Oscar Hijuelos - Beautiful María of My Soul

“The truth remains that, whether it’s fiction or not, an unkind reader might read that book and interpret the character of your mother as something of a whore,” he said. Then he wrote down some notes. “You might make a nice amount of money over this matter,” he said. And that held some appeal for Teresita. Her mother didn’t have a retirement fund, and she always worried about what might happen to María if, for whatever reason, Teresita fell out of the picture. Being around dying children will do that to you.

Nevertheless, as this gentleman began to detail the process of filing such a claim, and all the paperwork and fees and processes involved-among them the eventual deposition of both the author and her mother-Dr. Teresa, a most private sort herself, began to have second thoughts. It just seemed so tawdry and soul destroying, and, in any event, just to sit for an hour in that office depressed her. And so she left it with Mr. Zabalas that she would have to think it over, as much for her own sake as to spare her mother from the inconveniences of a long, protracted hassle, un lío, as they say in español.

Then, after a while, Teresita cooled down a bit. The book was already out there, and, besides, it occurred to her that hardly anyone knew her mother was beautiful María. Who on earth would equate the sexually voracious María of that novel with the real beautiful María, who wore curlers in her hair each morning as she went out to discard the trash and get her newspapers in Northwest Terrace? Who in their neighborhood read “literary” novels anyway, or ever stopped to consider the book pages of El Nuevo Herald? Not Annabella, their next-door neighbor, or Beatriz of Havana from down the street, or Esmeralda, baker of chicken pies, her mother’s canasta partner. Such books just floated above them like birds, without ever landing. The Cubans they knew just weren’t into that kind of thing, and so, Teresita pondered, even if some of her friends might remember her mother’s claim to have been the inspiration of that song, it was still absolutely possible that the novel would come and go without anyone from their little world even noticing. That notion calmed her somewhat.

And the author himself, she remembered, hadn’t seemed a bad sort. He was a little uptight perhaps, but apparently he took the deepest pride in his Cuban roots, and, in Teresita’s mind, that was almost enough to outweigh the incredible transgression. Yet, no matter how much she circled around the notion that the author hadn’t really meant any harm, that his María was an invention, she wanted to hear an apology from this Hijuelos himself. So, as the weeks went by, she started to call his New York city telephone number, leaving a half dozen messages without once hearing any response. And that was nearly enough for her to reconsider the legal approach once again. But then, one Saturday afternoon, while María was off somewhere with her friend Gladys, Teresita, considering it a nagging duty, dialed him again.

He picked up this time. There was loud mambo music playing in the background, which he turned down.

“Señor Hijuelos?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know if you remember me, but I am Dr. García, the daughter of María-we met a few months ago in Coral Gables.”

“Oh yes, of course. How are you?”

“I’m fine. But do you know that you’re a very hard fellow to get ahold of? Did you receive my messages?”

“Yes, I did. But I’ve been away. I meant to get back to you.”

“Okay, but the reason I’m calling you is to discuss your book. I will tell you, I was not too happy about your depiction of my mother.”

He sighed or lit a cigarette-she could not tell which.

“Look, Dr. García, as I told everybody…as I tell everybody, the book is mostly just invented. Sure there are some things I took from life, but I promise you that the character of María, for example, just came into my head from hearing that song.”

“I see, and have you ever considered what someone like my mother, the real beautiful María, would feel if she read your book when you have her doing so many things that are improper?”

“Look, I never even thought the book would get published, and, well, her character was really about the song.”

“But the sex? Why did you have to put so much in? Did you even consider that someone real might be on the other end?”

“To be honest,” he said, after a moment’s silence, “if I ever thought that it would offend someone, maybe I would have done some things differently. But it is a fiction, after all.”

“Come on,” she said. “We both know that you must have gotten some parts of my mother’s love affair with Nestor Castillo from somewhere. Isn’t that the case?”

“Okay, okay. All I knew is what I was told, just bare bones, by one of the guys in the book, Cesar Castillo,” he finally admitted. “He was the superintendent of my building, and, well, he liked to tell stories, that’s all. The sex was just intended as a kind of music, like saxophones playing during a recording. You know, an effect.”

There was a momentary silence, during which Teresita coiled the telephone cord in her hand.

“Whatever you call it, you should know that such things can hurt people’s feelings. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But what do you want me to do?”

“Well, I will tell you this, Mr. Hijuelos. I was very close to making this a legal matter, but I am not that way. No, what I want from you is to make an apology to my mother one day, like any decent cubano would. The next time you come to Miami, I want you to see for yourself that there is someone on the other end, and not just some anonymous fulana whose reputation you can disparage. Will you do that, for me?”

“If that would make you happy, yes.”

“Good, I expect you to honor this request, do you hear me?”

“Of course.”

“Hasta luego then,” Teresita said, hanging up.

Somewhat relieved-for in the interim yet another lawsuit, involving his book’s cover artwork, had been mounted against him-he felt nothing less than pure gratitude that Dr. Teresa García, though obviously (and perhaps rightly) peeved, had taken what he considered the high road. She was surely sparing him-and them both-a lot of grief. As for Teresita? Satisfied that she had made a statement in defense of her mother’s honor, Teresita, who had been trying to drop some weight lately, got dressed in a blue jogging outfit and took off for a half an hour’s amble along her neighborhood’s humid, sweat-inducing, tree-rich streets.

And that was the last of it, for a long time.

For her part, María remained blissfully unaware that such a book existed. Teresita kept her copy hidden away, with certain pages clipped together, and did not say a word about it to her mother. But it was only a matter of time before María inevitably heard about its existence. Her former writing teacher, el Señor Luis Castellano, with whom María dined from time to time, had, while keeping up with the latest literary trends, particularly works by Cuban Americans, read the novel himself and, knowing a little about María’s connection to that song, went to the trouble of buying her not the novel itself but the audiocassette tapes of that book, as read by the actor E. G. Marshall, in English, of course. (Even Teresita had to scratch her head over that one.) Fortunately, when María finally got around to playing those cassettes one Saturday afternoon, her first impressions were very good: just to hear Nestor Castillo’s name spoken aloud made her gasp, and that book’s early mentions of the song Nestor had written for her, “Beautiful María of My Soul,” naturally piqued her interest. But altogether, though her English had improved out of necessity, as some of her pupils at the dance studio didn’t speak much Spanish, just to listen to its prose was rough going.