Rosa Jordan - The Woman She Was

“Thank goodness Liliana didn’t want a fiesta de quince,” Celia murmured.

“Surely you would not have given her one?”

Celia tensed and Luis immediately regretted the question. Both in tone and phrasing it recalled their major area of conflict: his belief that she was too lenient with her sixteen-year-old niece. Had Celia replied yes to his question they would have quarrelled, and he would have agonized later over how he could have been so inept as to anger this normally even-tempered woman whom he only wanted to please.

But what Celia said, patiently, as if explaining herself to someone who barely knew her, was, “I may not be a communist, Luis, but I am not so bourgeois that I would allow my own flesh and blood to be paraded like a commodity.”

The fact that he was a party member and she was not was not an issue between them—or, rather, only became one when he tried to defend some National Assembly decision that annoyed her. But the quinceñero had nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with them, and now of all times he did not want to annoy her. He pulled her close and asked, “Are you hungry?”

“I suppose… yes,” she replied vaguely, as if food was the last thing on her mind.

They stepped through the ornate door and stopped, waiting for their eyes to adjust from harsh sunlight to the shadowed interior. In contrast to the ultra-modern planes that made up the shell of the building, the interior was graced with the brick ruins of an ancient sugar mill, age-melted into soft irregular shapes. Indirect natural light filtered through spaces left between the walls and roof, revealing tables artfully arranged against crumbling walls overgrown with tropical vegetation.

Luis stood slightly behind Celia when they entered so he could watch her. She was wearing a dress, which she did not often do, giving him a view of bare shoulders and well-muscled calves. She loved Las Ruinas and it thrilled him to make this pleasure possible—not often, but once a year, on the day she chose to visit the Sánchez museum. He had no idea why the restaurant appealed to her. It was out of character for her to crave luxury and she positively detested the ostentatious. But there was no denying that Las Ruinas entranced her. “What is it you like so much about this place?” he asked.

He rarely asked a direct question about her feelings. He had learned better. He had learned that while her answer was never an evasion, neither was it enlightening. But with the letter in his pocket, the one she did not know about yet, he had a more urgent need than usual to know her true feelings.

“The contrast,” she replied thoughtfully. “The modern exterior gives no hint that the inside conceals so much history and mystery and… forgotten lives.”

The headwaiter approached and they followed him to a table. Luis welcomed the distraction. A discussion of what they would order made it unnecessary for him to ponder her explanation. Although perfectly straightforward, instinct told him that it concealed labyrinths of meaning that he could not even guess.

They spoke little during the meal. Luis thought Celia seemed distracted, and knew for a fact that he was. As they dawdled over dessert, he finally forced himself to tell her what he had put off for two weeks. He spread his hands flat on the table to ensure that they neither shook nor balled into fists and said in what he hoped was a steady voice, “I got a letter. From José.”

“José who?” she asked, licking chocolate icing from her fork.

“José, my asshole brother!”

He hadn’t meant to raise his voice but he must have because the only other party in the restaurant, the family of the quinceañera, stopped mid-conversation and stared.

“No! De veras?” Celia’s expression was one of disbelief, as he supposed his had been when he first realized who the letter was from.

“After ten years of total silence! What the hell does he want?”

“What did he say?” Celia laid her fork on the empty plate carefully, perhaps too carefully, and folded her hands out of sight.

Lowering his voice, Luis muttered, “That he has two daughters. Which I suppose implies a wife. And—get this—he signed himself ‘Miami Joe.’”

“Did he say why he was writing?”

Luis’s broad, bony shoulders slumped. “The great ‘Miami Joe’ is coming for a visit. Apparently without his family.”

He waited for Celia’s reaction. When it came he felt stupid for not having known in advance what it would be. Concealing her own feelings, she focused entirely on his. It was exactly what she did dozens of times a day when dealing with children in distress. She reached across the table and enclosed his large cold hands in her small warm ones.

“What was between us was a long time ago, Luis. I am not the woman I was then,” she said firmly.

Although unconvinced, Luis clung gratefully to her hand.

JOE LAGO, driving too fast, swerved the BMW into the drive with practised precision. He loped across a manicured lawn and rang the doorbell. After a long wait he heard the tap-tap of Vera’s high heels.

For an instant he took the wide-open door for welcome, then it registered that his ex-wife’s posture was one of defiance. She was flaunting the fact that she could open the door as wide as she liked and he couldn’t enter—except by invitation, which he was unlikely to get.

He felt a flutter of bewilderment that the same blue eyes that once had the power to attract him from across a crowded room now repelled him like an icy sea, and the small tilted nose he’d found so charming now made him want to slap her. But where would that get him? Joe Lago was a practical man whose pattern was to ignore the past and focus on what he wanted in the moment. He gave Vera his most engaging grin and got right to the point.

“Hi, honey. I’m going to be away for the next few weeks, so I’d like to take the girls out for ice cream or something. It’s been quite a while and—”

“No.”

Of course it hadn’t worked. Countless times had he tried ignoring past conflict and acting as if they were on the best of terms. “Let bygones be bygones” worked well in business, but it had hardly ever worked with Vera. The more he let things slide, the more she elaborated on them until they filled her head and exploded in accusatory shrapnel. If he dodged, she only became more infuriated; understandable, since her intention was to do damage. His best ploy was to play dead, or at least act hurt.

“Have a heart, Vera. You know I’ve been out of town. I really miss them.”

“They don’t miss you.”

It wasn’t the lie so much as the triumph in her voice that caused him to explode. “Bullshit!”

“You can’t play father on a drop-in basis, Joe. We agreed—”

“No! You and your fucking lawyer agreed—”

The door closed in his face. For a minute he just stood there, imagining how easy it would be to kick the damned door down. Well, actually not all that easy—not in Gucci loafers. Screw it. He had never let her provoke him to violence before; no point in losing control now.

He strode back to the car. Control was the issue, had been from the beginning. She’d been willing to share his bed, his name, and, of course, his money—but only on her terms. When he thought about it, it astonished him that from the start he had let her call the shots: whether to buy a house, where to buy it, whether to have children, when to have them, what his role as father should be, and now, apparently, whether he’d have any role at all. On the slim chance that she was watching, he turned and gave her the finger.

But the faces peering out the picture window were those of Keri and Amy, his angel-blond daughters. Sheepishly he raised more fingers to convert the “up yours” insult into a wave. Keri, only four, lifted her tiny hand to wave back. Or so he thought but couldn’t be sure, for at that moment Vera pulled the girls away from the window.