by Alisa Valdes
“What do you think, Carmen?” I ask.
“I like it,” she says. “Sounds fine. Sorry for the other idea. It was stupid. It’s an adjustment, coming here.”
“Oh, please, don’t apologize,” I say. “It was a fine idea. We hired you because we like the way you think. This is still your idea, just with an Ella twist.”
Carmen’s posture softens and she smiles.
“I still like the naked boy idea,” Erik says.
“You would, nena,” Tracy says with a hoarse laugh.
I check my watch. “It’s about that time,” I say. “Anything else before we get out of here?”
Erik raises his hand confidently. I swear his nails are buffed shiny. I suppress a giggle. He has that smug look on his face that I can’t stand. I’m bad, I know. He’s a wonderful editor, very reliable, always on time with deadlines. But he’s a diva. I get the sense that if he could, he’d take over the magazine and throw me out. Until I asked him to stop, he used to place himself at the head of the conference-room table. I point to him. “Yes?”
He folds his hands in a prissy way in front of him and cocks his head to the side with a girlish smile. “Rebecca,” he says, drawing out the A. “I couldn’t help but notice you were mentioned in the new issue of Forbes magazine as one of the hot young entrepreneurs to watch in the next ten years. I wanted to congratulate you on that.” He pauses for emphasis, purses his lips, and everyone claps. “I was also wondering if we might include a small item on it in the magazine, with a photograph of you.”
I laugh and shake my head as if the honor were no big deal.
“Thank you, Erik. That’s nice. But, no. I’m not going to take the blame for this mess by myself.”
“Blame?” he asks.
“It’s a team screwup around here,” I joke. I gather my papers from the table to signal the meeting has come to an end. Hubris has ruined many a good business.
WHEN I GET back to my office, my assistant hands me a thick Italian pottery mug of unsweetened herbal tea infused with Echinacea extract. She reminds me that I have a lunch appointment with the director of advertising sales and a representative from a major cosmetics company. They have already agreed upon a tentative long-term contract, and simply want me to approve it before they sign on the dotted line. I’ve looked over the details with our lawyer and find it agreeable.
At my desk, I sip the tea and look over proofs for the next issue. I had read that this blend helped boost the immune system, and I believe it. I haven’t been sick in more than a year, since I started drinking it. It helps, too, that I have cut out meat and dairy, sugar, caffeine, and fat.
After a while, I take a break and look out the window. The sun is peeking through the clouds, melting the roof snow. It drips down my window in sensuously twisting streaks. I look at the wedding picture on the shelf. We married in Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in Albuquerque, a warm adobe building in the oldest part of town, a humble yet strong church where my family has sought spiritual guidance for more than three generations. Everyone from my side was there, my parents, my brother and sisters, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, all my cousins and nieces and nephews, the family from Truchas and Chimayó. On Brad’s side there were just a few people, his sister the filmmaker, who has become a good friend, and three of his friends from school.
His parents were nowhere to be found.
He told me they had prior obligations they couldn’t change. It wasn’t until we were already married that he told me the truth: His parents did not approve of me because they were under the mistaken notion that I was an immigrant. You have no idea how much that hurt me. My family has been in this country since before Brad’s family got to Ellis Island. But they have the nerve to call me an immigrant! It’s precisely that sort of prejudice I want to battle through my charitable works, getting my name and face out there as a new philanthropist, alongside the Rockefellers and the Pughs.
We look happy in that picture. I lift it off the shelf and hold it in my hand. It’s lighter than I remembered. I try to recall the happiness of the woman in the wedding dress, but it’s gone. I don’t remember what it felt like. In the photo, Brad smiles. He so rarely does that. I remember he told me he loved the church, my family, and the way we covered all of the cars with paper flowers for the post-wedding procession around old town. He loved the posole and enchiladas and the wedding cake made by that great Santa Fe chef. He said so. I felt it, didn’t I? We had a wonderful, passionate honeymoon in Bali.
What happened? Where did that man go?
I close the door to my office and dial my home number. Brad doesn’t answer right away, so I assume he is still sleeping and dial again. He sleeps all the time lately. It’s one of the symptoms of depression, I know that much. This time, he answers.
“It’s me,” I say.
“Oh, hi.” He sounds disappointed. Cold.
“I just wanted to remind you to be home when Consuelo comes by today. You forgot last time.”
“That it?” It is not, but I don’t know how to bring these things up.
“Yes,” I say.
“Okay.”
We hang up, and my heart sinks. My skin feels too thin. I get a chill, even though the temperature in the office is always seventy-four degrees.
I wait five minutes, stare at the inky red marks I’ve made on the proofs, and try to will down the dark feelings welling up in my chest. I don’t want my heart to beat this fast, I don’t want this adrenaline rush. I breathe deeply. I dial home again.
“Hello?”
“Brad.”
“Hey.” He sniffles and blows his nose.
I don’t know what to say. For some reason I think about how when someone in my family growing up got a cold, there was no babying them the way I’ve seen in other families. Brad expects to be babied when he’s sick. We weren’t what you’d call demonstrative. I never baby him.
I want to ask Brad if he remembers what we felt like on our wedding day. But I can’t.
“Listen,” I say, turning toward the large windows that look down over the bustling street. I clear my throat.
“I’ll be here,” he says. “Don’t worry.”
“What?” My heart flutters.
“When Consuelo comes.”
“Oh. No, that’s not—” Silence. A long, awkward
silence. “Rebecca?” he finally asks. “You still there?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want? I have reading to do.”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“Well I gotta go then.”
“No, wait.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“With … us.” This is so hard.
“Nothing.” His tone of voice is mocking.
“Please,” I say.
“Please what?”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“I told you. Nada.”
“Can we make a time to talk about this face-to-face?” I twirl a pen in my fingers and turn toward my desk calendar.
He laughs. “Oh, you mean like an appointment?”
“What is so funny?” I ask. My face feels hot and tight. I look at the clock on the wall; I have half an hour before I have to head to the advertising department to get Kelly for the lunch meeting.
“Oh, God,” he says with a laugh. “You’re so funny. You don’t know how funny you are. That’s what’s so funny.”
“How?”
“Never mind. Bye-bye.”
“No, tell me.”
He sighs. “You really want to know? I’ll tell you. I didn’t set out to marry some status-quo wanna-be white girl. Happy? It’s—it’s like you’ve become my worst nightmare.”
His worst nightmare? I am dumbfounded. “I have to go,” I say. I fight the urge to drop the phone even though it seems to burn my hand. “Just be there when Consuelo comes. Don’t forget again.”
“Oh, right. Consuelo! That’s
another thing. How in the world can you exploit a woman like that?”
“Like what?”
“Hispanic.”
“Oh, God. I have to go now.”
“Fine. But would you tell your realtor friend to quit calling here all day long? I’m sick of talking to her. I hate her.”
“She can’t call here. You said you’d help.”
“I don’t want a brownstone. I don’t need it. I hate people like that. You’re not who you used to be.”
Blood has filled my ears and I can hear my heart beating. “So,” I whisper, turning my back to the closed door of my office, “who did you think I was, then?”
“Earthy.”
“Earthy?”
“That’s right. Earthy. Earth mother.”
“I’m hanging up now, Brad.”
“Fine. Bye.”
I don’t hang up. Neither does he. We listen to each other breathe for a few seconds and I try not to cry.
Finally, I say, “Why are you doing this?”
“Good-bye, Rebecca.”
Click. He hangs up.
Earthy?
I look at the other snapshots, some early ones of us. I look giddy and flushed in the photos. We didn’t know each other much then, but I remember being excited about his money. I’ll be honest. That was the big draw, that and his light hair and handsome face. There’s a picture where he’s resting his head on my shoulder, bending over to do it because he’s so tall, and I see something now I never saw before. He looks like he’s praying.
I have never met his parents. His sister took step classes with me and we shopped for clothes together on Newbury Street and went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum one afternoon with Au Bon Pain sandwiches in our handbags. I expected the parents would want to get to know me, too. How was I to know they would despise me so much they would start to restrict Brad’s cash flow? It made no sense. I tried for months to make contact with them, to win them over, with letters and gifts. My father even called to invite them to spend a weekend at our ranch near Truchas, so they could see that we have been in New Mexico for generations, that we’re not immigrants. He called and told me the mother had told him she had no interest in going to “Mexico.” Was it possible for people with that much money to be so ignorant?
Brad curled his hands into fists when I told him about the exchange with his parents, and told me it was useless; he reminded me that for all their money, his parents had never bought a computer for the house, and didn’t have a single book in their mansion that he himself had not put there. Not even a coffee table book, or a cookbook. No books at all.
“They are idiots, Rebecca,” he said.
I used to tell him not to say such things about his parents. I was raised to respect my elders. But he may have had a point. I mean, I called and left a message for them, explaining that New Mexico was a state, and that I came from a long line of successful politicians and businessmen there, that we were descended from Spanish royalty from the Andalusia region, near France, where everyone is white. They did not respond. Now, it looks like Brad may get written out of the will altogether. That’s what his sister tells me.
I used to deny accusations of gold-digging when my friends brought it up, but I have to be honest with myself now; if Brad were not the son of a billionaire, I would never have married him. I close my eyes and focus. I do not think I love him anymore, if I ever did.
10:00 A.M. ON my way to get Kelly for our meeting, I walk past my assistant. She stops me, and holds out a pink message slip.
“Andre Cartier,” she says, raising one eyebrow. I doubt she meant to raise it, but it happened. I’m not sure what she means with the eyebrow, but it almost seems like she thinks I’ve got something going on with Andre, or else she herself thinks he’s attractive. People have very little control over their facial muscles, which betray our inner thoughts all the time unless we master them. They’re called “microexpressions.” World-class liars and politicians don’t have them. Bill Clinton never had them, for instance. He had a face that did whatever he wanted. My mother never has microexpressions, either, and I inherited that gift from her. No matter how bad I feel, no matter what negative thought crosses my mind, I am not the kind of person who other people ask, “What’s wrong?” I smile serenely and lift the message from her hand.
Andre is a software mogul from England who relocated his company to Cambridge, Massachusetts, several years ago. And he’s the reason my magazine exists.
When my family couldn’t come up with the funds, and when Brad’s family refused to help me, when I was just about ready to let my dream of Ella magazine die, Andre was there. He listened to me describe my idea at a Minority Business Association dinner (much like the one I’m going to tonight) where we had the good fortune of being seated next to each other. He did not tell me who he was or what he did, just listened to me talk about my idea for my business. He’s a good listener.
I thought he was handsome, well-bred, and charming with that British accent and understated tuxedo, even though he was black. Not that I am racist, but I was raised a certain way. I have nothing against black people—I mean, Elizabeth is one of my closest friends—but I wouldn’t feel comfortable dating someone outside of my own race. My mother made it clear when she told me repeatedly, “Date a black man, and you will break my heart.” That’s why this whole business with Brad’s parents is so shocking. They don’t understand where I come from, who I am, or what I believe in.
Andre has a nice, honest, open face. After listening to me go on about Ella for nearly an hour, he reached under the table, pulled out a briefcase, opened it, and took out a checkbook and an expensive pen. “How do you spell your name?” he asked. I thought he was joking, or that he was going to give me a small investment, because I had just finished telling him I would need a cool two million dollars to do the first issue right. He smiled secretly and continued filling out the check. Then he handed me his business card. I recognized the company name from the business pages of the Wall Street Journal. Under his name, it said President/CEO. When he handed me the check for an even two million, I almost had a heart attack. I tried to refuse it, but he insisted. “It’s a good investment for me,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was joking, but I came to learn he was not. Andre’s company is worth more than 365 million, and it’s growing.
I read the pink memo as I walk down the hall toward advertising.
Says he’ll see you at the MBA dinner tonight, hopes you’ll finally dance.
… It’s a new year, and already the planners of this year’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade in South Boston have once again announced they intend to ban gays and lesbians from the festivities. Don’t they realize this practically guarantees the media will focus on gays and lesbians who wish to be included? If the goal of the parade is to celebrate Irish heritage in Boston, rather than bigotry, organizers might take a lesson from the armed forces: Don’t ask, don’t tell. Otherwise, they ensure that homosexuality and the Saint Patrick’s Day parade are inexorably linked in our civic memory.
—from “My Life,” by Lauren Fernández
elizabeth
I PROBABLY SHOULDN’T have, but after seeing Lauren at the last sucias gathering, and after reading her sensitive column on the parade, I called and invited her to dinner, just the two of us, with the idea of telling her, finally, how I feel about her.
We went to the Elephant Walk in Brookline for Cambodian and French food, and spoke in the civilized, careful cadences we always use with each other. She wore a blue wool hat and jeans, carried a backpack as if she were still in college. Her eyes sparkled. Her lips shone. Ed, Jovan, problems, pain. She talked and talked. Drank and drank. I listened and choked on the words held prisoner in my throat. I almost told her, almost. Almost told her I could rescue her from all that, love her eternally, without condition, hold her until the doubting rose from her skin like steam, until all that would be left is the gigantic, striding beauty of her. But didn’t. Couldn’t. The risk would be
too huge, losing her. Facing her polite rejection. I couldn’t bear it. Coward in my own skin.
Selwyn senses something, I think. When I mention my friends, she is usually passive. But when I mention Lauren, Selwyn stiffens, a wolf whose fur rises along her neck. Something is there, she senses it, in the woods, lurking, threatening. Her nostrils open. I have told Selwyn of my past loves, but never of this one, the longest-gnawing love I’ve known, the one that makes me weep. What wolf Selwyn senses is my love for Lauren, this never-diminishing, ever-pulsating thing that—what is the word, gloms?—gloms on to my corpuscles, making the blood thick and useless every time I see her, pushes at me, tilts me toward the moon, howling.
I called her later that night, to thank her for a lovely dinner. She seemed sleepy and puzzled and I said nothing of what I felt. I paused with my secret, her scent in my nose, listened to her breathing and tried to think of a way to say it, this thing I’ve fought for a decade. “Hello? Liz, you there?” she asked. “Yes,” I mumbled, mouth full of ghost blood. “You okay?” she wanted to know. “Of course,” I’d said. “Just wanted to say we should do it again soon.” “Sure,” she said, a longer word than usual, with a question in it, maybe too an answer. Curiosity in her voice, listening to the coded message in deliberate silence. “Well, good-bye, then,” I said, rushing to run away, again. “Good night.” “Take care, Liz,” she said. “Love ya.”
The fluttering up of a million inner pigeons. The dying inside of hope. Love ya. Love? Love, in the straight woman way, where you may walk arm in arm while shopping for a dress, may kiss on the cheek, may even, as she once did in college, craftily grab a woman you love and stuff a condom into her bra before she heads out on a date with a man she has agreed to see mostly for show, love that means many nearly sexual moments, but where you may never open your mouth against hers to receive her tongue sweet and soft, where you may never slide your knee up between her legs, gentle and with eyes wide open.
I’m back to normal now. Or nearly so. Back to Selwyn. Thoughts of Selwyn all day long. I have removed Lauren from my heart. Again. She’d never understand the strangling of it all, the way she gets in there and pushes until I have to bite my pillow to stifle the thoughts, the way I love her. Straight women never do, entirely. After the last “curious” one used me for her experiment and left me sucking for air, beached on the loneliest of shores when she returned to her man with a “Thanks, it’s been fun,” I’ve stopped trying.
