The Ramos Brothers Trust Castro and Kennedy

by Roger Deblanck

  The following week the brothers went with Sharkey and Consul Del Porto to see them off from Miami International Airport. Juan and Alberto pledged to stay in touch with their Venezuelan friend, and Sharkey told the brothers they’d forever be pals. “Life is short, so live it up!” said Sharkey as he barreled his backpack over his shoulder and boarded the ramp to his flight. As the plane got smaller and smaller on the horizon until it shrunk to the size of a bird and then became swallowed by clouds, the brothers wondered if their father would someday arrive by boat or plane. They had never flown before, nor had they traveled by sea since leaving Cuba.

  On a Wednesday evening in October, Alberto was playing his weekly guitar solo at the DuPont Plaza when Juan rushed up the stairs to the mezzanine from the store. Alberto spotted his brother racing across the concourse straight to the stage. When he got there, he hurried up the platform under the garish lights. Alberto continued to play while leveling an annoyed grimace at this brother, who came up on stage and leaned in as close as he could to Alberto’s ear. Alberto finally had to stop in the middle of his song to hear what Juan was whispering.

  “Mamá has fallen in the store. She is having trouble speaking. She just vomited.”

  Alberto swung the guitar strap off his back and let the instrument thud softly to the stage. He faced the small crowd and politely announced that he had been informed of an emergency. He apologized for having to leave in the middle of his performance. He hoped to return in a few minutes, he told them.

  When the brothers bolted back down to the store, the hotel’s manager had already called for an ambulance. He had helped Lucretia sit up against the side wall of the front counter. She looked drowsy and weak, as though her whole body had gone numb. She spoke in murmurs, but the brothers had trouble deciphering her words. She kept moving her hand limply up to her head, indicating her pain.

  “Did you hit your head, mamá, when you fell?” asked Juan, as he held her head up.

  The brothers inspected her scalp and face for cuts or bruises, but detected none. Then all at once she gained better faculty of her speech and lazily uttered, “My head. I swear to you a rock has been planted there.”

  “It’s okay, mamá,” said Alberto. “An ambulance is coming.”

  At that statement, she retched forward, trying to vomit again, but her stomach was already empty, and she heaved up only spews of bile and phlegm.

  A siren blared outside the hotel entrance. The manager had gone out to the curb on Biscayne Boulevard to meet the paramedics. They opened the rear double doors of the ambulance and rolled out a gurney. They pushed it quickly into the downstairs lobby and through the sliding glass doors of the store.

  Juan did most of the talking as he described what had happened: his mother’s loss of balance, her slip and fall, her vomiting, the slurred speech, the short blackout, but now she was conscious. The medics checked her out. They took her temperature and asked her questions. She didn’t have a fever like her other strange illnesses over the past year. They took her pulse. It registered normal. She was responsive, although slow in her ability to describe how her head throbbed as if an explosive had been wedged in the mass of her brain, ready to detonate.

  * * *

  Chapter 38

  That Wednesday evening at Mercy Hospital, Huberto, Evelina, and Cuca joined the Ramos brothers, but no one was prepared for what the X-rays revealed. Lucretia fell into a pleasant slumber in her room almost immediately after the doctor had informed her and the family that his initial diagnosis upon examination of the X-rays was that she had a brain tumor. The family left Lucretia to rest and went with Dr. Lloyd to his office.

  “Are you sure of a tumor? It couldn’t be anything else?” asked Juan.

  “It looks like an abnormal growth,” said Dr. Lloyd to the family. “We won’t know entirely until we conduct a biopsy tomorrow morning and examine the tissue.”

  Juan stood next to the chair where Alberto sat, his head craned down, taking in the disbelief of what the doctor had just disclosed to them all. Cuca occupied the other chair in the doctor’s office. Huberto stood beside Evelina with his arm around her shoulder.

  “What else can you tell us?” asked Huberto, pulling his wife close.

  “From looking at the X-rays, it is obvious why Mrs. Ramos has been complaining of headaches,” said the doctor, pointing at the small dark blob of mass—the growth—located in the X-ray, which was illuminated against the light panel on the wall. “The growth, as you can see, is nested here between the frontal and parietal lobes. That is why her articulation and consciousness has suffered periodically when she experiences pain. Her motor skills and lack of balance have also begun to fail her, as the boys witnessed, because the growth is impacting the region of the brain responsible for those activities.”

  Juan asked if the vomiting could be a virus, and the doctor explained that the frontal lobe controlled swallowing and chewing. He said with a symptom like vomiting associated with an abnormality, it often indicated that the tumor’s growth was spreading.

  “Doctor, please be honest with us, what are the chances for the boys’ mother?” asked Evelina, touching the birthmark on her neck.

  “I will be frank, as I am with all patients with brain growth diagnoses, the situation is often bleak. You’ll need to hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. We don’t know enough about why cancer metastasizes the way it does. Perfectly healthy people like Lucretia suffer these growths, and sometimes that is it for them. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly.”

  From the window in Dr. Lloyd’s office, the blinds were open. The brothers could sense that the midnight air outside was thick and pungent with everglade warmth, a symptom of rain. As it began to drizzle, the window became a dotted matrix with little drops of life.

  The next morning the family arrived back at the hospital before eight. The nurse at the visitors’ desk informed them that last evening’s Emergency Room doctor, Dr. Lloyd, had made a late night call to Dr. Gallagher, the hospital’s chief brain surgeon, and he had arrived early to see Mrs. Ramos and review her X-rays. The family went to see Lucretia. She was sitting up in bed, her hands folded neatly in her lap, a resignation surrounding her. Her stillness looked statuesque, solemn, and contemplative. When everyone walked in, she shifted her eyes to look at them with sad, scared emotion. She said that Dr. Gallagher, the surgeon, had already come by to see her and discuss the surgery.

  “So they’ve decided?” asked Juan.

  “Yes, I guess in the next several hours. It does not look good,” she said and began to sob.

  “Mamá, no, it will be all right,” pleaded Juan.

  “I may die,” she breathed. “I have made my peace with the Lord.”

  “Mamá, Juan is right. We all believe you will be okay,” said Alberto at her right side, his brother on the left.

  “That is all fine and well. But I have to be ready. All of you should be, too.”

  The quietude in the room hung heavy with their palpitating hearts coursing strange and uncommon chemicals of emotion through their bloodstream: guilt, shock, pain, rage, and the weight of impending sadness.

  “Go on and talk to the doctor. He can tell you more,” Lucretia said. “I need a little more time to myself.”

  The nurse led them to the surgeon’s office. Dr. Gallagher was an elderly doctor, in his mid sixties, but his face showed no signs of wrinkles, and his completely gray hair hadn’t started thinning at all. He completed Harvard Medical over thirty years ago and was a distinguished doctor in the field of brain medicine. He confirmed the diagnosis from the previous evening of Dr. Lloyd. The growth was substantial, and when the pressure became too much, as it had for Lucretia, where she had begun to lose her motor skills and began vomiting, not a second more should be wasted to allow the growth to impede further on healthy cells of the brain.

  “Therefore,” said Dr. Gallagher, “I believe the best course of action is the immediate removal of the tumor to alleviate the pressure it is causing. I won�
�t know until I’m in there how much of the healthy brain matter has been invaded. The fact that Mrs. Ramos has clear control of her thoughts at this time is a good sign. It tells me the brain is still functioning normally in that regard. The growth, however, has been there for some time. It is amazing her symptoms have not been more acute on a persistent basis. It is a rare case. I will do everything I can to safely restore Mrs. Ramos’ health.”

  He went on to describe the risky procedure of conducting a craniotomy, which required the cutting of a section of the bone from the skull to expose the brain. The removal of the tumor, called debulking, he also explained, was highly dangerous, for brain matter was the most delicate tissue in the human body.

  “Anything can go wrong,” said the doctor. “I can make no promises.”

  “We understand,” said Huberto.

  “We have to trust you,” said Juan.

  “I will do all I can. That is my job,” said Dr. Gallagher.

  Shortly before noon, the nurses from the surgery ward came into Lucretia’s room. The brothers continued to sit on either side of their mother’s bed, holding her hands. One of the nurses said they could give the family a few more minutes.

  “It’s all right,” said Lucretia. “I’m ready.”

  She bent forward to give each of her sons a hug.

  “I love you, mamá,” said Juan.

  “I love you too,” said Alberto.

  “We will be here waiting when you come out,” said Evelina.

  Huberto reached out and touched his daughter-in-law’s shoulder. Cuca leaned in and kissed her on the forehead.

  “I want you boys to tell your father, I miss him. I am sorry for everything I’ve done. I know I have made mistakes,” Lucretia said. “But I have loved you in my own way. Forgive me for all else.”

  As the surgery was performed that Thursday afternoon, Juan sat next to his brother in the waiting room. Guadalupe had joined the family. All they could do was wait, each in their own thoughts. Juan wanted to believe.

  She had made her peace, she said. What more did anything matter if life was taken from someone once she was at peace? His mother had not shown any fear when they wheeled her off to surgery on the gurney. She had not acted like her situation was beyond control. She had accepted the reality of what she faced with a calmness and dignity that Juan didn’t know she possessed. She hadn’t raised an eyebrow. She was ready. Ready for what, Juan thought. She was still young and always healthy, until now. As the doctor said, perfectly healthy one second, then a symptom, and then this: her tumor. He wanted to cry, but didn’t. She’d probably been suffering for over a year, since her first illness, and they didn’t know. He didn’t know. She’d probably been ignoring the head pain, pushing herself to do more, convincing herself she was fine. Should he have been more concerned, more aware, more of a son? Guilt gripped his heart in a vice. He hadn’t done anything to insist she have her symptoms checked out. He cursed his negligence, his lack of caring. He was worried and angry. No, he had to force himself to think positive. Think like my father.

  He dozed off in his chair in the waiting room, and when he awoke he had been dreaming about how his mother had gone most of her life, until these last years, with always making daily routines seem so difficult and miserable. How could she all at once not resort to hysterics when confronting her own mortality? She had hoarded stuff—her clothes, her shoes, her money—as though they were more valuable than anything else. What type of principles governed her self-centered life? Her obsession with herself? Her control of the school and the beauty salon? Her failure to acknowledge and show love to her husband and sons? What was her heart like: a laboring machine that worked hard but didn’t know how to care for others? Then the tumor, and her whole life seemed to change, as though the growth planted something new into her way of seeing the world. What was going on in her mind? Her entire life had been an inability to utter the word love, a simple word, amor. Until that afternoon, Juan had never heard her say it. Until they had wheeled her into surgery, and finally the words spoken: “I have loved you in my own way.” And how she said it: genuinely, as though she had always loved him. Juan knew he had to trust and love back. It was all he had. He held on to the strangeness of what her love for him meant. He could either believe or not.

  Alberto was breathing calmly as he slept. He held Guadalupe who had also fallen asleep in his arms. Juan studied his brother’s placid face. Was he dreaming? What memories did his mind engage?

  Juan wanted to hear his mother say she loved him again. Alberto didn’t need to think so much. He already believed.

  * * *

  Chapter 39

  Their mother would have been in church that morning, praying for her soul, praying for the souls of her sons, the love of her sons. Juan wanted to believe. He looked up into the blinding clearness of the sky. There were few clouds, not the way they used to form into castles off the coast of Cuba. The world felt wide and vast, and he so small, a penny tossed out the window of a moving car in the middle of the desert. He’d never seen the desert. He only knew the hot, sticky heat of the tropics. I know nothing, he thought, as he and his brother and grandparents and Cuca listened to Father Moreno deliver his invocation over Lucretia’s grave, sending her off to where the departed gathered. Where? How? Juan did not know. He did not want to understand. The dug-up dirt of the earth was piled next to the open wound of the grave in Woodlawn Park Cemetery North.

  The distance the heavens attained—what and where they were—made the brothers feel the ungraspable nature of life. Control was out of their reach. The hemorrhaging had been too severe trying to remove the tumor, and too much of her brain showed signs of cancerous invasion.

  What was the purpose of hope, they wanted to know, if this was the end result? They were done with tears, but not with their thoughts and fractured memories, a puzzle of their mother, her sadness and theirs. How would they tell their father? How would he react? They had lost her. They did not want to lose him.

  “May our Heavenly Lord, the Father of Our Son, Jesus Christ, may He in his infinite love and wisdom escort Lucretia’s soul to the gates of the everlasting living,” said Father Moreno. “Life above, beyond these mortal realms, is where she shall spend eternity. Let her brave soul travel gently. Let her rest. May we miss her, though we shall never forget the time we had with her. In the name of the Lord, this grace we offer in honor of a wife and a mother. Amen.”

  The Father crossed himself and then walked over to Juan and Alberto. They could hear the cemetery crew begin to shovel the earth onto the coffin. The prattle and thud of the dirt hit the wood. The sound was altogether gone once the lid was immersed forever in the womb of the earth.

  “Father, my brother and I remember you from Cuba,” said Juan, having recognized Moreno’s thin face and wispy hair.

  “How so?” inquired Moreno, curious of the connection. “I did once make a visit to a church in Havana, many years ago, over a decade it’s been. The name of the church escapes me.”

  “Jesus de Miramar,” stated Alberto.

  “Yes, I think that was it, Father Ballesteros’ congregation, if I remember correctly. I was living in New York at the time. Many Cubanos were coming north in that day. I was asked to visit Cuba to talk of the Church’s outreach, whether in Cuba or here in the states. I have moved here to Miami in recent years to lead the exiles.” He stopped speaking and looked at the brothers. “I assume you boys must have gone to church in Havana?”

  “Yes, we did. With our mother,” said Juan.

  “Bless her soul,” he said and crossed himself again.

  The brothers looked back at her grave and then off into the distance, where the rows of headstones stood perfectly aligned, a mathematical grid, the order of death, the final rest.

  “I have not seen you two with my parish here in Miami?” Moreno questioned them.

  “No, we do not attend any more,” said Juan.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Moreno said. “Do consider comin
g to see me. I am available, and may I please remind you two that your mother was a dear woman.”

  “Gracias, Father,” said Alberto.

  “Yes, thank you,” said a glossy-eyed Juan.

  That afternoon the brothers cleaned out their mother’s house on 29th Avenue. They stuffed her belongings into bags and clustered them in the living room. She owned an elaborate wardrobe of hundreds of dresses, blouses, skirts, and nearly a hundred pairs of shoes. She also had a large jewelry box with multiple drawers. The first had diamond earrings of different carats. The second had yellow and white gold rings. The third was full of necklaces and pendants. To the right of the large box sat a separate little case for a single studded diamond ring, the one she must have worn on her wedding day, the one she hadn’t worn for years. Juan put the case in his pocket and carried the larger box of jewelry out of the bedroom into the living room with the rest of her stuff.

  In the kitchen, the pantry was nearly bare: a bag of rice, an unopened can of black beans, a bag of banana chips. She had no poultry in the fridge, only a half gallon of milk ready to expire and a carton of cottage cheese. She owned a set of fine China, imported from Hong Kong. Her silverware was sterling silver. They wrapped the fragile items with old newspaper and put them all in a bag. The perishable food items, they threw out.

  A beige leather couch and a small glass coffee table occupied the living room. On the wall above the couch hung a large, polished cross and a picture of the Son, bleeding and suffering, his agony ready for bliss and release. His crown of thorns was platted on his head, and an aureole glowed above his blood-sopped hair. They left the icons on the wall.

  They searched the house one more time and went back into her bedroom. For some reason Alberto decided to check under the bed. There, he found the old duffel bag. It was the one their mother had carried with its strap over her neck when they came to America, the same bag she had flung on her shoulder when she moved out of their grandparents’ house. On his hands and knees, Alberto stretched out his arm to grab the strap and pull the bag out.