The Affairs of the Falcóns

by Melissa Rivero

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. “We would’ve been just fine without you.”

  “You would have,” he said. “You’ve always managed to make your way through life. You’ve never needed any rescuing. I always admired that about you. You don’t need me or anyone else.”

  “But you do,” she said. “You need someone to save you, and I did. I saved you from the burden of another child.”

  He tightened his eyes. “You saved me from the burden of another child,” he repeated. “I don’t even know if that child was mine.”

  She glared at him. “It was yours, Lucho.”

  “I don’t know that,” he said. “I wanted to make things work, Ana. Everything was falling apart in Lima. I thought it was only a matter of time before it happened to you and me, too. I thought we had a shot here, I really did. But you’re right. You’ve never needed me. You could have. You could’ve trusted me, Ana. You could’ve let me in. Really let me in. But you never have.” He shifted, his face flushed with color. When he spoke next, his voice was steady. “If you’d been honest with me, then maybe. But you hid it all. The pregnancy, the abortion. And you lied. You lied about where you got the money.”

  Her heart picked up. He turned to face her, and his eyes held the unmistakable look of disappointment. “Did you get the money,” he asked, “from Alberto Bustamante?”

  She made no reply. She turned away, unable to look at his face.

  “Ernesto said Mama’s husband could always help,” he said, “if we’re ever tight on money. All Carla has to do is keep the man company.” He shook his head in disbelief. “‘If it doesn’t bother her, it shouldn’t bother you.’ That’s what he said to me. He said it was better than you having to make the choice you had to make.”

  Her eyes widened. So stupid, she thought. She should’ve known Carla might have been sleeping with Don Beto. If anyone felt the pressure to keep her family together, it was a mother of three who’d only just been reunited with her children. And of course, Don Beto would be all too willing to help. What did Ernesto care? As long as no one else knew, it didn’t matter.

  “It took every ounce of me not to hit him,” Lucho continued. “But I knew. The moment he said it, I knew. Mama wasn’t going to give you more money, not when you stopped paying her.”

  “I didn’t stop paying her.”

  “Was it his?” he asked. “Did he pay for this apartment? The abortion? Tell me what he paid for. I want to know how little you value yourself.”

  “Shut up, Lucho! Whatever I did, I did for us and the children.”

  “That’s a lie! You did it for yourself, Ana. Because if you thought of me or the kids, you never would’ve jeopardized us.”

  “You’re the one who’s jeopardized us! You and Valeria with your constant talk about sending the children away. Do you think I was going to let you do that? I did everything I could to keep us together. I’ve only ever done what was best for us.” She paused to rein in the supplication in her voice. She wasn’t going to beg him, not for compassion or understanding, not for the marriage. “That’s all I’ve done, and believe me, it hasn’t been easy. But you don’t see that, do you? All you see is a burden. We’re nothing but a burden to you.”

  She had convinced herself that she was a reminder of the life that wasn’t, of the life he had to forego. She was only a future of obligations. The child became the children, and the children erased who he was, who he had intended to be. How fortunate he was that everyone saw all that. To the world, he was a patient, hardworking man who’d sacrificed a respectable job in his country for a string of odd jobs in a place that relegated him to its shadows. No one questioned his dedication to his children; they simply underscored who he was at the very core.

  But no one saw her. After all, what had she given up? A shack on a dirt road in the terrorized forest. A trabajito, an inconsequential post as a greeter in an office, the most she could ever aspire to have. She had little to lose because she had nothing to begin with. No one, it seemed, saw the effort it took to stitch her fabrics together or weave her meals or how much she’d given of her own body. No one saw the love and dedication that drove it all, not even her husband.

  “I didn’t manipulate you into this marriage,” she said, “or into coming here. We decided to be together, and we both knew we needed to start over, or at least try to make this work. I’m not asking you to understand what I did. Just know that I did it for us.”

  He stood still against the door frame. His body hung there, as if dangling from a nail. He took a deep breath before he spoke again. “Ana, you only do things for you. No one else matters.”

  She bolted up. Her steps were succinct, silent, and in an instant she was in front of his hunched body. She searched his face for his eyes. She held up her hands, the callouses yellow and lined, the skin sagging in parts. “Look at my hands,” she said to him. “Look at my face. Do you think I do this for me? Look at me!”

  He did then, his eyes misted and almost full-mooned. She had not seen him cry since that night at the airport, the night their families had gathered to say goodbye. He held his mother and cried as if it were the last time they’d see each other; years later, when he finally returned to Peru and sat beside her on her couch in Jesús María, he’d realize that the airport was, in fact, the last time she’d seen him. Dementia would erase Lucho Falcón from his mother’s memory.

  But as he stood there, pale-faced and on the verge of tears for the first time in years, Ana was struck by one simple truth, something she’d been reluctant to see or accept until that moment. She’d been wrong about him. All these years, she’d done her best to preserve a marriage that she believed was rooted in force and obligation, in a sense of duty to her and her unborn child. She had wanted to prove him wrong; show him that he had, in fact, not made a mistake by marrying her. For this, she had always believed she needed the children. If they were gone, how else would she prove it? How else would she keep the marriage from falling away?

  Now, as she looked into his somber eyes, she finally saw what had been there all along. She’d seen it on that very first dinner, when she sat across from him in El Centro; when Victoria and Pedro were placed in his arms for the very first time; when he held her hand as they stepped off that plane at JFK. She’d seen it every afternoon, she realized, when she came home to him and the children, the same sense of longing, that wasn’t for a past life he now mourned or the life he wished they had, but for her. He wanted her to need him. Had she been that absent all along?

  She stepped back, unable to bear what it all meant. She retreated to the pile of clothes still on the floor, numbed by the realization that if she’d only trusted, if she’d had some faith in him, things might have been so different.

  He disappeared from her periphery, and when the front door shut, her body sunk to the floor. After all their years together, she couldn’t see what had been in front of her all this time. It wasn’t a sense of duty that tied him to her. It wasn’t the children. It was love, something she had never allowed herself to deserve.

  The wind whistled again through the fractures along the wall. Narrow, threadlike cracks that withheld the cold, but yielded to its gusts. She blew into her hands, cupping her hot breath. They’d need plastic to cover the windows. Thick curtains, too, though she knew that nothing could keep the cold air out entirely, no matter how much she covered up the cracks. It took all this, all these years and distance, for her to understand that he could love her, that he did, and all she had to do was believe it.

  19

  TWO WEEKS AFTER THEY MOVED IN, ANA HEARD PEDRO’S SMALL, delicate voice whispering the words of her favorite lullaby as she lay beside him one early morning, her eyes still closed. He hummed between the parts of the song he did not know. Pío, pío, said the chicks, and sang her son, and the words floated in the dark air, bubbling in hues of blue toward the sibilant tarps that covered the windows. The plastic covers she taped up that first night fluttered as they had every night since they m
oved in. Their contractions and releases, their whooshes and flaps had soothed Ana, lulling her to sleep on nights she lay in bed staring into the semi-lit chandelier. Outside, the sky was silver, and between her son’s hum and the quivering covers, she might have confused the moment for a dream. Except she knew dreams well, and this was not one. As ethereal as his voice was, as still as the moment seemed, she could not stay there. It was not a dream. She had to get up, and the sun, always searching for her, had already started to break up the room.

  She indulged in another round of Pedro’s humming, then, pretending to still be asleep, she filled it in with the lyrics. He giggled. “Keep singing,” she whispered, but as she continued with the words, he only dug his face into the space between her and Lucho’s pillows. Her husband, snoring gently, was sleeping on his side beside them. “Did you forget how the song goes?” she teased.

  Pedro smiled, and whispered, “No.”

  “Then sing,” she said, poking his belly. He laughed again, and she shushed him when Lucho stirred. Pedro held her face between his cool, sticky palms, and kissed her nose. “I don’t like cockroach kisses,” she joked. He kept kissing her and they both laughed, loud enough to wake Victoria in the bottom bunk of the bed beside them. When she saw her daughter’s grimace, Ana picked Pedro up, and said, “Let’s go outside before we wake your father.”

  And so their day began like the others before it. Since moving into the apartment, they took up a routine not unlike the one they had before they lived with Valeria. For breakfast, they sipped on honey-sweetened black tea and ate bowls of fruity cereal, leaving behind rainbows in their milk. They crunched on bread so toasted that it crumbled if Ana spread too much margarine along its edges.

  “Do I have to wear my long johns?” asked Pedro as she slid the pants on. She’d set out their uniforms the night before, stacking the blue shirts and ties, Pedro’s slacks and Victoria’s jumper on the couch so they could change in the living room in the morning. As the children watched cartoons, she braided Victoria’s two ponytails, then combed Pedro’s hair sideways. She packed their lunch boxes with ham and cheese sandwiches, oranges, and fruit juice pouches, then packed a plastic bag with the same lunch for herself. They did not say goodbye to the still-sleeping Lucho. Instead, they shuffled out the front door as quietly as they could and set off for the ten-block walk to the school. Then Ana took off on a much longer walk down a deep street, the iron sky now layered in slabs of beryl, as she pounded toward la factoría.

  Nothing with her husband, however, was like it once was. After being rootless for all those months, they finally had a place of their own. All along, she believed that was what they needed to rebuild as a family, as husband and wife. But ever since that very first night, it became clear to her that it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t bring herself to accept that she’d been wrong. He wanted to send the children away, she kept reminding herself. That’s why she did what she did. Although now, she started to doubt how much of a threat that truly was to her family.

  Still, she kept her distance, and he kept his, not that it was hard to do. They needed to make layaway payments on the new couch and table set they purchased, to buy new black leather shoes for the children’s ever-growing feet, and of course, there was the rent and tuition they needed to stay on top of. And so Ana’s days pedaling the sewing machine, and his nights behind the wheel, grew longer, with Betty caring for the children until Ana made it home from working overtime. He still gave her the money he earned, sliding cash inside her drawer so she could manage the ins and outs of their finances the way she always had. She was at least grateful to see he earned a little more each week. But they saw less of each other, and when their hours intersected, Lucho made sure one of the children was always with them. He left no room for conversation nor did he invite any. Nothing was asked of her that wasn’t about Victoria or Pedro or a utility bill. He only greeted her with a curt “buenos días” and “buenas tardes,” never kissing her.

  Ana pretended to be indifferent. She didn’t ask how his night on the job had gone, or about the article in the newspaper that he found so funny, or about the letter his mother sent that he tucked inside his wallet. She’d hear him climb the stairs as he returned from work, but she stayed in bed, praying for sleep. Their son became a physical barrier between them. Lucho would lie beside Pedro, gently pushing him closer to his mother to make room for himself in their bed. He no longer urged his son to sleep on his own.

  On Sundays, the only day neither worked, they attended mass together, even though Ana’s statues of San Martín and the Virgin Mary were tucked away in a dresser drawer with her socks and underwear. It was required, however, since Victoria had communion coming up later in the spring, and she had to bring proof that she’d attended mass on Sundays. Church was followed by their rounds at the supermarkets, then the laundromat, the silence between them, which was first grounded in anger and sadness, eventually taking root in the mundane. Pasará once again became Ana’s refrain, but as the days went by, she understood that this was the new state of her marriage. He’d never understand how difficult it was to make the choices she made, or her reasons for making them in the first place. What room was there now for forgiveness, for trust? She wondered if the marriage itself would simply pass.

  And so, in the quiet moments of those days, when her hopes of building a future as a couple faded, her focus shifted. It was no longer about preserving whatever was left of the marriage, but to unburden herself of the debt she still owed others, and to the once-silly dream that she still nurtured in her core.

  She caught up on her payments to Mama. She didn’t go inside anymore to make her payments. Instead, she waited by Mama’s front door, handed over whatever groceries or prescriptions she picked up for her on the way there, then rushed out with the excuse that she needed to get home so Lucho could go to work or because the sitter could only stay for so long. She never saw Don Beto again. With the longer hours at the factory and the housekeeping gigs she picked up on the weekends, Ana anticipated paying off the woman by the summer.

  Then, she could get back the deed to Lucho’s house. The debt to her husband was the one she wanted to pay back the most. Whatever their relationship was now, they couldn’t stay together because of the money or out of a sense of duty. If they were to be together, it had to be a choice. She needed to free herself of any obligation to him or to anyone. She owed herself at least that much. She owed herself the freedom to choose; so did he.

  It was during those days too, that she once again filled her address book. Not with grocery lists or nightmares, but of that seemingly unattainable dream of having her own restaurant. On nights she could not sleep, she’d sit at their new table flipping through its worn and blackened pages. She’d go through its repository of imagery, menstrual start dates and grocery lists, and expand on the latter. Basil, spinach, and evaporated milk—ingredients she used to make Tallarín Verde, their first meal in the new apartment. She recalled how there was still dirt on the basil leaves, how the blender sent Pedro scurrying into the bedroom. She dipped saltine crackers in the leftover pesto sauce. She pulled a pen from the pocket of her maroon sweater, and beside the list, she wrote down “Korean market on Union, best basil.”

  Then came her Causa Rellena. How much ají amarillo she used, what Jerry Rivera song was on the radio as she beat the potatoes, if she’d had enough leftovers for lunch the next day. Soon, she was writing out the stories of meals from months and years past. She noted whatever dish she found soothing (oxtail soup), what had ended up sitting in the fridge too long (tripe), and what she indulged in alone and in secret (arroz con leche with raisins). She wrote down the first meal she made at Lexar Tower—cebiche, because Valeria had once told her it was her favorite—and the first meal she made for Lucho—escabeche, and the praise that followed was almost euphoric. She had no intention of sharing what she wrote, and so she went back further, all the way back to the chicken her mother had taught her to cook over an open flame all those years
ago. There they were: the meals she’d make one day in that impeccable restaurant she’d envisioned for so long. Each nourishing ingredient and the songs and celebrations, the pain and the loss, the elements that made them what they were. Forget the saints and the prayer cards, she thought. The little address book would be her amulet, her protector. In it, was her.

  But on that gusty early February morning, after she dropped the children off, and as she tried to pay a street cart vendor for a cup of coffee, Ana noticed that her address book was missing. She shuffled through the empty lip gloss bottles, receipts, and loose coins, but it wasn’t in her handbag. A flicker in her chest made her catch her breath. Her recipes and musings weren’t soul-baring, but her words were intimate. The thought of someone else’s eyes over them, their fingers sifting through the pages, their hands on the black vinyl cover, was unsettling. She convinced herself it was home, and that if Lucho found it, he wouldn’t read it; he was too proud to snoop. A part of her wanted him to read it. Maybe then, at least, he could see her.

  As she approached la factoría, Betty, Carla, and a cluster of women from the fourth floor stood outside the door. Ana greeted them, but only Betty, shaking off the cold with a cigarette in her mouth, acknowledged her with a nod. The others clung to the words of another seamstress, the chisme simply too good to ignore. Ana squeezed into the crowd and heard her say, “Se salió con la suya.”

  “Who?” asked Ana. “Who got her way with what?”

  “Pero que chismosa eres, Anita,” the woman snickered, and the group giggled. “Your friend Nilda. I ran into her neighbor yesterday after church. She calls her to check in on the kid. Apparently, Nilda spent a couple of weeks in Guayaquil with her mother, but was in Costa Rica just over a week ago, and now—” the woman made a sweeping gesture with her hand, “she’s already in Texas.”

  “Texas?” said Ana, astonished.