When Tito Loved Clara (42 page)

Clara took her place in the kitchen assembly line, slicing yucca, rolling dough, chopping garlic, laughing, and telling stories. As much as she had longed for her life in the suburbs, as much as she loved the tranquility of it, she had to admit that it lacked this communal vivaciousness. But, after a certain age, wasn't everything in life a trade-off? She had made her choices and it was too late to change her mind.

I
N THE AFTERNOON
, her hands smelling of garlic and her clothes damp with steam from the rice pot, Clara walked up the drive to the town's main road. How different it was. When she was a girl, a motorized vehicle traveling along this road was an event. You came out of your house to see it—or you locked your door and hid in your house, depending on what kind of vehicle you thought it was. Now the traffic was incessant. In among the jalopies and pickups, the new SUVs with their veneer of criminality, and the overcrowded minibuses, there were the flatulent mopeds, often carrying as many as three people on their sagging seats, backfiring as they navigated the craters in the semi-paved road. There was no visible reduction in traffic or noise because of the holiday. The tin-shack emporiums along this byway could not afford to close; many could not afford to lose a day's pay.

Earlier in the week when Clara was on an errand to get some cooking oil for her mother, a distant cousin, Angel, had approached her and asked her for money. No preambles. No small talk. Just: “
Hola, Clara. ¿Tienes dinero?
” Just like that. She had offered the coins in her pocket—six pesos and change—but he'd snorted at her, saying he needed a hundred. She said she didn't have a hundred. For a moment, she thought there would be a scene. Angel had looked around and must have decided that there were too many people nearby. He nodded at her and melted back into the street.

After that, she started varying the time of her daily trip into the town to buy the little treats and necessities that were expected of her—batteries, soap, cosmetics, and bottles of beer and rum. Sometimes she would bring one of her uncles with her, but today, her last in the country, she wanted to go alone. She made her rounds with no sign of Angel. On the way back, she stopped and bought apples. The individually wrapped red fruits were a seasonal treat—the Three Kings equivalent of an Easter egg, a memory from her childhood. She bought a dozen each day and distributed them among her cousins. They were Empire apples, available in
any supermarket in America, but the context made them a delicacy and she relished eating them every afternoon. Apples never tasted so good. They tasted like gold.

The apples helped everyone fend off hunger until the late after-noon, when food began to emerge from the kitchen. The uncles, who were drinking beneath the mango tree in the driveway, got out the folding tables and more chairs and paper plates and glasses. The music was turned up. It was hot, but bearable, and it did not look like it was going to rain. More rum was poured. Sodas for the kids. And then the food. First, there were
pastelitos.
Deysei carried a platter of them around the compound, into bedrooms and living rooms, through backyards, summoning everyone, letting them know that the feast was about to begin. Clara watched the members of her extended family assemble under the mango tree with their half-eaten
pastelitos
in their hands, the crescents of dough and meat like invitations. After that, a sequence of dishes:
chicharrones, ropa vieja, tostones, yucca, bacalao, moro.

While they were eating, Clara's cell phone rang. It was Yunis.

“Yo!” she said. “Y'all having a fine time there without me?”

“I'm eating a
pastelito
right now.”

“I don't need to hear about that. You know what I'm eating?”

“No.”

“Lo mein leftover from yesterday. And you know what else?”

“What?”

“It's fucking snowing outside.”

“Well, it's only about eighty here,” said Clara. “A little chilly, actually. I might need to put on a sweater.”

“Shut up.” “So, how's the J-O-B going?” Clara asked. Yunis, unable to find an excon to support her, and no longer having a dependent child to use as leverage with the welfare office, had finally resorted to steady employment as a receptionist for a doctor on the Upper West Side.

“It's all right. I got to tell you, Sis, this working for a living sucks. Dealing with people all day sucks. When I get home all I want to do is go to sleep.”

“That means you're a grown-up now.”

“Shit. Who needs that? How's my girl?”

“She's good. You should see her. She's lost some weight.” The earliest indications of forgiveness had started to surface between Yunis and Deysei. There were speaking. A month ago that had seemed impossible.

“OK. Pass the phone around so I can holla at everyone and then I got some big
bochinche
for you.”

Her phone made the rounds of the gathering, and even Deysei spoke civil good wishes into it before it came back to Clara. She stood and walked away from the feast, as if she were heading back into the kitchen to get some food, but she turned at the last moment and headed between her mother's house and Tío Plinio's, walking toward the pen where the pigs were kept.

“Tell me,” she said to Yunis.

“You ain't never going to guess who was just here.”

“Who?”

“The police.”

“The police?”

“Yeah. They came here yesterday, looking for Raúl. They said they wanted to talk to him about that girl that got killed in the park. The jogger.”

“What?”

“That's right. The Cruzes moved her right before she got killed and Raúl worked on that move. He never told me that. Police just heard about this. They said he's a person of interest or some shit.”

“Oh, my God. They think he killed her?”

“They didn't say that. Alls they said was they wanted to talk to him.”

“Do you think he could have done that?”

“Before he fucked my daughter I would have said no. But now? Anything's possible. You live with someone for two years and you think you know them. You don't know anything.”

“What did you do?”

“Are you tripping, Sis? I told them I'd do anything I could to help them
.
I had a pretty good idea where Raúl might be hiding out and I called him up and acted like I wanted to make nice with him. Told him to come over today for a booty call. But he never made it up here to the apartment. The police were waiting downstairs and they arrested his ass right in front of the building.”

“Holy shit, Yunis. Are you worried?”

“About what?”

“That he might come after you for setting him up.”

“He's going to be in
jail,
Sis. Whatever he did, it's a second offense. He's going to be in there a
long
time. I ain't worried about nothing. But don't tell Deysei, you hear me?”

“You're going to tell her?”

“Not yet—but soon. There won't be anything she can say to me then.”

“She's not talking about him so much these days.”

“That's good. I should have kicked him out a long time ago.”

“So, you got a new boyfriend, Yunis?”

“Well . . .”

“What? There's a new man in the Yuniverse?”

“One of the patients at the office. Nice middleaged white guy. Electrician. Anyway, he's been giving me the signals.”

“Has he done time?”

“
No.
”

“Yunis!”

“What? You the only one who can go with a white guy?”

W
HEN THE FOOD
had been eaten and the rum had been drunk, when darkness had fallen and the mosquitos had chased
everyone indoors, Clara and Guillermo said their goodbyes, a half hour of hugs and tears and kisses and wishes for a safe journey and promises to come back soon. They got into the rental and drove back toward Santo Domingo, waving their hands out the windows and beeping the horn. Raúl was going to jail. The thought of it calmed her. Once they were on the road, Clara began eagerly anticipating the moment when she would open the door to their hotel room and feel the air-conditioning chill the sweat on her face and arms. Dwelling on this and not paying full attention to what she was doing, she missed her exit. She got off the highway and attempted to backtrack from the next exit but ended up on another major route out of the city. “Shit!” she said, and got off the second highway to try and turn around again. She pulled into a parking lot in front of a little restaurant to make the U-turn. It was barely more than a shack with a hand-painted sign. She recognized it right away. “Oh my God,” she said, and stopped the car.

“O
UR FATHER'S BEEN
murdered.”

The voice on the other end of the line was her half-brother's. She had not spoken to him in years.

“Sorry?” she said. The call was so unexpected that she had the sensation that God was talking to her. She stood in the kitchen of her Morningside Heights one-bedroom, listening. She was partially undressed. She and her new boyfriend, Thomas, had been making out on the couch in her living room. He was in there now, watching the movie they'd rented as a pretense for getting busy with each other.

“He was killed last night, Clara, shot four times during a holdup of the store.” This was Efran talking, she reminded herself. Not God.

It was too much for her to process. She focused on something smaller, something more manageable.

“How did you find me?” Clara asked.

“My friend's father works for the DMV. He looked you up.” There was silence for a moment. “Clara, Papi's dead.”

She said nothing.

Efran told her that there was going to be a wake in Inwood the next day and then they were going to fly the body back to the Dominican Republic to be buried in Dolores's home town, Higüey. The news of her father's murder filled her with guilt and remorse, triggered these emotions with such force that she felt compelled to take actions that would have seemed insane a day earlier. The following afternoon, she dressed in mourning black and went to the funeral home on Dyckman, just a few blocks from the store. There were a dozen people in the room with the closed coffin, and a murmur went through them when she entered. She looked at no one, walked straight to the casket, and kneeled, but she was not thinking about her father, not directly. She was thinking that she wasn't going to let Dolores prevent her from from paying the proper respect. She mimed a prayer and then let her hand rest on the flat surface of the coffin. When she stood up, Dolores was right behind her, looking haggard and deranged. Words of kindness from her step-mother in that moment might have gone a long way to healing the old wounds, but it was as if no time had passed, as if Clara was still a child newly abducted from the Dominican Republic.

“Now you come. Your father dies heartbroken because he has not seen his daughter in years and now she dares show her face!” This was said loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. Without a word, Clara walked out of the funeral home and got on a train downtown.

Two days later, she was on the same flight as Dolores, Efran, and her father's body. It had cost her a fortune, but the encounter with her stepmother in the funeral home was a challenge she would not turn away from. On the plane, Dolores and Efran sat up front and Clara sat in back. The whole flight down, it seemed that there was someone standing over her waiting to use the toilet. She had
not slept much since learning that her father had been killed. She'd fallen victim to a panicked second-guessing of everything in her life. Again and again, she wondered how things would have been different if she had gotten back in touch with her father. She could not help but think that if they had found a way to settle their differences, he might somehow still be alive. At the same time, she raged against those guilty feelings. It was only by escaping from him and Dolores that she had been able to make any kind of life for herself at all. Still, the fact remained that her father was dead and she had done nothing to prevent his murder.

The plane landed in the early afternoon. Clara was met at the airport by her
tía
Augustina, her mother's youngest sister, who was less than a decade older than she was. Augustina had once been married, though it turned out that the union was bogus—that her “husband” was still married to his first wife. She had a grown child by that man, worked in an office in the capital, and owned her own car. She was about as close to an independent woman as Clara knew among her family. She and Clara waited in Augustina's car near the cargo area. From a distance, they watched as Dolores harangued and badgered the customs officials. “Can't you see I'm in mourning? I want to bury my husband.” It took three hours for the body to be released, and as soon as the casket came through the door and the documents were signed (and, no doubt, a bribe paid, Clara thought), two relatives of Dolores's appeared, one in a station wagon and the other in a Jeep. They loaded the casket into the station wagon and then everyone else got in the Jeep.

It was a five-hour drive to Higüey. Augustina encouraged Clara to sleep while she drove, but she could not sleep. She was afraid they were going to lose sight of the station wagon in the traffic and never find their way to the funeral. The house was in the middle of farmland, off a small road. Cattle grazed in the fields. As Clara and Augustina pulled up, Dolores's people were unloading the casket from the back of the station wagon and taking it into the house. A
small crowd had gathered to greet them and neither Augustina nor Clara knew any of those people. Clara had never met her father's relatives—he was the only one of his family who'd emigrated. She did not even know if the people they were looking at were related to her. She waited until everyone had gone inside and then she knocked on the door. Dolores opened it. “This is not your father's house,” she said. “This is
my
family's house. You can stay out there, but I will not let you inside my house, you shameless daughter.”