The Ladies of Managua (23 page)

I asked Mariana once why her grandmother got to see her artwork and I didn't, and she said, “I don't show anyone but my Bela my paintings. Working with real artists, I can tell how far I have to go before they're good enough to be seen.”

“But why Mama, then?” I asked.

Mariana laughed. “Because it makes her happy, like when she used to stick my fingerpaintings to the fridge with a magnet.”

“I had your drawings up in my office, you know,” I said in the hopes of convincing her to e-mail me the occasional snapshot. But she just looked at me as if I'd confused her and said, “Yeah, I guess you did. On the side of the filing cabinet. I'd forgotten.”

She still didn't email me images of her work. But when I've looked at the pictures she's sent to Mama, I have felt the same warmth I did this morning when her arms were around me as we cried. She makes me feel less alone. I'm half an orphan now, something she's been virtually her entire life. That's what makes her paintings the opposite of whimsical; they're profound in that they show moments of hope, of beginnings. The people in Mariana's paintings are leaping into something they believe in, even if it's against their better judgment.

Allen refers to his own work as if we should know it, and, by the overly humble shrug of his shoulders when he describes it, he seems to think we would have seen his paintings whether he was dating our Mariana or not. As if I have time to sit around Googling contemporary artists. If he'd started an NGO or proposed an international treaty, maybe then I'd be familiar with his work. And now I'm worried again, for my daughter. Because no matter how emotionally stable this older man is, he's had a good decade or more head start to make his name in the art world. And if he's as important as he thinks he is, no matter how profound her work is—and it is, and I just realized how much I hate the word “whimsical”—it will always be an afterthought.

I have no idea how Mariana really feels about this man. She mentioned him last Christmas, so they've been together over a year, but a year can be lived in countless different ways. Their relationship has to be serious; he came here today, didn't he? But she wasn't happy to see him at the calling hours. Mariana has never been forthcoming about her romantic life with me, or her feelings in general. Even her anger tends to come out as biting comments, not shouts and tears. But I have never been under the impression that because Mariana does not discuss her emotions, she doesn't feel things strongly. Everything she says, even the sarcastic remarks, or maybe especially those, is backed by a force of emotion so strong that it sometimes seems the words have been detonated more than spoken. Mariana's psychology resembles Granada, with its brightly painted, windowless houses that flow one right into the other, snug under their sloping, tiled roofs. They look so prim, like they're hiding something. But once the lacy ironwork that bars the door has been laboriously opened and you pass through into the home, you're steps away from a sun-filled courtyard overgrown with vegetation. The rooms are built around the interior garden, and their windowless outer walls keep the dust and heat of the street from violating the cool interior of the house. But on the other side they open into this secret, lambent Eden.

Allen asks where Mariana is and I realize that I don't know. She was here, on the other side of Mama, throughout the entire burial, up until a minute ago, it seems. I watched her leaning over Papa's coffin, dropping two flowers into it, and just when I thought I couldn't feel anything more, I was so tired and so numb with grief, I felt joy enter my body as if I'd inhaled it. Papa was already gone, the coffin closed, flowers starting to pile up on top and slip off its sides into the waiting, open earth. But as she released the stems, Mariana was a worthy subject for one of her own paintings. She was so beautiful it hurt to see her, and yet the joy I felt was so tangible I could breathe it in great gulps. It was the same feeling I had when she was a baby and I felt scared and overjoyed and weepy and amazed that it was possible to love someone this much. And determined not to let anything, or anyone, ever hurt her.

Mama says she's only gone to the car, but I can't shake the feeling that I have just lost Mariana, as well as Papa. I adjust my scarf to steady myself, and try to move events along so that we can go find Mariana, asking Allen to take Mama's arm and help me lead her up out of her chair and over to the car. She's delighted by his offering her his arm, of course. Almost eighty years old and still a sucker for male attention.

I'm tempted to laugh at mama's Scarlett O'Hara routine, but I cover my mouth and pretend it's a cough. Wasn't I the one wishing I had tauter eyelids while trying to put this handsome stranger at ease just a few minutes ago? I suppose I'm just as susceptible to a good-looking man as Mama is. Anyway, I can afford to be generous with my thoughts because Mama is now patting the back of the last, straggling well-wisher, who has found us at the entrance to the cemetery, a sweet, weathered man almost bent in two who was at the Colegio Centro América with Papa when they were young. He seems to have popped out of nowhere, but here he is telling a long-winded story about a prank they played on the student who was named príncipe of their year. He shakes a little, with laughter or tears or Parkinson's. I feel badly that I don't ask what his name is, but instead just shake his hand and thank him for coming and then watch him precariously make his way to his car with the help of his chauffeur.

Now our time is our own. Allen says something that makes Mama laugh and I start to think I might actually like him. It's exhausting, all this assessing and reacting, scrutinizing his every word and action. I just want to see how Mariana treats him, to follow her lead. But when Don Pedro opens the car door, there's no one there, just Mama's purse sitting on the backseat as if it's a very patient passenger who has been waiting on us all this time.

“Where's Mariana?” Mama asks Don Pedro, then translates his response for Allen: “She went ahead to see that all was in order for the luncheon.” Turning to me, she adds in Spanish, “She could have thought to tell him who she was going with so we didn't worry—the Ferreras, do you think? Or the de Santiagos, they left rather early.”

I nod, not wanting to worry Mama, and I ask Allen to please take a seat up front. Once he does, and is looking in front of him, distracted by the horses and the motorcycles and the extravagantly colored churches all sliding past him, I pull out the envelope that is sticking out of Mama's purse. It has Mariana's spiky handwriting climbing across the back, and I breathe deeply to try to slow my heartbeat as I read the note.

I hope that I'm wrong. I hope that I don't know my daughter as well as I think I do, and that I'm misinterpreting this message as I have so many others in word or deed throughout her life. Because the first part of the note is just one of the many private conversations Mariana and Mama always seem to be continuing. But when I see the postscript, the words “don't worry about me for a little while,” and the fact that she signed her whole name, I have the sickening feeling that Mariana won't be at La Gran Francia when we get there, that she, too, is gone from me.

 

25

Maria

I had the caponera drop me off in front of the ATM so I could take out some córdobas to pay the driver; I had gotten cash at the airport in Miami, but it was all American dollars and while most people here accept those, it didn't seem fair to make the driver pay change fees for what amounts to just over two dollars. Plus, I need more cash for my trip; I'm still not sure how far away I can get, or for how long I'm going, but I need to flee, to be able to avoid the questions in Allen's eyes and concentrate on the ones in my head.

I had come to Nicaragua to say good-bye to Abuelo, to bury him, and now I had done that. As soon as I'm back at an easel, I will paint him throwing a flower down to a lovely young woman. Only in my version, the girl with the upturned hand will be my Bela. That's the point, or one point, of art, isn't it? That it can depict life as it should be rather than as it is.

The painting will be an apology to Abuelo for delivering the letter. It felt like a betrayal, slipping it into my Bela's purse today of all days, but I had been carrying it around for so long. And when Allen showed up there wasn't time to wait for the perfect moment to interfere in my Bela's quiet life. I have to focus on my own life instead, or I'll end up like my Bela, letting others make all the most important decisions for me. If Abuelo were here, we could talk about everything calmly; he'd help me clear away the clutter and decide what it is I want. But he's gone, and I have to do this myself, just like when he let go of the back of my two-wheeler on Key Biscayne.

I should have come home for Christmas, spent one last holiday with Abuelo. Every year in Miami, he was the one who softened the edges of the triangle my Bela, Madre, and I form. When it was just the three of us, one of us was always getting hurt; Madre felt left out that my Bela knew the names of the other girls who were in the choir with me, or the boys who took me to dances, but she didn't. My Bela got anxious, trying to make sure we all got along, that Madre didn't make any comments about my choice of reading material
(Sweet Valley High
not being her idea of intellectual stimulation, although I found it very educational) and I didn't make any snide remarks about Madre not being around enough to notice when I was actually reading literature—or ever, really. Even when we were having fun, laughing, catching each other up on the news of Do
ñ
a Olga's family, and life in Managua, and the antics of the neighbors in our condo in Miami, I'd always get quiet, wondering what was wrong with me that my mother didn't want us to be like this, together, always. And my Bela would notice I was subdued and try to cheer me up with one of our favorite treats, a walk to the Cuban coffee shop or a visit to Bal Harbour to watch the koi swim in their ponds and the rich people shop. None of which Madre particularly enjoyed, so she'd end up feeling left out all over again.

But when Abuelo was around, we were balanced, a square. He didn't expect every holiday to be the best Christmas ever like my Bela does, or a prelude to rejection like I did, or a disappointingly bourgeois ritual the way I imagine Madre saw all of our little celebrations. He just wanted to sit there together watching
It's a Wonderful Life
or
Qué Pasa, USA?,
sharing the jokes the Cubans at the coffee shop told him, and staring at the three of us like we were something special.

But I didn't come to Managua for Christmas this year because I wasn't ready to see everyone, and I thought it would be easier to hide within the dramas and celebrations of someone else's family than to negotiate my own. Our family dynamic is difficult even at the best of times. And these are not the best of times; I didn't think any of them, even Abuelo, could ease the confusion that is overtaking my life right now. So I thought I'd protect them from the chaos. Even, I'll admit, from the shame. My cowardice, or at least, my inability to figure out how to move forward, cost me my last Christmas with Abuelo. Now I don't have him to soften the edges of my life anymore. I have to figure out what happens next. And I need to do that alone before Allen and I—or Madre, my Bela, and I—can begin doing so together.

After stopping at the ATM I cross the park to sit under Abuelo's balcony one more time, to spend a few surprisingly happy moments staring up at the railing, imagining Abuelo there, as a boy in short pants like in the black-and-white photo at my Bela's house; as a young man in his wedding portrait; as a middle-aged man in a short-sleeved button-down shirt, sending my bicycle flying down the path with me on it, laughing away; and as an old man looking out the exam room's window down onto Biscayne Bay, saying he was ready to go. It feels as if Abuelo is sitting next to me, as if he could see the figures on the balcony, too. But I know that is just wishful thinking, me being a little maudlin, what with the heat and the fatigue and the emotion of the day. So I blink hard and stand up, telling myself that it is time to get moving.

I consider walking down the pedestrian street to the lakefront, but it's too risky; I'm bound to see someone I know, or who knows my family, shopping for chocolate croissants at the French bakery or embroidered children's clothes at Bordados Tres Hermanas. So I backtrack to the horse and carriages and climb up into one, refusing offers of sight-seeing tours, and ask the driver to take me straight to the port. Anyone noticing the carriage
clip-clop
past him on the street will be more interested in the horse than in the gringo tourist he'll assume is inside.

I thought I'd calm down as the town recedes and it becomes more and more unlikely that anyone will spot me. But instead I feel my heart beating in time to the horse's trotting hooves. When we reach the banks of the lake, which is so vast that it looks like the shore of an ocean, children are wading in their clothes, their backs to us, and their brown limbs flailing in the still, muddy water.

We pass the first dock, where pleasure boats and canoes vie for the opportunity to lead locals and gringos on tours of the isletas; it is too crowded and my purpose too unusual. My request would undoubtedly provoke discussion and commentary, necessitating an impromptu committee of seamen to settle on a fair price. It isn't until we reach the end of the peninsula, beyond all the lakefront restaurants and the grazing cows, where a few sailboats and speedboats idle, that I ask the driver to stop. Lake Cocibolca has several hundred islands, many of the isletas uninhabited, except by cranes or spider monkeys. But a number of the larger ones have schools, and villages of little shacks inhabited by some of Nicaragua's poorest citizens, whose families have lived on these island for generations. On one is a church where, each Holy Week, pilgrims row out in canoes, carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary in a floating procession. I watched the faithful water parade the spring break I was fourteen, from the lake house of a coworker of Madre's, some important Sandinista whose name I don't remember although his handsome bodyguard was called Elvis. Because that's what rests atop many of the other isletas, the stunning lake houses of wealthy Granadinos, and the weekend places of Managua's glitterati.