The Ladies of Managua (13 page)

Rigobertito grabbed my right arm and I could feel his strength, he was practically lifting me, not just supporting my elbow. But it was Celia, jasmine-scented Celia, whom I wanted near, so I clutched her arm with my left hand and listed her way as we stood.

“Gracias a Dios!” she said, as I righted myself.

“I just slipped,” I insisted. “I'm fine.”

“Well, gracias a Dios for that, too,” Celia said. “But also, thank heavens you weren't wearing a skirt.”

I looked at her face; she was completely serious. I mean, she was right, of course, it would have been horrible to flash my underwear at my entire staff and offer a free show to my father's surviving friends, perhaps inciting a heart attack or two, adding to the death toll. But it was also such a ridiculous thought, so sweet and silly, so Celia, that I started laughing, softly at first, then way too loud, and soon Celia joined in, too, and we were laughing and crying and hugging again.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Mariana, coming to join the embrace. But when I put my arm around her, she patted my shoulder once and slid away from me, in the guise of kissing her t
í
a Celia hello. I shouldn't say it like that. I'm sure she was genuinely excited to see her aunt. Celia had been a big part of her life in Miami; she was there to sign permission slips and help with Mariana's homework after school. I'm sure Mariana would say, if asked, that she had been moving toward her t
í
a Celia, not away from me. Not that I would ever ask, of course.

“Maybe we should start making our good-byes and heading home,” Mariana said. “I think we're all a little strung out.”

She looked at me hard, a gaze I hadn't seen since she was in high school.

“I'm fine, really, amor,” I insisted.

“Well, let's just say this is too much for my Bela, then,” Mariana said. “Please, Madre.” I shouldn't have felt so glad that Mariana seemed so worried about me. And maybe she wasn't, maybe she was tired from the trip and the drama of the day, or she really felt that Mama had reached her limit. Mama did need her rest. She'd be burying her husband in the morning. My t
í
a Dolores had arrived and was in her wheelchair, sitting opposite Mama, holding her hand. Mama was looking down, as if about to cry, but I couldn't see any tears from where I stood. They seemed like they needed a minute or two more to hold on to each other. I looked at Mariana, clasping her own hands together, perhaps trying to look self-contained, but appearing only forlorn. She didn't have a sister to lean into, and this was another way I had failed her.

“I'll just greet my coworkers and thank them for coming.” I gave Celia's arm a final squeeze and turned toward Mariana. “You visit with your t
í
a Celia for a bit, and then we'll take Mama home.”

As I walked over to my colleagues I remembered that Mariana had her own good-byes to make. But, scanning the room, I realized the gringo was nowhere in sight.

 

16

Maria

It shouldn't take Madre too long to say good-bye; she's had lots of practice. On the other hand, she wouldn't rush this; the people she works with are important to her.

Allen often refers to “the spirit of the stairs,” except he says it in French,
l'esprit de l'escalier
. Like all great artists, Allen has lived in Paris. Unlike those of us amateurs, who tend to summer in Managua. But in any language, the phrase means the same thing: the act of thinking of the perfect retort once you're walking away from your combatant. I need to come up with a different phrase for the phenomenon I have with Madre; I always have the perfect remark while she's right in front of me, it's just that only half the time, I have the good sense not to make it.

I'm not under any delusion that this restraint makes me a good person. Maybe just a cowardly one. If I were truly a good person, I wouldn't think these things, wouldn't blame Madre for building a life that, when I'm content with my own, I have to admit makes me proud. But the prouder I am, the more inadequate I feel. My mother has been chosen, again and again, to represent a new nation she's helped build. She's spent afternoons talking to Fran
ç
ois Mitterand and Fidel Castro. She's a badass! And I'm just an ass. There's a squalling baby inside me whining, “Why do you have to do all these impressive things? Why isn't just being my mother enough?”

I can't begin to fathom how to stop asking that question. I want to, but I can't imagine the therapist skilled enough or the pill blissful enough or the achievement satisfying enough finally to do the trick. And it's getting worse with age, not better. As my own future looms more terrifying, more unknowable than ever, her controlled life seems like more of a reproach.

T
í
a Celia hugs me, and as I'm drawn into her embrace I realize that my mother was right again. This is what I needed: the comfort of T
í
a Celia's soft body, of her familiar smell, that jasmine perfume that is way too young for her. There was a time in high school when I tried to get her to change, gave her some vanilla-scented cologne (she likes sweets), and, later, a m
é
lange of different, more sophisticated white flowers for her birthday or Mother's Day. She always used the perfumes I got her dutifully but sparingly, saying she liked to save them for special occasions. And in between, she went around smelling like a Disney princess. Madre told me once that there was a jasmine bush in their yard growing up, that at her debutante ball and, not too much later, her wedding, T
í
a Celia wore the flowers entwined in her upswept black hair. In high school, I wrote a science paper about how the part of the brain that controls scent and the part that manages memory are located in the same, wrinkled cortex. And I'm starting to suspect that T
í
a Celia, in her mind, is still stuck at nineteen, that as long as she smells the way she did back then, she thinks she'll still be that girl with the multiple suitors all vying to hold her white-gloved hand.

Right now I'm wearing an essential oil Allen bought me on his last trip to India. But I don't think I'll still be using the scent in twenty-five years. A few feet away, my Bela and my gran-t
í
a Dolores are holding hands, staring at each other, offering each other unspoken comfort, and although I'm yards away, I know from experience that the one smells like Shalimar and the other like Chanel No 5. Both smell strong and complicated and expensive. As they are.

Madre starts walking across the room toward us and I wish I could identify a scent for her, something I could bottle and sniff when I wanted to pretend she was close. But she always smells like herself. Like soap and laundry detergent and coffee and mystery.

 

17

Isabela

“And here I thought that this would be boring—I was tempted to bring a book,” Dolly says, and I stare at her, confused.

“Oh, come on, Isabela, it was a joke,” she says. “Of course I wanted to be here no matter what, to pay my respects to Ignacio. I'm just trying to make you laugh. And it's true, I never expected so much drama.”

“What do you mean?” I finally ask and Dolly wheels her chair a little closer.

“You didn't hear the crash?” she whispers. “See the muchacho fall, Ninexin faint?”

“My Ninexin? That's ridiculous, she's right over there with those other young people.” My Ninexin would sooner break into a tap dance routine at her father's calling hours than faint in public. Dolly grabs my hand and sighs as if I'm the one losing my grasp on reality. Need I remind her who's older? It's only natural that she'd start talking nonsense first.

“You're upset,” she says, as if she'd know what this feels like, as if her husband isn't sitting in a chair across the room, one elbow propped up on his cane, leaning forward to whisper to his son, probably giving him financial advice. “It's not just the end for Ignacio, it's the end for you, too, of this part of your life.”

“The life you chose for me,” I say, and she pulls her hand away, then takes out the collectible gold Est
é
e Lauder compact Francisco gets her each year at Christmas and busies herself powdering her nose.

I'm glad the nuns can't see her now. They taught us never to apply makeup in public. If you have to take a quick look in your compact mirror, that is fine, but if that glance shows you have lipstick on your teeth or a shine on your forehead, a lady must always excuse herself to go take care of whatever minor repairs she deems necessary. That is, after all, why they call it a powder room.

But Dolly never did very well in Comportment; it was the one class in which I received
Tr
è
s Bien
and she plain old
Bien,
and once, when she was caught reading a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt during a lesson on table manners, just
Assez Bien
. Dolly was a bit like Ninexin when she was younger; not as bold or as willful, but just as preoccupied with the few issues that interested her. She thought where you reapplied your makeup didn't matter much. She didn't realize that it is a sign of respect for others that you not perform your toilette in front of them. And of respect for yourself, that you aren't inviting dozens of strangers into your private moments, into your bedroom or dressing area. Sometimes the smallest choices matter the most of all. Dolly always tells me I worry too much about appearances. She doesn't understand that if everything about you appears normal, and polished, you can hide in plain sight. No one will look any deeper.

That's how it was that June in the last week before her graduation. The weekend after our talk in the garden, Mauricio came up to visit. Dolly had been chosen to play the piano for the hymn we would all sing at the ceremony and had a rehearsal with Sister Harris, and Cristian Hidalgo was giving the senior girls rides up and down Canal Street in his car one last time. Mauricio and Miss Birdie and I were free to be alone together, so we took the streetcar to Audubon Park to enjoy our po'boys in the open air; there was a caf
é
in the park then … maybe there still is? And after we'd finished eating, Mauricio suggested that Miss Birdie sit and enjoy a glass of wine or a slice of cake—or both—while we took a turn around the park.

“That's a lovely idea,
cher
!” she agreed. “Just stay on this side of the oaks where I can see you.”

We walked at an unhurried pace, not touching, me with my gloved hands resting against my own back. I had to force myself not to speed up or gesticulate as I told Mauricio about my talk with Dolly. I had written him right afterward, but all I thought safe to put in the letter was that Dolly seemed upset about graduation and I felt very sad both for her and for me, but I would tell him more in person. That way if anyone intercepted and read the message, they would think I was merely dejected at the thought of missing my sister next year. But he knew that I meant the talk didn't go well—how could he not? We were so enmeshed with each other by then that I often had the strangest feeling throughout the day that I knew what he was thinking, if he was in a good mood or bad, if his economics class had gone well.

“So Dolly thinks it would be a mistake for me to speak to your father at graduation,” he said as soon as we were out of earshot of the caf
é
. He had led me to a fountain where Miss Birdie could see us, but the sound of rushing water would keep even those close to us, those who weren't currently digging into a brick-size piece of chess pie, from making out our words.

“I didn't even get to that,” I said. “I just brought up the idea of you meeting them, both of them, just saying hello, not discussing anything important or specific, just making your presence known.”

“And she said it would be a mistake?”

“A disaster; she said it would be a disaster.” And then, I added more softly, almost whispering, “She said they wouldn't send me back to finish school alone if they knew.”

Mauricio nodded but didn't say anything.

“It's not you.” I rushed to fill the silence. “She likes you. It's just she's worried she'll never see me again, and if they don't want me to end up settling down so far from home, she thinks—”

“She hinted as much to Cristian.” Mauricio waved his hand as if neither Dolly nor Cristian nor his navy roadster mattered. And then he looked at me. “This doesn't change anything for me, Isa,” he said. And I felt his hand on my right elbow, where it was blocked from Miss Birdie's view by my torso.

“Or for me.”

“So it's settled then.” He gave my elbow a squeeze before taking his hand away. “We'll still get married; it will just have to be much sooner.”

“Before I graduate?”

“Before Dolly graduates.”

I sat on the edge of the fountain, not caring that my new seersucker sundress from D. H. Holmes was getting wet, the pink stripes darkening into red.

“Things are changing in Cuba, fast,” he said. “I had a letter from my brother, and I'm going to have to go home this summer to look after the business, transfer some funds to our accounts here.” He took a breath, as if he were about to explain to me the ins and outs of the family corporation, what he had to do with their accounts and why, but then he just smiled. “And you'll have to come with me. It's the only way to make sure they don't bring you back to Granada with them and keep you there.”

Right away I thought that Mauricio was crazy. Who would marry us—not the priest at school, that was certain. And what would I wear? I couldn't just throw together a wedding gown in a few weeks. But then, seeing him grinning at me, there was nothing I could do but smile back. “Yes.” I said. “Of course! I mean, I do.”