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Authors: carolina garcia aguilera
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plenty of men in my life without anything happening.”
I could tell from Anabel and Vivian’s expressions that I was protesting too much.
“Margarita, this is us you’re talking to. You don’t have to rationalize your behavior.” Anabel fixed her gaze on me; her eyes behind the Coke-bottle lenses reminded me of fish swimming in an aquarium. “But none of those men you had lunch with was your lover for three years, were they? And none of them made your toes curl—now did they?”
Leave it to Anabel to nail me. She might not be able to see a thing, but nothing important ever got past her.
“How long is Luther going to be in Miami?” Vivian asked. “Did he say how long his case is going to take?”
Vivian took out her cell phone, checked it for messages. Time was running short.
“Somewhere between two and three months,” I told her.
Vivian and Anabel looked at each other, shook their heads, and rolled their eyes. Anabel looked at her watch and started to gather her things.
“So how did you leave it?” she asked me.
Just then my cell phone rang. I grabbed it, intending to shut it off. I had thought it was set for voice mail, so I wouldn’t be interrupted while talking to my friends, but obviously I had forgotten.
I looked down at the screen to see the caller’s number displayed. From the exchange I could tell it was coming from downtown. I felt my heart start beating a little faster.
What the hell, I picked it up.
“Daisy?”
The second I heard Luther’s voice I tried to turn away from my friends to talk in private, but it was not to be. They could both tell who was on the line. Both Vivian and Anabel pointed at their watches in a secret code we’d established twenty years before. It meant Hey, chica, it’s just a matter of time .
Listening to Luther, feeling what I was feeling, I had to admit my friends were right. After all, they knew me best.
[ 7 ]
After I left Vivian and Anabel, I went straight to my parents’ house in Coral Gables. Though it had been just a few days since I’d been there last, it had been an eternity by Cuban standards—behavior that could cause serious friction, and for which I would pay dearly in one form or another.
I had told my mother that I would arrive around lunchtime, which had triggered a ten-minute digression into what I might like to eat that day. I knew that Mamá would assume I was bringing Marti, and that she would be disappointed when I showed up alone. I would have ordinarily brought my son along—if nothing else, he was a good buffer against my mother—but I didn’t think it was appropriate to discuss the situation with Luther at Starbucks in front of him, even though he wouldn’t have known what I was talking about. Just because I was contemplating having an affair with my former boyfriend didn’t mean that I lacked all moral consideration. And, on the practical side, it’s impossible to have any kind of serious conversation with a three-year-old running around.
The truth was, I was loath to expose Marti to Starbucks. He might have been born in the United States, but the blood that flowed through his veins was definitely Cuban.
The traffic from Coconut Grove to Coral Gables that time of day was light, and I made the trip in less than fifteen minutes. Mamá and Papa’s house was in northern Coral Gables, near the Biltmore Hotel. My parents bought the place in the mid-sixties, just before I was born, because they and my two older brothers had outgrown the place they’d rented during the tumult and uncertainty following their arrival from Cuba. Our lives were so ingrained in the Coral Gables house that it was almost impossible to imagine that they had ever lived anyplace else.
My parents were among the few Cubans fortunate enough not to have arrived in the United States penniless and destitute after leaving the island. The bulk of their wealth remained back home, but they had some investments outside of Cuba, primarily in the American
I could tell from Anabel and Vivian’s expressions that I was protesting too much.
“Margarita, this is us you’re talking to. You don’t have to rationalize your behavior.” Anabel fixed her gaze on me; her eyes behind the Coke-bottle lenses reminded me of fish swimming in an aquarium. “But none of those men you had lunch with was your lover for three years, were they? And none of them made your toes curl—now did they?”
Leave it to Anabel to nail me. She might not be able to see a thing, but nothing important ever got past her.
“How long is Luther going to be in Miami?” Vivian asked. “Did he say how long his case is going to take?”
Vivian took out her cell phone, checked it for messages. Time was running short.
“Somewhere between two and three months,” I told her.
Vivian and Anabel looked at each other, shook their heads, and rolled their eyes. Anabel looked at her watch and started to gather her things.
“So how did you leave it?” she asked me.
Just then my cell phone rang. I grabbed it, intending to shut it off. I had thought it was set for voice mail, so I wouldn’t be interrupted while talking to my friends, but obviously I had forgotten.
I looked down at the screen to see the caller’s number displayed. From the exchange I could tell it was coming from downtown. I felt my heart start beating a little faster.
What the hell, I picked it up.
“Daisy?”
The second I heard Luther’s voice I tried to turn away from my friends to talk in private, but it was not to be. They could both tell who was on the line. Both Vivian and Anabel pointed at their watches in a secret code we’d established twenty years before. It meant Hey, chica, it’s just a matter of time .
Listening to Luther, feeling what I was feeling, I had to admit my friends were right. After all, they knew me best.
[ 7 ]
After I left Vivian and Anabel, I went straight to my parents’ house in Coral Gables. Though it had been just a few days since I’d been there last, it had been an eternity by Cuban standards—behavior that could cause serious friction, and for which I would pay dearly in one form or another.
I had told my mother that I would arrive around lunchtime, which had triggered a ten-minute digression into what I might like to eat that day. I knew that Mamá would assume I was bringing Marti, and that she would be disappointed when I showed up alone. I would have ordinarily brought my son along—if nothing else, he was a good buffer against my mother—but I didn’t think it was appropriate to discuss the situation with Luther at Starbucks in front of him, even though he wouldn’t have known what I was talking about. Just because I was contemplating having an affair with my former boyfriend didn’t mean that I lacked all moral consideration. And, on the practical side, it’s impossible to have any kind of serious conversation with a three-year-old running around.
The truth was, I was loath to expose Marti to Starbucks. He might have been born in the United States, but the blood that flowed through his veins was definitely Cuban.
The traffic from Coconut Grove to Coral Gables that time of day was light, and I made the trip in less than fifteen minutes. Mamá and Papa’s house was in northern Coral Gables, near the Biltmore Hotel. My parents bought the place in the mid-sixties, just before I was born, because they and my two older brothers had outgrown the place they’d rented during the tumult and uncertainty following their arrival from Cuba. Our lives were so ingrained in the Coral Gables house that it was almost impossible to imagine that they had ever lived anyplace else.
My parents were among the few Cubans fortunate enough not to have arrived in the United States penniless and destitute after leaving the island. The bulk of their wealth remained back home, but they had some investments outside of Cuba, primarily in the American
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