After the Hurricane(57)
“They’re going to get stuck that way,” she jokes. He glances at her, confused, then he gets it, and smiles.
“Old wives’ tale.”
“What’s a new wives’ tale?” Elena asks, feeling whimsical.
“You’ll know soon enough, right?” Fernando says, offhandedly, but Elena straightens.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Aren’t you getting married?” Fernando asks, sounding puzzled. Elena stares at him. She told her father she had broken off her engagement. How had he forgotten? How did he even remember in the first place? But then, why is she surprised? Her father rarely retains information, little things, about her. The big things, the achievements, things that reflect his own accomplishments in life, big names and big events, they stick in his brain. The rest, as far as she knows, swirl away in the stream. He has always been this way. More than once, when he was still a daily part of her life, he asked her how old she was. He never knew the names of her teachers or her doctors, all her friends bled together, and Elena does not know if he ever registered a boyfriend, few and far between as those had been. Her mother has detailed folders, labeled by year, that contain Elena’s whole life: blood test reports, macaroni art, letters she sent from summer camp, pay stubs from her first summer job, a playbill from a play she was in in college, photos of her on her high school soccer team, postcards she sent from her year abroad in Buenos Aires, a copy of her graduate school diploma, a copy of the lease on her New York apartment. Anything important in her life, Elena brings it dutifully home to Philadelphia, where it is filed, kept safe, contained. Her father never met Daniel. Rosalind was his Facebook friend, still is, in fact. They trade recipes. Elena knows she should consider this a betrayal, but why? She ended things with him. Why begrudge her mother the chance to bake a new type of biscotti?
“Not anymore,” Elena says. “No new wives’ tales for me.”
“Should I be sorry?” Fernando asks, and Elena appreciates him for this. Most people just apologize, a knee-jerk reaction that she understands but dislikes. What concerned Elena most when she ended the relationship was not how much she felt, but how little.
“No,” Elena says. “I ended things.”
“Why?” Fernando asks, bluntly. Elena realizes that he must in fact be a rather blunt person.
“I realized that I liked what he represented, but not him.”
“What does that mean?” Fernando sounds confused. Elena doesn’t know what it means, it just came out of her. She thinks.
“He was stable. I like stability. I crave it. But he wasn’t anything more to me. And the person you marry should be someone you just all around adore, I think. He deserved better than someone who was using him like that.” Elena feels freer admitting this. She had been using Daniel, making him a safety blanket. Better that she had realized this before it was too late.
“How’d you meet?” Fernando asks. Elena smiles wryly.
“The university I went to does the nerdiest mixer events. There is a lecture, and then drinks. It’s for alumni but other people can come, too. I went to one about this history of Jewish food—my mom’s Jewish, I’m Jewish, too, that’s how it works . . . well not for everyone, if they choose not to be, but, anyway, I’m Jewish. I thought this food lecture would be interesting. Daniel, that’s him, he had tagged along with a friend who’d also gone to my university. Daniel went to Brandeis, he’s, like, very Jewish.” Elena pauses. “Sometimes I wonder if I was, like, leaning into that part of myself with him. Because I’ve never felt totally really Latina. Maybe I just don’t know what it really means to me. Because of my, well . . . Sometimes it’s easier, for me, to embrace the part of myself that’s easier for me to understand, or that’s more welcoming or something. Not that Puerto Rico isn’t, I just don’t have such a difficult relationship with . . . with the person in my life who is . . . well. Maybe it was just easier to focus on that one part. With Daniel. Anyway, we ended up getting a drink, and he asked me out. He’s kind. Moderate in all things. Rarely angry, rarely, never, too much of anything. A totally appropriate amount of person.”
“Do you regret it? Breaking it off?”
Elena looks at Fernando, whose eyes are still on the road.
“No. I haven’t heard from him since, not much. So I guess he doesn’t either. I think, I think I liked him, loved him, for all the things he wasn’t. And that’s not right. I should have loved the things he was.”
Elena looks out the window. She has surprised herself with her own candor. But there is a freedom to talking to Fernando, who knows if she will ever see him again after this car ride? This moment? He is like talking to the wind.
“I’m surprised that my father told you,” Elena admits. She didn’t know he had even registered the engagement.
“He wanted to celebrate. He bought the bar a round,” Fernando admitted. Elena winced. “It was six p.m. on a Tuesday, so the only person he actually bought a drink for was me. And himself. Of course.” Of course.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to invite him to the wedding, actually,” Elena confessed.
“Your fiancé? That’s a bold choice.” Fernando is attempting a joke, and Elena laughs, more out of respect for the effort than because it is actually all that funny.