“I’ve just had a telegram from Mama. Papa’s ill—seriously ill. She wants us to come home as soon as we can.”
Ruben might have thought it one last desperate ploy to get him home, if it hadn’t been for the genuine worry in her eyes.
“He’s really sick?”
“I told you he wasn’t well,” she said, her voice filled with exasperation. “I’ve tickets for the seven thirty train. You’ve time to pack up some things, if you hurry. Please hurry.”
The naked fear in her eyes was too much for Ruben to bear. “I don’t need my things. Let’s go.”
He thought about Luis and felt a pang of guilt, but pushed it out of his mind and firmly closed the door to the automobile.
“Do you want to send word to Emilia?” Violeta asked as she adjusted her skirts.
“No.” Ruben cleared his throat. “There’s no need.”
In part to distract her from her desperate worry and partly because he couldn’t hold back any longer, Ruben told her what had happened with Emilia. “So really it’s best if I stay away for a time,” he concluded. “As soon as I take you home, I’ll go to my old lodgings and see if I can find a room. I’ll write to the woman who runs the boarding house here and ask her to send my things.”
“I’m sorry things didn’t work out,” Violeta said as they pulled up outside the station. “But I know Mama and Papa will be happy to have you nearby again.” This time, she waited for the driver to open the door before alighting.
Ruben stayed inside a second longer, watching as she directed the unloading of her luggage. Behind her, above the entrance to the tiny station, the words Arroyo Blanco were spelled out in metal letters. They were glinting in the sun, almost blinding.
Ruben turned away, and went to join his sister.
Emilia had fallen into a fitful daze as the sky began to lighten, and when she’d woken, Susana was gone. She came in as Emilia was stirring some cornmeal into a pot full of hot milk to make some porridge.
“Good, you’re back,” Emilia said. Her head was aching, but she attempted a smile. “It’s almost time to go back to the fair.”
Susana sat on a cane-bottomed chair. “You can stay if you want to. I know it won’t be easy to face everyone after what happened.”
“I’ll be fine,” Emilia said. She bit her lip. “Mr. Mendez sent a note with one of the office boys. Worded it very nicely—he’s a kind old gentleman even if his son is a beast—but the general gist of it was that I shouldn’t bother returning to the office. I can’t pretend I’m not happy about it,” Emilia admitted, snapping a stick of cinnamon in half and dropping it into the cornmeal porridge. “You know I’ve wanted an excuse to quit for the longest time, and now I can, without fear that anyone would think I was selling my body in fact instead of in fiction.”
She had meant to be funny, but when she turned and saw Susana's face, all attempts at humor vanished. “Did anyone say anything to you? You ran into Cristobal, didn’t you? What did he say to you? Tell me, and I’ll go bash his head in like I should have weeks ago.”
“It wasn’t Cristobal,” Susana replied. “It was Mrs. Espinosa. She doesn’t think it’s prudent for me to lead the literacy program after all. She—she says Rosa Castillo will lead it instead.”
“Oh, Susana.” Emilia dropped the wooden spoon and hurried to her sister’s side. “I know I made light of it before, but just the thought that my horrible scribbling has cost you something you love so dearly…”
Emilia had been thinking of her sister’s job but as she spoke, the thought of Luis came to her mind. He hadn’t been at the fair the night before, but it was too much to hope that he wouldn’t have already heard what had happened.
“It was your horrible scribbling that kept us fed and clothed for the past two years, and if you think I’m ungrateful enough to forget that, then you have a very poor opinion of your older sister. I would have preferred for the truth about Miss Del Valle…” Susana's voice quailed, but she rallied and continued without a quiver. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
“You’re too good by half. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re a saint.”
“I’m hardly a saint!” Susana protested.
Emilia scooped out the corneal porridge into three bowls with a fresh spoon, covering the third with a dish and leaving it on the stove for her father, then taking the other two to the table.
“And besides, I was angry with you,” Susana admitted. She dipped a spoon into her porridge but didn’t lift it to her lips. “I was furious, in fact. You’d made it clear you didn’t care about facing everybody’s scorn, not as long as you could write the things you liked to write, and you didn’t seem to care that being accepted mattered to me a great deal. But I refuse to act like I’m ashamed of you when all you’ve done is have the courage to live your life as you want to, not as other people dictate you should.”
The doorbell rang and Emilia felt her muscles seizing with tension. She looked at Susana, panic beating inside her ribcage, and without her having to say anything, Susana stepped into and craned her neck to see through the door’s sidelights.
“It’s Luis,” Susana said, her face studiously blank. “He must have spoken to Mr. Torres. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She was out of the room before the words were fully out of her mouth. Emilia covered Susana’s bowl with a plate and, feeling slightly guilty for eavesdropping, tiptoed into the hall.
They were in the porch, and through the wood-framed sidelights, Emilia could see the two of them as they leaned against the balustrade.
“Is it true, what they’re saying about Emilia?” Luis was asking.
“Does it matter?” Susana said, and her voice was defiant.
“Not a bit. But I can’t say I’m surprised—I always knew she would end up doing something that would shock us all.” He sounded as though he were smiling.
Susana said something Emilia couldn’t quite catch and Luis made an impatient sound. “Oh, damn it all to hell, Susana. My father says he’d consider marrying you a disgrace from which the family’s good standing would never recover. But I don’t care what your sister does, nor whether your father drinks—I wouldn’t care if you drank. I want to be with you.”
“What about your father?” Susana asked quietly.
“Hang my father, and hang anyone who tries to get in our way. We’ll married as quickly as we can—that is,” he added, sounding suddenly stricken, “if you want to.” There was a pause and then he said, in an alarmed voice, “I’m doing everything all wrong, aren’t I? Here I am proposing marriage when I haven’t even told you—I haven’t told you how much I love you.”
Emilia walked soundlessly back to the kitchen, relieved beyond words that she hadn’t cost her sister her happiness.
Chapter 21
The second and last day of the fair came to a successful end and, as the booths began to empty and the crowd began to migrate into the center of the park where the municipal band was playing, Emilia and Susana dismantled their booth and loaded the things that hadn’t sold—three moth-eaten tomes of a French dictionary and one issue of a literary magazine that had been soaked by an injudiciously placed cup of lemonade—into the back of Luis’s motorcar.
“You two ought to stay and dance,” Emilia said as Luis opened the passenger door for Susana. “I’ll go look in on Papa.”
“All right,” Susana said with a quick glance at Luis. Emilia didn’t miss the warmth that traveled between them with that look, nor the heat that rose to her sister’s cheeks. “Make sure he eats something.”
“I will,” Emilia promised, and hurried home through empty streets.
She hadn’t seen Ruben all day, not since their argument at the lagoon the night before. She hated that he’d kept silent about his role in Blanco y Negro even more than she’d hated his reviews. She hated that he’d done it even while she’d confided in him about her stories, about her father, and that he’d meddled in Luis and Susana’s affairs. And she hated that despi
te all that, she felt his absence like a physical ache. Whatever his reasons, he’d been wrong to do all he had. His distress didn’t erase the real harm he’d done.
For lack of anything better to do—and too filled with restless energy to sit down and write—Emilia was straightening the cushions in the parlor when she heard the door open. There was a step in the entry and then her father was in the darkened hall. Instead of going on to his bedroom at the back of the house, he paused in the entrance to the parlor and looked at Emilia with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher.
“I suppose you’ve heard,” she said a little brusquely.
“I did. I might have expected something like it from you but somehow,” and he sounded surprised, “I didn’t.”
He had been drinking. The smell of it wafted from him in waves and traveled clearly across the room to where Emilia was standing. It was the smell she’d always associated with her father’s bad days, and it made something inside her stomach curdle.
“They’re rubbish,” Emilia said, swiping a stack of scattered pages into a basket and thrusting the basket behind the sofa.
“They have spirit. Which shouldn’t surprise me, if you’re the one who’s been writing them.” Emilia turned to look at him. “You’ve always had talent, Emilia. And what’s more, you’ve never been afraid to follow your heart. I only wish I were half as brave as you have been. If I was, I might never have stopped writing.”
It was the longest speech she’d heard from him in months. Emilia didn’t know how to answer. But it didn’t matter—her father gave her a small, tired smile, and then he turned around and shuffled slowly down the hall.
Ruben’s father had changed wildly in four years. He looked…diminished. There was no other word to describe his once tall, powerful frame as he lay in the large carved bed, dwarfed by its four posters and the profusion of pillows that propped him up. He was unshaven, and the stubble covering his jaw was as white as the shock of hair falling over his forehead.
Ruben was staring so hard he almost didn’t hear his mother’s exclamation as she detached herself from his father’s beside and almost ran to Ruben, half-sobbing as she flung her arms around him. He caught a glimpse of her face, lined with exhaustion, and then his arms were closing around her. Over her head, he could still see his father in the bed. The white blanket that covered him moved up and down with every breath, and that reassured Ruben enough to allow him to turn his attention to his mother, who was sniffling against the front of his shirt.
“How bad is it?” he asked quietly.
“Dr. Gonzalez says he’s stable for now.” With a final sniff, Ruben’s mother stepped away from him, fumbling in her pocket for a handkerchief. “But there’s no way of knowing if—if—”
She broke out into fresh sobs and Ruben held her again until they subsided.
On the bed, his father was stirring. His mother and Violeta were at his side in a moment but Ruben lingered just inside the room until, after a word from his father, the two women stopped fussing over him and left the room. Violeta gave Ruben’s arm a reassuring squeeze as they walked past him, then eased the door closed.
For the first time in four years, Ruben was alone with his father.
The old man was awake, his eyes dark, glittering slits that followed Ruben as he advanced further into the room.
“So you came.” His voice was steady, if a trifle hoarse, and so familiar it made Ruben’s heart clench inside his chest. “I didn’t think you would.”
“There was a telegram,” Ruben said. His own voice sounded loud to his ears, too loud for the hushed stillness of the sickroom. “Violeta was in a panic. I only came to see her safely home.”
His father ignored the obvious lie. “I read your book. It’s good. Too long, but good.”
Ruben snorted. “No one’s ever accused me of being brief.”
An upholstered chair had been drawn up to the bed. On it, his mother’s knitting lay abandoned. Ruben scooped up the mess of yarn and needles and placed it on top of the dresser, then sank into the chair and regarded his father. “I don’t plan to stay.”
“You don’t have to. Not if you don’t want to.” Mr. Torres closed his eyes briefly, then dragged his eyelids open as if he had to keep looking to make sure Ruben was really there. “Violeta wrote to us when she found you. She told us she didn’t think you would want to leave the town, as it appeared you had a sweetheart.”
“I did. But I made a mistake and now…” He swallowed. “Now she doesn’t want me. I can’t blame her, really—” He tried to say flippantly, with humor, like she would have, but he choked halfway through.
“Mistakes. I’ve made plenty of those myself. The biggest one was letting you go without explaining—”
“There’s nothing to explain.” Ruben felt his old anger simmering up inside him. He cast a glance at the door. It was solid wood and firmly shut, but he lowered his voice anyway. “You’ve deceived your wife for decades—
To his surprise, his father’s eyes watered. “I couldn’t bear to hurt her.”
Ruben’s mind flashed to Emilia. He couldn’t imagine feeling that way for anyone else. And yet he had hurt her— and what was more, he had deceived her. His throat felt tight. Violeta had been right. He really was just like his father.
Ruben left the room without saying anything else. He found Violeta in the back parlor, sitting in the sofa, her arm around another young woman. Though her eyes were puffy and her nose red, he recognized her immediately as the girl he’d seen with his father four years before. Sofia. His sister.
She looked at him warily as he sat across from them, and even Violeta watched him suspiciously.
“Hello, Sofia. I’m Ruben. I’m sorry we have to meet under these circumstances.”
Sofia cleared her throat. “It’s nice to meet you, Ruben. Is he…” She nodded in the direction of their father’s bedroom.
“He’s awake, if you want to go in. Does—does my mother know you’re here?”
“She does.” Violeta’s voice was a trifle sharp, as if in warning. “She knows everything.”
“Your mother has been wonderful to me,” Sofia said softly. “She’s letting me stay here until Papa is better.”
With a nod for Ruben, she hurried out of the parlor. Violeta sat back. “Thank you,” she said. “For being nice to her.”
“It’s not her fault Papa’s put us all into this damned mess.” Ruben got to his feet and he prowled restlessly around the room. “He just told me he never wanted to tell Mama so as not to hurt her.”
“He didn’t have to. She knew all along.”
Ruben hardly felt like he could absorb another shock. He picked up one of his mother’s knickknacks, a little figurine she had brought back from a trip to Ponce, and looked at it blindly. One more shock and he might shatter as easily as the figuring would if he dropped it. “You were right,” he said. “I’m just like him.”
“But you aren’t. You’re nothing like him and I’m ashamed of having said so,” she said fiercely. “Papa never wanted to tell Mama the truth for fear of hurting her. But you—you told Miss Cruz what you did to Luis and her sister even though you knew she would hate you for it. That takes courage, Ruben. And it takes courage to step away from someone you love.”
Ruben left the house shortly after, but he mulled her words for the rest of the day as he reclaimed his old rooms and wrote to Mrs. Herrera for his things. He had promised his mother he would return for dinner and by the time he left to walk home, he had realized he had no intention of stepping away from Emilia.
He might not have deserved her but he wanted her, and he was sure she wanted him in return.
The thought sent a thrill running through him. As soon as his father was better, he would return to Arroyo Blanco and wait there for as long as was necessary. In the meantime, there was something he could do.
Stopping in a shop he used to frequent when he’d lived in the neighborhood, he bought a pot of black ink and a cheap pen, along wi
th a notebook, and found a coffeehouse to sit in. It took him until dusk, but he had plenty of time to take what he’d written to the editor of El Diario Nuevo, who had been annoyed at being interrupted just as he was about to sit in front of a roasted guinea fowl, and beg him to run it instead of the column he’d sent in some days before.
Ruben was quiet all through dinner with his family and later, when they were all seated around his father’s bedside instead of in the parlor as they would have otherwise, he must have been equally distracted because the women gave up on him for conversation and talked amongst themselves, their glasses of sherry glinting warmly in the dim electric lights.
After a while, Ruben was aware that his father was watching him—and had been, for some time. He beckoned Ruben forward and said, without any preamble, “You love her, don’t you?”
Ruben met his father’s gaze squarely. “More than I thought I could love anyone.”
“That’s all that matters. Go to her. Don’t let your dislike of me and what I did keep you from finding happiness.”
He held out his hand and though he probably meant for Ruben to shake it, instead, after a moment’s hesitation, he grasped it between both of his own.
Chapter 22
With the excitement of the book fair over, Arroyo Blanco was settling back into its usual routine. The booths had been dismantled, the decorations taken down, and the festive air that had permeated the town had dissipated and been replaced by a heat-induced lethargy. Even the birds looked miserable as they hopped from one branch to another. Emilia could sympathize.
Without a reason to leave the house in the morning, now that her presence was no longer welcome at Mr. Mendez’s, she had nothing to do after she went to the bakery to get the day’s bread but write…and hide from Susana the fact that she couldn’t stop reading Vega’s article over and over.
A Summer for Scandal Page 19