Never Too Real (21 page)

Chapter 21

A
s the family milled about the restaurant in groups of three or five, hugs, tears, and even laughs were exchanged at a rapid clip. Magda stared at her phone. She texted back and forth with Albita, asking how they all were doing, passing along small notes on the services—particularly, of course, the near-casket dive. They chuckled a bit, albeit sadly. Cat and Gabi had cabbed it to the airport straight from the cemetery, both needing to return to commitments at home—Cat, for potential work—while Luz had made a mad dash for the restroom upon arrival at the restaurant, her coffee-filled bladder unrelieved for too long. Magda said good-bye to Albita and her children then, stood alone.

“Señor, what kind of tequila do you have?” she snapped at a passing server who looked no more than eighteen.

“Oh, we’re not serving liquor for this event, uh . . . señora.” He appeared to shrink an inch as he took in Magda’s size, gender, expensive suit, and commanding voice.

“What else ya got?” She held his arm with only her fingers but didn’t look him in the eye.

“I think we have some white wine or beer?”

“Bring me the white.” She looked about to release him. “But in a regular glass, okay? Not a wineglass.”

After a quick look around her, Magda’s attention went back to her phone.

“Hey.”

Magda looked up. It was Inez, her sister closest to her in age. Inez was strikingly petite next to Magda. Another beautiful golden girl, but this one all woman. Tiny waist, “all tits and ass” as Magda had joked when they were young. Her hair hung in long, tangled blond dreads. She smelled of patchouli and she never wore a bra.
So, this one goes to school in Vermont, becomes a complete granola, almost never comes home, and I’m the one no one talks to?
Inez’s reason for not being seen much back home was a controlling, possibly abusive, and much-older husband no one cared for. Magda felt draped by a mutual cold blanket of lost time and sadness. They had been so close once. She missed Inez so much. Two family outcasts. Why didn’t Magda make more of an effort to see her?

“Oh, hey,
chica,
” Magda said.

They embraced, Inez’s dreadlocked head coming just to Magda’s shoulders.

“What time did you get in?” Magda asked.

“Just this morning.”

“Good. Where’s Dave?”

“Oh, he’s back home, ya know. Doesn’t feel so good.”

“Well, that’s too bad.”

“Señora?” The server had returned with a white mug filled three-quarters of the way with white wine.

“
Gracias!
” Magda said after a beat. She raised her mug, but the server had run away as if he had served contraband. Magda’s father was a big drinker. Maybe too big. Magda’s mother had initiated a no-alcohol rule just after Magda left for college, as she’d had enough of her husband’s drunken behavior, both inside and outside of the house. Magda tried to recall if this was tied to finding out about another mistress, a deal they struck to keep Ma from kicking him out of the house. Whatever.

“Oh, shoot. Where can I get one of those?” Inez breathed in the vapors of the Pinot Grigio. She too enjoyed throwing down a few. She also enjoyed smoking herb. However, any and all drugs at this party would need to be liquid.

“Oh, I’ll nab him again for you.” Scanning the crowd, Magda spotted Luz, cornered by a fifty-something male cousin. Cheesy playa. Magda couldn’t remember if the guy was from the New York end of the family or Miami. But he was bearing down on her friend, spreading as much silky talk as he could. Luz looked stony but amused. She could hold her own.

To the left, where Inez was looking, their father worked to extricate himself from a couple of old-timers.

“
Gracias, sí, sí, gracias . . .
” His head bobbed up and down as he took hands, kissed a couple of cheeks, then turned and ambled toward the front door.

“You should go talk to him,” Inez said in her laid-back way.

“Nah.” Magda shook her head and took a big glug of wine.

“C’mon. Be the bigger man.”

Magda’s eyes widened. Inez just smiled her big, sweet, earth-loving smile, radiating warmth and peace like a Buddhist monk. Her beatific face caused Magda to take a breath. And another. Fueled by their reconnection at the cemetery and the resulting memory of how close they had once been, she felt a pull toward her father. At this point, what did she have to lose?

“Right. You’re right.” Magda handed her nearly empty mug of wine to Inez. “Excuse me.”

She turned toward the door and surprised herself by rushing to reach her father before anyone else followed him out. Inez watched, smiled harder, then raised the mug to her lips and finished her sister’s drink.

Outside, Magda looked around but didn’t see her father. Her blood was pumping now. The anxiety of a child raced through her veins, her nerves.

“
Aquí
,” a husky voice called out.

Her father stood to her right, away from the windows of the restaurant and half-concealed by the small alleyway between it and the building next door. He was smoking a cigarette, something else banned by her mother probably thirty years earlier. He had probably taken it up again in secret once she got sick.

“Hey,
Papi
.” She walked toward him, feeling vulnerable. Shoulders hunched.

He offered her a drag.

She shrugged a bit, then took it. It had been a long while since she smoked a cigarette. She drew in too hard, probably out of nervousness, and started coughing. Her father took the cigarette back and chuckled.

“
Cuidate,
” he cautioned.

Magda coughed. “Yeah.” She coughed again, choked out, “It’s been a while.”

They stood in silence for a bit, watching some folks leaving the reception who were helping an older woman amble slowly to the parking lot. Magda saw her extended side of the family for what felt like once a century. No need to say good-bye.

“So,” Magda said. “Tia Cristina didn’t let us down.”

“
Ay,
no. She never does, eh?” Her father took a last drag, threw the butt on the ground, and stubbed it out with his expensive loafer. “Man, but
gracias a Dios
for Olga, though.”

“Oh, totally!”

“That woman could take down a linebacker.”

“Definitely, definitely.”

There was another pause, but it was not so much awkward as the sign of a shift. The gravel under their feet crunched as they both nervously shuffled their stance in a delicate dance of worry. Magda noticed out of the corner of her eye, between her own locks, the glint of sun in her father’s hair pomade.

“Your mother told me, you know.”

Magda flipped the veil of bangs out of her eyes. “Uh. Told you what?”

Her father stubbed the cigarette butt again and again. “That she’d been seeing you.”

“Oh.” Magda looked away.

“I know she’s got family everywhere, and your sister in Vermont, so I never questioned her trips. And you know, I was too preoccupied . . . with myself. My own things.”

Magda read this as code for another woman and lots of golf. She wasn’t sure where this was going—his tone was so matter-of-fact. But that changed abruptly. Head down, waiting for the next words from her father, Magda heard sobs. Her father was crying.

“
Papi?
”

He closed the space between them quickly and embraced her in a bear hug. He held on to her so tight that Magda lost her breath.

“Magdalena,
m’ija
. . .” He continued to sob. She’d never heard her father cry like this. It was the cry of the deepest pain. Existential pain. Magda had felt this pain herself the day she found out her mother had passed. It was something she wished on no one. She had stiffened at first, but now she pulled her arms free to hug him back. She rubbed his back, halfway to joining him in crying. She wouldn’t allow herself to do so, however, until she knew it was safe.

“
Papi?
”

“
M’ija,
” he said, his face nestled in Magda’s shoulder, “your mother tried for years to get me to accept you, to take you back. She told me that it wasn’t a choice, what you do and who you are . . . and I didn’t believe her.” He gathered himself a bit, pulled back but kept both hands on Magda’s shoulders after he wiped his face with his sleeve. “I didn’t believe her. And now she’s gone.”

“Yes, she’s gone.” Magda stared back at him.

“She told me, ‘Think of her as your only son.’” He paused. “Your successful only son and his children, your grandchildren.”

Magda nodded.

“But you’re not my son. You’re my daughter.”

Magda’s eyes instantly teared up, large drops building and falling, a soft river rolling down her tanned skin.

“Pa . . .”

“You’re my daughter!” he said loudly, with passion. They fell into an embrace with the energy of an exploding star. Decades fell to the wayside. It was like darkness retreating from a fresh lightbulb that had at last been turned on. Finally.

Inez had been watching them at an angle from the window. She brought her hands up to her face to wipe her own tears, and smiled.

Chapter 22

“U
gh. I dunno if I can.” Gabi balanced her cell phone between her cheek and her shoulder. For the to-do list: Buy an earpiece. She shuffled several bags between her hands to get comfortable as she worked to focus on wrapping up her schedule with her blessedly patient assistant.

“You sure, Gabi? Maybe a night out? It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, I know.” She dodged a taxi driving much too fast down a neighborhood street. Her walk home in Brooklyn was a solid ten minutes from the train, but it was such a pretty walk—trees, brownstones, a bit of quiet in the air—that she used it as me-time. Valuable. “But you know
nene
’s been having trouble and I just hate to not spend time with him in the evenings.” More like: I don’t want to leave him alone with his drinking, chronically depressed, resentful father with a short temper.

“Okay, I’ll shoot them a note.”

Gabi was one block away from home. She placed all the jangling bags onto her left hand, both palms now red and striped from their weight cutting into her skin, and hung up her phone. It was a weird time to be at home, but Gabi just had to take care of her taxes before Max’s school let out. She couldn’t forget to file again, like last year. A disaster.

Gabi managed the double locks and bags, then gently kicked a delivery box down the short hall to the main room. Her husband sat at his computer, just past the dining table. He barely gave her a glance.

“Hi, hon,” Gabi said warmly.

“Oh, hey.” She noted Bert’s lack of eye contact.

“How are you?”

He took a deep breath, as if harnessing enough energy to do the big work of paying attention to the wife who essentially supported them all.

“Good. Just workin’.”

“’Kay.”
Workin’ on what? Because it’s not like you’ve been bringing in much money,
she thought.

Gabi dropped the grocery bags in the kitchen and proceeded to put everything in its place in record time so she could get to pulling together paperwork for their accountant before their son had to be picked up. This was the double-edged sword of running your own business: the freedom to make your own hours, against the need for more hours to get everything done.

For a few minutes Gabi considered hugging her husband, maybe sitting on his lap to try and seduce him. But these thoughts remained what they were: fantasies. She had been turned down so often for so long, even after nearly two years of weekly couple’s therapy, that today she just couldn’t take the rejection.
I’m a good wife,
she told herself.
I’m a good wife.

“Gotta run down to the mailbox to see if this check came in,” her husband hollered from the other room.

Gabi now sat in her small home office around the corner, shuffling papers. She didn’t know why, but she felt compelled to see his face before he left. She rounded the corner with just enough time to see his back, on his way out the door.

“Okaaay!” she mock-yelled after him.

She looked over at his computer. Not the sharpest tech-tool in the shed, Bert had to be taught to use the touchpad Mac Gabi had given him for his birthday. He hadn’t even owned a cell phone when they met years prior. For the past few months, though, unlike years prior, he had been locking his phone and his computer. Now Gabi realized that the lock was on a timer and she had only seconds.

Her heart pounding in her throat, nearly choking her, Gabi sat down at his chair and did something she’d never done in their eight years together: read his e-mails. It only took ten seconds to find all she had hoped she wouldn’t find.

 

 

It was from a public relations girl Gabi actually had met once.

 

 

This one was a response to a Craigslist escort ad.

Bile rose in Gabi’s throat, gagging her further. She scrolled through e-mail after e-mail, down the rabbit hole of her husband’s lust. Her gut was a mix of repulsion and satisfaction. How could she not know that this was going on? She knew. She knew for at least a year, if not two. Gabi had done what she’d always advised her clients—and the public—to not do, ignore the signs. Don’t confront. Maintain the status quo.
Maybe he’ll snap out of it. Maybe he’ll love me again. I want my family together. Take a back seat, Self-Respect . . . But I didn’t know it was this bad.

After forwarding the most damaging examples of each transgression to her own e-mail address (
Gracias, Lord, for some sense.
), Gabi put everything back the way she’d found it and bolted from the chair to go to the bathroom to throw up. This was what happened in the movies, wasn’t it? Not in real life. Yet here she was, head in the porcelain, heaving. It was brief and she was relieved. Now she needed to make a call before he got back. Her fingers shook as she dialed.

“Cat? If I need you, can you come over tonight?”

After exchanging a few more words with her friend, Gabi hung up. A sob burst forth and the tears began, a deluge. She couldn’t even think. Her head was all sharp pain and silent wailing.

She had built a career on relationships, had built a brand devoted to preventing things like this from happening. And here she was, a stooge. Taken, by her own husband—her family. She had tried so hard to head this off. She had known, though. She’d known. She ticked off her own grocery list of signs as she wiped the sweat and tears from her face with a cold washcloth:

 

• There’s no more sex (
Well, two years of maybe once a month, which was serious torture because she was a sex machine.
)

• Locked computer/cell (
You knew it then, girl, you knew it.
)

• Changed habits (
He started back at the gym—you knew it then, too, sucka.
)

• Change in personality (
He’s been ungrateful to you and horrible to his own son, whom he thinks of as a mini-Gabi.
)

 

Gabi looked out the window—the window in the home she had bought with this man, the father of her child. He wouldn’t be looking out this window much longer. It was over. It needed to end.

“Hey, hon?” she heard him call from the foyer. “Woo-hoo! Check came in!” He let the door slam behind him.

It sounded to Gabi like the shatter of a door that would never open again.