When We Left Cuba(21)
My mother’s displeasure over the fact that we are to remain in Palm Beach long past what is fashionable permeates the walls of our house, her complaints filling the room, her ire toward Fidel occasionally turning toward our father, his insistence that we can’t afford another house, that he can’t send us up north to compete with the venerable families, that his business keeps us here, Cuba a fading memory in the face of the new fortune he seeks to build.
My mother’s religion is our family’s status, the social capital she accumulates not nearly as adroitly as our father rebuilds his empire, his world dominated by sugar and land, the money he hoards in Switzerland and other places, his mistrust of the government magnified by the audacity of Fidel’s actions. I choke on their messianic fervor, on the fever pitch in our house as my mother’s growing insecurity over our diminished position in society and our father’s need for more reach inexorable levels.
And then with the late April showers, it’s over as quickly as it started; the world to which my mother desperately hopes to gain an entrée has moved on without us, the majority of her daughters still unmarried, Palm Beach a veritable ghost town compared to the golden months.
We spend our afternoons in the sitting room once Maria is home from school, the three of us flipping through magazines, reading books, our mother sipping her afternoon cocktail and deciding our futures. We’ve had nine days of rain, too many hours spent cooped up inside the house. The waiting wears thin, manifesting itself in the sharpness in our tones, sisterly glares, a thickening frost covering the veneer of my parents’ marriage.
“I have a cousin in Spain,” my mother announces one afternoon from her perch on the settee. “You could visit her, perhaps. Her husband is a diplomat. Surely, you could attend some embassy parties. There’s your father’s sister, of course. Mirta has offered her help. Her husband’s quite wealthy, you know.”
She frowns, as though she’s just realized the flaw in that particular plan.
Our aunt Mirta, our father’s younger sister, came to visit us in Cuba a few times, but I always gathered my mother didn’t approve of her husband. For all his money, the American lacks the pedigree to satisfy my mother. No, there will be no trips to visit our aunt to marry us off.
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Maria interjects.
“Don’t worry. No one is sending you away. You have ages to go before you’re considered a spinster,” I tease. “Enjoy it.”
“I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you,” my mother retorts. “At your age, I was already a wife. Had a child.”
Isabel is silent through all of this conversation, as though not speaking will render her invisible, and keep our mother’s attention off her.
My mother swallows. “Two more on the way.”
Surprise fills me. It is the closest she has come to acknowledging Alejandro since his death.
“You will be older next season,” she adds, sweeping past the moment, casting a worried look my way, as though twenty-three will bring with it a wave of wrinkles and gray hairs that will render me officially on the shelf. “Men like a younger girl. Before the bloom is off the rose.”
My mother was just eighteen when she married my father.
Maria snorts at the comment, and I’m glad this is all a joke to her, that she hasn’t had to face the reality of our situation yet, that our parents consider marriage to be the final goal for us, our success tied to the men we catch rather than our own merits. The realization will come, of course, likely when she is ready to advance her schooling, when she dreams of college or law school as I once did.
Our part-time housekeeper, Alice, walks into the room before my mother can continue telling me my golden years are behind me.
“Pardon me. Miss Beatriz, Mr. Diaz is here to see you. He’s waiting outside.”
Saved by Eduardo.
We haven’t spent much time together since the dynamite night—Eduardo’s been “traveling,” his whereabouts a mystery, but at the moment, I’ll take political intrigue over my mother’s marital machinations.
I paste a smile on my face and rise from the couch, setting my magazine down on the end table.
“I shouldn’t keep Eduardo waiting. After all, time isn’t exactly on my side, is it?” I say, shooting my mother a pointed look.
From Isabel’s position on the couch, a strangled laugh escapes.
* * *
? ? ?
“You saved me,” I tell Eduardo later when we are walking side by side on the beach.
“Did I? I think I like the sound of that. Would you say I’m your hero, then?”
I laugh. “I wouldn’t go quite that far.”
“Humph. What did I save you from?”
“My mother. Voicing her displeasure that society has moved on and we are still here in Palm Beach.” I cast a sidelong look Eduardo’s way as we walk along the beach, my sandals in hand, the skirt of my dress clutched in my fingers as the sand slithers between my toes. “I’m surprised you didn’t leave.”
“Where would I go?” Eduardo looks to the sea, brushing a lock of dark hair from his forehead. It’s grown longer since the season ended, the ends curling.
“New York, perhaps.”
His lip curve with distaste. He knows the game as well as I do. “Trying to marry me off?”