When Tito Loved Clara (15 page)

“Yes,” said her father. “It's late, but we made it.” He flipped a switch and the lights in the hallway came on and Clara could see
the face of the woman descending toward them, one hand steadying herself on the banister, the other hand gathering the front of her nightdress around her engorged belly. The woman was not her mother.

“Where's my mami?” asked Clara, her voice cracking. The woman was coming closer and closer. Only four steps separated them now.

“This is your mami,” said her father, who was at her side. He reached up to take the hand of the woman on the stairs, helping her down to the landing. He kissed her once on the mouth and then bent over and kissed her stomach. “How's the baby?” he asked.

“Ay, Roberto. He's kicking me all the time,” said the woman who was not her mother. She looked down at Clara. Clara had never seen a Dominican woman with such a straight, narrow nose, with such thin lips. Her hair was in curlers and the proximity of the great mass of her belly frightened her.

“Kiss your mother,” said her father.

“That's not my mother!” said Clara, edging away from her.

Whap!
The blow came from the woman and it had as much force as her father's slap earlier that evening. Clara staggered back a step and began weeping, her hands covering her face where the blow had struck her.

“Listen to your father!” the woman said. “Don't be an ungrateful child.”

“You're not my mother!” Clara yelled.

“Clara, kiss your mother,” said her father, gently but insistently. He grasped her by the arm and pulled her toward the woman who was not her mother. “Kiss her now.”

“No!” shouted Clara. Her hands were still over her face and she was sobbing.

Encircling her waist with one arm, her father picked her up. He pulled her hands away from her face, which was wet with tears. Clara struggled, but her father was too strong. He lifted her until
she was looking into the eyes of the woman who was not her mother. She had brown bloodshot eyes, the whites of which were gray at the edges, as if diseased.

“Kiss her!” said her father.

Clara moved her head closer, as if to comply with her father's request. At the last moment, she opened her mouth and caught a piece of the woman's cheek between her teeth. The woman screamed and Clara's father pulled her away, but not before Clara tasted the woman's blood in her mouth. Her father flung her to the floor and went to console the woman who was not her mother. She was sitting on the stairs with her hand on her face.

“Dolores,” he called. “
Estás bien?
”

Dolores looked up. “She's an animal!”

Clara's father produced a handkerchief to blot the wound. “It's not deep,” he said as he dabbed the gash. “You'll be fine.”

Dolores pushed Clara's father aside so that she could look directly at Clara, who was still on the floor where she had landed.

“Now I see why your mother abandoned you, little animal,” Dolores said to her.

“No!” said Clara. “She did not abandon me.”

“Yes! Your mother has forgotten you. It is your father who remembered you. You will have to put her out of your mind, because now I am the only mother you will ever have.”

C
LARA AND
L
AUREN
took their lunch at a café in the concourse that led from Newark Penn Station to their office building in the Gateway Center. Lauren and her partner, Abby, had gone through IVF the year before to conceive their daughter, Kate, and Clara often sought advice and comfort from her friend. Abby had had a miscarriage during her first cycle, but her successful delivery of a fullterm baby a year later gave Clara enormous hope. She told Lauren the latest news about the hysteroscopy. Lauren, with the
same thoroughness she brought to litigation, had researched every aspect of reproductive medicine before she and Abby had embarked on their course of IVF.

“You know, in the chatrooms we joined, a lot of people were saying that the whole T-shaped uterus thing is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for the doctors when they can't figure out another obvious reason. It's something to say that sounds better than ‘we don't know.' It's good they're doing the hysteroscopy. That's how they will know for sure. I bet that's not the problem at all. I bet that you've just been unlucky, or maybe you've got some kind of infection. After all, you already had one healthy delivery.”

Clara nodded, grateful for Lauren's strident certainty. Such confidence is what she needed to hear from Thomas the night before. He'd said some of the same things, but there was doubt or distraction in his voice.

“I've been thinking of starting a fertility club,” Lauren said. “Kind of like a knitting circle, only we could tell our stories. Isn't that what you need? To hear that someone else has been through this and that everything turned out all right?”

“Yes,” said Clara. “That's exactly what I need.”

Tito flipped open his cell phone and listened again to the message: “Mr. Moreno. This is Alicia Almonte. A valued possession of mine seems to have gone missing. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss the matter. . . . Perhaps I will have to fill out one of your surveys after all. Thank you.”

It was eight o'clock in the morning, the week after the Almonte move and, with only beer and sour milk in his refrigerator, Tito was on his way up Broadway to get some breakfast before starting work. He couldn't believe that she'd checked on the photograph. First time he steals from a client and he gets caught! He shouldn't have gone back to talk to her about Clara. It had obviously sent her down memory lane to the Julia Alvarez book. He had the photograph in his pocket, ready to return it and throw himself on her mercy. He'd already been into Kinko's the day before to have it scanned. A copy of the image was in his phone and another rested in his e-mail in-box at work. Even so, he didn't want to part with the original. He sensed that she would understand, that she would forgive him—at least he hoped so, hoped that some kind of connection had been forged because of their mutual curiosity about Clara.

Tito closed his phone and went in through the streaked glass doors of El Malecon. He favored El Malecon over other local eateries for the simple reason that his ex-wife worked there. Her name was María Luisa; it was a green card marriage. She was the cousin of his mami's friend Merida. Tito had been paid a thousand
dollars on the day of the ceremony at the Bronx courthouse, and another thousand was promised to him once the green card was safely obtained. This was cheaper than the going rate, but Merida was an old friend; she and his mami had known each other as kids in Barahona. The ceremony took place on a bleak winter day, just a week after María Luisa had arrived from Santo Domingo. The bride didn't speak more than a dozen words of English. She was young and fat, uneducated but sweet. She said her vows through chattering teeth, which the justice of the peace probably ascribed to nerves. Tito played his part and gave her a big kiss, tilting her great bulk slightly as he embraced her.

The reception was back at Merida's:
chicharrones
and Presidentes,
bachata
and merengue. Then he didn't see her for a few weeks. That was their honeymoon. Merida was taking care of the legwork. She appeared with an apartment lease, which he had to sign; she opened a joint bank account for them and found María Luisa the job at El Malecon. In the week before the INS interview, Tito returned to Merida's apartment. María Luisa had gained some English and lost some weight. With Merida as their teacher, they went over their story again and again. How they met, where they had gone on vacations together, when the other's birthday fell, what their favorite foods were, what music they listened to and movies they loved, who their in-laws were. Tito, much practiced in fantasy, had no trouble with the notion of a fabricated marriage, a fabricated life. He even offered little twists and enhancements to the story Merida had conceived for them. The week of study paid off. They passed the interview and María Luisa was approved for resident alien status.

In due time, Tito received the rest of his payment, but it wasn't until three years later that María Luisa took care of the final piece of business. She came to him with divorce papers, severing their union because she wanted to get engaged to an MTA track worker named Manuel (a regular customer at the restaurant, Tito later found out). By then, María Luisa's transformation from bewildered immigrant
to barrio eye candy was complete. This was before he had met Jasmina, and it occurred to Tito that his mother might have set the whole thing up in the hopes that he and María Luisa would fall in love and stay married, like one of those arranged marriages. There was no chance for such a scheme—if that's what it was—to succeed. Tito could not think of María Luisa as wife material. She was a
campesina,
a hick.

His new apartment was much closer to El Malecon than to his parents' place and, without his mother to cook for him, Tito found himself going there more often. He went in now and sat at the counter. The place was bright and glassy, with chrome furniture and Plexiglas sheets laid over the green tablecloths. Fake flowers adorned every table. María Luisa was taking an order from an older couple at one of the few occupied tables. A female MTA employee Tito recognized from the Dyckman Street token booth sat at another table reading the paper and eating eggs. In the corner table a high school girl, who looked like she was cutting class, whispered into a cell phone. Though it opened at six a.m., the place was much more about the meals consumed later in the day. At nine o'clock that night, most of the tables would be filled and a ball game would be on the TV where the Univision morning news was now being shown. At the counter he could hear loud and clear the chime of dishes being unloaded from a washer in the kitchen.

“
Ay, Tito, mi amor. ¿Cómo estás?
” María Luisa asked, having taken the elderly couple's order. She kissed him on the cheek.

“
Bien. ¿Y tu?
” He checked her out. Looked like she was putting some of the weight back on. She didn't need to be so careful now that she was married.

“
Bien, bien.
” She went around the counter. “
¿Café?
” she asked.

“
Sí,
” said Tito. “
Café y pan, por favor. ¿Y Manuel?
”

“Working hard,” she said, placing coffee on the counter before him. She fetched him a roll and some butter. Tito never liked to eat a big breakfast.

“So, you like being married again?”

“Yes,” she said. “Second time is better.”

“That's because I broke you in,” he said. “Manuel ought to thank me.”

“I'll have him send you flowers,” she said, looking at him mischievously, smirking.

“What's that smile for?” said Tito.

“I'm pregnant,” she whispered, leaning across the counter toward him, showing off her generous cleavage.

“Ah!
¡Felicidades!
”

“Shh!” she said. “I haven't told
her.
”

Her
was Lourdes, the owner of the restaurant.

“When are you due?”

“January,” said María Luisa.

As if on cue, Lourdes came out of the kitchen and gave María Luisa a get-back-to-work look.

“I better place this order,” María Luisa said, holding up her pad. “Coffee is on the house, you hear?” She disappeared through the swinging doors into the kitchen.

Tito put five dollars on the counter and walked out. María Luisa could get into trouble for giving him food.

He went up Broadway and then turned on Vermilyea, going past the fire house and the post office, taking 204 over to Sherman. He had thought María Luisa might have been pregnant before she and Manuel tied the knot—that would have explained her haste to divorce Tito—but a January due date meant they'd probably conceived on their honeymoon. Some kid was going to be born an American citizen because of what he'd done. It didn't feel like a crime.

At Ms. Almonte's building, he was buzzed in without a greeting. She was waiting at her mother's door, wearing those scalpel-like glasses and another sleeveless dress, her arms as narrow as dowels.

“Ah, Mr. Moreno. Thank you for coming so quickly.” She opened
the door to let him pass into the apartment. It had been a little more than a week since the move but the change in the place was apparent. It was cleaner, brighter, more orderly, as if a dozen unsightly objects had been removed from each room.

“Of course, I'm sorry to hear—”

“I don't care about your apologies. It's very important to me. My mother gave it to me for my
quinceañera.
”

“What?”

“The bangle. A gold bangle. It was in the top drawer of my bureau and now it's not there.

“A bangle?”

“Yes. You know what a bangle is, don't you? A circular piece of jewelry worn on the wrist. It's only gold-plated. Whoever stole it won't get much for it—if he is even able to sell it. But it means a great deal to me. I don't like to make accusations, but it was there the day before the move and I haven't seen it since.”

Now that he understood, Tito was elated that he wasn't going to have to give back the photograph. “I'm very sorry,” he said. “I will look into it.”

“Good. I thought you might try to deny that things could go missing during a move.”

“No,” he said. “I can't deny that.”

“Then you should know that there was also two hundred dollars in cash that vanished on the day of the move, but I blame myself for that. You shouldn't leave money lying around when you have strangers in your house. But I'm not worried about the money. It's the bangle I need.”

“I promise, I'll do everything I can,” he said. “And where
is
your mother?”

Ms. Almonte put her hand to her hair, just a gentle pat, though, from her expression, you'd have thought her head was about to fall off. “She hasn't been feeling well the last couple of days. I finally had to take her to the hospital.”