Sweet Mary

by Liz Balmaseda

  “I have everything—the bank records, the financial statements, and the letters,” I said.

  “Did you make any of this public during your divorce?”

  “No,” I said. “I wanted to keep it clean for Max.”

  A wicked smile crossed Casey’s lips.

  “Well, well,” he said. “It’s a whole new deck of cards now.”

  As much as I wanted to believe him, I wasn’t about to relax, not just yet. I needed to make sure Casey understood that.

  “I’m determined to make this happen one way or another,” I told him as I got up to leave.

  But Casey had a warning for me, and he minced no words.

  “I know you want to see your son,” he said, “but be smart about this. Don’t jump into the gutter with Tony. Don’t rile him up. And that means don’t go showing up at Max’s school to stir things around. We’ll go through the proper channels, and we will be civilized.”

  PALM SHORES ELEMENTARY—DAY 22

  An Art Deco–style grade school on a leafy residential street. It buzzes with students in blue-and-green striped polo shirts who shuffle beneath a sign that reads SUMMER SCHOOL’S IN SESSION. Mary sits in her parked car, observing the children.

  I couldn’t wait any longer to see Max. Against Casey’s advice, I drove to Max’s school and waited until Tony’s Lexus pulled up to the driveway. And there he was, my boy with his lopsided walk and morning hair, carrying an enormous backpack. I ran after him as soon as I saw the Lexus pull away, but I lost sight of him and had to go straight to his classroom.

  At the classroom door, Max’s teacher, a twenty-four-year-old woman with porcelain skin and Goth black nail polish, lit up when she saw me.

  “Hey, Mary,” she said. “I’ll go get him.”

  I peered into the classroom and spotted Max settling into his desk. The teacher whispered in his ear and he jumped up to look for me. He ran into my arms and buried his head in my chest. We hugged for a long, tearful time.

  “I want to go home with you, Mommy. Please take me home.”

  “Okay, baby, but first I want you to go back in there and have a great day at school. Will you do that for me?”

  “I will for sure.”

  I gave him a good-bye squeeze and he ran back to his desk. Before leaving, I called the teacher over.

  “How’s he doing?” I asked her.

  “Okay. I do my best to keep him busy,” she said. “Sorry about what happened to you. We’re so glad you’re back.”

  “Listen…you know you can call me if anything comes up I should know about.”

  “Will do,” she said. “By the way, that guardian’s a little creepy, don’t you think? Kinda reminds me of Janet Reno.”

  “What guardian?”

  “The one appointed by the court. She’s intense, like she’s looking for another Elián to save.”

  It was a jarring piece of news for me, but I didn’t want her to know it.

  “How many times has she been here?”

  “Twice this week. Kinda disruptive.”

  “I’ll talk to Max’s father.”

  I tried to hide my indignation as I blew a kiss to Max and headed back to the car. I took quick, angry steps, replaying the teacher’s words in my head. A perfect stranger was stalking my child—how could that be? Thanks to Tony’s request for a child psychiatrist, he had opened the door to greater scrutiny. He didn’t realize that by hyping Max’s “trauma” over the federal raid—and blaming me for it—he had stirred up questions in the judge’s mind. She wondered why I was in jail. She noted Tony’s hostility toward me predated my arrest. She wondered if his request for a child psychiatrist was a sign of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, the mental disorder that causes a parent to inflict harm on a child as a way of attracting attention. So she decided to take a closer look, and once she did, she sent the case into a bureaucratic holding pattern. Sometimes in family court, all it takes is a fleeting suspicion to lock a case into the cumbersome system. And although I didn’t know it at the time, this is exactly what happened in Tony’s wholly unnecessary foray into family court. He raised such a ruckus that the judge not only ordered a shrink for Max, she also appointed a guardian ad litem to speak for the boy. An otherwise simple custody issue had entered a Night of the Living Dead dimension, and it was lumbering ahead on its own phantom limbs, no longer responding to fact or reason.

  As I walked to the parking lot, I dialed Casey’s number, but there was no answer. So I called Gina. She was already at the office. I filled her in on what the teacher had told me. Gina was outraged.

  “That’s what assholes like Tony do,” she said. “They have to go and piss in the kiddie pool.”

  “Exactly.”

  While I was on the phone, I passed a trio of school moms I knew from the PTA. I smiled and nodded hello. But they just sniffed at me like stuck-up sophomores. They traded looks of disgust as if someone had just stepped in dog crap.

  I groaned. Gina picked up on it.

  “Who’d you see?”

  “Some ice-cold PTA moms.”

  “Say no more.”

  “To think I’ve made banana cupcakes for those witches.”

  “Let it go,” Gina said. “By the way, Ida wants to talk to you.”

  “Okay. Patch me through to her,” I said.

  “Not on the phone,” said Gina. “I think she wants to see you in person.”

  I drove home to change out of my sweats. I slipped into my most upbeat summer outfit, a bright green eyelet dress I hoped would mask my wretched mood. I wanted to present a cheerful, knock-’em-dead disposition at the meeting with the boss. I wanted to assure her every ounce of legal drama was now behind me, even though I knew it wasn’t true. Ironically, I was about to put an Ida Miller affirmation into practice, right in her office.

  “Fake it,” went her favorite saying, “fake it until you can make it.”

  GRAND REALTY OFFICE—DAY 22

  Ida Miller chats on the telephone in the exquisitely trimmed parlor that is her office. Sunlight streams in through bamboo wood slats, finding green orchids arching in robust clay pots. When she spots Mary, she hangs up and waves her in.

  It was good to see Ida, strong, wonderful, optimistic Ida, the woman I credit wholeheartedly for my transformation from lost divorcée to confident businesswoman. Just stepping into her serene office brought back a cascade of dreams I had allowed myself to dream before the raid. It was a good thing I had come to see her in person, I thought, for it reinforced my identity and the gut feeling that told me this job would keep my life on track and my sanity in check.

  “I’m just over-the-moon glad you’re okay,” Ida said, sweeping me into her arms.

  “I am, too, believe me,” I said as she led me through a set of French doors and into her jasmine-scented courtyard abloom with bougainvillea, bromeliads, and verdant ferns. We took seats on wrought iron patio chairs beneath a large canvas buttercream umbrella.

  “What was it like?” she said. “Must’ve felt like hell and back.”

  “I’ll put it this way: I’d rather sell a double-wide in Goulds than go through that again,” I said.

  “You poor darlin’.”

  “But that’s history now. I’m here and I’m ready to get back to work,” I said. “I’ve got so much to catch up on. I’m way behind on all my listings.”

  “I don’t want you to worry about a thing. We’ve done our best to keep all your clients happy for you,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  “I appreciate it,” I said. “I’ll follow up with all of them right away.”

  Ida’s smile faded a bit as she seemed to turn a solemn thought in her head for a moment.

  “There’s no need to rush back, Mary,” she said.

  “I know. But I want to pick up where I left off. It’s important that I do,” I said.

  Ida grew serious. She leaned over and took my hand as a mother might do.

  “You’ve been through so much already. I would hate for you to be har
assed in any way,” she said. “Maybe it’s better for you if you just stay off the radar for a while.”

  I let her words sink in. For a moment I wondered if her concern was real or merely selfish. Was she faking it?

  “I’ve been off the radar for more than a month, Ida,” I said.

  She pulled her hand away and stiffened a bit.

  “We’ve gotten some press calls about you,” she said.

  “What kind of press calls?” I said.

  She hesitated, then stood up.

  “Come,” she said, extending an arm toward the French doors, “I’ll show you.”

  Back inside her office, Ida picked up a manila folder from her desk and handed it to me. Inside, I found a copy of that morning’s Daily Press.

  “It’s the first story below the fold,” she said.

  When I flipped the paper over and read the headline, I was floored. It read REALTOR RELEASED, BUT EVIDENCE MURKY, FEDS SAY.

  The story went on to suggest I had been released on a mere technicality and that—I’m paraphrasing here—no one in their right mind believed I was innocent. Supporting this slanderous implication were quotes from unnamed federal sources, a PTA mom—anonymous, mind you—and, of course, my son’s father.

  “The well-respected financier Antoine Ramonet, who shares a young son with Guevara, said he was concerned by what he described as erratic changes in his ex-wife’s behavior,” read the story.

  Who spoke for me? According to the story, “neither Guevara’s lawyer nor her family could be reached for comment.” They did manage to interview my neighbor, Dale, who said, “I didn’t know her very well. She always kept to herself.”

  I looked at Ida for a sign of indignation at the sensationalistic piece, but instead I got a most gentle, blank stare.

  “There’s nothing murky about my situation,” I said, the anger in my voice rising. “You have to believe that.”

  Ida shook her head and took a step back toward her desk.

  “I think you should stay off the radar a little while. It’s just better for everyone involved,” she said, giving my forearm a pat.

  I got it. Her gracious delivery aside, Ida’s words meant those lovely, carved-wood antique doors of hers were closing ever so graciously in my face.

  “I understand,” I said. “I’ll make sure to thank everyone on my way out for picking up my slack.”

  “Oh, yes,” Ida said, her smile clicking on once again. “Do thank Brian. He’s been picking up most of your old leads.”

  Karma came wrapped in the scent of jasmine that day, I realized. Would things have played out differently if I had resisted the Glades Terrace lead, if I had displayed a tad more humility, if I had not trivialized Brian in my head as some pathetic cuckold? I would never know that. But I did know this: No matter how overconfident or even zealous I might have been in my days as a revved-up real estate agent, I had never sold cocaine, never trafficked cocaine, never touched cocaine. I had never been to New Mexico, never met a guy named El Flaco, and never had a stitch of plastic surgery. And my name was never, never Maria Portilla. So if indeed karma had boomeranged into my life to make some thunderous declaration, it needed to pick up line three and listen to this message from me: Take a number, karma. And while you’re at it, there’s a French poseur in Grove Isle you ought to visit.

  When I left Ida’s office, I stopped at my desk to gather my things. I packed my most important files, my contact lists, and my personal photographs into a crate, and without a word to anyone, I walked out of Grand Realty.

  Gina, alarmed, raced after me.

  “What the hell’s going on?” she said, catching me as I headed for the parking lot. “What happened in there?”

  I couldn’t stop, not even for Gina. If I stopped, I would break down. I knew this about myself. So when I reached my car, I dumped the crate into the back seat and fumbled for my keys in angry silence.

  “Will you wait for one second, please?” Gina said, swiping the keys out of my hand and giving me a good shake. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Did you see the paper today?” I said.

  “Yeah. Obits sucked today,” she said.

  “Not the obits, the front page. Did you see the front-page story?”

  “You mean the one about your case? Yeah. What about it?” said Gina, as if I had asked her if she had read Walter Mercado’s prediction for Scorpios that day.

  “It was full of lies,” I said.

  “So, who cares?” she said.

  “What do you mean, ‘Who cares?’”

  “Nobody believes that newspaper anyway,” she said.

  But Gina, who knew me better than anyone else, realized it would take more than that to settle me down. She knew I wasn’t about to take a smear of this magnitude without a fight. She knew I would accept nothing less than full-on clarity. She grabbed her cell phone and made a call: “Can you meet us in the Grove?”

  CLUB HAVANA—DAY 22

  A bustling outdoor café beneath cream-white umbrellas. Mary and Gina are seated at a table, sipping espressos. Casey joins them.

  Casey, perhaps the most widely quoted legal eagle in Miami, rarely read the newspaper. He preferred to spend the time biking across the MacArthur Causeway into South Beach for a daily run along the ocean or stretching out his sore limbs in the eucalyptus-scented mist of his steam room. His morning headlines, research, and need-to-know bulletins were meticulously gathered, printed out, and delivered promptly at seven A.M. each day by his longtime assistant, Joy Ellen.

  That morning, for reasons that weren’t immediately clear, she had omitted the front-page story about our hearing. So Casey got his first look at the hatchet job when I unfolded the paper on the café table and read the headline aloud to him.

  “ Realtor released, but evidence murky, feds say.’ Can you believe this load of crap?” I said.

  Casey glanced at the story and folded up the paper again with a tepid gesture. He called over a waitress and ordered an iced green tea.

  “So that’s what she’s so worked up about?” he asked Gina with a wink.

  “Why shouldn’t I be worked up about it?” I said.

  “Because it’s just a story, a badly reported story by one of the hack stragglers left over at the Daily Press. Big deal. It doesn’t change the most important fact—that you are a free woman,” he said.

  “It is a big deal to me. ‘Murky’ is not good enough to bring back my life. ‘Murky’ is the reason my son is living away from me. ‘Murky’ got me canned this morning. ‘Murky’ is too damn murky for me,” I said.

  “You got canned this morning?” Gina said, dropping a spoon into her demitasse.

  “Pretty much, yes,” I said. “But it all goes to a larger point: Where does all the murk end?”

  Casey listened as I complained about the child psychiatrist and the court-appointed guardian shadowing Max.

  “How do we get rid of them?” I asked him.

  “Relax. We’ve got a hearing at the end of the week. We’re asking the judge to close this case and reinstate the original custody agreement,” he said.

  “Somehow I’m not encouraged,” I said.

  “You should be. You’ve done nothing wrong,” he said.

  “Yet there’s a ‘murky’ cloud above my head,” I said.

  Casey laughed and took a swig of his iced tea.

  “The hell with that. You’re innocent and you’re home. That alone has changed the scenario,” he said. “Matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the judge opens a can of whup-ass on your ex for adding to the hoopla.”

  Casey’s projections eased my mind. For about five minutes, that is. My peace of mind shattered when Gina let out a bloodcurdling shriek.

  “Look at the picture on that bus!” she said.

  I turned around in time to see the Metrobus come to a labored stop at the red light, its entire side emblazoned with the Picture. At first I saw it in disjointed, Picasso-like sections: frightful face. Huge teeth. Bejeweled h
ands. Put it all together and it was a patriotic-themed family portrait with one Victoria Ramonet smack in the middle of it. There she was with her husband and son, all in matching red, white, and blue outfits. Except the boy in the picture wasn’t her son—he was my son. There was Max, campaign prop. And there was that slogan: “Victoria Ramonet. For the good of our children.”

  “That woman must have a penis,” said Gina.

  I grabbed my phone.

  “It ends right now,” I said, dialing Tony’s number.

  Casey nudged my arm.

  “Put it away,” he said.

  “She has to steal my child to get votes?” I said. “How can Tony allow this?”

  “Because he can,” Casey said. “Tony is your son’s father, biological and custodial. You know what that means? It means he can put his son on the side of the Goodyear blimp if he wants to.”

  “But I’m Max’s mother. Don’t I have a say?”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean you rumble in the street over a sign on a damn bus. Mary, think. You’re not just dealing with your ex-husband; you’re dealing with a clunky, highly subjective system. The system doesn’t care about campaign signs. You have to be smart about this. If you jump into the gutter with Tony, he wins. You prove him right. And you’ll never get Max out of family court.”

  I let Casey’s advice sink in with a swig of cold coffee. The midday sun glinted off the passing cars and lit up the sidewalk and all its passing stories. How many of them were true? I wondered. In a few hours, the entire block would be awash in patches of shadows. But now there was only searing sun.

  Perhaps it was the relentless light that brought me to the dizzying realization that would change my quest for justice in the most radical way.

  “It’s all because of her,” I said.

  “Who?” said Gina. “Dickhead’s wife?”

  “No. The other Maria,” I said. “Maria Portilla.”

  “What do you mean?” said Casey.

  “Thanks to her, there will always be a cloud of suspicion over me,” I said. “People will always think I’m a criminal.”

  “Does it matter what people think?” he said.

  “Yes, it absolutely does,” I said.