The Ladies of Managua (27 page)

Maybe that's what had me feeling so alone as I watched Marlon motor away, that I had planned to come here with someone I love. Instead here I was, far from New York, on a vast lake in the middle of a tiny country, in the same predicament I had found myself in back in Manhattan: facing all of this alone. Or maybe it was the island itself, made up of two volcanoes, connected by a land bridge formed by a long-ago lava flow. As we had approached them, the volcanoes looked eternal, joined together forever. One of them, Maderas, is dormant, and the other, Concepción, is active. Allen would have to be the active one, bubbling with artistic energy. And that left me dormant, which seems about right, attached to the active volcano by its creative overflow, but perhaps never to erupt in an explosion of talent that is both beautiful and terrifying.

*   *   *

At Villas Para
í
so, I spring for a cabin with hot water. I want to be the girl who can relish a cold shower; I know my mother could at my age, although lately she stays in four-star hotels, so all of her showers have side jets and come equipped with aromatherapeutic bath gel. But even the tepid water at my Bela's house felt like it was piercing my skin last night; ever since I arrived in Nicaragua, I've been much more sensitive to temperature. Besides, the cabin is slightly cheaper because I'm alone.

Sitting in a rocking chair on my porch, overlooking the lake, I remember the afternoon Abuelo, my Bela, and Madre dropped me off at college. After they had helped set up my room and driven away, I ventured into town to set up a checking account. I sat on a bench opposite the bank for twenty minutes, awed and proud and scared that, for the first time in my life, no one had any idea where I was. I'm embarrassed to admit it now, how sheltered my childhood was. Abuelo and my Bela always knew if I was at school or a friend's home, or at art class. Once or twice I told them I was staying at a friend's and we snuck out instead to a party at some boy's house. But even then, they knew I was with Lorena or Jennifer or Melissa; if something horrible had happened, they could have tracked me down through her.

Part of being an adult, or a single one, anyway, is that most people have no idea where you are at any given moment. They know you're at work during the week, but that could mean sitting at your desk, or lunching with a client, or maybe you ducked out in the middle of the day to get your hair cut. It's one of the things I like most about living in New York, that no one comments on my comings and goings.

I should feel that way now—exhilarated by my freedom, sitting alone in front of a Paradise Villa, knowing that I could go down into the lake and swim to the next volcano or let myself float away, never to be heard from again. But instead I'm feeling sorry for myself, wishing I had a reason to stay firmly rooted, someone inextricably linked to me as if by an isthmus of hardened lava. If I really were attached to another person forever, though, would that link begin to feel less like a miracle of nature and more like a chain? That's my biggest fear, that if I make the wrong decision now, I'll do something that can't be undone, at least not without the suffering of several people, should I decide, Oops, this isn't for me. There are so many ways I'd be a better person if I were like my mother: braver, bolder, more energetic. But what if the thing I've inherited from Madre is the quality I hate about her: her ability to walk away from the person who loves her most, again and again. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I ever hurt someone that way. I'd rather not have that kind of love in the first place.

“What are you drinking?” a voice says, and when I look up it belongs to what my Bela would call a typical backpacking gringo. I tell him it's hibiscus tea, and he smiles in that intrusively friendly way Americans do when they're traveling and meet a fellow countryman. It's a hopeful, overly familiar grin that resembles the smiles of the street children who make flowers made out of palm reeds in Granada, only this guy is begging for attention instead of coins. He's cute, the backpacking gringo; I bet most people find such puppyish small talk charming, especially if they're traveling alone. And suddenly I don't want anyone, not even this stranger, not even myself, to notice that I'm not as open as most people. So I do what I imagine Beth would if she were ever to find herself on an island with another roaming American: I ask him who he is and what he's doing on Ometepe.

His name is Dylan, “for Thomas, not Bob,” he points out, and he's traveling with a friend from architecture school. It's their last fling before they start at different firms, and they're determined to do everything they won't be able to when they're sitting behind desks in San Francisco and Portland, respectively: kite surfing, ziplining, surfing on volcanic ash, watching sea turtles hatch in nature preserves. I nod and say, “That's cool,” because it is. But I don't tell him I'm Nicaraguan because then he'll want all sorts of advice I haven't lived here recently enough to be able to give. We're both quiet for a minute, because I'm not giving him any leads to follow up on, and also because we're watching the sky and the lake turn pink as the sun sets.

When he says, “Sienna,” I know he's referring to the color of the sky.

“Like the crayon?”

Dylan nods. “But the crayon's a little more orange.” He's right. You can never exactly match the colors of nature, not with a crayon. With paints you can, if you mix them, but it takes time and if you go too far, you can ruin it. Except if you're painting bougainvillea. That's the exact color of a pigment called “Opera.” I tell Dylan this because I like the paint's name, and the fact of its perfection.

“I don't really paint,” he says.

“I guess you're not into hobbies that have no risk of breaking your neck. Besides coloring, I mean.”

He smiles and looks back at the lake. “I'm meeting Ryan in the restaurant if you want to join us for something a little stronger than hibiscus tea.”

I watch as the sun disappears into the ocean, and imagine painting over a canvas covered in Opera with blues and grays so that just the tiniest hint of the pink shows through.

“Thanks,” I say. “But I can't.” Because even though I'm alone and feeling melancholy, it's true. I just can't.

 

29

Isabela

There's a painting of an angel on the wall above the bed in what the elegant Indian hostess called my “Grand Suite.” I tucked one of the brochures from her desk into my purse after the luncheon, because it had a yellow slip of paper sticking out of it that I knew would be a price list; Ninexin just signs any check that's put in front of her, so it's left to me to make sure we're being charged the proper amount. Even when she's in her seventies, a mother still has to take care of everything herself, especially when her daughter is a dreamer, with her mind always on bigger and better things rather than the mundane details of life.

In the brochure this room is described as the honeymoon suite; they've rolled in a cot for Ninexin. I suppose the pretty receptionist didn't tell me the name of the suite out of courtesy, misplaced kindness, thinking it would be rude to let an old woman at the end of her life, a widow who has just lost her husband, know she's staying in a room where young couples come to begin their life together.

I know what people see when I pass them leaving Mass; I know because I thought it myself when I was a young girl tripping through the streets of Granada, practically galloping past slow-moving older ladies. I was aware that those women weren't born old, I knew intellectually that they'd been babies and girls and young women. But when I'd see a heavyset older woman picking her way along the sidewalk, leaning on the arm of a child or a grandchild or a servant for support, it seemed as if she'd entered the world in that state, fragile yet imposing, here to judge the young people swirling all around her. Somehow it happened that now, I'm the fragile yet solid older woman; my waist measurement is half again the size my hip measurement was in the days I attended Sacred Heart, but that's a secret. And I've learned that I carry all those other selves inside me. I'm still the little girl, wide-eyed with wonder, thrilled and also a bit nervous to go with my papa when he takes me to see the pony he says will belong to me even though it will live at my abuelo's farm. And I'm still the young woman who looks so calm, so proper, but who is convinced she must be dying, bleeding internally from the jagged edges of her broken heart.

It was the old woman in me who settled into the easy chair opposite the honeymoon bed with the help of her daughter. I was sitting here in this easy chair, like a lady, when Ninexin fluttered out of the room, trying to hide how nervous she is. The gringo looked increasingly anxious throughout lunch, too; he kept his lips pressed together into a tight line, which makes him look even more North American. I'm not sure how much he knows but at the very least, he has to suspect that Mariana isn't just in another room, taking a well-deserved nap. I'm the only one who is not nervous, who is sure that Mariana will be fine. If I had been half as bold as she is, half as capable, when I was her age, my life would have been very different. But then, if my life had been different, Ninexin and Mariana wouldn't be here. So I suppose it all worked out for the best, as it was supposed to, as God intended. I look to the angel in the painting for a sign, to confirm that I'm right and not just heaping platitudes on myself in order to feel better about a life that may have been lived properly, but wasn't lived the right way, the way it should have been. The angel is smiling a sweet smile, but a bit sly, too; it reminds me of Mother Dauphinais's face when she told me that Scarlett O'Hara was a girl who just got what was coming to her. Am I that now? A girl who just got what was coming to her, only it wasn't scandal and penury and dresses made out of curtains, but sitting quietly in an overstuffed chair?

*   *   *

When our relatives finally left, and I saw the worry on my daughter's face, I felt every one of my seventy-five years. But even though a spotted, bumpy hand, swollen at the knuckles, pulled out Mauricio's envelope, it is the heartbroken young woman in me who reads the words.

My Dearest Isa,

Many times I've told Cristian Hidalgo that he's the best friend any man could have, and I meant it each time. But it was never more true than the first and the last times I said it. The first was when he offered to drive us to Loyola for our wedding, although he knew that if things went wrong, he could be reported to school officials, and his admission to the college for the fall might be put in jeopardy.

And the last was when he returned from Miami where he'd gone for a follow-up to his heart surgery last year, and told me he'd met your granddaughter in the hospital. He said that when he saw her, he felt as if he knew her somehow, and that it was more than just the nostalgia of an old man seeing a beautiful young woman and recalling how girls looked when he was young. Then he noticed that she had crossed her legs at the ankles, the way you girls were taught to at Sacred Heart long ago, and he started talking to her, which is one of the benefits of becoming a truly old man; young girls are no longer nervous when you make conversation with them. She explained she was waiting for her grandfather, who was in town from Nicaragua having some tests. Cristian told her he'd had a friend from Nicaragua when he studied in New Orleans, a young woman from Granada. And so the secret came out. Cristian told me that your granddaughter knew about me—Isa, I think that is what gives me the courage to write now—and when he asked for her information, she hesitated for a moment but gave it to him.

When he put the piece of cardboard with her address in my hand—she wrote it on one of those rings they slide around paper coffee cups so that you don't burn your hand—I sat down to write this letter. Cristian told me I should have one of my children send it through the computer, that it would get there faster. But I didn't want anyone else—not my children, not your beautiful granddaughter—to read what I have to say. And besides, I want to imagine the letter making its way to you like the love notes we exchanged long ago. I still have all of yours. Have you kept mine?

In those days I would sit down to write to you and in what seemed like minutes ten sheets of paper would be filled, and my hand would be covered in ink, one of the drawbacks of being left-handed, and perhaps a reason I should have let the Jesuits cure me of it when they had the chance. This time I will try to keep it brief. So much has happened in the past—is it over fifty?—years, I could never explain it all. But wherever I went, whatever I did, I carried your letters with me.

I even had them tucked in the lining of my suitcase when I left for Cuba the day after you walked out of the church. I almost threw them into the river, but I couldn't do it. So I tucked them away where no one else would find them, where they would require effort even for me to reach, so that I wouldn't be tempted to read them too often. I secured passage on the first ship I could find; I couldn't leave New Orleans fast enough. I swore I would forget you, or at least hide my memories of you, like your letters, where they would be less noticeable. But when Castro took over in July, we lost our business and I lost my home, and none of it mattered compared to losing you.

I came to Nicaragua then … did you know that? I suppose not; how would you have found out? I came to Granada and asked a woman selling vigorón in one of the stands in the park if she could tell me how to find the Enriquez home. She said it was right on the Parque, but that no one would be there—they were all in the church at Xalteva where the Enriquez girl was getting married. Which one? I asked. The woman didn't know the family personally, she said, but she'd heard it was the beautiful sister who had just returned from New Orleans.