Next Year in Havana(110)

“Let me guess, you left someone back in Cuba?” he asks, enough of a bite in his tone to nip at my skin.

Men so do enjoy pursuing that which they cannot have.

My diamond smile reappears. Honed at my mother’s knee and so very useful in situations like these, the edges sharp and brittle, warning the recipient of the perils of coming too close.

I bite, too.

“Something like that,” I reply in a casual drawl.

Now that one of their own is back on his feet, no longer prostrate in front of the interloper they’ve been forced to tolerate this social season, the crowd turns its attention from us with a sniff, a sigh, and a flurry of bespoke gowns. We possess just enough money and influence—it turns out sugar is nearly as lucrative in America as it is in Cuba—that they can’t afford to cut us directly, but not nearly enough to prevent them from devouring us like a sleek pack of wolves scenting red meat. Fidel Castro has made beggars of all of us, and for that alone, I’d thrust a knife through his heart.

And suddenly, unexpectedly, the walls are too close together, the lights in the ballroom too bright, my bodice too tight, and my heart bleeds out over the elegant parquet floor. Acting as though everything is effortless is surprisingly exhausting, and pretending that their disdain is beyond my notice even more so.

It’s been nearly a year since we left Cuba for what was supposed to be a few months away, until the world realized what Fidel Castro had done to our island—before Cubans came to their senses and understood he wasn’t the savior they sought, but rather a charlatan hungry for power. Hardly better than President Batista, and with each day that passes, I fear far worse.

America has welcomed us into her loving embrace—almost.

I am surrounded by people who don’t want me here, even if their contempt hides behind a polite smile and feigned sympathy. They look down their patrician noses at me because my family hasn’t been in America since the country’s founding or hadn’t sailed on a boat from England, or some nonsense like that. They think their sons are too good to dance with me, their daughters too precious to speak to me. Thanks to my education, I speak English well enough, if not for the faintest accent, but that’s not enough for them. My features are a hint too dark, my voice too foreign, my religion too Catholic, my last name too Cuban. I am not one of them, and they won’t let me forget it.

And at the same time . . .

There is no quarter in Cuba right now for differing from Fidel in the slightest. They’re killing Perezes in Havana, so we must make do with the life we borrow in Palm Beach.

It is a strange thing to lack a corner of the world to call your own, to feel as though you are reviled wherever you go. In Havana, we are ostracized for having too much. In Palm Beach, we are written off for not being enough, dismissed as being of little use by a society that defines itself by how high one has climbed until one has reached a rarified status and can prevent all others from occupying the same space.

In truth, we did the same in Havana, and look where it has landed us.

The past tugs at me each moment, the memory of what we left behind a constant ache. The present hurls me back to the airport lounge at Rancho Boyeros airport—now renamed by Castro to Jose Martí airport—waiting in between our old life and an uncertain future. It’s easy to not feel like any of this counts, as though this year we’ve spent in Palm Beach is a placeholder, a dress rehearsal for a different life. What will we care for their contempt when we have returned home?

In a flash, an elderly woman who looks suspiciously like Anderson’s mother approaches us, sparing me a cutting look no doubt designed to knock me down a peg or two—as though a pair of steely gray eyes compares to the face of a firing squad—before turning her attention to her son. In a cloud of Givenchy, he’s swept away until I’m left standing alone, my fall from grace on full display.

If I had my way, we wouldn’t attend these parties, save this one, wouldn’t attempt to ingratiate ourselves to Palm Beach society; they and their stuffy opinions can hang, for all I care. Of course, it isn’t about me and what I want. It’s about my mother and sisters, and my father’s need to extend his business empire through these social connections so no one ever has the power to destroy us again.

And of course, as always, it’s about Alejandro.

I perform another visual sweep of the ballroom. There must be two hundred people here tonight, surrounded by walls adorned in gold leaf, entombed in their unwritten rules and code. We had them in Havana, too, and while some things translate, others don’t. I’ve learned the basics, but there are subtle nuances I’ve yet to grasp.

I turn on my heel and head for one of the open balconies off the ballroom, the hem of my gown gathered in hand, careful to keep from tearing the delicate fabric. We have a system in place for re-wearing and repurposing gowns; there’s an art to appearing far wealthier than you really are.

I slip through one of the open doors and step out onto the stone terrace, a breeze from the water blowing the skirt of my dress. There’s the barest hint of a chill in the air, or at least as close to one as South Florida experiences, the sky is clear, the stars are shining down, and the moon is full. The sound of the ocean is a dull, distant roar. It’s the noise of my childhood and my adulthood calling to me like a Siren’s song. I close my eyes, a sting there, pretending for a moment that I’m standing on another balcony, in another country, in another time. What would happen if I left the party behind and headed for the water, removed the pinching shoes and curled my toes in the sand, let the ocean pool around my ankles?