The Aguero Sisters (9 page)

“Do you think we can keep anything we love, Reina?” José Luís demanded.

When Dulcita was four years old, Réina heard that her beloved had drowned off the Isle of Pines, learning to swim. It was then that she gave their daughter his last name: Fuerte.

Reina knows that Dulcita resents her father, the veneration he still receives as a Hero of the Revolution. As her daughter grew older, his picture stared back at her from her history books, his slogans were extolled while she endlessly harvested lemons or yams. All Dulcita's life, it was José Luís Fuerte this, José Luís Fuerte that, until it made her ill.

If he was so great, why didn't he ever see me?
Dulcita was six years old when she asked Reina this. They were on a train headed for Matanzas, to the first of Dulcita's many boarding schools (she was kicked out of eleven altogether). Reina tried to explain to her daughter the nature of longing, the nervous pressure in the heart that never wanes. How could she tell her that José Luís simply hadn't wanted children, that it was nothing personal against Dulcita herself? Finally, Reina told her daughter that she was born of a grand passion, that at one time, nothing had mattered to Reina but her lover's face.

When he died, Reina knew somehow that José Luís had chosen it. Death, she is certain, begins from within. It
doesn't wait onstage like a retired general, eager for the podium, but overcomes a body cell by cell. For a few people, this happens long before the accidents and wrinkles, long before the conjugations of regret.

Reina settles down
next to Pepín and closes her eyes. Voices gather in her head, scattering senseless codes. Since the burning atop the mahogany tree, voices come to Reina late at night, unfettered by logic, utterly imprecise.
The stars have died, murdered in their nests. Yours are the creased lies of solitude
, Oye, mi hijita,
patience condemns
. Sometimes, like tonight, they creak out a chorus or two of the national anthem:

Sleepless and adrift in the dark, Reina circles and soars over the decades of her life, much like the bats and owls her father once so assiduously studied. She hisses and creaks and scolds herself for what she sees, for what she might have changed, for what she cannot. She avoids the image of her dead mother in the funeral home, which appears as something dangerous and blindingly hot far below, and averts her eyes as if from the direct rays of the sun. Is it for this that she's remained so long conscious?

When she opens her eyes, the voices and images recede. She is thirsty again. Reina drinks water straight from a Mexican pitcher Pepín brought back from a trip to Tampico, then sucks on the last lumps of ice. She paces the chilled marble floor in her bare feet. La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre has definitely failed her. The rooster flew off with some curse. Pepín insists that the powder he bought from
that
bruja
, La Sequita, saved Reina's life. Perhaps he is right, but for what?

Reina reaches in the bottom drawer of her father's desk and pulls out his passport, carefully stored in a wax-paper envelope. It was issued to him in 1948, the spring before her mother died. Reina examines the photograph, the flash-frozen expression. Papá was forty-three when the picture was taken, a sturdy man with brilliantined hair unfashionably parted in the center.

A faint blue permit from the United States is stamped on the first page. Reina vaguely recalls a trip he and Mami were planning to the deserts of America. But she can't recall why it was they never went. The succeeding pages of Papá's passport are blank. It seems to Reina that this passport, filed away for years with her father's other important documents, tells the truth of their lives as nothing else does.

Reina wonders, too, whatever happened to the little bone her mother used to carry in a red flannel pouch at her waist. Mami would let her touch the bone sometimes, let her rub a finger against the mushroomy knot at one end. Reina never learned where the bone came from or why her mother kept it.

In the closet, Reina unearths Papá's twelve-gauge shotgun, in its velvet-lined case. She removes it from its cradle and holds it tight against her shoulder. Then she aims the gun at various targets in the room: the
periquito
her father had shot in a virgin forest near Guantánamo; the opaque globe of streetlight burning just outside her window; Pepín's oblong face, heavy with sleep.

There is a portrait of her mother on the desk. She is much younger than Reina is now, with round cheeks that end in a jutting little chin. Mami's hair is loose and wavy and falls past her shoulders, past her smooth white throat. It
seems to Reina that her mother is always calling to her from this photograph, whispering her name.

Constancia grew to look remarkably like their mother after her death. She seemed to absorb Mami's erratic vigor, the spidery movements of her wrists. Even her inflection changed, from a nasal steadiness to the halting, feathery music of Mami's voice. Reina remembers how at the funeral, Constancia frightened all the mourners with this spectral impression. Reina wasn't scared, though. After never knowing her sister, she longed only to love her. Of course, Constancia wouldn't allow it. A week later, her sister went back to looking like herself.

Reina replaces the gun in its case and carries it downstairs. Outside, the wind is sharp, but she doesn't feel its sting. It seems as if she, like the gun, is trapped in black velvet. She walks rapidly to the Avenida de los Presidentes, then turns onto La Rampa. Not a soul anywhere. She passes the white-domed Coppèlia ice cream parlor and the harsh lights of the Habana Libre Hotel. A thumping music drifts down from its rooftop bar, the bar where Dulcita met the Spaniard, but Reina doesn't hear it. She passes ministries and travel agencies, restaurants, cabarets, and movie houses, all closed.

When she reaches the seawall of the Malecón, she stops. The air is rich with salt, and she swallows it hungrily. Reina feels as if the air is filling her heart, expanding it, giving it courage. A block away, a fisherman patiently casts his line, but Reina pays him no mind. Slowly, she steps back from the seawall and, with all the force she can muster, hurls the twelve-gauge shotgun far into the starless night.

T
he evening gowns
flaunt their hothouse colors, as if forced to bloom in artificial light. Jades and saffrons, vermilions, glamorous blacks. The women inside them turn and hesitate, rustling their skirts with a deafening allure. The men wear white guayaberas with stoles of discreet embroidery. Their skin has absorbed the sun their wives take pains to avoid. It is Tropical Night at the club on the bay, and the orchestra plays a cha-cha-chá so hot it nearly scorches the pork.

Constancia pulls her husband to the dance floor. He is diminutive, like her, and she is dressed in white, like him. Together they look like a first communion date. Heberto is a good dancer, but often reluctant. Constancia is not, but excessively enthusiastic. She lurches too far to the right on a turn, but Heberto reels her in with a practiced air. Then he steadies her with a palm to the small of her back and leads her across the room.

Heberto's chest glows through the front of his linen guayabera like a wet forest. He moves gingerly, still bruised from the pounding Constancia gave him in the back of the Cadillac.

“
Carajo
, you almost destroyed me,” he accuses his wife without warning, rubbing his solar plexus. Heberto maintains that he doesn't remember what happened to him before Constancia found him tied up and unconscious in the yacht club warehouse.

“
Por favor
, Heberto,” Constancia counters dismissively. “You were already half dead. You're lucky I got there in time.”

According to Gonzalo Cruz, the midnight assault on Heberto was executed by a fanatical exile group that got wind of his selling contraband Cuban cigars in New York. Of course, Constancia thinks, they must have sent some Latin Mata Hari to do the job. How else would Heberto end up stark naked in her car?

Constancia assumes that Heberto and Gonzalo know more than they claim, but how can she prove it? She mistrusts the brothers' growing chumminess, their endless, rum-fueled tête-à-têtes. Look where it's gotten Heberto in only two months!

The trumpets and congas call and respond. Soon Constancia and Heberto are back on the dance floor. His hips take in the extra measure of rhythm. Hers remain a quarter beat behind. Constancia leans forward and presses her mouth over her husband's, tastes the blackness inside. She wonders at that moment if all creatures face their doom opposite men.

Constancia wants to tell Heberto how the methods of ornithologists have changed since her father's day. That instead of guns they string up nets in the jungles now, stare at the birds face-to-face. Then they press their thumbs hard
on the exotic birds' breasts to stop the dainty motors of their hearts.

“You don't need to die yet,” Constancia says instead, more softly than she intended. Her own chest aches with too much exhaled air. “
No te vayas, mi cielo
.”

The swell of a new mambo takes hold of the room. A woman dancing alone in an atomic-red dress bumps up against. Heberto. She's at least twenty years younger than anyone there. Everywhere she moves, the dancers lose their step. Heberto stops in mid-turn, stares helplessly in her direction. Then he faces Constancia, the anger spreading unexpectedly from his mouth. “I won't loiter around here like a bum!” he shouts. Then he swivels into step again, an orchestral extension, and dips Constancia clear to the floor.

Heberto is leaving on Tuesday. Constancia blames Gonzalo for this. She knows firsthand how persuasive a salesman her ex-husband can be. Thirty-five years ago, Gonzalo came courting her, ferocious with dreams. He cut open a vein in his leg to impress her, brought her a wreath of dead bees. He said:
Mi vida, te lo juro
, I will know what you need.

Constancia considered him a hazard, like languor or sunstroke, and resisted his contagion. But it only drove him toward her all the more. The day Gonzalo took her hand, he left a live stain. It colonized her arm, overpowered her heart. Constancia and he shattered all language their first months together. Then Gonzalo had nothing left to say.

Heberto had joined Gonzalo's underground exile group, La Brigada Caimán, shortly before the attack in the pink Cadillac. The organization takes credit for every plot and bomb against suspected Communists, whether it's responsible for the violence or not. Gonzalo boasts that La Brigada Caimán stages military rehearsals in the Everglades
in preparation for a final takeover of Cuba. The big invasion, he hints, could occur this very summer.

Constancia can tell that her husband is overcome with a sickness of possibility, with the promising grandeur of a quasi-historical calling. Already he's bought brand-new guerrilla fatigues and a hunter's knife for his utility belt. How could she have predicted that Gonzalo's crude appeals would so stir Heberto? She considered her husband a strict
comerciante
, with little use for leisure or politics. In fact, he never seemed to enjoy anything unless there was a likely, definable yield.

“Don't be ridiculous, Heberto,” Constancia sniffs as they wait their turn at the banquet table. “There's nothing left to inherit in Cuba, nothing left to divide.”

Her husband loads his plate with hunks of
lechón asado, arroz con frijoles
, avocado salad, and
yuca
in garlic sauce. Then he serves himself a huge portion of flan for dessert.

Constancia thinks of how self-delusion is integral to even the most senseless endeavors by men. “We moved to Miami so you could relax!” she insists. Instantly, she realizes it's the wrong thing to say.

Heberto refuses to tell Constancia where he's going, but he expects her to pack for him just the same. Constancia shrank his underwear too tight for wearing, hid the laces for his army boots. When he goes to apply his deodorant, Heberto will find grade A honey in its place.

“Men always confuse patriotism with self-love!” Constancia hisses between bites of fried plantains. It's a perverse form of idealism. Why else all the primping and medals, all the oiled and spit-shined leathers? In her opinion, war should be strictly personal, like philosophy or sexual preference.

• • •

Later that night
, Constancia approaches her husband, who is feigning sleep in their bed. She slips off her evening gown, slides naked across the sheets. Then she pushes herself to standing, plants one foot on either side of Heberto's head. Constancia stares down at her husband, at the pleated humidity of his face. Slowly, she lowers herself until he must breathe her entirety. She rocks on her heels until the whole bed trembles, unsettled with her desire.

Constancia knows her husband is perplexed by her sexual urgency of late. It's as if a vital pleasure has reasserted itself since she found him inert in her Cadillac. Now she feels as if there were no history, no memory, no future between them except death.

The next morning
, Constancia follows Heberto across the Rickenbacker Causeway in a rented sedan from the hotel down the beach. Her convertible, she decided, is much too conspicuous for pursuit. The bay is flawlessly blue, an immaculate abstraction. Sailboats graze the water with starched rectitude. Constancia notices how distances are distorted by this blue, like an unreliable mirror.

Her husband is headed north. Constancia hates to drive on the I-95, but she's committed to this chase. The traffic is erratic, clots of cars followed by mile after mile of clear highway. The jumble of downtown skyline increases her restlessness. Miami is too young a city for peace. Nine cruise ships are docked on Dodge Island, hung with banners and triangular flags. Every Saturday night, Constancia spies the ships advancing along the horizon, imperceptibly, like time itself.