “So?”

  I’m getting angry at Solly all over again. At the way he compartmentalizes everything. He’s doing to our situation what he does in his personal life. He’s refusing to connect what’s happening outside with what happens inside, because the act of connecting these two worlds—of recognizing how one informs the other—creates an inconvenience for him.

  “And anyway,” he says. “We go home the day after tomorrow. I don’t see how we could get out of here any quicker than that. Did you see all the luggage we brought?”

  “Yoo-hoo,” Ingrid calls from the balcony. “Look who I found!”

  She stands flanked by Roberto and Luisa.

  Roberto waves at us. “Buenas tardes. We are sorry we do not come this morning to make for you the breakfast.”

  “It’s fine,” I call. I feel a rush of relief. Like the grown-ups just arrived to fix everything and make it right again. To set us back on our axis. “We all slept late anyway.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Solly grumbles.

  “We go now and we make the lunch,” he says.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask. “In the town? Outside? Are the police still searching for the men who did the kidnapping?”

  “We go now,” Roberto says. “And we make the lunch.”

  He and Luisa disappear from view.

  * * *

  • • •

  I CHECK ON CLEM. I check on Peter. They’re both still sleeping. They’re both so beautiful. Almost unbearably so. I want to stroke their faces. Kiss their cheeks. But I don’t want to disturb them.

  I go to the kitchen, where Roberto and Luisa have emptied the entire refrigerator and Roberto is making a list of its contents. There’s a pot of soup warming on the stove.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “We check on the food we have for next two days. The stores, they are all closed. But it is okay. We have food. We do most of the shopping already. We cannot get the steak to make the carne asada for dinner, but we have chicken from the freezer. We can also make many things with beans.”

  Luisa says something to Roberto and his response sounds snappy. She turns her back on him and begins reloading the refrigerator.

  “Where’s Enrique?” I ask.

  “He goes to be with our parents. He brings for them the food. He will stay there. He does not come here to work but it is okay because Luisa and I, we can do everything ourselves.”

  “What’s happening, Roberto? Did the police find the kidnappers? The victims? Why are the stores closed? Did you bring a copy of the newspaper?”

  Roberto talks to Luisa. His tone has softened. She stops, with the doors to the refrigerator open, letting the cool spill out into the kitchen. Her voice rises at the end of each sentence as if she were asking him a long string of questions.

  He sighs. I know he’d rather that I leave them alone to do their work. To the cooking and the table setting, the cleaning and the drink making. He’d rather not be charged with bringing in the news from the outside world.

  “The cartel, they cause more troubles. They light gas stations on fire. They throw a bomb into the banks. They block roads and highways with burning cars. The police, they now have to put out fires and empty the buildings and it is difficult to go after the cartel. This is just what the cartel wants.”

  “If the roads are blocked, how did you get here?”

  He looks at Luisa before answering. “We walk.”

  “How far away do you live?”

  “It is not too far. It is maybe seven miles.”

  I sit down at the table in the kitchen. “Oh, God, Roberto.”

  “It is okay,” he says. “It will be safe to go outside soon. But first, the police, they must get control.”

  “Why did you come here?” I ask him.

  Again, he and Luisa speak to each other in Spanish. Then she makes a move to leave the kitchen.

  “It is okay,” Roberto asks, “for Luisa to go make the beds now?”

  “No,” I say. It comes out more harshly than I intend. She stops and looks at me. “Please. No. The others are still sleeping. And anyway, we will make our own beds today. You don’t need to do that. We’re perfectly capable of doing it for ourselves.”

  He translates this to Luisa who doesn’t put up too much of a fight. She goes back to stirring the pot on the stove.

  Roberto pulls up a chair and sits down at the table with me.

  “I am sorry,” he says.

  “Why are you apologizing?”

  “I tell your daughter and Mr. Solly’s son about the club. I did not know. There has never been trouble before. The club, it is one of the nicest in Puerto Vallarta. I am very, very sorry.”

  I reach my hand out and place it on top of Roberto’s. He doesn’t pull his away, but I immediately feel uncomfortable for having touched him this way. I leave it there for a beat and then I take it back.

  “It’s not your fault,” I say. “And the children are fine. They’re safe. They weren’t even there when it happened.”

  “No?” Relief floods his face. “Mr. Solly’s wife, she tells me they are fine, but she does not tell me they were not there.” He relays all the information to Luisa. She draws her hands to her chest.

  “Gracias a Dios,
” she says.

  “So please,” I say. “Don’t feel badly. You couldn’t have known.”

  He nods.

  “So why did you come in today?” I ask again. “With all that’s going on, with the roads closed, with the directive to stay indoors, why did you walk all the way here?”

  He looks puzzled. “It is our job,” he says.

  “Yes, but . . . sometimes things happen.”

  “We must come to work. We must take care of the villa and its guests. It is very important for us to be here.”

  “But what about later? How will you get home tonight? You aren’t going to walk another seven miles, are you?”

  “No,” he says. “If it is okay, we stay here.”

  “Of course,” I say. “You know Ivan doesn’t use his room at all. He sleeps with his parents. You can have Ivan’s room.”

  “No,” Roberto says. “We do not stay there.”

  “Well, then you can stay in one of the living rooms. I haven’t looked to see if any of the couches fold into beds.” I jump up, like it’s my own house I need to make up for unexpected guests.

  “No,” he says again. “It is okay. We stay in the room downstairs. The room by the pool.”

  There is no room by the pool. The only space downstairs is an outdoor living room. The one with the Ping-Pong tables. Even in a house designed for openness and exposure, that space is not habitable. Not for sleeping overnight.

  “Outside?” I ask him.

  “There is another room,” he continues. “Come, I show you.”

  I follow Roberto down to the pool level. Ivan has roped his parents into a Marco Polo–like game in which he makes up the rules as they go along.

  “Here,” Roberto says. He leads me to a door I hadn’t noticed. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cluster of keys and he opens the lock. He flips on a light. Inside there’s a bed and a tiny bathroom with a toilet and shower. There are no windows. It’s basically a glorified storage closet. “This is the room for us when we need it. And we stay here tonight. We will not be in your way.”

  There’s a recurring dream I’ve had since I was little in which I discover a door in my house I didn’t know existed that leads to a room I’d forgotten or never even knew about. I used to have this dream about my childhood home, and inside I’d discover toys, books, an oversize dollhouse. I have this dream about the house I live in now, and when I discover this room I think: This would make the perfect office. Why haven’t we ever done anything with this room? Why do we let it sit here untouched?

  In my dreams this forgotten room is always lovely, always expansive. It is an astonishing surprise.

  This extra bedroom is not that room.

  “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable upstairs?”

  “No,” Roberto says. “We stay here.”

  * * *

  • • •

  PETER WANTS TO GO for a swim in the ocean. He argues that we won’t be in direct violation of Officer Delgado’s orders, that our little patch of beach is probably not a hot spot for the fledgling drug cartel.

  Clem hasn’t emerged from her room. I keep peeking in on her and suspect that when she hears the doorknob she feigns sleep, though with the wi-fi still down, I’m not sure what she’s doing in there. Malcolm came downstairs shortly after Peter. I watched Solly fuss over him, rubbing his back: father of the year. How’s your stomach? Can I get you anything? Would you like some white rice? My poor, sick boy. Then Malcolm excused himself to the kitchen, where I’m certain he ate a hearty meal.

  Out in the water, Peter and I float side by side on our backs, weightless. The temperature is perfect. The sun is warm, but not hot. There’s no wind. With my ears submerged I hear nothing, only a deep echoing silence. In the absence of all external stimuli I can finally feel myself relax.

  Peter is right. We are safe here.

  We stay like that, floating side by side, for what feels like forever before Peter reaches out and takes me by the hand, breaking my trance. I switch from floating to treading water and look back at the villa. We are much farther away than we were when we started floating.

  “It’s nice out here,” Peter says. “I needed this. That was quite a night.”

  “It sure was.”

  “Everything okay with Clem? She seemed rattled. But I guess maybe she was just mirroring our hysteria.”

  Though Clem didn’t say so specifically, I understood that our conversation last night was to remain between us. She confided in me, and even if that confidence was forced by my having caught her in a lie, it doesn’t mean I should betray her by repeating what she told me to her father. She loves Peter, sometimes I suspect she loves him more, and it is both in spite of and because of this that I cannot tell him what she told me.

  “She’s okay. I think it all just sounded scary to her. We shouldn’t have let her go to that nightclub in the first place.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “So now you admit it?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that you allowed yourself to be bullied by Solly. I know you, Peter. I know that if it wasn’t for Solly pressuring you, if it wasn’t for his whole aw shucks let the kids have some fun routine, you wouldn’t have told her it was okay with you for her to go to a nightclub in a foreign country with a boy who’s a drug dealer.”

  I don’t know why I threw in that line about Malcolm. I don’t blame Malcolm for his troubles. I feel for Malcolm. I understand him. And Malcolm turned out to be the hero of the night, not the villain. But I just wanted to put a fine point on Peter’s recklessness with his own daughter.

  “That’s not fair. You told her it was okay to go. Why are you blaming me?”

  “Because you put me in a situation where I couldn’t say no without being the bitchy uptight mother.”

  “Is anything ever your fault, too? Do you ever take any responsibility or share any blame for anything?”

  We bob in the water side by side without looking at each other. The silence is no longer calming. The temperature suddenly too hot. My bathing suit, my skin, everything, feels tight.

  He lets out an exasperated sigh. “Why are we even fighting? Nothing happened to her. It all turned out fine. Can’t we just be grateful for that?”

  “Yes,” I say. “We can. You’re right. This is a stupid fight.” I open my mouth to say I’m sorry, but then I decide that I’m not really sorry, because everything I just said to Peter is true.

  “Solly told me that you suggested we pack up and go home early,” he says. “Is it really about the violence? Or is it just that you’re sick of everyone?”

  “I’m not sick of everyone.”

  “You’re sick of Solly.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “You’re hardly the queen of subtlety, Jenna.”

  I dunk my head under the water. When I come back up I feel calmer. Cooler.

  “I guess I’m just having a hard time playing along with the charade of Solly as the perfect husband—not to mention father. I already felt sorry for Malcolm, and now I can’t help but feel sorry for Ingrid. It’s hard to watch her be the cuckquean.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s the opposite of a cuckold. It’s when a woman has an adulterous husband.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  “What?”

  “I never told you Solly was cheating on Ingrid. You’re jumping to conclusions. As usual.” His voice is loud enough now that if we weren’t floating out in the ocean it would draw the attention of people in other rooms. “Really,” he continues. “Stop it. For once can’t you just mind your own goddamn business?”

  I try channeling Maria Josephina in her perfect black cover-up and glasses. I can even see her villa from our spot out in the water. How would she handle this? How would she keep her calm? What shar
p comeback would she employ?

  “Peter,” I say. “This is how you explained Gavi calling you. Disrupting our vacation. Six times while we were on the boat. You said you were dealing with a situation. You basically admitted it was Solly. That you were cleaning up his mess as you tend to do. Look, Peter. I know you pride yourself on your gift for keeping Solly’s secrets. But you let this one slip.”

  “What I told you is that we had a legitimate crisis at work.”

  “So, then, what was the crisis? Come on, Peter. It’s not like I don’t know anything about how the business works. And I also know, like you said, that Kim can handle anything. So I know this wasn’t about bagels and it wasn’t about the app.”

  “Fine. It’s Solly, okay? But please, stop thinking you know everything. He’s not cuckqueaning his wife or whatever your fancy, all-too-clever word is.”

  “So he just slept with her? It was just sex? It isn’t a full-blown affair?”

  “Jenna. I’d rather not—”

  “And if it isn’t an affair and it isn’t just sex, what is left? What is it?”

  Peter has never been a door slammer, but this might be the moment in an argument where Peter would get up and leave the room. I can tell he’s had it with me, and yet I won’t retreat. This is our family venture. We’ve staked our future on Boychick Bagels. If Solly is jeopardizing the health of the business by engaging in a sexual relationship with a subordinate, I have a right to know.

  “It’s complicated,” he says. “Gavi, she can be a little . . .”

  “Needy.”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  I already told him she was needy. And he told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “This could ruin everything, Peter. Gavriella could sue Solly and she could sue you, too.”

  “Jen. Honey.” His voice is softer now. “The situation is under control. Can’t you please just stop your constant worrying? Can you stop seeing the worst-case scenario in every place you look? Can’t you just try and enjoy what’s left of our vacation?”

  I don’t respond. My silence is my answer. I can do none of the things he’s asking me to do.