The Liars

by Jennifer Mathieu

  A boy has never called me before. Not ever in my life. If Mami knew it was a boy on the other end of the line, she’d rip the phone from my hand and slam it into the receiver. Then she’d demand to know what nasty thing I’d done to make a boy call me in the first place.

  My heart hammering, I stretch the cord and step inside my bedroom, shutting the door and sliding to the floor.

  “Hello?” I ask.

  “Hey,” says the voice on the other end. I’m used to the bubbly, dizzy voice of Michelle. Or the thick, pressing voice of Mami. J.C.’s voice sounds deep. Deeper than it did at the beach or in his car. It isn’t really a boy’s voice. More like a man’s.

  “How did you get my number?” I ask. I wince immediately. It’s kind of a stupid thing to say right off the bat.

  “Michelle,” J.C. says. “I hope that’s okay.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I say. My heart is hammering even faster now. The inside of my mouth is dry.

  “You doing okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah, I just finished dinner. Spaghetti.” Why did I just say that?

  “Was that your brother who answered?” J.C. asks.

  “Yeah, my older brother.”

  “Cool,” he says.

  Silence. As I scramble for what to say next because it’s my turn to talk, J.C. says, “So … about that joint.”

  “Wow, you really get right to it,” I answer, pleased with myself for my quick comeback.

  “Ha,” says J.C. “Seriously, I was just wondering if you wanted to hang out tonight?”

  I tug at the cheap tan carpet underneath me, twisting it anxiously. Through the door I hear Joaquin watching some game show. Muffled sounds are punctuated with forced cheers and claps. I glance at my watch. Seven o’clock.

  “Like hang out and … ?”

  J.C. laughs, but it’s a kind laugh. “Hey, we don’t have to get high,” he says. “We could just hang out or whatever. You know. Nothing too intense or anything.”

  I remember his dark eyes and black hair. I remember the way he wouldn’t let go of me after he helped me up off the sand. I remember his infinite hotness.

  But I’ve never gone on a date with a boy. Not for real. My few kissing experiences are limited to stupid summer beach parties with random boys after we each had a few beers, and once we’re back at school we ignore each other. But now this nineteen-year-old wants to spend time with me. The thought that races through my mind at first is that nineteen is really close to twenty, which sounds impossibly grown-up to me.

  But he wants to go out. With me. Away from the four walls of my living room. Away from slumping, sighing, scary, page-turning Mami. Out. Somewhere. Anywhere.

  “So what do you think?” J.C. asks again. He coughs. I wonder if he could actually be nervous. The idea seems ridiculous.

  “You know …” I take a breath. I listen to the game show. I picture Mami in her bed, shut up for what will probably be the rest of the night, unless she stumbles out for another cocktail. I hear my voice saying, “Okay, sure.”

  “Cool,” says J.C. “Want me to pick you up in, like, half an hour or so?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and now my heart is running so fast I think it might give out. But I keep talking. “Just pick me up on the corner where you dropped me off this afternoon.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. It’s better that way. You could say I have, like, an overprotective mom or whatever.”

  “I’ve heard of that type,” J.C. says. “My mom’s the opposite.”

  “Like she didn’t care that you followed the Dead?”

  J.C. laughs. “Seeing as I haven’t talked to my mom in five years, I don’t think so.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I’m … sorry?”

  “Don’t be,” says J.C., and the way he says it I know he’s done talking about it. “Okay, so I’ll pick you up in half an hour?”

  “Okay, cool,” I say, and before I know it we are saying goodbye and I am sitting on the floor of my bedroom and I am grinning and nauseated all at once.

  Joaquin is standing in my bedroom. I’ve motioned him inside because I can’t risk having this conversation in the living room. It’s weird to see my brother in here. After I started wearing a bra and putting posters of Ralph Macchio on my walls, it was like he didn’t ever want to come in here.

  “You want me to say you have a babysitting job?” Joaquin says. “Why not just say you’re out with Michelle?”

  “Shhh …” I say, as if Mami could open the door any second, which she could. She’s so small and sneaky you never hear her coming. “You know I can’t just go out with Michelle,” I answer. “I can’t believe you would even suggest that.” I check my wristwatch again then glance at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door. Ugh, I look like shit.

  “You never even ask if you can,” Joaquin says. “You just assume.”

  I slide open my closet doors and pick through my limited options. “I’m assuming right and you know it,” I say, pulling out a light blue top and tossing it onto my bed. I’m on edge and need Joaquin to help me out right now. “You don’t know what it’s like because you can go out anytime you want. You can see Amy whenever you feel like it.”

  Joaquin jumps a little. Frowns slightly. “How’d you know about her?”

  “I saw it on that mixtape.”

  “What were you doing, spying on me?”

  “I was just putting your laundry away, so calm down,” I say as I squat and dig through the bottom of my closet for my best Keds.

  “Okay,” he says.

  I find the shoes. Success. When I turn around to face Joaquin, his mouth is twisted up in thought.

  “Hey,” I say, taking a breath. “Please, if she comes out of her room or wonders where I am, just tell her the Callahans had an emergency and they needed me? That’s who was calling on the phone? And I didn’t want to disturb her? Please, Joaquin. I never get to do anything.” The way it comes out makes me sound pathetic, I realize. But it isn’t that far off from how I really feel.

  “What time will you be back?” he asks. “And are you sure this guy is okay?”

  “He’s the nephew of Michelle’s boss,” I say, and I realize my breathing is a little shallow. Nerves.

  “The nephew of Michelle’s boss?” Joaquin asks, incredulous. “So he’s essentially a stranger, right? How old is he?”

  “Seventeen,” I lie. “And he’s really nice.”

  Joaquin scratches at the back of his neck. He exhales, loudly.

  “I have to get changed,” I say.

  Joaquin nods, his face still lost in thought.

  “That means you have to leave,” I say, spelling it out for him.

  After he finally does, a flurry of activity follows, but everything from my hair to my outfit to my makeup feels like it’s coming out wrong. I wish I had time to call Michelle. For her first date our freshman year, her mom did her hair in a French braid and let Michelle wear some of her Chanel No. 5 behind her ears. I briefly imagine calling Mrs. Callahan and asking her for advice, but that would be way too weird. We’ve never spoken on the phone about anything but babysitting. Still, for a moment I can picture her sweeping blush over my cheeks and smiling at me with reassurance, making me feel like the most beautiful girl on the island.

  I listen for Mami but there’s nothing.

  Please, God, don’t let her come out.

  I need at least five minutes to walk down to the corner where I’ll meet J.C. I can’t rush or I’ll get all sweaty. Taking a breath to calm myself down, I check my lipstick in the mirror. It’s a soft pink color called Gum Drop. I purse my lips together one more time to even out the coverage. I frown. It’s not a hundred percent perfect, but it’s going to have to do.

  I step out into the living room, my breath held, bracing myself for Mami. She’s still in her bedroom.

  I think I’m going to pull this off.

  “Let me give you some cash,” says Joaquin, getting up from the couch and
digging his beat-up leather wallet from his back pocket and pulling out two wrinkled bills. Tips from El Mirador.

  “Here’s ten bucks,” he says, straightening the bills out neatly before folding them up and pressing them into my palm.

  “Thanks, Joaquin,” I say, grateful. I slip the money into my jeans.

  “So you’re really sure this guy is okay?” he asks, his eyebrows sliding toward each other in concern.

  “Yeah, I really am,” I say. He’s a cute pothead who followed the Dead for a whole year, I think to myself. I wonder what Joaquin would do or say if I told him that. I think he wouldn’t let me go, more because of the following-the-Dead thing than the pot thing.

  “Well, I’ll cover for you if she comes out,” he says, nodding toward the back bedroom.

  “Thanks,” I say. Suddenly, we hear a cough over the sound of the television. She’s still awake. My eyes grow big.

  “You should probably go,” says Joaquin, lowering his voice. “Just …be careful, all right? And don’t be too late. And … call if you need me. I’ll come get you. No questions asked.”

  I smile, and for a moment I feel a bit of the same closeness we had as kids when we would wake up early to watch television on Saturday mornings, slumped together on the couch while Mami snored through a hangover.

  “I promise I’ll be careful,” I say. “And I won’t be too late.” And then, before my nerves or my mother can stop me, I’m opening the front door and slipping out into the dusk of early evening, skipping down the porch steps, my heart thudding inside me, my mouth turning into a hesitant smile, the word freedom spinning over and over in my mind on some frantic, endless loop.

  CARIDAD

  1958

  When she stepped out onto the ballroom floor, her hair perfect, her dress gorgeous, she was sure she would feel like a princess.

  That was what Caridad wanted for her quince. It was what she had always wanted, but Caridad’s father was not so sure.

  It was too dangerous, he said. The rebels were in the mountains, but it seemed each day as if the fighting was getting closer. The headlines in the newspapers loomed larger. Caridad’s friend Graciela had a little cousin who lived on the family’s finca in Santa Clara. Graciela had told Caridad that one morning when she was leaving for school, her cousin found her two dogs, Johnny and Daisy, slaughtered by the rebels, gunshots to their heads and blood seeping out of their skulls into the fresh green grass. Most likely the rebels had come down to the small stream on the property for water, and Georgina’s dogs had barked too loudly. Pop had gone the guns and then the dogs were dead.

  Caridad wasn’t supposed to have overheard her parents discussing that story, but she did anyway, hiding in the kitchen one evening eating crackers with Juanita.

  “Ay, mija, your parents would be angry at me if they knew you were listening,” Juanita had said when the voices of Caridad’s parents drifted in from the salita. “You need to go get ready for bed.”

  “Are the rebels truly as scary as they sound?” Caridad had asked, trying not to picture the little girl’s crushed face when she found her pups.

  “They say Batista is worse,” Juanita said with a shrug. “They say he keeps jars full of the eyeballs of his enemies in his office.”

  Caridad wrinkled her nose. “That’s a lie.”

  “Yes, probably,” Juanita had said. “But some people believe it. Maybe that’s why they have hope that the rebels will bring good things.”

  Maybe Juanita was right, Caridad believed. Maybe they would bring good things. And maybe it hadn’t even been the rebels who killed the dogs. Maybe it had just been an angry neighbor, drunk and unhappy. Caridad settled on that explanation because it made her feel better. And that explanation made her more convinced than ever that there was no reason why she should not have a quince after all. Still, she did not ask for it. Her parents didn’t like it when she whined.

  Fortunately, Caridad’s mother still wanted the party, too, and she took on the task of trying to convince Caridad’s father.

  “I don’t know, my dear,” her father had said when the topic came up toward the end of dinner one evening. Both her parents puffed over Pall Malls even though their plates were still mostly full. Lately, they had been smoking more and eating less. Caridad was a little surprised that they were having this conversation in front of her. They rarely allowed for Caridad to be a witness to any tension.

  “Ay, Joaquin, we only have one child and it’s a daughter,” she said, grimacing. “We’ve waited all these years to really show her off.” Caridad tingled with pride and watched as her mother brushed back her dark hair and tucked it behind her ear. A diamond earring twinkled merrily, and Caridad took it as a good omen. She was right because the next words out of her father’s mouth were, “All right, then. She can have her quince.”

  And so it was that four months later Caridad was wrapped in pink French chiffon that swallowed her up and made her look like a little tea cake, dainty and pretty and sweet. It had been made by a fussy woman who had studied under the finest dressmakers in Paris, and she had tugged and pulled and pinned and hummed to herself and in the end she had made Caridad look more beautiful than ever.

  Caridad and Graciela and some of the boys from good families had practiced the waltzes in the party room at the club. Ricardo was there, with his swoony dark eyes and shy smile, and even though Caridad knew her parents were responsible for making him her dance partner, she thought from the way he looked at her that he, too, was glad for the arrangement. Caridad’s mother had hired the daughter of a famous composer to choreograph the complicated dances, and whenever Ricardo’s hand touched Caridad’s, she felt a shiver of possibility run down her spine.

  Nearly three hundred invitations had been delivered, complete with dance cards tucked inside, and Caridad had seen them in stacks on the dining room table, ready to be addressed by a calligrapher her parents had hired. In the days leading up to their delivery, Caridad had slipped on her white gloves so as not to risk fingerprints, then picked up the thick, creamy card stock and flipped the invitation over and over, relishing the dark cursive font: Joaquin y Elena de la Guardia … el honor de invitar … los Quince Años de su hija … They were perfect.

  The afternoon of the quince felt dizzy and dreamlike. Caridad had munched on crackers, but she’d been too nervous for much else. Her mother had dabbed Arpège behind her ears before cupping Caridad’s face in her hand and smiling, her expression wistful now that Caridad was too old for agua de violetas. Juanita had shaken her head as the hairdresser brought in for the occasion had hovered above Caridad, and she’d finally stepped in to arrange Caridad’s dark locks herself. That night, Juanita would watch from the kitchen with the rest of the help. She promised Caridad she wouldn’t miss a minute.

  After the sun set, Caridad was whisked away with her father in a luxury car to one of the fanciest hotels in downtown Havana. Caridad clutched his hand and willed herself to absorb every moment into her mind for safekeeping. This night would never happen again. There would be other magical nights, she knew that intuitively. But not this night. This night would always stand alone.

  “Papi,” Caridad had said, looking up at him, squeezing his large hand with her small one, “I’m so happy.” And her father had looked down at her and smiled, and Caridad had known without him saying so that he was happy, too.

  There were society reporters and photographers waiting to take pictures outside the hotel, and Caridad had tilted her head just so, finally debuting the smile she’d practiced for so long in the mirror, demure but authentic. Innocent but sophisticated, too, somehow. The flashes left bright white explosions in her eyes for a moment, and when she was finally out of the range of photographers, she shut her eyes tightly in an attempt to adjust to it all.

  And then as she walked inside toward the ballroom with her father, she could hear the light strains of Barbarito Díez’s band, the violins swelling more loudly and sweetly the closer they got. As they entered the ballroom, s
he took in everything in one wild rush. The men in their white dinner jackets, the women in their long dresses, the palatial birthday cake—pink and white—on a special table in front of the band stage.

  And there was Ricardo hovering on the edges of the crowd, his eyes looking right at Caridad, his eyebrows slightly up, his face full of a pleasantly shocked expression that Caridad had to believe meant that she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

  “You’ve got to smile, hija,” Caridad’s father reminded her, his own eyes crinkling at the sides as he grinned, pulling Caridad into the center of the dance floor and beginning to waltz with her. “Te quedas como una piedra.”

  The words made her relax a bit at last, and she must have smiled, too, as she was led on the dance floor by her father, executing the moves she had practiced with him. Barbarito Díez’s voice sounded more beautiful in person than over the radio, that was for certain. As her father spun her, she caught a glimpse of her mother, her hands clutched under her chin, her face about to crack in two from happiness. If only Caridad could see Juanita.

  It was then that it happened. A loud blast accompanied by shattering glass. She felt the hardness of the dance floor under her. Caridad could not remember landing there. She only knew that she could not breathe. She turned over onto her stomach, placed her hands firmly on the floor underneath her, and tried to push herself up, but she couldn’t do it. She willed herself to breathe, but the more she did, the tighter her chest became. She was seized with a cold panic.

  Her ears were ringing, and the smell of something rancid and burnt seared the insides of her nose. Someone grabbed her from under her arms, hoisted her up. Perhaps it was her father. The good news was she could still stand, and somehow her lungs started working again. Then someone was moving her, pushing her toward the ballroom doors. Her ears rang so loudly she could hear nothing else. Caridad briefly wondered if she was dead, and if this was the afterlife—a chaotic, hellish place. Hadn’t she been good enough to deserve better? she wondered. As the stranger behind her maneuvered her outside, her mind rested dumbly on the birthday cake. She wondered if it could be saved.