William Kennedy - Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

Gloria shook her head no.

“You are not talking?”

Gloria shook her head no.

“You are so afraid.”

They sat on the bench and faced each other. Gloria hugged herself, keeping a grip, Renata decided, on the forces that had put her here. She had driven into the Quinn driveway but couldn’t get out of her car for an hour. Renata found her and coaxed her into the house, but she wouldn’t speak about what was wrong. She hid under the bed covers for a day and a half without eating, silent until she slapped and smashed a window in the bathroom, slashing her hand. She took George Quinn’s straight razor out of a bureau drawer and sat on the floor. Daniel heard the crash and found her holding the open razor, trying to decide where to cut herself for more serious bloodletting. After eight days in the psychiatric ward she did not seem improved to Renata; but there was no money to keep her here even one more day. It was out of the question to call Esme, who would lose her mind with worry, so Renata called Max to ask for money for her three overdue mortgage payments and didn’t mention Gloria.

“I’ll be down the hall,” the orderly said to Renata, and he went out.

A flat-nosed little man in a black sweatsuit came into the day room. He had been walking rapidly up and down the hallway when Renata arrived. He looked at both women, then spoke to Gloria. “I’m the leading Garden player on this planet. I’m the universal linchpin. All the scum played sex games so the plants would poison the dogs. Garden wants you to send your phone numbers right now.”

Gloria reached out to the man and took his small, gnarled hand. He pulled his hand away and scurried out of the room.

“You don’t belong here,” Renata said. “Sometimes you can live next to death without dying, but you should get out of here.”

Gloria said nothing.

“There is a reason to come home. Your father is in Albany.”

Gloria sat upright.

“Perhaps he knows you are here,” Renata said, “but I don’t know how. We talked last week but he said nothing about coming to Albany. Will you see him?”

Gloria almost nodded yes.

“And tonight is Cody’s concert, probably his last one. You must see him play, even one song. He’d love it. Have you been in touch with Roy?”

Gloria shook her head.

“Has Alex been here?”

Gloria shook her head violently, turned her face away.

“It is very silly to be upset because I mention him. People know about it, mi amor . Daniel’s editor asked him what he knew about you and Alex and Roy. You are no longer a secret. Hiding in here changes nothing. You have to talk about what happened. Whatever it was, it isn’t worth your death. You survived it. You will survive better if you tell me about it.”

Gloria said nothing.

“Since you won’t speak I will tell you a story. You know everybody in it — your mother, Max, Cody and me. I was in school in Havana with las monjitas . Your mother was not getting work on Broadway because they wanted her only as a Latina and there were no Latina parts. She was beautiful, her English was perfect, her singing voice still rich, and she wanted to keep on with her career. So she came back to where she began, the nightclubs of Havana. There were more clubs than ever and more customers, so many Americanos and she was Esme Suárez, the Broadway star. The hottest clubs wanted her, Tropicana, Sans Souci, Montmartre, you know all this. She would work some weeks, then stop working, but she would always go to the clubs for dinner. Max did not like clubs the way Esme liked them, so she took me as her chaperone and we would see Chevalier and Cugat and Beny Moré and Dietrich, so many. The managers would bring the stars to our table and everybody adored your mother. So spirited, qué viva, qué alegre ! Now I am going to tell you something. Sometimes men would take my hand and ask me to dance, but your mother would say, ‘Look but do not touch.’ She was thirty-two and I was sixteen, a nightclub virgin. You were a virgin when you asked me for lessons in the sexual life. They were for Alex, no?”

Gloria closed her eyes on the question.

“Of course they were. But your virginity is of no importance, nor is mine. One night at the Club Montmartre Max came to our table with a black musician, Cody, the first time I met him. He was from New York but he wanted to leave it and Max got him work at Night and Day, an American piano bar in old Havana. Max and Cody were friends since Cody was with Billie Holiday. He was the first to play for Billie and the newspaper said they were going to marry, but it ended. Billie loved Cody but she was a crazy person who worked very hard to destroy herself. Cody would never hurt her and she seemed to go with men who did hurt her. Many women are like this. Not me. If they hurt me I will do everything to hurt them. But that is not what I’m telling you. This night we had dinner and Cody talked very much with me, a sweet man who would never hurt anybody, shy almost, handsome, and your mother’s age. I liked him very much and I knew I could fall in love with him if I was older. I was almost in love with him while we talked but I did not know much about love yet. I felt it without knowing what it meant. But Max saw it in my face before my sister saw it. I was also in love with Max. I was in love with all men who liked me because I did not yet know about love. Max, and you know this, is a womanizer. Everybody knows this. He womanized with me when I was fourteen but he did not touch me. Never. We would laugh and he would talk about movie stars in love and tell me I would soon be a movie star and should know everything about love. Max loved many women. He had favorites, like your mother, but he went to the woman who was in front of his eyes. This night I am talking about he saw Cody touch my arm. Cody was telling me about his sad life, that his wife had left him and taken their son and he could not see the boy. It was years after this before he got his son back, and his son, of course, is Roy. He was telling me about Roy, that he was two years younger than I and that I would like him. I was listening very hard and I was sad for Cody. He touched my arm and when he did I touched his hand. Max was watching us and he said, ‘Get your fucking nigger hands off her.’ Cody could not believe it. I could not believe it. Cody said to him, ‘Sure, boss, sure,’ and got up and left the club. Max had never used such words in front of me. I went to the baño and cried for Cody and when I came out Max was gone. The next day your mother went to a lawyer to divorce him.”

Gloria leaned close. “Because of what he said to Cody?”

“No, mi amor , because he was obsessed.”

“With Cody?”

“With me.”

Gloria had known Alex Fitzgibbon since before she could remember. He had flown to Havana in the late 1940s to carouse in winter and see his old Yale buddy who was a resident expert in Cuban carousal, Max Osborne. Max brought Alex home to meet Esme and Gloria, and even when Esme and Max separated in 1953 for the first time, Alex kept the social connection.

Batista had made his coup against Prío in 1952 and he and the mob were thriving from the casinos, the brothels, the tourists. Castro was in jail for leading the assault on the Moncada barracks in Santiago in 1953, and Batista’s repression of rebels was vast and deadly. Esme, working steadily in nightclubs, kept Gloria, now seven, in the care of a nana, but grew fearful of violent politics. Max was political, but who knew on which side? Death came easily to such men and their families from the madness abroad in Cuba, in which the vengeful punished the innocent as readily as they punished their enemies. And if Esme would not herself leave Havana (she believed she’d never leave it again) she could protect Gloria. And so Esme decided to put her in the hands of the same Catholic nuns who had educated Renata and herself in convent schools in Cuba and Manhattan.