There are seven thinly sliced pieces of cheese on one side of it: sheep’s and goat’s milk cheese, Jarlsberg, others I don’t recognize. The other side of the plate is lined with quarter-moon avocado slices drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with smoked salt so coarse, I can see it without straining my eyes, its color the color of brown sugar. A small hand-painted bowl full of quince marmalade sits in the center of the plate, the delicate handle of a small silver spoon sticking out of it like a tongue about to lick its lips. This plate, the rustic baguette positioned nearby on a piece of wood, and the tall, clear glass bottle with lemon slices floating in water seem, at the moment, all I need to feel the most blessed of women.
The place has come to life, but as beautiful as each detail of it is to me, the most amazing thing about it is still the statue, the one Gustavo had begun with the intention of entering the East Little Havana Development Agency contest, but decided to give to Jorge as a “restaurant-warming” gift. The piece that had Gustavo’s heartbreak embedded all over, and was even more beautiful for it. It is huge and has many curves and swirls of different sizes . . . the oxidized metal goes from the darkest chocolate browns in some places to mustard yellow, turquoise, and deep azure blue in others. For the occasion of today’s opening, he has placed a thin piece of gauze the color of wet sand and the shape of a summer dress over it, and from a few feet away you can see it is a woman hugging a bundle to her breasts. It is a mother, the long curlicues of her rusty silver hair floating in the wind. Rather than positioned to welcome visitors as they come in, she appears to be walking in with them, as if coming home to someone. I long to touch and pray to her, if only as a symbol of us, women.
But not now. Now I sit, enjoying the cheese and the quince, watching Jorge beam as he welcomes the guests, searching for me with his eyes every once in a while and smiling, Gustavo at his side, everyone oohing and marveling at the simple, sophisticated beauty of everything.
And then I see her, as if the statue had made Gustavo’s dream come true. Abril and Henry are crossing the street toward them, and I can’t help thinking of Hector, waiting for her in the park, doubling over in pain, dying alone, the three women in his life mere yards away, all three furious at him.
But I shake the thought. His death wasn’t Abril’s fault, and I’m glad she came. I thought I wouldn’t get a chance to say good-bye to Henry after the cleansing cyclone of events that had descended on our lives since that day I’d spent with Olivia. I couldn’t believe almost a whole month had gone by since that morning that had turned into afternoon and then evening, the last leg of my scavenger hunt for the last of the missing pieces to the puzzle of Hector’s life and marriage, his affairs, and his death.
First, Olivia had made me tell her my “dream” again, as if gathering strength from it. Then we’d gone over the details of what had really happened.
Hector had been trying to pick a fight with her that night, we decided, to intimidate her into not questioning where he was going at that late hour. That’s why he had acted particularly obnoxious. After swigging back a mouthful of the belladonna mixture and pronouncing it a waste of money and time like all her “macrobiotic nonsense,” he’d left so quickly, she’d barely had a chance to react. She remembered thinking there was no point to anything: He would never change.
She’d woken around six in the morning and grown desperate when she realized Hector hadn’t returned. She’d called his cell phone over and over, then called the police, and then began to call the hospitals after police told her he hadn’t been gone long enough to file a report, her due diligence making her innocence more plausible in the eyes of the detectives investigating the case. Sometime around seven that morning, she’d heard the screaming and the rumble of people, and known, even before the officers knocked on her door.
“How come they didn’t find the belladonna? Did you throw it away?”
“There was none to find. I discarded the bag it came in when I bought it and had been drying it in brown paper bags from the flower market. And whatever Hector didn’t take, I rinsed away when cleaning the kitchen that night, knowing my remedy would never reach the boy, to judge from his mother’s attitude that day. There was nothing left by the time they asked if they could look around.”
As she spoke, I remembered waking up early that morning, my birthday, cutting my hair, walking to Tinta in search of coffee, without a clue that the insistent thoughts of Hector popping into my head were more about his death than about our breakup.
“For a while they believed he’d been robbed, and I felt relieved that it had been a mugging, that I hadn’t hurt him or failed to save him from himself, from me,” she said.
As we talked, she’d kept insisting that the only way to atone, to live with herself was to turn herself in.
“Wouldn’t it be better if you did something worthwhile instead?”
“Like what?”
“How about you work things out with Abril? Make sure Henry is provided for, dedicate your life to coming up with new remedies that will help people, I don’t know. What good would it do Hector for you to end up in jail, if that’s even a possibility? You yourself said he left almost immediately after he took the belladonna. Had you not been so distraught, you would have warned him, wouldn’t you?”
Which made her cry again, saying, “I really would have, Mariela. I was angry, but I could never really hurt him.”
Of course we both knew she had hurt him, that she’d wanted to, even if just for that one minute. All her life loving him despite everything, and in one moment, hate had overtaken her, defeating her.
I kept talking, figuring I had a good chance she’d listen. The fact that she hadn’t turned herself in when they told her the results of the autopsy could only mean that she had been too scared or weak to do it. All I needed to do now was to give her a good reason not to do what, to her, was “the right thing.” Instead, I had to give her something else to do that would also be a right thing, a better thing than turn herself in that she could do to atone.
That’s how papers were filed that would soon give Henry a new last name: Ferro, and some treasury bonds to go with it, as well as his father’s entire rare book collection, and more money coming to him when the bookstore sold and Hector’s estate was executed.
Olivia decided to move back to Argentina to be with her family, and Abril decided to move back to New York and do the same. At some point, she, and the rest of Coffee Park, had apparently decided to stop hating and fearing me, even though no one ever really found out exactly how and why Hector died.
Now Abril was going to start over in New York, away from this place that no longer held any real sway for her. She’d come over to tell me herself a few days ago and to thank me, refusing to answer my “For what?” or to get into details, as if all were understood and she trusted I too would forgive her, that I’d understand the spell of resentment and confusion she’d lived in all the time she’d known me.
“I’m going to New York!” said Henry now, trying to jump into my arms, orthopedic shoes and all, before I could make it all the way from my out-of-the-way table to the entrance where they stood.
“Yes, I know, darling. Are you excited?”
Henry smiled wide and nodded as if he were trying to get his head to come off.
“Remember what I told you.”
It was Gustavo, who had walked over, followed by Abril.
“To take good care of my mom?” said Henry.
“Yes. Take care of your mom and study hard,” said Gustavo.
“I always study hard. I study so hard that—”
He didn’t get to finish the sentence—Gustavo was hugging him so hard.
“Hey, you’re squashing me. Let go!”
“Sorry, little man,” said Gustavo.
“Not cool,” said Henry, smoothing his little guayabera.
“You’re right, not cool. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Better than crying.”
“A man can cry and be a man
, you know?”
“I know. I cry sometimes too,” said Henry. Then he whispered, “But not in front of them,” using his chin to gesture toward Abril and me.
Which made everyone smile.
Iris made her appearance just then, in a fabulous hot pink wraparound jersey dress and silver sequin high heels.
Soon, we’d sat to eat together, with Jorge coming over every few minutes with more food for us or a kiss for me, which made it impossible for anyone at the table to believe me when I said we were taking it slow, seeing how it went.
Looking at him, I remembered how he’d been sitting on my stoop a few days after that night in the park. Jorge had been waiting for me, he said, and heard noises in the empty apartment that had been Ellie’s. The one I’d been avoiding and hadn’t gotten around to renting, despite needing the money.
“Maybe we should check the apartment,” he’d said.
“You think Ellie could have sneaked in? To do what?”
“I don’t know, but maybe we should check it out,” he insisted.
“All right, let me get my keys.”
And then I’d walked into some other landlord’s rental apartment. Because every inch of apartamento tres was now clean.
“What happened here?” I said, looking at the half-used cleaning supplies I’d bought the morning of Hector’s death, neatly arranged on the counter.
“You like? Iris said it just needed a little cleaning. Cool, huh?”
“Are you kidding? It’s beyond cool. I can’t believe you and Iris did all this by yourselves. I don’t know what to say.”
“Gustavo helped.”
“This is amazing! I love you! And Gustavo and Iris,” I’d said, meaning it, feeling loved and grateful, and laughing when Jorge said, he’d prefer it if I loved just him, but would share with Gustavo and Iris for now.
It was the same feeling I had now, surrounded by these people I loved, letting myself almost float out of my body to look at the scene, to see myself being happy so that I’d never forget what it was like or that it was possible.
I also felt my mother close to me that night, a feeling that had become more frequent over the past month, and that I can only describe to you as a deep, all-encompassing well-being. It was so complete, this feeling, I didn’t even need to call her to me or to speak to her to know her essence would always be with me, her adored child. And even though I didn’t see myself making a career out of clairvoyance that night, I could see it being a part of my life again, could see helping people do what they didn’t yet know how to do for themselves or were afraid to do, loving and being proud of what husband number one had once accused me of as if it were a bad thing, this “making nice with the tenants.” It was called community, and I loved being part of one.
And there we all were: Gustavo, Abril, Henry, Iris, and I, celebrating Jorge’s restaurant, his dream come true, saying good-bye to Henry and Abril with love and warm hearts, eating, drinking, reminiscing, and laughing, feeling the bittersweet excitement of new beginnings, hoping and dreaming about the turns our lives would soon take, all of us enjoying this last chance to be together under the moonlit skies of Coffee Park.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho
Anjanette Delgado
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included
to enhance your group’s reading
of Anjanette Delgado’s
The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho.
Discussion Questions
1. What specific themes are emphasized in The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho? What do you think was the author’s purpose in emphasizing those themes?
2. What kind of character is the heroine, Mariela Estevez? Would you say she is an antiheroine? If so, does she remain so throughout the novel?
3. What is the view that the book presents of “other women” or mistresses?
4. What is the view the book presents of clairvoyants? And, after reading the book, would you say the book demystifies clairvoyance and psychic abilities in general?
5. What was unique about the setting of The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho, and how did it enhance or distract from the main story?
6. Speaking of which, what was the main story? Is this novel about clairvoyance? Is it about infidelity? Is it about the sisterhood among women, in spite of men? Or is it about all of the above, and, if so, how are those themes woven into Mariela’s story?
7. Did you think the book’s portrayal of Latinos is accurate? Or did you find the portrayal specific to Caribbean immigrants living in South Florida, and therefore, distinctive?
8. Were you aware that Coffee Park is a creation of the author’s mind and does not exist as described within the confines of Little Havana? What made it real for you?
9. Could Mariela have solved the mystery of Hector’s death without his ghost?
10. In the novel, the relationships between women are as important as, if not more important than, male-female relationships. Was this realistic for you as a reader? Did you believe the relationship that develops between Mariela and her lover’s wife, Olivia? Do you know of such relationships in real life? If not, what made this one believable for you?
11. Under what genre would you catalogue this novel: women’s literary fiction, chick lit, or mystery?
12. Did The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho remind you of other books you’ve read? If so, which ones and in what way?
13. What characters did you feel changed or evolved the most in the novel, and how?
14. Did you feel that the events of the novel reveal the author’s point of view?
15. And finally, did any part of the book make you uncomfortable? If so, why do you think you felt that way? Did this lead you to a new understanding or awareness of some aspect of life or society that you had not thought about before reading it?
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2014 by Anjanette V. Delgado
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
eISBN-13: 978-1-61773-391-8
eISBN-10: 1-61773-391-1
First Kensington Electronic Edition: September 2014
ISBN: 978-1-6177-3390-1
ISBN-10: 1-61773-390-3
The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho Page 25