Before he gave her an answer, she took the cup from his hands, turned just in time to place it on a waiter’s tray, grabbed him by the shirtsleeve, and led him across the room. He could feel the blood whoosh to his face as he followed in sheer terror. He had had a few dance lessons, but he was far from confident and prepared, and he had always assumed that the choice of timing would be his. Stumbling stupidly across the room toward the dance floor, he wondered if his ex was watching, which offered him a slight triumph, although not nearly enough to make up for his fright.
As he followed the audacious girl, he was again shocked by her boldness when she turned and looked back at him, flashing the seductive smile of a mature woman. He wondered if this dance was going to get him thrown out the window by a jealous boyfriend or a protective father. But he followed her onto the dance floor, helpless as if he were on skates. He tried to relax, to focus on the beautiful music played by a trio of guitarists crooning old-world boleros. He was about to engage his cardboard arms with hers when she pivoted and parked him squarely into the arms of a plump girl who beamed at him as if she had been waiting for him her entire life. She giggled excitedly and said, ”Ay, gringuito chulo.” Cute little white boy. She then squeezed him tight, so tight that when he looked down, he saw a tear of sweat roll down her doughy neck, which was freckled with a rash of skin tags that clung to her like fleas.
It was 1967, and the beautiful girl wore a floor-length “maxidress,” which swept the white marble tiles and trailed behind her. Dragged along with her skirt, like the tail on a comet, were the glances of those powerful men upon whose laps she had probably squirmed and giggled just a few years back. She turned and gave Bruce a wink of gratitude as she disappeared into a cloud of cigar smoke.
Alma Marina Borrero made an auspicious entrance into Bruce Winters’s life, leaving him with an early dose of the mystery she would surround herself with years later. And yet this awkward moment with the chubby girl would later prove to be serendipitous. Her name was Claudia, and she would become a great friend and ally, securing rare interviews for him with the military upper echelon, which would result in several journalistic awards. And with this awkward waltz he began a new chapter of his life—the brief chapter in which he liked El Salvador, even dared love it, as he entertained himself with his shameless courtship of a girl who had just turned eighteen.
At first, it was like a joke. Sure, he was an educated, professional, good-looking guy. And it was true that being a gringo with green eyes held some charm and novelty in Salvadoran society. But still, he was a nobody to the upper class, and the Borreros were about as somebody as anybody could be in those parts. Adolfo and Magnolia Borrero weren’t about to squander their only child on a man whose family they had never heard of, and who could contribute nothing more than exotic facial features. “We don’t even know your family,” Magnolia Borrero had told him through the speakerphone outside the gated wall of their home. “Go away.”
“Not a problem,” Bruce had said. He returned with a color photograph of his parents and two sisters huddled next to a waist-high bank of dirty snow. “There you go, Doña Magnolia,” he spoke into the speaker as he shoved the picture under the electrified iron gate. “That’s my family. May I come in and see your daughter now?”
Girls like Alma came with an unnamed price. As the old adage went, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. Bruce decided that his only currency was patience and persistence, and so he decided to stick it out at the embassy in El Salvador for the four years that Alma was in college in New York. During this time, he saw her only when she returned home for semester breaks and holidays. Bruce became a speck in Alma’s overwhelmingly complex social life, but he figured a speck was better than nothing. Besides, he was no monk during that time—there were endless weekends at the beaches and excursions to Roatán, Antigua Guatemala, and Belize with his own widening circle of Salvadoran and expatriate friends. There were days that he didn’t even think about Alma at all, and he was starting to think that maybe his decision to stay in El Salvador had nothing to do with her. He was used to the place, had made more friends in the first nine months than he had made in his whole life in the United States.
He became fond of his self-image—an expatriate writer, but unlike his friends who corresponded for newspapers from the outside, he had a certain amount of control over how long he might get to stay.
And Magnolia Mármol de Borrero—La Doña—was starting to come around. She insisted that they only communicate in English, so that she could practice, because her English wasn’t good. Bruce was impressed that a woman of her age and rank found no shame in her language errors. She told long-winded stories in broken English about her girlhood that Bruce didn’t always understand, but he was smart enough to laugh when she laughed. She began to invite him and his friends to the house, playing the role of grande dame to the young Americans and local journalists he brought with him. Alma was gone so long that Bruce actually started to note some improvement in the Dona’s English skills.
In the years that followed, Bruce’s career as a journalist began to pick up again, with requests from Washington for briefings on the civil unrest bubbling up all around Central America, especially in Nicaragua and El Salvador. The communist ideology was gaining strength in the countryside, with its intellectual nucleus at the universities and, some said, in certain Catholic pulpits. Rumors were confirmed that money and arms were being smuggled in from the USSR, China, and Cuba in rickety boats that pulled up to the remotest Salvadoran beaches, or through the jungles of Honduras and Guatemala.
During one of his rare dates with Alma, Bruce asked Alma and Magnolia what they thought about the political climate in their country. Serving as chaperone from the tiny backseat of Bruce’s beat-up orange VW Bug, Magnolia had been fanning herself with a magazine. As they passed a rash of shantytowns, she ignored his question. “Bruce, when are you going to get an air-conditioned car? I’m going to faint in this heat.”
Alma was sitting in the passenger seat. She shrugged and said, “I’ve never paid attention to politics. But I suppose if a civil war breaks out, then I’ll have to start.”
“Do you think we’ll have a civil war in El Salvador, Doña Magnolia?”
Magnolia had slammed the magazine against the roof of the car, apparently to kill an insect. Then, she rolled the magazine into a funnel and tipped its contents out the window. “Civil war? No,” she said dismissively, and Bruce could see in his rear-view mirror that she had turned her gaze toward the rash of tinplate and cardboard shacks. She narrowed her eyes and said, “We’re going to put an end to that communist nonsense. If things get rough, we have friends who can help.”
“You mean the U.S.?”
But Doña Magnolia closed that door as quickly as she had opened it. With her comment, she had allowed him a tiny glimpse into the very private world of the country’s ruling class. Bruce wondered if she was indeed referring to the United States—or to a secret paramilitary society whose mission was to eliminate suspected communists in a harsher and more efficient way than the government could manage.
That particular date had ended in the same fashion as the ten other “dates” before it: with a kiss on the hand for Magnolia and a peck on the cheek for Alma. Four years after he had met her, Bruce still hadn’t kissed Alma on the lips. Whenever he called to ask for a date, Alma would accept with a caveat: “As long as you know that we’re just friends, Bruce. Nothing more.”
But Bruce wasn’t discouraged. He figured the seduction would begin when she came home for good.
In 1972 Alma returned to El Salvador with dual bachelor’s degrees in biology and philosophy. Her English was flawless, and she thought she might want to return to the States to earn a Ph.D. in marine biology. Alma said that unlike other women of her culture, she didn’t “buy into” the rush toward marriage, and that she felt the need to do something significant before settling down.
But a month later, Adolfo Borrero, whose input had been dormant un
til this time, eyed his gold watch and declared that it was time for his daughter to get married. He made the announcement at dinner, during the soup course. Claudia and Bruce, who were the only guests that night, lifted their eyes from gold-rimmed bowls of crab bisque and turned to look at Alma. Alma held her soup spoon suspended midway between her bowl and her mouth for what seemed like an eternity. They waited, but she appeared to be stunned into immobility.
Adolfo turned to the guests. “I’ve decided that Alma should marry Augusto Prieto, the son of one of my business partners. Augusto is the heir to agricultural and textile interests throughout Mexico and Central America. The union of the two families would be …” His sentence trailed off and he nodded approvingly.
Magnolia said, “Adolfo, I thought we were going to talk to Alma in private about this.”
Adolfo pointed his spoon in the direction of the guests. “Claudia is a friend of the family, so is Bruce. Alma trusts their opinions, that’s why I’m telling them.”
“But we should have talked to Alma first.” Her voice had an edge of anger.
“Ladies,” Adolfo bellowed, “I know what’s best.”
They were still waiting for Alma’s reaction, but now she was looking past them, wide-eyed, out the window and into the yard. Then, she pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut as if she were going to sneeze. She made a sound that Bruce thought was a sob, then a gasp that rose and exploded into peals of shoulder-shaking laughter.
Her parents sat stone-faced and waited for her to calm down. “What’s so funny, Alma Marina?”
Alma pointed toward the window, and they all turned to look. It took a moment for all of them to recognize what Alma found so amusing. On the lawn, the gardener’s dog—a mutt covered with horrid molten brown spots—was happily humping away at Magnolia’s prize-winning standard poodle.
The Borreros jumped to their feet and ran out the door, screaming for the dogs to stop and calling to the servants for help. Alma clapped her hands and shouted, “Go, Fluffy, go!”
A few moments later, they watched as Magnolia’s beloved Fluffy bared her teeth and snarled at her owners, which sent Alma into another round of stomach-holding laughter. It took three servants, ten minutes, and a bucket of cold water to separate the copulating canines. “They’ve been trying to breed Fluffy for two years,” Alma gasped. “They bring these fancy-blooded males and Fluffy hates them all. She actually bit the last one.” Alma wiped tears from her cheeks. “His name was Claude Arpège.” Claudia let out a snort and the two of them giggled themselves silly.
When they finally calmed down, the two friends draped themselves like laundry across the dining room chairs. After a moment, Claudia’s expression grew serious and she said, “Alma, your dad sounded serious about Augusto.”
Alma rolled her eyes and looked at Bruce. “Can you imagine me married to Augusto Prieto? I’ve seen that boy get seasick on a pool raft, for God’s sake.”
“So what are you going to tell your parents?” Bruce asked. “Now that they’ve lost all hope for Fluffy and Claude Arpège.”
There were more guffaws and knee slapping before Alma answered the question. “I’ve managed to dodge a lifetime of that,” she said, gesturing toward the empty table. “I’ll dodge this bullet too. Trust me, I’m not marrying Augusto.” She intoned the name with barely concealed contempt.
“I’ll marry you if you need an escape,” Bruce offered, trying to sound as if he were joking. “Did you know that I never, ever get seasick?”
Alma sat up. “Well, you should have told me that a long time ago,” she said, patting his hand. “Level one is a man’s seaworthiness.”
Claudia asked, “What’s level two?”
Alma turned her eternally wet, shiny eyes upon her friends.
“Level two is a man’s ability to change the world.”
“An idealist?” Bruce asked. “I thought you didn’t care for politics.”
“No, I mean change the world. Deliver justice. Save the oceans. An artist who brings exceptional beauty to the world. A healer who can release us from pain.”
They were silent for a moment, then Claudia noted, “I don’t even have a level one. Just being asked out is my level one, two, and three.”
Suddenly feeling small, Bruce said, “I guess I don’t want to know what your level three is, Alma.”
Alma smiled in a way that reminded him of the oversexed smirk she had given him on the day they met. “I keep level three a secret.”
ALMA’S STRATEGY to avoid marriage was simple: she completely ignored Augusto and all of the other pedigreed suitors that her parents lined up. “At least I haven’t bitten any of them yet,” she joked, but Magnolia didn’t find it a bit funny. It must have occurred to her that she had made a great error of judgment in sending an already willful daughter off to the famously permissive USA. Alma’s obstinate nature had only hardened with exposure to ideas like feminism, a concept as useless in their world as the white, lace-up ice skates that Alma kept in storage.
Claudia had been the one to suggest to Magnolia that they give the gringo a second look. She had overheard Alma defending Bruce in his absence at a dinner party, snapping at the critic and declaring Bruce to be one of the most intelligent men she ever met. “Perhaps a union of intellect would be more durable than a more traditional bond,” Claudia had counseled during an afternoon coffee when she was alone with Magnolia. “Alma,” Claudia had delicately proposed, “is exotic among our tribe. Of the pool of suitable bachelors, none are evolved enough to endure her liberal ideas for long. Bruce Winters just might offer the right balance.”
After months of secret deliberation, the Borreros agreed with Claudia that the American wasn’t such a bad idea. Bruce knew he had arrived at the final leg of his journey when he got an invitation to visit the beach villa at Negrarena, which, la Doña added primly, would permit him to glimpse her daughter in a bathing suit. He wrote to his folks that day and suggested they apply for passports. Now all he had to do was win Alma’s heart.
BRUCE LOVED THE WAY the wood soaked up the caramel-colored stain, as if the grain contained a thousand tiny mouths that sucked it up all at once. As he worked side by side with Kevin, he marveled at the way history repeated itself. In the young man next to him he saw the same patience, the same devotion to a singular cause, that he himself had displayed when he was Kevin’s age. Monica was nowhere near as headstrong and enigmatic as her mother had been, not even in the same stratosphere. But Monica was cautious, and Bruce wondered if the estrangement she had witnessed between her parents gave her cause to fear intimacy.
Bruce was happy today. At this point in his life there were few people he would rather be with than this trio. Paige and Monica had been friends since Bruce and Monica had returned to the States in 1985, and he had always been grateful to her. Paige was bossy, nosy, and often crass, but she watched out for Monica’s interest like an old mother.
He thought about what Paige had asked him, about getting remarried. It was a wonder she hadn’t brought this up before. The kids were right: Marcy would marry him in an instant. He just didn’t feel the urgency, that’s all. He was waiting for the pull he’d felt with Alma, although in her case, it was a violent undertow, destiny yanking him by the feet and sucking him into a vortex of crushing waves. He didn’t need that at this stage of his life—he wanted peace, love, friendship, and, of course, attraction. He and Marcy had all that, so what was it then? Just plain age? Perhaps he had gradually lost interest in himself, thinking that there was no undiscovered territory left in his heart.
Bruce looked at his daughter. Summer was when she looked most like her mother. Although the eyes were his, Alma and Monica shared the same coiled black hair, the olive skin sprinkled with freckles, and the same slim but hourglass figure. But there was a softness to Monica’s face that she had got from neither Bruce nor Alma, a kindness and calm that she must have scavenged on her own somewhere. He wondered how much of it was her nature and strength, and how
much was a matter of not remembering the things that must have hurt and shocked her as a child.
Their memories of their last days in El Salvador were to each one private, and he didn’t feel he had the right to probe that space of her heart. Monica talked about her mother a lot, and she seemed to have been able to hold on to the happy memories. But Bruce was unsure if the bad stuff had just floated away, or if it lay dormant, waiting to upset her life at some unexpected time.
chapter 4 WHOLE BELLY CLAMS
Tuesday was the only day of the week that Will Lucero wasn’t a provider, a caregiver, a boss, or anything else but a man who sailed a boat. On Tuesdays he didn’t visit his wife and he didn’t go to work. He got out of bed at five and used the morning hours to catch up on bills and errands. He intended to get out of the house by eleven and head to the coast with a cooler and his dog, Chester.
He had given himself the gift of Tuesdays even before he had got married. It was the one day he got to change the station and tune into something altogether different from his everyday life: a language of wind, waves, fog, and tides. To Will, heaven could be found in the ruffle of canvas, in the tentative gasp of a sail as it inhales its life from the wind, the clink of a halyard’s metal hardware against the mast, the perthunk of the anchor plunging into water. As it turned out, sailing was what had saved his sanity over the last two years.
It was almost nine and Will still hadn’t been able to pull himself away from his chores—a broken garage door, an infestation of ants, a discrepancy on three of Yvette’s medical bills, a sluggish kitchen sink—all of them addressed but none of them wholly crossed off his list. At ten—two hours later than he’d meant to work at home—he decided he’d given it his best and started gathering his gear. Chester was already whining and giving him worried, woeful looks. When Will pulled his red duffel bag out of the coat closet, Chester went to stand by the front door, trembling with excitement. Will checked the fridge. It was almost empty; he hadn’t had any extra time to grocery shop. He packed a plastic container with his mother’s leftover bacalao salad, cold codfish mashed together with boiled yucca, vinegar, and olive oil. He packed two beers, five nectarines, and a handful of half-desiccated cherries he found on the counter. He put the weather radio on and listened for an update. Outside, the day was cloudy and still, a far cry from the television’s prediction of a sunny, breezy day. He couldn’t find his boat shoes and his mood was turning sour because of the time. When the phone rang, Chester barked and ran in circles, protesting yet another delay.
The Heiress of Water: A Novel Page 5