‘I was born behind Colon Market.’
‘But there are no proper houses there.’
‘There are houses, most certainly. Not as elegant as this one.’
Lola Lovely looked perplexed as she took in Eddie, the Rolex on his wrist, his expensively cut jacket, which he had declined to let me hang up and had now discarded carelessly over the armrest of the settee. She studied him, trying to place him correctly in her world. ‘You’re a friend of my daughter’s?’ she said, and I saw Aunt Mary shift forward in her chair, ready to intervene. ‘She was always interested in the other side,’ Lola Lovely continued. ‘A social reformer at heart.’ Aunt Mary cleared her throat.
‘Then of course Mary will know that the key to social change is opportunity!’ Eddie beamed.
‘Why, yes,’ Lola Lovely looked doubtful. She never seemed entirely at home with other people’s politics.
‘Take me for example,’ Eddie’s tone was almost flirtatious. His eyes shone at her. ‘Why, I didn’t attend school beyond tenth grade.’ I thought how he gave just enough away to seem vulnerable, certain now that Lola Lovely was no threat to him. Lola Lovely allowed herself to be charmed.
‘We knew such difficulties during the war too,’ she said. ‘I had to live in a village with my husband’s foreman and his family. Our house here was stripped by the Japanese. I took what valuables I could carry and we left in the night on an ox cart. Can you imagine it? Mary was just a little girl.’
Eddie laughed. ‘You must have dazzled the entire village,’ he said.
Lola Lovely threw her hands up, delighted. ‘I had to learn how to milk a cow. I had to put my hands down there!’
‘Madam, there is such dignity in working with ones hands,’ Eddie exclaimed. Of course, he spoke like a politician; who could be sure what he really thought? Still, I liked the sound of it.
‘Will you stay for some food?’ Aunt Mary said, though she knew they would hardly have done so at such short notice, and so by asking she gave them their cue to leave. Lola Lovely looked disappointed as Eddie declined.
The men lingered in the hallway for maybe another fifteen minutes saying their goodbyes, edging towards the door with each exchange — last minute queries, mostly from Lola Lovely, about school grades and health, which couldn’t be answered briefly — until eventually Cesar, who had stood gripping the door handle for several minutes already, turned and stepped out into the late-morning sun, moving aside almost immediately to allow Eddie to precede him.
Lola Lovely followed the men out onto the verandah and looked on as they climbed into the back of Eddie’s Mercedes. She waved as the car pulled out of the driveway, a tiny plastic Jesus nodding his endorsement through the back window. ‘How unexpected,’ she said loudly as she stepped back inside. ‘A Greenhills man and quite refined.’
Two Priests
Aunt Mary remained preoccupied for days after Eddie Casama’s visit and though America claimed to have interrogated her about it, we remained unsure as to why. Then, late one afternoon, I opened the boarding-house door to find Esperanza’s two priests side by side on our doorstep. Esperanza being such a populous barrio, it was unusual for the two men to make house calls together and so I was alarmed at the sight of them. The women of the household were at home, but the boys were out and, immediately, I imagined the worst. Father Mulrooney spoke hurriedly: ‘No calamitous acts of God, Joseph. We just wanted to talk to Mrs Morelos. Is she in?’
Father Mulrooney was in his forties but still had a boyish handsomeness about him that made the older women of Esperanza flirt kindly with him and enquire as to whether he was eating properly. He had an air of naivety too, the kind inevitable in men who had entered the seminary at seventeen and known no other life. His hair was coarse and tousled and sandy-coloured and his skin was of the kind of paleness that was ill suited to our sun and had a perennial tinge of redness to it. He had a slightly crumpled look — the sort of man who might in another life have been well advised to marry. Mulrooney was popular in the neighbourhood and well known, for twice a day without fail he walked out from his meagre convento, once before breakfast while the sun was still low and again before supper when the heat was abating. I liked to imagine that these times were chosen deliberately so that the sight of his flock and their uncertain circumstances might curb his appetite, for he remained of slender build.
Pastor Levi, by comparison, enjoyed his wife’s cooking. He was an earnest man, his face prone to smiling and deeply crevassed. He was younger than Mulrooney, in his late thirties. He had travelled a roundabout route through the Lutherans, the Anglicans and an agnostic period during which he had acquired a wife. He returned to Roman Catholicism, kept his wife, though he never completed any official Vatican paperwork on the matter, and carried on to father five children; Mulrooney was the youngest’s godfather. Although Father Mulrooney was officially Levi’s senior, the name of Pastor stuck to Levi: it had a good ring to it.
The two men settled themselves in the sala while I went to fetch Aunt Mary. Both had been to the house before but they, like many of our visitors, seemed not entirely at ease; the place was too impeccably tidy and the presence of the grand piano gave the room a kind of old-fashioned formality. Also, though Bobby Morelos had been dead for years, his presence persisted in the room; his graduation certificates were on the wall, photographs of him on the piano. I’d often admired the portrait of him in naval uniform as I dusted the piano, once I was trusted to do so, my fingers itching to press the keys but afraid of making a sound. In a certain tricky late-afternoon light that gave the present the texture of the past, it almost felt as if he might walk into the room at any moment.
Aunt Mary was upstairs at her desk. She wasn’t expecting visitors and she moved quickly on hearing that both priests were here to see her. I followed her down the stairs, heading to the kitchen to fetch water and iced tea, which I knew was Father Mulrooney’s favourite drink. I brought the drinks to the sala but before I could serve them Aunt Mary sent me back out again to fetch America.
‘It’s a terrible thing about the Pope,’ said Aunt Mary, as I came back in, as if she might have been talking about the men’s favourite uncle.
‘Yes. Thank you,’ Father Mulrooney nodded. No doubt he’d had plenty of practice by now with his responses. But he didn’t dwell; there was other business at hand. ‘I’m not at liberty to reveal my sources … ’ he enunciated carefully and, so saying, he blushed. Aunt Mary smiled at him encouragingly. Later in the conversation, on an unrelated matter, he wouldn’t be able to refrain from saying the same name aloud more than once: Jaynie. Johnny Five Course’s sister who ran the Beauty Queen salon. Eddie Casama’s wife was one of her regulars, though it was widely known that Eddie himself was no stranger to manicures. ‘Several days ago,’ Mulrooney continued, ‘I learned from my sources that Eddie Casama has submitted a planning application.’
‘As part of a consortium,’ Pastor Levi said. I looked at America who, like myself, uncomfortable with the idea of taking a seat next to the others, was leaning in the doorway. She looked bewildered; the language of our world had no need for terms like consortium.
‘He wants to build a shopping mall in Esperanza,’ Mulrooney continued. ‘My sources are facing eviction because their business is situated in the area earmarked for redevelopment.’ He flushed again. I pictured the Beauty Queen, squeezed in among the pharmacy, the noodle joints, the market hall and any number of places that were the body of Esperanza.