THERE IS SOMETHING indescribably indulgent about a coffee tower. As cakes go, a coffee tower, properly made and well presented, is the closest thing there is to a logical proof for the existence of God. On the one hand, the atheists argue, given an infinite supply of flour and butter and endless batteries of eggs and millions of copper pans of boiling water all jostled together in an eternal kitchen from the day the stars were born until now, it is possible that choux pastry could simply have happened. More complicated things have simply happened, after all—bedbugs and bacteria and blue whales, for example. But then they would also have to believe that an infinity of bakers had dolloped the newborn choux out onto immemorial parchments and, over endless, uncountable millennia, baked them into buns and pierced them to let the steam escape and cooled them and filled them with the thickest, most perfectly coffee-scented cream, rich and soft and brown as the thighs of that new girl who has just started work at the Ottavio House.
A Florentine biscuit, with its almonds and its glacé cherries all cemented together in a circle of bitter chocolate, is wonderful enough but there is something gravelly and random about a Florentine and there are bits that can stick in the teeth, nuts that unerringly pierce the suspect filling.
A coffee tower will never do that. A coffee tower never disappoints. It sits, shivering on its tiny paper doily, fresh and bright and chill, cowering like a captured cloud and crowned with a little chocolate disc, waiting to be devoured like a virgin bride.
Father Gonzalez, if he was wise, would put aside all his theology and his dogma and his encyclicals, he would take the Catechism and the Spiritual Exercises and throw them out the window and, instead, in front of every doubting unbeliever, he would place a clean white saucer with a coffee tower in the middle of it and simply say: “Here is proof. See you at church on Sunday.”
Mrs. Sophia Antonia de la Santísima Trinidad y Torre Blanco Valdez was sitting now in front of just such a coffee tower, at a table in the Members’ Dining Room of the Merino Polo Club, looking out across a tray of cakes and through the French windows to the terrace.
The terrace was England, or what she imagined England to be; old stone and small, modest flowers in becoming, ladylike hues. Nothing extravagant. Nothing ostentatious. Everything a calm dignity.
A few people stood there, looking down at the polo field with its faraway noises of horses and hoof beats, its grunts and cries, the thwack of the mallets, the polite applause. She had spent most of the afternoon down there already, sheltering from the sun under an enormous and beautiful hat, sitting in a deckchair on the edge of the field, knees together, legs locked and tilted a little to one side in that graceful, uncomfortable slant she had learned as a girl when her ankles were slim and in a perfect, one to one-and-two-thirds ratio to her calves. After so long it should be easier, less achingly painful. Life was unfair. Mrs. Sophia Antonia de la Santísima Trinidad y Torre Blanco Valdez had learned that lesson long ago too.
Polo was so noisy and distressing, she found. Everything about it was a fuss and a bother; those nasty hard balls, all that impolite barging about, jangling, creaking harness, sweat and lather and long, ugly strands of drool arcing and flicking from the bridles of the ponies. No, she was almost sorry she had ever permitted Chano to get involved, but his father, his father …
Still, she had done her duty. Nobody could ever accuse her of failing in her duty. She had sat there for hours in the heat, bored to the point of actual distress. She had struggled, all ungainly, out of that ridiculous deckchair, forced at last to accept a helpful arm from a nice young man, and made her way to the ladies’ room and then, as if to prove her devotion, she had returned to watch the end of the game and see Chano lift the cup. She had done her duty.
And now this was to be her reward. A proper table, with a proper cloth and nice, heavy cutlery and thin cups, nice thin cups with gold rims and painted roses. She deserved it. Just a little more waiting, just a little, until Chano was showered and changed and fit to be seen with his mother and all this would be hers. Mrs. Valdez fiddled pointlessly with the silver spoon in her saucer. It chimed cheerfully against her cup. She admired the sugar lumps in the bowl. Real sugar lumps, random, irregular sugar lumps broken from real loaf sugar. The real thing.
“Coffee, Mrs. Valdez?”
A waiter. A real waiter. Not a boy making a little extra money to get himself through university but a proper waiter with a little silver in his nicely oiled hair, trousers nicely pressed, clean nails, somebody who took a little trouble, somebody who deserved a tip.
“Coffee, Mrs. Valdez?”
And there, behind him, sitting alone at a table for two, a man chewing his fingernails, a man wearing brown shoes with a black suit, a man who looked away quickly when he saw that she had noticed him, a man who looked down at the table where there was no coffee, no cakes, no cutlery, a man ignored by every waiter in the room.
“Coffee, Mrs. Valdez?”
She raised just a finger in refusal. “No. No thank you. I will wait.”
The waiter withdrew with a bow. She was so happy. He had called her by her name, not “Madam” but “Mrs. Valdez.” He knew who she was. How wonderful. She went back to looking out the French windows with a smile.
And that was how Chano found her when he came upstairs from the locker room. She was facing away from the door, every perfect hair in place, her back cut in half by the rail of her chair, a fine gold chain glinting on her neck.
Walking toward her across the dining room, Mr. Valdez had a sudden moment of recollection; seeing his mother again like that, her hair piled up and her shoulders appearing from the bench seat in the front of his father’s car, his father sitting beside her at the wheel, the soft, rhythmic “schlubbbb” of lampposts passing the open window. In those days, Mr. Valdez remembered, he could control traffic lights with the power of his mind, making them flick from red to green all the way along Cristobal Avenue to their house on the hill. There were frightened, whispered discussions in that car—never in the house, always in the car, all of them bundled in together at any time of the day or night, driving without arriving, never going anywhere but home. Looking back now, Mr. Valdez understood how his parents had tried to make things seem ordinary, but their fear seeped into the back seat and under the blanket where he lay sleeping. He knew somehow—he could not think how—that his father was in danger. He was afraid. There was the scent of warm plastic in his nose, the upholstery of the seat he lay on. It was dusty red and stamped with a pattern like woven rattan and he prayed there, offering God his power over traffic lights in exchange for his father’s life.
His father had vanished, but Mr. Valdez lost his ability to control the traffic lights. Every time he got in a car, he remembered why he did not believe in God.
“Hello, mother,” he said.
She held her face up to receive a kiss. “Hello, darling. Well done. I thought you played so well. You were wonderful.”
He had been wonderful. He was wonderful. Mr. Valdez was well aware of just how wonderful he was, with his perfect blazer and his perfect hair and his perfectly polished shoes.
“Oh, you smell good.”
And his perfect sandalwood cologne. But he would have preferred to have his wonderfulness acknowledged by someone rather more discriminating than his mother. For her, everything he did was “wonderful.” It had always been “wonderful.” Every glue-dabbed, paint-blotched creation he had carried home from school was “wonderful,” just like his novels. Exactly like his novels, in fact. Not more wonderful in any way. A paper calendar, a cardboard cat, a novel that made grown men weep, they were all equally valuable because he had made them and she treasured them all.
Mrs. Valdez had an entire shelf of his novels in her flat. He made sure that she always got a copy of everything he wrote. She made sure that they were always on display, in view but out of the sunlight, always dusted. Mrs. Valdez showed them to everyone who came to visit. She pointed them out to her friends but she never lent them. She conversed knowledgeably about them; plot, character, those particularly vivid passages of description. Perhaps even Señor Dr. Cochrane would have regarded her with honor as another aficionada, but she knew nothing more of her son’s books than what appeared in the review columns of the Sunday papers. She never read them. Mr. L.H. Valdez knew all of this. When he lovingly autographed his third novel with a personal dedication, he delivered it to her flat with a 5,000-corona note slipped between the pages halfway through the book. It was still there when he checked three weeks later. Six months after that, on another visit to his mother’s house, Mr. Valdez took the money away again and tucked it back in his wallet.
He spent it at Madame Ottavio’s that evening and he had never enjoyed a visit more. The thought that it was, somehow, Mama’s little treat made every moment that much sweeter.
In spite of that, Mr. Valdez still gave her the first copy of all his books, but the fourth novel and all the other novels sat on her shelves, not with money between their pages, but with some very unusual pictures, clipped from the pages of gentleman’s magazines. She never found them—he hoped she never would—but it made him happy to know they were there.
Mrs. Valdez poured the coffee. “Are you taking sugar these days, darling?” She hovered the tongs above the cup. “I don’t, but they’ve taken so much trouble here and it’s nice to see. Not those silly paper packets.”
“No.”
She laid her hand down on his and Mr. Valdez saw his skin move and ruche under the weight of her touch, loose over his flesh like the skin on a chicken. She had skin like that—old woman’s skin—and now she had given it to him. He adjusted his spoon in his saucer. It gave him an excuse to move his hand away.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Were you very bored?”
“Nonsense. It was thrilling. And you were wonderful, darling. So many goals.”
“I think I scored twice in the whole tournament.”
“Well, those others were very selfish. They kept you out of the game.”
“Mama, I play at Number 3. It’s not my job to score goals.”
“Well, you were obviously—cake, darling?—the best one in the whole team and you had the nicest horses.”
“Ponies, Mama.”
“Ponies are smaller, darling. Those are definitely horses.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Anyway, yours were by far the nicest and anybody could see you were best at riding and best with that hitting thing—the stick.”
“Mallet.”
“Yes, the mallet, so they might at least have put you in charge.”
“They did, Mama, that’s why I’m Number 3.”
“Then, they should have let you have more of the ball. But you were terrific, in spite of them, wonderful! Have a cake, darling.”
With a magician’s grace she slid a modest pastry off the silver-plated cake stand and on to a plate.
“I think I’ll have the coffee tower—you don’t mind, do you, darling? I’ve had my eye on it and I do like a coffee tower although I shouldn’t really. You could have it, Chano, darling. It wouldn’t add a feather to your weight, not with all that running about that you do. You have it, darling.”
She lifted her pastry fork and gave the cake a little, half-hearted, sacrificial nudge toward him.
“Don’t be silly. You must have it.”
“Well, if you’re absolutely sure, darling.” She had done her duty. She had thought first of others. She was satisfied. “I do like a coffee tower. I always think, it’s silly I know, they are like a promise of better things to come.” She sank the edge of her fork into the choux and a tiny puff of air farted demurely through the cream like a bishop passing wind at a First Communion. “Will there be better things to come for me, Chano?”
“Always, Mama. Rainbows and butterflies always.”
“And coffee towers, endless coffee towers, and you will never be one day older.”
“And grandchildren?”
“Mama, how can you always be young if you are a grandmother? You’d hate it.”
“Don’t I deserve grandchildren?” Mrs. Valdez held a soft and delicious piece of coffee tower in her mouth and savored it. The moment or two it took to swallow meant that she did not have to say: “After all I have done.” That would have been unforgivable. Duty did not count the cost. Duty did not demand a reward. “People say that you should marry, Chano.”
“Sadly, nobody I know thinks I should marry them, Mama.”
“You’d only have to ask. You’re in the prime of life, successful, respected, wealthy. I’m sure I could help you find any number of nice, clever girls to choose from.”
“Mama, stop that. That’s indecent.” And then he remembered the other night and the Ottavio House and all those other girls to choose from.
“How do you know Camillo, the Commandante of Police?” he asked.
“I don’t.” But there was a chilliness in the way she set about stirring her coffee—coffee that contained no sugar—which made him disbelieve her. “I know of him of course. Everybody knows who he is, but I don’t know him.”
“You never met?”
“Didn’t I just say that?”
“Only he asked me to pass on his regards.”
Mrs. Valdez put down her pastry fork and wiped carefully at the corners of her mouth, so carefully that, though her napkin came away with tiny dabs of octoroon-colored cream on it, there was no trace of lipstick.
“What did he say? Exactly. Tell me exactly what he said.”
“I don’t know, Mama. Just something about asking to be remembered to you. It was only a politeness, I’m sure.”
“That man is incapable of politeness.”
“You said you didn’t know him.”
“I don’t know him. But he was horrible. He is horrible. He was horrible forty years ago and he is horrible now. He stood outside our house every day for weeks. He never spoke a word. Never said ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good evening,’ he just stood there, looking, the way a cat sits looking at a garden pond, watching the goldfish going round and round. Papa knew there was no way out, just like the goldfish know. Stay away from that man, Chano. He is the Devil.”
Mrs. Valdez was tearful and upset. Mrs. Valdez was never tearful and upset. He pretended not to notice.
“That man killed your Papa, Chano.”
On the other side of the room the man with the brown shoes was looking at her again.
“Now, you can’t know that,” said Mr. Valdez, although he believed it to be true.
“I know it and if you don’t think I deserve grandchildren, then ask yourself if your poor Papa does. Ask yourself that. God alone knows what that poor man suffered. Do you want his name to disappear with him?”
Mr. Valdez found himself thinking of Caterina. She was young enough. She could bear him a son—perhaps many sons—and pretty daughters too. But she was not the sort of woman to take home to Mama. Not the sort of woman who could sit here, in the Merino Club, and eat cakes and drink coffee with Mama. Who was she? Who were her people? What did they do? Who did they know? Who were their relatives? How could she be the mother of his child, she who was herself a mere child? No, she was just a child. And he did not love her. He wanted her but he did not love her. He had always imagined that he would love his wife, at least for a little. But wives were so untrustworthy, and who knew that better than L.H. Valdez? What if he loved a wife and she turned out to be like Maria Marrom? What if she turned out to be like his mother? He did not want a wife.
And yet, knowing all that, fearing all that, when Mama demanded a grandchild, as she had so often done before, his mind flew to Caterina. Nothing like that had ever happened before.
“Could I be falling in love?” Mr. Valdez wondered. He was aghast. He was afraid. He put his hand out, flat on the table, inviting his mother to take it, pretending it was so he might comfort her.
“Why did you never marry again, Mama?”
He tried to imagine her, for forty years, in an empty bed, without a man’s heat. For forty years!
“Oh, Chano,” she said. “I am already married.”