The Ladies of Managua (30 page)

It's the child in me hoping to be discovered that feels almost giddy at the thought that Madre is here. But the adult is glad, too. Because if there's one thing Madre is good at, it's strategic planning. And that's exactly what I need right now. My Bela would be a comfort, she would rub my hair and order me tea. But Madre may be able to tell me what I actually need to do.

At first the hour can't pass fast enough, and I find myself wishing, for the first time since I got to Nicaragua, that I hadn't left my watch on the table in Allen's studio. It has two faces stacked one above the other—one is on New York time, the other, Nica—but that's not doing me any good now as it ticks away in Chelsea and I sit in this wooden box on stilts above the shore. But then, as I hear the captain motor up to us, I feel my stomach rising and dropping again, and the glee at having a mother who will actually chase me when I flee is eroding, being eaten away at the corners by the anger that's always with me whenever Madre is, the resentment that she's finally showing up now, when I'm thirty-three, rather than when I was nine, or eleven, or eighteen. I'm angry at myself, too, that now that I've finally gotten what I wanted—my mother dropped everything and came to be with me—I'm still too bitter, too much of a baby just to enjoy the fact of her being here. And there's another emotion that's keeping me from being nothing but happy to see her, besides bitterness and anger. I'm afraid of what she'll say, or what she'll expect me to do.

The captain has told me that he's trying to learn English, but I'm not in the mood to practice, so I take a seat in the back of the boat, as far from him as I can, and I put my bag in the chair next to mine, so Madre will sit in the row in front of me. I want to hear what she thinks I should do, but I'm not sure I'm ready to face her as she tells me.

“So you know, then,” I say to the back of her head. “Allen told you.” She turns her head so I can see her profile while the captain busies himself with ropes and her bag, and says, “He's very worried about you. We were all worried.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I should have left you a note. And him, too, I guess. I wasn't trying to be dramatic, I just wanted to figure things out on my own. But now that you're here, I'm ready to listen to what you have to say.”

“Me?” She's still for a few seconds before twisting in her seat so that I can see three-quarters of her face. “I can understand what you like about Allen. I mean, I wouldn't have picked him, an older man, with teenaged kids. But I like how just when you think you know everything you need to about him, he opens his mouth and says the last thing you'd expect.”

The captain turns on the motor and we start chugging across the lake. Madre turns back to watch the scenery.

“That's it?” I say. I know it's her way to be cool under pressure, controlled at all times. But I thought she'd have an opinion. Fear. Anxiety. Disappointment. Or maybe joy.

“No,” Madre says. “And yes. I mean, I'd love to talk to you about how you're feeling, but in terms of what you decide about your future? It's really not any of my business.”

I can't speak. It's such a cold thing to say, even for someone as buttoned-up as she is. If Madre's so uninterested in my life, then why come all this way to find me? It's only when the dock to Mancarron comes into sight that I realize she must be here because my Bela sent her to bring me back. My Bela's too old to come herself, Allen's too angry, and so it fell to Madre to clean up the mess I've made, to bring the runaway home.

In a way, she's right. The decision is mine. I'm as alone as I ever was. I had been worried about my Bela's shame, Madre's disappointment that I've now made it even less likely that I'll ever pull myself together and do something great, and Allen's resentment that he can't just concentrate on his painting. I had been worried about all of them. But really, none of their opinions matter—if, unlike Madre, they even have an opinion at all. It's funny, but after days of ruminating, hearing Madre say that it's none of her business does help me articulate what I want. Just as she turns her head and opens her mouth, I speak into her ear, louder than a whisper so I can be heard over the dying motor, but softer than a shout so that the captain can't listen.

“You're right; it's not your business,” I say. “It's just mine. I'm the one who made this mess, I'm the one who should have to deal with it. But, on the off chance that you're at all curious, I've decided I'm going to have this baby.”

 

32

Isabela

Soon I will go back to Managua. To a house without Ignacio. With so much empty space that I'm not sure where I'll fit anymore. Ninexin was going to pack me off today; she was in full comandante mode, giving the orders. But Mariana's young man—or man, anyway—gave me a reprieve. He wants to stay here until he's heard from Mariana, until he knows what happens next, where she wants to see him. He didn't say, “
if
she wants to see me,” but he has to be thinking it. She hasn't called him, not once, since she's been gone. Of course, she hasn't called me, either, and I like to think I'm the person she loves most in the world. I'm not worried, I know she will come back to me soon; she always does. Even when she was very little and angry at her mother, she would run away next door, and when Do
ñ
a Auxiliadora would call to tell me she was there, I didn't rush over and drag her back. I let her have her flight, her freedom. When your mother is a soldier, it's important to feel like you can disobey orders sometimes. And Mariana always came back to me, in time for dinner and our walk to the Eskimo store afterward. That is how you make someone love you so that they will never leave, with affection, with amusement, with ice cream and attention.

I'm not worried about Mariana, but I do need her back now. I'm so desperate to talk to someone about Mauricio's letter that I almost crumbled and told Ninexin about it several times before she left. I've read it so many times that I could recite it by memory, like we used to do poems in school. But, it would have been a huge mistake to take Ninexin into my confidence. She is her father's daughter, after all, a father she has just lost. It wouldn't do to tell her there was another man I loved, truly loved, even more.

The miracle of the letter is that he loved me, too. He still does. It proves I'm not just a silly old woman giving herself airs, embellishing stories, embroidering the truth as we did pillowcases for our dowries. It was real. I was loved, I am loved.

But now that I have this proof, this delicious knowledge, what do I do about it? I'm approaching eighty. What would be the point of meeting with Mauricio, besides satisfying my curiosity? It's not as if we'll build a life together, start a family. Perhaps it's better to let him remember me as I was, the smooth-skinned girl he loved, whom he crossed oceans for, than to have him see me as I am now, when even my wrists have wrinkles. I protected my hands so vigilantly, wearing the gloves Papa's factory made long after it was fashionable. And still these hands betray me now. I've used the creams, I've rubbed the salves into my skin as if I were a fine leather bag worth protecting, but there's only so much you can do to outrun time. My heart looks exactly the same as when I was eighteen, I'm sure of it. But there are so many more inches between my heart and the outside world now; you could fit two of me then in one of the skirts I wear now, with room to spare.

Mauricio will be different, too, of course. But I wouldn't care. It doesn't seem to matter as much to women, does it? Ignacio grew a belly, one that was bigger than mine when I was pregnant with either of our daughters, and I never cared. I never thought he looked silly or weak, like less of a man.

Am I underestimating Mauricio? Isn't it possible that a man who could write a letter like his, after all these years, could look past the sagging skin and wobbly flesh to see the girl he loved, and love her still? If any man could do it, it would be him.

It's not only what I look like now that concerns me. I was beautiful once, and you never really lose that completely. Even the gringo can tell, when he looks at me, that I was once a woman who would have made him stop and stare.

What worries me isn't just my own ruin; it's that Mauricio's letter is so perfect as it is. His love for me is so strong, without him having so much as glimpsed me on a street corner for decades. And my memories of him are so golden, my thoughts of him so precious. Memories are always much prettier than the present. Just watching Granada from the balcony of the hotel has taught me that; the city is so much cleaner in my mind, the people so much better dressed, in hats and gloves and shoes made of leather, not rubber, each of them with a familiar face under his or her hat brim. I thought my memories of Mauricio were like diamonds, clear and so hard as to be unbreakable. But I see now that they could be crystal, as fragile as they are beautiful. What if we meet and feel the disappointment of returning to a place you once loved, to a city that has changed without you? What if we realize that the reality we have now is just a fading echo of the love we kept and polished in our minds? What if seeing each other somehow ruins the dream, the beauty, all that we already have at this moment?

I have so many thoughts! I should see him; I shouldn't, but I should at least write to him; no, not even that, what on earth would I say? And there is no one I can talk to about it, with Mariana away. If Connie were here—but then, I don't even know where she lives now. I sent a Christmas card to the last address I had for her, but have yet to receive a response. Maybe there is a card, full of pictures of her grandchildren and her behind sunglasses so large I can barely tell what she looks like anymore, waiting for me on the table in the entry of the house in Managua. The quiet, empty house. But even if it's there, and she's written her phone number in her swollen, bubble-like numbers at the bottom, it's not doing me any good here in Granada. There's not a soul here to talk to at all. Except for the gringo. Mariana's youngish man. And now he is knocking on the door and it's time for lunch, and what will I find to say to him for the hour it will take to eat?

*   *   *

“So, Mr. Allen,” I start, once we have ordered; I suggested the guapote, telling him it's the specialty of the house, caught fresh from the lake daily, and after that, he had no choice in the matter, did he? But he cuts me off and says, “Just Allen, please, Bela,” even though I haven't told him he could dispense with the Do
ñ
a, or Se
ñ
ora, or Mrs., even, to use Mariana's name for me. How could I have told him to drop a title when he never tried one out to begin with?

“Allen.” I smile, and the New Orleans schoolgirl must not be buried as deeply as I thought behind wrinkles and kilos, because he looks down at the table before picking up his water glass to drink. A decade or two ago, I might have even been able to cause him to blush.

But now that I've got his attention, what do I say? I have nothing in common with this tall, youngish gringo. Nothing except Mariana.

“What are your intensives toward my granddaughter?” I cock my head to look as stern as possible, but I smile, too, because it's always better to smile when you ask a serious question. And because I'm proud that I've thought of the perfect thing to say and that my English is coming back so fluidly; I've been dreaming of Sacred Heart since I got Mauricio's letter, so I've been hearing the language in my sleep, but it feels good to use it after all this time, to speak it out loud and hear it in my own voice.

He sips again, and makes his fork and knife trade positions, even though the table was set properly in the first place. “I want to marry her, Bela.” He stares at me as if daring me to look away. “I didn't think I'd ever want to get married again; after the divorce, I didn't see the point.”

He keeps talking, but I'm not listening anymore. “Divorce?” It's not that I'm shocked, many of my friends' daughters are divorced, and those are some of the best families in Nicaragua. This man, he might not even be Catholic; now that I know about the divorce, I'm not about to ask. No, what's shocking is that Mariana didn't mention this to me. I'm beginning to realize that in all our conversations, she never mentioned anything of importance about him.

“Marriage, kids, I thought that was all in my past, which wasn't so bad, because it allows me to concentrate on other things, my work, mainly, but also on my relationships. I still see my college roommates once a week—crazy, right? And Maria. She's incredible. You know how she gets when she's excited, all quiet and intense, taking everything in. I get so focused on what I'm doing, especially when I'm painting, that I don't see the world around me. Usually I think that's a good thing. But Mariana, she notices everything. We take a cab and she looks at the driver's name, figures out where he's from. Sometimes she'll strike up a conversation, sometimes she doesn't, but when we get out she'll have a whole theory about his life before he came to New York, like, this one used to be a professor, because he was wearing a tweed jacket and tie in the photo, or that one's got a wife he longs for at home, which is why he's listening to Serbian love songs on the radio. Everywhere she turns she sees a story. It might end up in a painting, it might not, but she always finds a story. Now, when she's not with me, I try to notice things, too. In the cab on the way to the airport, I didn't look at my phone or watch the taxi TV. I turned off the sound so I could hear the music the driver was listening to. But it was just a regular oldies station. ABBA. When I was talking to Ninexin yesterday, all that was running through my head was, ‘Can you hear the drums, Fernando?' It's about some revolution. Maybe Ninexin's, right?”

I don't answer. He's not making any sense, but it doesn't matter; he's not talking to me any longer, he's talking to himself. It's not that I don't understand the words—I do, or at least I think I do. It's that he's not really giving me any information. “You asked Mariana to marry you?”