“I can’t wait,” he says. “I wish it was happening tomorrow.”
“Me too, but we have a lot to do in between.”
Ana is happy for me and says she will be glad to be the maid of honor.
The darkness has lifted and I’m about to embark into a new adventure. I call Uncle Berto the next day and beg him to come over. I tell him nothing will make me happier than having him stand by me on that special day.
“I’d love to,” he says without hesitation. “But right now I’m retired and money is tight. Let me see what I can do.”
I hang up upset; everything always comes down to money. The phone rings and it is Nick, wanting to know if they are coming. I tell him what happened and he says “Is that all? Tell them I’ll take care of it. I’ll send them the tickets.”
My joy knows no limits. I call them back and my aunt answers the phone. I tell her and she screams. “Fabulous, we’ll be there.”
The thought of seeing her father again makes Ana deliriously happy too. It’s been a long time and she tells her roommates they have to leave within a month because her family is coming. The two stewardesses, who were the perfect tenants to begin with because they were never around, are compliant and we spend a lot of time cleaning and painting our apartment. Nick buys me a small diamond and a bridal dress. Trying it on reminds me of the bridal show I once modeled for, and for a second I have a painful flashback. Sergio’s wife, Lisa, says it is bad luck for the groom to see the bride but Nick can’t wait and barges in on us at the fitting room.
“She makes the most beautiful bride in the world, doesn’t she Lisa?”
“She sure does, but you shouldn’t be here.”
“We are taking it,” he tells the saleslady. “That dress has her name on it.”
We come out laughing and joking but thinking of mother, and what it would have meant to her to be with me on this special day, makes me very sad. Instead, it will be Aunt Sonia, good old Aunt Sonia with whom I have such a conflicting relationship, who will ironically have this joy, two weeks from now.
They come and Ana, Nick and I pick them up at the airport. We give them our bedroom, choosing to sleep in the living room in our convertible couches. My aunt looks thin, she has lost a lot of weight and her face looks haggard. She has dyed her hair a dark brown and it doesn’t become her, it hardens her soft face and makes her look older.
My uncle has aged visibly too, his head is completely silver now, deep lines mar his face and he moves a lot slower. But he still has a kind, accepting look and his eyes are serene. He is also taking a lot of medication and when I ask him why, he tells me that “las secuelas de la vida” [“the traces of life”] take their toll in all of us. But Nick couldn’t have given me a greater present.
Bringing the gentle giant of my childhood to my wedding is a dream made reality. He is so much smaller now, I remember a taller man but the love and admiration I always felt for him remains unaltered. We take them out, Nick and I, and although they can’t communicate because of the language barrier, they feel awfully glad for me and my uncle tells me he knows my future husband well.
“I sense a good man and you deserve it,” he says gently. “And God knows you’ve earned it.” At home, he talks to Ana about her future. “I won’t always be around,” he says reclining himself into a comfortable chair. “I want to see you married too before I die.”
“You’re not going to die, don’t talk like that,” says Ana with a frown.
“Some day I have to die, we all do. It’s no use denying that reality.”
“Finding a good man is not easy,” says my aunt. “He talks as though you could order one from a catalog. Vicky was just lucky.”
“Vicky always made her own luck; Ana has to learn to do the same.”
Ana is angry but she says nothing. Aware that she hates to be compared to me, I change the subject. I understand where she is coming from and feel sorry for her. Everyone in the family loves to measure her against me and she is always coming up short. I’m the one who is skinny, who speaks better English, who has a better job; she works as a receptionist for a Spanish bank and has been unable to lose weight. And now I’m the one who caught a good man while she has to take the scraps from a married man.
She is in a painful relationship she has to keep secret, and I’m the only one who knows her secret. Her handsome lover, a Greek immigrant, sneaks away from his wife on certain nights a couple of times a month, and she goes through a great deal of trouble cooking and cleaning for him, all for a few miserable hours. I’m sure she’s lost her virginity to him too, but whenever I broach the subject she blushes and tells me it’s none of my business. Yet she listens to his record “Sagapo” [“I love you, in Greek”] for hours and has hung his picture on the wall of her room. It’s a big picture of him that clearly shows he had his arm around someone and cut it off to give it to Ana.
Demetrius is teaching her Greek and has told her his name means (the one who loves the earth) in Greek. I like him, he is charming man with green eyes, a square jaw and a distinguished manner, but I hate what he’s doing to Ana. She walked him to the subway one hot summer night, and got mugged while walking back to our apartment alone. She was so angry she chased the thief yelling “the one with the yellow shirt, the one with the yellow shirt” till he ripped it off his body and threw her purse away.
She had gotten paid that day and lost her entire salary, but what had made her crazy wasn’t the money or the papers she lost, but the pictures of her family she kept in the wallet. Unfortunately they disappeared together with the wallet and she was inconsolable for months. She had pictures there of her dead mother and there were no negatives, so it was an irreplaceable loss to her.
Seeing my aunt again, awakens all kinds of raw emotions, a part of me is glad and another angry. If only she had done right by mother at the end, I would have forgiven her for all the pain she inflicted upon her for years, but she failed her miserably. Still she looks frail and sick, with none of the vitality which always characterized her. When I ask her what happened, she tells me that shortly after mother died; she developed insomnia, anemia, chronic colitis, and dropped twenty pounds. Guessing the real reason I change the subject but she reverts back to it.
“You weren’t there; you don’t know what it was like. It was a nightmare and I had to see it from the beginning.”
“Please, Sonia,” interrupts my uncle. “Let’s not talk about sad things, not at a time like this.”
“I thought I would be finally free when she went,” she goes on, ignoring him. “But it was worse. I kept seeing her in that hospital bed and it was devastating, you were far away, you didn’t have to see, you don’t know how lucky you are.”
“I’m not so lucky, Aunt Sonia,” I respond, icily.
“I left her for a few days and your uncle had to get her body at the morgue. He came back sick, shaking and begging for a drink, you didn’t have to see that either.”
“For God’s sake, Sonia, what are you trying to do, ruin her wedding?”
“These things have to be faced, Roberto. Why are you shutting me up?”
“Don’t you realize what you’re doing to her? She was her mother, do you not understand? Why must you dredge this up?”
“I want her to know what I went through, she probably thinks that because I didn’t bring her to live with me those last few months, I didn’t suffer with her but I suffered, I’m still suffering, and in moments of great distress, I pray to her, yes, me, the great atheist praying to my dead sister, but it’s true.”
“Good for you,” I respond, sarcastically. “I hope it helps, because nothing helps me.”
“You have changed,” she says looking at me with suspicion. “And I know why too. You think I should have brought her to my house to live with me, that I should have taken care of her. Well, I think so too, I’m sorry I didn’t, alright? I wouldn’t have gone through the tortures I went through if I had done it. But it’s done now and I paid the price, now are you sati
sfied?”
Something explodes inside of me and I can’t stop it. “I’m not accusing you, Aunt Sonia, you’re accusing yourself and since you want to have this conversation, let’s have this conversation.”
She is sitting on her bed in her flowery night gown, and her eyes look at me with fear, but it’s too late, she has opened the floodgates and a world of repressed feelings spill out of me with venom.
“What do you want from me, huh, absolution? You want me to say everything you did was perfect? You got colitis; you suffered, oh, my God, how terrible for you. It was your guilty conscience, and I’m supposed to feel sorry for you now? All your life you hated and humiliated her, she was the worst thing in the world to you - the embarrassment of your life. I saw her cry bitter tears because of you, I had to swallow my feelings and go along with everything you did because I needed you so much, but I hated you, really hated you and I couldn’t tell you; do you understand? I couldn’t tell you and that nearly killed me.”
“Is that so?” she says sarcastically, her eyes large and moist.
“You did me a lot of harm, you don’t know what it was like to bear your insults time after time and not be able to say a word. You would have saved your soul if you at least did something decent and humane for her at the end, but you couldn’t even manage that, could you? What did you do, bring her a lousy cup of soup at the hospital? And that’s supposed to make up for all the horrors you did to her? I hope you suffered, I hope your insides twisted and turned like a coil, I hope you never enjoy a decent night sleep for as long as you live, but I doubt it because you have no conscience, you never did, and that’s been your problem all along.”
She is unprepared for the onslaught and her eyes fill with tears.
“I got sick, didn’t I? I cried till I had no more tears left, so I must have a conscience. I must know right from wrong. You and my son Ramiro will go on blaming me for everything till the day I die. What are you going to do when I’m gone? Who will you blame for all your troubles then? I always meant well, I may have handled it harshly but I meant well.”
“Please… don’t make me laugh, Aunt Sonia.”
“I see, I’m a viper, I don’t deserve to live. Yet I always gave, I always got involved.”
“I used to love you; I wanted to be like you, now I realize that’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to me.”
“If you loved me once; you must have seen something good in me.”
“I can not deny the importance you had in my life; I will never be able to deny that nor repay the enormous debt that I owe you, but this thing has been choking me death for a long time and I needed to get it out.”
She smiles bitterly. “You say you swallowed my insults when you were a child? Then I take my hat off to you because you were very smart. But before you stand before me in judgment, think about this, I was always there for your mother and you, always, in a good way or a bad way but I was there. And before you give me “cátedras de bondad,” [“lectures in goodness”] ask yourself, who paid for the funeral? Nobody contributed a cent to it that I recall, that’s for damn sure.”
“That’s enough, Sonia,” yells my uncle, reddening. “How can you bring that up? Have you lost all your senses?”
“She’s right,” I say, defeated. “How much did it cost? I’ll reimburse you for every cent.”
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” says my uncle in disbelief. “Look what you did to her. This isn’t worthy of you, Sonia, stop it right now or I’m taking the next flight back home. You have hurt each other enough.”
I say nothing and realize she has won again; she always gets the last word, but she has also made me think and I make up my mind to find out how much the funeral cost and to shove the money down her throat if necessary. I cry myself to sleep that night realizing that she is right in many of the things she said, and that my horrible Uncle Jorge, whom mother had helped so much when he most needed it as a child, hadn’t even contributed a cent to her funeral.
She has hurt me, the way only she knows how to hurt, but I also feel better because at long last I have defended my mother, the malignant tumor has been exorcised, and for the first time in months my chest feels clear. I’m aware that a kind of spiritual cleansing has taken place, and I’m very grateful she has unwittingly opened the door. Now I won’t have to die with this bitter mass inside of me, now I can finally rest in peace.
Her eyes are red and swollen the next day but she makes an effort to talk to me normally. “Would you mind?” she asks, tentatively. “If I got in touch with my brother? He is after all your uncle and should be attending the wedding.”
I hesitate. “Please,” she pleads. “Don’t do it for me, do it for your Uncle Berto.”
I sigh deeply. “Go ahead; if he wants to come, I don’t have a problem.”
Uncle Berto nods at me proudly. “Live in peace with everybody, Vicky,” he says, tenderly. “Don’t walk around with weights, go light; it’s the best way to live.”
Aunt Sonia gets on the phone and calls him. They have a long conversation and Uncle Jorge says he’s coming to the wedding. She turns to me gratefully, her eyes are full of tears and she disappears quickly into the bedroom. I say nothing realizing that my aunt is a hard and callous woman, who through a lifetime of training has learned to hide her scars, but they are there, clearly visible below the surface, and they run very deep.
~~~
The days before the wedding pass in a flurry of activity and I catch a dreadful cold, so bad in fact, I develop a fever. I take lots of medicines but nothing helps and through a blur, I see myself walking down the aisle with Uncle Berto to meet my future husband in church. The place is full and Nick gets emotional at the ceremony shedding some tears. He looks particularly handsome in his black suit; brown hair combed back, light brown eyes bright. Faced with the enormity of the occasion, I hesitate. Am I doing the right thing? Would I be marrying him if my situation wasn’t so desperate? Unlike most girls my age, I had never dreamed of this moment. I had always wanted to be free, first and foremost, and I had wanted to fall desperately in love with someone before getting married. But life had forced this moment upon me, and I would have to go through with it. Perhaps this was all there was to life, and the passionate love I had always dreamed about existed only in my dreams.
We stand outside waiting to be congratulated and my voice is going, I’m developing laryngitis and find myself trembling on this sunny, warm day of September. The party at Sergio’s house is a fog, and through the haze of my mind I see Uncle Jorge and Felicia, their happy, smiling faces coming at me in celebration. Only I don’t feel much like celebrating, my body aches and I long for sleep. I’m aware that there is a lot of drinking and eating going on but I can barely touch my champagne.
“Your mother must have sent him,” says Aunt Sonia, drying a tear. “He is easy to love; you’re going to be very happy.”
I nod. “I’ll try to make him a good wife.”
“You better,” she says, hugging me. “Or I’ll come back and hit you.”
She is laughing and enjoying herself, we are taking lots of pictures and I feel faint.
“Felicia and I are very happy to be here,” says Uncle Jorge. “We always liked Nick for you, we are so glad you finally came to your senses.”
By the time we finally leave, my voice is gone and I can only utter a whistle. Nick has scented candles and two beautiful bouquets of red roses in the apartment, and he has decorated our bed with rose petals. Reading his mind I tell him that making love is impossible the way I feel but he is having none of that and gently begins undressing me. I lay there passive, not participating, he’s drank a lot and the whole thing seems to take forever. At last, it’s over and I fall into a deep sleep, but upon waking up in the morning, I can’t even utter a whistle, and we have to go to the doctor for antibiotics, postponing our honeymoon for ten days.
The five days in Miami afterwards are a mixture of blue skies, sandy, beautiful beaches and glorious we
ather. We take a boat tour of Biscayne Bay and Millionaire’s Row, and I’m enthralled. It is simply the most beautiful place I have ever seen, and I can’t stop talking about the marvelous views these fortunate people wake up to every morning.
“That’s nothing,” scoffs Nick. “Wait till you get to Capri, now that’s really the most beautiful place on earth.”
A wave of sadness washes over me. Mother often talked to me about Capri and she described it as though she had seen it. She had seen pictures at the library and had never forgotten the deep blue sea, and the extraordinary rock formations and caves in the water.
“Capri must be the most exquisite place one earth,” she would say to me with her eyes glowing. She knew all about the Blue Grotto and the fact that the waters had to be completely still to be able to see it.
~~~
Nick is a citizen and my papers move quickly. I have to leave the country in a few months, and reenter it as a resident. We’ll take a flight to Montreal and I’ll come back to New York legally. I’ll finally have the legal right to stay in the country I love. I’ll have the coveted green card in my hands and will never have to worry about deportation again. I will be able to go back home. I will see my family. It seems too good to be true and the whole thing has only taken six months.
But my elation is short lived when devastating news arrive from home. My beloved Uncle Berto has had a stroke and is lying in the hospital in critical condition. Ana and Ramiro take a flight to Bolivia right away, but again I’m unable to go. I can’t say goodbye to the person I have most respected and admired in my life.
Unforgettable memories pass before my eyes making me cry, outings at the tennis club, long walks by the river, his sincere affection, wisdom and innumerable kindnesses. From the beginning his steady presence in my life had been a gift. He gave me confidence and hope for the future. He was the father I wanted to have, the father I adopted in my dreams. He taught me patience, understanding, perseverance and compassion; and his last gift to me was giving me away at the wedding. Never a demonstrative man, he gave me a big hug at the airport; did he sense we would never see each other again?
Beyond the Snows of the Andes Page 44