The Ladies of Managua (33 page)

“Never, Mariana,” I whisper. “I never felt trapped. Just torn.” Maybe I shouldn't have said that last part, but we're being honest with each other now. And I want her to know it's normal: she'll feel torn, too, between her child and everything else she loves. I want to tell her that this dilemma is a gift, an embarrassment of riches. But I also know it's going to be hard, maybe the hardest thing she'll do, so I stay quiet. I don't want to scare her or upset her, I just want to reassure her. But I'm not very good at doing that, so it may be safer to say nothing at all.

She's kept her hand in mine this whole time, and now she tightens her grip and steps forward to hug me. This sweet and unexpected embrace is more than I let myself wish for, normally, but now that I'm in her arms, I don't feel comforted, just hot and short of breath. I pat her on the back and break the hold.

“I'm going to lie down a little before dinner.” Mariana starts walking to the door, but before she enters the cabin she turns to say, “Thanks for being excited, Mama. I'm glad you know.”

I think I smile at her. Maybe I even say something. But I don't follow her inside. Instead, I sit in the chair she just left, which is still warm from her body.

I'd never realized until now how little she knows. How much she's invented to make up for that lack of information about her father's death. But I know that I can't let her live in her own imagination anymore. It was her I was trying to protect, not me. It was always her, I promise. And me a little, too. But I can't protect either of us anymore.

The sun is long gone and the world has deepened from pink to light blue to navy. And I will sit here, rocking, until everything around me is black. That's one of the advantages of an island without electricity: it's much easier to hide, even from yourself.

But soon Mariana will wake up, and we'll go to the dining room to eat. And then we'll sleep and sometime tomorrow after breakfast, we'll sail back to San Carlos, where a driver from the office will meet us to take us to Managua. It should all be lovely, this mother-daughter road trip. Except for the fact that at some point I'm going to have to do what I've put off for too long. What I hoped I might be able to get away with avoiding forever. I'm going to have to tell Mariana what only one other living person knows: that I'm the one who killed her father.

 

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Maria

On the bedside table, there's a balsa-wood angel, painted white with blue flowers trailing down its gown. The hotel is full of these decorations, showcasing the handicraft of the island; even the chain you pull to flush the toilet has a wooden turtle at the end. It's like living in a children's book.

Maybe I will name the baby Marisol, for Solentiname. But that sounds too much like my name and she deserves her own. Or he, I suppose. Maybe if it's a boy I can call him Ernesto and he can claim Ernesto Cardenal as his spiritual father, and live in a world as vibrant and lush as this archipelago. I've actually teared up at the thought; at least it's dark, so Madre can't see me.

It's the hormones. Oh, Wooden Bedside Angel, let it be the hormones! Because if they're not responsible for the shifts in my mood then I am truly going insane. In New York my overriding emotion was anxiety—a ferocious need to be over this precarious stage in my life, to know what happens next. I told myself that whatever happened, I could deal with it; it was the not knowing that made things seem so vast, so overwhelming. I tried to prepare myself to imagine all potential scenarios. Me in a studio apartment with a baby sleeping in a Moses basket, a baby Allen never sees. Me and Allen, hand in hand at his mother's house in the Berkshires, watching a toddler run through the wildflowers. Me acting as godmother to Beth's second child, the baby they've adopted and love with more stability and security than I could ever offer. Me, without Allen, without a baby, traveling to Switzerland for the first Art Basel that will show my work, trying to keep from doing the math to figure out how old my child would have been at this point.

By the time I got to Nicaragua, I was so angry there was no room for anxiety anymore. I'm starting to think it's myself I was most mad at it, for adding more stress and drama to my overly dramatic family at such a difficult time. But it was easier to believe I was angry with everyone else. I was furious at my mother for not being the kind of mom Beth's was, for not giving me a model of a working mother that seemed positive or even feasible. The fact that I always blamed her for abandoning me when I wanted her to stay made it that much harder to decide what to do with my own child, especially since I was considering abandoning this baby with much more finality than Madre ever did, by giving it up for adoption. Or not having it at all.

I was also mad at Abuelo, for dying and taking away the one stable male presence in my life, and erasing the possibility of my imagined life in Nicaragua, with him teaching the baby to ride a bike or play baseball. The truth is, even if Abuelo had lived, that scenario was unlikely. I couldn't really see myself dropping my career and moving to Nicaragua to live off my mother. And I wasn't about to follow Madre's example by staying in New York and sending my baby to Nicaragua to be raised by great-grandparents. They'd already done more than their fair share by raising me, and at their age, they wouldn't have had the energy to bring up another child. Still, I had thought, perhaps if I could move to Miami, to open a gallery in Wynwood and have my baby grow up near Beth and her kids, maybe then Abuelo and my Bela would come to spend six months of the year with us, and he and I could take the kid for watermelon juice and bike rides on weekends and my Bela could enjoy her great-grandchild in the glorious anonymity of a big, American city without worrying about what all her Nicaraguan lady friends would say about the poor little bastard, how the whispers would boil over the minute she walked out of Mass on Sundays.

With Abuelo gone, that compromise world is lost, too. And even though it's crazy and selfish and narcissistic, I've felt as mad at him as I have sad about his loss. Just telling my Bela would have been easier with him here to remind her that it doesn't matter what other people think, what matters is that you do what you know is right. He would have been surprised to learn I was pregnant, of course. And disappointed. But he was a man who absorbed the shocks life threw his way and tried to make the best of them without complaining, whether it was rebuilding his life outside his beloved country to keep his family safe, or parenting another child long after retirement age. Abuelo would have taken a deep breath, stared down at the tiled floor, and then looked up and said something that made me feel everything would be okay. Something like, “Every baby is a blessing.”

In the end, it was Madre who suggested that this baby could be a good thing. And when she did, I felt more than relief. I felt joy. I had made her happy. And hope, that maybe I can make myself happy, and this baby, too.

I shouldn't be so surprised that it was Madre who made me feel better. She is Abuelo's daughter, after all. She's great under pressure: calm, and clear-thinking. But ever since I arrived in Nicaragua, I've slipped back into the way I used to see Madre when I was a hurt, hormonal teenager. It's immature, and so unfair, but from the minute I spotted her staring at her iPhone in the airport in Managua, I felt the old irritation rise up in me. If I had been able to see her with an open mind, if I had thought to confide in her from the beginning, maybe I wouldn't have been so eaten alive with my own fear and anger that I felt the need to flee from everyone I love.

Including, of course, Allen. Has he come to rescind the proposal, having spoken to his children? Or was he so shocked, and his pride so hurt, when I wasn't delighted with his grudging offer of marriage, that he had to rush to my side to lock this down?

I know, I know it's possible that he's just worried about me, that he's come to support me. He knows how much I loved Abuelo, how much I still do. And until now Allen was the one person who knew about the baby, knew that my future, and my life, has never been less certain. I like certainty. I'm the planner. I make the reservations, I book the hotels, I arrange the dinners with friends. Allen shows up and sees what happens. But when I saw him standing there in the funeral home, I knew things were different now, that he had a plan and I was the one just crossing my fingers. And I knew I had to get far away from him before his own easy confidence took over and I ended up floating along in the current of his desires, letting myself get washed into a life that is his creation, where I'm just an acolyte to the Artist and, if he so desires, the Baby, and what's left of me swirls away down some cosmic drain.

In the end it wasn't Allen or the storybook setting of Solentiname that made me decide I'm going to raise this baby somehow. It wasn't even Madre. It was Clara Posada. I was looking at her husband's paintings, and her daughters' work, and her granddaughter's, and at her own unexpected canvases. And I found myself thinking, I wonder what my baby's paintings will look like.

It wasn't a decision even, but more of an epiphany. I had already decided. I'm still not sure it's the right thing. It would be kinder, more sensible, maybe, to arrange a private adoption with Beth, to magically provide the sibling she's longing to give to Olivia, and at the same time to give my child a life free from my neuroses, a life with a father whom I already know is giving and loving and ready to be there always, so eager to raise children, as opposed to willing to do it again, if he's forced to, because he feels like he should. I didn't mention this plan to Beth; I didn't want to get her hopes up. I didn't tell her about the pregnancy at all, didn't tell anyone except Allen. And I hadn't gotten around to bringing up the idea of adoption to Allen yet; I thought I should wait until we had a chance to discuss things further, to come to an agreement together—or a rupture that would make it clear this baby's future was mine to decide alone. But when I saw the Posadas' paintings all lined up, so similar to each other and yet distinct enough to be immediately identifiable, I knew I was going to keep this baby. When Madre said “It's not really my business,” and I thought she was referring to the pregnancy, it just confirmed what I'd already decided looking at the Posadas' artwork: that everyone else—Allen, Madre, Bela—is a supporting character in this situation; I'll just have to see where they fit in. All I'm sure of right now is that the baby is going to grow up with me.

I know that's simplistic. I know I'll have to figure out how to support this child and where to raise her. Or him. I know I'll be exploding some lives in the process. Allen's daughter will be mortified and his ex-wife will be livid and I can't even imagine how my Bela will react without Abuelo to calm her down, to make her realize that the gossip of the chirping ladies in her tiny world doesn't matter as much as she thinks it does.

Since yesterday at the Posadas', my mood has been swinging wildly between relief at having decided, mixed with strange surges of joy and a weird urge to run—me! Running!—and a violent desire to punch something or someone, to fight anyone who doesn't agree with my decision to keep the baby. I was convinced that once Madre found out, she would want me to give up the baby and get on with my life, to finally do something important like she does every day. She's always dropping suggestions that I should come run an orphanage or at least develop a project that teaches art to street children, something that will make me move back and help her rebuild Nicaragua. It seemed only natural that she would want me to put the interests of all of Nicaragua's children ahead of a selfish desire to manage my own life as I pleased, to raise my own child; that's what she did with me, after all.

It never occurred to me that Madre would be happy, thrilled, even, for me and the baby. I know it's narcissistic and petty to feel sibling rivalry with all of humanity, with an entire nation, but I'll admit it: it felt so good to know that Madre was thinking of just me tonight. Me and the baby. When I saw her face on the porch, the way it softened and smoothed and glowed, I knew I was watching her in a moment of uncomplicated joy. I don't think I've ever seen her look that way before. Madre's joy was contagious; seeing it infected me with the belief that everything is going to work out, somehow.

Now I've lost all desire to fight, or to run, I'm just tired, so tired. I know I should call Allen and tell him we can talk tomorrow, in person, then I should figure out what it is that I want to do with him, with the baby, with all of our lives, and present that scenario to him as a fact, not an option.

That's what I should do. But I'm not going to. Because all I want to do is sleep for a few hours and then wake up, eat something, and sleep some more. I want to sleep for hours before I think about anything rational or logical, before I start wondering if my mother's unconditional joy will last or if she'll start thinking of plans to mold me into the kind of mother she was; if nurture is destiny and I am doomed to raise a child without a father, like she did; and if my baby will judge me as harshly as I have her.

Just for this evening—no, all the way until tomorrow morning—I want to forget about all the things that I lack: a father of my own, a father for my child. I want to concentrate instead on what I have: a brief, divinely sleepy moment of peace.

I know it's a hormone-borne illusion, a chemically induced calm. But I'm going to curl up in it and try to pretend that it's real, and not just cosmic payback for the nausea and the fatigue and the painfully swollen breasts. I'm going to stare at this wooden picture-book angel until my eyes drift shut and I fall asleep to the sound of my mother breathing in the next bed, and hope that when I drift off, I'll dream of a life in which this feeling can last.

 

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