Cave of Little Faces. Aída Besançon Spencer
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heralded his impending advent and then a second announced he was now arriving.
“I think I can walk you down to the gate,” Jo offered. “I’m feeling better, really.”
Don Ramón smiled. Jo was hardly up to helping him push back the heavy gate in her present condition. “No need, Querida,” he assured her. “Our youngest son, Ernesto, has come to help us today. He will be staying on to assist me when the delegates arrive for the reunion.”
“Someday we will have to get that gate mechanized,” exclaimed Jo. “I don’t know why it wasn’t done years ago.”
Both Doña Lucia and Don Ramón simply smiled.
“Some of the new ways are good, too,” said Jo.
“Of course,” Don Ramón assured her. “We do have cell phones, you notice.”
Licenciado Angel Moreno Cueva de Piedra was a man Jo knew by sight, but had never really gotten to know. He came on business from time to time to talk with Uncle Sol and her father when she was here on vacation, but, since that never concerned her, they had never really spoken. He was a quiet man, gentle, and dignified, as were so many who visited Las Olas. He was somewhere in his middle age, sharing the same warm skin tone as she, her siblings, her parents, and the Romeros: lighter than Dominicans, but with a rich creamy olive complexion. Jo herself was tall and slim to normal with lovely long dark hair, a beautiful smile, and warm, encouraging eyes. She was not Daniela, of course, she had often told herself, with the features and figure of a model, or aquiline and all muscle and drive like Ruby with her short hair and flashing eyes and set chin, or sensual and promising a hint of future weight like Ben, but now altogether endearing with his expressive eyebrows, engaging, boyish smirk, pleasantly rounding face, and framed with the same smooth skin they all possessed. She was just Jo, the eldest, the one who stood in the back behind the sports star and the dashing gambler and the dazzling beauty and tried to take care of them all in her own humble way. Her siblings exhibited the best of their Taino heritage, her stepmom Lea had exclaimed over and over again, winning the young children’s hearts—both her own and Ben’s—with her praise, while Lea’s simple—and, in that, profound—loving kindness won Jo’s love.
The lawyer, on the other hand, was a small man—very small by their standards, some five foot or so—not over five foot two. He looked nondescript. He was very deferential, greeting Doña Lucia and Don Ramón with a cordial, almost old-world formality. He bowed to Jo, asking her not to rise or prepare to go anywhere because he could spread his papers on his briefcase and answer all of her questions as he was able to do so. He sat in a straight wooden chair that Don Ramón dragged over for him, scudded forward, and opened his briefcase to reveal a neat little portable desk top with an upright back in which was strapped pen, paper, and documents, all secured in with soft brown bands. Jo suspected this was the standard way he dealt with documents when he ranged about the countryside, visiting his clients. He even shifted a little around so that Jo would not be staring into a brown wall behind which he would be obscured.
“I have all these documents on computer as well,” he assured them, nodding to the computer bag he had sitting by his chair. “We could look onto the screen, but I thought you might all want to have your own copies to examine, so I printed out copies of the will for everyone. He paused and looked around. “Señor Asenao is here already?”
“No,” said Don Ramón.
“He is on his way then?”
“No, I’m afraid he’s not coming.”
“Not coming? He is not coming?” The lawyer’s mouth dropped open. “How is it that he is not coming? Did he say?”
“Just that he was too busy.”
“Too busy?”
Jo looked from one to the other. She saw Doña Lucia shake her head. All of them appeared deeply disturbed.
“This is not right.”
“No, it’s not,” said Doña Lucia.
Jo just sat and waited. She was not Ruby, full of demands, wanting explanations on the spot—and those snappy, as well!
“Should we go on?” asked the lawyer.
“Yes,” said Doña Lucia, “we must.”
Don Ramón nodded in agreement.
The lawyer paused, said, “Well,” and then “well,” again, and became very serious. He hunched his shoulders and nodded to Jo, deeply deferentially, with the air of one who is dreading the answer he fears he will receive. “May I ask, please, did he meet you at the airport in Santo Domingo?” It was clear by his intonation the “he” was in reference to their missing guest.
“No one met us,” said Jo, “and we did wonder about that.” And then she added, as her first attempt to clear up some of the mystery of that whole fiasco, “No one did. And my father—you know my father, of course?”
The lawyer nodded an obvious, unspoken assent.
“Well, he gave me a message about picking us up himself or sending someone who would say, ‘Baiguanex has sent me for you.’ You must know that is my father’s Taino name. But, no one came saying that or anything else. So we rented a car—on my credit card, I might add—and we drove here. Are we speaking of the one who was supposed to meet us? He must be very busy, indeed, neither to come as promised nor meet with us today. Is his presence so imperative that he must be here for us to meet? And, who is he exactly? Do I know him?” Jo looked again from one to another, searching all their faces. But they were all impassive now as only the heirs of the First Nations can be impassive.
“Not imperative,” said Don Ramón, “but his presence would have been very helpful.”
“And,” added Doña Lucia, “well mannered.”
“Yes, both,” agreed Don Ramón.
“His assistance is going to be necessary for you to see your inheritance,” said the lawyer carefully. “It will be very difficult without his cooperation.”
“Not impossible,” said Doña Lucia.
“No, not impossible, of course,” agreed the lawyer, “but very inconvenient.”
“Inconvenient?” echoed Jo. “What is this ‘mountain’ you spoke of Don Ramón? Something on his property—is that it?”
“No, no, Josefina. He is simply a guardian.”
“A guardian?”
“Yes,” said Doña Lucia, “one of many, but very important. He should be cooperating with us. This is very disturbing.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jo, “but I’m not making head or tail of all this. I have an inheritance, but it is not here. It is elsewhere. I have lost an uncle, but I have heard nothing about his funeral. I have two parents who are missing, but they are somewhere, though not here. Honestly, I am a bit sick today and perhaps my patience is not where it should be, but I’m feeling a bit like my sister Ruby. I would like to know—with all due respect, and I mean that sincerely—what on earth is this all about?”
Whether they would have answered her or not Jo often wondered afterward. But none of them had a chance if they had been so disposed, because at the very moment she had ceased putting her questions to them, a young man hurried around the side of the house, dashed up to them deferentially, and paused, waiting to speak. Jo recognized Ernesto, the Romeros’ youngest child.
“What is it, son?” asked Don Ramón in surprise.
But, before the young man could reply, around the same corner strode a tall, and somewhat imposing man just over Jo’s age, dressed in a gray sports jacket and black designer slacks. He had wavy black hair and a broad smile. He surveyed the entire back yard with approval, spending a moment gazing at the sea and what he could see of the beach behind the back fence. “Very nice,” he murmured in Castilian Spanish. “Yes, very nice indeed.” He framed