“I,” Emilia said, frowning at her sister, “am always nice and pleasant.”
Susana muttered something that sounded like, “I beg to differ.”
Emilia, who had her pride even though she was currently on all fours as she looked under the bed for a missing shoe, chose not to answer. She and Torres had had a pleasant enough conversation on the train and she was reasonably sure that she could get through an afternoon without doing him serious harm. In fact, she was rather looking forward to it.
It took nearly half an hour for Ruben and Luis to scrub the remains of the girls’ experiment out of what seemed like every horizontal—and some vertical—surfaces in the Cruzes’s kitchen. Hanging up a dishtowel with a diligent air that would have satisfied any housewife, Ruben began to roll down his sleeves. Tempted as he was to poke around the house while the girls were dressing, it was too much to hope that Emilia would leave proof of her secret identity lying around. So instead, he finished fastening his cuffs and slid into his linen jacket, thinking if he could guide the conversation towards the subject of her serial, he might just be able to goad her into admitting the truth.
He thought about the papers he had laid out on his table back at his lodgings: a copy of La Rosa Carmesí, open to the latest installment of the True Accounts, and a half-written article in which he had begun to eviscerate her portrayal of the duke. She would be incensed when she read it.
It might have been terribly masochist of his part, but he couldn’t wait to see her reaction.
“Isn’t this a pretty sight,” Emilia remarked from the doorway, looking at them with an arched brow. “If you two don’t take care, you might just find yourselves pressed into service.”
“I know someone in this room who wouldn’t mind that in the least,” Ruben said, nodding in Luis’s direction.
“As I said earlier,” Luis said, holding out his arm to Miss Cruz, “I would make a fantastic ladies’ maid.”
Arroyo Blanco wasn’t a big enough town to make a drive really satisfying. They had rounded the church and gone around the park twice when Luis suggested they treat the girls to ice cream. The proposal was well received; though Ruben hadn’t thought it was possible, the heat grew even more intense with every day that went by.
Luis parked the motorcar in the shade and they walked to Helados Imperiales, Ruben and Emilia strolling ahead with Luis and Miss Cruz following slowly, absorbed in their conversation.
Emilia had changed out of her ridiculous apron and into a white shirtwaist and a fresh green skirt that was almost the exact same shade as the striped awning shading the front of the ice cream shop. A belt around her waist emphasized the generous curves of hips and bosom.
She caught him looking, so he had no choice but to say, “That’s a nice dress you’re wearing. Less…sticky than the one you were wearing before."
She didn’t seem to take offense at his awkward attempt at a compliment. Laughing, she said, “My, Mr. Torres, you really are a wordsmith. Do girls go weak in the knees when you present them with such extravagant praise?”
He smiled. “As a matter of fact, they do—most of them, at least. Some just try to drown me.”
They stopped in front of a cluster of white iron tables that had been arranged on either side of the door, in the manner of a Parisian cafe. Luis pulled out a chair for Miss Cruz, who thanked him and sank into it, and Ruben did the same for Emilia, who did not sit but asked, rather abruptly, “Have you come here before?”
“I don’t think I have,” Ruben replied.
“Then you haven’t seen the mural yet.” Her hand slipped into the crook of his arm and he found himself being firmly led to the door of the ice cream shop as she told him all about the artist who had painted it.
It was dim and cool inside, a respite from the scorching glare. Ruben had to wait until his eyes adjusted to the lower light before he could make sense of what was drawn on the wall Emilia had led him to.
The mural was unremarkable. It depicted a day in the park, rather less successfully than the series of paintings by that artist his mother liked whose name he never could remember. Ruben turned to ask Emilia if she knew his work but she wasn’t paying attention to him or the mural—she was gazing at Luis and Miss Cruz through the window, an anxious expression in her face.
“He’s all wrong for her, you know,” Ruben told Emilia as Luis said something to Miss Cruz that made her laugh.
Her dark, bold eyebrows rose. “How can you say that? He dotes on her. He’s in love with her, for heaven’s sake—even you can’t deny it.”
Luis was besotted, that was true. But he had been just as infatuated with the other girls.
“I don’t deny it. But that’s always been the problem. He falls in love with girls, and he courts them, and he makes them believe he could never feel about another the way he feels about them… and then he moves on to next one and leaves me to pick up the pieces. So if you were counting on a wedding before the summer’s end, I’m sorry to say you’ll be sorely disappointed.”
“I thought you were supposed to be his friend,” Emilia said, making her reproach clear in the way she furrowed her brows. Some of her curls had come undone from their pins; they danced in the warm breeze coming through the open door. She was all energy and movement even when she was standing still, and again Ruben couldn’t help but compare it to her sister’s serenity, which wasn’t half as engaging as Emilia’s liveliness.
“I am his friend. A good enough friend that he can trust me to keep him from making all sorts of mistakes. It’s not for his sake that I’m telling you—your sister seems like a very nice girl and I should hate to see her hurt by someone who isn’t capable of being constant in his affections.”
“I trust him, Mr. Torres—and what’s more important, so does my sister. Believe me, I would be the first to send him on his way if I even suspected he would cause her any harm.” She drummed her fingers on the pale marble countertop. “What if this time it’s different?”
“It isn’t,” he said firmly. “Luis is too much of a romantic.”
“Do you not believe in romance, Mr. Torres?” She was giving him one of her probing looks, the ones that made him feel that, if she couldn’t see into his thoughts, then at least she would have liked to. The thought made Ruben feel oddly flushed.
“I don’t know if I believe in much of anything at all.”
“I’m sure that’s not true. You seem to believe very strongly in suffrage. I read the article Rosa mentioned the other day. You were very impassioned in the way you defended what Miss Paulino said in last month’s rally.”
“Only because I hated the way the papers covered her speech. I hate how they tried to make it out like she was being unreasonable and inflexible when she insisted that Fernando Gutierrez’s proposal wasn’t good enough.” Gutierrez’s proposal of partial enfranchisement had been met with a degree of approval by women who owned property or businesses, but Paulino had been adamant about holding out for universal suffrage and Ruben was inclined to agree with her.
Ruben hadn’t realized how vehemently he was speaking until she raised an eyebrow, saying, “Heavens. Is there anything you do like?”
“I like to swim,” he said, and was gratified to hear her laugh.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to speak at the WSA one of these days,” she suggested as they began to walk outside. “We’re always looking for guest speakers and lecturers and as you can imagine, men who support suffrage can be pretty scarce in these parts.”
They rejoined Luis and Miss Cruz, arriving at the table in time to give their orders to the waiter. Once again, Ruben pulled out a chair for Emilia then settled into one across from her as Luis and Susana reminisced about the love letters he used to send her when they were young.
“They were awful. But nothing was ever as bad as the time you copied one of Papa’s poems and tried to pass it off as your own.”
“She knew it immediately, of course,” Luis told Ruben, his eyes sparkling with mirth.
“But she didn’t tell me for fear of embarrassing me. So I copied poem after poem—I hadn’t realized they were her father’s, I’d found his book in my mother’s bookshelves—thinking myself quite clever, and all the while she must have had fits whenever I slipped another envelope under her door.”
“I would never laugh at you,” she protested, then caught Emilia’s eye. “Well, not too much.”
“Only when I deserved it,” Luis said, and they all laughed at that.
“Isn’t this a merry group!” came an exclamation from behind them.
Emilia turned around in her seat. “Miss Torres?”
It was indeed Ruben’s sister, walking arm-in-arm with Ana Maria Espinosa, looking for all the world like they’d known each other their entire lives.
Ruben fought the urge to hide behind one of the potted palms as his sister’s keen gaze swept over them and lingered on Emilia. They’d met at the theater the day before and though she’d seen Emilia’s murderous tendencies firsthand, she still insisted he was harboring romantic feelings toward her, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Miss Cruz, Miss Emilia, it’s so wonderful to see you again,” Violeta said as the group rose and exchanged kisses on the cheek. “I was just telling Ana Maria how much fun I had at the theater last night. That was a very exciting conclusion to our game, wasn’t it?”
“A trifle wet, too,” Ruben murmured, and was pleased when Emilia laughed again.
He smiled at her, and when he looked away he was disconcerted to see Violeta was giving him one of her sharp gazes. He frowned at his sister, and she replied with a smile that made him frown even harder.
A waiter in a striped bow tie materialized and before long, two tables had been pushed together and Violeta and Miss Espinosa had taken seats across from Ruben and Emilia.
“Stop it,” he whispered to his sister as he opened an illustrated menu.
“Stop what?” she asked in a maddeningly innocent tone.
“Looking at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you in any particular way. Really, Ruben, you’re getting to be quite odd.” And with that, she turned to Miss Espinosa to resume their conversation and Ruben had no choice but to seethe in silence.
“Sisters,” Emilia whispered from the chair beside his, giving him a sympathetic look.
“You’d know all about it yourself,” he said with a nod toward Miss Cruz.
“Oh, Susana’s goodness itself. If anyone’s occasionally infuriating, it’s me.”
“Not as infuriating as my sister, hopefully, or else I’ll feel very sorry for Miss Cruz.”
“Oh, I’m worse,” she said, but smiled. “You should try the soursop ice cream—it’s their best one.”
He shook his head. “I don’t like the seeds.”
That reminded her of something she had read in a Puerto Rican magazine and she launched into the story, talking so animatedly that the other conversations at the table faltered and slowed to a stop as everyone turned their attention to her.
Ruben watched her as she spoke. Her hair was still a mess and the gestures she made with her hands called attention to the thread unraveling from the cuff of her blouse, but she effortlessly held the group’s attention.
Belatedly, he remembered his plan to get her to confess the truth. He could easily guide the conversation to the subject, get her as riled as she’d been the night before. But though it would be fun to see her hotly defending her work, for the moment, he didn’t want to scheme or plot or plan her downfall. He only wanted to sit back and hear her talk.
It was almost eight when they finally returned home. Emilia said goodbye to Torres and went into the kitchen in order to give Susana and Luis some privacy as they lingered by the front door. It was uncomfortably hot in the kitchen, and Emilia undid the top three buttons of her blouse before reaching for the brown-paper bundle on the table. It was too hot to cook anything for longer than five minutes, so toasted cassava bread and avocado would have to do, perhaps with some of the soft white cheese she’d bought the day before.
She had unwrapped the cheese and was laying flat, round pieces of pieces of cassava bread on a hot pan to toast it when Susana came in.
“I don’t think Mr. Torres likes me,” she announced.
Emilia gave her a surprised look. “Don’t be silly. Why wouldn’t he? Everyone does— you’re agreeable and kind and sweeter than the little prince who was made of chocolate and had a peanut for a nose.” Emilia added the last bit of nonsense hoping to provoke a laugh out of her sister but Susana remained unsmiling as Emilia handed her an avocado and a knife.
“I don’t care if he does,” Susana said, slicing into the dark green skin, “only Luis seems to value his opinion a great deal.”
But Emilia could see that Susana cared more than she was letting on. “Luis would be an idiot if he paid any attention to that jackass,” she said firmly. “Even if Torres did dislike you, which he doesn’t. It’s Luis he disapproves of—he told me so himself.”
“Luis?” Susana said, looking up in surprise. “Why would he?”
It wouldn’t do any good to let Susana know that Torres thought Luis was a philanderer who would toy with her affections before dropping her like—well, like a piece of charred cassava bread. Emilia took the pan off the fire before Susana realized it had begun to smoke and scolded Emilia for her inattention, and dropped its contents onto a plate. The cassava was dark but thankfully not burned. “He thinks you wouldn’t be suited to each other.”
“Why?”
“Oh, who knows what goes on in that man’s head,” Emilia said as she cut a small wedge of cheese in half. “We’ve known Luis all our lives and he’s always been the steady sort. Torres has known him for six or seven years at the most— who’s he to say whether Luis’s affection for you is genuine or not?”
“It does feels genuine,” Susana said. “Though perhaps that’s wishful thinking.”
“I don’t think it is. I think it’s obvious from the way he looks at you that he—well, that he cares for you a great deal. And I think Torres is full of rot. He was wrong about my stories and he’s wrong about Luis and he’s only trying to cause trouble where there’s none.”
“There’s no reason why Mr. Torres would want to cause trouble between Luis and me.”
“Unless he’s in love with you himself,” Emilia pointed out, stifling a tiny wisp of what was most assuredly not jealousy. It was altogether too possible— nobody who met Susana could help but to fall in love with her. She’d had plenty of other beaus, three of which had proposed. No man, however, was a match to Luis in Susana’s eyes. They’d grown up together and even though Susana had seen him only a handful of times in the seven years since he’d moved to the city, her infatuation with him had remained steadfast.
Susana waved her suggestion aside. “Of course not—he’s only just met me. Do you think it’s possible Luis has…some sort of arrangement, maybe?”
“Another girl?” Torres had been forthright enough with Emilia that if there had been another girl, he would have said so. Emilia shook her head. “No. There isn’t another girl. I’m sure of it.”
“Then why hasn’t he said anything?” Susana asked in a low voice.
Emilia didn’t have a chance to answer, as the door to the kitchen swung open and their father staggered inside. The brim of his Panama hat cast a shadow over his face but Emilia didn’t need to see it to know he was sloshed. The smell of alcohol wafted off him in waves, strong enough that she could smell it from halfway across the room.
She felt the familiar mixture of resentment and affection and guilt rising inside her chest. Turning away to take a stack of plates to the dining room, she saw from the corner of her eye as Susana reached out to hang up their father’s hat and walking stick, patting him on the shoulder as she did with the easy familiarity Emilia had never been able to adopt while around him.
By the time Emilia carried their dinner to the table, Susana had helped their father into his
seat and poured him a glass of lime juice. Both girls pretended not to notice when he added a splash of rum from the bottle he kept on the sideboard.
They might have been a normal family, sitting around the table to eat together. Their father was quiet, a little glassy eyed, obediently eating everything they put before him.
And then, as always, Emilia ruined the moment by saying the wrong thing.
“We had a letter from Mr. Delgado yesterday.”
Mr. Delgado had been her father’s editor, as well as one of his closest friends. In the years after her mother’s death, he had come down weekly to fuss over her father and persuade him to work on the half-finished book that had remained untouched for months. It had been three years since he’d last been in town, and though he still kept in touch with Emilia, it was more from a sense of duty to her and Susana than from any hope their father might start to write again.
“Burn it,” Mr. Cruz said. “This well has run dry.”
“You won’t fill it with rum, if that’s what you’re thinking.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, Emilia wished she could take them back.
“These days,” he said, “I try not to think of much at all.”
A heavy silence descended over them, and didn’t lift until dinner was over and their father had exchanged his seat at the table for one on the cane-backed armchair in the front porch, where he promptly fell asleep. Emilia and Susana carried the plates back into the kitchen and soon his snores were overlaid by the sound of running water.
Careful to avoid talking about their father, as they had done for the past few years, the conversation turned instead to the book fair.
“We’ll have to find something else to sell at the booth,” Emilia said glumly, remembering the spoiled jelly, most of which they’d poured down the drain. It was just as well. A few jars of guava jelly would never draw as many people as Carmen’s booth was sure to. She brightened as an idea came to her. “Maybe I could write some stories—not that kind,” she added hastily as she saw Susana’s expression. “I could write down some local legends and maybe Mrs. Espinosa could have it printed and bound by one of the publishers who are contributing to the fair. I’m sure that would fetch a good price.”
A Summer for Scandal Page 6
