by Ana Menéndez
When, alone with him, the people gone home, she would complain of despair, her sick parents, he would hold her face and tenderly ask, “Why do you not kill yourself?”
It was an old joke with them. And Lisette always laughed. Logotherapy, he called it the first time. And she’d understood loco therapy. There is meaning in this, he insisted. And he waved his arms, meaning everything. Yes, she’d said, it’s all loco.
Lisette stopped at the door to her old room. She walked to the closet. From the top shelf she pulled down a box and sat on the bed. It was the kind of box young women keep and she hadn’t opened it since her last weeks in college. A graduation program sat on the top, yellowed and brittle and almost twenty years old. Bits of the foil that condoms came wrapped in. A dried corsage from her junior prom. A translucent pink cocktail stirrer whose origins had long ago disappeared into her memory. Below, near the bottom, a pink diary with a lock and a stack of photographs tight in a rubber band. Lisette winced. Had this been her life?
She sifted through the letters, names she’d forgotten, dates and places. She stopped, reached to her chest for her glasses. Love letters. Letters from friends. One note on linen paper which she opened, the paper crackling back into the present.
L.:
So happy you’ve finally decided to write that novel. I think the Cuban experience is a great idea for a book. You have to promise me one thing: You have to make fun of them. There’s no other way to write this. Send me what you have.
Love you. Miss you. Can’t wait to see you.
A.
The letter was typed, as if the sender wanted to remove the last trace of himself. She couldn’t remember receiving it. Who was A.? Had she ever thought of writing a novel? She remembered writers she’d known in college, students, a man who had followed her for days. Was it the editor who had told her she had Great Potential? A lover? A prankster? Her ex-husband?
Had she written the note herself? She sat at her old bed and tried to reach back into the years. She met herself going the other way. Promising she would never write, never publish, never be a special section in the bookstore. Better to write about berms and set-asides, last night’s vote in a small room of microphones and lights.
She took a pencil from the box. She read the letter again and folded it in half. She stared for a moment at her hand. And then she began to write:
Beautiful Coral Gables home, five bedrooms, three baths, vaulted ceilings in the dining room. Balcony with wrought-iron railings overlooking large pool. Entrance flanked by royal palms.
She paused and added, The house of your dreams.
Outside by the gazebo, she slipped the letter into her pocket. She stood still to hear a peacock send its melancholy wail through the yard. A car passed the house slowly, its engine low and hungry. Tomorrow she would air the house out and the next day she would call the realtor, tell her she was in a hurry. She walked up the creaking wood steps and sat on the railing, looking out over the fraying yard. Her parents had thrown a party here after she’d returned from Cuba, all of them healthy and young, the orange trees in blossom, her cousin’s daughters splashing in the pool. She’d looked up at the house, the palms framed against the sky.
What was it like? What was the house like? The children’s laughter like punctuation marks.
Only her mother was silent. She sat across from her, her hands in her lap. Lisette followed her gaze. The day was bright, shimmering above the water. Lisette spoke slowly. It was too bad, she began, that the soldier had taken her camera. There was so much to see. The road to the house that crossed a wooden bridge into a field of sugarcane. The narrow path flanked on both sides by royal palms. It was a late afternoon in summer and the men were coming in from the fields, their hats flopping softly in the breeze.
But the house. What about the house?
Lisette paused, making a circle with her arms. She looked at her mother. Watched her hands turn in her lap.
“Everything was the same,” Lisette said after a moment. “The stairway, the balconies. Even the marble fireplace. Somehow, it all made it through the revolution.”
She faced her mother. Held her chin in her hands.
“And the long white-shuttered windows that looked over the rose garden still let in the very brightest sunshine.”
The children had stopped by the edge of the pool to listen. One by one they moved away to resume their game. Her father let his gaze fall. Lisette’s mother looked up. She stood and Lisette watched her go. Her cousin came out with the guitar. The chatter of the afternoon resumed. Someone passed by and patted her on the head.
Lisette closed her eyes. The guitar played a slow bolero and Lisette remembered Erminio, his Sunday poems; she saw him again against the light, pouring her morning coffee. He had wrapped his arms around her tight, held her steady against the day.
Acknowledgments
I would like to especially thank my sister Rose, my best friend and reader. Thanks to my uncle Dionisio Martinez for inspiration and example. Many thanks to the people at the NYU graduate creative writing program, especially Melissa Hammerle who has created a warm and intelligent environment for young writers. Thanks to The New York Times Company Foundation for their support. Thanks to Breyten Breytenbach for your guidance and wisdom. Thanks also to Adrienne Brodeur, Samantha Schnee, Rebecca Allen and Edna O’Brien. I owe so much to my agent Amy Williams for all your hard work and endless energy and to Elisabeth Schmitz at Grove/Atlantic for your unflappable good judgment.
