Acapulco Nights

by K. J. Gillenwater

  “Except for the eyes. She has her father’s eyes.”

  “Yes.” I brushed my thumb across the picture. “But she’s your daughter.”

  Mercedes nodded and took the picture from me, carefully tucking it back in her wallet. “So, he’s not leaving Mexico?”

  “Not with me. I don’t know. Maybe he has plans.”

  “His mother lives here, you know. She knew about the baby. She wanted him to do the right thing.”

  “And then I came into the picture. No wonder she didn’t like me.”

  Mercedes smiled. “She doesn’t like much of anyone. She’s a tough woman to love, but she adores Ariana. She’s been a wonderful grandmother to her.”

  “Maybe that’s all she needs.”

  “Yes, maybe.” She put her wallet back in her purse. “So, you’re going to divorce Joaquin. Then, what?”

  “I’m engaged to someone else.”

  “Americano?”

  I nodded my head.

  “That’s good. I’m glad you have found someone.”

  “Thanks. He’s a good man.” I thought about the night he had changed my tire, down on the greasy floor of the parking garage in his nice suit. “He’d do anything for me.”

  “Well, that is the kind of man you should marry.”

  “Yes. Yes it is.”

  Mercedes glanced at her watch. “It’s getting late. I really should go. This night didn’t turn out quite the way I was expecting.” She gave me a glimmer of a smile.

  “It was good to talk to you, Mercedes. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Ah, I’ll be okay.” She picked up a pebble and threw it into the waves. “How do they say it? ‘There’s more than one fish in the sea’?”

  “Exactly.”

  We both got up off the sand. She waved at me and headed back toward the hotel.

  I wasn’t ready to go back yet. I needed some time alone to think, but I was glad that I had made amends with Mercedes. We may never have been destined to be friends, but at least now we understood each other.

  Joaquin had hurt both of us. In that way, we were allies.

  *

  I sat on the sand for hours. This late at night no one was out on the beach—just me, my thoughts, and the silver moon, slowly moving across the sky.

  I knew what I had to do. There was maybe a chance for me and James, but I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself. Moping would solve nothing.

  I looked at my watch. Three-thirty in the morning. Before I tackled any of this, I needed to get some sleep somewhere. Sleeping on the beach probably would not be the safest bet, and, besides, I was cold. Even seventy-degree weather can start to feel chilly if you’re wearing a spaghetti strap dress with a steady ocean breeze at your back.

  I made my way back to the hotel, which seemed to be miles and miles from where I stood—its distinctive electric-orange lights like a group of fireflies at this distance. At some point, I lost one of my shoes. I was too tired to go back for it, so I left the orphan shoe behind in the sand, as if I were Cortez marking Spain’s territory with a flag. The spot where I decided to fix my broken life.

  Trudging through the sand, my legs grew weary. The lights were as far away as before. I wondered absently if there might actually be a treadmill under all this sand. Clearly, I was sleep-deprived.

  But I walked on.

  The hotel lights got closer, my body grew more tired. By the time I reached the pool patio, I was ready to collapse. I staked out an empty lounge chair, covered myself with a couple of the thin, hotel towels, and promptly fell asleep.

  *

  “Señorita?”

  Someone shook me – rather roughly, I thought. I groaned and rolled to one side.

  “Señorita, no puede dormir aquí. No puede, usted!”

  My tired eyes cracked open. The early morning light burned them.

  An anxious maid leaned over me, her plump little body quivering in confusion.

  Oh, God. It was morning, and I had fallen asleep outside by the pool.

  I sat up, clutching one of the towels to my chest.

  Last night the lounge chair had been the perfect solution. I had been so, so tired, and there had been a very comfortable looking chair waiting for me to lie on it.

  But this morning, I realized the error. Early morning buffet breakfast by the pool.

  It was still early, thank goodness. But a few crack-of-dawn type people were queueing up across the patio from me, waiting for pancakes, huevos rancheros, and tropical fruit salad. While waiting, they found my predicament quite entertaining.

  I finger-combed what must be my atrocious coiffure and got up from the lounge chair with as much grace as possible. I tried to wipe the wrinkles out of my skirt. And my shoes! Whoops. I’d forgotten. I only had one shoe.

  I reached for my handbag, pulled out my room key card, and waved it in front of the maid’s face. I didn’t want her to think I was some drunk who had wandered in from the beach last night. I was a paying guest.

  With as much dignity as I could muster, I sauntered past the pool and the growing line of earlier diners and entered the lobby.

  I headed to the elevators without thinking. I didn’t care that I looked a mess, that my teeth needed to be brushed, or that I had sand in places I didn’t want to think about. My first thought was to find James. I wanted to let him know why I did what I did and that I would fix it. I would get the papers signed for the divorce before I left Mexico. I needed to tell him I had never loved anyone but him.

  On the elevator ride up I thought about James in the room last night. How final and sad he’d sounded. I had to show him our relationship could be fixed. I had made a mistake. A terrible mistake.

  The doors opened on the fourteenth floor, and the eerie, suffused quiet of the hallway surrounded me. My bare feet padded down the hall on the soft carpet. I’m sure I left traces of sand on the floor with each step.

  A maid laid a fresh copy of the New York Times in front of each door.

  I wished I could turn invisible. It bore great resemblance to the ‘walk of shame’ from a frat house early on a Saturday morning. Everyone who saw you thought they knew how you spent your evening, and it wasn’t spent playing chess.

  The maid glanced at me, taking in my bare feet, sand dusted calves, and wrinkled party dress. But she didn’t say a word. Guess she’d probably seen odder things happen in her tenure at the Playa Del Mexico. She turned back to her duties, making her way in the opposite direction.

  I walked past with as much dignity as I could muster. I’d feel a lot better about the way I looked if my hair hadn’t been such a ratty mess. Several hours of walking in a steady sea breeze was about as bad for the hairdo as riding in the back of a convertible.

  I reached our room.

  A flutter of panic stilled me for a moment. What if he told me to leave again? What if he wouldn’t listen to me and my explanations? I couldn’t lose him. Not now.

  I slid my room card through the reader next to the doorknob. The green light snapped on. I pushed on the handle, and the door opened.

  The bright light of the morning shone through the window, and I stepped inside ready to fight for James. Ready to give him all of me. Every piece of my history. Every mistake I ever made. I was ready to lay everything bare.

  The door shut quietly behind me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  What would my mother think?

  I rode the bus heading back to Puebla when this thought came to my mind. Although it was only a few hours after the wedding ceremony, what seemed so right to me at the time, now felt impulsive. But here I was on the way back to the university to gather my things and start my new life as a married woman.

  My father would probably take it in stride. His only child, married in a whirlwind ceremony in Mexico? How romantic, he would say. My impulsiveness could be traced back to him. He had proposed to my mother only a few weeks after they began dating. He told me more than once that ‘when you know, you know.’ He
had told me the minute he had seen my mother across the room at a crowded fraternity dance that she was the one, even though she had been his best friend’s date at the time.

  I had known with Joaquin. In my arms at the civil ceremony it had all felt perfect. Yes, I was young. Yes, I wanted to finish school, but why couldn’t I finish my studies in Mexico? The horrible trip to Acapulco had been far from my mind.

  My dad could convince my mom I’d done the right thing. She would probably have a fit, and then my dad would calm her down. I had been so dependable in the past, she would say. I had been on the right track—good college, good grades. She would panic. She would think I had ruined my life.

  But my dad could bring her back. He had big dreams when he had been young. The wandering spirit. My mother had been his anchor in reality.

  Now I had my own husband to think about. What a crazy feeling. I was no longer a girl. I was a married woman with a husband who loved me.

  This would be my last trip to the Universidad de América Central. I would be transferring my credits to the UNAM, where Joaquin attended school, for the summer semester.

  Then, I would call my parents and explain to them everything that happened. How I wouldn’t be coming back for summer vacation as planned. How I wouldn’t be going back to my job at the Dairy Queen. Maybe they could come visit us this summer, get to know their son-in-law.

  *

  When I walked into my dorm suite, Janice waited on the couch with a pinched look on her face. The minute she saw me, her face paled.

  “Suze, where have you been?” Janice blurted out, leaping up from the couch her slim arms reaching out for me.

  “With Joaquin,” I said quizzically. “What’s up with you?”

  Janice’s face became paler than pale, her thin lips taut against her teeth. She held something back. “You got a phone call this morning.”

  “And?” I asked, setting down my backpack. “Who was it?”

  “Your mom.” She said this in a whisper, and then her hand flew up to her mouth. “Oh, God, Suzie.” The agony in her voice made my blood run cold.

  “Tell me” I knew something was horribly wrong. “What happened? What did she say?”

  Waiting even those few seconds for an answer had been agony. I had never seen Janice so serious, so pale.

  “Your dad,” she began, and I heard a loud buzzing in my ears. I could anticipate what she was about to tell me. “He had a heart attack last night.”

  I didn’t hear the rest. I didn’t want to. Dad had heart troubles for the past few years. Nothing too serious, we thought. He had a simple surgery to get rid of a blockage and some medicines that he took regularly, but I never thought that—

  I sagged against the doorframe, my purse dropped to the floor. Then everything went black.

  *

  That same night I waited in the airport in Mexico City for my plane home. All of my bags were packed. The only thing I’d left behind was a shredded copy of my marriage certificate and the inexpensive gold band that was my wedding ring. I had planned on sharing everything with Janice before I left school for good.

  I had no time to explain any of this to anyone. Professor Burnham took care of all the arrangements. I could barely think straight, much less figure out a way to tell Joaquin what had happened.

  He would have to wait until I got back to the States. Once the funeral was over—

  Then, a wave of sorrow hit me in the gut, making rational thought impossible.

  My father was dead. My wonderful, doting, sweet-natured father was gone forever. My mind could not grasp it completely, no matter how many times I repeated the truth out loud. I’d landed in a horrible nightmare.

  I had only spoken for a few minutes with my mother on the phone before I left for the airport. The conversation had been mostly tears and stray, meaningless thoughts about which tie Dad should wear or which dishes we should use for the buffet afterwards at the house.

  One thing she said broke through the clutter of thoughts in my mind and stuck with me: “At least I still have you, sweetheart. You will be here for me, won’t you? Always?”

  I had never heard weakness or doubt in my mother’s voice until that day. To hear her plead with me now broke my heart. As if in losing my father, she had lost part of herself.

  I answered automatically, “Of course. Always.”

  That’s when I knew I couldn’t tell her. I could never tell her. The marriage to Joaquin may have seemed like the right thing to do yesterday, but today, the world had turned into an entirely different place.

  Yesterday, I had been a carefree college student in love with a handsome, young man. Today, I was a daughter whose mother needed her most desperately.

  I didn’t even know the person who had existed that sunny Saturday afternoon in Mexico City, smiling in front of the judge, letting Joaquin slip the ring on my finger. That Suzie no longer existed. Joaquin would have to understand that.

  Waiting in the Mexico City airport, I tried to force myself to call him, tell him where I was going, why I wouldn’t be at the bus station in the morning. My heart had grown numb, it didn’t want to feel any more emotions. If I had to explain my father’s death to him and hear his heart break over the phone, I didn’t think I could stand it. I barely had my sorrow in check, and I still had to make it through a four-hour plane ride, a funeral, and a long line of relatives, friends, and neighbors waiting to give their sympathies.

  A phone call to Joaquin right now was out of the question. It could wait until tomorrow. When I had a chance to settle in, adjust to this new life without my father in it.

  *

  When I did finally get home, my mother enfolded me in her arms and we wept. No words passed between us that first day. There had been no need for them, we both were thinking the same thoughts.

  When I didn’t make that phone call to Joaquin my first day home, I thought I would make the call the next day. Not a big deal. He would understand once I explained it to him.

  But then another day went by.

  And another.

  Helping my mother to plan the funeral took everything out of me. In her grief, my mother couldn’t make any decisions; she needed me to lift that burden from her. I called the funeral home, the church, the florist, the organist. I called the caterer, the family lawyer, the secretary at his work. It all had to be done, and I had been the only one capable of doing it.

  My mother spent those first few days curled up in bed, her head buried under a comforter. People called with their condolences, and my mother waved a hand at me when I brought the phone to her, a fresh glut of sobbing making even the most simple of conversation impossible.

  Joaquin had been the last thing on my mind.

  *

  After the funeral, Janice called. She was in Puebla; the semester would be finishing up in a few weeks. After asking about my mom and myself, she brought up a topic I had been avoiding.

  “Joaquin’s been calling for you. I didn’t know what to tell him.” She sounded tinny and far away, but I knew she worried about me.

  “I know,” the guilt filling my voice. “I just can’t—my mother—”

  Every time I explained my actions to her, my thoughts returned to my father. His body lying in a casket. His warm hands now cold and gray, his face once so animated now sunken and lifeless. And my mother, an emotional wreck. A strong, focused woman reduced to constant tears and hiding in her bedroom.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Do you want me to tell him what happened?”

  “No!” I couldn’t believe I said it. “Don’t tell him anything. I’ll take care of it.”

  My mother shuffled past the living room, her eyes circled and puffy. She had been wearing the same nightgown, bathrobe, and slippers since I had gotten home. Her hair was wild, and her hands clutched at the front of her robe, as if she were warding off a cold breeze.

  “Janice,” I said with a sob, unable to hold it in any longer, “I have to go now.” I hung up th
e phone before I could hear her answer.

  “Mom,” I called gently, crossing the living room in a few strides to catch up to her, “do you want me to make you some soup?”

  Her blank eyes looked at me, unfocused, “Your father needs his clean socks. He can’t go to work without his clean socks.”

  Putting my arm around her shoulders, I guided her back toward the stairs. “I’ll get them, Mom. Don’t worry. And then I’ll bring you some of that soup.”

  She nodded slowly, and for a moment her eyes cleared. Looking at me, she cried, “Oh, Suzie, what are we going to do?” She gave me a tight hug and held me for a long moment. The strength left her body as she clung to me. “I need to get some rest.”

  “Yes, mom, why don’t you do that? You can have the soup later. When you’re feeling better.”

  She nodded and let go of me. “What are we going to do?” she mumbled. Tightening the belt of her bathrobe, she ambled up the stairs to her bedroom.

  Before I entered the kitchen, I sat down on the bottom step and hugged my knees to my chest.

  “Yes,” I said out loud to myself, “What are we going to do?”

  *

  For a few months, Joaquin sent letters. I never opened them. Not one. I didn’t have the courage. Instead, I stacked them in the bottom drawer of my bureau, tied with a string.

  By the end of August, the letters had stopped. School was starting up again, and I thought ahead to the new year. With my father gone, I decided to transfer to a college closer to home. Even months after his death, my mother wasn’t the same person she used to be.

  There were days where I felt guilty for what I did to Joaquin. There were days I thought about trying to find a way to dissolve our marriage, but I had no money and no real idea of where to begin something like that. As the months and years slipped by, it had been easier to pretend it had never happened.

  Until I met James.

  He had changed everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Our hotel suite stood empty. The bed was a mess of tangled sheets, and wet towels had been piled in the bathtub.