A woman was coming down the stairs, her left hand sliding down the banister. She was not an old woman although she had streaks of silver in her hair, her body too straight and nimble to belong to a senior citizen. But her severe gray dress and the hardness in her eyes added years that were not embedded in the flesh of her frame.
“Mother, this is Noemí Taboada,” Francis said as he began the climb up with Noemí’s suitcases.
Noemí followed him, smiling, and offered her hand to the woman, who looked at it as if she was holding up a piece of week-old fish. Instead of shaking her hand, the woman turned around and began walking up the stairs.
“A pleasure to meet you,” the woman said with her back to Noemí. “I am Florence, Mr. Doyle’s niece.”
Noemí felt like scoffing but bit her tongue and simply slid next to Florence, walking at her pace.
“Thank you.”
“I run High Place, and therefore, if you need anything, you should come to me. We do things a certain way around here, and we expect you to follow the rules.”
“What are the rules?” she asked.
They passed next to the stained-glass window, which Noemí noted featured a bright, stylized flower. Cobalt oxide had been used to create the blue of the petals. She knew such things. The paint business, as her father put it, had provided her with an endless array of chemical facts, which she mostly ignored and which, nevertheless, stuck in her head like an annoying song.
“The most important rule is that we are a quiet and private lot,” Florence was saying. “My uncle, Mr. Howard Doyle, is very old and spends most of his time in his room. You are not to bother him. Second of all, I am in charge of nursing your cousin. She is to get plenty of rest, so you must not bother her unnecessarily either. Do not wander away from the house on your own; it is easy to get lost and the region is puckered with ravines.”
“Anything else?”
“We do not go to town often. If you have business there, you must ask me, and I’ll have Charles drive you.”
“Who is he?”
“One of our staff members. It’s a rather small staff these days: three people. They’ve served the family for many years.”
They went down a carpeted hallway, oval and oblong oil portraits on the walls serving as decoration. The faces of long-dead Doyles stared at Noemí from across time, women in bonnets and heavy dresses, men in top hats wearing gloves and dour expressions. The kind of people who might lay claim to a family crest. Pale, fair-haired, like Francis and his mother. One face blended into another. She would not have been able to tell them apart even if she’d looked closely.
“This will be your room,” said Florence once they reached a door with a decorative crystal knob. “I should warn you there is no smoking in this house, in case you partake in that particular vice,” she added, eyeing Noemí’s chic handbag, as if she could see through it and into her pack of cigarettes.
Vice, Noemí thought and was reminded of the nuns who had overseen her education. She’d learned rebellion while muttering the rosary.
Noemí stepped inside the bedroom and regarded the ancient four-poster bed, which looked like something out of a Gothic tale; it even had curtains you could close around it, cocooning yourself from the world. Francis set the suitcases by a narrow window—this window was colorless; the extravagant stained-glass panes did not extend to the private quarters—while Florence pointed out the armoire with its stash of extra blankets.
“We are high up the mountain. It gets very cold here,” she said. “I hope you brought a sweater.”
“I have a rebozo.”
The woman opened a chest at the foot of the bed and took out a few candles and one of the ugliest candelabra Noemí had ever seen, all silver, a cherub holding up the base. Then she closed the chest, leaving these findings on top of it.
“Electrical lighting was installed in 1909. Right before the revolution. But there have been few improvements in the four decades since then. We have a generator, and it can produce enough power for the refrigerator or to light a few bulbs. But it’s far from suitable lighting for this whole house. Accordingly, we rely on candles and oil lamps.”
“I wouldn’t even know how you use an oil lamp,” Noemí said with a chuckle. “I’ve never even been camping properly.”
“Even a simpleton can understand the basic principles,” Florence said, and then continued talking, giving Noemí no chance to reply. “The boiler is finicky at times and at any rate young people shouldn’t have very hot showers; a mild bath will do for you. There is no fireplace in this room, but a great large one downstairs. Have I forgotten anything, Francis? No, very well.”
The woman looked at her son, but did not give him any time to reply either. Noemí doubted many people got a chance to utter a word with her around.
“I’d like to speak to Catalina,” Noemí said.
Florence, who must have thought this was the end of their conversation, already had a hand on the doorknob.
“Today?” the woman asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s almost time for her medication. She won’t stay awake after she takes it.”
“I want a few minutes with her.”
“Mother, she’s come so far,” Francis said.
His interjection seemed to have caught the woman off guard. Florence raised an eyebrow at the young man and clasped her hands together.
“Well, I suppose in the city you have a different sense of time, running to and fro,” she said. “If you must meet her forthwith, then you better come with me. Francis, why don’t you go see if Uncle Howard will be joining us for dinner tonight? I don’t want surprises.”
Florence guided Noemí down another long hallway and into a room with another four-poster bed, an ornate dressing table with a three-winged mirror, and an armoire large enough to hold a small army. The wallpaper in here was a diluted blue with a floral pattern. Little landscape paintings decorated the walls, coastal images of great cliffs and lonely beaches, but these were not local views. This was England, most likely, preserved in oils and silver frames.
A chair had been set by a window. Catalina sat in it. She was looking outside and did not stir when the women walked into the room. Her auburn hair was gathered at her nape. Noemí had steeled herself to greet a stranger ravaged by disease, but Catalina did not seem much different from when she’d lived in Mexico City. Her dreamy quality was perhaps amplified by the décor, but this was the sum of the change.
“She is supposed to have her medication in five minutes,” Florence said, consulting her wristwatch.