The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  José made an expansive gesture. “So I’ll buy her a dress.”

  “Miami-brand discipline for a child who skips school?” Luis sneered.

  José caught Liliana’s eye in the rear-view mirror and winked. “Okay, a T-shirt.”

  Was it ever thus? Luis thought despairingly. Five minutes with any woman, any age, and my goddamned brother has her eating out of his hand.

  As they slowed for the toll booth, Luis wondered if he would have to flash his credentials to avoid being questioned. He glanced back at Liliana and saw that she had curled up on the seat, covered herself with Joe’s jacket, and was pretending to be asleep. The toll booth attendant either didn’t see her or took her for a relative of the men in the front seat. The effective way she concealed her provocative outfit caused Luis to wonder if she had used a similar guise to slip into Varadero with other men.

  Luis stared morosely out the window until they crossed the high bridge at the entrance to Varadero. Pride revived his spirit as the resort came into view. Its modern buildings rivalled any in the Caribbean, and the well-paved streets were filled with late-model cars and shiny hotel shuttle busses. “Take this exit,” Luis indicated. “The autopista along the bay now runs all the way to the end of the peninsula.”

  “Where are we going?” Liliana asked, sliding forward to breathe on José’s neck.

  “Luis claims things have changed since I was here last,” José said over his shoulder. “Let’s drive out as far as the campismo and cruise back to town from there.”

  “There’s no campismo anymore,” Liliana informed him. “But they’re talking about making a tent campground for tourists in Parque Ecológica.”

  “Parque Ecológia?” José echoed. “What’s that?”

  “The area around Playa Calaveras and on out to the tip of the peninsula,” Luis clarified. “For environmental reasons it was left in native vegetation. It was necessary to eliminate the campismo to make room for another resort.”

  “The beach has been developed that far out?” José asked in disbelief. “Why, that’s got to be twenty miles!”

  “All developed.” Luis smirked, basking in José’s astonishment at what the government had accomplished in the past decade. “Like Cancun. Only we did it better.”

  José slowed the car to a crawl. Luis swelled with pride as his brother, with mumbling amazement, read aloud from signs advertising scuba diving, deep-sea fishing, sailboating, hang-gliding, windsurfing, river rafting, kayaking, catamaran rides, glass-bottomed boats trips, yacht excursions to nearby islands, even swimming with dolphins. Joe’s head swung from side to side as he gawked at manicured grounds rolling off toward hotels lining the beach on their left and whistled at the sleek sailboats, big trimarans, and sporty catamarans berthed at a marina on their right.

  Luis’s gaze followed his brother’s across the deep blue waters of the Bahía de Cárdenas. They and their friends had come here often when they were Liliana’s age. Weekending at the now-vanished campismo on the beach side of the peninsula, more than once they had danced until dawn, then hiked over to the bay side to watch the sunrise. Luis glanced at José, wondering if he remembered the camaraderie of those mornings.

  As if responding to the thought, José pointed. “See those rocks out there, Liliana? Can’t tell you how many times we”—here he punched Luis lightly on the shoulder—“sat right there and watched the sunrise. Celia too,” he added, with a nostalgic edge that caused Luis to remember images of the two of them together that he had tried to forget.

  They passed the caves, and as they entered Parque Ecológica, José sped up. Luis could not recall his brother ever showing an interest in human or natural history. It had taken Celia’s prodding, on one of those campismo weekends, to get them to visit the Cueva de Ambrosia to see its small pre-Columbian drawings. José had pronounced them “boring.” Years later, again at Celia’s request, Luis had taken Liliana to see them. He smiled grimly, remembering that Liliana had used exactly the same word.

  When they reached the end of the peninsula, José screeched to a stop at the entrance to Marina Gaviotas. “I see this is still under military control.” He motioned to a yacht being hosed down. “Officer recreation?”

  “Not necessarily,” Luis explained. “The military is involved in tourism too. Especially things that require air and water transport. They have the equipment, so why not? No reason for boats and planes to sit idle when they could be bringing in hard currency by providing services for tourists. That boat is used for deep-sea fishing trips.”

  “I’m starving,” Liliana piped from the back seat. “Can we stop for lunch somewhere?”

  “You bet.” José made a U-turn and headed back to town. In central Varadero he parked at the curb near a sidewalk vendor selling T-shirts. Passing a twenty-dollar bill to Liliana, he said, “Okay, kid, go get something cute. And decent.”

  “Gracias, Tío!” Liliana jumped out and, forgetting the care required to balance on five-inch platform shoes, stumbled and fell.

  Luis and José simultaneously opened their car doors, but Liliana regained her footing with the agility of a cat and laughed to let them know it was no big deal.

  “Hey,” José called and motioned her back to the car. He handed her another twenty and said, “Get yourself a pair of sandals too.”

  Liliana rewarded him with a brilliant smile and avoided looking at Luis, whose face registered disgust and other emotions that his gut told him were equally poisonous. Didn’t José know he had just handed the girl as much as Luis’s or Celia’s monthly salary?

  While Liliana mingled with sunburned tourists at the T-shirt racks, José sat tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Finally he said, “I’ve always wanted to eat at Al Capone’s beach house—you know, the one they turned into a restaurant. I don’t remember where it is. Is it any good?”

  “It’s that way.” Luis pointed farther along the beach. He suspected that José had not forgotten where it was but was merely trying to find out if Luis ever ate there. He had eaten at La Casa de Al once, along with other National Assembly members. No need to explain the circumstances. His personal inability to pay for a meal there was none of José’s business. “It is overpriced but pleasant. People go there mainly for atmosphere.”

  José flashed a grin. “Or to pretend for an hour that they’re part of the mobster set.”

  “If they can afford to eat there regularly they probably are,” Luis shot back.

  Liliana returned wearing a big blue T-shirt that concealed her tartish clothes. Back in the car, she traded the platform shoes for a pair of thongs. The T-shirt probably cost ten dollars, and the thongs at most two, but Liliana did not, Luis noticed, offer José any change from the forty dollars he had given her.

  La Casa de Al, set somewhat apart from its neighbours, was built of natural stone in a linear style that gave almost every room a view onto the sea. In Capone’s days there was only the old gangster’s beach house at this end of the peninsula, more private and more heavily guarded than the DuPont mansion on the other side of town. In recent years two hotels had been built down this way, but Capone’s house still stood apart. It had an unobtrusive quality that Luis admired.

  Entering the restaurant, Luis was satisfied that Liliana looked decent; a trifle casual, but this was, after all, a resort town, and she was only a child. Liliana promptly excused herself to go to the restroom. She returned with her face scrubbed clean, looking every inch the wholesome teenager.

  Gazing around the dining room, she bubbled, “This place is amazing! I’ve always wanted to come here. Imagine what it was like when Al Capone and his gangster friends sat around deciding who they were going to snuff out next!”

  “Probably not so different from gangster get-togethers nowadays,” José said, declining drinks and pointing to a selection on the menu so that the waiter had to lean over his shoulder to see his choice.

  “Like the Miami Cubans planning their next futile attempt to assassinate Fidel?” cracked Luis
. “The same for me,” he said to the waiter, without knowing which entrée his brother had ordered.

  “Me too.” Liliana piped. “It’s so sweet of you to bring us here, Tío Joe!” And to Luis, with a modest flutter of eyelashes, “Thanks for letting me come along, Tío Luis.”

  Luis said nothing. He wasn’t going to spoil the outing by pressing the issue of her truant behaviour, but neither did he want her to think it was forgotten.

  She turned wide eyes on José. “Have you ever been to one of those meetings?”

  “There are a few of us who don’t move in those circles. Actually quite a few,” José glanced at Luis, “who want productive relations with Cuba.”

  Luis did not respond to that overture either but sat quietly as Liliana plied José with questions about Miami, questions that he answered without recourse to modesty. Yes, Miami’s beaches were nicer than Habana’s. Yes, Miami had more hotels than all of Cuba and lots of famous people came there; anyone with the dough could stay in those hotels and attend the celebrity performances. Yes, there were hordes of wealthy people in Miami and even ordinary people lived in houses as nice as this one, although not right on the beach. It was true that there were blocks of side-by-each shops, including Calle Ocho, which was almost entirely Cuban. It was also true that there were hundreds of shopping complexes bigger than Habana’s Juan Carlos II mall, and there was absolutely nothing one might want that couldn’t be bought in Miami.

  Liliana drank it in with the wonder of a child being offered a first-hand report from Fantasyland. When José grew bored with the chatter—which was long after Luis had grown bored with it—he turned his attention to their immediate surroundings. “You’d have thought a Mafiosa like Al Capone would have built something more grandiose, like the DuPont place. Or else something more fortresslike.”

  “He had this whole section of the beach to himself,” Luis commented dryly. “With security blocking off the road and the beach from a kilometre or more back, I suppose he could sit out on the terrace without worrying too much about assassination.”

  “Everyplace in Miami must be this nice,” Liliana said with a wistful sigh. “Don’t you just love living there?”

  “I miss my friends and family here in Cuba,” José replied.

  The answer surprised Luis. That was the last thing he would have expected José to say, even if it was true, which seemed highly unlikely.

  Liliana, though, took the remark at face value. “I know I’d miss my family.” She looked from one to the other. “You’re a lot alike, you know that? Tía Celia always said you were.”

  José arched an eyebrow. “I thought you said she never talked about me.”

  Luis grimaced. Physical resemblance was hard to deny, but that Celia had characterized them as similar in any other way was, well, hurtful.

  “Alike? How?”

  Liliana, sharp little vixen that she was, again looked from one to the other, giving them time to realize that they had spoken the words in perfect unison.

  “Tía Celia,” she began primly, like a child reciting catechism, “said that you’re both ‘true believers.’”

  Luis glanced at José, who seemed equally baffled by the characterization.

  Liliana pointed a pink-enamelled forefinger at Luis. “She said that you think the government ought to make all the rules, like the church did in the old days. And you’d get to be one of its rule-makers.”

  She put two fingers together, pistol fashion, and aimed at José. “And she said you went to the States because you believed in freewheeling capitalism and had fantasies about being one of its high rollers.”

  José rolled his eyes at Luis. “Is this how Cuban teenagers talk nowadays?”

  “Only the bright ones,” Liliana quipped, reverting to the flippant tone that Luis abhorred and Celia so readily tolerated. “Can we go for a walk on the beach after lunch?”

  “Sure,” José said.

  Luis glanced at José. He had seen very little of his brother in the week he had been back and had supposed he had business to conduct in Varadero today. He found it hard to believe José had planned the day with its attendant expenses just for the two of them. But as José appeared to have no other commitments, Luis was forced to conclude his brother had actually planned to spend the day with him alone—and would have had it not been for their unexpected encounter with Liliana.

  An uneasiness tugged at Luis. It had to do with a lifelong and generally futile attempt to resist his younger brother’s charm. To forgive the abandonment, which seemed to be what José was after, was undesirable but possible. To forgive unnamed injuries that Luis’s gut told him would be inflicted by this breezy return was incomprehensible. But where his brother was concerned, had he ever had a choice?

  José saw the check coming and handed the waiter a credit card before he reached the table. Luis waited for the waiter to reject it, but after studying it carefully, he seemed to find it acceptable. José, he realized, must have known that credit cards issued by US banks were not acceptable and had got one issued elsewhere. It caused Luis to wonder how long José had been planning his return to Cuba.

  When the receipt was brought for José’s signature, Liliana leaned across and thanked him with a kiss on the cheek. Her timing, Luis noted, allowed her a glimpse of the bill’s total, which José had casually shielded from Luis’s gaze.

  They left the car in the restaurant parking lot and went directly out the back door onto the beach. José paused for a long look at the house. “Beautiful stonework. And what a location. I wouldn’t mind owning that place.”

  There’s a difference between us, Luis mused. I see something I like and think, That’s nice. What José likes he imagines owning. Well, in this case it’s more mine than his because La Casa de Al belongs to Cuba, and I am Cuban and he is not.

  They walked along the cleanly raked beach, nearly empty in the mid-afternoon heat. Luis felt tensions being dissolved by the combination of hazy sunshine, a cool sea breeze, and the gentle rhythm of wavelets lapping the sand. He and José walked at the same pace, something they had started doing in adolescence, as soon as both had got their full growth and their legs were equally long. Liliana raced ahead of them and was soon out of sight.

  “Celia certainly has her hands full with that little package,” José remarked. “Lucky she has you and Mamá.”

  “That is one of Cuba’s strengths. A value system that puts family ahead of everything. But with tourism and this transition to the dollar economy, I don’t know.” Luis shook his head.

  “Can’t keep ’em out down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree. Or should I say, ‘out in the cane field after they’ve seen Varadero?’”

  “Probably not. It’s hard on the country, though. So many of our best and brightest, well-educated, multilingual kids being seduced by the glitter of places like this.”

  “So how do you stop it?”

  “That,” Luis replied with a deep sigh, “is a subject of endless debate.”

  José pointed. Liliana was no longer on the beach but above them on the grounds of a large hotel. A band was playing poolside. Waving her arms in time to a salsa beat, she made exaggerated motions for them to come up. Luis felt some trepidation as they climbed the beach stairs of what he knew was a resort complex open only to registered guests. But he took his cue from José, who seemed perfectly at ease.

  By the time they reached the pool area Liliana had disappeared. She wasn’t watching the band, nor in the crush of semi-nude men and women, most of them kilos overweight, clustered at the bar. Luis and José walked around the pool to where a larger crowd, likewise dressed in beach attire that exposed large areas of pale skin, moved in time with the music. With laughter that suggested alcoholic excess, couples cut in, switched partners, and called challenges to each other as they danced. Luis squinted into the noisy crowd. She had to be here somewhere.

  Suddenly Liliana appeared, gyrating to the music. “Come dance with me!” She held out her arms to include them bot
h. “Don’t give me that stiff look, Tío Luis. I know what a good dancer you are! Come on, Tío Joe. If you don’t know how, Tío Luis can teach you.”

  The brothers looked at each other, grinned wolfishly, and moved in unison to dance with their niece. Liliana whirled and clapped her hands, her own daring egged on by José’s uninhibited, inventive style. At first Luis danced a bit apart, getting a feel for the music. Then he moved in to claim Liliana with a repertoire of steps that his brother couldn’t begin to match.

  But José hung in there and gave Liliana a twirl or two when Luis passed her to him. Liliana played her role perfectly, so well, in fact, that Luis later wondered if she had sensed their competitiveness and deliberately set them up.

  Whatever she might have guessed, one thing she could not fail to have noticed was that he, Luis, was the better dancer. It was him the crowd fell back to watch and applaud. The dance floor was one arena where he had never, not ever, played second fiddle to his brother.

  THIRTEEN

  CELIA scanned the crowd as the train, with a shrieking of brakes and a rattling of couplings, pulled into the Santiago station. Franci and Philip always insisted on meeting her and were always here, no matter how late the train. Today, thankfully, it was on time.

  Celia and Franci had been best friends for twenty years, dating back to the time when, as coltish teenagers, they took a mutual pledge to stop chasing boys and make the grades necessary to get accepted into medical school. They frequently defaulted on the boy-chasing part, and if José had not left for the States when he did, Celia’s pledge might not have been enough to keep her focused on a medical career. Ultimately Celia’s academic achievements outshone Franci’s, but Franci’s love life fared better. Soon after graduation she had married Philip Morceau, then a young naval officer, now a harbour pilot responsible for moving great ships through the dangerously narrow entrance to Santiago’s harbour. Celia always stayed with them when she came to Santiago de Cuba, just as Franci stayed with her when she came to Habana.