Rosa Jordan - The Woman She Was

La Casa de Al, set somewhat apart from its neighbours, was built of natural stone in a linear style that gave almost every room a view onto the sea. In Capone’s days there was only the old gangster’s beach house at this end of the peninsula, more private and more heavily guarded than the DuPont mansion on the other side of town. In recent years two hotels had been built down this way, but Capone’s house still stood apart. It had an unobtrusive quality that Luis admired.

Entering the restaurant, Luis was satisfied that Liliana looked decent; a trifle casual, but this was, after all, a resort town, and she was only a child. Liliana promptly excused herself to go to the restroom. She returned with her face scrubbed clean, looking every inch the wholesome teenager.

Gazing around the dining room, she bubbled, “This place is amazing! I’ve always wanted to come here. Imagine what it was like when Al Capone and his gangster friends sat around deciding who they were going to snuff out next!”

“Probably not so different from gangster get-togethers nowadays,” José said, declining drinks and pointing to a selection on the menu so that the waiter had to lean over his shoulder to see his choice.

“Like the Miami Cubans planning their next futile attempt to assassinate Fidel?” cracked Luis. “The same for me,” he said to the waiter, without knowing which entrée his brother had ordered.

“Me too.” Liliana piped. “It’s so sweet of you to bring us here, Tío Joe!” And to Luis, with a modest flutter of eyelashes, “Thanks for letting me come along, Tío Luis.”

Luis said nothing. He wasn’t going to spoil the outing by pressing the issue of her truant behaviour, but neither did he want her to think it was forgotten.

She turned wide eyes on José. “Have you ever been to one of those meetings?”

“There are a few of us who don’t move in those circles. Actually quite a few,” José glanced at Luis, “who want productive relations with Cuba.”

Luis did not respond to that overture either but sat quietly as Liliana plied José with questions about Miami, questions that he answered without recourse to modesty. Yes, Miami’s beaches were nicer than Habana’s. Yes, Miami had more hotels than all of Cuba and lots of famous people came there; anyone with the dough could stay in those hotels and attend the celebrity performances. Yes, there were hordes of wealthy people in Miami and even ordinary people lived in houses as nice as this one, although not right on the beach. It was true that there were blocks of side-by-each shops, including Calle Ocho, which was almost entirely Cuban. It was also true that there were hundreds of shopping complexes bigger than Habana’s Juan Carlos II mall, and there was absolutely nothing one might want that couldn’t be bought in Miami.

Liliana drank it in with the wonder of a child being offered a first-hand report from Fantasyland. When José grew bored with the chatter—which was long after Luis had grown bored with it—he turned his attention to their immediate surroundings. “You’d have thought a Mafiosa like Al Capone would have built something more grandiose, like the DuPont place. Or else something more fortresslike.”

“He had this whole section of the beach to himself,” Luis commented dryly. “With security blocking off the road and the beach from a kilometre or more back, I suppose he could sit out on the terrace without worrying too much about assassination.”

“Everyplace in Miami must be this nice,” Liliana said with a wistful sigh. “Don’t you just love living there?”

“I miss my friends and family here in Cuba,” José replied.

The answer surprised Luis. That was the last thing he would have expected José to say, even if it was true, which seemed highly unlikely.

Liliana, though, took the remark at face value. “I know I’d miss my family.” She looked from one to the other. “You’re a lot alike, you know that? Tía Celia always said you were.”

José arched an eyebrow. “I thought you said she never talked about me.”

Luis grimaced. Physical resemblance was hard to deny, but that Celia had characterized them as similar in any other way was, well, hurtful.

“Alike? How?”

Liliana, sharp little vixen that she was, again looked from one to the other, giving them time to realize that they had spoken the words in perfect unison.

“Tía Celia,” she began primly, like a child reciting catechism, “said that you’re both ‘true believers.’”

Luis glanced at José, who seemed equally baffled by the characterization.

Liliana pointed a pink-enamelled forefinger at Luis. “She said that you think the government ought to make all the rules, like the church did in the old days. And you’d get to be one of its rule-makers.”

She put two fingers together, pistol fashion, and aimed at José. “And she said you went to the States because you believed in freewheeling capitalism and had fantasies about being one of its high rollers.”

José rolled his eyes at Luis. “Is this how Cuban teenagers talk nowadays?”

“Only the bright ones,” Liliana quipped, reverting to the flippant tone that Luis abhorred and Celia so readily tolerated. “Can we go for a walk on the beach after lunch?”

“Sure,” José said.

Luis glanced at José. He had seen very little of his brother in the week he had been back and had supposed he had business to conduct in Varadero today. He found it hard to believe José had planned the day with its attendant expenses just for the two of them. But as José appeared to have no other commitments, Luis was forced to conclude his brother had actually planned to spend the day with him alone—and would have had it not been for their unexpected encounter with Liliana.

An uneasiness tugged at Luis. It had to do with a lifelong and generally futile attempt to resist his younger brother’s charm. To forgive the abandonment, which seemed to be what José was after, was undesirable but possible. To forgive unnamed injuries that Luis’s gut told him would be inflicted by this breezy return was incomprehensible. But where his brother was concerned, had he ever had a choice?

José saw the check coming and handed the waiter a credit card before he reached the table. Luis waited for the waiter to reject it, but after studying it carefully, he seemed to find it acceptable. José, he realized, must have known that credit cards issued by US banks were not acceptable and had got one issued elsewhere. It caused Luis to wonder how long José had been planning his return to Cuba.

When the receipt was brought for José’s signature, Liliana leaned across and thanked him with a kiss on the cheek. Her timing, Luis noted, allowed her a glimpse of the bill’s total, which José had casually shielded from Luis’s gaze.

They left the car in the restaurant parking lot and went directly out the back door onto the beach. José paused for a long look at the house. “Beautiful stonework. And what a location. I wouldn’t mind owning that place.”

There’s a difference between us, Luis mused. I see something I like and think, That’s nice. What José likes he imagines owning. Well, in this case it’s more mine than his because La Casa de Al belongs to Cuba, and I am Cuban and he is not.

They walked along the cleanly raked beach, nearly empty in the mid-afternoon heat. Luis felt tensions being dissolved by the combination of hazy sunshine, a cool sea breeze, and the gentle rhythm of wavelets lapping the sand. He and José walked at the same pace, something they had started doing in adolescence, as soon as both had got their full growth and their legs were equally long. Liliana raced ahead of them and was soon out of sight.

“Celia certainly has her hands full with that little package,” José remarked. “Lucky she has you and Mamá.”