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.“What sort of statement?”“Oh, something tactful and reasonably supportive of our country’s foreign policy, don’t you think? Something to the effect that Sam was a wonderful old eccentric who’ll be missed by all of us.President Morosa has been talking about a memorial in La Mensa.They’d want us down for the dedication.I promised him that we would present a united family front.”Maddy shook her head slightly, more to clear away the mists of disbelief than to argue with her mother.“Now, now, don’t make up your mind too quickly,” Helen said, and the soothing tone was a mockery.“This wouldn’t happen until sometime next year.They need to get the rebels under control first.But a monument to your father would be a wonderful healing gesture, and I think …”Maddy walked out of the room.The cook looked at her curiously when she walked into the kitchen, but made no comment when Maddy picked up the phone and called a taxi.For the ten minutes it took for the car to come Maddy sat waiting by the kitchen window, staring sightlessly out into the carefully manicured sidewalks, trying not to think about the rubble that once was a tumbled-down old villa.After leaving her mother’s house, her energy had carried her back into the District, up to Capitol Hill and through the miles and miles of hallways to Michael O’Malley, junior senator from New Hampshire and possessor of the most liberal record in all of Congress.He was also the most vocal opponent of military aid to San Pablo.They spoke briefly, she handed him the candy box, and an hour and a half later she was flying back to LAX.Her mother hadn’t spoken to her since the news hit the airwaves.The videotape included not only a last interview with Sam Lambert, looking wise and not at all fanatical, merely tired and grieving, but also atrocities committed by the Gray Shirts in their quest to wipe out the pockets of resistance that flourished around the mountainous country.Maddy had watched it once, on Dan Rather, but the sight of a tall, familiar figure in the background of one village scene had been too much.She’d switched off the television, sat back down on her sofa, and, for the first time since she’d left San Pablo, began to weep.She’d cried from six in the evening till eleven the next morning.She’d wept and coughed and vomited and wept some more, and still the tears came.She screamed into her pillow, beat her fists against the bed, stuffed a towel into her mouth to stop the howls of anguish that threatened to overwhelm her.And nothing did any good.The only thing that finally stopped her was an exhaustion that was more passing out than falling asleep.When she awoke her eyes were dry and swollen, making the extended-wear contact lenses she’d bought when she came back to the States feel like pennies in her eyes, and her heart was like ice.The only thing that could warm it were her father’s children.The Greater Hollywood Help Network was a busy place, just three blocks down from the infamous corner of Hollywood and Vine.Maddy’s job as administrator had little connection with their actual social service work.She saw to it that the money came but had little connection with how it flowed out.They worked with street people, with the large inner-city population of Armenians, Asians, blacks, and with the vast influx of San Pablan refugees.It must have started by accident.She heard a familiar accent and drifted out of her office, into the front room crowded with hungry, lost, frightened-looking people.Clearly to them she was one more of a vast array of officious norteamericanos, and they stared at her with a wariness at variance with the faint stirrings of hope.A small girl, not much more than four, wandered up to her, tugging at her skirt.“Hey, gringa,” she said, “do you work here? I’m hungry, and they keep asking questions.”The entire room took in a deep breath of horror at the child’s artless words.In the best of times “gringa” was a drawling insult, though clearly the child didn’t know better.A harassed-looking woman, clearly in the last stages of a monumental pregnancy, came up and pulled the child’s hand away from Maddy’s white skirt.The small imprint was clearly marked.“Please excuse the child, lady.Samuelita doesn’t mean to give offense.”Two more blows to the memory.Jake had called her lady when he’d pretended not to recognize her.“Samuelita?” Maddy echoed.The woman drew herself up proudly.“She is named after El Patrón, Sam Lambert.A norteamericano who—”“I know very well who Sam Lambert was,” Maddy said, the smile on her face only a little stiff.“He was my father.”You would have thought, she mused later, that she’d said she was the Virgin Mary herself.The cries of gladness, the crushing embraces, the tears were embarrassing and absurd and oddly moving.The last grant hadn’t come through yet, and the coffers of the Greater Hollywood Help Network were low.Twenty-seven San Pablans, Maddy, and three social workers closed the office, trailed down Hollywood Boulevard, and ended up in Burger King, with Maddy footing the bill.It was a few days later when she began hearing the phrase “La Patronita” when she walked by.And the oddest thing of all, Maddy mused as she dodged and parried the twenty million cars that took to the L.A.freeways at rush hour, was her sudden friendship with Soledad Alicia Maria Mercedes Lambert de Ferrara y Morales.Her sleek, catlike stepmother [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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