American Dirt : A Novel (2020) Read online

  Sebastian locked his eyes on her and answered in the most deliberate possible tone. ‘No.’

  She nodded. ‘The piece you’re working on about Los Jardineros – does it specifically mention him?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all about him, his big debut. The whole Hello, World, I’m a Major Kingpin exposé.’

  Lydia tilted her head to one side, placed her hand against her forehead. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered. ‘It seems impossible.’

  ‘There’s nothing to do, Lydia.’

  ‘But I just can’t understand it. I know him.’

  ‘I know, Lydia, I know. How charming he can be, how erudite. But he’s also incredibly dangerous.’

  She pictured Javier’s eyes, how exposed they looked whenever he removed his glasses. That word dangerous seemed so incompatible.

  ‘I know it’s difficult to get your head around it,’ Sebastián said. ‘I can see you’re struggling, and I’m sorry.’ He paused before he shifted gears. ‘But he’s a murderer, Lydia. Many times over. This guy is made of blood.’

  This guy. She shook her head again. Sebastián stood up and placed his hands on the back of his chair. He pushed it under the table. ‘He’s not who you thought he was.’

  ‘But you said yourself, just last night, that he, that Los Jardineros, they aren’t as violent as the other cartels.’

  He had said that, dammit. Lydia opened the kitchen window to the noise of traffic below.

  ‘Lydia, I love you. I love your loyalty and your goodness. But we are talking degrees of murderers here. Less violent or not, he’s still a major narco. And when you’ve killed that many people, killing becomes conventional. Does it matter that he’s killed fewer children than other murderers have? It’s not a moderation born of virtue. It’s a pinche business decision. That guy would kill anyone if he thought it was the smart thing to do.’

  ‘Not anyone.’ Her voice was a weakening plea. ‘He has a daughter.’

  Sebastián dropped his head between his outstretched arms.

  ‘Sebastián, listen,’ she said. ‘I know it all sounds absurd but I’m not naïve. I’m not an idiot, right?’

  ‘You’re the smartest woman I know.’

  ‘So I’m just, I’m trying to take it all in, to reconcile everything you’re telling me, and to make it match up with the person I know Javier to be.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘It’s difficult.’

  ‘I can’t imagine.’

  ‘Because I do, Sebastián, I know him. And like you say, he is smart. In a different life he could’ve been someone good—’

  ‘But it’s not a different life, Lydia. He’s not someone good.’

  ‘But maybe he still could be. That’s what I’m telling you. Because people are complex and whatever you say he is, he’s also this other person. This tortured, poetic soul, full of remorse. He’s funny. He’s kind. Maybe things could still be different.’

  ‘Wait.’ Sebastian surveyed his wife, who was now leaning against the kitchen windowsill. Outside a horn blared, and a breeze moved past a drying tendril of her hair. ‘Wait a second, Lydia. Are you in love with him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Sebastián, don’t be ridiculous. This is no time for histrionics.’

  He shook his head. ‘But do you have feelings for him?’

  ‘No, not like that. I do love him—’

  ‘You love him?’

  ‘He’s my friend! A real friend, someone who’s become very important to me!’ She leaned her hands on her knees and looked up at him. The coffeemaker gurgled and sighed. ‘His father died of cancer, too.’

  Her husband pulled the chair back out and sat down again. ‘Oh, Lydia.’

  Sebastián had never met Lydia’s father, but his death was such a defining loss in Lydia’s life, and indeed in Sebastián and Lydia’s early courtship, that he felt a strong kinship to his deceased father-in-law, nonetheless. He knew all the stories. How, when Lydia was twelve years old (slightly too old for teddy bears), her lifelong favorite developed a gash in its nose. Lydia was heartbroken and embarrassed. The bear hemorrhaged his stuffing all over the house. Lydia’s father went quietly to the pharmacy and returned with a bag that he placed on their kitchen table beneath a swing-arm lamp. He instructed her to bring the bear from her room. She transported the bear with great care, and when she returned to the kitchen, it had been transformed into an operating room. There was a sheet of plastic spread out across the table. Her father wore a mask and rubber gloves. His surgical tools were spread out beneath the lamp: needle, thread, a gleaming swatch of new leather. Lydia’s father crafted an entirely new leather nose for her bear. Sebastián knew, too, that the only green vegetable his father-in-law ate was lima beans, that he had a three-inch scar on his leg from a childhood boating accident, that he sang loudly at concerts and sometimes in mortifying harmony with whatever act was onstage. Sebastián knew that the only time Lydia had ever seen her father cry was when Oscar De La Hoya won the gold medal round at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Sebastián felt such a fondness for his father-in-law that he wondered if he knew the man better in death than he would have in life. They’d been dating only eight weeks, and were at the Estadio Azul in Mexico City attending a fútbol match when Lydia got that terrible phone call. Though the cancer had been slow, the end had been fast, unexpected. It was October 24, 2003, exactly one week before el Día de los Muertos. Reportedly his last words had been, ‘There’s a party. I have to prepare.’

  Lydia and Sebastián left the stadium immediately, and he drove her first to her apartment and then, through the night, back to Acapulco. Her clothes were in heaps in the backseat. She couldn’t think what she was supposed to bring, so she brought everything. She packed in a laundry basket. Sebastián held her hand in the dark and stopped on the side of the road near Cuernavaca when she thought she might throw up. He drove back and forth to Mexico City three more times that week: the next day, to retrieve his own clothes, two days later, to inform Lydia’s professors and his own about their absences, and finally to bring some of her friends down for the funeral, and to join Lydia’s mother in convincing Lydia to return to college.

  In some way, Sebastián always credited that tragedy with being the thing that cemented their relationship. They had already known they were falling in love, and then the gravity of that heartbreak acted like a measuring stick for Lydia. It calculated the depth of Sebastián’s character. The death aroused an unfamiliar stability in Sebastián. He found himself expanding in an effort to plug the holes in Lydia’s life. So he understood, when she said this simple thing about Javier – that his father died of cancer, too – Sebastián understood the scope of what that shared experience really meant to his wife.

  ‘How old was he,’ Sebastián asked, ‘when his father died?’

  ‘Eleven,’ she said.

  Sebastián grimaced. ‘Terrible.’

  Lydia went to the cupboard and took down two mugs, which she filled with coffee. She set one in front of her husband and sat down beside him once again. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs.

  ‘Sebastián, I think he’s in love with me.’

  Sebastián filled his cheeks with air before letting it all loose into the room. ‘Maldita sea,’ he said. ‘Of course he is.’

  * * *

  In the short term, the only real change was that Sebastián began calling and coming to the shop more frequently than he had before. Four or five times a day he texted, and even if she was busy, she made sure to respond, to reassure him. All was well. Lydia was intensely nervous when Javier came the following week. She texted Sebastián beneath the counter. He’s here. I’ll call u after.

  Javier carried a small parcel and his eyes were brighter than usual. He seemed eager for the other customers to withdraw, but Lydia took her time, re
luctant to be alone with him. When the last couple wandered toward the exit without any purchases, she called after them, ‘Did you find everything okay?’ They didn’t answer her. The man only nodded, and the bell above the door startled as they left. Lydia’s hands trembled as she spooned sugar into Javier’s cup.

  He smiled broadly at her from his stool. ‘I brought a gift.’ He prodded the paper-wrapped bundle across the counter to her.

  It was plain brown paper, taped and devoid of ribbons, but the austerity of the wrapping didn’t diminish the intimacy of an unwarranted gift on a Wednesday morning. Lydia opened it anyway. Inside was a wooden nesting doll, peanut shaped and about the length of Lydia’s forearm, with a barely visible seam running around her middle. She was painted in festive colors: black hair, pink cheeks, yellow apron, red roses. Lydia pulled her apart at the seam and, inside, found her identical, smaller sister. She pulled her apart again, and again, and each time she discovered in miniature the shell of the doll before her.

  ‘They’re Russian nesting dolls,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’ Javier watched her face. ‘But really they’re me. Keep going.’

  She pulled apart the last severed doll, no taller than her thumb, and inside she found the tiniest sister. This one was bright turquoise, and more beautiful, more exquisite and detailed than all the sisters before her. Lydia pinched her between finger and thumb. She held her up and studied the intricate silver filigree of her paintwork.

  ‘And that’s you.’ Javier tapped his chest with his fist. ‘Muy dentro de mí.’

  Lydia blinked rapidly, but it was too late to conceal the tears that came to the corners of her eyes. Javier mistook them, and his smile broadened.

  ‘You like them?’

  She sniffed. ‘Very much, thank you.’ She hastened to pack the dolls back into one another while he watched.

  He noticed the way she didn’t take care to line up their tops with their bottoms. This was his first indication that something was truly askew. ‘What’s the matter, mi reina?’

  When the dolls were reassembled, Lydia rolled them back into their brown paper and placed them beneath the counter with her phone. There was no easy way to say it. She might as well be direct.

  ‘I received some bad news last week,’ she said. He leaned forward, frowning. ‘About you.’

  He leaned back, frowning deeper. A very long silence grew between them, and then a customer came in, jangling the bell above the door. The woman bought three notebooks, three fancy pens, and a birthday card, and Lydia found herself unable to smile while she rang the woman up. She felt Javier’s anxiety like a malediction in the room. It rattled into her chest. His shoulders were curled in, and he squeezed his flattened hands between his thighs. When the customer left, Lydia went to the door and locked it. She flipped the sign to cerrado.

  They studied each other across the counter. She stared into his eyes, and neither of them shifted their gaze.

  At length, he spoke. ‘I presumed you knew.’ His voice was strained, raspy.

  She shook her head without removing her eyes from his. ‘How would I know? Why would I know?’

  His eyes swam even larger than usual behind the glasses. His mouth trembled as he spoke. ‘It feels as though almost everyone knows. I thought . . . somehow, I hoped it didn’t matter to you. I thought it didn’t matter because you knew me, you could see the person I really am.’

  ‘I can, I still can,’ she said. ‘But, Javier, that other part of you, the part I don’t know . . . it’s irreconcilable. That person is real, too, yes?’

  Finally, he dropped his gaze from hers. He blinked his eyes repeatedly, removed his glasses, and cleaned them on the tail of his shirt.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  Lydia pressed her lips together.

  ‘I’m in love with you. I am in love with you.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Lydia, you’re the only real friend I have. The only person in my life who wants nothing from me except the joy between us.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘It is true! And when I’m not with you, I’m lonely for you. You have no idea the light you provide. You and Marta, you’re all I really have. Nothing else matters. I would leave it all if I could.’

  ‘Then do!’ She slapped her hand against the counter. ‘Leave it!’

  He smiled sadly at her. ‘It doesn’t work that way.’

  ‘It works whatever way you say it works! You’re the jefe, right?’

  ‘Yes, and if I leave, what then? What will become of Acapulco if I leave? How many people will die while they fight over who takes my place?’ His elbows were up on the counter. He tugged at his hair in distress. ‘You know I never wanted this. It was an accident of fate that I ended up here.’

  Quite near the surface of her consciousness, Lydia knew that couldn’t really be true. If it was a lottery ticket, it was one he had selected and purchased with his own money. She knew this, that he must have committed specific evils to have attained this rank. How many? Of what nature? Some combination of fear and sadness prevented her from asking. She didn’t dare to contradict his justifications.

  ‘But here we are, here I am.’ His eyes were pleading. ‘There’s no getting out of it, Lydia, not for me. But it doesn’t define who I am.’

  She could feel the dissonance throbbing through her brain like an erratic pulse. Of course it defines who you are, she did not say. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt him take her hand.

  ‘Please understand,’ he said. ‘Try.’

  When Lydia had found Javier’s picture in Sebastián’s folder the previous week, she’d been riven with real anguish. Seldom had she experienced such profound and authentic friendship in her life. The prospect of losing that attachment grieved her. But now that Javier sat before her, clasping her hand in his, now that the thing had been spoken between them and confirmed to be true, all that was left for Lydia was autopsy. What love had been there was already slipping away. She could still sense it like a ghost in the room, vague and inanimate, but she could no longer feel it. Her affection had gone, leached out, like blood from a cadaver. When he squeezed her fingers, she caught the scent of formaldehyde. When he hooked his sad gaze into hers, she saw the glass of his lenses, spattered with blood.

  Chapter Nine

  In Carlos and Meredith’s house in Chilpancingo, there are new ghosts to contend with. Trauma waits for stillness. Lydia feels like a cracked egg, and she doesn’t know if she’s the shell or the yolk or the white. She is scrambled. During the three days that follow, she and Luca are often alone in the house while the boys are at school, Carlos is at work, and Meredith prepares the Indiana missionaries for their return home. There is no temporary suspension of living as there usually is with death, because a public pause would arouse suspicion. Lydia and Luca have to stay hidden. The family has to carry on in their typical fashion. The sons have well-stocked bookshelves in their rooms, gracias a Dios, so while they’re out living their regular lives, Luca reads two or three books a day. Lydia tries to read as well, but her mind can’t hold the words. She doesn’t have the reservoir of space to take anything else into her brain. So instead she tries to keep her body occupied. She cooks food that neither she nor Luca feels like eating. She cleans sinks and laundry and rugs that aren’t dirty. She watches as Luca grows silent.

  The afternoons feel a thousand hours long. Luca barely even changes positions on the couch as he reads. He moves when he finishes a book; he gets up to retrieve another from the shelf. Whenever he rises to use the bathroom, Lydia tries to coax him into eating. The rest of her time she spends at the old IBM desktop computer that sits on a small cart in one corner of the living room. She checks the headlines coming out of Acapulco. There have been beautiful tributes to Sebastián by his colleagues, but Lydia can’t read the
reflective pieces. The word héroe makes her angry, as if he chose his death courageously, as if it means something. For God’s sake, he died with a spatula in his hand. Instead she skims the news for emerging facts about the investigation, and it’s as she expected: nothing. Because fear and corruption work in tandem to censor the people who might otherwise discover the clues that would point to justice. There will be no evidence, no due process, no vindication. So Lydia checks for other stories, new violence, any hint of what’s happening among Los Jardineros. A tourist was accidentally killed in a shootout near the beach huts at Playa Hornos yesterday afternoon. A burned-out car with two bodies inside, one large, one small, was found outside Colonia Loma Larga this morning.

  The mouse pointer trembles on the screen, but she manages to click out of the news and shift gears. Carlos will get them as far as Mexico City, but what then? She must try to make plans. She researches the buses, and yes, there are reports of increased roadblocks across the area, an uptick in disappearances. Travel within cities is relatively safe, but between cities it is strongly discouraged. Authorities advise deferring nonessential trips on regional highways in Guerrero, Colima, and Michoacán. Lydia feels a new wave of despair threatening to descend, but she doesn’t have time for it. The roads are not an option. Even if her driver’s license were current, she wouldn’t risk driving with Luca right now, and the buses are no better. The roadblocks are too dangerous. So what’s left? She checks airline tickets, although she doesn’t love the idea of her name being on a flight manifest. Everything is digital now, and what good will it do to run a thousand miles away if her name raises a red flag in some online database? Tijuana is about as far as you can get without a passport, and that flight is three hours and forty minutes. Plenty of time for Javier to send a sicario to greet them when they deplane. Lydia imagines carnage at the baggage claim. She can see the headlines. There are no long-distance passenger trains in Mexico, so as a last resort, Lydia studies the freight trains the Central American migrants ride across the length of the country. All the way from Chiapas to Chihuahua, they cling to the tops of the cars. The train has earned the name La Bestia because that journey is a mission of terror in every way imaginable. Violence and kidnapping are endemic along the tracks, and apart from the criminal dangers, migrants are also maimed or killed every day when they fall from the tops of the trains. Only the poorest and most destitute of people attempt to travel this way. Lydia shudders at the YouTube stories, the photographs, the grim warnings delivered by recent amputees. She starts over, researches everything again from the beginning. Buses, planes, trains. There has to be something she hasn’t considered. There has to be a way out. She clicks and scrolls and hours pass like sludge, while Luca turns page after page.