The Woman She Was

by Rosa Jordan

  When she entered his office he was at the window, gazing into the distance. “You wanted to see me?” she asked.

  He turned. “Yes. How is your niece?”

  “Physically, she is virtually healed. Emotionally she is—” Celia hesitated, not knowing quite how to characterize Liliana’s strange behaviour. At last she said, “Not very accessible.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked with a puzzled frown.

  “Liliana was always very open with her feelings. Joy, anger, rebellion, insecurity, a desire to please—whatever it was, she radiated it. Now whatever is going on inside her seems bottled up. Whether by choice or something beyond her control, I do not know.”

  “Do you think she needs psychiatric help?”

  “I do. But she has refused.”

  “And you allow her to make that decision?” His steady grey eyes held hers.

  Celia did not look away, although she wanted to. “Yes. I let her decide.”

  “That may be a mistake.”

  “I know.”

  Leyva sat down but did not ask her to sit, so she remained standing. She sensed that he wanted to say more, though, and so did she. Whatever he had intended to discuss with her, apparently he had decided against it. There was dismissal in his eyes when he looked up, until he saw the uncertainty in hers. “You had a question?”

  “I—yes. But it may not be answerable.”

  He arched his finely shaped eyebrows, which, like his hair, had changed in the years she had worked under him, from bushy black to bushy white. “Well?”

  “Why would a girl who has everything—friends, family, freedom—feel trapped?”

  “Your niece? That’s what she says?”

  “Yes.” It was a question Celia felt compelled to ask Leyva because she knew it was one he must have asked himself a thousand times after his own daughter took to the sea on a homemade raft. Perhaps he had found an answer.

  He swivelled his worn desk chair around to look out the window. His view was of the hospital parking lot, the Vía Monumental, the apartment complex where Celia lived, and beyond it, the ocean where his child had perished. With his back to her, he said, “It probably has something to do with types.”

  “Types?”

  He turned back to face her. “Let’s say you have two adolescents, both bright and full of energy. One has a focus—a career she’s looking forward to, a hobby, even a boy she wants to marry. She puts her energy and imagination into that. The other one has the same amount of energy and imagination but no focus. She bounces from one enthusiasm to another. Such a young person, the one who wants to go, see, do it all, feels restrained.”

  “Our children are not restrained!” Celia cried. “They have opportunities to travel around the island, can participate in sports, spend weekends at the beach. Associate with others of any race, play their music as loud as they like, choose a career—”

  Leyva cut in on her defensive response. “It’s not parental; it’s geographical. Cuba is an island, not a continent. Possibilities are limited. For some, what we have to offer is enough. For others, apparently not.”

  The chair went round again, putting his back to her. Celia felt that the decent thing to do would be to steal from the room and leave him alone with the despair that she, in attempting to deal with her own, had revived in him. But one does not disappear from where one has been summoned by one’s superior.

  “Was there anything else?” she asked tentatively.

  The rickety swivel chair came back to face the desk. Leyva picked up a notice and gave it to her. “A conference at Children’s Hospital in Manzanillo. Can you get away?”

  She was surprised. “They have invited me to make a presentation?”

  He grinned wryly. “They haven’t invited you at all—merely asked that I send ‘an appropriate delegate.’ Since one of the unlisted activities will surely be refuting your Santiago presentation, I thought you might want to be there to defend yourself.”

  “Not really,” Celia protested. “And Liliana is not—”

  “I understand that,” he interrupted. “But give it some thought.”

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  LUIS was about to enter Celia’s apartment building when a woman carrying an armload of books approached. When Luis held open the door for her, she gave him a startled, grateful smile. Her dark intelligent eyes seemed, like his mother’s, almost too big for her face. The books, clutched to her chest like a schoolgirl, pushed her breasts upward. They were fuller than one would have expected on a woman so slender.

  “Thank you!” she exclaimed, as if he had performed an exceptional service.

  “Let me help you carry those.” He reached for the books.

  “Oh, but I’m going all the way up to the fourth floor,” she protested.

  “So am I.” He scooped the books out of her arms and saw as he did so that they were pre-college textbooks. “Are these by any chance for Liliana?”

  “Why, yes. How did you know?”

  “I am a friend of the family. Luis Lago.” He cradled the books in one arm and held out his hand. She shook it warmly.

  “Compañero Lago! We spoke on the telephone when Liliana went missing. I am Emily Solana, the secretary at her school.”

  “Of course, Compañera Solana. At your service.”

  “You are.” The woman gave a tiny laugh, indicating the books he had taken from her. “Are you here to visit Liliana too?”

  “Just checking on her. In case Celia is at work and there is something she needs.”

  “How thoughtful!” Emily paused on the next landing and waited for him to step up beside her. “It must have been such an ordeal for poor Liliana,” she said in a low, breathless voice. “What a shame they didn’t catch the brute who abducted her.”

  This clued Luis in to the fact that Captain Quevedo had telephoned the school, as he had requested. He knew that a call from a MININT official would be taken more seriously than a call from Celia or himself. Once Quevedo explained what happened, whether he provided many details or none, no questions would be asked regarding Liliana’s past or future absences.

  “Young people recover quickly. I expect Liliana will be back in school soon.”

  “I don’t know.” Emily sounded doubtful. “When Dr. Cantú called this morning she said Liliana was likely to be out the rest of this week.”

  Emily turned and headed up the next flight of stairs. He thought her legs, bare and pale, were pretty. Not as muscular as Celia’s, but then, he didn’t often see Celia’s legs, since she generally wore slacks.

  “You aren’t working today?” he asked.

  “Oh, I am. I was sent into the city to run some school-related errands.” They had reached the fourth floor. Emily went ahead of him down the hall and knocked. There was no answer.

  “She has been sleeping a lot,” Luis said and reached around her to try the door. It was not locked so he pushed it open and called, “Liliana?”

  There was no reply, but he glimpsed a movement on the balcony. Liliana entered the living room hesitantly, carrying a partially eaten plate of food. She wore a shapeless white T-shirt spattered with old and recent food stains.

  “Oh, hi, Compañera Emily.” She seemed genuinely glad to see the secretary. She cast a nervous glance at Luis and said, “Tía Celia is at work.”

  “She was not there this morning,” Luis remarked, hoping to get some feedback as to what Celia’s new schedule was.

  “I guess she slept in,” Liliana said nonchalantly. But Luis caught the malicious glint in her eye and a telltale glance at the computer.

  “Or working at home,” he said. He put the stack of books down next to the computer and flicked off the monitor that Celia had inadvertently left on.

  Emily touched the geometry book on the top of the pile and said, “Your aunt asked me to bring these over. Each one has a note in it from the teacher, to let you know what was covered during your absence and what each class is working on this week.”

  “Tha
nks,” Liliana mumbled.

  “Oh, Liliana!” The words rushed out of the woman, charged with emotion. “We all miss you. Do come back as soon as you can!”

  “Okay.” Liliana looked dully at the floor and offered no excuse for why she was well enough to sunbathe on the balcony, well enough to eat, well enough to stand here and talk to them, but not well enough to go to school.

  “I wanted to visit awhile,” Emily said earnestly. “But there is only the one bus this afternoon, and if I miss it—” She gave a tiny wave and backed toward the door.

  “I’ll be going too,” Luis said and felt a flash of resentment at the relief in Liliana’s face. At the door he said to Emily, who was already out in the hallway, “Don’t worry about the bus. I’ll drive you back.” Then, without premeditation, he said in a voice meant to carry back into the apartment, “Maybe you’d like to join me for lunch first?”

  He would have given a lot to see Liliana’s face but did not look back. He was amazed at his own audacity. It was what his brother might have done in a situation where a woman was jerking him around, but for him it was completely out of character. Just imagining Celia’s feelings when Liliana told her gave him satisfaction. He closed the door behind him before Emily responded, in case her answer should be a rejection.

  Emily turned around to look at him. “Compañero Lago! How kind of you!”

  • • •

  He chose Las Terrazas because it was in Cojímar, just three kilometres up the coast. Foreigners who dined in what had been a favourite Hemingway haunt paid in dollars, but there was a peso menu for Cubans. “Would you like a drink?” Luis asked as he held open the door leading into the cool dark interior of the street-level bar.

  “Heavens no!” Emily laughed in her high-pitched yet melodious way. “If I went back to the office with alcohol on my breath that would be the end of me!”

  He caught Emily’s small-boned elbow and steered her upstairs to the dining room. A group of tourists was just departing, leaving the place in something of a mess but pleasantly empty. Luis picked a table near the window overlooking the bay.

  Emily gazed around, eyes luminous. “I’ve never been here. What an adventure!”

  How many times had he brought Celia here, and how many times had she thanked him with unfailing courtesy? Yet never had she indicated that it mattered, that she wouldn’t have been just as satisfied to pick up a pizza on the street or, for that matter, to eat alone at home. Luis felt Emily’s gratitude as a man in a parched desert might feel the miracle of rain: something to be absorbed through the very pores of his skin.

  “Are you a Hemingway aficionada?” he asked.

  “Well . . .” Emily looked out across the Bahía de Cojímar, ruffled with small whitecaps by the afternoon breeze. “I do like The Old Man and the Sea, it seems so true to life as it was for the poor before the Revolution. It really deserves to be the classic it is. But in general, no. Furthermore,” she added with sudden passion, “I don’t see why we make so much of him! Many Cuban writers are as good or better. And scores of first-rate Latin American writers have lived and worked in Cuba.”

  “It is done for economic reasons,” Luis explained.

  “Economic reasons?” She leaned toward him, lips slightly parted.

  “Few foreigners have heard of our writers, but most have heard of Hemingway. There are these ‘literary groupies’—tourists who want to visit Sartre’s grave, or take a boat down the river Mark Twain wrote about, or sit at the bar where Hemingway sat.”

  Emily’s eyes sparkled with humour. “Do you think our elbows are on a table where Hemingway put his? Should that be inspirational in some way?”

  “I will let you know,” he said. “After I have finished writing my next dry-as-a-bone report on Cuba’s energy options.”

  As they studied the menu, Luis revelled in his own wit, which he had never thought of as quick. Emily brought it out in him, he decided. He could not remember ever feeling so easy with a woman he had just met. Emily ordered little, with an eye to prices. She cleaned her plate thoroughly, letting nothing go to waste, which he also liked.

  After lunch he drove her back to the school. The trip would have taken two hours by bus but by car took barely thirty minutes. When they arrived he did something he had not done for a woman in years. He walked around the car and opened the door for her.

  Emily exited gracefully. “It was a wonderful afternoon, Compañero Lago,” she said, her eyes still sparkling with the unexpectedness of it all. “I am so glad we met.”

  “So am I,” Luis said and knew, in the few seconds he held her fine-boned hand in his, that if they had had the privacy of darkness she would have accepted a kiss as well as, or in preference to, a handshake.

  Driving back to the city, it occurred to Luis for the first time that he might be more in love with his dream of loving Celia than with the woman herself. She was no more attractive or intelligent than a lot of other women he knew. Not all of them were available to him, but some would certainly appreciate the attentions of a man who held so high a position in the government. Who was to say that some weren’t better company than Celia Cantú? Why was he so addicted to her? What did she offer that he couldn’t find in other women? He could easily have a woman like Emily Solana, younger than Celia by five years or more, who would be thrilled with him—and maybe, under the right circumstances, thrilling.

  But old habits die hard. As the hospital where Celia worked appeared off to his left, the Fiat, as if of its own volition, exited the Vía Monumental, rounded the traffic circle, and steered itself to a spot in the hospital parking lot that would allow Luis to see Celia when she exited the building.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  CELIA was removing her bike from the rack when she saw Luis walking toward her. He was too close to pretend she had not seen him. She forced a smile. “Hello, Luis.”

  “Hello, my—Celia.” he answered, cutting short the endearment. “I tried to reach you on the weekend, to ask how Liliana is doing. I guess you weren’t around.”

  “The bruises still show, but I think the soreness has gone out of them. The cut over her eye hasn’t healed and the knee is weak but she is not limping as badly.” Celia pushed her bike along the sidewalk avoiding his eyes. “How are things with you?”

  “Not bad. José is back. Of course you knew that, since he came for the car.”

  “Yes.”

  As they reached a spot of shade cast by a jacaranda tree, Luis caught hold of the bike handlebar, forcing her to stop. Celia stiffened. She did not want to discuss their relationship, which she was sure was what he had come for. Quickly, by way of distraction, she threw out a question. “Luis, have you ever visited a prison?”

  He gave her a baffled look. “Several. Last week, in fact. I was with a team evaluating three for possible installation of solar panels. Why do you ask?”

  “Liliana was asking what conditions were like. I had no idea what to tell her.”

  Luis sighed. Celia supposed he understood that the question was tangentially related to his threat of sending the girl to a re-education camp. “The ones I saw in Camagüay Province were basic, as you would expect. Forty or fifty men in dorm-type barracks. Line-ups for the bathroom. The food is your standard rice and beans, with meat not more than once a week. After all, that’s how we lived during military basic. In fact, that’s how our medical school students are housed right now, including the foreign ones here on scholarship. It would hardly be acceptable for convicted criminals to live better.”

  “Do they work?”

  “Of course. Each prison grows its own food, so there is agriculture, a garage for equipment maintenance, and so on. They also have exercise and education programs. As I said, incarceration is not all that different from what José and I had to put up with when we did our compulsory military service.”

  “You never saw anything that suggested . . . abuse?”

  Luis shrugged irritably. “Of course not!”

  “Well, you know ther
e was—”

  “Twenty-five years ago! There were those run by compañeros who distinguished themselves during the war but being illiterate could not be brought into the government. It was obviously one of the mistakes of the Revolution that they were put in charge of prisons. Their attitudes toward homosexuals, and some of the religious groups—well, what could you expect? As soon as the abuse was brought to the attention of responsible people in Habana, it was corrected,” he huffed. “I hope José isn’t bringing Liliana Miami newspapers. Which as you well know, are crammed with lies about Cuba.”

  “He did not leave any reading materials,” Celia said coolly. “Or anything else.”

  “Celia, Celia!” Luis dropped his head and said in an almost-broken way. “Please! I know it was my fault. But it’s over. Liliana is back where she belongs. Can’t things go back to where they were?”

  “No. We are not—I am not who I was.”

  “I am! I have made mistakes, I know! But I am the same person! Why do you treat me like a stranger? Worse than a stranger! Like an enemy!”

  Celia stared at his hand, squeezing the handlebar of her bike so tightly that the big knuckles were white. She felt as if the hand was latched on to her own flesh. “I’m sorry, Luis. I do not want you to feel badly. But it is over between us. Finito.”

  “Oh, I know that!” He laughed bitterly. “I knew that the minute José showed up.”

  Before Celia could react—and she was not sure how she would have reacted, not sure how much José’s return had to do with anything—Luis turned on her a gaze so pleading that it almost broke her will. “I know I have lost my fiancée, Celia. Have I also lost the nearest thing I ever had to a sister?”

  She could not bear to look into his eyes, to see all that pain reflected just inches from her face, and not want to do something, however inappropriate, to alleviate it. She looked away. “We are family, Luis. We always have been. I simply need some distance.”