When We Left Cuba(57)
“On the beach. I went for a walk.” I brush at my face surreptitiously, hoping the tears have dried, that they will chalk my disheveled appearance up to the elements.
“Why aren’t you at school?” I ask Maria.
“Quiet,” Isabel interjects, gesturing toward the TV.
I follow their gazes, as Maria rises from her perch on the couch, turning up the volume on the television.
My breath catches.
The rumors are true; there’s been an invasion of Cuba.
* * *
? ? ?
The thing about hope is that when it fills you, when you hold it in the palm of your hand, the promise of it is everything. You can go for days, weeks, months, years on that hope, telling yourself everything will be fine, eventually, you’ll have what you’ve been waiting for, this is just a momentary setback in your life, one you will overcome. After all, if there isn’t a happy ending at the end of the story, what is the purpose of all of it?
Hope is such a beautiful lie.
The initial reports are scant, the news dire. The invasion at Playa Girón—the Bay of Pigs, as the Americans call it—failed miserably. Over a hundred men killed, over a thousand men captured. There is little room for my broken heart in these times, and I spend my days gathering whatever news I can on the situation in Cuba, while my father calls friends and business associates trying to discover what has happened to our island, while my mother and sisters pray in the pews of St. Edward’s.
Does Eduardo’s body litter the shores of Playa Girón, or is he in one of Fidel’s prison cells?
The thought of him dead or injured breaks my heart.
We wait for news to trickle out of Cuba.
Days after the failed invasion, President Kennedy addresses the nation.
We gather in the same living room where we once watched the election night results with eagerness. Now, Maria is quiet and subdued. Our father is here, grim faced and disappointed in yet another politician. And I— I regret the way I left things with Eduardo. But more than that, I am filled with anger again, the hope I had placed in President Kennedy evaporated now. Did I place too much trust in him because he is a friend of Nick’s? Or are we simply naturally predisposed to hope?
Is Cuba lost to us forever?
Kennedy offers words, but it is not words we need now. We need weapons: planes and tanks. We need men willing to fight. Men who are trained in the art of such warfare, who are adequately prepared, not men who are sent to be killed and captured, outmanned and outgunned, abandoned by the Americans.
We need military action from the United States.
“We’re never going back, are we?” Maria asks me as she readies for bed that night.
And in my weakness, in my grief, I admit the truth that has plagued me all along.
“I don’t know.”
* * *
? ? ?
Days pass, my nights spent tossing and turning in bed, worrying about Eduardo, about Cuba. I’ve seen firsthand what those prisons are like. Surely, Dwyer and his colleagues will move forward with the assassination plot now. They have to. What else is left? Leaving Cuba for Fidel?
The emerging reports surrounding the failed invasion suggest Fidel knew we were coming, and I am reminded of Dwyer’s earlier concern that Fidel has eyes and ears within the United States reporting back to him.
Were we betrayed by one of our own?
There’s a meeting with the Hialeah group this week; perhaps they’ll have information to share.
In the beginning, I doubted the value of such espionage, but if anything, the recent events in Cuba have made me appreciate the CIA’s role in this. And if it’s possible for me to make a difference, then how can I resist helping? My countrymen lie dead on a Cuban beach; languish in Fidel’s prison. I can’t stand by and do nothing.
The beach is mostly empty at this early hour, the season ended, the social set moved on to Newport, or New York, or wherever. I walk toward my usual spot, stopping in my tracks at the sight of a man standing near the palm tree where I normally sit.
The impulse to turn back home is strong, anger and nerves filling me. The impulse is there, but for all of my flaws, I’ve never been a coward, and so instead of running away, I walk toward him, stopping when we’re so close he could reach out and touch me.
He looks awful.
Thinner than I remembered, shadows under his eyes, a wrinkle—two—in his normally flawlessly pressed dress shirt.
Neither one of us speaks as we look at each other, and I get the sense he’s searching my appearance as much as I am his, looking for signs of—what?—I don’t even know. It’s been over two weeks now since that horrible night I saw him with his fiancée, but it feels like so much longer.
He breaks the silence first.
“You left me.”
“You lied to me,” I counter.
“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you; I didn’t want to lose you. It’s not an excuse, and I know it doesn’t make what I did right, but that’s why I did it.”
“You didn’t want to lose me so you lied to me? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? I knew you were engaged. I understood where I was in your life. At least, I thought I did. And then you lied.”
“I didn’t want to lose you by disrupting whatever balance we have between us. We’d fought recently, and everything is so complicated right now with Cuba. I didn’t want to make things worse.”