The Summer We Came to Life (8 page)

“WE MET ON THE OPENING NIGHT OF STUDIO 54. April 26th, 1977,” Jesse began, and lit a cigarette. “I was twenty-one. Now, I don't know if I've told y'all this, but I used to be famous.”

Lynette groaned and everybody laughed. This part of the story we knew. Jesse reminded us at least once a month, and she always began with, “Now, I don't know if I've told y'all this—”

Jesse ignored the laughter. She was staring into the waves, looking as if she was trying to remember correctly, in a way that would be honest and complete. But how is history ever conveyed completely? It arrives in fleeting moments and images, and is recalled in just the same way.

Jesse had to go back to 1977, the year she met Panama's most eligible bachelor—Cesar Guerra.

 

“I was something. I was a model, yes, but also what I guess what you ladies would call an ‘It Girl.' I had thick wavy hair
for days, and eyes to make seasoned photographers swoon. And a body like—damn, I miss that body.” Jesse laughed loudly.

“I wore this shiny little silver number—all sequins and sparkle. It was a crazy night, even for New York in the seventies.” Jesse laughed again, her still thick hair shaking. “Twenty-one years old. But, of course, I'd been on my own since I was sixteen, when I was discovered.” Jesse waved her cigarette in the air. “That's why I've always encouraged you girls to get out there and have a little fun. My life was decided in a bar and a disco.”

 

At sixteen, Jesse was the prototypical wild child in Austin, Texas. She and her girlfriends snuck into bars and clubs—enchanting doormen, cowboys and businessmen alike. It was in one such bar she met Richie Gibbs, a photographer on assignment from New York City. Jesse saw her chance. The photographer never believed her fake ID for a minute, and to his credit, did no more than kiss her on the cheek on his way out. But Jesse's face was the first thing he thought of when the morning came, and still the week after, so he had her flown in to meet with the biggest modeling agency in the world. Jesse was in Paris by the next change of season, living in agency apartments spilling over with girls with giraffe legs. Jesse loved it, and rose to the top of the pack by way of her gray eyes and vibrant, erotic laugh. She graced magazine covers and catwalks, jet-setting between New York and Paris. She rarely visited her parents in Texas. Jesse Brighton had money to burn.

Suffice to say, at twenty-one, Jesse was a sensation. She was lithe and freckled, with shiny full hair and steel-colored, almond-shaped eyes. She moved through a room like a championship stallion—regal and fluid, partial to dramatic tosses of her mane. Jesse was not particularly tall for a model, but her spirit and her startling laugh allowed her to tower
over anyone around her. Jesse waited in no lines. She ate lobster three times a week. She donated fifty pairs of barely used high-heel shoes to charity three times a year. Jesse could arrive at a club alone at midnight and expect one hundred people to rush at her as she entered. She knew all the celebrities. She was worshipped by all the nobodies. She'd been around the world. Twice.

 

Jesse shook her head again, flicked ash into the sand. “I was living the life, I think you could say. Money and famous friends were my accessories of the late seventies. I was like 50 Cent, Sammy. Like a rap star. Cristal and—what do they say? Bling.”

Isabel rolled her eyes, but looked delighted, as Jesse commanded the spotlight. It was no secret she revered her mother, and gobbled up her stories of the glamorous single life.

“You know, Frank Sinatra didn't get in that night Studio 54 opened on West 54th. But me? By eleven, I was snort—” Jesse cleared her throat. “Ahem, I was smoking cigarettes in the basement with Brooke Shields and Cher. We were preparing to make our
second
grand entrance,” Jesse said with a theatrical swoop of her arm.

 

Jesse wore a silver sequin tank dress that threatened to expose her milk-white breasts along with her lean freckled thighs that showed from dress hem to knee-high boots.

Cesar Guerra sat at a table against the wall, meeting with business associates of his father, i.e. telling off-color jokes and buying martinis. He was still unaware, as yet, of Miss Jesse Brighton.

 

“Your father, sweetie, he was…as handsome as nature allows,” Jesse said, eliciting giggles from all the girls. Arshan and Cornell groaned. “Delicious, was the word I used to describe him to my girlfriends. Perfect, I believe, was their
assessment.” At this Jesse grew thoughtful. “He was Panamanian royalty, his family bigwigs in the ruling oligarchy. These Zonians, residents of the Canal Zone, had a major superiority complex. They fed their children peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sent them off to Harvard. Looking back, studying abroad is what must've shielded Cesar from his family's decline and unsavory business interests.” Jesse coughed. “Course, I didn't know anything about that at that time.”

 

At twenty-five, Cesar Guerra had big, thick black curls and clear, fair skin. Smoldering black eyes, ringed in dense lashes, lit up with his easy laughter. He was tall, muscled, smart and charming.

His international education had afforded him class and worldliness beyond his years. He debated American politics and French poetry and wine, all with the ease of one who had nothing to lose. Unfortunately, the Zonians lost everything in the 1968 military takeover by Torrijos, who made sweeping land and wealth reforms driven by his deep-seated hatred for the elitists.

 

“Cesar was a mama's boy in transition. He'd lived the pretty-boy intellectual life abroad, easily escaping the political upheaval in Panama. Just before he met me, well…it was time to pay the piper. He'd been brought back to Panama to start work with his father. Poor thing, he never stood a chance at staying good.” Jesse looked at Isabel pointedly. “But he was a good man, once, baby. A good kid, anyway.”

 

Cesar, like all Latin trust-fund children, was raised almost exclusively by his mother and nanny. Señora Guerra was pretty, quiet and young. The perfect rich man's wife. She filled her days with entertaining and charity events and afternoons at the Union Club. Like the other members of
the oligarchy, she believed they were
entitled
to the spoils. When the unbelievable happened, when the populists came to power, she was in unspoken agreement with her husband that they must preserve the lifestyle of the family at any cost. Arrogance, however, corrupts behavior in many ways, and it was not long before she was dutifully looking the other way at her husband's affairs, both business and pleasure. Señora Guerra wisely stopped reading the newspapers.

Cesar adored his mother, and understood the predicament of Panamanian society women from an early age. In fact, as early as ten, Cesar understood that manhood would bring him to side with his father. But Cesar felt sure he would never lose empathy for his mother and sisters. Once, a teenage Cesar home on holiday break comforted his mother when media scandals forced her into shuttered rooms in their Paitilla Point mansion. He left a daring message with the head butler at their vacation home in El Valle de Anton, where Alfredo Guerra brought all his mistresses. “Tell him that I hate him. That I will take care of my mother now, so he should never come back to Punta Paitilla.”

 

“Do you remember your grandfather, Isabel?” Jesse asked her daughter.

Isabel shook her head. She'd always told me she only had vague impressions of her father and grandparents, of dolls and sweets in a fancy house.

“Well, he was—he was something of a character. Dashing looks, impossibly white teeth. A smile that charmed and disarmed you for reasons you couldn't explain. His presence in a room was like the arrival of the Rolling Stones, everybody whispering and poking and tripping over themselves to serve. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's meet your daddy first, huh?” Jesse took a long gulp of her drink.

“Let's see. Ah, yes. All the rich and famous were smooshed down in the basement. I don't recall who rallied, probably
me, but we all got ready to reemerge as a group. When we waltzed back into the club, it was like something out of a movie. People parted and then swarmed around us. It was one of those moments that stick—the ones that move in slow motion with a soaring soundtrack like
Gone with the Wind.
Your soul just spills out in every direction, soaking up the sensation. Well, naturally, that was when Cesar caught my eye. He had this look. Where do they learn that look, huh? Some Latin lover handbook somewhere, I imagine. With plenty of your father's footnotes. Anyway, could've been the drugs, the booze, the lights. But time stood still when Cesar Guerra looked at me.” Jesse took another swallow and smiled to herself.

“So, of course, I pretended I hadn't noticed. I made a point of dancing through the crowd, kissing every celebrity on the lips. We played a little game that way. I showed him who he was dealing with, and he indulged me. I thought I was so smart, so clever. Forcing him to fall madly in love with me.” Jesse snorted. Then she lifted her chin. “He did, though, and it was real, I think,” she said to herself. Then, more firmly, she continued, “It was real. Cesar said he had never met anybody like me. And I imagine he'd done a pretty wide survey of the female species.”

“Well, there
isn't
anybody like you, Mom.”

“World wouldn't fit more than one,” Lynette said drily.

“Why, thank you, darlings,” Jesse said, blowing us kisses. “I never would have made it without the support of my fans!” Jesse laughed and I laughed, too.

“Okay, go on,” I prompted. “Did you guys do it that first night, or what?”

“None of your beeswax!” Jesse protested and then laughed. “It was the seventies. Of course we did it. In his penthouse hotel suite. I didn't wear clothes for three days.”

I gasped, pretending to be shocked.

“Oh hush. It wasn't just sex. He extended his stay and I
postponed Paris and we just lay in bed and told each other our whole damn life stories. And—whew!”

Jesse smacked a hand to her forehead. “Our stories could not have been more different. Quickly, I became his American Dream and he my exotic prince.”

Jesse chewed on her lip, pondered the thought. “On the fourth day, an angry all-Spanish phone call came from his father. Cesar left immediately. I holed myself up in the hotel and refused all calls. Cesar, with his two degrees in economics and business, had talked my ear off about saving his beloved Panama. Snapped me out of my glitz and glam bubble, I guess is what I'm sayin'.”

 

Cesar returned home to his fuming father. At Harvard, Cesar's head had been filled with the philosophies and hopes of his professors. He dreamed of modernizing Panama's economy, and of uplifting the poor. But for the last six months, Alfredo Guerra had been orchestrating his son's initiation into the family's affairs. Alfredo had quite a different plan for Cesar. The family's finances were in shambles. His son's delusions about helping the poor would have to wait. Family came first.

 

“Your father wasn't naive, exactly, honey. He'd seen enough to know his father was no saint. But he didn't quite understand the level of corruption or his father's complicity. Oh, who am I protecting? Your grandfather was a snake. A charming, gorgeous snake. Now, I know I am not lacking in self-confidence myself,” Jesse said, “but Alfredo Guerra had vanity, greed and sadism, with loads to spare.”

Jesse slapped her thigh. “Damn,” she said, “Getting ahead again. So, we had just—”

“Had wild passionate sex for four days?” Isabel prompted.

Cornell chuckled. “Yeah, I think we got it, Jesse.”

Jesse looked at Isabel instead of Cornell. “Oh, honey, I told
you, it was much more than sex. So much more. It was like the meeting of two blazing comets resulting in the creation of earth—”

Now Lynette made a gagging noise, but Isabel shot her a look that said not to interrupt. Arshan, for his part, let his eyes linger on Jesse, then looked away.

“I'd never felt anything like that before,” Jesse finished. She looked far off toward the sea. “I'm not sure it ever happens like that twice. Not once you know how bad it can get.”

The expression on everybody's faces quickly turned serious.

JESSE WAS BACK IN THE ENORMOUS BED IN CESAR'S hotel in 1977. She lay on her stomach, her head nestled into an impossibly fluffy pillow, and smiled at Cesar. He reached out his hand and gently fingered a stray curl from Jesse's hair. He tucked it behind her ear and traced her face with his finger—her arched eyebrows, the delicate bridge of her nose. He brushed his thumb across her lips. “I'm in love with you, Jesse Brighton.” Jesse blinked and giggled, started to protest. “No, wait,” Cesar said, stopping her. “I've waited a long time for this feeling. If you don't share it, please don't spoil it for me.” Jesse pulled the smile off her lips, and closed her eyes. She found that she had memorized his face. The number of hairs in his full brows, the diameter of his curls, and the laugh lines barely visible around his coal-black eyes. She loved that face. She loved the outrageous stories of his childhood and travels. She loved his impassioned talk of changing the world. She loved him.

“I love you, too,” Jesse said as she opened her eyes.

 

Jesse coughed raggedly with her hand over her mouth. She snapped her fingers and Isabel tossed her the pack of cigarettes. “Yeah, so, he came back to New York two weeks later and proposed. He flew my parents in for dinner, and then I packed and moved to Panama.”

“Wow, romantic!” I said.

“Your father let you go?” Cornell asked, indignant.

Jesse turned to Cornell. “I wasn't asking permission. I'd been on my own a long time, and it's not like my family had any room to give advice on marriage. My mother was the textbook definition of depression. She was in and out of hospitals my whole life. My father, he hired a nanny and—” Jesse looked away “—and had lots of affairs, I assume.”

Jesse looked down and realized she hadn't lit her cigarette. She flicked the lighter. “And, anyway, they were as dazzled by Cesar Guerra as I was. As everybody was.” The flame went out immediately in the ocean breeze.

I shivered and looked around. The air was thick and humid with the now familiar scent of jungle meeting saltwater. But it would cool off soon. “Should we take a break and think about food, you guys?”

The group turned to look at me, a spell broken. Isabel stretched and stood up to go inside. “Let's go change. I think it's about time I got out of this bikini. We'll have dinner on the porch?”

Lynette stood up next to her. “I'll start cooking.”

I patted her shoulder. “How 'bout me and Isabel cook this time?”

 

While the rest of the group splintered off, Isabel and I convened in the kitchen over piles of veggies—familiar ones. We had a long-standing routine when cooking together.

“I chop. You cook?” Isabel voiced the protocol.

“Yup. Chop for chop suey.”

“Nerd alert!”

“Takes one to know one,” I said, and handed her the carrots and celery. “So you really don't know these stories about your dad?”

“Do
you
know about the first time your parents had sex?” The fire in her eyes fizzled as she realized however little she knew about her parents' love story, I knew less about mine. “Look, my mom always talked about my father like just another crazy thing she did in her life. Just one of her passionate love affairs. Or her one oopsie misstep into the messy world of marriage.” Isabel pretended to laugh. “Can't say that anybody ever gave me a different impression.”

“If you ask, Jesse would know how to find him, I bet. You could call him.” It was something I'd asked my father a thousand times. He must know how to find my mother. I'd had no luck so far on the internet.

Isabel sighed. “He doesn't call
me
.” Isabel held out a celery stalk. “Let's mix some more Bloody Marys, yeah?”

I slid over the mix a little too hard and fast. That was exactly it. My mother certainly could've found
me.
“What's he like now, you think?”

“Who? My dad? Probably more like the way she described my grandfather.” Isabel's hands froze and she looked at me. “Look, I haven't told you much about my dad because there's just not much to tell. Listen to what my mom said. They had some crazy fling. My mom was a cokehead supermodel party girl. Cesar was rich and handsome. You do the math. Then, oops, they had me. Divorce. Move. I met you and you know the rest.”

I never knew when to quit. “Well, it sounds like it might be a little bit more complicated, is all I'm saying.”

“Well, it better fucking not be!” Isabel snapped, and dropped the knife, which clattered to the floor. “My mother spent my entire life treating men like accessories and extracurricular activities, and encouraging me to do the same.
Jesse Brighton thinks marriage is a sham and a sexist plot. Ask her.”

“Have you?”

“Fuck you,” Isabel said.

Silence. Neither of us moved. The frying pan startled to sizzle.

Isabel sighed. “Damn, I'm sorry. This is just weird, okay, hearing about my family like they're strangers. You're right. I never asked much beyond the standard-issue
funny-Jesse
answers.” Isabel took a bite of celery. “Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe everything was a lie.”