The Ladies of Managua (42 page)

Allen acts like he's modern. Too modern, if you ask me; he can't even say the rosary—“wouldn't begin to know what to do,” he told me when I asked him if he wanted to borrow my beads. But he seems to have a deep-seated belief in the power of repetition, of incantation, because he wants to hear me say it, again and again: “I promise Mariana will be fine. And the baby, too.” He prompts me if I don't remember to add the last part.

I appreciate his faith in me, but I'm starting to get hoarse. I can tell the poor boy—man, I should say, he's hardly a boy—is desperate to take some action, to do something with all his nervous energy, to help somehow. So, since he wasn't willing to try the rosary, this morning after coffee at his hotel I sent him to a restaurant on the other side of Managua where they make the rice pudding that Mariana loved when she was a girl. I even told him that, here in Nicaragua, we believe rice pudding is good for expectant mothers. That's not necessarily true, but we Nicarag
ü
ense should believe it; why not? It's just milk and rice and what could be healthier than that? The poor man set off with such energy, as if he had wings on his feet. Don Pedro even let him drive.

*   *   *

I'll admit I didn't remember the rice pudding just for Allen's sake. Or even for Mariana's. I needed to see her alone. The worry over Mariana, the shock about the baby, it made the question of how I should answer Mauricio feel less urgent. But, once I began to believe what I'd been telling Allen—that all that could be done for Mariana and the baby is being done, and all that is left for us to do is pray—I thought it might be all right to consider my life again, and what I plan to do next. The letter still requires a reply. In the cacophony of the last several days, the question of whether or not I should write back was drowned out. But now everything else has quieted down, and Mauricio is still awaiting my answer.

I've already written it. I wrote it on Wednesday night, after I was convinced that Mariana was going to be okay. And, truth be told, after I stopped worrying about what everyone would say about the baby. “If people want to talk about us, they'll find a reason to do so, Mama,” Ninexin told me when she brought me my evening chamomile. “What matters is that Mariana's healthy and happy. She's too strong to let the gossip of ladies with empty minds and empty lives, who have nothing better to do than talk about her, ruin her happiness. You could learn something from her.”

I know Ninexin was talking about my attitude toward the baby. And I know that she is right, and not just about the baby. I've spent my life doing what everyone thought I should. It worked out, in its way. But there may not be much life left. You'd think I would have realized that my time on earth was getting short years ago, at my seventieth birthday, perhaps. But even though intellectually I knew that the end was coming nearer every day, and that I should make the most of the years that remain, I didn't really feel it. I didn't believe it until now, not in my soul. Ignacio gave me that knowledge. It was his parting gift, along with the fuchsia datebook. And I want to fill that little calendar with events that are worthy of its cover, bright and bold. Maybe even shocking.

I wrote the letter after Ninexin left, in an old notebook that I use for shopping lists and phone messages. But I won't copy it over until I know that what I've written is possible. I can't know that until I see Mariana alone. And that couldn't happen until today, when I managed to get Allen to leave my side for a few hours.

As soon as Dr. Alvarez is done with Mariana, it's my turn to go in. Ninexin has meetings all morning, she said, she'll stop by at lunch. But we'll be done by then. Allen will be back with the rice pudding, and if I've gotten the answer I want, I'll tell them I need to lie down. I'll leave them to enjoy the sweet and I'll go home and copy over my draft on my nice stationery, which is so thick you have to use the right pen so it doesn't get stuck in the weave of the paper, so thick that it takes some effort to fold it, and then I'll ask Don Pedro to take me to the post office. I won't send it off with the housekeeper's daughter or give it to Ninexin to mail from her office. I will post the letter myself.

*   *   *

Dr. Alvarez is taking longer than I expected, and as each minute passes, my anxiety increases. I'm not worried anything's gone wrong with Mariana; I can hear them laughing. That Dr. Alvarez is too chatty and charming for his own good.

He's always running behind, showing off for the mothers-to-be with his little funnel for hearing the baby's heart and his anecdotes about his own little boy at home who is just learning to speak and whom the nanny has taught to yell, “Doctor!” when he wants his papi's attention.

It's me I'm nervous for; what if Mariana doesn't approve? What if she's disappointed? Or worse, disgusted?

I can't even imagine such a reaction from her. The one time she told me she was disgusted with me, when I complained to her over the phone that I realized the housekeeper was washing Don Pedro's uniform along with our household clothes, she could barely stop laughing long enough to admonish me. She's never really angry with me; she saves that for her mother. I'd like to think that's a privilege of age, but I'm starting to suspect that, really, she thinks I'm too silly to scold.

The thing is, I don't want her to laugh at me this time. Or to think I'm silly. I don't want her to think this is a trivial little matter I'm bringing up at a time when she's experiencing something truly life-changing. And I don't want her to think it's adorable, either, like Dr. Alvarez's son's escapades. This whole time I've been waiting for her to come back, not just to Managua, but to return to her old self, so that I can confide in her. But maybe the right moment still hasn't arrived.

“Abuela, you're next.” Dr. Alvarez helps me into the room, and I let him, although I'm tempted to remind him that I'm not his abuela.

“I sent Allen for the rice pudding you love, mi corazón,” I say. “I hope you still like rice pudding; it's probably been years since you had it.”

“Decades.” Mariana says. “Shut the door, please.”

I do, although the doctor should have taken care to do that, instead of making an old woman like me exert herself. He's too busy with his jokes, that one. But I'm not here to complain. “He's a good person, he was happy to go get it,” I say as I make my way to the door, and I'm talking about Allen, not the doctor. “But so talkative for a man! Every morning we have a coffee at his hotel before coming here and it's always Maria this and Maria–”

“When he's not painting Allen's just like a gossipy old biddy. It's as if, without a particular canvas to work on, he's got nothing serious to fill his mind, so he becomes obsessed with all sorts of things that are none of his business: local political scandals, the doorman's budding romance, the latest paperback thriller,” Mariana says as the door shuts and I make my way to the chair at the side of her bed. “But enough about Allen. Look, we don't know how much time we have.” She adjusts the movable bed and squeezes the pillows behind her so she can sit up straighter. “Did you bring the letter? You don't know how many times I held it up to the light to see if I could make out any words through the envelope! I've been dying to read it, but there's always someone else around. Tell me it's in that massive purse!”

I don't say anything, I just busy myself going through my handbag, because of course I do have the letter, hidden in the pages of an old
Vanidades,
and also so that she can't see how relieved I am.

“I can't
believe
you showed Allen before you showed me! I mean, I know, I was indisposed, otherwise engaged.” Mariana laughs. “See, I get all old-fashioned just thinking about it. Tell me Mauricio used a fountain pen! I asked Allen to describe the handwriting but he said he couldn't remember what it looked like. Men are useless sometimes.”

“He shouldn't have told you anything about the letter!” I have it in my hand now, holding it in my lap.

“Ha!” Mariana sits up even further; I hope she's not straining herself. “Of course he should have told me! I need something to think about while I lie here all day. I only brought one book with me, and there's just so much TV a person can watch. You're the one who shouldn't go around showing everyone if you don't want them to talk about your business.”

“Everyone!”
I'm so horrified I put the letter right back in my purse. “I like that! Everyone!”

“Bela! Give it to me!” Mariana begs. And then, as I'm reaching back in the bag for it, she adds, “Have you already shown Madre?”

“Mariana!” I sit up straight and hang my handbag on the arm of the chair; I never put it on the floor because a Colombian girl at Sacred Heart told me that if you put your wallet on the ground, that's where your money will go, too. “Only Allen has seen the letter, and only because you were unavailable, as you said, and I needed to tell
someone.”

“Of course, Bela, to make sure it was real,” Mariana says, and I'm already relieved; she has always understood me. “I'm just teasing you.”

“I am only showing people on a Need-to-Know Basis,” I tell her. “And your mother has no Need to Know.” Now it's Mariana's turn to respond to some questioning. “How much did Allen tell you?”

“Well.” She grins and I have to admit that Allen is right: she does get brighter, and ruddier, and even more beautiful every day. It's as if her soul is expanding along with her stomach. “Just that you're Mauricio's one true love, that his wife left him years ago, and that he wants you to come away to Camag
ü
ey when Castro dies, but Allen thinks Castro is dead already and they're never going to admit it. And he might be right, Bela. You know Beth told me that some of the Cubans in Miami think he's a santero and that he's going to live forever.”

“That sounds right.”

“You think Castro's going to live forever?”

“No, that's ridiculous, I wasn't even going to acknowledge that remark. I meant that's right, what Allen told you about the letter.”

“But I still want to see it!” Mariana leans forward. “I need to! I have a Need to Know!”

And she does, she's just not aware of it yet. So I stop torturing the poor, sick girl, and I hand her the letter. Mariana has always been a fast reader; I watch her eyes slide across each line and start again at the other side, alighting on each word. Occasionally she breathes in, too deeply for a regular breath but not long enough or forceful enough to be a sigh. She doesn't smile, she doesn't frown, but she has the thumbnail of her free hand in her mouth as she reads. I'm so absorbed in watching her that I don't register this disgusting habit until she's almost done with the letter. I pull her hand from her mouth as she drops the paper onto the blanket covering her legs.

“Oh, Bela!” She clasps my hand as if I had meant to reach out and hold hers rather than yank her nail out of her teeth. “It's amazing. And his penmanship—it's just as beautiful as I imagined! I do think it's an ink pen. Did you see that the letters blur a little toward the left of the page, as if he's dragging his hand over the wet words as he writes?”

Mariana starts to bring her thumb back to her mouth before catching herself and stopping it in front of her face, reaching out to point at me instead. “Okay, here's what I think you should say to him. Do you have a pen and paper?”

“I do. But I don't care.”

“You're not going to respond! But, Bela—”

“Of course I'm going to respond! I just meant that I don't care what you think I should say.”

Mariana just looks confused, not properly taken aback or impressed. “I mean, I do care what you think, of course, mi reina,” I reassure her. “But I've already written a draft of a response, and I'd rather hear your thoughts about that.”

“Bela!” I can tell from Mariana's voice that she's smiling at me, even though I can't see her face because I'm engaged in the complicated process of untangling my bag's straps from the chair, thanks to that Colombian girl whose name I can't even remember right now. “Good for you! Can I see it?” She sounds almost shy, she's so eager. I extract the notebook paper from the back of my stealth
Vanidades
. It was sandwiched between a starlet's diet and a perfume advertisement, so it smells of heaven. But it doesn't look anywhere near as elegant as it smells, or as nice as Mauricio's letter. You can tell I used a ballpoint. I start tearing off the little chits of paper that remained when I pulled out the notebook pages, but Mariana yells, “Stop! You're going to rewrite it later, right? Just give me that thing.”

So I do.

Mauricio,
it begins:

When you wrote your letter, you couldn't have known that it would serve as a beacon in the darkest days of my life since the ones I suffered when I first left New Orleans and you. Even as I did so, even as I convinced myself that leaving meant upholding everything that was right, I knew it was wrong. Nothing in my life has ever felt like more of a sin.

And when, reading your letter, I realized that you followed me, that you came to Granada to find me, that we had a second chance to be together which was ruined by circumstance, by a chance interaction in the park I've always loved, for a moment I thought I was dying, the pain of that revelation was so strong. I closed my eyes fully expecting that I would never open them again.

But when I closed them, an image arose in my mind. It's a painting my granddaughter made—she's a very talented artist—and it shows a girl, me, dropping her schoolbook at the foot of a man who looms over the upper right corner of the canvas like an angel or a demigod of pagan mythology. And I stopped thinking of the loss I suffered—we suffered—in our parting, and realized all that had been gained. If I hadn't left, the painting wouldn't exist. Mariana would have never been born. And I can't imagine a world without her, or my grandson, or my daughters, or even my late husband any more than you could envision one without your children.