Beyond the Ties of Blood (3 page)

“What?”

“Well, you know, the part about many of them not returning, including Manuel. But I did return. Manuel is back.”

“It's not really a joke in the song, you know. It's really sad. She's waiting at the gate, and he doesn't come back, because …”

“I've heard the song before. It isn't as if … Is something wrong?” he asked upon seeing her clouded expression.

She was silent for a moment, looking out over the few remaining people, mostly couples holding hands or hugging in the slanting afternoon light. “I don't know,” she sighed, trying to get a grip on herself. “Sergio always made fun of me for liking that song. He said it was mushy.”

Manuel leaned his elbow on her shoulder and left it there, a surprisingly intimate gesture, considering that they had just met. They sat for a while, watching the weeping willows in the
parque forestal
take on the apricot hues of the approaching dusk. To their right the traces of snow on the Andes mountains glowed against the fading sky. Manuel took his arm down and let his hand rest for a moment on hers.

“Are you hungry? We can go back to that same place. They make a mean steak-and-avocado sandwich. And their espresso isn't half bad.” He didn't wait for an answer, but pulled her up to a standing position, took her hand in his, and began walking. Once again she was caught off guard by his dominant manner, so soon after he had seemed so gentle and nurturing, but decided not to resist.

They sat at their same table. The young man who had served them before came out, carrying a pad and pencil. He'd changed his stained jacket and was wearing a navy blue one. “What'll it be,
compadre
?” he asked.

“Bring us a couple of your steak-and-avocado sandwiches, no mayo, and a couple of espressos. Make the lady's a
cortado
, you know, the way you add just a touch of steamed milk …”

“Coming right up,
compañero
.” The waiter gave Manuel a mock salute.

“What made you think I wanted a
cortado
?”

“Didn't you?”

“Well, yeah, but …”

“So then?”

“Well, you can't always make assumptions about people.”

“Why not, if I'm right?”

Eugenia sat back in her chair and snorted. “How can you know you're right if you don't listen to the other person?”

Manuel chuckled. “Now
you're
right, little one,” he answered, reaching for her hand.

“Don't call me ‘little one.'” She yanked her hand away. “It's so patronizing.” And it was what Sergio always called her. She was done with that, now.

The waiter arrived with the sandwiches and the coffee. Napkins, silverware, and sugar materialized from the neighboring table. Manuel piled four teaspoons into his small cup.

“Let me just hazard a guess,” he said after he'd taken a bite of his sandwich and washed it down with the sweet black liquid. “This isn't really about me.”

She was silent, chewing on the slightly stringy steak, savoring the combination of flavors with the salted avocado. The espresso's slightly burnt undertaste was heightened by the frothy milk. “Let's just forget it, okay?”

“Fine with me, but only if you're willing to share a bottle of red wine. These guys have a really good Santa Rita, and they sell it cheap.” He motioned over the waiter. “The Santa Rita Tres Medallas, please,
garzón
,” he joked.

The thick, cherry-toned Cabernet was like a soft blanket against the evening chill. Manuel ordered another bottle when they finished the first one, and pretty soon they were sitting very close together, her head on his shoulder, both smoking black tobacco cigarettes.

“I don't know what I'm going to do when I get home,” she said, the unfamiliar roughness of the cigarette stinging her tongue slightly. “My mother will smell the black tobacco a mile away.” She took another puff anyway, savoring the peppery aftertaste.

“One possible solution is that you don't go home till it wears off.” He was now running his free hand through her soft ringlets.

“Somehow, I think not going home at all isn't going to solve the problem,” she said, nudging him away playfully.

“You can't blame a guy for trying.” He let go of her hair and his hand dropped slightly to her jaw line, gently bringing her head closer. They kissed. The hairs of his beard were surprisingly soft, and he tasted of burnt oranges. Her cigarette lay abandoned in the ashtray.

“So what do you think we should do?” he asked finally, his voice hoarse.

“I don't know. But one thing is clear: Sergio is going to find a way to tell her.”

Manuel sighed and his chair scraped loudly as he pulled back, fumbling in the crushed pack for another cigarette. “What do you mean?”

“Well, he's my mama's favorite. From ‘a good family.' They have land right next to ours. He's not very happy right now, I'm sure of it, and he's going to find a way to get back at me. What better way than to tell my mother about you?”

Removing the cigarette from the pack and scrabbling around in the matchbox helped him regain his composure. She wasn't exactly sure what had upset him most, her suggestion that he wasn't from a good family, or her bringing up Sergio. After lighting it and blowing out a cloud of smoke, his voice had recovered its ironic tinge. “No offense, but what were you doing with him anyway?”

“Our families saw each other every summer vacation since I can remember; he was the handsome older boy next door. When I started at the Catholic University this year, his mama said to watch out for me. It felt like everything was already decided, you know? He's a big-time leader, all my girlfriends were jealous. I don't know.”

“Tell me the truth. Did you know he was running around on you?”

“It's not like I thought about it consciously, but when you said that before, I wasn't surprised, just offended that you'd said it to me. I guess I didn't want to admit it to myself, and hearing it from someone else set me off.”

“You're right, I was acting like …”

“It's okay. Never mind.”

Manuel stubbed out his cigarette and stood up, pulling her up and into his arms. His kiss was deeper, longer. She felt the tingle on the inside of her lips move down her body until it became a weakness in her knees. When it was over, she leaned into him, resting her head against the middle of his chest.

“I live right here, just on the other side of the river,” he whispered. “Come back with me for a few minutes, then I'll find you a taxi.”

They walked across the plaza and through the park, stopping to kiss again under a weeping willow. As they strolled across the bridge, their arms around each other, the Mapocho River caught the reflection of the rising moon.

On the other side of the river, Manuel put a key in the lock of a tiny door next to a dry cleaning shop. They climbed up a flight of dark, narrow stairs. Inside the apartment, he turned and crushed her in his arms, not even bothering to close the door at first. His lips left a line of fire along the curve of her right breast, fire spreading, gathering, knotting. Soon they were lying on his unmade bed, his large hands hot on her bare skin, not able finally to get close enough, soon enough, they were still too far apart, and then the pain. She gasped and drew back.

“What in the hell …?” His voice was suddenly very far away. And then so was he. She sat up. “You hadn't … he hadn't … why in hell didn't you say something?” He'd bolted up from the bed and was already zipping up his pants. Then he began pacing back and forth. She was silent at first.

“What's the matter?” she finally asked.

“Why in hell didn't you say something?”

“You mean because I'm a virgin?”

“Well, yeah …”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“It's 1971! Come on!”

She began picking up her clothes. No matter how hard she tried, she'd never be part of this radical crowd. Her eyes filled with tears, and she wasn't sure if it was from anger or from shame. What was the point, anyway? But then he sat down on the bed next to her.

“Wait a minute, stop.” He took both of her hands in his. “Look at me. Just a moment.” She refused to look up, not wanting him to see the tears. She focused on trying to zip up her boots.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “To be honest, it was quite a surprise.”

“I know, I should have said something, but … well, it happened kind of fast, I'd never let Sergio go that far. I don't know, I didn't want to stop, I …” She stood up and walked to the window, finally able to zip up her jeans and put her jacket back on. She stood by the window looking out at the moonlit street, the leaves of early fall swirling in eddies across the abandoned cobblestones. She rested her forehead on the pane.

“I didn't want to stop, either.” He was standing right behind her, running a hand along her neck. She melted back into him, then turned into his embrace. He drew away first. “But it won't be like this. Not the first time. Let's find you a taxi.”

Boston, 1990

Had she fallen in love with Manuel because he hadn't been willing to take advantage of her virginity? The more she wrote in her journal, the more Eugenia realized that her love for Manuel had also been a way to escape the grip of her mother's neediness and smothering ideas about social class and codes of behavior. She'd forgotten how tied up Sergio had been in her own family's drama, and to her mother's desire to hold on to her after Irene had left.

Her parents had fought all the time when she was younger. She awakened sometimes in the middle of the night to hear muffled arguments. Afterwards, her mother's sobbing could go on for hours. Somehow she'd felt responsible, she realized now. She tried so hard to be the good daughter who didn't cause her mother more problems than she already had, especially since Irene had always gotten along better with Papa. At the very least she could be her mother's favorite. On the farm in the summer or on vacation, it was always her sister who volunteered to go out with Papa on horseback, the two of them galloping off in the early morning and not heard from again until after dark, when they returned covered with dirt, several recently killed rabbits dangling from their saddles. When the really difficult times began in the marriage, Irene usually sided with Papa, leaving Eugenia to defend Mama.

She'd pieced the story together bit by bit. Her mother's family, from the Chilean landowning elite, had come into hard times while Mama was growing up, a product, she now knew, of the falling prices for agricultural goods. Her papa, a chemical engineer, was from a family that had made a lot of money in the textile industry and, after they got married, he used his own money to bring Mama's family's farm back from the brink of bankruptcy. For a while things seemed to go well, and she remembered golden summers and family vacations as she was growing up, long, lazy afternoons spent at the river that ran through their property, picnics full of laughter and playfulness in which Mama and Papa seemed only to have eyes for each other.

But no amount of profit or prosperity could make up for Papa's inferior pedigree in the eyes of Mama's kin, despite all he had done for them. His family tree just wasn't as prestigious as theirs, and money made in industry, no matter how long it had been in his family, was considered boorish. That such vulgar wealth had saved them from ruin only added to their resentment. With time, even she, still a young girl, had begun to detect the edge in her grandparents' comments. When she was entering adolescence—or was it simply that she noticed it then for the first time?—Papa reached his breaking point. He began coming home late almost every night, missing dinner. Sometimes he didn't come home at all. She knew now that he had begun seeing other women, though at the time what she noticed most was Mama's tears at the dinner table, or the late-night arguments. Of course, at the time she could not have understood that, in addition to being angry that he was being unfaithful, Mama was also upset because she was unable to choose her husband over her family.

When Papa finally fell in love with someone else, he packed up his bags and left. It seemed the woman really loved him, too, since she accepted him with nothing, no hope for a new marriage or a legitimate family. There would be no formal separation; Mama's family simply would not hear of it. So after pumping a great deal of his own resources into her family's farm, he left with nothing more than his clothes and his engineering connections. The moment he shut the front gate on his way out of the house, Mama retreated into the bedroom and closed the door. Aside from trips to the bathroom, she stayed in the room, blinds drawn, for six months. She opened the door to accept the tray of food their maid Teresa put there, on the floor, three times a day. Shortly afterward, the tray would be back outside the door, plates empty, ready for Teresa to pick up and return to the kitchen.

As Irene spent more and more time out with her friends, Eugenia had nowhere else to go. She would help Teresa in the kitchen, or read books in the living room. She knew that Irene also talked to Papa almost every day, since she heard the phone ring and occasionally picked up the other receiver in time to overhear snatches of their whispered conversations. Irene was more like their father in so many ways, from horseback riding to her stellar grades in chemistry. Eugenia, on the other hand, had no one to turn to, her father having abandoned her and Mama barricaded in her room. She became obsessed with the short stories of Borges, and devoured García Márquez's
Cien años de soledad
when it first came out. Although she knew she could not write fiction, she began to dream about becoming a journalist.

By the time Mama emerged from her room, her hair had turned completely white. Her friends urged her to dye it back to its original color, but she refused, wearing it proudly, it seemed, as a badge of her suffering. Upon her reentry into the world, she spent most of her time keeping track of her daughters' movements, at precisely the moment in their lives when they needed more independence. When they got home from school, she had tea with sandwiches waiting for them at the table, and then required that they sit down and tell her every detail of their day.