Next Year in Havana

by Chanel Cleeton

  I need to know the end of the story, need to know what happened, and Ana’s earlier warning returns to me now.

  You can’t understand what those times were like, how our world was shattered in the span of a few months. Whatever you find, don’t judge her too harshly.

  She has to know some of it at least. Do my great-aunts know? There’s no mention of whether they were my grandmother’s confidants in the letters, and there are so many pieces I need filled in for me.

  Is her lover alive? Is he still in Cuba?

  It’s late—just after midnight according to the clock on my phone—but I can’t sleep, questions running through my mind. I want to share what I’ve learned with my father and sisters, and at the same time, I need more information before—if—I tell my family this news. Besides, Cuba’s telecommunications challenges don’t make it easy. A part of me welcomed the reprieve from real life, but now I feel almost unbearably lonely, cut off from my friends and family.

  Why didn’t my grandmother tell me these stories? Why didn’t she trust me with this?

  I need fresh air, the four walls closing in on me. I grab a robe from my suitcase, belting it around my tank top and yoga pants, tiptoeing from the room. The Rodriguezes’ part of the house is quiet. Upstairs their neighbors are still awake, domestic noises filtering through the water-stained ceiling. Footsteps thud, joined by the whoosh of water running down the pipes. The faint sound of a baby crying.

  The stairs creak, and I wince with each one, praying I don’t wake the whole household. I walk past two closed doors and reach the back of the house, opening the glass door that leads to the paladar’s outdoor dining area overlooking the water. The wind whips my hair around my face, the lulling sound of the water calming my racing heart.

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  I whirl around. Luis lounges in one of the chairs previously inhabited by diners. A bottle of rum and a half-filled glass sit on the table in front of him.

  The moonlight shifts. I freeze.

  A sliver of light illuminates the left side of his face. His eyelid is bruised, a nasty-looking gash on his cheekbone that definitely wasn’t there earlier this evening.

  I gasp. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  Luis reaches for the drink in front of him. He drains the liquid, setting the glass back on the table with an angry clank.

  “I was robbed.”

  “Oh my God. What did they take?”

  He unscrews the bottle, filling the glass. He doesn’t drink it.

  “Mostly, my dignity.”

  “Did you report it to the police?”

  His lips curve in a sardonic twist. “I highly doubt the police would concern themselves with a simple robbery.”

  “I thought Cuba didn’t have a ton of crime. The guidebooks I read mentioned it was fairly safe,” I say, feeling a bit foolish with the evidence to the contrary staring me in the face.

  He snorts. “Don’t believe everything you read. Crime doesn’t cast the regime in a favorable light.”

  “Do you need something for your face? Antibiotic cream, maybe?”

  Luis lifts his drink in a silent toast. “I already have it.”

  He gestures toward an empty chair on the other side of the table with his free hand, and it occurs to me that he just might be a little drunk.

  He’s married. Go back to your room. Do not sit down.

  I sit, and when he slides the full glass across the table to me, the liquid sloshing around the rim, I don’t hesitate as I lift the drink to my lips and drain it.

  The rum is better than expected. I’ve seen the brand before in my travels abroad, its distinctive logo jumping out at me as a sign of yet another thing Castro’s government has taken, but I’ve never tried it. Was it once the Rodriguez family’s before the rum companies were nationalized?

  “Are you sure you don’t want to patch up your face?” His eye looks like it must be throbbing; he’ll have a hell of a bruise tomorrow.

  Luis shakes his head, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that he’s sitting across from me beaten and bloody.

  Men.

  “Rough night?” He gestures to the empty glass in my hand.

  It sounds like he’s laughing at me again.

  “You could say that.”

  I slide the glass back across the table, and he refills it, taking another sip. His gaze is trained on the sea in front of him rather than on me, but I sense he’s waiting for me to respond, and now, an ocean away from my family, I’m so in need of another person to talk to that I do.

  “Your grandmother had a box of possessions my grandmother buried in her backyard when she left Cuba. There were letters in there. Love letters. From a man. He was a revolutionary.”

  Luis is silent, waiting for me to continue. Surprisingly, I do.

  “I came to spread my grandmother’s ashes because she asked me to, because I knew her better than anyone, or thought I did, but now I don’t feel like I knew her at all.”

  “She never told you about the man?”

  “No. I don’t think anyone knew. At least if her sisters did, they never said anything. She told me so many stories about her life in Cuba, and this might be the most important one of all, and she never mentioned it. Not once.”

  I’ve never been overly close to my father; he’s an affectionate, if distant, parent. And my grandfather died when I was fairly young, so he’s little more than a hazy memory. My mother left me in the care of others after the divorce. But my grandmother—

  She was the constant in my life, the person I knew would be there for me no matter what, the one person in my family who accepted me without reserve, who didn’t attempt to shape me into the Perez mold. That makes this discrepancy between the woman I thought I knew and the woman she was cut the deepest.

  “What are you more upset about? The secrecy or that your grandmother loved someone you wouldn’t approve of?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “My grandparents’ relationship was always built up as this great romance in my mind. I didn’t have a lot of examples of healthy marriages to look up to—my parents certainly didn’t fit the bill.”

  I’d told myself that one day when I was older, my own relationship would look like theirs, that my children would never grow up in a home as divisive and fractured as the one I was raised in, but rather in a house filled with love and affection like that of my grandparents.

  “When I was a little girl, I used to beg my grandmother to tell me about how they met,” I explain to Luis. “They married a month later. Can you imagine that—meeting someone and falling in love in the blink of an eye and then marrying them a few weeks later? What is that if not great love?”

  I can feel my skin flushing, the warmth prickling me, either from the rum or the topic.

  Luis stares at me, his expression inscrutable. “Your definition of romance is a singular one.”

  I blink. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  It sounds like he’s faintly mocking me again.

  “You speak of passion, but what about companionship, mutual respect, friendship? Why do people always seize on the spark that can peter out as the measure of a relationship?”

  Does he have that spark with his wife, or is theirs a steady marriage, bolstered by the qualities he speaks of now?

  “Those things are important,” I concede. “And my grandparents had them, too. They were married for a long time; I very much doubt marriage can endure without those qualities.”

  He tips his head in silent acknowledgment.

  “But I’d want the spark, too,” I say, my voice growing bolder.

  Luis laughs, the sound throaty and warm. “I don’t doubt it.”

  He picks up the glass again, bringing it to his lips, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.

  I can’t look away.

 
“I imagine a family like yours wouldn’t be pleased to have a revolutionary in their midst,” he says.

  “No, they wouldn’t.” I hesitate, torn between truth and caution. The rum loosens my tongue. “I grew up hearing the worst about people like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.”

  There is somewhat of a divide between the Cubans who left and the Cubans who stayed. There is affection and worry for family members and friends who remained behind, the intrinsic need to help anyone leave Cuba, but there is also a schism. Some believe those who stayed contributed to Cuba becoming what it is now, and in doing so, bolstered Fidel’s power and legitimized it. People like my grandmother saw that as another betrayal—one that hurt especially because it came from her fellow Cubans. It is much easier to forgive the stranger than it is one you love.

  “It’s difficult to imagine my grandmother loving one of them.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t one of them,” Luis suggests. “Not everyone involved with Fidel’s 26th of July Movement was the same.”

  I’m embarrassed to admit my knowledge of Cuban political history is fairly limited. I know broad brushstrokes and anecdotes passed on by my grandmother and great-aunts, but I’ve rarely examined the nuances beyond the simple proposition that Castro and the communism he wrought were bad. It was a truth so strongly accepted in our family, that questioning it, even in the smallest manner, was blasphemy.

  “Who were the good ones, then?”

  Luis drains his drink, pouring more rum into the glass. He slides it toward me, his fingers grazing mine as I grasp it.

  I lift the glass to my lips, the smell of the rum filling my nostrils. The taste of him lingers somewhere on the glass and in the alcohol, or perhaps it’s just my imagination.

  He looks away, out to the sea again.

  I swallow, the rum sending a hot lick of fire down my throat, uncoiling in my belly.

  “I didn’t necessarily say there were good ones,” Luis clarifies. “Merely men who died before they made the full transition from liberating heroes to tyrants. Men with good intentions, at the very least, which is almost but not quite the same thing. I imagine a number of history’s most notorious offenders started out with the very best intentions.”

  I slide the empty glass back to him. He removes the cap from the rum bottle, filling his glass, lifting it to his lips.

  “I want to find him,” I say, surprising myself even as the words leave my mouth.

  The need to learn what happened between them, the puzzle of it, is all-consuming now.

  “Of course you do. Journalists.” Luis sighs, his expression hovering between resignation and amusement. “What do you know about him?”

  “Not much. The letters were unsigned.”

  “Probably to protect your grandmother if they were ever found. Were there any clues in the letters?”

  I think about it for a moment.

  “He was an attorney. He met Fidel at the University of Havana while studying law.”

  Luis flinches, the move nearly imperceptible, and yet so slight it speaks volumes. Fidel casts a long shadow even in death.

  “That’s not much to go on. You don’t even know if he remained in Cuba or if he left. If he’s still alive.”

  “I know.”

  Without the use of Internet searches and genealogy sites, it will be a difficult endeavor. Without a name, it seems insurmountable. And still, I can’t help but wonder if my grandmother sent me here because she knew I would need something to seize hold of once she was gone. Ana said that my grandmother asked her to keep the box for me; she had to have wanted me to have this part of her. But if she did, why did she never tell me herself?

  “Your grandmother might know something,” I add, recalling Ana’s earlier words. “Maybe there were other people around who are still in Cuba. I want to try to find him, at least. If he’s still alive, if he’s in Havana, perhaps I could meet with him.”

  “Why?”

  Luis refills his drink, the alcohol swaying in the bottle, and then he slides the glass back to me. This time I don’t pick it up.

  “Because she feels like a stranger and she was the only person in the world who really knew me.”

  Understanding flashes in his eyes as a sense of recognition passes between us. It’s obvious in his interactions with Ana that there’s a special bond between them, that for a boy who lost his father at a young age, his grandmother has become a rock for the entire family, taking them into her home, running the paladar in an effort to give them a better life.

  “Tell me you wouldn’t do the same,” I say.

  “If things were different, perhaps I would. But this isn’t Miami. You need to be careful. Maybe he was a nice man nearly sixty years ago; that doesn’t mean he’s the same man your grandmother loved. You don’t want to start asking questions, poking into things that will agitate the regime.”

  “You think finding him—trying to, at least—would be dangerous?”

  It seems such a simple thing, to want to know my family’s history. The idea that the government would discover my efforts or even care is something I can’t quite wrap my head around. It’s a love affair, not political insurrection. Were my great-aunts right to worry about me coming to Cuba as much as they did?

  “Yes, it could be dangerous. Marisol—”

  An oath falls from his lips, and his chair slides against the chipped tile floor with a scrape. His face is flushed, though from the liquor or the conversation, I’m not sure.

  “I should go to bed,” he murmurs.

  The image of him lying next to Cristina assails me.

  Married. He’s married.

  “Thanks for the drink,” I offer haltingly.

  He doesn’t answer me.

  I look straight ahead, fighting the urge to turn around, to watch him walk away. I’m too old for a crush. Especially on a married man. I came here to settle my grandmother’s ashes, not for this.

  “My grandmother asked me to show you around Havana tomorrow,” Luis says behind me. “I’ll be downstairs at ten.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but when I turn to tell him I’m fine without a tour guide, he’s already gone.

  * * *

  • • •

  The morning comes far earlier than I’m prepared for, my grandmother’s love affair spread out on the bedspread, a dull throb in my head from the alcohol. I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of rereading the letters after I returned to my room, my belly full of rum and my mind full of questions.

  Was he killed? Were they separated by the revolution? Did he leave Cuba as well? If they were divided by something trivial, why did she never mention him?

  I haven’t forgotten Luis’s warning last night, but I can’t ignore the desire to attempt to track down my grandmother’s mysterious revolutionary. It feels like this, too, was a charge she gave me—a puzzle surrounding our family’s past, and now that the temptation is here, I can’t shake the desire to learn who he was and to find him.

  I choose my favorite maxi dress from my suitcase, pairing it with comfortable sandals and oversize sunglasses. I pretend I don’t spend more time on my hair and makeup than normal, that I’m not preening, but I do and I am.

  The ring on my hand weighs heavily, and I stare down at it, envisioning it on my grandmother’s finger, as though I’m carrying a piece of her past along with me on my journey through Cuba. I hesitate but slip the container with my grandmother’s ashes into my bag as well. Perhaps it’s a bit macabre to carry her bones with me, but who knows when inspiration will strike.

  I leave the room and walk down the stairs, my steps faltering when I spot Luis at the base waiting for me. He’s wearing a white linen shirt and another pair of khaki pants. His eyelid is a spectacularly awful coloration of yellow and green, his cheekbone slightly swollen. He looks tired; maybe I wasn’t the only one who passed a slee
pless night.

  “Are you sure you don’t want someone to take a look at that?” I say in lieu of a greeting, gesturing toward his injured face.

  His lips quirk. “I’m sure.”

  “How are you feeling?” I ask, my tone gentling.

  “My eye’s fine; my head, on the other hand . . .”

  His expression is sheepish, so out of character with the glimpses of his personality I’ve seen so far—intense and serious—that I can’t help but grin in spite of my earlier resolve to be oh-so-stoic and proper.

  “It was strong rum,” I concede. My own head is fuzzy, the daylight shining through the windows in the entryway a little too bright.

  “Yes, it was.” His gaze drifts over my appearance. “Are you ready?”

  “I am.” I glance around the room. “Is your grandmother here?”

  “No. She usually goes to the market in the mornings to buy food. My mother went with her.”

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “A couple hours, maybe?” A faint smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “She likes to visit with everyone while she’s buying groceries. They all love her.” His smile disappears. “Let me guess, you want to ask her about the letters you found.”

  “I do.”

  “So despite what I told you, you’re still determined to find this man.”

  “I’m not going to do anything to put your grandmother at risk, but if she knows something, surely answering my questions wouldn’t be dangerous.”

  “Are you always this curious?”

  He says it like it’s not a compliment.

  “I don’t know. I guess. Besides, this isn’t some stranger we’re talking about. This is my grandmother, the woman who raised me. How can I not take this opportunity to learn more about her? Who knows when I’ll have the opportunity to come to Cuba again; if I’ll have the opportunity to come to Cuba again.”

  These are uncertain times for both of our governments, and decades of Cuban-American relations are changing on a dime.

  Luis shakes his head in resignation. “If you’d like, we can hit up the major sites today and see where we end up. My grandmother will be here when we return. This article you’re writing—what kind of tips are you looking for?”