Delia's Heart (14 page)

Adan would be the first face I would see when I woke up.

I dared not put a picture of Ignacio anywhere except in the front window of my memory.

And for the moment, Adan’s handsome face was pushing Ignacio’s into the shadows claimed by the third death.

A
t dinner that evening, I decided Sophia had lost a battle but not the war. When she finally came out of her room, she was neatly dressed, with no rings in her nose or anything else that usually annoyed and disturbed Tía Isabela. Her hair was brushed and pinned very neatly, and she wore one of her prettier blouse-and-skirt combinations. She wasn’t overly made up. In fact, she wore no lipstick, black, which Tía Isabela especially hated, overly bright red or otherwise.

At the table, she was Little Miss Politeness, performing perfect dinner etiquette and saying nothing that could disturb her mother. She was even polite to me, passing dishes and thanking me for whatever I passed to her, but I didn’t for one moment believe in her performance. It would take more than being grounded on the weekends for a month and threats of greater punishments to rehabilitate Sophia Dallas. If
she really did turn over a new leaf, it would be a leaf with new thorns as well, the only change being that they might be more difficult to see.

Nevertheless, she began the dinner by reciting a speech she had surely read in a book or gotten over the phone from a friend.

“I’m sorry about my behavior. I know I have no justification for it. My excuse is only that I have been miserable myself. I’m disappointed in my failure to lose weight, and I’ve been a little bitch, especially to you, Delia. I admit that I have been jealous and done things I shouldn’t have done. Some of my so-called good friends have instigated a lot, too. I’ll try to be a better cousin.”

I looked at Tía Isabela, expecting her usual skeptical expression. Surely, I thought, she knew Sophia was not sincere, but to my surprise, she pretended to believe and accept her apology.

“I’m happy to hear you say those things, Sophia. I hope that’s all true.”

“It is.”

“Good. Let’s see how it goes,” she added, holding up the promise of a reprieve.

“Do you think I can get some help with that math tonight?” Sophia asked me, with one eye on her mother. “I didn’t really pay enough attention in class, and as usual, it all looks like gibberish to me.”

“Yes, I’ll help you with it,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. She flashed another smile at her mother.

Am I in the middle of some play? I wondered. Do they lie so much to each other that they have learned to accept and to live on them?

“Mother,” Sophia sang, “can Delia and I go to school in her car tomorrow?”

“Oh, I need to practice with it first,” I said quickly. “And I should give my ankle another day or so.”

“Yes, you should,” Sophia agreed. “You know, Mother, it is a very complex automobile. You should hire someone to teach her about the car.”

“I think she has a very good teacher already,” Tía Isabela said. That surprised me as much as it did Sophia. How did she know what Adan had offered to do?

“Who?” Sophia asked.

Tía Isabela smiled at me and nodded to urge me to tell her.

“Adan asked to do it,” I admitted. “He’ll come by one day this week.”

For a moment, Sophia lost her deceptive sweet face but quickly brought it back.

“That’s a good idea. He owns a lot of sports cars, I hear. Doesn’t he?” she asked me.

“I do not know how many cars he owns or what kind of cars they are.”

“I’m sure you will soon,” she muttered. It fell out of her mouth the way water or something she had gulped too much might dribble. She dropped her gaze quickly to her food and began eating again. I looked at Tía Isabela.

She wore an odd expression. She looked troubled more than angry. Was she worried that somehow, some way, Sophia would turn Adan against me?

The remainder of our dinner was passed in the all-too-familiar silence. Afterward, Sophia came to my room with her math book and tried to be attentive as I explained the homework. I could see talking about
the homework and making her do the problems herself was like forcing her to take some bitter herb to cure a headache or a stomachache. She listened and successfully completed the problems, but she hated every moment of it.

“How can you care about any of this?” she asked, gazing at the textbook pages with disgust.

“I would never have had such opportunity back in Mexico,” I told her. “Thinking about going to college was like thinking about going to the moon. When I was a little girl, my father always told me never to turn away any knowledge or information, for it has a way of finding a place sometime in your life, often when you least expect it.”

She flashed a smirk and then became a little thoughtful. “How come if your family was so poor and everyone worked so hard, you had so much time to spend with your parents?”

I smiled.

“What’s so funny?” she asked angrily.

“I am not laughing at you. I am laughing at what you would think if you saw a party in my village or parents out on what we call here an evening out. The family is always together. There is no such thing as a babysitter. Most of the homes in the village have only one bedroom. Parents and their children are together much, much more. Some children even go with their parents to work. I worked on the soy farm at a very young age, actually as soon as I could become a pair of fruitful hands, as my grandmother would say.”

As if she realized she was getting interested, she shook her head emphatically and scooped up her books. “Sounds like a terrible life. I would have run away.”

“You’re running away from your life here, aren’t you?” I shot back, perhaps a little too sharply.

She did pause as if she had been slapped. “Huh?”

“You mock your school even though it’s an expensive school with more opportunities for students than the public schools provide. You don’t want even to know about your mother’s businesses. You say you don’t want to go to college. You dislike so many of the other students. You seem bored all the time.”

Her eyes actually became glossy with tears, and I felt guilty. “Well, maybe you’ll rub off on me, and I’ll go pick soybeans and be happy,” she said. “Thanks for helping me with this stupid math.”

She turned and rushed out, closing the door sharply behind her. I couldn’t become close to her even if we were stuck together in the same dress, I thought.

The next morning, she came down to breakfast rather than demand that it be brought up to her. I found out later, however, that Tía Isabela had instructed Inez not to bring Sophia her breakfast. It was part of her punishment. She was told to return directly home from school, too, and Señor Garman would be there at the end of the day to get her. Violate one of the new rules, and she would extend her punishment.

The sword of threats over Sophia’s head worked like a steel cage and at least kept her contained at school. I could see her friends were disappointed in her. They had so wanted to continue the onslaught on my reputation and have fun, or what they considered fun, tormenting me. My picture in the paper with Adan and Fani’s continued friendship with me depressed them as well. It was as if I had been installed in the house of royalty. The girls, including Katelynn, who
had helped flame the flames of the nasty stories by reporting me at the restaurant with Edward and Jesse, were now attending to me as if I were the princess and not Fani, or at least as important. Everyone wanted to know about Adan and what it was like going out with an “older man.”

I was flattered but simultaneously depressed about it. Apparently, what Jesse and
mi tía
Isabela had suggested was true. Having a relationship with Adan, or at least having it appear so, was the best antidote for the poison Sophia, Christian, and their clique of friends had tried pouring into everyone else’s ears. I had the distinct feeling that if I didn’t get along with Adan and continue dating him, the rumors, like some aggressive cancer, would come charging back to destroy me and infuriate Tía Isabela. The trip to Mexico would be forbidden. I would soon be the one in a cage and not Sophia. I felt like a prostitute who couldn’t deny that her client was desirable, for I had yet to discover something distasteful or unpleasant about Adan Bovio. A part of me hoped I would, and a part of me feared I would.

He called that night, and we made plans to meet at my aunt’s house the next day to practice with my car as soon as I returned from school. My ankle had improved enough so that I had barely a limp now. Señor Garman returned the crutches to the emergency care. Sophia continually asked me when Adan would be coming around to help me learn how to drive my new car. I knew that she was hoping Tía Isabela would then give permission for me to drive her to school. Perhaps she harbored the belief that she could talk me into taking her other places as well.

I discovered that Fani knew what was happening between Adan and me almost as soon as I did or perhaps a little beforehand. I had the sense that they spoke often and that I was the chief topic of their conversation. I began to believe Fani was acting as a matchmaker almost as enthusiastically as
mi tía
Isabela.

“You two really looked good together at Danielle’s party,” Fani told me.

“With my crutches? We couldn’t even dance.”

“You still made a good impression, and that photographer managed to keep the crutches out of the picture, didn’t he? All I’ve heard are good things about the two of you. My parents said it, too, and they spoke to other adults at the party. You’re the talk of the town, Delia, our own Latina Cinderella.”

All of this talk made me very nervous when Adan arrived on Wednesday. He brought me another gift, a pair of designer sunglasses that I later found out cost hundreds of dollars. Even my aunt would be jealous of them.

“You can’t keep giving me presents,” I told him when I unwrapped the box.

“You can’t drive a car like that wearing an ordinary pair of sunglasses, Delia. It’s practically a sin.”

I laughed and put on the glasses. When I looked in the mirror in the entryway, I was impressed with myself. Immediately, I studied the shadows behind me, too, searching for some sign of the
ojo malvado
. Adan was watching me, a slight smile of amusement on his lips.

“What?” he asked, seeing the expression on my face.

With Ignacio, I would not have hesitated to explain
my belief in the evil eye, but I was afraid Adan would laugh at me and perhaps not want to have anything to do with a girl who was so superstitious.

“Nothing. They are beautiful.
Gracias
, Adan. But you spend too much money on me.”

“Nothing compared with what your cousin Edward spends,” he said. It was like a sharp cut. He saw the pained expression on my face and quickly added, “Besides, I like buying you things. You really appreciate it. Most of the girls I know and have known are so damn spoiled I’d have to buy them a jumbo jet to get a sincere thank-you.”

I continued to look at him in the mirror. It seemed safer to talk to him this way. It was more like a dream, a fantasy, an imaginary relationship that didn’t compare to the reality of Ignacio and me. It was as if Adan and I were characters in a movie we were both watching. To the other girls at school, it truly seemed that way. We had quickly become what our English teacher would say, quoting from Shakespeare, the stuff that dreams were made of. Maybe if I, too, believed this and conducted myself this way, I would not put Ignacio and myself into any real danger. Could I treat it all as lightly as air, slip in and out of my own body, and speak like a puppet? Would Adan notice, and would that make him angry?

“Thank you, Adan,” I said, and he smiled and reached for my hand when I turned to him.

“C’mon. Let’s get to that car. You have the key, right?”

“Right,” I said, laughing at his enthusiasm.

We went out quickly. I opened the locked doors as Jesse had shown me, and Adan got into the driver’s
seat. First, he went through every button, every control. He had me get into the driver’s seat so we could put the seat’s position and height into memory. All I would have to do was touch a number, and the seat would move to fit me. Even the side mirrors moved to fit the way I would look out at them.

We went through the climate-control system and the audio, and then he started to explain the navigator. We put in the address of
mi tía
Isabela’s
hacienda
first.

“All you’ll have to do,” he explained, “is push this location icon that says ‘home,’ and the car will tell you what turns to make until you are here.”

I could see he enjoyed my astonishment. “Most of the roads outside our village have no signs,” I told him. “However, there is always someone who can tell you where to go or how to get there.”

“There’s not always someone here,” he said. “And you can’t depend on their directions, anyway. Besides, you have to be careful about whom you talk to when you’re driving this car. A beautiful young woman who looks well-to-do is a moving target.”

I nodded, impressed with his concern.

“Do you want the top up or down?”

“Maybe down,” I said.

“It’s a hardtop convertible. Watch this,” he said, pressing the button. The top lifted up and back. “Neat, huh?”

“Yes, it does so much.”

“Only what you tell it to do,” he said, smiling.

We started away, and he explained more about the engine, the gears, and the driving. Finally, he pulled to the side of the road, and we changed seats. I pressed
the memory button for my seat, and it moved closer and higher. I screamed with delight, and he laughed. It took awhile for me to get used to the accelerator. The car was so powerful that if I pressed too hard, too quickly, we both were snapped backward, screaming. Eventually, it all became much easier, and I became comfortable.

“It’s a beautiful piece of machinery,” he said, stroking the dashboard as if to him the automobile was really alive. “You’re going to enjoy it.”

“Thank you for helping me,” I said when we pulled up to the
hacienda
.

We put the top back up.

“You did great. I imagine you are quite a good student, Delia. Your teachers must enjoy having you.”

“Thank you, Adan.”

“Can I dominate your weekend this weekend?” he asked before opening the car door.