Vita’s Arc

The Cross

Vita Cayetano lived with her husband in Jackson Cross, a town in the Arizona desert, just north of Winslow and just south of the Navajo Nation. And miles from England, her native country. Who Jackson was is now lost to time. And whether the Cross was a religious reference, no one could say, there was no church in town. On Sundays, Christians would go to services in Winslow. And after church, they would troop to Marlene’s diner, which everyone agreed was the finest restaurant in town, and inexpensive to boot. Others, who communed with the spirits sacred to the indigenous, would drive rusty trucks or well-used gas guzzlers up to Tolani Lake.

The Cayetanos doubled-dipped Sunday Masses. At 9:00, they attended the Madre de Dios Church. After which, they would drive the mile or so to St Joseph’s for the 11:00 service. It wasn’t that they were fanatically religious. They went out of custom to meet and chat with friends. Vita’s husband Luis was a Mexican-American, born in Hunucmá, Yucatan. His parents had brought him to the States as a nine-year-old boy. Slight and tanned, his Mayan roots were evident. Known to one and all as Licho, he was popular in the Hispanic community, who made Madre de Dios the hub of their socializing.

Vita was as unlike Luis as it was possible to be. Where he was short and dark; she was tall and pale. He was gregarious; she was reserved. He was a writer; she was a reader. She had a clipped English accent. Words died in her mouth, trapped behind stiff lips and clenched teeth. Licho spoke with a desert drawl. So much so that the others nicknamed him ‘el Gringo’. An ironic poke at the deep color of his skin, much as a bald guy might be called ‘Curly’, or a big man ‘Tiny’.

After catching up on gossip at Madre de Dios, they repeated the exercise outside St Joe’s. Here Vita (her full name was Victoria Mary Sackville-West) would stand at the center of the Anglo community. She did not say much, which is probably why so many people enjoyed talking to her. And she kept her own counsel. While it was clear she was a well-educated Englishwoman, her friends knew little else about her. It was no use asking her about her past, as this taciturn woman became as silent as the grave if anyone tried digging in that field. She did admit to ‘knocking about’ Europe for some years before arriving in New York. But the rest was a mystery until she appeared in Tucson.

There she had met Licho, an English professor at the University of Arizona. He had crashed into her at Antigone’s, Tuscon’s renowned indie bookstore, and knocked the horticulture book she had been thumbing to the floor. Retrieving the wayward tome, he begged her forgiveness. And insisted she allow him to buy her something from the store’s cafe to make up for his boorish behavior. It was the first in a series of dates.

He talked and she listened. So reticent was she to talk about her past, Licho assumed she was suppressing the emotional wounds of an unfortunate childhood. He honored her silence on the subject and was content to love her in the present.

Soon after they were married. Licho quit his professorship and pursued a full-time writing career. He wrote comic novels whose protagonist was a dim-witted character named Pepe, who always ended up saving the day by besting the rogues who were supposedly smarter than he. Pepe was a crossover success that appealed to Hispanic-Americans, who rooted for one of their own. And to European-Americans who enjoyed Licho’s P.G. Woodhouse-style of effortless comic writing. To any fan of classic cinema, the comparison of Pepe to Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp was inescapable. And Pepe’s tales of unlikely triumph were soon a staple of Spanish-language TV.

After Church, and once everyone was caught up on the local news and gossip, it was time for lunch. With luck, Marlene’s special would be pot roast, her signature dish. It appealed to all palates, although some of the patrons thought it best served with habanero sauce and tortillas, washed down with a cervesa Indio fria. After which, the Cayetanos would return to their modest desert home.

Licho’s writing provided the family with a sizable income, and they could have afforded something far grander in one of Phoenix's gated communities. But, like so many who had grown up poor, Licho was careful with money. And Vita showed no interest in spending on anything beyond books. And they lived a comfortable life in the modest adobe house.

Licho was happy for the privacy it afforded him to write. And Vita did not care where she was because she read. In her imagination, she was always somewhere else anyway. The house sat in a xeriscape of hardy native species that grew best with neglect. The landscape was usually mottled greens, grounded in brown, beige, and sandy hues. But after the late summer rains, the cacti and other succulents blazed red, orange, pink, and purple flowers. Most striking were the long desert views. Vita, whose wanderlust may have sprung from the claustrophobia of growing up on a small densely-populated island, may have felt the relief of being unbounded. Or not. She had never said one way or the other.

And thus life slid somnolently past, with the hum of ceiling fans and the occasional truck’s rumble. Until one day, a Panama-hatted man, in a baggy linen suit, with an impossibly English inflection, asked Clois, the owner of the Cross’s general store if she knew where he might possibly find the Cayetano residence if it wasn’t too much trouble and he wasn’t taking her away from something more important. Clois, a well-preserved hippie who had lost her ambition to go to New York some decades ago, wondered why this stranger needed so many words to ask what to her mind seemed a simple question. He didn’t look stoned. But she couldn’t be sure as expensive sunglasses, of the kind favored by celebrities in the ‘40s, hid his eyes.

Judging him harmless, Clois gave the stranger instructions of sufficient quality that they took him to the door of the house he was looking for. He knocked firmly on the wood frame of the screen door which was all that barred entrance to the residence. Hearing the sound from his desk, Licho went to the door and pushed the screen open. He acknowledged, at the stranger's inquiry, that he was indeed Señor Cayetano. The stranger, in turn, introduced himself as Mr. Alaistair Bairdston-Fiennes. Although he insisted that Señor Cayetano must call him Sim because his full name was too heavy a burden for most tongues to bear. Licho was not ready to reciprocate the informality as he was unclear as to why Sim was darkening his door. Sim shed some light on the matter when he declared he was an old friend of Vita’s and wondered if she were in.

Licho was astounded. He had never met a friend of Vita’s from before they met. He had loved her from the moment he set eyes on her, but marrying her was like marrying an amnesiac who could tell you nothing of their past.

However, Licho accepted Sim’s statement as the truth and turned to call, “Quierda, there is a Mr. Bairdson-Fiennes here to see you.” Sim would have to wait for a spell before the suggestion that his nickname be used was accepted by Licho, whose parents had raised him to be respectful.

Vita, on the other hand, did not stand on ceremony. As she entered the room, she eyed the rumple-suited man and demanded,

“Sim, what on earth brings you here?”

“I have news from home, Vita,” Sim replied.

“How did you find me?” She asked. Not that she had hidden her whereabouts, but as we have already discovered, she was not the sort to broadcast information. And she had remained incommunicado with the family and friends she had left behind in England.

“Ah yes,” he replied. “It wasn’t easy. But Bingo, you remember Bingo, no?’”

“Yes.”

“Well, Bingo does something in government. He’s never said what. But the rumor has it it’s pretty hush-hush and all that. So, when I ran into him at the club, I thought I would take a flier. I asked him if he knew anyone who could chase down a fox that has gone to the ground if you will. And he allowed that it was possible he might know someone who had some ideas on the subject.”

“Well, I can safely report that Bingo is a man of his word, and if you ever need to find someone, he’s your man,” Sim continued. “The very next day, as I was enjoying a spot of gin at the bar, Bingo sidled into the place and handed me a piece of paper with your address on it. Just like that. I tell you, the man is a marvel.”

“How is Bingo?” Vita asked. Which surprised Licho as he had never heard Vita refer to any of the friends of her youth.

“Bingo’s Bingo, and you know how that is, no?”

“Yes.”

Licho again marveled at how the British could convey so much information without expressing a single cogent thought.

“What brings you here, Sim?”

At that point, Licho suggested that they sit down. And he asked the Englishman if he would like a coffee or some soda or water.

“Give Sim tequila, darling. It confuses him to drink anything without alcohol after breakfast.”

Licho returned with a tray of three snifters of sipping tequila and three tall glasses of ice-cold oscura beer. Sim, now sitting on a wide well-worn leather sofa, picked up a glass in which rested an oily amber liquid. He swished it around, held it to his nose, and sipped.

“Oh, I say. This is an Anejo, isn’t it? It’s rather good.”

“You know your tequila, Señor Sim.” said Licho, warming to the visitor.

“Sim is a man of few talents, darling,” said Vita. “But I do remember him as a cut above the usual enthusiastic tippler in his determination to study his true love. Get to know all her subtleties and moods.”

It was true. Sim had never had much interest in art, or music, or even cars or sports, the sort of things that young upper-class Englishmen make a study of, to either occupy their minds or to give themselves an advantage in the pursuit of a mate. But he was an aficionado of things brewed, fermented, and distilled. In short, he knew the difference between a first-rate, three-year-aged, oak-barrel tequila from the overpriced, celebrity rubbish foisted on the star-struck.

“So why are you here, Sim?”

It was apparent that Vita was not to be diverted from pursuing the purpose of Sim’s trek.

“I have a spot of bad news, Vita.”

She waited patiently, And Licho said nothing.

“I don’t know if you know, but your Mum died five years ago. And two weeks ago, your father passed on.”

“I see,” said Vita with no discernable emotion. “But why on earth would you go to the trouble to find where I was, and then make such a long trip to tell me? You could have sent a letter. Or if Bingo is that good, just got my phone number.”

“Yes, quite. I suppose in the normal run of things, that is what I would have done. But there is an additional consideration, you know. Another wrinkle, if you will.”

“Yes?”

“I am here as the family solicitor.”

And that was the most surprising news of the afternoon. Although the fact Vita was now the owner of a property in England was a close second.

The Pilgrimage

On hearing the news, Licho worried. He was curious to see the property but concerned a return to England might bring the pain of the past to Vita. However, she remained serene, saying the time had come and she should return. They closed up the house and left the keys with a neighbor. A limousine, a rare sight in Jackson Cross, took them to Tucson airport. They boarded a midday flight and, after a brief layover in Dallas, arrived at Heathrow on a cool spring morning.

Another car took them south of London, past grim rows of brick houses. The houses became even drearier as they passed by rag-and-bone shops, industrial parks, and knackers’ yards. Licho could not imagine where they might end up.

Then the sun came out, and the car left the decaying landscape behind. The driver exited the motorway and took a road that narrowed to a country lane bounded by lush green hedges and venerable oaks. They turned into an opening on the left. In front of them stood a massive pair of wrought iron gates hung from two stone-topped piers adorned with crests that split a substantial wall. As the car approached the gates, they swung open to permit passage down a long gravel driveway.

From the front, the chauffeur said, “Welcome home Ma’am.”

“Thank you, James,” replied Vita as the castle loomed in front of them. And Licho sat staring in disbelief.

The Castle

Sissinghurst Castle was more a collection of grand buildings than the traditional image of a moated mass of turreted stone. Its fame lay in gardens widely considered the finest example of the formal English style. Vita’s parents had bought the decaying pile from a great uncle whose interest lay in shooting and fishing. He had ignored the grounds which languished as a home to indifferent plants, scraggly trees, and vines that wandered purposelessly through boggy mires of ill-drained land. Diminutive wildflowers in spring, and berries during the rare sunny days of summer, provided the only color relieving the washed-out expanse of matted reed and fen.

For thirty years, Vita’s mother and a host of gardeners gave life to the designs of Vita’s father. They drained marshes into newly dug ponds and removed tons of rot and ruin, laying blank a canvas on which they wrought natural art. Roses, the hub of England’s horticultural universe, brought a palate of colors from virginal whites, through imperial purples and passionate reds, to the celibate austerity of the near-black of a Priest’s cassock. Paths led from one tree-walled room to the next, telling a wordless story as descriptive as any Dickensian novel.

On first seeing the gardens, Licho wandered speechlessly. A rare state of affairs. Under a gray English sky, walking through the coolness of a misty late May morning, he marveled at the rich fullness of the cultivation. Later, after midday showers had passed, the full glory of the garden was coruscated by the light of the afternoon sun dancing off the lakes. Licho felt something close to a religious experience. It was as if God had spoken to him in some divine language to protest that He was not just the creator of pestilence, war, famine, and death. He had also given man beauty, peace, serenity, and pleasure.

Vita blossomed. Licho knew she loved him deeply. But the expression of her love had been nuanced and subtle. Never physically overt, she conveyed it in a private glance across a crowded room or the parking lot of a church. But now at Sissinghurst, she would clutch his arm or hold his hand and direct him from one wonder to the next. Far from being mute, she would describe in both scientific detail and aesthetic appraisal the nature of the beauty that lay before him. It brought joy to his soul.

In time, two things happened. Pepe retired. As Licho explained, Pepe had done all he wanted to do and wished to relax. So with regrets, Licho bade his alter-ego adiós. And Vita and Licho had a daughter they named Alexandra. They nurtured her and swaddled her in love. She listened attentively as her father told her tales of conquistadors and gold. Of native people worshiping exotic Gods. And of strange plants and customs from a distant peninsula. Her mother told her of ancient cities and ruined temples. Of old customs long-buried by new thoughts and ideas. And of ignorant superstition overturned by a Renaissance of learning and science.

Alex, as she styled herself, was a quiet child, entranced by her parents’ stories. She grew from squealing infant to whiny toddler. At five, she learned to read and found serenity, and was never petulant or needy.

Vita hosted cocktail parties at which she introduced her husband to the society she had left behind. Soirees became full-blown dinners at which legendary wits embraced Licho and congratulated him on his comic genius. It amazed him how his life had arced from the humid hemp farms of Yucatán, through the arid cactus-ridden desert of the American southwest, to the life-giving drizzle of the English countryside. And he settled into the embrace of the British literary scene as if to the manor born.

After Pepe retired, Licho discovered the pleasure of silence. The less he spoke, the more he learned. The teacher became the student. And the less he said, the more his listeners agreed he was an incisive conversationalist.

Vita, on the other hand, now rose with the sun to tap out on computer keys the stories she had told only to herself in her imagination. Where Licho had revealed concealed truths with light-hearted levity, she plumbed the depths of the human condition with profound insights into the things people hide. Years of listening had given her the material for novels celebrated for their observation. And readers recognized their strengths and frailties in the characters she created.

Every Sunday, they attended the local Anglican church. It was not that they had rejected Catholicism. It was that they had never bound their God to the theology and tradition of any one sect. And besides, the main point of the Sunday morning exercise was the opportunity to mingle and chat with their neighbors on the church lawn after the service was over. There was no Marlene’s in the local village, offering substantial yet inexpensive fare. So Vita would host Sunday dinner for a rotation of local families. Both for the pleasure of their company and to stock up on raw material for her books.

Sim was a frequent guest. And one had to keep a careful eye on the drinks’ cabinet to make sure it did not run low. However, that eventuality was unlikely, as a delivery from the local wine store foreshadowed each of his visits. Vita had extended, through Sim, an invitation for Bingo to visit. But he never came. It seems his small role in the story was complete and his presence was no longer required.

Vita and Licho grew old together. Their union had been unlikely. But the solidity of their relationship was cemented in the observation that opposites attract. But what that trite adage does not say is that opposites can change. Through what agency? I cannot say. The reader will have to decide if it is God, nature, or experience. But there is no reason you have to stay the way you are today. And your past should not put chains on your future.

Alexandra’s childhood was a halcyon period of learning and indulgence. She had good friends and was never a wallflower. But she was no more a talker than her mother had been when young. She read voraciously and possessed a restless intellect. And on her 18th birthday, she left home. As she told her mother, she had a desire to knock about Europe. And thought she might visit New York one day.

At this announcement, Vita clasped Alex’s hands. And said,

“God speed, darling. I wish you find what you are looking for.”

“Like you did with Dad?”

“Yes, except you must follow your own path.”

And as Alex was leaving, her father pulled her into a long, silent embrace. And Alex felt the breadth of things he left unsaid.