Martínez del Río Estate, 1925
Dangerous Times
Lola continued her story one afternoon as we sipped lemonade in the kitchen of her tiny bungalow. As kitchens go, it was a simple affair, modern and efficient: a worktable, a freestanding cabinet, a wall-mounted sink with running water, and an icebox. I was living with Tía Emi at Madame Isabelle’s, and, to be honest, my living quarters were nicer than hers. Anyhow, this is what she told me:
She knew he was keeping something from her. The frenzied way he chattered on about Picasso’s Blue Period or the production of L’Avare they’d seen in Paris. The way he held his fork in midair, then brought it back to his plate without eating a morsel. The way he caressed her hand à propos of nothing or stood staring at her as she applied lipstick. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something was wrong. He was feverishly attentive and distracted at the same time.
Jaime was spending more and more time away from the estate, sometimes coming home in the wee hours of the morning or not at all. Lola looked for face powder on his collar and sniffed for telltale scents. Was he bored with her already? she wondered. He didn’t seem interested in other women, but...
Strange people started showing up at the door—men with high-collared shirts and serious-looking suits, men who reminded her of her father when he went to his office. Jaime would escort them into his study and close the door. When they emerged, Jaime’s face would be pasty and his hands trembling. Félix, the chauffeur, disappeared. Then the Daimler disappeared.
In some ways, life went on as usual. On Saturday evenings, they took the Ford to the Mendoza plantation, some fifty kilometers down the road. Jaime drove. They ate quail on fine china and éclairs prepared by the Mendozas’ French chef. Silver spoons clinked on porcelain teacups. Gossip and laughter filled the air, just as before. But there were worried sighs, too. The drought had been awful, Mendoza said. He had lost a lot of crop. Jaime looked forlorn.
“Is everything okay?” Lola ventured one evening on the way home.
“Better than okay, mi amor. I’m married to the most beautiful girl in the world!”
Lola let it go. She had her mind on other things. She hadn’t felt well lately, and she missed her mother. She read and knitted or danced to fill the time, or else she wandered around the house as if she were still trying to figure out the floor plan. There was no one to talk to. Jaime was always busy. Instead of riding his horses or sipping rum by the pool, he spent the hours poring over account books. One day oozed into the next. It’s not so bad, she told herself. Everything will change after...
Lola was reading in the patio, stretched out on a chaise longue, when a farmhand burst through the gate. “Señora! Señora!”
“What is it, Lucio?”
“Something terrible, señora. They’ve shot the patrón! Come quick!”
Lola darted out of the patio behind the man. Jaime had taught her how to drive the Ford, but did she remember? What was that? The clutch! And that? The brake!
The farmhands had carried Jaime to a shed to get him out of the sun. He lay on a pile of straw, blood trickling from a wound in his shoulder, but he appeared more dazed than hurt.
“Get on your horse and go for Dr. Gracián!” Lola commanded Lucio. The sky glimmered like tin. Lucio disappeared into the whiteness.
After the doctor assured her that the bullet had only grazed Don Jaime’s flesh, Lola had her husband carried back to the house. She put him to bed and sat by his side while he slept. Then she contacted the family lawyer and demanded an explanation—but Don Filoberto was not about to share confidential information with a child.
Lola went to her husband’s study and rattled the knob, but the door was locked. She sat down and wrote a note to her father.
“Take this to the city,” she told Lucio, shoving an envelope in his hand. “Make sure you give it to Don Jesús Leonardo personally. And wait for a response.”
When Lucio returned, he handed the unopened letter back to her.
“Don Jesús Leonardo left for Texas yesterday morning,” he said forlornly, as if the whole thing were his fault.
“And Doña Antonia?”
“I don’t know, señora. You didn’t say anything about finding Doña Antonia.”
Lola knew it would be counterproductive to badger Jaime for information now. He would just clam up or start babbling about the Paris opera. She had to bide her time.
After about a week, he felt well enough to get out of bed and come to the table.
“I’m sorry, darling,” he whispered. She could see the anguish in his eyes. “I’ve been keeping something from you.”
Instead of hurling an acerbic remark—No kidding! You just took a bullet in the shoulder! You mean something’s going on?—she smiled kittenishly. “Well,” she purred, “I’ve been keeping a secret from you, too.”
Jaime looked alarmed.
“You tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine,” she said, winking.
“Mine is serious.” His face was pallid.
“So is mine.” She was still smiling, but her voice had taken on a hard edge.
“Please, Lola, I’m not up to playing games. Just tell me.”
“Okay, I’m going to have a baby. I’d been feeling a bit odd for weeks, so I called for Dr. Gracián. He came to the house just before you got shot and confirmed it. That’s my secret. Now, what’s yours?”
“A baby! Lola, darling! That’s wonderful!” He brought her hand to his lips.
“What’s yours?” She was no longer smiling.
As Lola suspected, Jaime had badly mismanaged the estate. They’d spent a fortune in Europe, nearly all Jaime’s liquid assets. The drought had ruined last year’s crop, and no money was coming in. Creditors were calling in their loans, and Jaime was having trouble coming up with the cash. He had had to sell things, to bargain, to stall. But the creditors were growing impatient. What’s more, the peasants were still resentful. The Revolution hadn’t solved their problems. It was easy for the creditors to rile them up, to get them to give the patrón a good scare. This bullet had been a warning, they threatened. The next time...
“I think we should go back to the city,” Jaime said finally. “You’re not happy here, and to be stuck out in this no-man’s-land with a baby... I’ll have to sell property, but we’ll still have enough to live comfortably. My brother can manage what’s left of the estate. I’ve never been cut out for this kind of life. I hate cotton. I hate dirt!”
Lola sobbed softly. Tears of joy, she told herself. After all, her prayers had been answered. In the capital, she would be near her parents. She would have places to go, friends to visit. Her baby would have a grandmother and everything it needed. But would it really be like that? Her family had survived the terrible losses of the Revolution because her father had known how to shelter his assets and invest, and her mother had known how to use family contacts to build social capital. But would Jaime be so smart?
“Could you take me to Durango to send a telegram to Mami, Jaime?” she asked softly.
“Yes, I guess you have to tell her the truth. But I wouldn’t send a telegram. Those telegraph operators are such gossips.”
“I’m going to tell her about the baby...that I want her with me when it’s born.”
Lola forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand. They had to decide what to sell and what to keep, what to take and what to leave with the Mendozas until things were settled.
“I’m taking all my clothes! I just had three new dresses with accordion pleats made. At least I’ll be stylish in the city. And I have lots of cloches.”
“Don’t forget, you’ll be losing that pretty figure very soon, Lolita.”
Lola giggled and set about organizing her wardrobe. Once in a while she noticed a twinge in her side.
“It’s nothing, señora,” said Luz, her maid. “It’s just the body getting ready.”
“Isn’t it too early for that?”
“Some women have light cramps all the way through.”
Jaime was carving up his estate, but Lola was not concerned with property prices and contracts. She piled her dresses on the bed, then placed them in trunks—summer frocks here, party frocks here, winter frocks there. The twinges became stronger.
Nice things happened that muted the sting of her husband’s financial plummet. Jaime brought her a pearl necklace, “for my favorite mamacita.” Félix returned. The Daimler returned.
One afternoon, as she was organizing her jewelry—brooches, necklaces, and earrings spread out like a terrain of gold with knolls and valleys—a twinge became a spasm, and then a debilitating pain. Lola dropped the emerald ring she held in her hand and teetered. “Oh my God!” she cried. She touched her belly and struggled for breath. She felt as though a vise were tightening on her uterus.
“Luz!” she screamed. “Luz!” She crumpled onto the floor. Hot tears poured onto her cheeks and chin. “Luz! I need you! Please!”
The maid came running, sized up the situation, and threw her arms around her mistress. She tried to pull Lola upright, but her body was locked into a slump. “Oh, holy Virgin!” Lola wailed. “The pain! The pain!”
Underneath her, a pool of thick blood was swelling and seeping into the carpet.
Jaime burst into the room. He struggled to speak, but the words withered in his throat. He took a step toward Lola, but then balked, unable to move. He looked as though he might faint.
“Señor, get Dr. Gracián right away!” commanded Luz.
A maid was giving him orders. He might have reprimanded her, if he’d had his wits about him, but he didn’t even hear her. Trembling, he turned and grabbed a basin to throw up.
Luz ran to find Félix and ordered him to bring the doctor back in the Daimler.
By nightfall it was over. Lola had lost her baby after massive hemorrhaging. Now she lay in a morphine-induced sleep.
“But she can have another one, can’t she?” Jaime asked Dr. Gracián anxiously.
“I’m sorry, Don Jaime... Another pregnancy would kill her.”
Jaime stood there, staring at Gracián as though he were some sort of monstrous animal. As soon as he’d closed the door behind the doctor, Jaime collapsed into a chair and sobbed.
Once Lola was back on her feet, they wasted no time moving back to the capital. Jaime looked for distractions—plays, concerts, receptions, charity events—to lift Lola’s spirits. Fortunately, in the city, something was always going on.
“Adolfo Best Maugard is giving a party! We simply must go, darling!” he told her. Three months had passed since the miscarriage, and Lola was eager to socialize.
“Of course, we’ll go, mi amor,” she said.
Best Maugard was considered one of Mexico’s most innovative artists. In the heady days following the Revolution, he created a new style of painting that combined the motifs of Mexico’s great archaeological treasures and those of early European masters. But for Jaime, what really mattered was that Best was connected with the new artistic élite—Diego Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo, Rufino Tamayo, Miguel Covarrubias. What’s more, Best was friends with the leaders of the US film industry, people who might connect him with Hollywood producers.
“He wants you to dance,” Jaime told Lola, “but it might be too soon...”
“If he wants me to dance, I will dance!” she insisted. “I’ve been experimenting with interpretive movement. Dr. Gracián says the exercise is good for me! You can play the piano.”
“Albéniz and Manuel de Falla! That’s what you’ve been practicing to.”
The night of the party, Lola draped herself in a delicate tunic like the ones she’d seen Isadora Duncan wear in photos and danced to Jaime’s playing. She stretched and twirled, leaped and skipped. Best Maugard was breaking the old restrictions in art, doing away with perspective and shading, and Lola was eager to do the same in dance.
One of the guests couldn’t take his eyes off her. He was wearing a double-breasted suit and sitting between the host and a glamorous blonde. Lola was used to the attention of men who weren’t her husband, but this man wasn’t even discreet. His gaze was intense, even aggressive. When her performance was over, he applauded frenetically. Lola went to stand by Jaime. The man left his stunning companion and strode up to them.
“Yo soy Edwin Carewe,” he said in passable Spanish.
Best appeared suddenly by her side, assuming the air of a gallant caballero come to rescue her. But why? Her husband Jaime was standing right there. She didn’t need rescuing.
“I want to introduce you to Edwin Carewe, a dear friend and renowned Hollywood director,” said Best. He signaled to the blonde woman to join them. “And,” he added pointedly, “his bride, Mary Akin. They’re on their honeymoon.”
Carewe’s gaze fluttered over Lola like a butterfly over a blossom. “You, my dear, are lovely,” he said. “And your dancing is divine.”
“Actually,” quipped Lola, “it’s quite human. If it were divine, my leaps would be higher.”
Mary stood there smiling like a wax doll. She didn’t understand a word of Spanish.
Lola welcomed Carewe’s attention. If he befriended her, she thought, maybe she could convince him to give Jaime a chance as a screenwriter. She had failed Jaime in a big way. She had lost their child. Now, she thought, perhaps she could redeem herself.
They were relaxing after breakfast when Lola heard a knock. She got up to open the door, and a messenger handed her an enormous bouquet of flowers with a card that read, “Con cariño y admiración”—“with affection and admiration”—Edwin and Mary.
“He wants us to have dinner with them tomorrow at the Rosa de Seda,” said Lola. “You’ll be able to tell him your story ideas. This could be your big chance!” She kissed Jaime gently on the cheek. “I love you,” she whispered. “All I want is to make you happy.”
“I know,” he murmured. He took her hand in his and ran his lips softly over her fingers. But somehow, he didn’t seem as delighted about the prospect of having dinner with Edwin Carewe as she thought he would be.
The Rosa de Seda was a posh little restaurant that featured a violin quartet, crystal chandeliers, and succulent dishes from every region of Mexico. Lola ordered pollo al carbón and Jaime mole poblando. Carewe wanted “plain old tacos, like the ones we have back home,” and ordered the same for Mary.
“I was thinking,” he said, after the waiter brought the appetizers, “Lola should join us in Hollywood. With her looks and talent, she could be a star. I already have an idea...”
Jaime stared at Carewe in disbelief. “Lola?” he said. “Just Lola?”
“No, of course not,” stammered Carewe, realizing his blunder. “You would go with her, of course. You could, well...”
“I could write,” interrupted Jaime, furious. “I could write screenplays.”
Carewe turned to Lola. “You don’t have to know English,” he coaxed, “since there’s no sound. There are lots of foreign actors in Hollywood—Ramón Novarro, Pola Negri. Say, isn’t Novarro a cousin of yours? He was a huge hit last year in Scaramouche!”
Lola glared at Carewe. “Jaime has a real gift with words,” she said coolly. “He belongs in Hollywood more than I do.”
Carewe pursed his lips, then angled toward the violins and pretended to listen. Lola smiled at Mary and tried to say a few words in English. “Hon-ey-moon... Con-gratu-lations!”
“We’ll think about it,” Jaime interrupted.
But in the end, he had to say yes. There were simply no possibilities for him at home.
Lola closed her eyes. She was done with her story. I sat there in silence, peering into my glass of lemonade. The afternoon sunlight poured through Lola’s kitchen window.
“Not as glamorous as you thought, right, Mara?” Lola said finally.
Jaime was making forty dollars a week filing scripts. There were no screenwriting jobs available for him at the moment, Carewe explained, but anyway, it would be better for him to start at the bottom. That way, he’d get a feel for the business.
On the other hand, Carewe had cast Lola in his new film Joanna right away. She was to play Carlotta de Silva, a wily seductress from some unidentified Latin country. She had that sensuous sway, that amazing control of her hips that came from being a dancer. First one buttock tightened and veered to the right and then the other tightened and veered to the left.
The studio gave her a contract for $250 a week, and with the forty dollars a week Jaime made as a script clerk, the couple had rented a house and bought a secondhand car.
“Ed says he’s sure I’ll be a hit,” she told me. “He’s directing the film himself. Harry Wilson, the publicist, insisted I shorten my name. Asúnsolo López Martínez del Río is far too long. From now on, I’ll be Dolores Del Rio. Del with a capital D, and no accent on the i. That way, it’ll look exotic, but not too exotic. Ed says he’ll make Dolores Del Rio a household name!”
Lola squeezed my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek. “You’ve been such a good friend, Mara. You listen to me as I ramble on and on. I want to do something for you!” She paused. “What if I asked Ed to give you a screen test? You’re pretty and smart. I bet you’d be good at acting.”
“I don’t know...” I stalled. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“Of course, I may regret this,” she teased, “when you’re my rival for top billing!”
When I got home, I said to Tía Emi, “You know who I ran into at the studio the other day? My old friend Dolores Asúnsolo.”
Tía Emi was stitching the sleeve of a flouncy blue blouse. Needle perched between thumb and forefinger, she pricked the fabric and pulled the thread with such dexterity that her hands seemed to float over the cloth.
“Ah,” she said, without looking up. “The Asúnsolo girl. She’s not your friend, Mara. You’re nineteen years old, old enough to understand how things are.”
“She is my friend,” I said quietly.
“She’ll spend time with you now, while she’s lonely. You’ll be her rainy-day playmate, just like back then.”
I could feel my face growing hotter, the old rage numbing my tongue like a toxin.
“That’s not true!” I snapped. “She wants to help me! She even said she’d get me a screen test at her studio! Only a true friend would do something like that!”
I don’t know how I expected Tía Emi to react, but her sudden, stone-cold Chalchiuhtlicue glower threw me off balance. “¿Estás loca?” She threw her sewing into the basket and balled her hands into fists. “After all these years of protecting you, of hiding you, now you’re going to go and fuck everything all up.”
I was stunned. “What do you mean, hiding me? You’re talking nonsense.”
“If you pass that test and appear in a film, someone might see you. And if they see you, they might come after you! They might kill you!”
“Kill me? What are you talking about?” She’s old, I thought, and she’s lost it. Looking back, I realize she wasn’t old. She couldn’t have been more than forty. “Nobody’s going to kill me,” I said, trying to make my voice sound soft and composed. “I’m just an obscure hairdresser, not important enough to kill.”
I don’t think I’d ever seen Tía Emi cry, but her jaw slackened, and tears trickled from her water-goddess eyes. I took her hand in mine and caressed it. My rage had passed.
“Promise me you won’t do it! Stay away from that Asúnsolo girl, Mara.”
“Okay,” I whispered, “okay.” The truth is, I didn’t want to take a screen test anyway. The movie life didn’t seduce me at all. But Lola’s desire to help me, that meant something. Let her be the movie star, I thought. Let her set the world on fire in Carewe’s Joanna. Just having her as a friend is enough for me.