by M. E. Kerr
“I’m so glad you’re here!”
“I never should have left the way I did.”
He had on carpenter jeans and an old blue plaid seersucker shirt. The sleeves were so short, his muscles showed.
There were tears behind his eyes and he shook his head. “Oh, Anna, I make apologies for how I talked to you last. I took out on you my great anger with myself for what I had done. I feel you never see me in a good way. You never see me smart or going places, becoming someone you can respect. I am less than boys you are used to, and—”
I put my hand to his lips to hush him. “You are more to me, not less. Don’t ever think that way, Esteban. I think only good about you. Don’t you know how I feel about you?”
“But I want you to be proud of me and I don’t see how that can happen. Here in this country I will always be a number zero. Your brother has college and now will be this animal doctor.”
“Shhhh. Listen to yourself. Where is any mention of how brave you are to be in a foreign country, working to keep your family together? Where is any talk about how you sing and so many flock to Jungle Pete’s just to see you?”
“I sing for nothing,” he said. “Now I feel your father is watching me from somewhere inside with angry eyes. I know he was at Ridge Road looking for me.”
“Is that where you live?”
“If you call it living. Sí. I went out the back door as he came in the front. Then I decided to just face him. First I went to town immediately to buy you something because I was bad to leave. You had made everything on the table look like a film.”
“Don’t be afraid of him, Esteban. He won’t bite.”
“Just bark.”
“Yes, he barks. That he does. But he’s not a mean man, Esteban, any more than you’re a zero. You are both men I care about. Somehow, some way you have to know each other. When you do, you’ll like things about each other. You both love family. You both work hard. Neither of you wishes anyone harm.”
We walked very slowly toward the house.
He handed me the package he had, and we stopped while I took a CD out of it.
On the white cover was a line drawing of a large, older woman with black hair. You only saw her from the back.
The title was Corazón Libre.
“Free Heart,” Esteban said. “It is Mercedes Sosa. She is who made famous the song you liked.”
“Which one?”
“ Los Niños de Nuestro Olvido’—‘The Children of our Forgetfulness.’ She writes folk music about the hard life in Argentina. She is the favorite of my mother, who was born in Buenos Aires.”
My father’s voice boomed in the muggy early-afternoon air.
“Annabel!”
“I’m coming!”
“He is muy angry. I know that from his voice.”
“Thank you for this present, Esteban.”
“It is because you liked the song and because I never shared the paella dinner with you. My bad.”
“You made a mistake, that’s all.”
“Another mistake…. Will he not want me to see you now?”
“Esteban?”
“What, Anna?”
I took his hand. “Don’t think so much about my father now. Esteban, it is not going to be easy for us. But we will have to find a way to make things work.”
He squeezed my hand hard. “We will have to,” he said. “I am okay with that.”
“And I am okay with that too.”
“Thank you for thinking we can, Anna.”
NINE
THESE WERE the rules.
I was not to have Esteban to our house.
I was not to watch him play soccer.
I was not to go to Jungle Pete’s on Saturday nights.
I was not to go to the Pantigo Deli.
I was not to telephone him or receive calls from him, and Dad took away my cell phone.
He kept the screening room ceiling as it was, and he even paid Esteban the usual ten dollars an hour.
“I am a fair businessman,” Dad told me, “but I am a loving parent as well. I paid this muchacho as I said I would, despite his incompetence. But he had better stay away from you, Annabel. What is the matter with you, running out the door to greet him?”
“I like him, that’s all.”
“You’re right, that’s all.”
I almost never did what Dad said I couldn’t do, but he had not forbidden me to walk along the ocean with Esteban, and that’s what we were doing. Okay, that’s a tacky way to put it. I was defying Dad on a major issue. My excuse to myself was that I wouldn’t do it for long. Somehow I’d find a way for Dad to accept Esteban. My father was not a petty man. He was a kind, caring, gruff guy with a big heart, and there’d be a way to reach him. I’d find it.
Esteban said where he came from there were beautiful coral reefs and the sea was a turquoise color, but the beaches were small and narrow.
We walked along, arms around each other. With him, even that didn’t seem that innocent. I could feel warm little darts running from inside my elbows to the tips of my fingers.
“Is there anything I can do to change your father’s mind about me seeing you?” Esteban asked.
“Not right now. Maybe he’ll change his mind later on.”
“Is it most because I am not from this country?”
“That is a lot of it, yes. He feels about you the way Gioconda feels about me. You seem to him to be a threat to our family. We are very close, too, particularly since Mom died.”
It was after five, a foggy afternoon, with the tide coming in, both of us barefoot, pants rolled up, shoes back on Main Beach.
“I hear he treats his men well and he is not a bad man to work for.”
“He is not a bad man, Esteban.”
“You’re right. He is just afraid, like my sister. Does your brother feel as he does?”
“Kenyon doesn’t judge people that way.”
“He is not prejudiced?”
“No. My father isn’t really prejudiced, either. He’s just a little behind the times.”
“Except when it comes to knowing who will work for nuts.”
“Peanuts. We don’t say someone works for nuts. We say someone works for peanuts.”
“That’s us,” Esteban said gloomily.
“Do you wish you weren’t here?” I asked him.
“Well, Anna, I am a Colombian. Providencia is my home.”
“So why are you here?”
“You don’t want me to be here?”
“I want you here, oh yes! But sometimes I wonder why you came all this way.” I knew that I sounded impatient with him when what I really felt was frustrated that we had to sneak around to be together.
“Our family cannot exist there on what little they have. Gioconda and I help support our younger brothers and sisters in Providencia. Two boys, three girls, and my mother’s parents live with us. We are all ten family. El orgullo del Hispano está en la familia. Do you know what that says in English?”
“Tell me.”
“A Hispanic’s pride is in his family.”
“Do you know what Esteban is in English? Stephen. I may call you Stephen sometimes.”
“Ay, no! Don’t anglicize my name. Never!”
“Oh?” I was surprised he was so adamant.
He said, “Ramón got so mad when a vato in our house had a boss who changed his name from Rafael to Ralph. Ramón teaches we must keep our names and our pride!”
“And what is this Ramón all about, anyway?”
“Ramón is familia here, in our house here. We are loyal to each other, which is why I can never be a Stephen.”
I had to laugh. He was so solemn at times. I bumped against him purposely and said, “You are such a wack!”
“Because I listen to Ramón? He knows the rope. He has all the answers.”
“Ropes,” I said.
“What?”
I knew he didn’t like it when I corrected his English.
“Nothing,” I s
aid. “It is nothing.”
“See if you can catch me,” he said. He ran ahead of me, splashing in the waves while I ran after him. It was not easy to catch him. I know he slowed up on purpose so that I could.
Where we were on the beach, there was no one. Even if others had been there, we would hardly have seen them, the fog was so thick.
That was what I loved about Seaview beaches. There were private parts, and when we found one, we would go up to the dunes and talk and make out.
There was always that moment when Esteban would stop touching me. At the same time he would hold my hands so I couldn’t touch him.
“We don’t need a chaperone with you doing that all the time,” I complained.
“One of us has to.”
“Why?”
He smiled at me. “The Swan Man has to keep us out of trouble.”
“I like that you remember my nickname for you. But I don’t like you to be the one who says what we can do and not do.”
“I think sometimes you would not say anything to stop us. Did you stop Trip, too?”
“I never had to. I didn’t want him.” That much was true. I’d wanted to be with him and be seen with him, but I’d never felt the physical pull with Trip that I felt with Esteban.
“Do you swear that’s true?” Esteban asked me.
“I swear! But why do you ask me so much about Trip?”
He smoothed my hair back from my face. He had such small hands.
I remembered a poem by e. e. cummings with the line “nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.”
He said, “Maybe why is because I might be falling in love with you.”
“Maybe? Might be?”
“I wait to see,” he said. “Do you understand?”
“I wait to see too,” I said, “but I think I know now. I think we both know.”
Our mouths opened to each other, our arms held us tight.
What a time for me to see Larkin over Esteban’s shoulder, Larkin walking her dog, one of those golden hound dogs all the guys in trucks have riding in the back!
Can they ever just go on with their walks? Do they always have to run up for a smell, panting, wagging their tails, and shaking water all over us?
“Oh, no, it’s Larkin and Dolly!” I said, pushing Esteban away.
“So it takes Larkin to make you stop us?”
She was coming toward us, barefoot in cutoff white jeans and a navy tank top.
“Come on, Dolly! Come!”
Dolly was licking Esteban’s face and neck. The first time I’d met Dolly, she’d tried to hump my leg.
“Why did she have to come along?” I muttered.
Then Larkin saw us. “Hello!”
“Hi, Larkin.” She was walking toward us, carrying Dolly’s leash.
“You remember Esteban,” I said. It had been a while since the matinee incident. My brother was almost graduated from college. In three days I would go to Cornell with Dad for the ceremony.
“Hello, Esteban.” She smiled.
“Hello, Missus. You know, I never thanked you for saying you liked my mistake.”
“I do like it, and you’re welcome. Come, Dolly!”
I was glad she didn’t stop to talk, and not sure if she was embarrassed or just wanted to let us have our privacy. She knew that Esteban and I were forbidden to see each other. Right in front of me one day my father said to her, “If you ever see the famous Latino roof designer around here, call me immediately so I can bring home one of those pest bombs. After I smoke him out, I’ll report him to the law for living ten people to a room. He’s not exactly the kind I want anywhere near my daughter.”
Larkin had no answer to that. She’d learned to let my father rant and rave. It’d be over faster that way. The more noise he made, the less it mattered. When he was quiet, he was lethal.
This time the dog followed her, and I watched them until they disappeared into the fog.
“That was bad timing,” Esteban said.
“I’ll say.”
“Will she tell your father she saw us together?”
“I think she’ll tell him and make him swear not to tell me she did.”
“I bet she won’t tell him,” Esteban said. “She’s too nice.”
“But she’s crazy about my father.”
“Let’s make a bet,” he said. “What do you want to bet?”
“If she tells him, you can never grab my hands and stop me from touching you.”
He frowned and shook his head, playing with the gold Santa Cecilia medal around his neck.
“It was your idea to bet,” I reminded him. “Don’t welsh.”
“What is that? The rabbit made with cheese? Once where I cooked that was on the menu.”
“Not Welsh rarebit. Welsh! It means you don’t keep a promise.”
“All right,” he sighed. “But if the Missus doesn’t tell your father, I will always be our chaperone. You will never complain about it, or pout.”
“I can still pout.”
He said, “But I will be the boss of such things…. How will we know if she is a squeaker?”
“Squealer.” Sometimes I had to correct him. “Oh, we’ll know. Don’t worry about that! If you think it’s hard to see each other now, wait until he hears about it!” Then I said, “What do you have against sex?”
If he was blushing I couldn’t tell, but he had an embarrassed expression on his face. He looked away from me as he said, “It is too soon for us to take that step, Anna.”
“Is that for you to say or me?” I asked him.
“It is for us both to say. We just don’t want it to be an accident.”
“The last accident you had is now a piece of art.”
“But if we have one, I don’t think your father will look at it that way.”
I said, “It’s none of his business. You don’t get it, do you? I’m not a child, Esteban! Next thing I know, you’ll proof me.”
He pulled me down beside him. “That’s not the next thing.” He smiled. “This is.”
That was when I got the idea to steal one of Kenyon’s condoms. I knew there were still some Trojans under his shorts in my bottom drawer. What if I had one with me at a time like this?
TEN
DOWNSTAIRS IN THE Seaview Library was a book called La Paella de Valencia. It was on a bottom shelf alongside other cookbooks, and I could see that the last time it had been borrowed was in 2000. That became our mailbox. We left notes saying where we would be, and sometimes we just left love notes. It was easy for me, because in the summer I worked there five days a week. Esteban was at the deli most of the time or on another job, but he didn’t have a problem running in there late afternoons during free moments. Besides, he liked to read books from the Spanish collection, which had grown so large in the last few years that it occupied several shelves on the main floor.
Esteban’s favorite writer was a fellow Colombian: Gabriel García Márquez. He said everyone at home loved him, and they all called him Gabo.
I left Esteban bits of poetry I liked, particularly my new favorite, e. e. cummings.
One of his poems began, “i like my body when it is with your body.”
Esteban wrote back, “Did you know my lucky initial is E for my mother’s first name? Now you do, Anna, my love, and when I am not your Swan Man, I will be e. e. santiago.”
Once my message to him was: “My father sees a client on Sunday morning. Will you be on Main Beach? Nine to eleven? Xxxxxx.”
He answered, “Sweet Woman, Sunday mornings are hard for me to get away. Gioconda and I go to Casa Pentecostal with our housemates, and then we all sit down for Sunday dinner. I am working that afternoon helping a man in Watermill put in a lawn. What other time can we meet next week? ees”
We’d brought Kenyon home from college the last week in June, so it was just as well that Esteban was busy, because my brother would need help packing for the move to his apartment.
People say we look enough alike to be twins, b
oth of us blond and blue-eyed, both of us on the skinny side and tall.
The one thing I really liked about my brother was that he never tried to talk me into or out of anything. We didn’t agree on every subject, but he didn’t pull rank on me.
He asked me how I’d like to bike down to Accabonac Presbyterian with him. That way we’d exercise our minds, bodies, and souls.
“We can get coffee and a bagel first,” he said. “Does the Accabonac General Store still have benches outside?”
“I thought you’d like help packing.”
He said, “There’s plenty of time to do that. I need a good sermon. Reverend Stewart is still in the pulpit, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” I’d almost forgotten that side of Kenyon. When Mom was alive, he always went to church with her. Dad and I made excuses at times, but Kenyon never did. Once Mom died, I never went to church except with Dad on Christmas.
“Don’t tell me you still feel the same way about church, Anna B.?” He sounded sad. Mom used to call me Anna B.
“Why would I feel any differently?”
“I thought you might have changed. You don’t seem to be upset because Dad is dating Larkin.”
“Larkin didn’t let Mom die.”
“God didn’t either, Sis.”
“He didn’t do anything to stop it!”
“God didn’t give Mama breast cancer, Annabel.”
When Kenyon was feeling sad about her death, he always called her Mama.
“I thought the Lord gaveth and tooketh,” I said. “If He didn’t giveth, He didn’t taketh either, did He? He let her suffer. Remember how long it went on?”
“Let’s change the subject. Why don’t you take a walk on the beach with your new boyfriend? Now’s your chance, isn’t it? Dad will be going to the Unitarian church with Larkin.”
I knew I was safe telling Kenyon all about Esteban. Since both Esteban and I were in one piece, Dad couldn’t have known we were seeing each other secretly.
“I’ll bike with you to the Accabonac store and have a bagel and coffee with you,” I said.
I couldn’t admit that my new boyfriend was going to church himself.
“You don’t have to,” Kenyon said. “Aren’t we going to have Sunday dinner as usual?”