“Don’t worry, we’re not talking about you,” Maria said.
She winked at me and I giggled.
“Yeah, right,” George said. He looked at me suspiciously. Then he turned back to Maria. “It’s still rude.”
“Give Luisa a break. She’s still learning English.”
“She’s not going to learn it by speaking Italian.”
“No. I speak English,” I said. And to prove it I said, “How are you? How is your night?”
“See?” he said, glaring at Maria. “Is that so hard?” He turned to me. “I’m fine.”
“Good,” I said. “How long you stay here now?”
Before he could answer, Maria blew out a breath of exasperation, left the table and brought her coffee cup to the sink. I guessed why she was upset. She didn’t like him being away.
“Unfortunately I have to leave again tomorrow,” he said to me but he was looking over at Maria. “I can’t help it, you know.” He was talking to her now, not me. “What do you want me to do? If I don’t go back, I get court-martialed.”
“How about get a different job?”
“It doesn’t work that way. I have to stay until my enlistment period is up. But then what? I still need a job. This is my job.”
“You can find a different job.”
“Good jobs don’t grow on trees.”
“Good jobs don’t take you away from home most of the time, either,” Maria said.
“Do we really have to argue about this again this morning? God!”
“Who’s arguing? Luisa, am I arguing?” She turned back to George. “You’re the only one arguing,” she said. “You’re always in a bad mood. I should be the one in a bad mood.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Just then I noticed Corey appear from the hallway and enter the kitchen. The loud voices and angry tone stopped him in his tracks. He stared at the two of them. Seeing them arguing darkened his face. He didn’t do well with conflict. It scared him.
I jumped up and rushed over.
“Good morning, Mr. Corey,” I said, hugging him as I always did. “Ready for breakfast? I make you eggs today, yes?”
He didn’t answer, but instead stared at Maria and George.
“Is nothing,” I told him. “Mamma and Papa is only excited about something.”
“Papa?” Corey said.
George glared at me as well.
“Uh, Mamma and George,” I said. When I got nervous, and their fights made me nervous, I made stupid mistakes like that.
George wasn’t Corey’s father. Maria had had him with a different man. She’d told me about him during one the many nights that George wasn’t there. I think that George knew she’d told me about him, and that was another thing that he didn’t like.
To be honest, to see George with Corey, you would never think he was Corey’s father. He wasn’t affectionate toward the boy. I never knew if it was because of Corey’s illness or because George didn’t know how to relate to children in general or perhaps because Corey was some other man’s child and everything that that implied was something he struggled with.
Why he didn’t like me very much, I wasn’t so sure about until one night when he was away and Maria, Corey and I watched a movie together in their bedroom. Corey fell asleep before it ended. Maria decided to let him sleep there with her instead of bring him to his room. She did this often when George was away. She didn’t like to sleep alone. Neither did I.
Maria and I had similar situations. Both our men were away most of the time. Many times I talked to her about how much I missed Brandon. This night she said why didn’t I just stay and sleep with her and Corey. That way neither of us would be alone.
I truly didn’t like sleeping alone. In Italy I didn’t mind. But it was different here. I was in a strange country. I missed my family. I started to feel isolated and welcomed the chance to be with someone. So I agreed. I went to my room and put on my sweats for sleeping and cleaned up for bed.
When I got back to Maria’s room, I could hear her in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. Corey was asleep on one side of the bed. I climbed in under the sheets in the middle of Maria and George’s king-sized bed. A few minutes later, I heard the water in the bathroom stop and the door open. I looked up to see Maria coming out, dressed in the tiniest, silk lingerie.
I didn’t know what to say, what to do. My first thought was to connect her invitation for me to sleep there with the way she was dressed. And that freaked me out. I liked Maria but not that way. I had no interest in women, any women. I wondered if I had done something to lead her to think differently.
But then I convinced myself that I was letting my imagination get away from me. Maria wouldn’t try to lure me into her bed for sexual reasons with her son here beside us. She was a free spirit. She did her own thing. The sexy lingerie was probably just what she liked to wear and had nothing to do with my being here tonight.
“Corey is still asleep?” she asked as she slid in next to me.
“He must have been exhausted,” I said.
“He really loves you, you know,” she told me.
“I love him like he was my own.”
“You’re really good with him. Someday when you have your own, they’re going to be lucky children.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Why not? You would make such a great mother.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
The phone rang. It was almost midnight.
“That’s got to be George,” Maria said. She answered it, and she was right, it was George. They talked for a moment, and then Maria said, “Really, that’s great!”
I looked at her and mouthed Che cosa? What?
“He’s being transferred to San Diego,” she said.
That was good. He would be closer. I wasn’t sure how far San Diego was, but maybe he would live here. I was happy for my friend.
“I’m just here with Luisa,” Maria said into the phone. He must have asked who she was talking to.
She was silent a moment, listening to him, then she smiled at me and answered him. “In bed, why?” She covered her mouth and laughed. She was enjoying teasing him. I didn’t think that was such a good idea.
“We were watching a movie together,” she said. “Why are you asking?”
She giggled again then looked at me and smiled, as though I were in on this with her. This whole thing made me uncomfortable. He already didn’t like me much. This wasn’t going to help.
“Do you want to say goodnight to her?” Maria asked.
Obviously he said no.
“Okay. I hope everything is good there,” she said. “Here, it’s really a hot night.” She snickered silently, constantly looking over at me as though I were part of this. “Can’t wear much, it’s too uncomfortable.”
I heard the low buzz of his voice from the receiver in her hand. I couldn’t tell what he was saying, but he sounded angry.
Maria looked satisfied, as though she had achieved what she set out to do. “No, I’m fine. And if I need anything, I have Luisa here. Anything,” she repeated.
She hung up and laughed out loud.
“Why do you do that to him?” I asked.
“It’s so easy to get him going.”
“You shouldn’t try to make him jealous.”
She waved off my concern. “Men should be jealous. They’ll appreciate you more. And it’s fun, too. You have to have fun, right?”
“He really thinks you and I would do something together? That’
s crazy.”
“Well…” she said.
The way she said it I knew there was a lot more unsaid. She reached over and turned off the lamp, thrusting the room into darkness.
“There was one time,” she said after a moment, “when I, you know, had some fun with a woman.”
I didn’t know what to say. I remained silent in the darkness. Corey was on the other side of me. I felt weird.
“But it was just physical,” Maria said. “Not a relationship, you know. I didn’t think that it meant anything. Don’t get me wrong, the sex part was awesome, but I like men better. George shouldn’t be insecure.”
“If you tease him like that, he’s going to be insecure.”
“Jealous, not insecure. And like I said, a little jealousy is good for a relationship.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do.” She rolled over and said, “Good night, Luisa.”
“Good night.”
. . . . .
In the middle of the night, I was startled from sleep by the sensation of being held. I opened my eyes and saw Maria snuggled up close to me. She had her arm around me. At first I thought she was awake and coming on to me, but then I saw that her eyes were closed and she was asleep. I gently reached over, lifted her arm off and eased it back to her side.
A while later I was awakened again by her arm around me and her body pressed against mine. If she had been awake, I would have jumped out of bed for and run. But she was asleep. I decided she was dreaming, probably about George—hopefully about George—but it still made me uncomfortable. I lifted her arm off me again and put it beside her and I slithered as far away as I could get without pushing Corey off the side of the bed. I had difficulty falling asleep again, worrying that she was going to move in on me again.
When the morning came, I woke up first and went to the kitchen for coffee. She got up a little later and joined me. She was still in her lingerie. She didn’t say anything about what had happened during the night.
I had to ask her. “Maria, last night, did you have dreams about George?”
She looked at me oddly. “Why do you ask that?”
“In the middle of the night, you, uh, you kind of hugged me.”
“Really?”
“Twice.”
“I did?” And then she smiled.
I realized that she knew exactly what had happened last night. But I wasn’t upset with her. She liked to have fun. That’s all it was. She could have tried something, but she hadn’t. That part of my life was kept for the weekends and for Brandon.
The next weekend, when Brandon came to Los Angeles, we went again to a motel. It was during the forty-eight hours of each weekend that I felt happiest. I had come halfway around the world for this man. The more time I spent with him, the more I realized how right my decision to come here had been.
And still hanging over it all was Brandon’s unanswered question to me, his proposal. Would I marry him? Thinking about how I would answer him was going to be scary.
CHAPTER 10
As my summer in Los Angeles drew to an end, Corey, who was fine, started school. There was less for me to do around the house during the day, which meant more time to think. And the thing that I thought about the most was the expiration of my visa. By mid-October I would have to return to Italy. I’d had two wonderful months here, the weekends with Brandon being the best part. But I also enjoyed the time with Maria and Corey.
And I found the United States fascinating. People here seemed somehow freer than in Italy. I couldn’t quite understand why, where that feeling came from. Maybe it was because everyone did whatever they liked as far as fashion and jobs and everything else, and people moved around a lot. They weren’t restrained by a long history, obligation, and expectations.
In Italy, generations lived in the same place. Opportunity was limited. And everyone knew your business. The anonymity here gave you a kind of freedom.
The shallow roots allowed everyone to build their own lives however and wherever they wished. And afterwards, if that didn’t suit you, you could rebuild again, somewhere else, in some other way. That intrigued me.
But to have that, I had to let go of the safety and comfort of having generations of family with me, the stability of knowing I was in a place where I belonged, the effortlessness of familiar surroundings, familiar customs. My home, my family, my beach, my markets, my friends, my everything was there. Here, I had nothing.
Except Brandon.
And a blank page upon which to write my own story, Luisa’s life.
I had too much free time to ponder this question.
. . . . .
Brandon had a long weekend in early September, for the Labor Day holiday, which gave us an extra day and night to spend together in the motel. We made love three or four times each day. Brandon always wanted desperately to give me pleasure, and he seemed never to be able to get enough. I felt the same way. Maybe because of those five days each week when we were apart, we wanted each so desperately when we were together. Whatever the reason, the sex was wonderful.
He showed me more of the city. We walked down Hollywood Boulevard and read the names of famous actors on the sidewalks. Brandon took me dancing. When I saw something in a store window, he bought it for me. He spent all his money on me. He took me to a beautiful restaurant where we sat outside and had a view of the Hollywood sign in the hills. The night was so perfect, I didn’t want it ever to end. But it only reminded me that I was living in a temporary state and my time was quickly running out.
“I hate to leave,” I said to him.
“Then don’t leave.”
“My visa expires soon.”
“You can stay. Marry me and it won’t matter that your visa expires.”
“Is not so easy.”
“Yes it is. Just say yes, you’ll marry me. I don’t want you to leave, Luisa. I don’t ever want to be away from you. Going back to Twenty-nine Palms every Sunday night is hard enough, facing a whole week without you. I want to be with you, every day.”
“I love being with you, too.”
“Then marry me. Stay and marry me.”
I took a breath and stared at the Hollywood sign for moment. I said, “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I have a responsibility in Italy. I promised my mother I would take care of the family.”
He grasped my hands and looked into my eyes. “I want to marry you, Luisa.”
“No, you don’t,” I said, my deep feelings finally coming out.
He looked stunned. “What?”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes, I do. I’m saying I want you to marry me. I want you to spend the rest of your life with me. I know exactly what I’m saying. I know exactly what I want. You.”
My insecurities about him, about men in general, about my obligations to my family, left me confused about what to do.
“Well,” I said. “I can’t answer right now. My mother said take care of the family.”
“Forever?”
“No, but while they need me, yes.”
“I need you,” Brandon said.
Maybe he wanted me. But he didn’t need me.
“I need time to decide,” I told him.
He wrapped his strong arms around me and pulled me close. I closed my eyes and sank into the security of his chest.
“Please say yes,” he whispered in my ear.
I remembered the first night I had met him, the night he asked me to dance. He’d said almost the same thing, please say yes
. The sincerity in his voice went right to my heart. It would have been so much easier if I knew he was another Nino, if I could honestly say that he didn’t really love me.
. . . . .
After Brandon had gone back to the base, I was in the living with Maria one evening. She was preparing for George to come back in a few days. We had a little wine to celebrate after Corey went to bed. I told her about my conversation with Brandon.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “Maybe it’s not, you know, the best thing to do.”
She leaned forward on the sofa and glared at me. “What’s the matter with you, Luisa?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you blind? Everybody can see. You can’t?”
“See what?”
“When Brandon’s here, he never takes his eyes off of you. He drives hours every weekend to be with you. He spends all of his money on you, and the Marines don’t pay him much. Believe me, I know. But he spends it all on you. He begged you to come here. He bought you a ticket. He took you to meet his family. He loves you.”
“I know, but…” My words trailed off. I didn’t know what to say.
“No, no. Listen to me. He really loves you.”
I wanted so badly to believe that. But it was difficult.
“What else do you want, Luisa?” she asked.
“I promised my mother that…”
“Oh, stop it,” she said. I had told her that before. She waved her hand, dismissing what I was saying. “He loves you. But you’re afraid. All the rest is nonsense.”
“Yes, I’m afraid. What if it’s a mistake to marry him?”
“What if it’s a mistake not to?” she said.
“I know! It’s hard to know what to do!”
“Follow your heart, that’s what you do.”
“My heart is in two places.”
She threw up her hands, frustrated. “Listen, Luisa. A love like what you and he have doesn’t come along often in life. Maybe only once. You let it go, you’re going to regret it forever. Is that what you want?”
Until Forever Page 8