Never Too Real (14 page)

“You know what,
you
killed her!
You
killed her!” Magda was now in her father’s face, pointing, nearly chest-bumping him. “You knew she was sick and you didn’t do anything! You couldn’t give a shit, could you, you selfish fuck!”

She was screaming now, her arms ready to hit something. Her father hollered in return, trying to double his size, raising his arms, shaking his head furiously.

“Stop it! Stop it, both of you!” Nica wedged herself between them. “Get out, Magda! Get out!”

A tense, sad-looking security officer stood nearby with a hand on his baton, ready to step in if needed. A burly nurse had his hands on his hips, scowling at these two adults airing soiled laundry in a building full of people with their own sorrows and pain.

“That’s enough!” he said. “You two need to get out
now.
”

They both stopped abruptly. Magda’s father centered himself, tugged at his dress shirt, and walked out—a prominent local doctor couldn’t afford too much drama in a hospital. He left his daughter wound-up and huffing. Magda paced, running her hands through the long top layers of her hair as if stroking her brain, her mind, to soothe it. The bear of a nurse approached Nica.

“Hon, she’s got to leave, mm-kay? Like now, or this officer will escort her out.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Nica patted his arm.

He raised an eyebrow skeptically as she walked toward Magda.

“You need to leave, Mags.” Her sister was relishing this moment a bit too much, Magda felt.

“Fine. Fine.”

But Nica wasn’t done. “Did you really think you could just come in here and blow things up like that? That mom didn’t hear the whole thing? The both of you are just awful.”

Magda paused, her face showing real care as it dawned on her what her mother had just heard. She felt culpable all of a sudden, nauseated. She had so easily let her anger get the best of her. Magda might even have given her father what he wanted, played into his hand. He liked seeing reactions to his actions, enjoyed moving people around like chess pieces, pulling strings. Feeling happy today? Let me remind you of that bad grade you got last week, or that second piece of cake you ate that will go right to your hips. Feeling bad today? Let me help you feel worse.

“I would be around if he let me and you know that,” Magda sighed.

“He’s never going to accept you and how you live,” Nica responded.

“Yeah, and I guess you all go along for the ride, right?”

Nica paused. She didn’t have a good answer. At least an answer that made her proud. Her favorite emotion.

“Magda, all Dad has is Mom. Yeah, he has the practice, the other women, but he’s just an old-fashioned macho and when she goes, he goes. You should have just kept your cool. You’re not the only one hurting here.” With that, Nica didn’t care to hear a retort, so she turned brusquely and headed back into their mother’s room.

Magda wanted to go in and apologize to her mother. And complain. And rage. But she knew that now was not the time. Magda was like a walking ghost of her younger self—she had scales of resentment and layers of bile to rid herself of before she could see her mother again. It wouldn’t all be gone in a day, but she could at least try to get a grip on it.

As she squinted to squeeze out the last tears, wiping them roughly away with her hands, she felt relieved to see at the end of the hall her nieces and nephews followed by their parents, all coming to see
Abuelita
. Magda got up off the hallway chair and headed in the other direction so the little ones who had barely, if ever, seen their other
tía
wouldn’t see her this way. With broad strides she worked to build distance between their sounds of wonder at being in a hospital and her internal gloom.

As Magda stepped into the elevator, she realized something for the first time: If she hated her father, then she hated parts of herself. Like his temper and his strident tendencies. His way of turning a blind eye to things he didn’t like or understand. His philandering. His drinking. When they fought in the hall, Magda realized that they must have looked like mirror images of each other, one just a few inches shorter and older. Mirror images.

There was a bar Magda liked down the road, at a hotel she knew all too well. She jingled her keys in her hand and thought:
Just one drink. And maybe one pretty lady. That’s all.

Chapter 14

“J
esus Christ, I needed this so bad.” Luz’s curls looked wilted, like thirsty hydrangeas. She reclined almost fully in the restaurant booth, her head tipped back for a few seconds while the lanky server brought her a generously filled wineglass.

Gabi took her in. She loved Luz dearly and deeply admired her chutzpah, not to mention her doting, involved husband. But both married mamas found themselves together tonight for an urgent infusion of sistah
amiga
support.

“Okay. First,
salud
. . .” Gabi began. Luz raised her eyebrows, curious as to what her friend could be toasting to at this moment. “. . . to family: new and old.”

“Ha!” Luz brightened. “
Salud
to that.”

Both swigged down their wine like water, comfortable enough together to follow their gulps with heads bowed as if in prayer. A “
Gracias a Dios
” for the dulling, soothing effects of this powerfully calming substance.

“I just don’t know, Gabs . . .” Luz started off. Following the revelation of Luz’s newfound sister and father, one of the first calls she made was to Gabi, the rock-solid therapist friend. Her steel-trap of a mouth helped, too. Luz wasn’t ready to share this news of her newly discovered convict father and his rather “urban” teenager, who was now her sister.

Gabi leaned in. “Tell me: What’s happened since yesterday?” She quickly changed her priorities. “But wait . . . first, first, and most importantly, how are you doing?”

“G, I absolutely don’t know how to feel. I haven’t done much but cry and rage like a banshee to poor Chris . . . and then fend off texts from my desperate brother who’s going nuts in this position.” Luz paused for another swig. “I’m beating myself up at being so, so angry at my parents, my mother, even my father! I mean, dad, dad-father . . . the man who raised me!” She threw her head into both hands and let out a moan.

“Hon.” Gabi put her right hand onto Luz’s left forearm. “It’s a lot to take in. A lot. Give yourself a bit of time. Anger is a very natural response to all this. Shit, it’s a LOT.”

“Is it, though? Is it a lot? Does it change anything?!” Luz’s azure eyes flared. “I’ve never been angry like this at my mother or my father, for anything,
annn-yyy-thing
.” She drew out the word with her fingertips in a gesture handed down from her mother. Then she leaned back and reined it in. “This completely on-fire, pissed-off feeling is so foreign to me, yet, it’s like . . . my life’s been a lie—who I am is a lie. My identity! I’m fucking pissed!”

“Hon, I hear you, I hear you. But please remember, you are the sum of a lifetime’s worth of experiences, and nothing, no one, can alter that. No one can change who you’ve been for over thirty years.”

“But it’s not like I’m starting off being the daughter of a gangster to winning the lotto in life and being the daughter of an Ivy League brother—it’s the opposite! It’s switched. I’m going backward.” Luz’s eyes shifted from lit by ire to heavy with hurt.

“Luzita. You are not going anywhere. What you’re describing, it’s textbook loss aversion. We hate to lose what we already have and you have something truly great in your family and your father—the one who raised you—coming from a very prominent and historic family that you’re proud of... Nuthin’ wrong with that. But they’re not lost. You’ve just added to the . . . uh . . . rainbow of your life’s story.” Gabi turned playful for a moment, joking about her own hippieness.

Luz rolled her eyes. “Yes, a fucking rainbow! So what am I now? A full-blooded Dominican with no African-American legacy—I mean, you know Dominicans don’t want to admit they’re black, right?”

“Yeah, we share that one.”

As their salads arrived and they oohed and aahed in thanks at the generous amounts of pancetta on their frisée, they continued to talk it through and Luz started to come down off her tight perch, the wine and soothing pork fat taking their effect. Gabi kept her advice to a minimum, instead letting Luz process and release as much as possible before she stepped in.

“Gabs, I don’t know who to be mad at first . . . I mean, everyone lied, my mother, my father—dad—but, but, besides the lying, I don’t know what I’m really angry about.”

“Well, what are you angry about?”

Luz set her fork down. “I’m scared.”

“Scared.”

“Yeah, really scared.” Luz’s eyes started to well up.

“Can you tell me more about that?”

“Gabs . . .” Luz was very tentative. “I can tell you this because you won’t judge me, right?”

“No, Luz. I don’t judge you.”

Luz sighed. “I’ve spent my whole life being able to enjoy a very cushy life. An admittedly lucky life. I haven’t been a statistic—the huge numbers of us who have family in jail, fathers incarcerated, brothers—and now I’ve not only joined those rolls, but I have a surly, hip-hop teen who needs a mom, and a dad, and . . . and she’s my sister. When it comes to my life, my family’s life, she might as well have been dropped from Mars.... Don’t judge me.”

“Hon, not happening,” Gabi assured Luz. “I get it. I get it a lot.” Luz mentioning her fear of being a statistic resonated with Gabi. She knew that at some level, she rushed into marriage because she heard her biological clock ticking and didn’t want to be another unmarried Latina, another single mother of color.
Shame on me,
she thought. So who was she to judge when it came to being embarrassed about becoming, or being, the so-called underclass of their ethnicity? And here she was, a relationship expert, a professional, possibly heading toward being another stat, a divorced parent. Maybe even a single parent.

“Luz, I don’t want you to deny those feelings in the slightest, but . . . but here’s a big opportunity. You mention privilege, and luck. Think: For the luck of your birth you are not or were not your sister. You got the big roll of the dice. She didn’t.”

“It could have been me.”

“Yes, girl. It could have been you. And that’s for all of us, frankly, but wow, for you, it’s a very real and very close alternate universe of sorts.”

Luz gulped as her mind’s eye imagined it for a moment. “Too close.”

“But, so, here’s the rub. What if in many ways this isn’t so much about you, but about that girl. Your sister.”

“Huh?”

“Your ‘alternate’ universes are meeting and meeting for a reason. Maybe for her reason just as much as yours. Imagine, you’re giving her the opposite of loss really. She can have a life now full of gains. Sure, she’s lost her mother and even lost her father for a very long time, just as you’ve lost some ideas of who you are. And you both can mourn that, and you will.” Gabi wiped errant salad dressing from her mouth. Luz had barely moved while she spoke and didn’t eat another bite.

“But think, Luz, your loss is her gain. And who’s to say that that’s not the universe’s plan for her and for you—for you to change someone’s life on such an elemental level, she’s won the lotto.”

“Yeah, she did . . . but, but . . .”

“Yeah, I know, your sitch is a bit opposite of lotto, but I think this girl will be the biggest gift to your family.”

Luz raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“You’re big on legacy, right?” Luz nodded in response. “Your father has an amazing legacy, especially as a black man.”

“True dat.”

“Well, as Latinas, particularly Latinas like us, of black descent, we have our own legacy—it’s not as rosy or pretty or quote-unquote ‘good,’ but it is what it is and your children and family will now see how most people of their shade and heritage live. Shoot, you’re like a bridge, girl!”

Luz couldn’t help but smile. She loved civil rights references. “Okay, I get it.”

“See it through her eyes for a second—you’re the grown-up!”

“Okay, yes, feeling a bit better now. The anger, falling aside a bit . . .”

“That’s my girl.” Gabi winked.

As they talked for another hour, Luz processing and Gabi guiding, Luz began to notice the sag in Gabi’s shoulders. Gabi, the brilliant boho, was the sprightly one, bubbly, energetic, a light. But Luz, Cat, and Magda had all felt and noted to each other that Gabi seemed more and more stressed and rankled at her husband lately.

“G? What’s going on with Bert?”

“Ya know. I dunno.” It was Gabi’s turn to put her fork down, licked clean of her favorite panna cotta, and smooth her napkin. She thought and took a last swig of her drink. “I mean, I do know, but . . .”

“G?”

“Luzita, I’m like a doctor who smokes. I feel like the lawyer who breaks the law, the cardiologist with a fast-food habit.”

“Wait—what do you mean?”

“I’m really concerned about Bert. About us. But see, I’m the therapist—I should be able to fix this. To just . . . fix it. But I don’t know if I can.”

“But you guys seem so happy, right?” Luz was genuinely concerned, yet slightly insecure about what to say. Gabi was a type-A gal who never asked for help. She was the helper, not the helpee. Talking candidly about their husbands, without the armor of neck-rolling and cliché husband-bitching, was a new thing for her.

Gabi didn’t look up from her plate as she absent-mindedly rolled, then unrolled her napkin. “He’s drinking now every day—every single day—and a lot. Whiskey. And it’s getting to be too much for me to run everything and support the household . . . I mean, it’s gotten to the point that I don’t want to leave Maximo at home alone with him at night because they get into nasty rows, and when he’s drunk, he’s not good. Just not good.”

“Oh, Gab-sters.” Luz was deflated and taken aback. “Is he cheating?”

“Probably. I dunno. I’m blocking it all out.”

Both women sighed and assessed the weight of what had just been revealed. The packaging of the weight was different, but the mass, strangely the same.

“Have you confronted him about all this, or, how much?”

“We’ve been in weekly therapy for a year, but seriously, this woman is not doing a thing. She’s too soft on him, and I feel like the nagging wife—she’s completely transferring something, someone to him of her own. There is not enough digging, too little analysis, and no demanding on her part that anyone take responsibility for what they’ve done.”

Luz was nearly done with her plate. “Well, now, that just won’t do.” She shook her head. “Is it hard to change therapists because you know so many people in the business?”

“Nah, sort of. But we’re all in therapy; it’s just a matter of finding one who works and is discreet. I’m giving her another week or two and then I’ll look for someone else.”

“Hmmm.” Luz was somewhat at a loss. When a friend shifts into an unfamiliar place and you’re excelling in that place, it can get awkward to be the blessed one. Luz may have her own current problems but thankfully, not in the marital area.

“How’s Chris handling all your news?” Gabi shifted her attention back to Luz.

“Ya know, he’s just the best. Seriously, I know I hit the jackpot in the husband department, but let’s just say it’s all gonna balance out as I hit the lotto with fathers.” Luz shifted into a game-show voice: “You’ve just won a
brand
. . .
new
. . .
father!
Your father comes with a home in the woods, also known as prisoooon! And if that isn’t enough, you’ve also won yourself a brand . . . new . . . juvenile delinquent sis-TAAAH!”

Gabi laughed. She could always count on Luz to sauce things up just right. “Oh, girl, you too much . . . But yes, you won the jackpot with the hubby.”

“Gabs, will you let me know if you and Maximo need a break?”

Gabi smiled and nodded as their glasses were refilled.

“Yeah.”

“No, really. Just because I have a new daddy don’t mean I don’t still get use of the old one and all he comes with, including property!” Luz paused, mentioning her father’s wonderful nesting and hosting skills, along with the beautiful Massachusetts estate. The thought of space led Luz to ask about the elephant she could sense in the corner of the room. “Would you leave him?”

Gabi exhaled. She gazed out the window, remembering herself in this same spot, the same restaurant a decade ago. Just another postdoc writer stretching her dollars to splurge on the fancy hot spot once in a while. What a different person she had been back then. Or was she just the same and life had changed around her?

“I don’t want to be a single mother. I don’t want to be a statistic, a stereotype. But I also don’t want to be
una cabrona
. I’ve been nothing but faithful, and I’ve had my own chances, ya know!”

“Umm, hmmm, I know!” Luz was remembering the night at one of Gabi’s book parties where a famous documentary filmmaker sidled right up to Gabi, asking when they could get together, sending her text messages inquiring when they could dine alone. But Gabi was just too good for that. She shut that man down. Now she was thinking that maybe she shouldn’t have.

“I just love the idea of family too much—fidelity, loyalty. I hold on to that ideal, really. But at the same time, after all the work I’ve done to give him, us, a certain kind of life . . . I’ve given him so many gifts to try to win him back.
Ay, Dios,
I can’t even think of the money I’ve spent. Damn, hon, I really thought this was the one.”

“Well, he was the one to give you Maximo! So, okay, now it’s my turn to tell you to not be so hard on yourself.”

“But, Luz, how would it affect my business to divorce, to have my marriage fail?”

Luz’s eyebrows raised as she recognized in Gabi something that all the friends shared: fear of failure, period.

“Listen, don’t you think you owe it to yourself to be happy—or even better, to be respected, to show Max as a man how to be respected and be treated with pride?”

“Sure, but . . .”

“Nah, no buts.” Luz waved her fork in the air. “You’ve told me yourself that you can’t live your life for other people. It’s gotta be about you and that beautiful boy of yours. If it can’t be or won’t be about loyalty and wanting to keep your family together for the sake of togetherness, then you can make it about you and Max—making sure that you and Max are treated with the respect and love you deserve.”