The Ladies of Managua (26 page)

Mama always clung to the status quo; she still does. Papa, in his own, quiet way, was the revolutionary. Or the reason I had it in me to become one. Actually, it wasn't just Papa. It was him and the nuns who taught me at La Asuncion. They took us, the daughters of Managua's elite, to do charity work in the poorer neighborhoods and taught us always to think of the less fortunate, to follow Christ's example of service. A number of us girls ended up joining the Sandinista movement, and I don't think it was a coincidence; those nuns had radicalized us without knowing it. And the irony is that Mama was the one who insisted that Celia and I go there, because it was the one place in Nicaragua that reminded her of own beloved convent school, Sacred Heart. So I suppose, in her way, Mama made me a rebel, too.

But in her own life, she has always followed the rules of polite society. Whereas Papa, even as he moved the family to Miami, he gave money to the aspects of the Revolución he believed in: the literacy programs, the medical outreach. When I took an English literature class at UNAM—the last one the university offered before it was deemed unpatriotic—he was the one who bought me Fitzgerald's books, stopping at the English-language bookstore on the way home from the office after I said I didn't want to be seen shopping there. And he told me that while he understood why I might want to regulate my behavior to fit in with my peers, I should never let anyone control my mind.

Maybe it was because he secretly wanted a son that Papa was willing to have a daughter who read unfashionable books and volunteered in dangerous neighborhoods—always chaperoned by a liberal priest, of course, but still, most of my girlfriends weren't allowed to work with the poor even if their brothers did. And when Manuel asked him for my hand, which I insisted on because Rigoberto had done so with Celia and because I thought Papa would expect it, he told Manuel that any marriage I entered into of my own volition would have his blessing, and that no one should get to choose the path of a woman's life except the woman herself. Manuel was so embarrassed! “See what you got me into with your bourgeois leanings,” he joked, throwing an arm around me as we walked down the street, now that we were official. “Imagine, Don Ignacio lecturing me on women's rights!”

Everyone at the funeral luncheon knew me, knew my history. They would assume that what I said about Papa was a political statement, that I was hinting that my father had supported the Movimiento, and they would think, understandably, that I was rewriting history. But what I said wasn't political at all. All I meant was that Papa was the person who made me imagine a life for myself that didn't resemble Mama's and her mother's and her grandmother's.

And look where that life got me, shaking my ankle under the table waiting for my relatives to get the hell out of town already so I that could begin searching for my daughter, who was, apparently, busy pursuing alternate futures of her own. I knew Mama must see Mariana's little rebellion as my karmic retribution, not that she'd put it that way. “You, my girl, simply got what was coming to you,” she'd say, one of her favorite pronouncements. It's what she said after I insisted on racing the neighborhood boys on my bike and fell and skinned my knee, after she rubbed salve on it and settled me in my bed surrounded by pillows and the radio. Mama was always so high-strung and nervous, warning us not to ride our bikes on the street, not to chew ice in case we choked, not to eat mamón so we didn't accidentally swallow the pit and get it lodged in our throats, causing us to suffocate. And now Mariana had disappeared and was wandering the world without a plan or a purpose or a companion, as far as we knew, and Mama was sitting at the table with a far-off look in her eye, sipping fruit punch and nodding at each tribute to her deceased husband.

But once everyone left, including, finally, Celia, who first had to be convinced that I could manage both Mama and Mariana—whom we said was lying down upstairs, undone by the trip from the U.S. and the emotions of the day—I realized that I was being uncharitable. Maybe Mama hadn't been listening to the speeches, but had simply been thinking of Papa, comforting herself with her memories. Because she didn't gloat about Mariana running off and how it serves me right. And she didn't even complain about what I said in tribute to Papa. She just asked me and Allen to lead her to the room so she could rest.

For a minute I thought she'd forgotten about Mariana altogether. But as we left her there alone, with her big black bag on her lap, she grabbed my arm and said, “Don't worry too much about Mariana. She'll be back soon. We raised her well.” And I had to step into the hall and make a big show of going to the front desk to ask for an extra pillow so that neither she nor Allen could see how grateful I was for that “we.”

“I need a room, too,” Allen says and I realize that he's standing behind me, although I hadn't noticed him following me until now. The girl at the front desk goes to confer with her manager, and now that it's just the two of us, I will have to speak to this man, although I don't know what Mariana would want me to say.

“Ninexin,” he says, and I turn around. “Mariana's not resting upstairs, is she? I didn't want to say anything while your relatives were around but—what aren't you telling me?”

“She left a note saying she needed some time to herself and not to worry,” I admit, speaking quickly because I see the receptionist heading back toward us with a key. “And now I must ask, what is it that you are not telling me?”

He looks down at his hands, as if he's just noticed they're covered in stains. I've seen guilty men before, I can tell that he knows something.

“Se
ñ
or,” the girl says, putting a key on the desk in front of him. “We do have one room. Will you be wanting breakfast inclusive?”

“I'll let you check in,” I tell Allen. “I'll be upstairs in the bar when you're ready to talk.” I walk up the stairs slowly, so that my rising panic won't be obvious to him or anyone, and I settle in at a table on the balcony, overlooking the street below, where a stray dog is sleeping and the Eskimo Ice Cream man has stopped to sell Popsicles to three boys. If I focus on them I'll be able to stay put, calm down, and think rationally, because the cooler I am, the more likely this gringo is to reveal everything he knows that could be of use to me, everything about this situation he'd rather keep hidden.

He's taking longer than I think he should, and I want to run down the stairs and ask what the hell is going on here, but instead I tell the waitress—the same nice girl who helped arrange for the room where Mama, lucky Mama, is napping right now—that I'd like two whiskeys, please, one for me and one for my friend who is going to join me. What I'd really like is a cup of coffee but I want him to feel obligated to drink what's in front of him, and if it's whiskey, he's more likely to tell me everything he knows. Finally, I hear footsteps.

He sits down, picks up the whiskey, drinks it, and signals for another. “Thanks,” he says. “I just called the hotel where Mariana told me to stay in Managua—she's not there. I said she'd left her wallet here and I need to find her to return it, and they promised they'll have her get in touch with me if she shows up. I'll call back in a couple hours, just to be sure.”

It was smart of him to contact the Contempo. But I don't tell him that. “Do you have any idea why Mariana would run off like this?” I ask.

“She was really upset, about her grandfather.” He looks down at my whiskey as if he would like to drink it.

“We're all upset, Allen,” I say. “My mother, my sister, me. But none of us ran away. Just Mariana did. And none of us know why. Or why you're here.”

He doesn't speak, and I don't either. Instead, I take a sip of my whiskey, my first sip, and watch as he runs his grubby hands through his hair so that it stands up on end. Mama would hate that.

“I'm here because there were things Mariana wanted us to talk about before she left, but I've been really busy with this painting.” He glances up at me in a look I recognize from the stray dog below; he's hoping I'll throw him a scrap or at least not kick him. I just shake my head. “You know, she wanted to talk about our future, what's next for us.”

“And you did not want to talk about this?”

“Not right then. But I do now.” The waitress brings his second whiskey and Allen settles back in his chair, as if remembering he's a man, not a dog, after all. “That's why I'm here.”

“Perhaps she is no longer ready to talk.”

He sighs. He clearly thinks I'm criticizing him although I'm not. I'm just stating a fact. Sympathizing, almost. Because I know what it is finally to have time for Mariana and to find that she no longer has time for you.

“A day late and a dollar short,” Allen says.

“What?”

“It's an expression. When you haven't put enough effort into something and now that you're ready to fight for it, it might be too late.”

“A day late and a dollar short.”

Allen smiles at me, which, I think, is a day early and five dollars too much. He still hasn't told me anything about where Mariana might be.

“So she is maybe not wanting to speak with you, okay,” I say. “But to run off?”

“I know!” Allen tugs at his hair again. “It's the kind of stunt my kids would pull.”

The whiskey burns my throat. “You have children?”

“A seventeen-year-old son and a fourteen-year-old daughter who isn't as nice to Maria as she should be,” he says, finishing his second glass. “And an ex-wife who's pretty pissed off that I canceled the kids' visit to my mother's cabin to rush down here for the funeral of the grandfather of the younger woman I'm dating.”

Mariana has told me none of this. And my throat is still burning, not just with the whiskey but with anger that this man has made such a mess of his own life that his almost-grown children are making my poor daughter's life difficult. Difficult enough that she might want to run from him, and therefore from me.

“Maybe if you'd stayed at the cabin where you should be, my daughter would not be missing.”

“That thought has crossed my mind.” He looks down at his hands again and for a minute I think this large man is going to cry. But then he looks back at me and says, “But the important thing now is how are we going to find her?”

I don't correct him, don't point out that I am the one who will find her, that she will come back to me, not to him. Because he's right, finding her is the important thing. And he might be useful; it was quick thinking to call the hotel.

I ask the waitress to borrow her pen, pull out the notebook I have in my purse, and turn the page on which I'd written the notes about Papa that I never used. On the new, clean, white page, I start making a list. “First, I will call my contacts at the Ministry of Transportation and ask that they have people at the airport watch for someone traveling under her name, or who matches her description. Watch discreetly, of course, so Mariana does not notice, and then notify me if she passes through.”

Allen nods.

“The ports also. Anyplace that sells tickets and keeps a record.”

“What can I do?”

“E-mail Beth, and anyone else she is close to, and see if Mariana has made contact.”

He nods again.

“We also can split up, go around town asking people if they have seen Mariana; you can learn very much from on-the-ground intelligence.”

Allen taps his hand against his head and says, “Aye, aye, Captain!”

“I prefer ‘comandante,'” I say, without smiling. While it's nice to have someone else who is ready to work to find Mariana, unlike Mama, who seems to think she will turn up at any minute with a camera full of photos and a travel journal scribbled with adventures, it's a little too soon for him to be making jokes.

“Comandante,” he repeats, but when he says it, it sounds like he's talking about Moses' tablets. “I'll do whatever I can to help. Although, I should tell you, I don't speak Spanish. Despite the best efforts of Se
ñ
or Weisberg at Larchmont Prep.”

“Many people here speak English; you can interview the other tourists,” I say, although what I'm thinking is that he's lucky that Mariana was willing to spend any amount of time with someone so provincial. The dog below barks and the man selling Eskimo pops pushes his cart down the street. Mariana's favorite is the watermelon.

“I heard what you said about your father during lunch,” Allen tells me. “It was really moving. I'd like to be able to do that for my children.”

“Mariana never mentioned that you had children.”

“She's full of secrets these days, I guess. I thought Maria was happy, overall. I thought I knew what she wanted but…”

He doesn't finish his sentence, but I know he'll get around to completing the thought if I'm not careful. I can tell from his rough, deep voice, the way he's leaning forward and looking at me over the whiskey, his golden eyes darting back and forth from my face to the glass: he clearly has no idea where Mariana has gone, he doesn't even seem to be sure why she left. And that's all I care about. I don't want him to confide in me about their life together, to tell me things that will make me see the situation from his point of view. I don't want to feel sorry for him. I don't want to have an opinion as to what Mariana should do. I just want my daughter back, and then she can do whatever she wants, live with or run from anyone she likes. I reach for my bag and say, “Excuse me. I must now check on my mother.”

 

28

Maria

Marlon waited for a taxi to come pick me up at the dock, but he was speeding back across the lake by the time I closed the cab door. I didn't blame him; he had Marlon-hijo's party to get to. He had dropped me off at San Jos
é
del Sur, the smaller port closer to the hotel where I wanted to stay. I had picked out Villas Paraíso when I Googled Ometepe a few months ago, planning an itinerary for Allen's promised trip to Nicaragua in the new year.