Tomorrow They Will Kiss

by Eduardo Santiago

  As my wedding day approached, I had a nasty, nagging thought that would not go away. On the morning of my wedding, as I laid out the beautiful white gown and veil on my bed, I kept hoping that Pepe would come to the church and put a stop to the ceremony. I imagined him shouting that he objected; that he was sorry, that he’d been a fool. I would throw down my bouquet and run into his arms. It was a fantasy that haunted me, and that I braced myself against.

  No, I told myself, you can’t do that to Ernesto. He’s a good man. He’s worth a thousand Pepes. If Pepe comes to the wedding and makes a scene, you must take Ernesto’s arm and stand by him. You must denounce Pepe as a liar and a fool and have him dragged screaming from the church. And I knew that there were plenty of men who were willing to do just that. No one was going to let Pepe Medina Ynclán make an ass out of Ernesto de la Cruz on his wedding day. It wasn’t going to happen.

  All through my brief courtship with Ernesto, my mother and father endured his visits, and as soon as he left they went into their bedroom and closed the door. But at least they were somewhat gracious to his face. It wasn’t that they preferred Pepe. They just knew from the start what took me a long time to learn.

  Even on the day of my wedding, my mother insisted that Ernesto was a mistake.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But it’s my mistake to make.”

  “You don’t love him,” my mother said as the boy from the bakery brought in my wedding cake. I waited until the delivery boy left. The last thing I needed was for him to go back to the bakery with chismes. Everyone went to the bakery at least once a day. Letting him overhear anything would have been like putting my personal life on the radio.

  “I’ll learn to love him,” I told her. And I meant it. But she wouldn’t hear of it.

  “You think I don’t know you?” she said. “I know you too well. I know there is someone else. I see how you look when you come home. I sense it in you, I can smell it. All I can think of are all the babies God denied me, and you are the one he chose for me. You’ve been giving yourself to a man who used you, and now that you’re getting older you’ve chosen this unfortunate creature for a husband. A man too deep in grief and memories to know what he’s doing. You will bring disgrace to your father. Ernesto is an important man, so you’d better be sure of what you’re doing. I can’t stop you, I could never stop you. All your life you’ve been willful and disobedient. So what can I expect of you? You say you’ll learn to love him? Ya veremos, we’ll see. But if you’ve ever had an ounce of respect for me, you’ll go talk to Ernesto right now and call this wedding off. Today you can start doing what’s right.”

  “Mamá, how can you say this to me? You’re my mother. I’m getting married in a few hours.”

  “I had to clear my conscience. I had to be a mother.”

  “But you just called me a whore.”

  “I did not use that word,” she said. “It’s not a word that comes easily to me, particularly in regard to my own daughter. But perhaps you do know yourself. Perhaps you do. Only you know what you’ve done to yourself.”

  “Yes, I’ll admit —”

  “No,” she interrupted. “I can’t listen to your confession. Do you honestly think I can sit here and listen to the disgusting details of your life?”

  “Mamá!”

  She raised her hand to silence me once and for all and left the room. I wanted to tell her that I had been stupid. That I had trusted a man who didn’t love me. I wanted her to comfort me, to bless me, to teach me what she knew about being a good wife.

  Moments later Ernesto and a friend delivered a case of champagne. He was full of good cheer. He kissed my mother’s cheek while she swallowed her tongue.

  “Is everything all right?” Ernesto asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “You seem upset,” he said.

  “Just a little nervous,” I told him. He smiled at me and took my hands in his.

  “That’s only natural.”

  I nodded in agreement and forced a smile and he left without kissing me.

  As I started to get dressed, my mother and father came into my room and announced that they would not attend the wedding. I can’t say I was surprised by their decision. As a matter of fact, I would have been more surprised if they had supported me. I had cleaned and decorated the house all by myself; filled the living room with flowers by myself, set out the glasses, the plates, and the napkins by myself. The two of them had been home, watching me like owls in the daylight, their eyes big and blind; and neither of them lifted a finger to help.

  “Why not?” I asked with a tired, resigned voice.

  “Because we know you,” my mother said.

  “You don’t know me,” I said. “You don’t know anything about me. Nothing you said earlier is true. You’re wrong. You’re always wrong.”

  “Your mother only wants what’s best for you,” my father said. “Think about it, Graciela, call it off. I’ll talk to Ernesto if you want. It can all be settled between men.”

  It was then that I started to shout.

  “You think about it. You think about what it’s going to be like for me to walk down that aisle without you. Think about what people are going to say.”

  “When did you start caring what people say?” my mother asked.

  I promised myself there would be no tears, but it wasn’t easy. They backed out of the room, and I closed the door on their faces. Still seething, I slipped into my dress, pulled on my gloves, and attached my veil. I checked my makeup in the mirror. It was perfect. Not too much around the eyes, and very pale lipstick. I looked in the full- length mirror behind the door, and I saw the bride I had always dreamed I would be. The sight almost made me let go of the tears I was holding back. But I didn’t. I wasn’t going to spoil all the work that had gone into my face. Instead I threw a pillow on the floor, carefully dropped to my knees, and prayed. I prayed to Santa Bárbara to give me the strength to go on. I begged San Lázaro to help me become the person I had always wanted to be. I begged La Virgen del Cobre to help me forget Pepe, and I begged Santa Lucía to help me be a good wife to Ernesto.

  I had never been too fond of praying, but on that day the prayers helped immensely, even the ones to the saints I didn’t believe in. I rose from my knees with a light, clear heart. I searched my mind for the darkness and despair that had tormented me a few minutes before, but it wasn’t there.

  As I left my violet- colored bedroom, where I had slept alone all my life, I felt free. I walked through the house, took a final look at the living room. It looked beautiful. Just right. My only fear was that my crazy mother would take it all down before I returned for the reception.

  Married.

  Married to a man my mother was convinced I didn’t love. Would never love. As if her marriage had been based on anything other than convenience and routine. I never once saw a kiss or caress pass between them. I wondered, if the roles were reversed, if my mother had been my daughter, would I have opposed or tried to stop her marriage to my father? Would I have been so cruel? So cold? So unforgiving? Those were the thoughts that ran through my mind that morning. And I had no answers.

  But as soon as I saw her, I knew she wouldn’t touch a thing while I was out getting married. That would have required too much of an effort. More effort than she was willing to make that day.

  She sat in a rocking chair next to the front door, too exhausted to rock. With her head bowed to her chest, content to play the helpless victim, the martyr, to just wash her hands of the whole thing. I walked past her without a word. My father had sequestered himself somewhere. He was probably in the backyard puffing down a cigar. I didn’t want another encounter with him. It would bring down my spirits. I wanted to put distance between us.

  I stepped out of the house and into the sunlight; the breezes licked my face like a hundred butterflies. I decided to walk to the church by myself, like a crazy person, the type of lunatic who wanders the streets in a tattered old wedding dress. Except mine was fresh and white and
lovely. If it wasn’t for the long dress, I would have run to the church. I didn’t have to walk alone. I had choices. I could have asked Imperio or Caridad to walk with me, or called Ernesto, who had hired a car for the day. I could have hired a car and driver, or a horse- drawn carriage. But I didn’t think of that. As soon as I was dressed and ready, I just wanted to get out of that house as fast as possible.

  I felt beautiful and proud, as if I was floating, as if I was being carried by the gentle wind to the next phase of my life. It was a perfect summer morning, cloudless and bright. Later it would get hot and horrible, the wind blowing as if from an oven. But at that very moment, the day seemed blessed.

  Everyone I met on the streets smiled, admired my dress, and wished me well. That day I took them at their word. I didn’t care if they shook their heads or rolled their eyes as soon as I passed. Farther along, I met up with people also hurrying to the church. I knew all of them: neighbors, former classmates, shopkeepers, as familiar to me as my own relatives. They were all dressed in their very best and, although at first they were surprised to see me walking alone, they hugged me and kissed me and joined me. I knew they were only going to the wedding out of respect for Ernesto, but I didn’t care. I gracefully accepted their good wishes and compliments. A car even stopped and offered me a ride.

  “Get in, Graciela,” the driver shouted.

  “No, muchas gracias, Felo, I prefer to walk,” I said. The people walking with me took him up on his offer and happily jumped into his car. Off they went—while the bride walked alone. I didn’t give it any thought. I laughed as I walked. I didn’t have much farther to go. I could hear the church bells ringing. At an altar just a few short blocks away, there was a man waiting for me who was willing to make me his wife. And I would be the best wife anyone in Palmagria had ever known.

  All regrets were mine and mine alone. I would not air them in the van for all of them to judge. There was no possible way for me to get them to understand, not if we talked about it every day on the way to work and on the way back for the rest of our lives. How could I express what it felt like after my wedding, coming home to the house and finding all those people crowded around that ugly spectacle, and then seeing Pepe again after all that time? His green eyes expressing pain and confusion, that dead baby in his arms. How would I get them to understand that at that moment I gave that unfortunate baby no second thought, that all I could think of was, So that’s why Pepe didn’t stop the wedding.

  These had been the thoughts of a much younger woman. I no longer harbored such illusions. I still thought of myself as romantic. I had not entirely given up hope that, one day, I would meet the right man.

  Pepe had not been the right man for me. When he showed up at my doorstep a few days after my wedding, I made my first mistake.

  “I have to talk to you, preciosa,” he said.

  “It’s too late to talk, and don’t call me that,” I said, and I meant it. I didn’t want to hear one word he had to say, particularly those useless ones, preciosa, tesoro, cariño. But he wouldn’t go away, and the last thing I needed was for the neighbors to see him standing at my door. And once he was inside, nothing else mattered for either one of us.

  Not one of the women who rode in the van knew the first thing about desire. The sort of desire that won’t let you think of anything else. The sort of desire that made everything else in the world seem unimportant. Husband, children, neighbors.

  After that first time, he never knocked on the door again. One moment I would find myself alone, wandering from room to room, going about my day, lost; and the next he was inside. And as soon as I saw him, my mind became as blank as a newborn’s. It didn’t matter if the neighbors saw him. It didn’t matter if Ernesto came home early. I would take any chance, any risk, just to feel that skin next to mine. Sometimes I pretended that it mattered, but Pepe could see right through me.

  “You can’t stay,” I’d say as he reached for me.

  “I know,” he’d answer, coming closer.

  “It’s dangerous. If he finds us it will break his heart.”

  I worried about Ernesto; wished that he was a crazy, violent man, so that it could all be settled. But I knew that he wasn’t. I knew my husband too well.

  “I don’t care,” Pepe said each time, as he guided me into the bedroom and toppled me backward onto my carefully made bed. “Do you?”

  “No,” I said as I fell. But I was lying. I watched while he stood above me unbuttoning his shirt. His eyes fixed on mine, a shameless smile on his lips. I felt him reach under my skirt, take hold of the elastic band of my bloomers, and roll them down my legs. I felt his beard caress the inside of my thighs. He was lips and tongue and hands, as if a dozen invisible men had joined him, and I felt myself engulfed by twilight. Even if I’d wanted to stand up and walk out of the room, I couldn’t have.

  The moment I started to tremble and my eyes started to water, I knew there was no turning back. He would stay and do whatever he wanted to me for as long as he wanted.

  Every time he left, I thought about packing my bags and leaving Ernesto’s house. I had every intention of doing just that. But it never seemed like the right time.

  Pepe and I always took the necessary precautions, even in moments when we were so rushed and breathless that it seemed as if the world would end if we didn’t wrap ourselves around each other. But accidents do happen. Before I knew it, I was pregnant. Nine months I waited, feeling limp and lifeless, to see what would happen. But the moment I saw that child, I knew he was Ernesto’s. I remember an overwhelming feeling of relief; as if my life had been spared.

  I couldn’t very well take away his baby, and I wasn’t about to leave my child. And so it seemed like the only thing to do was to continue dividing my time between the two men. I had the feeling that whatever it was that drew me to Pepe would eventually fade away and I would return to some sort of normal life.

  No one will ever know how nervous I was. What it felt like to be unable to look my husband in the eye, day after day after day. To speak in a normal tone and talk about ordinary things, all the while counting the long, painful moments until I could see Pepe again.

  As soon as Ernesto was gone, Pepe arrived and I fell into his arms as if my mind had been erased clean by the absence of my husband.

  How I hated washing those sheets in such a hurry and hanging them up to dry in the small backyard. Watching them flutter in the wind, casting the scent of our lovemaking to the sky; convinced that all the neighbors could smell the unbridled truth of it. But my passion started to turn into frustration, because Pepe seemed to enjoy the arrangement just the way it was. Never once did he suggest that I leave Ernesto. Perhaps if he had, I would have been more likely to make a decision. To leave, or to stay.

  While I waited for Pepe to ask, I became pregnant again. But Pepe had started to change, and I had stopped caring. All he wanted to talk about was the Revolution. Every time we saw each other, the sweet words he had used before were replaced with anger toward those who were leaving the country.

  “Traidores,” he called them. Traitors. He railed against them at every opportunity, asking bitterly why anyone would choose to abandon a place so many had shed blood to improve. He talked about the military officials who had taken over Palmagria with worshipful admiration.

  “They’ve changed our world,” he whispered to me in my husband’s bed, as if trying to convince me.

  His whispers soon turned into orations, as if he was rehearsing on me what he would say later.

  “They’ve made the country free and every person equal,” he’d mutter into my ear as he pushed my face deep into my husband’s pillow. “They’ve chased out the crooks and the gangsters responsible for the poverty that was rotting away our society.”

  Perhaps he noticed my growing disinterest, because he started to make his discourses more personal.

  “The woman who drowned her baby in the outhouse latrine,” he said, tangled up in my husband’s sheets, “is a perfect exam
ple of the madness that poverty and desperation can lead to. Do you remember?”

  I remembered perfectly.

  “That woman ruined my wedding,” I wanted to say. I wanted to say that she had ruined my wedding not just by drowning the poor creature, but by bringing Pepe and me face- to- face. When I saw those tear- streaked eyes I wanted to turn back time. I wanted to go back to that church and undo what had been done. I wanted to drop to my knees in front of my mother and tell her she’d been right. But I swallowed my words.

  Pepe’s visits started to become less frequent. But by that time, I was so frightened all I could do was wait for the inevitable. The inevitable came from the stupid, drunken lips of Mario Santocristo. I heard all about it, the moonless night, the weekly domino game, the spiteful words spoken for no good reason. But he’s Imperio’s problem, she’s the one who has to sleep with him. I would rather spend the rest of my life alone, at the bottom of a salt mine, than spend five minutes in bed with Mario Santocristo.

  *

  THE IMAGES OF PALMAGRIA FROZE and faded like the ending of a Friday night episode. “Graciela, you’re home,” Leticia shouted.

  The brakes of Leticia’s van screeched to a halt in front of my building. I looked at Imperio and Caridad, who were searching my face as if they were able to read my thoughts.

  “You’re so mysterious tonight,” Imperio said as she moved her legs aside for me to exit.

  I said nothing as I climbed past her. I only vaguely remembered when Raquel and Berta were dropped off, although I was sure they had said good night. I said a general and halfhearted good night.

  “Graciela,” Caridad called out. My heart froze for a moment. I turned back and she was holding up my bag, my clear plastic bag. I took it without a word.

  “Where is your mind tonight?” Imperio said with a giggle.

  I slammed the door and practically ran to see my boys. Until tomorrow I was free. I didn’t care how much they pried, I was not going to turn my personal life—my past, imperfect as it was—into a telenovela for their enjoyment.