The Ladies of Managua (32 page)

And for me! Maybe it's selfish to think about it this way, but for me, Mariana's child is a second chance. With this baby, I won't be preoccupied, or nervous all the time. I won't have to share her child with my mother, just with Mariana, and the best part is, it's an opportunity for me to love Mariana more openly, too. I want to offer to baby-sit, I want to invite Mariana to move in with me so I can support them both. But I don't, because I know it's possible that she will make that huffing noise again and ask me why I would want to live with my grandchild when I couldn't be bothered to live with my own daughter.

“I'm so glad!” Mariana is still crying, not even bothering to wipe away her tears, but she seems more excited than sad, rocking back and forth so that I have to, finally, release her ankle. But I stay sitting at her feet, looking up at her, because I don't want to disrupt anything by moving. “I thought you would tell me to forget it, to make something of myself, not to spend the rest of my life atoning for one mistake.”

I know I need to say something, but it's all so precarious. How could she think I'd be anything but delighted? She's not a child. She can support this baby. And if she can't, I can. Is this really how she sees me, as someone who has a plan for her life that has to be followed as strictly as a prison sentence?

“You can still make something of yourself!” I say finally. And even though I know there's a chance that my imagined disapproval is part of what made her decide she wants to raise this baby in the first place, I add, “You
are
making something of yourself. And now, you'll be making yourself a mother, too. You'll be a wonderful mother, Mariana!”

She's still crying, but now she's laughing, too, not the snort but a real laugh. She has to stop for breath between the words as she says, “Come on, Madre!” She gasps again. “You don't know that! I'll probably be a terrible mother! I've never even had a pet. I killed the orchid Beth sent to the gallery when I got promoted.” Now she's not crying anymore, just laughing. “You don't get to be a great mom just by watching reruns of
The Cosby Show
. Beth says it's instinctive, biologically coded in us. But what about genetics? I mean, the women in our family, we're not going to win any prizes in the motherhood department. No offense.” The laughing fit has passed but she forces out one more so that I know she's joking. I've seen enough American TV, read enough English books to know that this is where I'm supposed to say, “None taken!” But I don't. And she rushes to fill the void of my silence.

“I mean, look at us,” she continues, her breath steadier now. “It took both you and my Bela to raise me, and my Bela never had anything important going on but me, and you always had everything else going on but me. What do I have? A job that will keep me away from the baby all day?”

“A job you love!”

“A job that, you're right, really makes no difference in the world. A job I love that has me spending all day talking up everyone else's art but my own. And I'm already so exhausted all the time I don't have the energy to talk, much less paint, and the baby's only the size of a kidney bean!”

What about Allen? Surely he would help support the child, pay for a nanny so you can keep working? I want to ask, but it doesn't seem like the right time, she's rocking so fast now that I wouldn't be surprised if she were propelled out of her chair and ended up floating over the lake like the bride in that Chagall painting. Oh. Will they get married now? I can't ask that either, I'll sound like my mother.

“So, then I think, okay, maybe I'll never set the world on fire with my art; maybe I never would have anyway. The baby won't care.”

“Of course not! She'll love you no matter what you do. And she'll respect you for doing it.”

Mariana looks at me as if I've just said that the Metropolitan Museum of Art had called to ask about purchasing her latest painting, only I forgot to mention it to her.

“Right, Mama. Because kids are always so loving and respectful of their parents' work. Just like I was,” she says. “You know, Beth once told me that whatever headaches you caused your parents, your kids give them back to you three times worse. It's karma.”

I want to tell her that I don't care what she thinks about my work, that I wish I'd done a better job letting her know I was thinking of her, always, even as I was working. But that's not the kind of thing we say to each other, and I don't want to disrupt the flow of the conversation. We've been getting along so well, talking about the baby.

“In any case, he or she will already have one parent who's a famous artist,” Mariana continues. “And see, that just makes me feel worse, because it makes me think of Allen, and how shocked he was. I just know he must think that I did this on purpose—I mean, who gets pregnant by accident anymore? And in their thirties?”

That gringo giant should thank God and the Virgen and Papachu on his knees, every day, that he even met my daughter, much less was able to date her. “He said that?”

“No, of course not. I mean, he knows I didn't want this any more than he did. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I wanted to travel and paint and watch him do the same, because watching him is like doing everything amazing twice, multiplying it to the second power.”

Math was never my strength, but I know how it felt to see the future, and the country, and even the muddy villages around me, through Manuel's eyes, so I have a sense of what she means.

“It's Abuelo's fault,” she rushes in. “I mean it's mine, of course, but when I came to Miami for Abuelo's last round of doctor's appointments, I forgot to bring my pills. I didn't even realize it until after I got back and saw the pack next to the sink where I'd left it. But it had only been three or four days! Do you know how hard Beth had to try to get pregnant? I mean, at my last checkup the gynecologist asked if I'd ever considered freezing my eggs!”

I laugh before I can stop myself and she laughs, too. Then she's silent, staring at her hands in her lap.

“Allen doesn't want the baby?”

Her hands come to life, flying into the air near her face. “Allen! Allen wants whatever I want, Allen respects my decision, Allen's been in so much therapy since the divorce he doesn't know what he thinks until he talks to Dr. Leitner.” She looks back at her hands, which have settled in her lap again. “He proposed. He said we were probably going to get married anyway, we might as well do so now, he just had to figure out a way to break it to his kids.”

“Pendejo!” I say and she looks at me and laughs even harder than before.

“I know, right? What an idiot. As if that's what was worrying me this whole time, not how I'm going to raise this kid on my salary, not whether I'm ready or even fit to be a mom, not whether the wine I drank before I knew I was pregnant has doomed this baby to a life of mediocrity, but whether or not two teenagers would decide that I get to be Mrs. Allen the Second. And then, when I tried to explain why this maybe wasn't the proposal of my dreams, why I maybe wasn't sure I even wanted to get married, to him or anyone, now or ever, he said the most horrible thing.”

“What?” I'm ready to swim back to Granada and use the gringo giant for target practice.

Mariana takes a deep breath, shuddering as she exhales, a sound I haven't heard in decades. “The night before I left, a few days after we found out about the baby, I thought we should talk about things, make some decisions before I came down here. But he was in the middle of painting, and it's a great painting, sure, an important painting, but he was so distracted by the canvas calling to him from the back of the studio that he couldn't speak, or even listen to me. And I just kept getting madder and madder, and finally I said he should go back to the painting if it was so much more important to him.” She stops speaking but keeps rocking, slowly, so that the only sound is the birds in the trees and the wood on the cement. “And he stood up, smiling, he was so relieved, and said that I was right, he'd have a much clearer mind once he finished, and that he was sorry he was so preoccupied, but that he felt this painting might be a departure for him.” She stops rocking altogether. “He said he felt he was doing something revolutionary.”

Now Mariana is crying again and I give in to my body and stand up so that I can take her damp face into my hands. “Oh, mi amor! You're worried about what your Bela says? About revolutionaries making bad husbands? I'm not sure how much you know about your grandparents' marriage, but I've seen enough to be sure that Mama is not in a position to give advice. Not that it ever stops her.”

Mariana smiles, but I can tell it's out of kindness more than anything else. She stands up, gently shaking off my hands, and walks over to the railing of the porch, then leans against a post that holds up the roof as if she's decided she needs to help it do its job.

“I'm not worried about Allen being a good husband.” She's staring at the lake again. “He would be, I think, he's learned from experience. But I don't know if I want to marry him, or at least not yet.”

I step up behind her. I want to put my arms around her waist, to press my hands against her stomach and imagine my grandchild growing inside her. I want to lean my chin against the back of her head and smell her hair like I used to when she was a child. “What is it then, hija?” I ask, softly, because even though I haven't taken the step toward her, my mouth is still quite close to her ear.

At first I think that she's not going to answer. But then she says, “I'm worried about how he'll be as a father. He's great with his kids, but when we first started dating he was really honest about saying he'd had children young and he wasn't sure he wanted any more. So when I first found out, before I told Allen, before I even went to the doctor to confirm the pregnancy test, I tried to imagine raising this baby alone.”

“You wouldn't be alone.”

“I know. Allen would at least provide child support.”

That's not what I meant, but I don't correct her.

“And I decided that I could do the heavy lifting, the day-to-day, I could raise my daughter on my own if I had to, without disrupting Allen's life, his revolution. I even started to get excited about it. And then I thought—what if it's a boy?”

I laugh softly, but she hears me.

“No, really. I don't know anything about boys. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized, whether it's a boy or a girl, I think it would be … important, and, I don't know, nice, I guess, for the baby to have a father.” A cormorant sticks his beak into the lake, then raises it back up to the sky. The movement catches Mariana's attention and she turns her head to be able to watch him more easily. “That's such a lame word, but it's all I can come up with: I always thought it would be nice to have a father. But the thing is, I don't have such a great track record with fathers. Or much of one at all.”

Now I do step forward and envelop her, my arms around her waist, my chin resting above her shoulder. “I'm sorry,” I say, so quietly that I'm not sure she can hear it even though I'm so close to her.

“Why wasn't I enough?” She's still looking out at the water although it's almost too dark to see the crane diving its beak into the lake. “He had a new baby. Why wasn't that reason enough to opt out of the action?”

“Oh, hija—” I start but she interrupts before I can finish.

“I know, it was an important mission. And I know, you all had ideals and this was his way to help change things. And I appreciate that, I really do. But all the other guerrillas, they got out alive. It was just that fat rich guy who died, just him and Papi, who wasn't fat, and who had spent years in the jungle learning how not to get killed. It's just too crazy.”

“Mariana, in a situation like that—” I begin, hugging her so tightly that my face is almost past her ear, and I can imagine my words floating past her shoulder and down to the shore, until they drown in Lake Cocibolca.

“Thank you, Mama, I know what you're going to say: these things happen and it's unpredictable and he died fighting for something he believed in. But you don't know what he was thinking at the time, when he walked up to that fat man with his gun. You don't know if maybe, just in that moment, he wanted to die.” She shrugs her shoulders to wriggle free of my grip, then turns to look at me. “We'll never know. But I can't help thinking about it. Sometimes I wonder why I wasn't enough. And sometimes I wonder if I was too much. If he felt trapped by having a baby, someone he needed to put ahead of the greater good.”

Mariana shrugs again, a movement that should seem light and fluid, but she moves slowly as she starts walking across the porch, as if she's wading neck deep in the lake. Before she can go too far I grab her hand. “You can't possibly think that Allen would feel so trapped that he would do something drastic?”

“No.” She smiles again and this time I can tell she's genuinely amused instead of trying to make me feel better. Her smile should make me feel calmer, lighter, but it doesn't. “Allen may think of himself as a revolutionary, but he's just an artist, even if he's a pretty big one. He's not going to try to take any generals hostage or run toward any loaded guns.” She looks down at her free hand. No. At her stomach, which is behind her hand. “But I don't want him to do whatever the Allen equivalent is: run toward bottles of loaded scotch, or stop painting, or paint furiously, recklessly, so that he never has to wipe up the vomit or smell the poop or dab at the drool. I just don't want to make anyone feel trapped if I can help it. I've already done that. I know you'll swear this wasn't the case, but how could Papa not have felt stuck with a baby that interfered with his great adventure, all his good work? And you, too, Mama.”