Were there any jet airplanes then? DC-6 from Santiago to Lima. Lima to Panama. A long night from Panama to Miami, ocean glittering. We had always made the trip by boat before, from Valparaiso to New York. The voyage took over a month. It wasn’t just the beauty of it but the crossing of oceans and continents and seasons … a comprehension of vastness.
This was my first plane trip, my first trip anywhere alone. I was leaving Chile for college in New Mexico. It was the going alone that was so glamorous. Dark glasses and high heels. Pigskin luggage from Bariloche, a graduation present. Everyone was at the airport. Well, not my father, he couldn’t get away, but even my mother and all my friends. Everyone was talking and laughing except Conchi and Quena and me, crying. We had made time capsules. Letters to be opened in thirty years, with avowals of friendship and predictions about our futures. They came out pretty right. Both of them married who they thought they would and gave their four or five children the names they said they would. Boris María, Xavier Antonio. But both Quena and Conchi died in the revolution, years before it was time to open the letter. The predictions for me were all wrong. I married and had children too, when I was supposed to be single, a journalist, in a walk-up apartment in Manhattan. I do live alone in a walk-up now.
It was exciting, boarding the plane, everybody waving from the observation deck. We buckled in and listened to the steward. The plane taxied down the runway and then stopped, for a very long time. Hot. It’s summer in Chile in December. There was some problem; the plane turned back to the airport for an hour wait.
Everyone had gone; the lobby was deserted. An old man was pushing a rag with a stick, mopping. I could see my mother in the bar with some Americans from the plane. I went to the door and she saw me, looked surprised and then looked away, as if I weren’t there. She’s like that, doesn’t see what she doesn’t want to, but actually sees everything that’s going on, more than most people. She once confided to me something “downright rotten and mean” she had done. It had been at the Sunshine Mine in Idaho, when I was little. She hated the Sunshine Mine, all of the dozens of mining camps we lived in, hated the “common” women and their tacky houses. We lived in tar-paper cabins with woodstoves too, but she didn’t notice that. She wore a wool coat with a fur collar, glassy-eyed foxes. Hats with blue feathers. None of the women could play bridge well at all. But they were playing that day and the room was hot. There were ridiculous Halloween decorations. Orange and black crepe paper, jack-o’-lanterns. The women talked about cooking and recipes. “The last two things I would ever want to hear about.” My mother glanced up from her cards and saw that a lantern had caught fire to a curtain. Flames blazed. She just looked back down at her hand and said, “I bid four no trump.” Finally the fire got totally out of hand and the women fled to stand outside in the rain until the fire truck came from the mine. “I can’t tell you how desperately bored I was.”
Taking off above Santiago was splendid. The Cordillera was at the wingtips, you could see the sparkle of the snow. Blue sky. We circled back over Santiago toward the Pacific. I saw Santiago College and the rose garden. Santa Lucía Hill. It had never occurred to me that I would want to go back home.
Ingeborg, my father’s secretary in Lima, was supposed to meet me at the airport. I wished he hadn’t done that. He was always planning, making lists. Goals and priorities. Timetables and itineraries. In my purse was a list of all the people who were to meet me, their numbers if I should get lost, embassy phone numbers, etc. I dreaded this secretary, spending three hours with her. His secretary in Santiago wore her hair in a net, had a blind mother and a retarded son she went home to every night, on two buses, standing, probably, after she got off work at six thirty. But when Ingeborg wasn’t at the airport I felt scared, not a glamorous traveler at all. I called the number on my list and a woman with a European Spanish accent said to take a cab to 22 Cairo. Ciao.
In Lima the slums were as foul and desolate as in Santiago. Miles and miles of shacks made of cardboard and tin drums, roofs shingled with flattened tin cans. But in Chile the Andes are there and the blue sky and you just naturally look up, above the stench and misery. In Peru the clouds hang low, grim and wet. Drizzle mixes with wispy fires. A long bleak ride into town.
One thing I still like in the U.S. is windows. How people leave their window curtains open. Walking through neighborhoods. Inside people are eating, watching TV. A cat on the back of a chair. In South America there are high walls with broken glass on them. Crumbling old walls with small beat-up doors. The door to 22 Cairo had a frayed and knotted bell pull. An old Quechuan hag opened it. Her legs were bound in urine-soaked rags for chilblains. She stood back to let me in, into a brick patio with a tiled fountain. Cages with finches and canaries. Roses. Banks of cineraria, anemones, nemesia. It was as if the sun were shining. Bougainvillea cascaded from every wall and up the stone staircase into the sala. Pale wood floors with rich Peruvian rugs. Pre-Incan huacos, masks. Masses of tuberoses and bowls of gardenias, narcotic, cloying. Had my father ever been there? He hated smells.
The “Doña” was in the shower. The maid brought me an aguita in a demitasse. I sat politely but it seemed as if this Ingeborg was never coming so I got up and looked around. A blue Chinese vase, a harpsichord. An antique wooden desk. On top of it was a photograph of an old couple in black, both with black canes. Snow against bare trees. A faded framed snapshot of a blond child with a borzoi. There was a large color photograph of my father in a silver frame. In his Oaxacan poncho, a big hat. He was wearing an open shirt, a rose-colored shirt that I had never seen before. He was smiling. Laughing. Behind him were ruins, the Andes, clear blue sky. I sat back down in the chair. The little demitasse spoon clattered.
Ingeborg came in wearing a white robe, loose, showing long tan legs. Her blond hair was in a single braid down her back. A waft of what I now know to be L’Interdit. She was lovely.
“God, I’m glad your plane was late, never could have made it. I guess I still didn’t, did I? But I’ll feed you a nice lunch anyway and pay for a cab back. You don’t look at all like him. Do you resemble your mother?”
“Yes.”
“She’s pretty? She’s sick?”
“Yes.”
“Are you hungry? Lunch will be on time at least. Forgive me for not driving you to the airport. But most of all Eduardo (Eduardo? My father, Ed?) wanted me to feed you and to see that you weren’t lonely. But I don’t think you are a lonely type. That is a wonderful suit. The way he spoke about you I expected a little girl, a child who would want to color, or tease my birds.”
I laughed. “I expected an old woman. With cats and National Geographics. Are you Swedish?”
“German. You know nothing about me? But that is typical of him. I hate cats. I think there is a National Geographic around here somewhere. You only need one, they’re all exactly the same.”
“When was that picture taken? The one on the desk?” My voice sounded stern, judgmental, just like his.
She squinted, looking at it. “Oh, years ago, at Machu Picchu. Divine day. Doesn’t he look … happy?”
“Yes.”
Lunch was on a terrace above the garden. Ceviche. Sorrel soup, a purple clematis in the center. Empanadas and chayote. She only had the soup, drank gin and tonic while I ate, asking me questions. Do you have a novio? What does Eduardo do on Saturdays? Are those Italian shoes? That’s the worst about Lima … no decent shoes and no sunshine. What will you study? What do your parents talk about together? Coffee?
She buzzed for the maid to go get me a cab. The phone rang. She said ¿Bueno? and then put her hand over the mouthpiece.
“If you want to maquillarte the bath is down the hall.”
“Sorry, love,” she said to the phone. The doorbell rang, the cab was there. She put her hand over the phone again and to me she said, “Sorry, dear, but I have to talk to this person. Come give me a kiss. Good luck! Ciao!”
* * *
On the plane from Lima to Panama I sat next to a Jesuit priest. The type of choice I often make. One that appears safe and sensible. He had had a nervous breakdown after working in the wilds for three years. The steward finally took me back to sit in his little kitchen.
Mrs. Kirby met me in Panama. Her husband was vice president of Moore Shipping, the boats that my father’s company used to ship copper, tin, and silver. I could tell that she didn’t want to do this at all. I didn’t either. We shook gloved hands. It was hot. We were driving, in a Rolls, in the Canal Zone, in a faded photograph. Everything was off-white, the houses, the clothes, the people. The lawns were manicured, beige grass. Long shadows. An occasional palm tree. Hot. I asked her if it was summer or winter. She got on the tube to her chauffeur and asked him. He said he thought it was spring.
“So what would you care to see?” she asked me. I said I’d enjoy seeing Panama City. In minutes the silent car had passed a magic invisible barrier and we were in Panama. It was as if the sound had been turned on. ¡Mambo! ¡Que rico el mambo! Car radios blared; music came from every shop. Street vendors sold food, parrots, toys, bright fabrics. Black women laughed in flowered dresses. Flowers everywhere. Beggars, children, dogs, cripples, bicycles. “This has been an adequate tour,” she said to the tube and we slid quickly back into the pale silence of the American sector.
Mrs. Kirby and a lady called Miss Tuttle and I played canasta all day. Maybe just all afternoon, until teatime, finally. They scarcely spoke to me. Inquired after my poor mother’s health. Did my father just travel around telling people how sick my mother was? Was she sick? Maybe he had told her she was sick, so she was. Mr. Kirby arrived, in Bermuda shorts, a damp guayabera. He had been playing golf.
“So you’re old Ed’s daughter. Apple of his eye, I expect.” A black servant brought mint juleps. We were on a veranda now, looking out on the ecru grass, drooping birds-of-paradise.
“So Ed thinks shipping ore on Chilean tankers will placate them, eh? That his game?”
“John!” Mrs. Kirby whispered. I saw that he was drunk.
“If the Reds nationalize the mines only way we’ll keep our control is to boycott shipping. He’s playing right into their hands. Biting off the hand that feeds him, for sure. Pigheaded man, your father.”
“John!” she whispered again. “Mercy. How are we doing for time?”
I insisted that they not come to the airport, that I needed to study for an entrance exam. Turned out there really was such an exam and I should have studied for it.
The best part about the Panama stopover was talking to the chauffeur on the tube. The airport was a low, ramshackle building, hidden by banana trees, fragrant vines, hibiscus. Another old man mopping the floor with a rag and a stick. Night fell. Blue runway lights. Black jungle ticking with insects and birds. What had Mr. Kirby meant about Chilean tankers? Was my father pigheaded?
* * *
In Miami it was morning and winter. In the airport women wore fur coats and their dogs wore fur coats. I was terrified by so many dogs. Little dogs with hair dyed peach to match the women’s hair. Painted toenails. Plaid bootees. Rhinestone or maybe diamond collars. The whole airport was yapping. No towels in the bathroom but a machine you pressed for hot air. I waited at the Panagra desk for my aunt Martha. I dreaded her too, hadn’t seen her since I was five. My mother said she was a hick. My parents fought about the money my father sent her and Grandma Proctor, my great-grandmother, who was ninety-nine. She and Aunt Martha lived in a tract house in Miami.
I cringed when I saw her, with all the snobbishness of a vain teenager. She was grotesquely fat, with a goiter, an immense goiter on her neck almost like another Siamese head. Doctors must have found a cure for goiters. When I was little there were hundreds of people running around with goiters. Aunt Martha had blue permanented hair and big round rouge spots on her cheeks. She wore a red flowered muumuu and she crushed me to her, rocking me, hugging me. I was enfolded into the vast poinsettias on her breasts. In spite of myself I clung to her, sank into her and her smell of Jergens lotion, Johnson’s baby powder. I stifled a sob.
“You sweet darling! I’m so glad to see you! Poor thing, you must be worn to a frazzle. Going off to college … your folks must be just busting with pride!” She swept up my bag. “No, no, you let me take care of you for a little while. Thought we’d have some lunch. Grandma and I, we come here a lot, to watch the planes. Good hot turkey sandwiches too.”
We sat in a booth by the tinted plate glass overlooking the runways. Lay really, as she sort of lounged and I found myself lying into her, like on a chaise. We ate hot turkey sandwiches and then cherry pie à la mode. I was sleepy, leaned into her and listened, like to bedtime stories, while she told me about how my grandmother got TB so they moved to Texas from Maine. Then both my grandmother and grandfather died and Grandma Proctor came to care for Martha and Eddie, my father.
“So poor Eddie had to go out and work when he was twelve years old … picking cotton and cantaloupe. He’d be so tired he used to fall asleep eating dinner late at night, barely get off to school in the morning. But he’s been working and providing for us ever since. He worked in the mines then, at Madrid and Silver City, put himself through Texas School of Mines. That’s where he met your mother.”
How was it that I had not known any of this?
“He bought us our place in Miami. Course it was hard for us to leave Marfa, our friends and all, but he said it would be for the best. Land sakes, I’ve been talking on and on. Best we be getting to the boarding gate.”
She gave me a basket that had MIAMI BEACH embroidered on it. Inside was a little satin diary with a lock and key. Brownies wrapped in wax paper. She hugged me again.
“Eat well, now. Always eat breakfast and get plenty of sleep.” I clung to her, didn’t want to leave her.
* * *
A long flight from Miami to Albuquerque. I was blasé now about oxygen masks and life preservers. I didn’t get off the plane in Houston. I was trying to think. What did my parents talk about? My father and Ingeborg. It’s hard for anybody to imagine their parents making love. It wasn’t that. I couldn’t imagine him wearing a rose-colored shirt. Laughing that way.
It was sunset as we circled Albuquerque. The Sandias and the miles of rocky desert were a deep coral pink. I felt old. Not grown up, but the way I do now. That there was so much I did not see or understand, and now it is too late. The air was clean and cold in New Mexico. No one met me.