Next Year in Havana(36)

I sit, and when he slides the full glass across the table to me, the liquid sloshing around the rim, I don’t hesitate as I lift the drink to my lips and drain it.

The rum is better than expected. I’ve seen the brand before in my travels abroad, its distinctive logo jumping out at me as a sign of yet another thing Castro’s government has taken, but I’ve never tried it. Was it once the Rodriguez family’s before the rum companies were nationalized?

“Are you sure you don’t want to patch up your face?” His eye looks like it must be throbbing; he’ll have a hell of a bruise tomorrow.

Luis shakes his head, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that he’s sitting across from me beaten and bloody.

Men.

“Rough night?” He gestures to the empty glass in my hand.

It sounds like he’s laughing at me again.

“You could say that.”

I slide the glass back across the table, and he refills it, taking another sip. His gaze is trained on the sea in front of him rather than on me, but I sense he’s waiting for me to respond, and now, an ocean away from my family, I’m so in need of another person to talk to that I do.

“Your grandmother had a box of possessions my grandmother buried in her backyard when she left Cuba. There were letters in there. Love letters. From a man. He was a revolutionary.”

Luis is silent, waiting for me to continue. Surprisingly, I do.

“I came to spread my grandmother’s ashes because she asked me to, because I knew her better than anyone, or thought I did, but now I don’t feel like I knew her at all.”

“She never told you about the man?”

“No. I don’t think anyone knew. At least if her sisters did, they never said anything. She told me so many stories about her life in Cuba, and this might be the most important one of all, and she never mentioned it. Not once.”

I’ve never been overly close to my father; he’s an affectionate, if distant, parent. And my grandfather died when I was fairly young, so he’s little more than a hazy memory. My mother left me in the care of others after the divorce. But my grandmother—

She was the constant in my life, the person I knew would be there for me no matter what, the one person in my family who accepted me without reserve, who didn’t attempt to shape me into the Perez mold. That makes this discrepancy between the woman I thought I knew and the woman she was cut the deepest.

“What are you more upset about? The secrecy or that your grandmother loved someone you wouldn’t approve of?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “My grandparents’ relationship was always built up as this great romance in my mind. I didn’t have a lot of examples of healthy marriages to look up to—my parents certainly didn’t fit the bill.”

I’d told myself that one day when I was older, my own relationship would look like theirs, that my children would never grow up in a home as divisive and fractured as the one I was raised in, but rather in a house filled with love and affection like that of my grandparents.

“When I was a little girl, I used to beg my grandmother to tell me about how they met,” I explain to Luis. “They married a month later. Can you imagine that—meeting someone and falling in love in the blink of an eye and then marrying them a few weeks later? What is that if not great love?”

I can feel my skin flushing, the warmth prickling me, either from the rum or the topic.

Luis stares at me, his expression inscrutable. “Your definition of romance is a singular one.”

I blink. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

It sounds like he’s faintly mocking me again.

“You speak of passion, but what about companionship, mutual respect, friendship? Why do people always seize on the spark that can peter out as the measure of a relationship?”

Does he have that spark with his wife, or is theirs a steady marriage, bolstered by the qualities he speaks of now?

“Those things are important,” I concede. “And my grandparents had them, too. They were married for a long time; I very much doubt marriage can endure without those qualities.”

He tips his head in silent acknowledgment.

“But I’d want the spark, too,” I say, my voice growing bolder.

Luis laughs, the sound throaty and warm. “I don’t doubt it.”

He picks up the glass again, bringing it to his lips, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.

I can’t look away.

“I imagine a family like yours wouldn’t be pleased to have a revolutionary in their midst,” he says.

“No, they wouldn’t.” I hesitate, torn between truth and caution. The rum loosens my tongue. “I grew up hearing the worst about people like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.”

There is somewhat of a divide between the Cubans who left and the Cubans who stayed. There is affection and worry for family members and friends who remained behind, the intrinsic need to help anyone leave Cuba, but there is also a schism. Some believe those who stayed contributed to Cuba becoming what it is now, and in doing so, bolstered Fidel’s power and legitimized it. People like my grandmother saw that as another betrayal—one that hurt especially because it came from her fellow Cubans. It is much easier to forgive the stranger than it is one you love.

“It’s difficult to imagine my grandmother loving one of them.”