Lyra left Gabriel in the administrative office, hoping to visit the remaining patients before lunch. She’d packed a measly avocado sandwich for herself and a sad, dry chicken salad sandwich for him.
Lyra’s leather heels clacked on the linoleum floors of La Iglesia’s open-air corridors. Rain battered the freshly painted zinc roofs, stripping them like thinner. Green water poured from the grooves and gutters, dyeing the dead grass an unnatural shade: Astroturf-hued, or like a wrapper of lime-flavored candy. From the other side of the convent, Lyra heard a man named Mr. Díaz hollering from his padded room about the End Times and an exciting sequel to the Great Flood. A Chinese butterfly, he yelled, had flapped its wings so hard it angered God. Lyra would make him her last patient.
She glanced down at her clipboard: SUÁREZ VARGAS, ELEANOR.
“DOCTORA,” MRS. SUÁREZ Vargas said in the middle of their session.
“¿Yes, señora?”
“¿When will my daughter come to visit me? ¿Has she said anything?”
Lyra looked awkwardly at the observing nun, who spoke too matter-of-factly for Lyra’s taste. “Señora, Ángela has been dead for three years,” the nun said.
“That’s odd,” Mrs. Suárez Vargas answered. “¿Why wouldn’t she even call to let me know? I know I raised her right … She’s not ungrateful, just a forgetful girl sometimes. ¿Will you call her for me? Just to remind her.”
“Of course I will, señora,” Lyra said before the nun could correct her. “Of course I will.”
Lyra ended the session fifteen minutes early. Disorganized notes from the convent’s attending psychiatrist revealed that there was no precise explanation for Mrs. Suárez’s condition. To Lyra, what Mrs. Suárez said indicated a type of delusional disorder. But the psychiatrist’s chicken scratch asserted dementia. Mrs. Suárez was only forty-five—Lyra knew it was too early for dementia. Yet again, the attending psychiatrist’s scribbles were noticeably half-assed assessments, complete with random mental maladies, as if the psychiatrist had been throwing darts at the DSM—Lyra wondered if the psychiatrist was even licensed, if Father Silvino was so desperate he didn’t care. But such neglect shouldn’t be allowed. Not here, not with such extreme patients. Just this morning Lyra had met a murderer, an arsonist, and a woman who’d fed her second husband to dogs. She’d kept Gabriel in the office under lock and key. She didn’t want him wandering; she didn’t want him being subjected to any patients, least of all Juan Julián.
“Sister,” Lyra said to the nun, “I’ll be right back. I have to go to the bathroom.”
This was the second time in her entire career Lyra had sneaked out to have a cigarette. She crossed the courtyard, her heels digging into the mud and dyed-green grass, and stood beneath the concrete shrine of Father Silvino. Lichen sheathed the statue’s brass plaque, obscured his gilded contributions to humanity. Concrete fingers littered the ground. Lyra looked out at the convent’s disarray. The chapel was in danger of collapsing, and army ants made off with food pillaged from the kitchen.
Lyra began to laugh at the absurdity that such a place was called La Iglesia.
The Church. For whom?
What kind of sick joke was it that these people were at church? What was their Holy Communion? The line for medications? Instead of wafers and wine, Lyra saw a nun dole out soda to wash the pills down. Lithium was the body of Christ here, Coca-Cola his blood.
“The Vatican doesn’t help us,” Father Silvino said. His voice startled Lyra, who turned around to face the statue that he had just used like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
“Even the bishops in Cartago refuse my calls for financial aid. I arrive at their Masses and their offices, but they condemn this place. They say these patients are possessed by the Devil himself, and that I’m guilty of prolonging Evil’s time on this earth.”
“That’s madness,” Lyra said.
Father Silvino sat at the edge of the shrine, allowing his boots to be washed by rain. “It is madness. Let’s lock the archbishop in here, too, why don’t we.”
Lyra laughed nervously.
“¿Have you visited your brother-in-law yet?” Father Silvino asked. “Go see him, Lyra.”
Lyra put out the cigarette with her bare fingers.
“He talks about your sister,” Father Silvino said. “Every day, Carmen is the first word out of his mouth.”
“¿And the second?”
“Gabriel.”
“¿He still remembers him?”
“Of course he does, Lyra. You’d be surprised at the memory of those who are out of their minds. Sometimes Juan Julián stuffs a pillow under his shirt, then pulls it out—delivers it, really—and cradles it. Rocks it, sings to it. Whispers to it.
“Go on, Lyra,” Father Silvino said, pointing to a room across the lawn. “Do it for Carmen.”
Lyra walked back through the rain without answering. Even if Lyra hated the arrogance of priests, and their sly, manipulating nature, Father Silvino had given her the nudge she needed. All day she’d worried that Juan Julián roamed the corridors. But now she could see him on her terms.
“JUAN JULIÁN,” LYRA said. “¿May I come in?” In the shadow of a corner of his single room, Juan Julián picked petals from fresh roses. He spritzed cologne into the stagnant air. More than a hundred bottles were stacked on his dresser, the shelves, and in a pyramid on the floor. They all glittered like a housefly’s eye when Lyra opened the door.
“¿Golondrina?” Juan Julián looked up as if the Virgin Mary herself had appeared to him.
“No, it’s me. It’s Lyra.”
“Oh,” Juan Julián said. “¿What use do I have for Carmen’s sister?”
Lyra wasn’t sure what she was expecting in greeting Juan Julián, in asking him about the weather, about his accommodations, about Cristina. But it was as if Juan Julián could sense that Lyra was pretending, skirting around why he was really here in La Iglesia. His hostile silences convinced her he knew Gabriel was in her care. That she’d somehow stolen him.
When Lyra couldn’t take it anymore, she excused herself, left Juan Julián in his tomb of glass. Thoughts ran circles around her as she marched slowly back to the office. In every passing nun’s face she saw Carmen, so she walked the corridors with her eyes down. And when she reentered the office, and Gabriel sat up, Lyra saw Juan Julián staring back.
“We have to go,” Lyra said. She deposited her notes on the temporary desk, herded Gabriel out, and left without saying goodbye to Father Silvino or the nuns.
Lyra led Gabriel to her cherry-red Peugeot, strapped him in, and was making her way to the driver’s side when a shrill, familiar voice broke through the wind.
“Lyra, you’re going to get soaked without an umbrella.”
“Cristina,” Lyra sighed. “Father Silvino mentioned you lurked here once a week.”
“Yes,” Cristina said. “He also told me you were here today. What a coincidence. You saved me the phone call.” Her pink plastic parasol shielded her from the rain.
“¿What do you have to call me about?” Lyra turned around. She folded her hands into a visor over her eyes.
“You know,” Cristina began, ignoring Lyra’s question. “I don’t blame you. Somehow, I understand why you do it—why you keep Gabriel away from Barrio Ávila, away from us. Sometimes I want to get away too. ¿You don’t think I’ve thought about it? ¿And did you really think your mother wanted to come back?” Cristina shivered. “There’s something that keeps us there, Lyra. Maybe your mother and I have lived in this world long enough to know that no matter where you run, or how fast, the past always catches up. Maybe if you look deeper, child, you’ll understand just how your mother felt the day she left.”
Lyra and Cristina stood frozen in the parking lot, their dark silhouettes as rigid as rams on a hill. Bodies weighed down by their own stubbornness and the brutal pain they shared. But Lyra lowered her head in submission, and for a second, Cristina raised her hand as if she were going to wipe the tears from Lyra’s face.
“I’m throwing a party for your mother,” Cristina said finally.
“¿A party? ¿For what?” Lyra raised her voice. “¿Why do you think I would even go? ¿Have you finally lost your mind too?”
“Your mother’s dying. Cancer,” Cristina said.
“I didn’t think you were one for pranks, Cristina,” Lyra scoffed.
“I’m not joking. I took your mother to the doctor. She’s sick, Lyra. Very sick, and you have to see her before it’s time.”
Lyra didn’t answer. She let the rain saturate her clothes, soak her through down to her bra and underwear.
“We can talk about it more. Come back to Barrio Ávila, let’s sit. Or I can phone you even. Please, we have to talk this through.”
Lyra refused, waved Cristina off angrily, and slammed the car door behind her. For a moment, it looked as if Cristina was satisfied beneath that parasol. She sped off in her ancient pink Pontiac, leaving a thick trail of smoke that reminded a stunned Lyra of the old train on La Guaria Railroad.
THE RIDE HOME was short enough that Lyra didn’t have to think too deeply about what Cristina had just told her. Instead, she asked Gabriel about the day, how far he’d gotten in his video game, if he was excited to have the rest of the week off from school. He answered with a vivid retelling of his daydreams, which level he got to, and fidgeted in his seat with an electrified current of energy.
The wind was picking up when they pulled into the driveway. It howled and whistled through the trees, against the windows and the doorway. The duplex they lived in sat on a hill, a small apartment building owned by a German woman who didn’t live in Costa Rica. Lyra paid rent once a year when the woman arrived from Berlin and stayed long enough for a pastry and tea. Lyra loved this place because it was secluded—the other tenants had moved out months ago; no more being awoken by sex at midnight, the ceiling lamps swinging to a steady, grunting beat. Lyra blasted her music whenever she cooked, and Gabriel could watch TV and play his Sega without worrying about disturbing the neighbors.
Gabriel ran up the stairs to change his clothes, and Lyra sat in the living room. She poured herself a Scotch and sipped until she fell asleep. Carmen arrived to talk.
She took the form of her childhood self this time, regained her balmy and sweet composure. Carmen lay prostrate on the floor like a client in need of psychoanalyzing. But she was the one to ask Lyra how she felt. Lyra said she was fine. Carmen asked if Lyra missed their grandmother Amarga, her petty bitterness that had made them laugh. Lyra said she did. Carmen asked if she would ever give up on solving the mystery of that night. Lyra didn’t answer. Then Carmen mentioned their mother, and Lyra recoiled, as if also in the dream Teresa reached out to touch her. The very mention of her name, regardless of plane or reality, turned Lyra into a child being pricked with a needle.
Let her meet him.
Gabriel shook her awake. She had been groaning and tossing on the couch.
“Gabby, I’m sorry. I’m fine,” Lyra said, looking at his little, frightened face. She sipped from the cup of water he’d brought her. It tasted of chlorine. “Don’t worry, go on and play. I’m going to start dinner.”
Let her meet him. Why? Lyra thought as she righted herself and finished the whisky. Why the Hell would she do that? Because of some offhand comment Cristina had made in the rain? Lyra didn’t know what kind of game Cristina was playing, but that idea of her mother having cancer grew into a pulsing, all-consuming mass. Lyra again felt the guilt society reserves for daughters—eldest daughters especially—for having ignored her mother for a decade. In her mind she’d done the right thing, for years trying to convince friends and therapists that a boundary like that was necessary. Even if depriving Teresa of contact with Gabriel was a bit harsh.
Lyra knew Carmen had entered her dream to persuade reconnection. In their adolescence, Carmen was the mediator between Lyra and Teresa, quelled their fights and dispelled weeks of silent treatments. It turned out Carmen was just as cogent in dreams, even if she’d skirted around the subject. Before heading into the kitchen, Lyra sat at her desk with a piece of paper and a Sharpie. She bolded a vertical line to divide the pros and cons of taking Gabriel back to La Iglesia tomorrow, or if she would leave him with Teresa for a day.
But no sound reasons came, no bullet points that made any real sense. After ten minutes, just two words, both written on the cons side:
Avoid.
Confront.
Shit, Lyra thought. A therapist’s brain, and that was all she could come up with?
Lyra burned the list in the wastebasket. Then she picked up the phone and dialed her mother, who answered on the third ring.
Lyra kept her introduction short, laced no affection in her tone or what she asked of Teresa. “I need someone to watch him,” Lyra said. “Everyone else said no.” A lie.
“Of course I will,” Teresa said. “Of course I will, if you’ll allow it.”
“And, Mother,” Lyra said at the end of the call.
“¿Yes?”
“Don’t tell him about Carmen,” Lyra said. “If you dare mention it, you’ll never see him again.
“¿Mother?”
“Of course, Lyra,” Teresa answered, her submissive tone now exactly what Lyra had wanted. “Whatever you say.”
Lyra hung up and walked to the kitchen. Guilt surrounded her on all sides, as did the boiling steam of her acrimony. Lyra’s heart still raced. She needed to be confident in her decision. She needed to believe that her threat was enough to deter any carelessness from her mother. Lyra snapped open a can of tuna and congratulated herself. She snipped cilantro leaves with scissors, sliced strings of sweet pepper, and licked her fingers. What she had just done, what tomorrow would be, was mercy. Teresa did not deserve this opportunity, but Lyra was benevolent enough to pause Teresa’s sentence and grant her this pardon.
Lyra felt in control again as she served Gabriel his dinner. She smiled to her son and said, “You’re going to have a babysitter tomorrow while I’m at work.”