The Ladies of Managua (31 page)

He nods.

“What was her answer?”

He looks down as the fish is placed in front of him. I always like to watch a visitor see a guapote for the first time; they're the ugliest fish I've looked upon in my three-quarters of a century, with teeth that would benefit from underwater orthodontia, and big, fat, delicious cheeks. Mariana's friend, Beth, actually gave a little scream the first time a guapote was set down in front of her. But Allen, for all his talk about noticing things, he doesn't even seem to see it. There's a giant, prehistoric-looking fish on his plate, staring him in the eye; he just glanced at it as if it were a hamburger and went back to his drink.

“She didn't really answer, not at the time. Then when she wanted to talk about it again, I was really into this painting. It sounds terrible, I know, but when you paint…” He picks up his knife, looks at the fish, and puts it down again. “The next thing I knew she was in Miami, on her way to Managua.”

“You did not run behind her?”

“I thought it was best to give her time to cool off.”

I take a sip of my water; they've put in too much ice, as usual. “I see now why the divorce.”

I could hear Mariana gasping inside my head when I said that, but I think it helps a man to let him know when he's behaved like an idiot; perhaps it will keep him from doing so the next time. The gringo just laughs; he's an agreeable sort, really. Now he's cutting into the fish and not doing such a bad job at it.

“It's raising teenagers that does it. They run off in a rage and a couple hours later, they're fine.” He chews appreciatively. His table manners are not bad, for an American. “Of course, I know Maria's not a teenager. But by the time I realized that grown women like her don't cool off, they just spend the time between incident and apology marinating in anger, thinking up even more reasons why you're a massive jerk, it was too late to call. So I texted her that I was sorry—”

My snort of derision stops him, but not for long.

“I called as soon as I woke up the next morning.” He takes a sip of his drink. “It took fourteen messages to get a reply, and even that was just a text telling me that she'd be in Managua for longer than just the funeral, she had some thinking to do.”

“I might necessitate a drink,” I say, although the only alcohol I've consumed in years is ronpopo at Christmas. But I can tell it's going to take him some time to eat that guapote, and something about having luncheon with a young man who's made a mess of love and is telling his sad tale in English reminds me of New Orleans. I ask the waitress for a Tom Collins, hoping that she won't ask what's in one because I have no idea. I just remember the name after all these years; it sounds so glamorous and yet reassuring, as if it would be attached to a handsome man, like Gary Cooper.

“I knew that was ominous—the needing-to-think part—so I followed her here, on the theory that we could think together. We've talked a lot about me coming to Nicaragua; it didn't seem out of the realm of possibility that she'd want me here.” He stops and looks down at his half-eaten fish, as if he is wondering how it got there. I'm starting to think that I should say something reassuring, something to make him forget that it's possible—or even probable—that Mariana wouldn't want him here. But then he looks straight at me and grins. “Plus, I thought it was time for a grand gesture. Cinematic.”

“Of course,” I say, because I like the sound of the words. He looks back at his fish, forlorn, and pity flutters in my stomach, so I refrain from pointing out that it's only really a grand gesture if there's a ring involved.

Now I wish Mariana were here not just for me, but for this poor, sad man, who is looking more like a little boy than any father of teenagers has a right to, and it can't be the alcohol making me sympathetic because my Tom Collins only just arrived. But feeling sorry for a man is no reason to marry him. And I'm still not convinced that he's really good enough for my Mariana, this divorced gringo.

“I tell you a story, Mr. Allen,” I say, and I don't want him to talk with his mouth full, so I add, “Allen, disculpe; I mean, I tell you a story, Allen.” And then I take the first sip of my Tom Collins to prepare myself and I can feel New Orleans sliding down my throat and spreading through my body, bringing me back to life. “When I was first married and we live with my husband here, en Granada, my husband, she was a very important lawyer. After two, three years, she—”

“Your husband?”

“Yes, she hire a young clerk to work with him. I see this clerk when I stop in to find Ignacio, get money, bring the childrens, but never I see the clerk outside of the office, though I do walk in front to the window many times each day. Many years pass and the young clerk, he fall sick.” I raise my hand and shake it at the wrist to indicate that the poor boy drank too much and was dying of cirrhosis, because I don't want to explain this out loud and speak ill of the dead. “And when she is nearing the end, his doctor call for me and she say, ‘Do
ñ
a Isabela, this boy refuse to leave to go to the hospital. He says he only leave his room if you come see him.'” Here I pause so that Allen can make an appropriate comment, but he just nods to indicate he's listening and keeps right on chewing his guapote.

“I say, ‘Doctor, I am a married woman, I cannot go to a young man's room,' and the doctor, she say, ‘Do
ñ
a Isabela, do it as a work of charity.' So I go, of course I go, and this young man, he see me and ask for a pen and start writing something, and when he is done she hand me the paper, only it's not a paper but a photo of him like we used to make in those days, black-and-white, and she is wearing a jacket and tie. And he kiss my hand when I take the photo and then she say to his nurse, ‘I can go now.'”

I stop to take a bite, but also to make Mr. Allen wait just a little while. It's always a good idea to make a man wait.

“What had he written on the back?”

I keep chewing, like a lady; I read in
Vanidades
about an actress who chews each bite thirty-seven times, and she has a lovely figure, still, although she's no longer young. She's not as old as I am, though, maybe Ninexin's age. Mr. Allen doesn't even move, he keeps his knife and fork in the air until I reveal, “On the back, he write, ‘To Isabela, the lover of my dreams, with gratefulness for making beautiful my unhappy life.'”

The gringo puts down his knife and fork. I lean forward and ask him, “Allen, do you love my granddaughter like that?”

At first I think he is so moved by my story that he is crying. But then he tilts his head back and I realize that he is laughing, most unbecomingly; I can see the fillings in his teeth, the old, cheap American fillings that are black instead of white or silver or gold.

“I don't mean any disrespect, Bela, but, hell, no!” He stops to laugh some more. “I absolutely do not love your granddaughter like that.” He takes a sip of water before he can continue. “I'm sure you were very attractive, and that's a lovely story,” he says, but the compliments come too late after his unseemly display of laughter. It's not that his laughter embarrasses me; he's the one who should be ashamed of his behavior. It enrages me: he's not just insulting me, he's belittling Mariana by his laughter and his words. If only he understood Spanish I could tell him exactly how unsuited he is for Mariana, how lucky he is even to have been in the same room with her. But I'm too unsettled to find the words in English, so I just sit in icy silence, and I'm glad, for the first time, that Mariana is far away. I would even hope that she'd stay a day longer if I didn't need to see her so badly, just so that she could teach this rude gringo a lesson.

“Bela, that boy with the Parkinson's, or whatever made his hands shake, he wasn't in love with you—he loved the idea of you.” Mr. Allen has quieted down now, he's starting to speak calmly. “I'm sure it gave him great comfort, the idea of you. But I really know Maria. I know what makes her laugh. I know which movies she would never see because she can't quite convince herself that they're not real and she knows they'd keep her up all night crying. She's a person to me, Bela, not an idea. I know her and I want to spend my life with her. That's got to matter.”

“Perhaps.” I like the way the word sounds, so I say it again after taking a rather long sip of my Tom Collins. “Perhaps.” He hasn't quite convinced me that his version of love matters so much. Not after his laughing fit. “We shall see when Mariana return,” I say. “We shall see.”

Allen reaches across the table to grab my wrist, moving so fast that I don't have time to take my hand away. “Bela, I don't think that these days anyone loves anyone the way that clerk loved you. Maria does make my life beautiful, and it's very likely that I'll have an unhappy life if she doesn't come home with me,” he says, and it's the first time I've heard him admit that this is in fact a possibility, that she might not return with him, or to him. “But that's where my similarities to your clerk end.”

He lays his knife and fork across his plate aslant, and I find myself pleased to see that someone raised him properly, which makes me think that I may not be quite as offended by his presence as I should be.

“I know you were married for fifty-something years, and I was only married for ten—although, believe me, it felt like a hundred,” Allen says. “I have no business telling you my theories on love. But I think when you love an idea like that clerk cherished the idea of you, that can't last. I mean, not unless you die young. For love to last, it has to be based on something real, not timing, or circumstance, or imagination, or even beauty, however stunning that beauty may be.” He nods at me again, just a small tilt of his head, but this time I like it. “And I'm sure, in this case, it was staggering.”

He's right about the last part. I was something to look at back then. But is he right about the rest of it, about love and reality and imagination? Or does he just think the way he does because he lacks any imagination at all?

My Mariana, she deserves to be adored. I'm not saying I want depressed, drunken boys, God rest their souls, dying with her name on their lips. But this gringo, who had a wife he must have once thought he'd spend his life with, could he ever consider Mariana his one true love? Because that's exactly what I want for her, exactly the kind of love she deserves.

It's the kind of love I had. I wonder, for Mariana's sake, and, I'll admit, for my own curiosity, too, if Allen is even capable of that kind of emotion. I even wonder, what would this gringo leaning back in his chair, calmly assessing the skeleton of his decimated guapote, think about Mauricio and his letter? Would he consider that kind of love real?

 

33

Ninexin

I think maybe I imagined it, or misheard because of the sound of the motor and the captain's voice saying, “We're here!” But she definitely said the word “baby.” Mariana gets up from her seat behind mine, walks to the front of the boat, and takes the captain's hand to hop out onto the dock, smiling at him with her usual radiance, as if the world hadn't just hushed to a stop.

“Se
ñ
ora?” the captain says, and he takes my hand and leads me to the edge of the boat as if I'm my mother. Only when I'm safely on the dock does he let me go and nod toward the island. Mariana is on the land already, walking steadily, a few yards ahead of me. As I follow her onto the island I can hear the birds in the trees shaking the leaves, and, somewhere, a far-off monkey. The dusk blurs the green of the land and the gray of the lake, and the only thing I can still see sharply is Mariana, her slim body swaying slightly as she walks ahead of me. Even when she stops and turns to open the door of the last cabin, and I see her in profile, she looks the same as always. Her breasts—were they always that full? But then it wasn't until the fourth month that I started to show. I wonder how far along she is, but when I walk into the cabin and open my mouth to ask, I realize the room is empty. There's an open blue door in the corner that takes me to a concrete porch looking out onto the lake where Mariana is sitting in a rocking chair, which is painted the same ridiculously calm blue as the door, watching a flock of birds showing off. There's another rocker next to hers, so I sit down in it and watch the birds, too, hoping that she will be more likely to talk to me if we don't have to look at each other.

“I didn't know,” I say, because it's true, but when I hear the words I realize it's completely the wrong thing; it makes this all about me. I should have gone with my first instinct and asked how far along she was.

When she asks, “Allen didn't tell you?” Mariana's voice has lost the hard edge it had on the boat. She sounds lost.

“No.” Maybe I should feel hurt that he didn't assume Mariana had told me right away, but I don't. He let me think she was simply angry at him, so that she could tell me herself. It shows how well he knows Mariana, and I'm glad that he's turning out to be such an adult, grateful that he's watching out for my daughter, especially now.

“I guess he wanted me to be the one to spread the good news.” She laughs, but it's more of a snort.

“But it is good news, Mariana!”

I turn to her so she can hear the force of my words, see me say them and understand how deeply I mean them. Mariana is crying when she says, “Do you really think so, Mama?”

I want to seize her, to pick her up like I used to when she was a toddler and she'd wrap her arms around my neck and her legs around my back. But it's been three decades since I cradled her like that, so instead I get up from my chair, sit at her feet, and grab one of her ankles, because I need something of her to hold.

“Of course! A baby!” Saying the words keeps me from blurting out what I'm really thinking, what I was thinking on the walk from the boat, which seemed so long ago, although it must have been only a few minutes. That her life is about to become infinitely more complicated. And so much better! I have done things I'm proud of: I have fought for my country, and then helped it heal from the fight. And I've done little, practical things, too: lived in villages where women can work to support their families because I caused a well to be built that saved them having to spend all day getting clean water. Seen Do
ñ
a Olga's daughter become a teacher after I paid for her school uniform and helped her with her homework because her mother can't read. Convinced representatives of superpowers to support environmental programs in my own small country. But none of it has been as exciting or as important, nothing has changed me as much as having Mariana. Now it's her turn. And she will never have to choose like I did. She can have her work and her home and her child. It still won't be easy. And it will be even harder if Allen isn't a part of their lives. But it will be amazing. It's a new beginning for her.