The Ladies of Managua (29 page)

He sat back down and crossed his ankle over his knee. Neither Mariana nor I would ever sit like that; Mama raised us better than to show people the soles of our shoes. I haven't decided yet how much I like this man or not. But he's definitely smarter than I thought.

“So you're just going to wait?”

“I don't have a choice.” He finally looked up. “If I come, what if she runs again? What if she won't return with me?”

I didn't want to look in his eyes, to see how anxious he was. Anxiety is contagious and I needed to stay calm so that I could find Mariana and bring her back to the people who love her. If I had to face Allen's fear that she had no interest in seeing him, then it would become harder to ignore the fact that she hadn't called me either, that she hadn't left me a note saying not to worry, that we had no reason to think that she had any desire to see me. That I might be the person she ran away from. So I started collecting my cell phone, the water bottle, a packet of Splenda from the table, although the only person I know who hoards Splenda is my mother and she'd be here with Allen and all manner of artificial sweeteners while I was trying to bring our girl back. “All right, then,” I said. “I'll call you as soon as I find her.”

Now that I'm in the backseat of the car, alone, racing to San Carlos, trying to imagine what he and Bela could possibly have to say to each other and how, I wonder if I should have said more, should have left Allen with some words of hope or comfort. I didn't say, “You're right to stay.” I didn't say, “I'm sure she'll come back.” I didn't offer him any reassurances at all. I'm not sure she'll come back. Under the relief of knowing where Mariana is, I feel anger percolating. And fear.

I can still see Mama sitting there holding her teacup, smug and smiling. But it's not her I'm angry at; I don't care how we find Mariana, whether it's through my government contacts or Mama's old friends, confidantes, and lackeys. It's Allen who makes me mad. Because even though he may be right to give Mariana space and time and distance and all the things people say they want when they really want comfort and safety and affection, and even though it may be slowly suffocating him to stay behind, his doing so means that I have to go retrieve her alone. And that if she blames anyone, or rejects anyone, if she runs farther away and never returns, the person she'll be running from—again—is me.

 

31

Maria

Dylan and Ryan wanted me to join them on their hike, on their swim, for their pitcher of Macuás. Which would have been nice, under any other circumstances. Now it was just sort of maddening that I could be sitting on these floating volcanoes in the center of a sea-size lake, in the heart of an obscure country, in the middle of Central America, and I still couldn't escape Americans. Friendly, honest Americans who were eager to find themselves and everyone else, who wanted to tell me all their plans and hopes and fears and dreams, and wanted to hear mine, too. So I told the girl at the desk that I didn't want to have to wait for the ferry, and she said she could get me on a private boat with some German tourists who were going to Solentiname on Sunday morning. Germans. It was perfect. If I nodded hello and immediately pulled out a book, the Germans would know what that meant, and how to act accordingly.

I didn't tell Dylan and Ryan I was leaving; I was hoping to sneak out without them noticing. The boatman almost ruined it, yelling my name so everyone sitting at breakfast could hear it, but I dashed out of my cabin, waved at the boys and mouthed, “I got a ride!” while speed-walking toward the boat. I felt a little guilty.

That's a lie. I knew I
should
feel guilty. I told myself that I would look them up on Facebook someday, message them hello, inquire about the rest of their trip. But the truth is, I didn't feel bad about leaving at all. Hopping on a boat right under their noses made my stomach writhe, but in a good way. Running off suddenly added to the excitement of making a clean getaway.

And when the boat dropped us off on Mancarron, and I walked up the long dock into the woods, to the whitewashed hotel that looks like a monastery—I guess a convent would be more appropriate, under the circumstances—I knew I'd made the right decision. It's perfect here. There are no cars, just a wooden boardwalk that winds through town past houses with folding tables in the yards covered in brightly painted balsa-wood animals, which, it seems, everyone here makes and sells. Sometimes the bushes in front of the cottages are covered in drying laundry, so it looks as if the branches grow vividly colored shorts and T-shirts and bras instead of flowers. That seems possible here. Anything seems possible. There's a bibliobote, a floating library that sails up to the island regularly so the dozen or so schoolkids can rush out to see what's new. The white church where Ernesto Cardenal preached liberation theology is still here, and every time an older man passes by I look to see if it might be him with his white beard, white hair, and trademark beret, his jolly belly making him look like a Sandinista Santa.

When I sit on my veranda before the sun sets, watching what I think are South American guinea pigs hop past and bats swoop in histrionic arcs, I have this little daydream that I'll bump into Ernesto Cardenal and he'll invite me in for jamaica tea. I'll tell him everything and he'll know exactly what I should do, and guarantee that if I do it, everyone concerned will be happy and satisfied for generations to come. In my fantasy, he takes on the role of
ü
ber-grandpa because he sees how much my painting owes to the primitivist art the islanders on the archipelago make, how I try to show everything not as a photograph would represent the scene but as I see it, just as vivid and shaky and off-center as in real life. The locals here must have always been artistic; the petroglyphs I saw on my hike into the jungle, covered in swirls and faces and symbols, prove that. But Cardenal is the one who organized them into a collective, bought them materials, showed them they could sell their paintings. He's my vision of an art dealer hero: spotting talent, shaping it, and spreading it to the world. In my daydream, he recognizes me as a fellow artist and appreciator of the arts, and that's what makes him take an interest in my predicament, in my future. In my soul.

But he's off-island now, probably collecting a peace prize or poetry award. And I'm going to have to figure out my future, and, as a result, shape everyone else's, myself. Somehow that's not as frightening here as it was in New York or Managua or Granada, or the no-man's-land of the plane ride from Miami. Part of me thinks I could stay here forever, try to blend in, focus on my painting, sell a few to passing tourists or in the exhibitions in which local artists like the Posada family show their work. But the rest of me recognizes that this would be running away. Still, it's nice to roll the idea of doing so around in my head like a marble, colors flashing.

I've spent the past two afternoons at the Posadas' house on La Venada. They're fairly well known in primitivist art circles, and I knew that if and when I made it to Solentiname, I'd want to look them up. The Germans have their captain and boat on retainer, and whenever he picks them up to take them out on the lake, he drops me off on the islet, at the foot of the concrete stairs that lead up into the Posadas' home; I've been talking to them about bringing some of their work back to the gallery to sell on commission. I've met three generations of artists already: Don Alejandro and Do
ñ
a Clara, their daughters, and their granddaughters. Each member of the family has a different style, but it's the older couple whose work interests me the most. Don Alejandro mostly paints community scenes, long-ago festivals when everyone would row out in their dugout canoes to venerate a statue of the Virgen and celebrate her Immaculate Conception during the Purísimas, for example. His paintings immortalize the lush beauty of the islands, but he focuses on the people, too; they're not faceless stand-ins but individuals in different clothes, with distinct expressions on their faces and varying skin color, even their own hairstyles. The first time I knocked on the door, I was tripping all over myself apologizing for intruding, but he just stood up from his hammock, pulled on an ancient short-sleeved button-down over his undershirt, and ushered me in, welcoming the company. His paintings are amazing, but they're exactly what you'd expect him to paint. He lives for community, for celebration, for interaction.

It's Do
ñ
a Clara whose art is such a surprise. Each afternoon when I showed up she was wearing a blouse in an imitation silk fabric, a tailored skirt, and Ben Franklin eyeglasses, her hair pulled back into a strict bun. But her paintings! The canvases erupt in swirling greenery and animals that look so alive, so alert, that I found myself tensing to listen for the sound they had clearly just heard. There's no way to describe her paintings except to say that they're full of passion, they betray a side of her that I never would have imagined existed. I told her how much I loved her style and she sat with me and described each of the animals—the tapir, the yellow-tailed birds, the jaguar—all of which are native to the archipelago. The way she spoke about the animals made me feel they had more interesting thoughts and experiences, richer interior lives, than most people.

The second time I went to see the Posadas, yesterday, I went less for the art and more for the company. I bought some bags of rosquillas from the manager of the hotel and Do
ñ
a Clara made some instant coffee to go with the cookies. We sat and looked at their work and I showed them the photo of the painting of my Bela and her flying textbook that I carry on my phone. “It's nice,” Don Alejandro said. “But there's so much empty space in the middle; such a big canvas for those words to cover.”

I see his point; his paintings are action-packed, each inch is dense with flowers, even the water of the lake is created with several pigments and minute strokes. But Do
ñ
a Clara took one look and told him, “She left the space for the people looking at the painting to fill with their minds.”

I hadn't thought of it that way; I just couldn't imagine any other way to depict the scene. But I've been considering the remark since she made it yesterday and I realize that Do
ñ
a Clara is right: most of my work exists on the fringes of the canvas.

*   *   *

The Germans have gone kayaking this afternoon, so I'm alone in the boat to La Venada and I feel bad about the captain using up his gasoline on me. I'll have to remember to tip him when we leave tomorrow. Or maybe I'll tip him and wave from the shore as the Germans leave and I stay behind. I have enough money to hide out at the hotel through Friday; by then I'll have come up with some kind of plan. I hope.

The boat bumps on the surface of the lake and I can feel my stomach rolling and clanging like a metal bowl dropped on a countertop. Maybe it's not the choppy water that has me unsettled, but knowing that I have to make a decision tomorrow, about whether to leave with the Germans or not. Or maybe I'm anxious about today's visit; I plan to show the Posadas the sketch I made for the painting of Abuelo tossing bougainvilleas off of his balcony into my Bela's upturned hand. I did it on a sheet from my sketchbook, which I've rolled up and dropped into my shoulder bag, and even though it weighs nothing I can feel it bumping against my thigh each time the boat rises and falls.

The captain kills the motor and as I step onto the dock, I can hear Don Alejandro talking. “Now with the mobile phone, it's so much easier to sell paintings. I get calls every month with commissions, from Managua, Granada, Le
ó
n. Things have changed in the last thirty years, compa
ñ
era, haven't they?”

They have visitors, or a visitor, anyway, and it sounds like someone they've known a long time. Now I'm even more nervous; I don't want to get in the way if they're making a sale or catching up with old friends. And I'm not going to show them my sketch in front of a stranger.

“More than any of us could have imagined,” says a woman's voice. Maybe I'm not nervous. I must be sick, because I seem to be hallucinating: the stranger sounds just like my mother. I turn back toward the boat but the captain has already pushed off from the dock, with the help of the captain of the boat next to his, the one that must have brought the woman with the doppelganger voice. I tell myself to stop being an idiot, there's no way Madre could have found me here, in Solentiname; aside from showing the Posadas my painting, I haven't even turned on my cell phone for three days, out of paranoia that somehow she might have the power to track me.

”Mariana!” Do
ñ
a Clara calls, spotting me through the open window. “Come on up!” I have no alternative, so I climb the steps and there's Don Alejandro, shirt already on, flip-flops on feet I've only ever seen bare, and next to him is my mother, her arm resting on his shoulder as if they're old pals posing for a photo.

“Mariana!” Do
ñ
a Clara says as I walk through the door. “All this time you didn't tell us who you were! Don Alejandro knew your mother in the Revoluci
ó
n.”

Do
ñ
a Clara is smiling, Don Alejandro is grinning, and my mother has an expression that reminds me of someone I can't place, until I realize it's the tapir in Do
ñ
a Clara's painting, listening with his whole body for a noise in the jungle.

“Surprise!” I say, because it's the only thing I can think of, and it must not be a bad choice, because everyone laughs.

Madre says she's tired and needs to find a place to stay, and I find myself telling her that my hotel is nice and that the captain will be back in an hour if she wants to return with me. She pays her own captain and waves good-bye so vigorously that I wonder if he's an old friend, too, and what exactly went on during the Revolución that they're all so nostalgic for it, because when Madre talks about it, it just sounds like a lot of making speeches and slogging through mud. Back inside, they tell me stories about that time while we drink more instant coffee, stories about Ernesto Cardenal, and Don Alejandro's first few paintings, and Do
ñ
a Clara passing secret messages between guerrillas who would sail past in canoes and imitate birdcalls to let her know they were there. Normally, these tales would fascinate me; I would store them away to tell Allen later, to impress him with the wonders of my country, the bravery of my mother. But although I'm nodding, and even laughing, as they speak, I'm not really listening to the Posadas and to Madre at all. I'm too surprised, shocked, really, to find that I'm not angry. For a minute I was furious, not at Madre for having found me but at myself for having invited her to my hotel. At myself for being so infantile, so easy to please, so delighted that she noticed I'd run away. I ran away once or twice when I was little in Managua, but just next door to the neighbors, and I always wandered back by dinnertime because I knew that my Bela would take me for an Eskimo afterward if I ate all my mashed potatoes. At the time it seemed that I sat on the neighbor's tufted sofa for hours without anyone realizing I'd left home, but I'm probably misremembering.