one hot summer
Page 8
I took a bite. I thought the fish was cooked just right, but there was no point getting into a pissing match with Mamá about it. I had learned well over the years that it was no use contradicting my mother. And since I had to be out of there within the hour, I didn’t want to get into a prolonged discussion with her about the damned fish.
Instead I turned the conversation toward a subject I knew Mamá would like: my other aunt. Tia Veronica, and her liposuction. I knew I was selling out, but I was on a tight schedule. And who was I to stand on principle? I was scheming how to get out of the house to meet an old boyfriend.
I ate everything on my plate, accepted a serving of flan for dessert, and topped off the meal with coffee, even though I feared it would spoil my breath for my meeting with Luther. The tin of Altoids in my bag, I hoped, would take care of that problem.
As soon as lunch was finished, I kissed Mamá good-bye and mumbled something about having a few errands to run before I went home. I sprinted out to my car, giving her no chance to comment on my horrid manners. If I had hung around I would have been on the receiving end of a major lecture.
Actually, if I thought about it, Mamá had been on her best behavior that day. It must have been painful for her to suffer in silence what she must have thought were so many social gaffes on my part. It was too much to hope that she was mellowing with age, but she might have been moving gradually, slowly, in that direction.
Mamá’s attitude, never entirely easy for her family to deal with, took a sharp downturn three years before when, completely by accident, she discovered that my father had been having an affair for ten years with Ofelia Carrera, a Cuban woman who worked as a bookkeeper for Santos Pharmacies. If my father had been a womanizer, his behavior would at least have been understandable if not excusable. For Cubans, it was almost expected that men cheated on their wives at some point in their lives—again, it might not be excusable, but it was chalked up to the appetites of the male of the species. But this hadn’t been a one-night stand. Papa had been involved deeply with one woman for a very long time, and that was what made the situation so upsetting for the entire family.
To top it off, the manner in which their affair came to the surface was uniquely tawdry. Papa suffered a heart attack while visiting Ofelia in her apartment—which, it turned out, he had bought for her. When she realized how seriously ill Papa was, Ofelia had been forced to call up my brother Mickey and tell him that paramedics were on the way to the apartment and that Papa was lying down and having difficulty breathing. She told Mickey that she wasn’t sure Papa was going to make it, and that the family should be prepared for the worst. And there was a practical matter—as a nonrelative, she would be unable to consult with doctors about his treatment. Papa needed one of us right away.
Until that phone call, my brothers and Mamá had thought of Ofelia—when we did, which was rarely—as the competent and reasonably attractive bookkeeper at Papa’s office. Unlike others who worked in the executive office, Ofelia generally kept to herself and was very circumspect about her personal life. Now we knew why.
Once he got over the shock of getting a call at home from Ofelia, then hearing what she had to say, Mickey added two and two and came up with the right answer. Papa wouldn’t be at Ofelia’s apartment to discuss bookkeeping, after all. Mickey hung up and raced over to her apartment, which was just a mile away from his place. He knew for certain that his father was having an affair. What he didn’t know was whether Papa would live long enough to be confronted about it.
Mickey arrived just in time to see the paramedics lifting Papa from the king-size bed in Ofelia’s bedroom onto a gurney. They were taking him to Mercy Hospital, the closest to Ofelia’s apartment. Mickey identified himself to the paramedics, who said the situation was touch and go. Papa was barely conscious as they slammed the ambulance doors shut. Mickey stood in front of Ofelia’s apartment, his blood turned cold by the sound of the siren receding into the distance.
A few nights later, when Papa was out of danger, Mickey took Sergio and me to a bar in the Grove for drinks after leaving the hospital. It was then that he told us all the details of what happened. He told us how Ofelia had sat in a chair in the corner of her bedroom, dressed only in a tatty bathrobe, silent as she watched the paramedics working on Papa. Though it was her home, she seemed to know she was pushed to the margins of Papa’s life. Miami might be a freewheeling place, but it hadn’t reached the point at which mistresses were considered on a par with blood relatives. Mickey wasn’t particularly sensitive, but he said her expression had broken his heart when he left her there with a hollow promise to call later. She knew her days with Papa were over.
As soon as he got in his car to follow the ambulance to Mercy Hospital, Mickey got on his cell phone and patched through a conference call with Sergio and me. I don’t know which was more shocking—the news that Papa had suffered a heart attack, or the fact that he’d had it in his lover’s bed, like a character in a telenovela. I knew it wasn’t unusual for men to cheat on their wives, especially Cuban men, but I didn’t think Papa was like that. I had never really given my parents’ marriage much thought, I realized. The fact that they were still married after all they had been through meant they were still in love, I figured. They had three children, so they must have had some sort of sex life. I realized that their marriage was a mystery, just like everyone else’s. No one knows the full truth, save for the two people involved.
Sergio and I had immediately gone to the hospital, where we met Mickey outside the emergency room and went into full crisis mode on the issue of what to do about Mamá. Obviously we had to notify her, but we weren’t sure what we should say. It was possible, we realized, that Mamá knew about Ofelia, or at least suspected that Papa had a mistress. She was, after all, a Cuban woman married to a Cuban man.
We agonized for half an hour while we waited for her to arrive. Then, rightly or wrongly, we decided to concoct a story about Papa falling ill while delivering some documents for Ofelia to work on. We simply couldn’t deal with giving Mamá the sordid details. But we were spared having to lie when Mamá arrived. Mamá identified herself at the front desk before she saw us, where a triage nurse handed her the paramedics’ report. It was all there: Ofelia, the bed. Mamá didn’t need to know any more.
Mamá never discussed Papa’s heart attack with me or my brothers except as it related to his physical health. Mickey, Sergio, and I talked about it for a while, but soon they grew bored with the subject. For them, it simply wasn’t all that interesting that Papa had a mistress. They were Cuban men, and deeper explanations were unnecessary.
For my part, I felt that I understood Mamá a little better. I wish I had known earlier, because it would have made a lot of things easier to understand. My opinion of Papa didn’t change much because the truth was that I had never really known him very well in the first place. Cuban men, especially of his generation, weren’t very involved with their children’s lives, especially that of their daughters. I was at least able to view him as a complex person, with human needs and desires, and not simply the ultimate authority at home, the breadwinner and decision-maker.
I was then thirty-two years old, and I hadn’t begun to sort out the truth of my parents’ private lives. After Papa’s heart attack, I realized that all of my thoughts about marriage were filtered through my parents’ relationship. They weren’t exactly great role models, but they were all that I knew. I hoped they were happy, though a lot of the time I feared they weren’t.
And now I was driving to meet Luther. I had a flash of my mother’s face in the emergency room, ashen, reading the paramedics’ report with a black expression. She was a lady at all costs, even in the face of catastrophe. I couldn’t have said what she was feeling in that moment.
It wasn’t an image I wanted, or needed. Not when I was minutes away from meeting an old love who said it was urgent that we talk right away.
[10]
This time, the American had to wait for the Cuban.
Dinner Key was the isthmus jutting off Coconut Grove, and housed the mayor of Miami’s offices. The Art Deco two-story whitewashed building with sky-blue accents had become a famous image during the Elian Gonzalez fiasco. Irate Miamians had thrown bananas at the mayor’s office door when he openly defied a government order demanding his cooperation in removing the six-year-old boy from his relatives before being returned to Cuba. The fruity projectiles symbolized people’s anger that the mayor was making Miami look like a banana republic. It wasn’t a high point in Miami history, but then nothing about the Elian Gonzalez tragedy had been a high point. Ever since then, I hadn’t been able to go to Dinner Key Marina without thinking about the whole disgraceful mess.
There wasn’t much I could do about my looks just then, so I settled for a quick spritz of Chanel No. 5. I decided to think like the French, and hope that perfume would mask all the ills of the world. When I got out of the car, the sound of the door closing made Luther turn around.
“Daisy!” he called out to me.
He was dressed in a khaki suit much like the one he’d worn the day before, and he looked a little out of place in such casual surroundings. It was close to a hundred degrees in the afternoon heat, but Luther looked nice and cool in his suit and tie. I had no idea how he did it. He got up and met me, taking my arm and leading me back to the bench where he had been waiting. He waited for me to choose a seat before lowering his lanky body next to mine.
“It’s beautiful here, Daisy,” Luther said. The wind kicked up, swirling the air around us. “Still using Chanel No. 5. It always makes me think of you.”
I blushed, knowing I’d overdone it on the perfume. Then I wondered if that was all we were going to talk about, there in the sweltering heat. I could feel a hint of anxiety inside my stomach, and I was very aware of Luther’s physical proximity to me.
“Are there always this many boats docked here?” Luther asked, gesturing to the docks in front of us, where every slip was occupied. I didn’t remember Luther ever showing much interest in boats before. Durham, North Carolina, hadn’t been a hot spot for nautical pursuits.
I didn’t believe we were there to talk about my perfume, or about boats, and then a thought occurred to me: Luther was as nervous as I was, and couldn’t get around to what he wanted to talk about. If that was true, then I was going to be sick. Luther had ice water in his veins. He was cool and unemotional even by American standards.
I decided to humor him. I didn’t feel as if I was operating from a position of strength, not the way I looked.
“There are always lot of boats here,” I said. “Some people even live on them.”
Luther nodded sagely, as though this nugget of information had cleared up a lot of questions for him.
“Must be nice,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You know, being able to do that.”
We watched the pelicans perched on the channel markers at the edge of the marina, cackling and preening. Sometimes they would stretch in preparation for swooping down on a hapless fish that had made the mistake of swimming too close to the water’s surface. It always amazed me that those ungainly beasts could actually fly, with their huge beaks and pouches underneath, and that they were actually graceful when they did, skimming the water with their wide wings extended.
I sneaked a look at my watch and saw that we had been sitting there for fifteen minutes. It looked like it was up to me. I was the mother of a three-year-old, after all, and couldn’t disappear in midafternoon two days in a row without coming up with some kind of explanation.
“Luther, you said it was important that we meet today,” I began, as gently as I could.
He turned to me with a deer-in-the-headlights stare. He suddenly acted as though he would prefer a root canal to telling me what he had to say.
“I did.” He paused, took a deep breath. His eyes were bluer than ever. “I have a confession, Daisy. I didn’t come to Miami because of a case.”
“Then…”
“I’m working a case here, that’s true,” Luther said hastily.
“All right,” I said, taking all this in. Luther took another deep breath, and I could see him steadying himself for whatever he had to say next.
“But I’ve come to Miami on the case more than a dozen times in the past five years. I’ve been coming down here for years, I just haven’t contacted you before.”
“You chose to call me now?” I asked. “That seems strange to me.”
A sheepish expression came over his face. “Look, I don’t want you to think I’m a stalker or anything.”
“Luther, I didn’t say that.”
Apparently he was reassured. “I know,” he said quietly. “But there’s something else. Before, when you were working at the firm, I could see you without your spotting me.”
“You were…watching me?”
“Look, Daisy, this is really difficult.” Luther looked out over the water. He had gone this far, and it was painful for me to watch him struggling with himself.
“Just tell me,” I said.
“I would watch you as you went in and out of your office building,” Luther offered, wincing a little.
I didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered. I knew Luther too well to think that there was anything creepy or unsavory behind what he was saying. Still, I was really too shocked to react.
“Luther, help me out here,” I said. “I don’t understand this. Why…why did you watch me?”
I saw Luther conducting an internal monologue with himself, his lawyer’s training weighing how to present his information to make his case. Displays of vulnerability were not part of Luther’s character, although I had seen more in the last five minutes than I ever recalled from our dating days.
“Look, it’s like this. Even after we broke up, I still kept track of you and what you were doing.” Luther looked into my eyes, then away. “And I knew there were solid, practical reasons for our breaking up. Believe me, I used to repeat them to myself over and over. But it didn’t matter, I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I dated a lot, and I got involved with a couple of women. But I wanted you, Daisy. All this time.”
Luther gently took my hand in his. I just watched him, almost feeling like my hand belonged to someone else. It was awkward, and almost uncomfortable, to be sitting there with our arms outstretched between us, our palms damp and sweaty. The oversize diamond wedding band on my finger was digging into both his and my flesh. Perhaps the ring awakened Luther to reality, because he suddenly released my hand.
“It was about a year after we split that I was assigned to a case and sent down here,” Luther said. “We had agreed not to have any contact, and I had no idea how you felt about me. So I asked around about you. It broke my heart when I found out that you were engaged to marry a Cuban attorney, and so I didn’t try to get in touch with you.”
I sat there, stunned, pondering how all this went on without my knowledge.
“Then, the next time I came down, I found out that you had already gotten married to him.”
I could hear the pain in Luther’s voice. I had figured he had gotten on with his life after our breakup. Part of me didn’t think that WASPs felt much of anything too deeply, and that Luther would have moved on to a whole new life without me. I looked at Luther and wondered: If I hadn’t been engaged to Ariel the first time Luther came to Miami, and if he had contacted me, then how differen
tly would our lives have been? And what if he had called me while I was engaged to Ariel, but not yet married?
Luther shook his head and laughed softly, with a look of admiration in his eyes that confused me.
“I must say, Daisy, you follow through with your intentions.” Luther looked off into the distance. “You said one of the reasons you wanted to stay in Miami was that you wanted to integrate yourself into the community. That you wanted to be and feel more Cuban, after seven years away at Penn and Duke. Well, you achieved your goal. And I know you probably couldn’t have gotten there with me.”
It was my turn to reach for his hand, this time with the one that had no ring on it.
“Luther, I don’t know what to say,” I paused. “I mean, you’ve taken me by surprise with this. All of it.”
I shifted to face him.
“But there’s one thing I don’t understand,” I told him. “After six years, after watching me from afar, why did you contact me this time?”
The heat was starting to feel punishing, and in the harsh afternoon sunlight I saw a slight sheen of moisture come over Luther’s face. I was hot enough in my cotton T-shirt, so he must have been sweltering in his suit. And, of course, this conversation couldn’t have been helping matters.
“I know this is going to sound stupid,” he said. “But you haven’t been going to work for close to a year now. Ever since you took your leave of absence, I haven’t had an opportunity to see you.”
Luther took out a handkerchief and wiped his face. “Excuse me,” he said. “It’s so hot, I can’t help it.”
Americans, especially northerners, don’t do well in Miami’s oppressive summer climate. Even I was starting to feel a slight trickle of sweat running down my back. I was glad to be wearing a white shirt, since it wouldn’t show any sweat stains. I was a firm believer in never letting them see me sweat.