“It’s a little dirty—es un poquito sucio—yes?” she asked with all sincerity.
“Only now and then, but, Mama, you shouldn’t trouble yourself about it.” Then, seeing that her mother seemed a little low, she added, sitting beside her, “Besides, the María in that book isn’t really like you.”
“But isn’t she beautiful?”
“Oh, yes, very beautiful.”
And that made María, who had struggled through that maze of English, smile. The bawdiness of its sex and the details of the story may have passed over her head, but not the notion that it was about her, and in a most flattering way. Now that she was almost sixty, if anything, her vanity spiked, María felt rather proud about the matter, and if she had any regrets at all, it was that so few people knew that she was the María both of that song and now—oh, how proud Lázaro would have been—of a book.
While the Miami newspapers sometimes wrote about its author, who had lately won some kind of big-deal prize (which made the Cubans jubilant with pride), the more important thing in María’s life came down to her mounting involvement with that scarecrow Luis, with whom she not only occasionally dined but also went off now and then for the afternoon to an undisclosed location where, Teresita assumed, they had what she liked to gingerly think of as “relations.”
Thin as a starving guajiro and with a mortally wounded air, he must surely have been overwhelmed by the voluptuousness of María’s ripened body, and yet during his visits to the household, when he would sit quietly with them in the evenings as María watched her favorite shows, Teresita remained amazed by her mother’s serene attentiveness to the man, as if, indeed, he had given her something to be extremely grateful for: affection. Homely as any Cuban man could be (Luis, in one of his running jokes, referred to himself and María as “Beauty and the Beast”), he must have been doing something right, for, if Teresita was not mistaken, María had taken to doting on Luis and with the kind of tenderness she had usually reserved for Omar, their cat. Was it some autumnal rush of love? Or just the companionable dalliance of two poetic souls finding ways to amuse one another? Whatever the case, despite Teresita’s own loneliness, beautiful María, doused with perfume and floating through life in clouds of smoke, seemed happy enough in those days.
EVENTUALLY, TERESITA GOT TO MEET THE AUTHOR AGAIN, WHEN he returned to Miami the following autumn to promote a paperback edition of that work, and this time, at the same venue in Coral Gables, she could not help but notice that this Hijuelos, in the blush of his apparent success, seemed far more world-weary and solemn than she remembered. Somewhat sheepish about facing yet another crowd, and spotting Dr. Teresita with beautiful María by her side in the audience, he made a last-minute change and chose to read a few selections that, while mentioning María in passing, were sweetly clean—spick-and-span, in fact. In one, he told of the Castillo brothers’ meeting with Desi Arnaz and Lucy on the night, in 1955, when they first performed Nestor’s song of love, and then he read from selections that were like sound poems. Once again, the evening followed form—a Q & A, a signing, and afterwards, as he had agreed with Teresita, the author finally met the still startlingly good looking and well preserved María, who, in addition to an ebony comb in her pulled-back hair, wore a dark felt-buttoned, hip-hugging dress of considerable décolletage. Once Teresita made their introductions, María, looking the jittery author over, said, “So you are the one?” And, as an aside, whispered, as she tugged at his arm, “Sabes, joven, que me debes mucho”—“You know that you owe me a lot.”
Shortly they went over to a Spanish restaurant a block or two away, where, as it happened, the affable media personality Don Francisco of the popular Sábado Gigante television show, which María often watched, had turned up with a small entourage. Walking in, they saw him, formidably tall and broad shouldered in a blue serge suit, standing by the piano bar, crooning, a drink in hand, an old Cuban bolero, “Siempre en mi corazón,” into a microphone. That very fact, along with the decorum and stolid Spaniard’s gilded ambience of the restaurant, and with the way that Don Francisco, a consummate showman, bowed, winking at them as they passed inside, impressed the hell out of María and, most fortunately, put her into a good frame of mind. She may have been a guajira in her former life, but as she made her way to their table, María exuded nothing less than an amber dignity. This is what happened: After they ordered the house specialty paella, and a few bottles of good champagne, the evening unfolded agreeably enough. Having recently flown to Sacramento, California, for a deposition regarding the aforementioned second lawsuit, the author had been quiet at first, a certain formality and carefulness attending his every word. But once it became clear that neither Teresita nor María bore him any animosity, and as the champagne lightened spirits, the conversation, mediated by Teresa, who switched from English to Spanish, veered quickly to matters that for María, after so many years, had weighed on her heart.
“Mira, chico, so did you know los hermanos Castillo?” she asked him at a certain point.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered. “I knew Nestor when I was very little, but Cesar much more.”
“Y Cesar, ¿está vivo?”
“No, señora, he passed away about ten years ago. In a hotel room in Harlem.”
Yes, of course, thought Teresita, just like in his book.
“A pity,” María said. “They were both very handsome men—and wonderful musicians.” Then: “And Nestor’s family? What can you tell me about them? He had children, yes?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “A boy and a girl—they’re now grown. His daughter’s name is Leticia—she’s married now with three daughters of her own.”
“And the son? What do you know of him?”
“Eugenio Castillo? I still see him. He was my best friend, growing up. We were at his papi’s funeral together, way back when. He’s a public high school teacher now.”
“And does he have a family?”
“No, he never married. Es soltero.”
“And you? ¿Estás casado?”
“No, I’m not,” he told her, looking down.
And that made María glance over at Teresa; then she whispered into her daughter’s ear, Teresita smiling. (Later, as they left, when he asked her what that was about, Teresita told him: “She said it was too bad you’re so bald.”)
As María kept staring at this Hijuelos, he could read in her eyes what he read in many Cuban eyes: “a strange fellow.” His New York manner was so pronounced, and his body language so unfluid and earthbound, that, no matter how much Spanish he used, the waiters continued to address him in English. Teresita, somewhat of an outsider herself, reading his weariness, started feeling an empathy for him. And, at one point, she made a toast: “Para nosotros cubanos!”
Then a lull came over the conversation, the three munching away.
“Bueno,” María began, finally breaking the silence. “You—Señor Hijuelos—are probably wondering what I think about your book”—“librito” she called it—“verdad?” He nodded, and she sipped from a glass of champagne. “If you must know, I found it muy, muy interesante.” She laughed. “And muy sucio sometimes! Very filthy! But, I will tell you this, my real story was very different from what you wrote. I came from el campo del Pinar del Río, really from nothing. I was the daughter of guajiros, una analfabeta, in fact, and whatever I have now, I came by through the grace of God and the sweat of my brow. But my greatest blessing is this one here, mi chiquita, a doctor,” she said, and she kissed her daughter’s hand. “Even if her abuelo couldn’t read a word of anything, she became a doctor, and in a country where she didn’t know at first ni un pío de inglés! Not even one bit of English. Can you imagine that? Forget all the sex, which is only air, that’s what you should put in a book someday, sabes?”
He nodded again.
“As for that buenmoso Nestor Castillo, I will tell you this: I don’t regret that I knew him, and if I regret anything—”
“Mami,” she heard her daughter interjecting.
“Of course it does,” he said.
“Then you know that it brings a sadness of its own.”
She became subdued, staring off into a corner of the room, where a chandelier glowed and music emanated from an electric piano. By then Don Francisco had long since left, and few patrons remained. That’s when beautiful María caught herself speaking, as she would put it, miércoles.
“Can you tell me something, chico?” she asked. “Do you remember Nestor as a happy or a sad man?”
“He seemed nice enough, a quiet fellow, used to sit outside the stoop of my building with his brother, handing out quarters to us kids.”
“But did he ever say anything to you about Cuba?”
“No, señora, he kept that to himself.”
“I see. And nothing about me?”
“No, I was just a kid—why would he?” he said, shrugging, and though María was about to say “But you know that I never wanted to hurt him in any way,” she thought better of that and kept it to herself.
The end of the dinner proceeded, with scorched flan desserts served and tacitas of espresso. For his part, the author, so wary of legal matters, was happy that they, as a trio, seemed to have become rather friendly. He’d almost forgotten about his conversation with Teresita the year before when, as a waiter cleared the table, she steered him toward the fulfillment of a certain promise, saying, while María was away using the bathroom, “Isn’t there something you’d like to say to my mother?”
“About?”
“An apology.”
“Of course.”
And then, when she had returned, without looking María directly in the eye, he said, “There’s something I have to tell you, señora.”
“Tell me.”
“If there’s anything in my book that offended you in any way, for whatever reason, for all of that I sincerely apologize, señora. Con todo mi corazón.”
María was a little surprised by this; it was nothing she had required or expected. “Ay, but why say that? All such things, after all, even books, are soon forgotten. La vida es sueño, after all, okay? But if it will make you feel better, I will accept your apologies. I promise you.”
With that, María reached across the table and took hold of his wrists. “But you must promise not to forget me. You are as good as family now, and as family”—she made the sign of the cross over him—“you must be loyal, understand?” And with that she surprised Teresita, slapping the author’s right cheek. “Don’t forget it, okay?”
“I won’t,” he said, feeling rather startled himself.
Then they parted: Mr. Hijuelos, who had paid the bill, heading back to his hotel by taxi, and beautiful María driving home with her daughter in their Toyota.
Chapter FIFTY
María’s opinion of the author was that, though too “Americanized,” he was a decent enough fellow: he helped that notion by sending her a gift basket of chocolates and dried fruits the next Christmas, but beyond that he had become but a recent memory and his book some odd artifact that they’d nearly forgotten. That is, until the waning months of 1991, when they heard that a film called The Mambo Kings had been shot in Hollywood and was slated to open the Miami International Film Festival that coming February. This, of course, sent up red flags with Teresita, who, having read about it in the newspapers, called him in New York to request, at the very least, that he provide three tickets for the premiere—for her mother, herself, and Luis. Though most of her calls were swallowed up by the netherworld of his answering machine, someone from the film’s promotion company eventually forwarded, by overnight mail, an envelope with their tickets for the opening (though without any for the after-party, it should be noted).
And so it was that beautiful María, Teresita, and Luis, he in a nice dark suit and looking very dapper indeed, arrived at the premiere that February evening, the seventh, navigating through the crowds of press and onlookers onto a red-carpeted walkway unnoticed, not a single camera flashing at their approach. The flashbulbs were reserved for the stars, among them the queen of Cuban song, Celia Cruz, who drew the greatest applause from her devoted fans behind the barricades as she got out of her white stretch limousine, a blinding flood of lights exploding around her. They had paused in the lobby as the other stars came in, but then, discouraged from lingering by some charmless security officers, were rushed inside to take their seats, the audience around them quite nicely turned out, and, as the papers would later put it, an air of anticipation buzzing through the hall.
Then the houselights dimmed. A musical prelude, a shot of Havana, a sonorous trumpet playing, and boom—the interior of a Havana nightclub, with a mambo troupe gyrating onstage and then the outraged Cesar Castillo, played by the handsome actor Armand Assante, charging through a dressing room and approaching, rather roughly, a dancer, beautiful María, portrayed by the gorgeous Talisa Soto, whom he accuses of being a whore for the way she had thrown off his younger brother Nestor. Her gangster novio and his cronies intercede, and Cesar ends up with his throat cut in an alley, wherein a bereft, perhaps guilt-ridden beautiful María kneels before him. While he should be bleeding to death, despite a kerchief wrapped around his neck, it was Dr. Teresa’s opinion that, in real life, he wouldn’t have long to live, and María’s opinion that no such thing had ever happened, though she enjoyed the fact that she was being played by so dazzling a woman. Tenderly the film’s beautiful María begs Cesar Castillo to take Nestor away to America, and so the plot’s mechanism begins, for the next scenes are of a well recovered Cesar Castillo, looking sharp in a sporty shirt and shades, dancing the mambo down the narrow aisle of a bus headed north to New York, a charming moment, with a solemn, forlorn, tightly wound Nestor, played by Antonio Banderas, no doubt thinking gloomily about María. Later, while settled in New York in the early 1950s, the brothers form their orchestra the Mambo Kings. And along the way, Nestor is shown working on his bolero “Beautiful María of My Soul,” which, as eventually performed by the brothers in a nightclub and later on the I Love Lucy show, in an episode invented for the film, bore little resemblance to the bolero which María’s former love, Nestor Castillo, had written and recorded with his brother Cesar and actually sung on the real Lucy show those many years before.
It was both an exhilarating and a nerve-racking experience for María to wait and wait for her character to appear again—she does so as a dreamy, sea-soaked memory of Nestor and herself carousing on a beach (she liked that)—but from then on that other beautiful María hardly turned up again at all, save in some photographs. Two scenes María found particularly painful to watch: Nestor’s meeting with his future wife, Delores, at a bus stop while Nestor happens to be working on that canción—which Teresita recalled from the book—a bit of rekindled envy passing through María’s soul, and the film’s depiction of Nestor’s death in a car wreck while driving back from a job in New Jersey through a snowstorm, which had been surely taken from the real Nestor’s life. It was too much for María to bear, even if she knew they were just actors, and handsome ones at that; she got up to use the ladies’ room, where, after urinating, she stood before the mirror to retouch her lipstick.
She liked the film well enough, but she wondered why they couldn’t have done something more in the beginning with Nestor and María in Havana, just walkin
g the streets and sitting in the placitas, holding hands; or portrayed the way he, with his head in the clouds, used to sing up into her window, and how they’d find musicians in the alleys and courtyards of Havana, Nestor playing his trumpet and making her feel proud; or even a scene of the way they’d race up the stairways to his friend’s solar, unable to keep their hands off each other—that would have been nice too. Then, thinking about what went on in that bed—nothing that could be shown in a Hollywood movie—she flew headlong into a vision of the life they might have lived had they stayed together in Havana, maybe raising a little brood of children, or maybe living in the States, in a house with a nice backyard, Nestor, a success or not, as her husband, doting on their children and, even in his sixties, ravishing her nightly with love.
She reached into her purse for her cigarettes. As she lit one, distant music throbbed through the walls, a trumpet solo rising above, voices singing; and then, just like that, in the blink of her mascara eyes, as she dabbed her face with a dampened hand towel and sighed, she saw in the mirror’s reflection Nestor Castillo himself, as gloriously handsome as he was in his youth in Havana, in a white guayabera and linen slacks, standing some ten feet behind her against the Italian-tiled ladies’ room walls.
“¿En qué piensas, Nestor?” she asked him. “Are you happy?” (And behind that, María, unable to forget the love-filled afternoons at the Payret, felt his fingers sinking inside her panties once again.) Nestor just smiled, and rather sadly so, in the way, as María had been taught, lost souls do, envying earthly life. “But the movie, what do you think?” she said to him. “It’s about you!” As an apparition trapped in some other world, he could not comment on such tawdry things, and when Nestor finally spoke, with hardly any voice at all, and so softly, he told her: “¿Pero, no sabes que te quería?” To which she answered, “And I loved you, mucho, mucho….” Just then, however, as Nestor seemed about to step towards her, two women in tight, slinky dresses, talking about how they would die to be fucked by the actor playing Cesar Castillo, strutted in, and with that, in the blink of an eye, Nestor vanished, his sad smile, on that soulful guapito face, as beguiling as Maria remembered. (Ay, pero Nestor.)
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