Act of Betrayal

by Edna Buchanan

  “She said you would come,” Berta told me, smiling broadly.

  “I wasn’t expected,” I said, stepping inside. My Aunt Odalys always did that to me.

  The crude clay image of Eleggua, god of destiny and pathways, stared sternly from behind the door. Guardian of gateways, he is messenger to the gods, carrying communication between Santerfa priests and the orishas.

  “But she knew you would come.”

  I squinted, my eyes growing accustomed to the half-light inside. Instead of the usual aromas of savory Cuban cooking, the air was heavy with incense and a smell I couldn’t identify. I hoped it wasn’t coming from the nganga, a large iron cauldron in the corner of the cozy living room.

  “Where is she?”

  “In the bedroom.” Berta wiped her hands on a scarlet cloth that she carefully folded and placed in her pocket. “I will go now and come back later with the palos from the botanica.”

  Palos, twigs? Uh oh, I thought. “She’s not sick, is she?”

  Berta motioned me toward the bedroom and departed, her placid face unchanged.

  “What’s wrong?” She was stretched out on a chaise longue, dressed in white as usual. Her tawny skin, high cheekbones, and green eyes give my Aunt Odalys a slightly feline appearance. She looked beautiful, as always, but unnaturally still. In a cloud of incense, on a bedside table stood a statue of Yemaya, the Virgin of Regla, dressed in the blue of the sea.

  My hand automatically went to my aunt’s perfect brow, which was smooth and cool. But she seemed barely able to move.

  “It will pass, mi hijita” she said, reassuringly. “It has not been so since I was paralyzed in the year the great storm struck Melena del Sur.”

  “Paralyzed?” This was the first I had heard about that. “That’s the last time you had this problem?” I said. “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “Then or now?”

  “Either time.” I pulled a chair up close to her side.

  She smiled wanly. “Nothing can be done. This will pass. The gods are angry, Britt. There is great danger.”

  “Well that’s Miami for you.” I smiled, rearranging her pillows, to make her more comfortable.

  Her eyes widened. “¡El Mal! The evil! Where did you get them? The evil…”

  “What?”

  With effort she lifted a slim arm and with a long graceful nail, beautifully manicured in shiny platinum, she lightly touched one of the gold earrings I had worn daily since my interview with Reyes.

  “Evil? No way. Gold is good.” I smoothed her shiny dark hair, pushing it back from the small gold loops in her own tiny earlobes. “Diamonds may be better,” I said, “but gold is good.”

  She didn’t buy it, shaking her head woefully.

  “My mother gave them to me when I was eighteen.” Self-consciously, I fingered the gold. “I hardly ever wear them. But they’re part of what I need to talk to you about. Why do you say they’re evil?”

  “Ask your mother,” she murmured.

  I sighed, took her hand in mine, and told her everything: my mother’s odd behavior, Reyes and Bravo, my father’s diary, and my questions.

  “Your mother,” she repeated, voice solemn. “Many years ago, she requested that I never speak to you of your father. It broke my heart but I gave my word.”

  “But why?”

  “You must ask her, mi corazoncito. Antonio was a hero, a martyr. When we were children we were always together.” She smiled fondly as she reminisced. “We played in the azure surf. He taught me to ride and to swim. Ah, muy guapo. My favorite brother.” She paused and raised her eyes to mine. “Danger,” she whispered. “The orishas will not be appeased.”

  “I’m taking you to the doctor,” I said irritably, checking her pulse, watching the second hand on my watch. But she refused. “If you are not better tomorrow, you’re going,” I warned. “Do you know that my father’s diary is supposedly somewhere in Miami?”

  She turned to smile at the Virgin. “The sea and the winds have brought it. He wrote always. He wrote everything down. Always. Did you know he wrote poetry?”

  A poet with an assault rifle, I thought. No wonder I am so screwed up.

  “No I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you ever show me any of his poems? Do you have any?”

  “Ask your mother.” Her smile was sad. “She swore that I will never see you again if I speak to you of Antonio.”

  “For heaven’s sake, I was a little kid. I’m over thirty now, old enough to see whomever I damn well please.”

  I brewed her some tea and as the water bubbled and roiled and began to boil, so did I. My life’s work is communications. Why will no one I am close to communicate with me?

  I intended to go right back to the office, but didn’t. The T-Bird had a mind of its own and a lead foot on the gas pedal. Gotcha! I thought, as I wheeled into the parking lot. Her convertible occupied its space and I swung in right next to it.

  When she did not answer the bell, I pounded with the metal knocker, my impatience fueled by anger and irony. I write stories about people’s lives every day. What about my own? Why was the past so murky?

  “Who is id”

  “Me.” I sensed scrutiny from behind the peephole. “It’s me, Mom.” Did she suspect that some stranger was imitating her daughter? Would I need a SWAT team to get inside?

  The chain rattled away and the door swung open. “Britt, what on earth…?” Her pale hair was damp, a hand towel tossed over one shoulder as she tied the sash of a rose-colored robe. “All that pounding! I thought the fire department was evacuating the building!”

  She brought the towel up to blot her hairline. “I was just getting out of the shower.” She looked piqued, her voice husky. “You sounded like the Russian Army breaking down my door.” She studied my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” I brushed by, into her pastel living room.

  “Look at you.” Her voice was cajoling now. “You’re out of breath, all windblown, your face is flushed.” She stood back, giving me an appraising look. “You should really shorten that hemline, Britt. Legs are in right now. And yours are great.”

  I turned and folded my arms, lips tight, the posture of a stern mother. Barefoot and unaware, she looked the part of a vulnerable child.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you knew him?”

  Her innocent blue eyes widened. “Who, Britt?”

  “You know who. And that act of yours at lunch the other day. What was that?”

  “How nice of you to visit,” she said, voice frosty. “I don’t have a clue to what you’re talking about.” She turned, flounced into her bedroom, and emerged wearing a pair of lace-trimmed scuffs that matched her robe.

  I watched the graceful lope of her walk through new eyes. The luminescence of her still flawless skin, the lustrous hair exuding the scent of soap and rose water.

  She was a fifty-three-year-old woman, but a damn good-looking one. What had she been like at twenty?

  “Juan Carlos Reyes sends his regards.”

  She affected a world-weary look. “Now there’s a name I never thought I’d hear again.”

  “Do you have my father’s diary?”

  “Your father’s what?” She sounded irritated.

  “His diary. I understand he kept one.”

  “Britt, that was thirty years ago. If there was such a thing I certainly wouldn’t remember it now.”

  “Where are my fathers things?” The few photos I have came from my Cuban grandmother and Aunt Odalys.

  “Whatever there was,” she said quietly, “is long gone.”

  “Why?” I cried out indignantly. “Didn’t you ever think about me, that I would want…”

  “I thought of nothing but you.” Her cheeks reddened. “He’s the one who didn’t think! Of you, or me. He walked out on us both. What did he care?” She glanced toward the Waterford clock on a shelf. “I’m really busy right now. I wasn’t expecting you. You should have called f
irst, Britt.” She tried to hustle me toward the door. Planting my feet firmly in the deep pile of her carpet, I refused to be hustled.

  “I tried, but you ignored my messages. I’m not leaving without answers.” We stared at each other like combatants thrust into the arena together.

  “You barge in here,” she said, voice rising, “spouting ancient history about which you know nothing, itching for an argument…” Nostrils flaring, anger mounting, she ran out of words. For a moment I thought she might try to physically push me out the door. Instead she sank with weary grace into a wicker peacock chair. The fen back of the chair framed her patrician face, her robe draped just so as she reached for a cigarette in an enamel box on the end table. Always she had been just my mother. Would I ever see her that way again?

  “Be careful, Britt,” she said, her expression ironic. “You may get exactly what you want, and you may not like it.” Her composure regained, she lit her long brown cigarette, then looked up. “I really must get to work. I’m coordinating plans for the fall fashion shows.”

  “I hate surprises.” I spoke carefully. “How do you think I felt meeting a man like Reyes, never knowing that he knew me and my father, or you? I felt so stupid. I learn more about total strangers in twenty minutes on the job than I know about my own parents. I am not leaving until we discuss this.” I plopped down on her soft flowered sofa.

  She stood and walked to the window, staring out into the darkness that had fallen.

  “It all happened so long ago.” She spoke softly and I strained to hear. “I wanted to forget it. It was a different life, a different rime, a different Miami. None of it has anything to do with you.” She began to pace back and forth between the window and the sofa where I sat. Each time she neared the window she gazed out into the night as though searching for something that wasn’t there.

  “I had to put it all behind me. Why do you persist in opening old wounds? Why should you care about your father? He didn’t care about us. He didn’t give a shit about me or you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “What do you want to know?” she said flatly.

  “What did you do with his things?”

  “There wasn’t that much. What I didn’t toss I gave away.” She shrugged. “I burned the letters.”

  “Why?”

  “Britt, the son of a bitch abandoned me and my three-year-old daughter without a word. No note, no good-bye. For a long time I thought he took my life with him.”

  “Why, what happened between you?”

  “That’s what I asked myself until I hated him. He was the proverbial husband who went out for a loaf of bread and never came back. Not a hint. I had no idea where he was, if he intended to come home, or how I’d pay the bills if he didn’t.”

  “Maybe he planned to be bade.”

  “Sure,” she said, her voice brittle. “I reported him missing, but the police didn’t take it seriously when they heard who he was and who he ran with.”

  “And who was that?”

  “Your friend Reyes, Jorge Bravo”—she drew on her cigarette—” and a man named Winslow who always seemed to be around in those days. All sorts of secretive, furtive people were in and out of our lives then. A pilot named Fiorini. I overheard them talk about covertly flying over the radar or under the radar, I don’t know”—she shrugged impatiently—” dropping medical supplies, leaflets, weapons. Once they left on a boat. He said he’d be home that night, but didn’t show up for three days and I was frantic. When they got back they talked about outrunning the Coast Guard on some mission and having to hide out in the Bahamas. Your father seemed to think that Cuba would be free soon and our lives would get back to normal.” She sounded almost wistful. “Then he walked out the door on his way to some meeting and never came home again.

  “Next thing I heard was that he was in prison in Cuba. He had always told me that if anything happened to him or if I had any problems, to call Winslow, but that phone number had been disconnected. Reyes and Bravo were nowhere to be found. I asked everywhere for help. None came. Then I heard he’d been executed. There were radio reports, a story in the newspaper. Bravo came by months later to pay his respects. I slammed the door on him.”

  “What about Reyes?”

  She turned to gaze out the window again. “Oh, he reappeared as well. Courtly, suave, and full of secrets like the others. Adventurers,” she spat. “People like them don’t care who they hurt. Their lives are never normal, they are drawn to trouble. Danger is an addiction. They love it. As if there is not enough trouble and pain in the world. They made me sick, with their love of intrigue and egotistical dreams of making a difference.” She stubbed out her cigarette, lit another, then lifted her eyes to mine through a haze of smoke.

  When justifying my job to her I often talked about making a difference. Now I knew why she always took offense.

  “It certainly made a difference in my life,” she said sarcastically. “You have to understand, I was eighteen when we met and engaged to a young man my family loved. His parents and mine were best friends. Ironically, what attracted me most to Tony was his quiet strength and his strong sense of commitment. How could I know that what I interpreted as quiet strength was really secretiveness and that the commitment was an obsession that didn’t include me? My family was furious when I gave up everything to marry Tony.

  “They were right,” she added crisply. “He left me broke, betrayed, with a child. They never let me forget it. I never trusted another man. Why do you think I’ve been alone all these years?” Her blue-eyed stare was bold. “No matter, who would want you when you have a small child?”

  So I am also to blame for her being alone, I thought. But I didn’t object. She was talking at last. I wouldn’t have interrupted for the world.

  “So there I was, a widow, too stubborn to ask my estranged family for help. Never able to experience the closure of a final good-bye and burial. Do you know how important that is, Britt? More of those people kept being released from prison, coming back from Cuba or turning up, crawling out from under Lord knows what rocks. A steady stream of strangers, scary men dropping by at all hours. People who went by names like the Strange One and El Tigre. And then there were the FBI agents! They wanted to fill in their days and their time sheets and justify their existences by hanging around, sitting in my kitchen, asking me questions, even though they knew I knew nothing. It all replayed over and over again until I finally broke down. I was sick to death of it all and didn’t want to hear anymore about it. I still don’t.” She paused, lost in thought.

  “These earrings, the ones you gave me.” I caught the smooth gold of one between my thumb and the knuckle of my index finger. “Where did you get them?”

  Her eyes narrowed, focusing on me. “You wore them when you went to see Reyes?” she whispered.

  I nodded.

  “I should have known better than to give them to you! I want them back.” Her voice rose. “Now! Give them to me!”

  Lower lip quivering, I removed the earrings and dropped them into her outstretched hand. My hand shook. Hers didn’t. The gleam of gold caught the artificial light for an instant. Then she dropped them into her pocket.

  She went to her desk and began to flip briskly through some fashion layouts. “The only way I was able to hang on to my sanity was to try to forget it all.” She turned and studied me over her shoulder, an odd look in her eyes. “I could have done it, if not for you. You’re the only proof that it all really happened.”

  I stared back, her words scalding me. Like the scary strangers and the lazy FBI agents who had tormented her, I just wouldn’t go away.

  I lumbered to my feet, numb and clumsy. “I have a story to write,” I murmured. She did not call after me as I walked out of her apartment and quietly closed the door.

  13

  I drove back to the paper on automatic pilot, feeling orphaned and alone, the familiar crackle from the police scanner comforting as it washed over me. Wor
k, as always, was the best anesthetic. Taking a deep breath, I began returning messages. The boys’ families had joined forces and had set their first meeting for Friday night. I promised to be there.

  Lottie picked up the phone back in the darkroom and demanded to know where I’d disappeared to that afternoon. “Don’t ask,” I said. “I went to see my mother and my aunt. Separately, of course. God forbid they should ever find themselves in the same room. We are so dysfunctional. My mother has an elephant in her living room and pretends it isn’t there. Trip over the trunk and she says, ‘What? What elephant? What are you talking about?’ Ask my aunt about the elephant and she says, ‘Ask your mother.’” “You can’t belong to them,” Lottie cooed soothingly. “You musta been switched at birth. At least you ain’t blessed with all that many of the critters. You ought to try surviving one of my family reunions. It’s like having a bowling alley in your brain. Some people ain’t happy till they’re miserable.”

  I told her about my encounter with Gretchen. “Are we the only people in the world who have no sex lives?” I sighed.

  “What do you mean we?” she said smugly.

  “Oh, no, Lottie, don’t tell me? He’s not back.”

  “Answer me one question, Britt. Just one. Could it be possible that Santana’s name is not on the jail log ‘cuz he’s being held incommunicado, cooperating with cops who are arranging to put him into the witness protection program?”

  “No. Shit. Is that what he told you? I mean it’s plausible, but all his stories are plausible. He’s a lawyer. He’s always got some explanation that makes it seem possible that he is telling the truth.”

  “That’s the hell of it,” she agreed. “But this is absolutely his last chance. He swears he’s a changed man.”

  “What’s he gonna do, start cross-dressing?”

  Silence followed. I’m dragging her down into misery with me, I thought guiltily. “Hell, it is possible,” I said. “Anything’s possible. But you deserve better. Did you get your hundred fifty-seven dollars back?” I asked accusingly.