The Ladies of Managua (10 page)

But Mariana didn't invite me, didn't ask my advice. Which hurt me, even though I knew it shouldn't. And so I gave my opinion anyway: “If you want to help Nicaraguan artists, and even the country itself, mi amor, we should work together. With your abilities it doesn't have to just be art for art's sake; you can do things that will have a real impact.”

I meant it as a compliment. With her intelligence and warmth, she could do so much good, not just for Nicaragua, but for the world. She's so much easier with people than I am, but she's just as direct, she can get right to the heart of a matter without digging so deep that she wounds anyone. She has so many more gifts than I. Her smile. Her humor. The intimacy she creates with everyone who isn't me, leaning forward, looking right at them, as if she truly wants to know them. Surely those skills could be used to do more than convince rich strivers to buy art they don't care enough about to choose without her help?

I meant it as a compliment, but she didn't take it as such. She didn't yell, or make any retort, she just said she was tired from the flight and went to rest, and Mama asked me if I had always had such a one-track mind or if the war had made me unable to focus on anything but politics. I didn't know the answer. But I knew I was right, that Mariana can do anything she wants exceptionally well, better than I could ever hope to. I just can't tell what it is she truly wants to do. She paints, but she doesn't show her work in any gallery, and doesn't seem to have any plans to do so. I asked her once what her ultimate goal is, and she said, “Really, Madre, not everyone has to change the world. Some of us are happy to just answer the phones, hang the art, and collect a paycheck.” But if that were true, why paint at all? If it's just a hobby, why doesn't she hang her efforts in her home or give them to friends instead of being so secretive about them, insisting that they're not ready to be seen “yet”? The only person she even shows her work is Mama.

I know Mariana is good at the art broker aspect of her job, and that it's a source of pride for her. She's never been materialistic, but she called a few months ago, bubbling with news of her latest sale. I heard the energy in her voice, and suddenly I saw her, decades from now, one of those older women in New York still rushing down the street, speed-talking into her cell phone. And I had the same sinking feeling I always do when I realize that Mariana will probably spend her life in that city, she'll never return to the country that her father gave his life for and that I've spent mine trying to improve for her. I've tried to share my love for Nicaragua with her; I don't know how well I've succeeded. She enjoys visiting here, but in twenty years, when my parents are gone, will she have reason to return? Or will she see Rigobertito once a year in Miami, an easier compromise for each of them? I suppose they'd invite me to Miami, too.

“Think of what that money could be used to do if it were donated to an orphanage,” I told her. There are several orphanages between Managua and Granada, and I had been harboring a secret fantasy that Mariana might want to move back and put her talents, and her sales experience, to use fund-raising for them; it would be a way for her to build her own relationship with the new Nicaragua. And, although I'd never say this to her, an opportunity for us to spend time together. I never got a chance to tell her that idea. She hung up on me, but not before saying, “Well, I'm sort of an orphan and my commission will pay my rent for four months, so you can feel good about that.”

I got her point. She's building her life, and I gave up my right to comment on her choices long ago. So I never shared my fantasy of her moving here, and I will keep my hope that one day she'll have her own child to myself. I thank God for Rigobertito as I lean over to whisper to his boys, the closest thing I have to grandchildren, who are shielding me from all the well-meaning small talk, the sympathetic murmurs that will either upset me or leave me cold, and unable to tell which is worse. Suddenly I hate this funeral home, although everyone who works here has been nothing but kind. A funeral seems like such a ludicrous place, a ridiculous idea, as artificial and constructed as a masked ball or a coronation. Why do we do this? Expose ourselves to so many others in the hour of our grief when it would be more natural, surely, to sit alone with our thoughts and our memories. Society demands calling hours, and I've never been one to worry about what society demanded. But somehow, I must have invited these people into my sorrow. Now, they don't want to be here and I don't want to see them, and we're nervously glancing at each other over the heads of these sweet, disoriented children, like people monitoring the advance of a stray dog on the street; you hope the mutt isn't too badly off, you wish you could help it, but you also don't want it coming too close and licking your hand.

When I glance up from the boys, to steel myself for my colleagues' arrival, I see, behind them, a man, tall, foreign, looking even more lost than I feel. Too young to be a friend of my father's. Too well dressed and too obviously nonlocal to be a chauffeur. And then Mariana is next to him, as if she had teleported to his side. I can't hear what she says, so there is no way she could be described as shouting, but I can tell she's angry, angling herself in toward him, in and up, putting as much force behind her words as she can, and he's backing away from them as if they hurt as they hit their marks. I start to stand to see if she needs my help, but just then, the stranger takes another step backward and collides with a waiter who is walking into the room, carrying a silver tray bearing a glass of Rojita for Mama. As I rise up the tray falls down and hits the floor with a crash and a clang, and the young waiter slips on the red slick of Rojita, falling back into the open door, causing it to slam shut.

When I open my eyes I find myself on the floor again, but all the way down this time, and instead of me crouching over Rigobertito's boys, they're standing over me, and the five-year-old is crying.

 

13

Maria

I can't decide whom I'm angrier at: Allen, for showing up where he knows he's not wanted, or my mother, for fainting, causing such a commotion, making herself so present in one of the few moments of my life when I didn't want her there. My Bela sat there like a lady, lost in her memories of Abuelo, almost smiling, and Madre—who carries a semiautomatic more naturally than a baby—suddenly became a fragile flower, collapsing at the sight of her daughter speaking to a strange man. I've got a dead grandfather, a bereaved, aged grandmother, and a completely displaced boyfriend—or whatever he is right now—and it's my mother, the soldier, I have to worry about?

The worst part is that, technically, I can't be mad at Madre. It's not allowed. Her father just died, so it's natural for her to be upset. Her fainting is just a sign of her deep-seated goodness and unexpected fragility, and my anger reveals my childish petulance. I could see the shock in her colleagues' expressions when she fell, and then, like a series of kaleidoscope turns, their faces changed, taking on a look of admiration, almost worship. Their fearless leader was vulnerable. The iron lady had her soft spots.

Okay, so Madre's not exactly Margaret Thatcher. But she's just as strong, albeit it with better hair. Stronger, maybe. This is a woman who meets with heads of state on a regular basis, who's drunk shots with Castro, who stalks out of a room whenever the conversation takes a turn she doesn't like, too busy with the business of nation-building to deign to discuss concepts that don't interest her. And now she's got, what, low blood pressure? Anemia? The vapors? And I'm the bitch for feeling pissed off that she once again drained all the force of my emotion, turned my focus from Allen, and our life together—or lack thereof—sharply back to her, when she's already always looming in my mind. And I now feel like a fifth grader singing to her mom again, realizing the woman tearing up in the audience is a total mystery.

I know I'm not supposed to be angry at her. I've always known I'm not allowed to be angry at her. It's not like I was a miserable child because my mother wasn't there. Her absence was just a fact of life, something I accepted, even when other people around me seemed to find it strange. When I was in seventh grade, I broke my arm during a particularly spirited game of volleyball. At the hospital, the doctor said he was going to have to rebreak it before it setting it in the cast, and asked if I wanted to wait for my mother to arrive before he did.

“My mother's very busy, she won't be able to make it,” I told him, my good hand clasping my Bela's. And then, because I didn't want him to ask where she was (somewhere in Central America, I wasn't even sure) or what she was doing (fighting injustice, sort of like Wonder Woman), I added, “But don't worry; I'm very brave, and quite mature for my age.”

He stared at me for what seemed like a long time, then patted me on the head as if I were a much younger child. But it's not like I was trying to be stoic or anything; I had my Bela there, and I secretly thought it would be cool to have a cast everyone could sign. It didn't seem like an event where my mother was necessary, really, even if the doctor expected a mom to show up; it might have made him more comfortable but I don't know that it would have done much for me.

There were times when I wished she would appear, of course, and on those occasions, I didn't play the strong, silent type. I see now that it probably made her feel unappreciated, or just sad, but I would whine to my Bela when all the other mothers were going to be at the swim meet, or the dance recital, even the pre-prom party where you stand next to your awkward date in your hideous dress and everyone takes pictures and marvels at how much you've grown and it's all “Sunrise, Sunset”; even that late in life I kept hoping Madre would show up to watch me do something. And my Bela, God bless her, never said, “Consider yourself lucky your abuelo and I are here to feed and clothe and adore you.” But she would say, “Mariana, you can't be upset at your mother; she's busy helping fix Nicaragua. It's all for you.”

I couldn't say I wanted a fixed Nicaragua, but I also wanted a mom like the others, who was always hoping for an excuse to pull out her camcorder and commemorate this recital or first day of school or stupid play. I wanted a mom who was excited to be looking after me, not a whole country. Even as a kid, I knew that desire made me sound like a megalomaniac, even before I was sure how to pronounce the word. “Just always remember your mama in your prayers, and thank God that she isn't in danger,” said Bela, who went out of her way to explain that I didn't need to worry about Madre being hurt or killed like my papi was; she wasn't a soldier anymore but a minister in the new government, so she carried press releases, not guns. I knew I should be grateful that Madre wasn't going to disappear completely, that I got to see her as often as I did. I had plenty of people who loved me. It's like my Bela said, “One good thing, maybe the best thing, about your madre working so hard is that your abuelo and I get to spend so much time with you.” Maybe it was greedy to want the attention of one more person. But I still kept looking over my shoulder on the important days, to see if Madre might walk in quietly to surprise me. I've been looking over my shoulder my whole life.

And now that I've stopped doing that, whenever I have a big moment, she inserts herself in it somehow. When I made a major sale, she made it seem crass and tacky and small compared to her noble lifetime of public service. Guess what? She was right! And tonight, talk about a moment! It was practically cinematic. I turn around and see that Allen has showed up. All those years I'd been hoping the person I loved would turn up when I needed her, and now someone did, only it's a him and I've spent three days convincing myself that he—and his kids—are better off without me, and that I'll be fine without him, this man who couldn't even find time to talk about a future with me, much less plan one. I was so tempted to run over to him and throw my arms around his neck, but I didn't. I was strong, and kept reminding myself that I wasn't supposed to want him here. In my email, I had asked him to give me time to mourn. And to think. I didn't tell him that I also need this time to keep my promise and deliver that envelope to my Bela. But somehow, even though there's no way he could know about it, I'm angry at him for screwing that up, too. He should have just respected my request, even if he wasn't aware of all the reasons behind it.

More than once he's canceled weekend plans with a text that said nothing more than,
Caught up in the new painting. Will call when at a stopping point. Thx for understanding.
And I do—I do understand. I am always genuinely excited for him, even though I'm the one who gets stuck making excuses to his friends, or canceling our dinner reservations. So why is it different when I choose to remove myself from the situation for a bit, to go on hiatus? Why can't he honor my request? After thinking about it the entire flight from LaGuardia to Miami, composing and revising the four-line message all through cooking and dinner and our black-dress shopping trip, I'd emailed him from Beth's computer while Olivia slept, saying I was planning to stay in Nicaragua for a bit after the funeral, that I needed a week for myself to think things through. And suddenly he's here? At my grandfather's calling hours?

Still, it's not as simple as that and he knows it. I'm lying when I say he's shown up where he's not wanted. I hate to admit it, even to myself, but of course I want to see him. I want to see him every day, in the morning when he wakes up with an exaggerated growl and bounds off to shower and paint, so eager that sometimes he forgets to get dressed in between and I'll find him naked, dripping on the floor, with a brush in his hand, staring at his canvas. I want to see him at night when he's so tired he can't possibly work anymore so he sits out on his fire escape and looks at the sky as if expecting the universe to entertain him. And it does—that's the thing, it always does! There's always a falling star, or a winking constellation no one has ever heard about, like Delphinus, the little dolphin who found Poseidon his mermaid queen, Amphitrite. Allen says that when the honeymoon period wore off and the couple started squabbling, Poseidon changed Delphinus' name to Mahi Mahi and grilled him for dinner. He always laughs at his own idiotic jokes, like that one. And his laughter becomes the funniest part. He's over a decade older than I am and he's still delighted by everything he sees. He's broken three iPhones because he's always pulling one out of his pocket to film a bird flying across the sky above the park, or two kids in red T-shirts playing basketball, or three nuns in old-school habits billowing down the street. And then the colors or the swooping habits end up in his paintings, and he's immortalized something I would have walked right past without noticing. It makes me want to sit next to him for the rest of my life so that I get to watch what he's seeing, too.