Oscar Hijuelos - Beautiful María of My Soul

But whatever María and Gustavo lacked, as Teresita would speculate years later, it hardly affected the image they presented during those dance nights sponsored by the Gallego Society or the Cienfuegos Club. Held in the ballrooms of Miami beach hotels, these were merry affairs, packed with people, live bands, and more Cuban food than any such crowd could possibly consume. (Having too much food, as opposed to the paucity of such things back in Cuba, was the point.) Teresita loved to see them out on the floor, most elegantly dressed, dancing to boleros amongst other couples of every possible age, from los ancianos to los nenes; enjoyed observing that ritual of stance and attitude in which, with their faces pressed gently together and heads tilted slightly upwards, both of them smiled, as if seeing something magnificent in the sparkling globes revolving below the ceiling. A good enough dancer, Gustavo never stepped on anybody’s toes, and he even had a certain grace.

Teresita knew this because, seeing her sitting alone, he’d pull her out into the crowd, that dear and sweet man, who always had something nice to say to her-“If those fellows only knew what they’re missing” and “Don’t be shy, you’re as pretty as your mother,” which she knew was a lie but appreciated anyway. Though she would have preferred to stay home and study, or chat with her friends on the telephone, or simply watch some TV-in those days she really didn’t care about “boys” one way or the other-Teresita, having no choice about the matter, did her best to enjoy herself, mainly by overdoing it with the food, crispy tostones and the rinds of suckling pig-lechón-cooked up in the proper Cuban manner with tons of garlic, salt, and lemon juice, along with a nice heaping plate of rice with black beans, and maybe a little fried yuca. It was food that, as some of her Jewish friends at school would say, was “to die for.” Sucking in her stomach, whenever Teresita felt that someone’s eyes were on her, her greatest downfall came by way of the pastry tables, which were stacked with sweets, the diabolical napoleons being her favorites.

On one of those nights, Teresita had been sitting off to the side, gingerly nursing each scrumptious bite of one, when she noticed Gustavo coming off the dance floor with a pronounced limp, and when he sat down, María off somewhere in a frenzy, showing off with some young caballero during an upbeat mambo, he kept rubbing his shin and ankle, as if to get something working again. Back home, later that night, he took off his black patent leather shoes to find that both his feet were swollen and lividly purple; the more he rubbed them, the more he groaned in pain. A local doctor, who couldn’t have been very thorough, Teresita would think years later, diagnosed him with gout, but it turned out to be the boiling point of a diabetes-induced heart-related malady that, undiagnosed, only worsened in the following months and culminated in a stroke, which befell him as Gustavo sat in his office, helping a newly arrived exile couple with the paperwork for the government-subsidized purchase of a house.

That was God’s reward for all his good deeds, María kept thinking. “Gracias pa’ nada, Dios”-“Thanks for nothing, Lord”-she snapped at the sky after the priest had finished leading them in a final benediction and the cemetery workers, hoisting down ropes, lowered his coffin into the ground. Grasping her mother’s hand, Teresita, only fourteen at the time, was in tears. She had been crying for days. From the strange moment when María, late one afternoon, found her reading a book in her bedroom and told her, almost nonchalantly, that her step-papito was no more. And through the three days of his “showing” at the Gomez Brothers funeral home-“formerly located in Havana ”-Teresita had been mystified by María’s indifference. For her mother showed hardly any emotion. He may have been only her step-papito, but she missed him.

The house already seemed emptier without Gustavo, and on one of those evenings after they’d gotten home from his three-day wake, just the sound of the ice cream truck’s chimes at dusk brought her to tears, and every time she worked up the nerve to touch something that had belonged to him, like the plump brown wallet he had in his back pocket the day he died, which the police had returned to them in a plastic bag along with a rosary and comb, it broke her up too. But María? She had hardly shed a tear.

“Oh, but don’t you understand, mi hijita,” she said to Teresita, “that Gustavo’s passing was God’s will? There is nothing to be done when someone’s time comes-believe me, I know.” And when Teresita, feeling as if that was not enough of an answer, asked her: “But tell me, Mama, did you love him?” María said, “Of course, I cared very much for him, but was it a deep and burning love? No… If I chose him when I could have looked around for someone else, it was because he was a decent man, and I wanted you to benefit from his decency.” Then: “Did I want him to die? No. Did I want to deprive you of him? No. That was in El Señor’s plans, and nothing changes that. Es el destino- It’s destiny.”

“But, Mama, why is it that you haven’t even cried?”

“Why?” María said, getting up to refill a glass with red wine. “Because it doesn’t change a thing. Believe me, I’ve wept enough to last me two lifetimes-just to think of my own mother’s passing makes me cry deep inside at night. But by now-and you will understand this when you are older-I’ve learned that in this world you have to develop a hard skin. I learned this the hard way, and, believe me, you should too.”

Oh, but the hard skin? Even years later Dr. Teresita wondered if she herself had become muy durita, durita, as her mother used to say, without really intending to.

That same morning, when Gustavo was laid to rest, to join the others in María’s life who had once meant so much to her-her papito, her mother, her sister and two brothers, old Lázaro, and Nestor Castillo, and likely Ignacio too-and many in that crowd, among them more than a few of the reverent cubanos Gustavo had helped in the darkest days of their early exile, wept unabashedly, only beautiful María, dressed appropriately in black and under a veil, remained curiously unmoved, and that, sharp as a snapshot, was something Teresita would never forget. The ceremony ended, and as the crowd began dispersing, María, perhaps feeling robbed or relieved-it was impossible to tell-tossed a rose onto his coffin, peered down for a few moments, made a sign of the cross, and then, as if it were the most ordinary late Saturday morning, asked her daughter, “What would you like for lunch?” And when Teresita, taken aback by the casualness of that remark, shot her a disquieting glance-Teresita’s large eyes, dark as coals, flaring-María shrugged and just started walking off to a waiting Town Car. Later, on their journey back home, María, always content to watch the world go by, glanced over at her daughter only once, and when she did, she said, “¿Y qué?”-“And what? Tell me, what am I supposed to do?”

Of course, there was soon someone else to fill the void left by Gustavo in that household, a dapper cubano of the old school, with a thin mustache, and gleaming (dyed black) hair, whom beautiful María met about a year later at a quinces celebration for one of Teresita’s amigitas from school. He happened to be the honoree’s uncle. They struck up a conversation because he had kept staring at María from another table, as if trying to place her. When he finally walked over, he said: “Haven’t I seen you somewhere, maybe in Havana?” And then: “Of course, at one of those clubs. Say, didn’t you dance at the Lantern?”

“Yes, I did,” María answered, with neither pride nor shame. “It was my profession in those days.”