But finally Clara’s voice ventured forth, from the heart of the darkness, and crept gently into Lucie’s ears. “Are you asleep?” she asked, as she had before.
“No,” Lucie answered; but not peevishly this time.
“You should sleep,” Clara suggested, after a little.
“I would if I could.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I told you before. I’m too sore.”
“Do you want me to get your pills?”
“No. You’ll wake Eduardo.”
“He won’t even notice.”
“You’ll wake César.”
“So?”
“No,” Lucie repeated.
Again, the hush fell down, and mingled with the heavy blackness. Lucie felt Clara’s arm, though she could not see it, as it embraced her.
“Don’t do that,” she snapped.
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
The arm was removed; but Lucie wasn’t as hard as her words. She lay still for a few minutes, but then rolled towards Clara, and sighed miserably.
“I love you,” Clara said simply.
“So all of you seem to keep saying,” Lucie returned, invoking – and perhaps unjustly aligning with Clara’s – César’s drunken declaration.
“That’s not fair,” Clara said.
“Isn’t it?”
“It’s not.”
“Explain.”
Lucie thought that Clara would founder, here – but she didn’t. She only went on to say, in quite the clearest and sincerest voice as could be asked for:
“It’s not fair that you say it, Lucie – because I do love you. I don’t say that my brother, and all my family doesn’t love you, as well; but it’s not the same. I love you the way that you love me. I know it, and you know it. Does anyone else know it? Well, César may guess it, and Tomás may be certain. I don’t know. I should ask him, I know I should – but I haven’t. I should tell him, if he doesn’t know. Nothing else is fair.”
“How long have you been together?”
“Five years.”
Lucie winced, and asked, “Do you love him?”
“I thought I did.”
“Perhaps you do.”
“Not enough.”
“You may be confused.”
Instead of answering, Clara drew nearer to Lucie, and doubled her former embrace, with both her arms this time. She whispered into Lucie’s ear, “Te amo, mi bella Lucie.”
Then she kissed her – and Lucie knew that no one, in that moment, was confused. Really it was a marvelous thing for her, too; for she was always confused. Had anyone told her beforehand what would happen, she would have wagered that she would be more confused than she had ever been in her entire life – but somehow, when it came, there wasn’t a doubt to be found in her mind.
She was twenty-eight years old. There had been the boy who worked down at the grocery store, and with whom she had hardly even known what was happening, until it was over. She even thought, afterwards, about telling the police on him – and no doubt would have done so, if he hadn’t been the one to start crying. He was rather too pathetic to punish; and besides, she soon forgot he had ever existed, anyway.
Lucie couldn’t remember his name. She could remember the name, though, of a daughter of one of her father’s old friends – Kathleen McCormack. It wasn’t so quick, with her. Lucie thought that she liked her very much, thought so for several months even. One night Kathleen knocked on the door to her apartment; and when Lucie opened it for her, she didn’t hesitate to crawl directly into the bed. She stayed the night – a very long night – but after that, Lucie never heard another word from her.
Then there was Mr. Green, owner of the aforementioned piano. Once every few months, his wife went to visit her sister in Colorado, and he was left quite to himself. Sometimes he came to Lucie, when Mrs. Green was gone; and sometimes he didn’t. As a rule, Lucie liked it much better when he didn’t. But really she didn’t have many friends, and she liked very much when she could pass the lonely evenings with the Greens. She favored Mrs. Green, it’s true, far more than Mr. Green; but to spend any time with the former, she needed acquiesce on occasion to the latter. And, besides – she was very fond of that piano.
Somehow, while she was thinking these things, she didn’t know that she was saying them aloud. So, when the train of thought had passed, she was very surprised to realize that Clara had heard it all.
She was horrified. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t –”
“Stop,” said Clara. She kissed Lucie’s mouth, and pulled her close. Lucie could feel her skin, and her hands – her skin and her hands everywhere. She could feel her heart, beating against her own chest.
27
The Blow-Up
Now we leap through the darkness, and into the sunlight of the following day. Lucie and Clara woke early, and looked blinkingly round in the bright light, till their eyes found one another, and they settled back again. They sank down the pillows, and Clara’s sleeping head lay on Lucie’s breast. Lucie kept her arms wrapped tight around Clara, as if afraid that she would disappear.
They didn’t rise until after noon. When they went out into the kitchen, they found it empty. Josefína and Maríbel were in the work-room; Eduardo and Mateo were gone; César was sleeping through the bottle of rum he had polished off, and the apartment was quiet. Alejandra was missing – but we won’t say any more about that. To be fair, she had been asleep when Lucie arrived the night before, beaten and bruised; and so she knew nothing about it. Her nature wasn’t such a bad one, as to make us think that she wouldn’t have considered twice before resuming her relations with Robert Benoit, if she had only known just what a perfect monster he was. But, she did not know (seeing as her own injury didn’t seem enough to enlighten her; and seeing as Robert was very skilled in the art of hiding the signs of a beating, many times as his underhanded practices had earned him one before) – and so her absence will make us think none the worse of her.
Every now and then there came the sound of the sewing machines in the back room, but it mingled comfortably with the singing of the birds, and the traffic in the street below, so that the strong and expressive thoughts which crowded the minds of Lucie and Clara did not seem unbearably loud.
After sitting for a while with their coffee cups at the kitchen table, they went into the parlor, and Clara asked Lucie to play something on the piano.
They sat together all afternoon. For a while Lucie played, and Clara listened, with her chin resting on her fist, as if in a trance. But then Lucie left the piano, and went to the sofa where Clara was seated. They sat holding hands, and looking out of the window, until the day began to grow less clear, and evening showed signs of setting in. It was then that Clara noticed again the bruises on Lucie’s face, and offered to cover them before all the family presented itself. She could only find make-up so dark as she needed in a little box on Alejandra’s dresser. She used this to conceal the blue and purple marks as best she could – and all in all it was good enough, in the absence of sunshine, and when viewed under the artificial light of the apartment bulbs.
Around six o’clock, Mrs. Vicente came with Maríbel out into the kitchen, to set about getting supper ready. She called Lucie and Clara from the parlor, and assigned them chores in the making of the meal. They had all been working for some time in silence, preparing meat for cooking, peeling potatoes, and coating everything in some sort of spice or other, when Mrs. Vicente cleared her throat, and looked at Clara with a mysterious smile.
Clara didn’t notice at first; but when she finally did, she dropped everything she held in her hands, and knitted her brows together. “Qué, Mamá?” she asked. “Por qué estás sonriendo?”
At this, the smile to which Clara alluded seemed to split in two, and lent one of its halves to Maríbel, so that Clara was doubly perplexed. But neither her mother nor her sister would offer any information that might shed some light on their oddness; and so
everyone went on with their work, and tried to pretend that nothing had been going on at all.
But finally Maríbel dropped her knife, and clapped her hands together. Her mother shot her a warning look, but she paid it no mind. She only went on smiling, and clapping, as she burst out: “Tomás is coming to dinner!”
Josefína sighed, and began shaking her head, while waving her hands and muttering about her daughter’s loose lips. But Clara only laughed, and went back to her work.
“What’s the big fuss?” she asked. She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, and added, more pointedly, to her mother (wishing to demonstrate that Tomás’s coming wasn’t such a rare occasion), “Tomás viené a cenar a menudo.”
“Yes, but tonight –” Maríbel began piping up; though she was cut off by Josefína, who very obviously wanted her to quit her blathering. She took a hand lightly to the back of Maríbel’s head, and reprimanded her firmly. After this, Maríbel kept quiet, but couldn’t by any means be forced to dispel that strange smile that floated over her face.
The silence that followed was somewhat less easy. Mrs. Vicente was huffing and puffing, still obviously displeased; and Maríbel’s inexplicable ecstasy could not be contained. Clara was confused, and slightly wary; but Lucie was altogether unnerved. She felt that she had good reason to be – although she didn’t know yet what that reason was.
When dinner was in the oven, and pots of sides and sauces were cooking on all four burners, Eduardo and old Mateo came through the door, and tramped wearily into the kitchen. They made to sit down, but Josefína batted them away, and made them go and wash the ink from their hands and faces. So they trudged on down the hall with very deep sighs, and were gone for long minutes, scrubbing the thick black stains from their skin.
By the time the present party of seven was seated at the table (César had finally come rambling out of his room, shortly after his father and brother arrived, with bleary eyes and puffy cheeks), Alejandra returned home with Eduardo’s Cristina, whom she had fetched from her own apartment building on the next block. Then they all waited for Tomás to show himself. For Lucie’s part, she sat at the table beside César, with pins and needles in her hands and feet, a scaly layer of gooseflesh over her arms, and a stiff neck. César spoke to her several times, but she never answered him.
During this impatient time, the air was thick with some sort of expectation, and everyone but Lucie and Clara seemed aware of something vastly important which was about to take place. The card table was dragged out, and set up in its accustomed spot. Chairs were set around it; everyone rearranged their places so that they mirrored their organization during last Sunday’s lunch; and the waiting continued.
Eduardo was just beginning to verbalize what grumbling his stomach had been making for some minutes past, and was being hushed by his mamá, when suddenly there came a firm double-knock at the door. The sound was followed by the entrance of Tomás, who appeared in a neat, and very new-looking dinner jacket and tie, with his feathery black hair combed for once into a position of partial submission, and a broad grin on his face which seemed to show each and every one of his pearly white teeth. His thin mustache, arranged perfectly over his lip, made him appear as Clark Gable’s dashing (but foreign) great-grandson. Lucie sighed, and her heart sank a little, for he looked more strong and handsome than she ever had seen him.
But Clara only narrowed her eyes at him, and said (in inquiry towards the reason for his looking so especially well), “Te ves muy bien, Tomás. Hay alguna razón en particular?”
“Tal vez,” Tomás answered cryptically, with a very bright gleam in his eye, and a smile over his lips which seemed to test the ordinary bounds of the human mouth. Perhaps, he said, and nothing else. Then he simply took his seat at the card table across from Clara, and nodded respectfully to her mother and father. They returned this gesture with tenfold enthusiasm, bobbing their heads and waving their hands at him, as if he had just debarked from a great warship, having been away for whole years together.
The dishes of food were quickly spread over the tables, and everyone began to partake rather quietly of the meal. It seemed much shorter than usual, and when it was finished, Mrs. Vicente pushed everyone very eagerly into the parlor. She even neglected, for the time, the mess that was the kitchen – which wasn’t like her at all. Everyone in the apartment sat packed inside the little sitting room, which was quickly growing hot, and wasn’t at all an environment conducive to pleasant small-talk. There was an unspoken tension, a palpable strain on the minds of all present; and Lucie couldn’t understand it. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something.
When Mrs. Vicente cleared her throat, and asked if anyone would like anything to drink (which no one did), Tomás seemed to take this as some sort of cue, to begin whatever appeared to be his own project. He hem-hemmed very gracefully, and sat forward a little in his chair, now with a very grave countenance. He looked in turn at each person in the room, and began what seemed to be a carefully rehearsed speech. He said it in Spanish, of course; but Maríbel whispered the words to Lucie, in English, as he spoke them. We will give you her translation.
“I have felt for a long time,” Tomás said seriously, “as if I were a part of this family. I was always very lonely, after my parents died. Until I met Clara – and all of you.”
Though Lucie could appreciate the wickedness of the thought, she couldn’t help but feel, as Tomás stared at Clara with such a tender expression, that she cared very little, and was hardly sorry at all, for his dead family. Hers was dead, too. Did he expect some sort of medal for his suffering?
“The past few years have been very happy ones for me,” he went on. “There is nothing I would have changed, nothing at all that could have made them better. Surely there is not such another family to be found, in all the world.” He paused, and looked at Clara with eyes so loving and true, that Lucie felt as if she might be sick. “Surely there is not such another woman to be found,” he continued, “in all the world. I am certain of it.”
There was a collective intake of breath, as he rose up from his chair, and then fell down upon his knee before Clara. “I want nothing more, Clara Vicente,” he said earnestly, “than to spend the rest of my life with you. I love you dearly, and know you love me, too. I dressed myself in the best way I could manage, to kneel here before you as the best man I can possibly be – as near as I can come, to the man that you deserve. There is only one question to ask, and I will ask it now.”
He looked up at Clara with wide eyes, velvety soft in their passion, and seemingly filled with small pools of warm liquid, where parts of his very heart had melted, and risen to look out at his beloved. He smiled sweetly, and pressed Clara’s hand.
“Clara Vicente,” he said, “quieres casarte conmigo?”
Maríbel was so taken by emotion, at this last bit, that she forgot all about facilitating Lucie’s comprehension with its English counterpart. But Lucie needed no Spanish dictionary to understand the full meaning of the question. She looked wildly from Clara to Tomás, with a fierce burning in her throat, and a wealth of tears welling up behind her eyes. But of course no one noticed, full as their eyes were with their own tears. Maríbel only smiled, and squeezed Lucie’s hand.
Clara was silent. She was staring down at Tomás, with a very strange expression on her face. It was difficult to interpret her exact emotions. Her mouth opened several times – but it always closed before she could speak. Obviously she was not overcome, for her face was free from any passionate flush, and her eyes were quite dry. She looked merely bewildered.
“Clara?” Tomás said gently, reaching to lay his hand on her head.
But Clara jerked away from him, and leapt suddenly from her seat. She darted glances at every person in the room, her eyes moving so quickly that it was impossible to tell exactly what she was looking at, at any given time. But her gaze came to rest finally on Lucie, and settled there for a long moment. Their two sets of eyes were utterly locked; but Clara tore her own away just
as quickly as she could, to avoid the suspicion of her family.
“Clara?” Eduardo said worriedly, as he rose to take her arm. “Estás bien?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped, thrashing his hand away. Then she only stood, with her arms crossed over her chest, there in the middle of the room. All eyes stared at her. No lips moved.
“Clara,” Tomás said finally, with an affecting tremor creeping into his voice. “Have I spoken too rashly? Have I overwhelmed you?”
This is what he said; but Lucie didn’t know it, for of course this strange turn of events left Maríbel in no frame of mind for translating. At that moment everyone jumped up from their chairs, and began speaking to Clara all at once, in their native tongue. Lucie sat silently, forgotten and bemused.
“Aléjate de mi!” Clara shouted, holding up her hands to emphasize her desire for everyone to keep away from her. “Aléjate!”
So everyone fell away. Their mouths all hung open, and their eyes were wide and glassy, as if shell-shocked.
“What is the matter with you, Clara?” César asked, stepping forward to place his hand on his sister’s shoulder. But he, like all the rest, was shaken off.
His eyes, however, had in the excitement lost their alcoholic glaze, and he was perhaps more attentive than anyone else. His gaze followed that of Clara intently, and did not quit till the latter had been tracked to Lucie’s own face. He threw up his hands, and cried out.
“Hush, César!” Clara begged fearfully.
“Qué está pasando aquí?” thundered old Mateo, who wished to understand immediately what was going on.
“Pregunte a ella,” César said quietly, pointing at Clara to show that his father should ask her.
“Hija?” said Mateo.
“Oh, Papá,” Clara said miserably, pressing a hand to her forehead.
“Shall I tell them, sister?” asked César. “Or will you?”
“Be quiet, César!”
Bella Page 17