The Ladies of Managua (24 page)

I'm remembering that spring break now, while assessing the speedboats at the dock we've finally trotted up to. Most of them must belong to the men who own their own islands, driven by caretakers who drop off and pick up their patrons and invited guests. When I ask who can take me to Solentiname, the guys idling by the boats laugh at me as if I'm an adorable but not very bright child.

“Solentiname … let me guess. Do you paint?” asks a man with a mustache that looks drawn on, as if he had gone to a costume party dressed as a French chef and forgotten to wash his face when he changed his clothes. I nod.

“But I'm betting you don't sail?” The laughter the men had been suppressing momentarily explodes around me again.

“Sadly, no.”

Finally a guy who appears to be about my age steps forward. He has a mustache, too, but it looks more genuine, or maybe it's just overshadowed by his eyes, which remind me of the close-up of the Charioteer of Delphi in the textbook of the first art history class I ever took, bright and open almost too wide to be believable.

“A ferry leaves here at two on Mondays and Thursdays, but it doesn't get to the archipelago until six the next morning,” he says.

“I guess it's farther than I thought.” I'm feeling a little light-headed, so I look around for a place to sit down while I rethink my plans, but I don't see one. I close my eyes for a minute instead, reverting to my childhood logic that if I can't see these men staring at me, waiting for me to make my next, hilarious move, they can't see me either. I could turn back before anyone even notices I've left, hail another carriage, find my family all at La Gran Francia and say I'd just needed air and gone for a walk. But the city is so crowded with memories of Abuelo, and Allen's force of will is so great, and my own uncertainty is so vast that it would swallow me whole before I had time to decide what I needed, and I'd end up doing what's best for Allen simply because Allen always knows what he wants.

“It is far; the islands are in the south of the lake, near the mouth of the river,” a voice says, and when I open my eyes I see it was the Charioteer who spoke. “But also, the ferry stops on Ometepe first.”

“Maria.” I extend my hand.

“Marlon,” the Charioteer says, and as he shakes it, the crowd around us slackens a bit, some of the men going back to their boats. Now that I'm a person with a name—the name of the Virgen, after all—my stupidity is less likely to be a source of amusement. If they stick around long enough, they might even have to help me.

“Pleasure, Marlon.” The first thing the woman who trained me at the gallery told me was to repeat a potential buyer's name often, to roll it around in your mouth as if it is the most delicious treat in the world. Each time you say a buyer's name, she swore, the likelihood of your making a sale increases by 17 percent. (She also told me always to give a price in odd numbers, so the buyer thinks you're shaving a bit off and giving him a deal. Otherwise, I suspect, she would have sworn the name trick worked in increments of 20 percent.)

“Tell me, Marlon, how long does the ferry to Ometepe take?”

He shrugs. “Four hours, more or less.”

“So you could take me there in your boat?”

He turns to study the shiny speedboat behind him and he puckers his lips slightly, which makes me think he's doing math, figuring out how much gas he has, trying to remember if he has an extra container on board, and to calculate how long it will take to get to Ometepe and back.

“I could,” he says. “But it would be expensive.”

“How expensive?” I have to keep enough money on me to stay on Ometepe three nights, waiting for Monday's ferry, then to support myself on Solentiname for however long it takes to figure things out, wait for the next ferry back, and maybe even scout some new artists while I'm at it, so I can charge this folly to the gallery. But after some more lip-puckering on Marlon's part, and negotiating down to an odd-numbered sum on mine, we agree on a price.

I jump onto the boat quickly; all I have with me is my purse, and I don't want Marlon to overthink this, change his mind. It isn't until we're already motoring out of the dock that I realize Marlon is wearing a polo shirt with the words E
L
M
IRADOR
stitched above his left nipple. This isn't his boat, then; he's not an independent contractor offering speedboat tours to day-trippers or water-skiers, but an employee from one of the grand homes. El Mirador is probably the name of the property he tends. Of course, the shirt is just as likely to be a hand-me-down, or something he picked up in one of the many stores selling secondhand goods. It doesn't really matter. I don't care if he's bending any rules by picking up a side project; I'm just glad he's agreed to let me aboard, and to take me so far. Lake Cocibolca is bigger than Puerto Rico, I remember Elvis's boss, the nameless Sandinista, telling me when I was fourteen, “You could fit Puerto Rico inside it, it could be an island in the lake.”

“But then where would all the other isletas go?” I asked in all seriousness, and the important man laughed and chucked me under the chin, saying, “You're just like your mother.” Which, if he knew anything about my mother, would mean that I abhor the kind of man who chucks people under the chin.

In minutes the speedboat has left the shore behind and I feel as if I'm in a Japanese painting, what with the volcano in the distance and the massive water lilies floating past. The plants are even more stunning than I remember, big as dinner plates, and open wide as if they're waiting for blessings from the sky to drop into their centers. But the smell of the diesel from the motor is spoiling the view for me, so I move to the next seat up, diagonally behind the driver.

“If I'm going too fast, let me know and I'll slow down a little,” Marlon says. I nod. “But not too much,” he adds. “I need to get back tonight; my son's birthday is tomorrow and my wife will murder me if I'm not there, or if I'm too tired to oversee the pi
ñ
ata.” He's smiling already, whether at the thought of his boy or his quick-tempered wife, I'm not sure.

“How old is he turning, your son?” I ask.

“Five.” The grin again. So it was for the birthday boy after all.

“What's his name?”

“Marlon.” I should have guessed. Marlon-papa looks even more like the Charioteer now, gazing ahead at the distance he has to cover, the remains of a smile on his face as he thinks of his son. No matter how often I hear them, I'm amused by the way so many people around here have names that haven't been popular in the U.S. since the middle of the last century. Just in the course of Abuelo's calling hours I met chauffeurs younger than I am named Oswald, Norbert, and Wilfred. The roll call at Granada's kindergartens must be identical to the list of residents at the assisted living facility where Beth works in North Miami Beach.

“Marlon-hijo,” he clarifies, because I haven't asked another question and he's still eager to talk about his son. Palm trees lean off of isletas as we zoom past, threatening to topple into the lake, and cranes practice yoga poses, balancing on rocks that pierce the surface, but Marlon-papa seems oblivious to all of it, as if he's thinking not of the scenery but of his boy.

I wonder what it's like, to have someone be your first and last thought each day, but without the electric uncertainty that underscores my thoughts of Allen. To love someone more than you thought possible but with the calm of knowing that you belong to each other and have from the beginning. The devotion Marlon-papa has for his child is as visible as the name on his shirt, and it overwhelms me. I wonder if I'll ever be capable of loving someone that much, that single-mindedly, and if Marlon-papa was always so openhearted, or if he learned to love this way with the birth of his son. How does it feel for him: Does the weight of that love drag him down or buoy him up, carrying him along like this boat? Or both?

I consider asking him; he's smart and friendly, and doing me a favor, really, even if he's being well paid for it. And a little conversation would take my mind off the bumping of the boat, which makes me feel like throwing up, although I can't remember the last thing I've eaten. But I don't say anything because if I ask Marlon-papa to describe what he feels for his son, the answer could be so large it would knock me out of this boat and send me sinking past the water lilies down to the bottom of the lake.

Or maybe it would be my own jealousy that would drag me down. Because, I have to admit, part of me envies Marlon-hijo for having a dad who sees his son's face before him even as he speeds past cranes and monkeys and canoes. If the love of a father is as pronounced as the yearning for one, hearing Marlon-papa describe it would crush me.

I'm being melodramatic. Abuelo would say he raised me so that nothing could crush me. It's the hunger, or the emotions of the day, that have me thinking like this. I know better. Not having a father, I've learned to fill my life with other things, to do without. And besides, who's to say that my dad would have been the must-get-back-before-the-pi
ñ
ata kind? Maybe he would have been so busy creating the new Nicaragua that he wouldn't have noticed my birthdays, and I would have spent my childhood longing for him even when he was there. As I did Madre.

“He's adorable,” Marlon-papa is saying about his son, even though I still haven't managed to come up with any follow-up questions. “He's chele, like you. Like his mother. I'm the dark one.” Marlon laughs at the whims of fate and genetics.

I laugh, too, because I've lived in America long enough that it always surprises me how openly people here talk about race and weight and age and all the things I've trained myself to pretend I don't notice.

“I'm the dark one in my family,” I tell Marlon. “I mean, we all have light eyes but my mother has much lighter hair, chestnut colored.”

By now several hours have passed since I left the graveyard. Everyone will have noticed my absence at lunch. My Bela will have found the note. And even if she focuses on the luncheon and follows my instructions and doesn't worry, she's bound to wonder where I am or what I'm doing. And Madre, too. Maybe I should have left a note for her as well, or at least jotted another line to my Bela, saying,
Tell Madre I'll call her when I get a chance.

For most of my life, I could have sworn that my whereabouts were below literacy campaigns and free immunizations and party-appropriate neckwear on Madre's list of concerns. But of course she was upset today at the funeral home, and she seems to be missing Abuelo sharply now that he's gone. Maybe she's more susceptible to the absences of her loved ones than I would have guessed. She told me she loved me this morning, in front of the Funeraria Monte Santo. I believe that she meant it when she said it. I'm just not sure that I believe she knows how to express that love. Or maybe it's that she's good at being a loving daughter, a thoughtful person, a philantrophist, but something limits her ability to show her love as a mother, or to let it drive her in the overarching way other moms seemed to do. Is it her independence? Her selfishness? Or maybe it's the opposite, her altruism; it would be more selfish to love one child rather than all the children of Nicaragua. That's what my Bela would have me believe, that my mother always loved me so much from afar, but that so many other people besides me needed her, too. With Madre gone, my Bela's love for me had so much room to grow. Maybe it became so powerful that it blocked Madre's love from reaching me.

It doesn't seem fair, how people can be so skilled at one kind of love and stumble so badly at another. I know I'm a standout granddaughter. And I haven't been a bad daughter, I don't think. I see Madre more than many of my friends in New York do their parents who live a few states away, and who were with them every day until they turned eighteen, give or take a few weeks of summer camp. But I'm not delusional enough to believe that I've been a loving daughter. I don't seem to be that skilled at loving Allen either; I'm either adoring him to the point of erasing myself, or convincing myself that he's so insufferable I never want to see him again.

It's time for me to stop thinking about what I want Allen to do and determine what it is I want to do about loving him, and if I'm strong enough to expand my capacity to love, or shrewd enough to realize that it's a hopeless case and I should walk away and save myself, and everyone else, more disappointment. And I suppose that's even truer for Madre.

I don't want to talk to Allen until I know what I have to say. But it seems right to let Madre know that I'm fine and will be in touch soon, so that I'm not adding to the pain of the day for her. I pull out my phone to send her a text message; she'd never hear me in all this wind and I don't want to be interrogated into letting her know where I am or what my plans are. I type,
I'm taking a little trip for R
+
R. Will call soon. Don't worry.
But when I hit “send,” the words stay on the screen, and I see how empty they are. I start deleting them, to try again, but Marlon-papa leans forward to let me know, “That won't work here.”

“We're out of range?”

Marlon-papa shrugs in sympathy, but he's smiling like a man who can sail to the middle of Lake Cocibolca, halfway across the imaginary island of Puerto Rico, miles away from everyone he knows, and still not be out of touch.

 

26

Isabela

Mariana's tall beau sat in the front, next to Don Pedro, which made me pity Don Pedro—gringos always feel compelled to make conversation with drivers; they don't understand that part of what attracts a man to this job is the opportunity to spend hours alone with his thoughts, even if the car he's maneuvering is full of chattering people. But it's a good thing Mariana's giant sat up front, where he's using a very odd, very loud, very slow brand of English to point out to Don Pedro that it is a nice day, sunny, and the sky, it is blue, and the houses of this town, they are so pretty, because from up there he can't see Ninexin frantically waving the envelope at me, stabbing at the note Mariana left across the sealed back in her abominable penmanship.