Daniela Chamorro

The Widow

I.The Silk Scarf

No one would have noticed Doña Ana’s scarf had disappeared — she was dead, after all, and without a neck to wear it, the lilac striped item would’ve been forgotten, or declared lost by her sons, who couldn’t have told you anything specific about their mother anyway. Except that at the funeral mass, her close friend Dolores de Martinez breezed into the cathedral, silk scarf tied in a perfect knot at her thin, wrinkled throat.

“Isn’t it darling?” Dolores said, in response to nothing. “Anita gave it to me when she died,” Dolores touched the scarf with a manicured hand.

None of us had the interest to ask how exactly that exchange occurred. Did she bestow the scrap of fabric before or after she dropped dead at age 65 from “old age”?

We didn’t question much about Dolores anymore, not since her husband passed away a year prior. Don Enrique had been the center of Dolores’ world; she had been the primary moon of his. They were a strange pair: she, tall, rectangular, bright, and fabulous, and he, stout, round, slow, and ginghamed. Yet pair they were - they had been inseparable since they’d met.

Now, since his passing, Dolores seemed to be without a planet, lacking gravity, a balloon that a child had left go of, with no head for his parents’ finances. She was always dressed for a nonexistent cocktail party and talking nonsense — when we saw her at all. Once the host of regular soirees, Dolores never invited anyone to her home anymore. Like her, all we saw now was the outside: an iron-wrought gate and a locked wooden door.

As the priest emerged from his chambers to begin the mass, Dolores sat in the front row, in the spot recently vacated by Doña Ana. “She wanted me to take her spot,” Dolores whispered loudly to nobody in particular, then went up to do the first reading from Proverbs 19.

None of us asked why a woman in perfect health decides to start distributing church seating assignments to her close friends.

“Were they even close?” We wondered this aloud to each other in the middle of the department store, colliding like bumper cars on route to different sections, gripping each others’ arms and pulling lips to ears. “My cook used to work for Doña Ana, and she says Dolores hasn’t been over to visit in years. How close can you be, when you don’t know what their living room looks like anymore?”

“Father Juan says they came to the Eucharistic Adoration together every Thursday. Then, it was just Doña Ana.”

“Ana’s always been the favorite of every saint, Virgin, or member of the Holy Trinity she spoke to. She prayed and she got what she prayed for.”

This was true. A new job for her niece? Done. A cure for her neighbor’s cousin’s colon cancer? Done. Financial assistance for the old woman who came to her gate every Thursday morning? Done. Ana only had to wake up to pray at 3 AM once for answers to float her way.

“I suppose Dolores resented that after a time.”

“I would, too, if I spent the same amount of time on my knees and got nothing for it.”

“Well, maybe now, she’ll be bumped up the line.”

“Maybe she bumped off Doña Ana to bump herself.”

“Tied that pretty scarf around her neck and strangled her.”

We all laughed and drifted off to the home goods for a $500 lamp we absolutely needed.

II.The Bulldog Cane

Two weeks later, over five o’clock coffee, we learned that Don Pablo, the director of the national bank, had been bludgeoned to death in his home office around 11 in the morning with an unidentified object.

At the wake, Dolores sat before the open casket in a dramatic black dress, a wooden cane with a silver bulldog on the top across her lacy knees. The height on her heels was a little too high. Her blue eyeshadow was a shade too bright. Every five minutes she’d dab her dry blue-rimmed eyes and make dramatic asides to Pablo’s wife and sons.

“Ay, Pablito. Enrique loved him so much!”

Don Pablo had been Enrique’s closest friend in his first and his last years. Enrique had loved him, first because Pablo had attended Yale (like him) and more recently, because Pablo kept Enrique’s financial situation under wraps.

Enrique’s inherited fortune had dwindled over the years. His many businesses had failed quietly but consistently, and his house, designed and built during the brief success of a fast food franchise, was choking his checking accounts.

Dolores either didn’t know or didn’t care, and we hoped it was the former. She insisted on keeping two maids, a gardener, a driver, and a cook, because “that’s what everybody else did.” Somebody had to manage the 5-bedroom mansion while she was out.

So Dolores went shopping; Enrique took out loans. Dolores went shopping; Enrique defaulted on his loans. Dolores went shopping; Enrique kept it from his wife and everyone else.

Pablo had helped Enrique sell some properties to keep his lifestyle afloat, but more importantly, he’d kept Enrique’s secret — though of course, we all knew about it and pretended not to. Under wraps, but the wraps are cellophane, stretched thin and ripping in several places.

When Enrique passed, Don Pablo continued to advise the family on their finances. We’re sure he advised Dolores to sell their mansion and purchase something more modest, or maybe move in with her eldest daughter. Dolores responded like the ivy on the outer walls of her home: she clung tighter.

“I couldn’t possibly sell the house,” she’d told him, and her maid had told another maid had told another maid had told all our maids. “An open concept kitchen? Heaven forbid.” Another time, her argument was, “And where would I put all of my things? My mother-in-law’s hutch? Enrique’s desk? The outdoor living room set? The indoor living room set?” And yet another, “The service areas in those new houses are simply too small. I will not subject Marta and Flor to those conditions.”

So now her four children paid the steep upkeep for the family home, though she was the only one who lived in it.

“A crime, to force your children to spend their inheritance on you, and even worse, their paycheck,” we said, contemplating the dry sandwiches and cups of orange juice offered by the funeral home.

“The loans have to get paid. Are they paying them, too?”

The silver on the cane glimmered in the fluorescent lighting of the funeral home, announcing Dolores’ approach.

“Interesting cane,” someone brave (or shameless) said.

“Enrique’s from his time at Yale,” she said, handling the stout silver dog like a baton twirling champion. “Pablito had one, too, but, last time we spoke, he said he lost his.” She smiled a tearful smile. “I’d give him this one, if only I could climb up to heaven.”

She danced away with her ham sandwich.

“Never saw Enrique with that cane in my life.”

III.The Green Dress

The day after Martina Delgado was found with her pretty eyes gouged out, and dead from a literal back stabbing to boot, the seamstress canceled her appointments with all her usual clients.

“I won’t have your items ready today,” the seamstress told us. “Doña Dolores insisted I come in for the entire day and alter something for her.”

None of us knew of Dolores before she’d married Enrique. Usually you see an engagement coming, and you buy a new dress a few months beforehand, or, even better, use it as an excuse for light jet setting. We thought Enrique would find his bride among his family acquaintances, the collection of ten or so families that flowed through each other’s genealogies like the arteries of one beating heart. His only serious relationship — Martina Delgado, come to think of it — fizzled out before he went to Yale. Shame; their parents played tennis together at the country club.

Another Sunday, another funeral mass. Our black dresses and suits would be growing tired if we only had one set. Martina Delgado lay like an angel, eyes closed to the cathedral ceiling. We heard the doctor had to stitch up the two long gashes down her back. Not that we’d want to see them.

It surprised all of us when Enrique brought Dolores, a question mark in slim capris and a tight little black tube top, to his parents’ two-story colonial home. Who were her parents? Who were her grandparents? They didn’t exist, because we’d never heard of them.

Yet he married her anyway, and she used his money to buy herself a size 4 wardrobe and, eventually, a tummy tuck, once her naturally trim figure fell victim to three natural births, a C-section, and Enrique’s dawdling eye. Money got rid of her dark arm hair, her yellowed teeth, her overwrought fingernail polish. She discovered she looked her best in deep reds, warm oranges, and matte black. Even her tan faded, a little, never enough.

She put his name on her first-ever passport and on the driver’s license she never used: Dolores de Martinez. Not so much a traditionalist move as a makeover, a shedding, a reincarnation where the bug comes back as a lioness.

We took her in eventually, once it was clear this wasn’t just a first marriage. We can admit when we’re wrong. We never said it, even to each other, but we wondered if she knew she’d never be one of us, not really.

Dolores was late to Martina Delgado’s mass, so everybody saw her walk in during the opening hymn. She strolled down the center aisle in the green dress that had robbed us all of hem alterations. The disproportionate A-line skirt of her dress ballooned from her nonexistent waist. The jewel tone, meant for a woman with a lighter complexion, made her look closer to death than her husband’s former sweetheart. As she passed us, we all saw the two long stitches running from the top down to the small of her back, where the fabric had been taken in at least 6 inches.

The seamstress did beautiful work, but even she couldn’t make a dress fit the wrong owner.

IV.The Mont Blanc Pen

Dolores’ backyard was a point of pride for her the way a restaurant owner is proud of their signature dish when they’ve never scrambled an egg. She teetered on the edge of the back patio, straw hat laid on her dark hair, watching the gardener weed and pot and move a snake plant from one side of the yard to the other. Then she took credit for every mango on the mango tree, every blade of ornamental grass, every bird that twittered its compliments at the lip of the stone fountain.

Doctor Francisco was the largest of these birds, a stuffed parakeet that hopped around her garden every time he came over for Enrique’s check-ups, tilting his head at this and that.

“What a beautiful fountain,” he said. “Enrique’s heart is failing,” he said. “What will you do, doctor?” Enrique said. The doctor twisted his shiny Mont Blanc pen and wrote a prescription.

“What beautiful grass,” he said. “Enrique’s heart is still failing.” “What else can you do, doctor?” Enrique asked. The doctor took the heavy Mont Blanc pen from his shirt pocket and wrote a prescription.

“What beautiful flowers,” he said. “Enrique’s heart won’t last another year.” “Careful with the yellow oleander,” Dolores responded. “They’re poisonous.”

Except Doctor Francisco was less talented than her gardener, and Enrique died of a heart attack before age 72.

Enrique’s health was never good. Clearly. Look at the size of his shirts, the way his belt disappeared more and more under his distended belly, the excess of rice and bread on his dinner plates. Whose fault was it, really? A wife should be there for her husband. A wife should fix his plate. A wife should make the grocery list. A wife should give him his medicines. Till death do we part, but you try to avoid the death part. Dolores dealt with it like she dealt with pests in her garden: she let someone else handle it.

“Doña Dolores finally came off the back patio the other day,” her gardener told his wife on Wednesday after work. “Wonder of wonders. Wanted me to pick her some of that yellow oleander to bring to the doctor. Nice man. Hope he likes the bouquet.”

None of us saw a bouquet in his window. None of saw any flowers at all until we ordered the funeral wreaths for Doctor Francisco’s wake. Severe heart problems, of all things. You’d think a doctor would take care of himself the way he does his patients.

We suppose the flower store forgot to add the names to the Martinez’ funeral wreath, because at the wake, Dolores signed the card on her arrangement herself, with the Mont Blanc she produced from the depths of her bright yellow purse. Rest in peace.

Snake plants, cacti, the spiky branches of the yellow oleander, a towering mango tree, the ground around it cleared of overripe fruit. An expanse of grass, both wide and long, put in square by square, trimmed to the exact right height, whatever that was. A bubbling stone fountain, patroned by grackles and motmots and the occasional squawking parakeet. No sign of an ant. It really was an enviable backyard.

V.The Sapphire Ring

“Enrique never buys me anything,” Dolores would say to us with a laugh. “Except for my engagement ring. Have I told you the story of how I lost it?” She had. “I was with Isabella at my mother-in-law’s house, and she was only six months old. The nanny had the day off. A group of men came into the house and held us at gunpoint.” They had. The older Doña Martinez had confirmed this. “And one of them took a liking to my sapphire engagement ring. Enrique loved sapphires, and I guess men just love sapphires, because this man also loved sapphires. And I didn’t want to give it to him. Well, that man held a gun to my Isabella’s head and said it was either the ring or my baby.” She’d sigh for an eternity, and that was not the end of the story, but that was as far as she got.

Isabella Martinez had blue eyes and a blue-tiled pool in the center garden of her home. If you leaned over the railing of the spiral staircase that led to the second floor, you could see right down into it, the six jets sending gentle wiggles through the water. What a beautiful color. Who does your maintenance? we asked her. I have a crew of three that comes every Friday, would you like their number? Yes, we would. Aren’t you afraid one of your children will jump off the staircase into the pool? we asked her next. I’m very careful, she said.

Dolores had prayed the Rosary every day during her four pregnancies, begging the Virgin for her children to have blue eyes, and she’d succeeded four times over: two blonde baby boys, two porcelain-faced baby girls. “The Virgin spoils me,” she’d tell her guests at the baptisms, cradling the wide-eyed infant in their flowing white christening gown and scratchy bonnet. Perhaps she thought that, like her Heavenly Mother, she’d be praised for birthing children who were just like their father.

None of us told her we’d prayed just as hard. None of us wanted to know what she would’ve done to a child that had her brown eyes and tanned skin.

It might not have been worse than what she did to the ones with blue eyes: nothing. She held them over the baptismal font while the priest poured water on their blonde hair, then ignored them. She spent her evenings at galas while the babies cried in their nanny’s arms. She took month-long trips to Italy, Southeast Asia, and Russia with Enrique. Enrique purchased the gifts: handmade leather belts from Florence for his sons and sapphire rings from Thailand for his daughters. Dolores bought clothes and jewelry for herself.

Isabella Martinez had her father’s blue eyes and a blue sapphire ring and a blue-tiled pool in the center garden of her home, which she cleaned on Fridays.

It was Friday, so the pool maintenance crew, in their khakis and embroidered polos and long plastic pool rake, heard Isabella Martinez arguing with her mother on the second floor. The staircase has an open railing, you see, and sound carries.

“I need it —”

“Mama, you’re sick, I’m gonna call the doctor—”

“Doctor’s gone, I made him go —”

“I’ll call another one —”

“I need it, I need it, I can’t lose it again, you can’t make me —”

“Mama, it doesn’t fit you, your fingers are smaller than mine —”

“I’ll have it resized for me —”

“Mama, you’re not well, let me call someone. Please —”

“Not again, not again, take her, I’ll do anything —”

And the pool maintenance crew said Isabella came down the stairs, and they said Dolores followed, and they said Dolores grabbed for her daughter’s hand,and they said Dolores pulled, and they said Isabella fell back, over the railing, hit her blonde head on the side of the pool, and fell in.

We recommend Isabella Martinez’ pool maintenance services, too. Between them, the three men scooped out the blood with a bucket, ensured the filtration system was working, raised the chlorine concentration, and maintained the pH at 7.5 for the next half hour. They didn’t even charge extra for removing the body.

VI.Mea Culpa

Five funeral masses in five weeks, we huffed, passing next to Isabella Martinez’s casket. Thank god they were all on Sunday, so they count, although Saturday counts for Sunday, so a Saturday mass would have been fine as well, but the priest could really pick a new reading, I am the resurrection and the life for the sixth time was getting tiresome, and speaking of tiresome, when was she going to —

Dolores burst through the door of the cathedral, drowning in Martina’s green dress and about twenty other items of clothing, accessories, and jewelry, a Christmas tree with too many ornaments. The priest stopped sing-speaking the Psalm but, like the rest of us, he could only stare at the creature that clearly wanted to be stared at, or it wouldn’t be here, wild-eyed and dressed up.

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned!” she screamed, careening down the center aisle like a demented bride, her many beads and jewels and pearls crashing into each other as she went. Doña Ana’s silk scarf pulled tightly on her jugular, and she swung Don Pablo’s cane above her head, Doctor Francisco’s pen tucked in the breast pocket of one of the button-down shirts on her frame. She climbed the steps to the altar and threw herself at the feet of a Christ mid-Crucifixion.

“Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault!”

She struck the floor with her left hand. Isabella’s ring swung around, too big for her bony finger, the sapphire clinking against the marble tile, challenging the Mohs scale, over and over, until the police came and dragged all 200 pounds of Frankenstein’s Dolores away. Confessions to priests are confidential; Christ has no such privileges.

At least now they could sell the house. We all offered to help her (remaining) children clear it out. All this death had us feeling charitable.

When the iron gate opened and we walked past the overgrown ivy and through the heavy wooden door, we found things. Things shoved into every box, every corner, every surface, every square inch of floor and shelf space, blocking the faded faces in framed photographs. Old things and new things, hat boxes with no hats, evening bags with no RSVPs left in them, rings with the wrong color gem, moldy suede jackets for trips she’d never take. The freezer was packed with Enrique’s preferred cut of steak, the pantry lined with his favorite juice, the medicine cabinet singing with silver blister packs of heart medication. Drawers refused to close on too many restaurant receipts and hangers bent heavy with the weight of gingham button-downs and wool pants. Things, things, things. Things enough for five more lifetimes, in a house of five rooms, with a household staff of five. Five lifetimes, but none of them lived with Enrique Martinez.