No Matter How Much You Promise

by Edgardo Vega

  “Oh, wait, wait, remember about the magazine?”

  “Yeah. Did you get the spread?”

  “I called you yesterday.”

  “We were on the boat.”

  “Okay, wait right there,” she was saying as she ran out of the room, yelling for her mother, “Mama, Mama where’s the magazine?” And then, coming back into the room with the Seventeen magazine that featured her picture, full-length in a green-and-white print dress, her long, elegant neck accentuated by the makeup, and holding a large straw hat with a trailing green ribbon the same color as the dress, her sister looking totally in command so that you thought how much you would like to get to know this girl and help her any way you could. “It came out while you were up at Tarrytown talking to your mom.”

  Vidamía was speechless for an entire minute as she shook her head in disbelief.

  “You’re a cover girl,” she finally said. “You’re going to be famous. Can I still call you Cookie?”

  “Sure, that’s still who I am,” she said, proudly. “Cookie Farrell from the Lower East Side. McAlpin Farrell’s my makeup and whatnot. A fourth-wall disguise, as we say in the craft, my dear,” she tagged on with a remarkable British accent. And then Cookie was very quiet. She sat down on the bed, turned to Vidamía, and said she was probably right, that she was going to be famous, but that it wouldn’t mean much.

  “You know what I mean, Vee?” she said. “With Papa gone and everything. I think he would’ve enjoyed seeing me doing well. I think he worried about me. He never said anything, but I think he worried that I was going to turn out bad and use drugs or get killed. But none of us use drugs, including Fawn, and she got killed anyway. Poor little Fawn. Life can sure be awful sometimes,” she said and sounded very much like Lurleen. And then she was once again New York tough and determined. “As much of a bitch as life is, I’ma kick ass, homegirl. You-understand-what-I’m-saying?”

  Then they were wrestling on the bed, trying to tickle each other and laughing like two crazy girls.

  And now, sitting in the Village Gate and having Cookie—excuse me, McAlpin Farrell—sitting next to her, looking so stunning, Vidamía could understand how irresistible she must have been to the producers of the film when she had first auditioned for them nearly three months before. Cliff was now soloing on “Little Rootie Tootie.” Vidamía couldn’t wait to hear what had taken place earlier in the day. Cookie had returned for the callback, this time dressed with great elegance and style. What Vidamía didn’t know, and Cookie later explained, was that the writers had thought it over and made this girl, Maggie—they changed the name of the character—a recent immigrant from Ireland. Without batting an eye, Cookie slid into an Irish brogue the likes of which they hadn’t imagined. They couldn’t figure out whether they were in the presence of some little punk girl from the streets of Dublin or someone so well trained that they had no choice but to give her the part.

  “What did you say? Tell me, tell me,” Vidamía asked as they sat waiting for the musicians to come onstage.

  “They’re gonna start any minute,” Cookie said. “Rebecca’s sitting down.”

  “Just tell me,” Vidamía said, pushing her. “C’mon, Cookie. You gonna leave me hanging? I had to go eat dinner with Wyn and my parents.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “Not fair, Cookie. I asked you about your thing first.”

  “Okay, okay,” Cookie said. “Coño, girl, you get so bossy sometimes. And me a promising star of stage and screen and whatnot and you ordering me around like I was trash. Damn, lighten up a taste.”

  “I told you, girl, don’t be playing yourself,” Vidamía said, shaking her shoulders and turning her face away like she couldn’t be bothered, even sucking her tongue and making a loud clicking sound of derision.

  “Okay, okay,” Cookie said, relenting. “So like when he says this bit about this girl coming from Ireland and whatnot and they already heard like I got this thick, Loisaida, badass P.R. accent and whatnot, they musta figured Cookie Farrell ain’t nothing but a backward-type jíbara, right?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “So right away I go into this Irish accent like Grandma Brigid from the auld sod, right? I go, Would you be minding if I tell you a wee story? And they go no, go ahead. A man and his wife are golfing one weekend. The man hits the ball into the rough and goes looking for it. He’s in there no more than a minute when a leprechaun jumps up and says, ‘Top o’ the marnin’ to ye, lad.’ And the man says, ‘You’re a leprechaun.’ ‘That I am,’ says the leprechaun, ‘and ye have three wishes.’ The man says, ‘Okay, I want a Porsche.’ ‘No problem at all, lad. When ye go home tonight there’ll be a Porsche in yer garage.’ ‘Okay, but I want a million dollars.’ ‘Done, lad. On Monday when ye go to yer bank there’ll be a million dollars in yer account. Ye have one more wish.’ ‘I want to be a scratch golfer,’ the man says. ‘No sooner said than done,’ says the leprechaun. ‘From now on, par and under.’ ‘Well, thank you very much,’ says the man. ‘I have to find my ball.’ ‘Hold on, laddie,’ says the leprechaun. ‘Ye know we leprechauns are kind of mischievous. I see you’re golfing with yer wife.’ ‘Yes, I am,’ says the man. ‘Now, would ye be minding if I went behind the shrubbery with yer wife for an hour or so?’ ‘I don’t know,’ answers the man. ‘I’ll have to ask her.’ So the man goes to his wife and asks her. She says that she doesn’t care about the car or the golf, but a million dollars is a million dollars and if he doesn’t mind, she’s willing. The man shrugs his shoulders and his wife goes into the bushes with the leprechaun. About an hour later they’re coming out and the wife is brushing the grass off her skirt and the leprechaun thanks her. ’You’re welcome,’ says the wife. ‘May I ask you a question, ma‘am?’ ‘Sure,’ says the wife. ‘How old is yer husband?’ ‘Forty-two,’ says the wife. ‘Why?’ ‘He’s a little too old to be believing in leprechauns, in’t he?’ says the leprechaun. And these dudes fell out and threw up their hands and said I had the part and did I have a lawyer or an agent because somebody ought to look at the contract.”

  Vidamía was shaking her head and grinning from ear to ear.

  “You are too much, my sister,” she said. “You are one crazy, twisted niña. Your mother’s gonna—”

  “Girl, don’t you talk about my mama,” Cookie shot back, hand on her hip and pouting like some badass morena homegirl from Harlem and whatnot, her accent so convincing that Vidamía was stopped cold. It was obvious that she was in the presence of someone of great thespian capabilities. And then Cookie was back to her true self, the down-home New York Cookie Farrell of the beautiful even smile and tender heart Vidamía loved with all her being. She began to say something, but Cookie shushed her and pointed and whispered that the musicians were coming up on the stage.

  70. Santurce

  The straight-ahead set went on for the next forty minutes, in all over an hour. Wyndell was standing in front of the mike in his Alan Flusser suit with flowered tie, handkerchief, and matching socks, smiling and talking easily to the audience as he introduced the band while they continued playing softly in the background.

  “On drums, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. David Weinstein. David Weinstein on drums. On trombone, Mr. Clifford Farrell. Clifford Farrell, ladies and gentlemen. On piano, Ms. Rebecca Feliciano. Rebecca Feliciano on piano. And on bass, our mentor, Mr. Buster Williams. A special hand, ladies and gentlemen, for our connection to this great American music. Buster Williams. Buster Williams, ladies and gentlemen. Buster Williams.”

  Each time Wyndell introduced a musician the person did a few bars above volume. The audience gave each musician special applause. The applause, and some considerable whistling, went on for a while and then quieted down enough for Wyndell to address the audience again.

  “My name’s Wyndell Ross and at this point we’d like to ask a very special musician, a pioneer in the Latin music business and someone who’s played with Tito Puente, Machito, and all the greats of salsa to come up on the stage and accomp
any the quintet in a tune by the late African-American composer, Mr. Alfred Butterworth. The tune is called ‘Santurce’ and has as its inspiration the town of that name on the island of Puerto Rico. Ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause for Mr. Justino ‘Tumba’ Santiago.”

  And up on the stage went Grandpa Tumba Santiago dressed in his polyester white suit, white shoes, and red shirt with no tie—looking spry and very tropical, his kinky hair slicked back. His friends were whistling and his lady, Panchita—her blond hair newly peroxided, and amply filling her tight electric-blue dress—was smiling from ear to ear.

  Vidamía looked back at her mother to share the moment. Elsa had grasped Barry’s arm and there was a look of overpowering sadness and regret in her eyes. Vidamía mouthed the words “Don’t worry,” and Elsa nodded and smiled awkwardly. “Thank you,” Elsa mouthed back.

  Grandpa Tumba Santiago was now behind his congas and Wyndell was counting and David Weinstein came in on the cowbell and eight beats later Rebecca joined in with a lilting Latin melody that made half the audience want to get up and hit the dance floor like it was Monday night at the Village Gate and “Salsa Meets Jazz” was on the musical menu with Alfredo Cruz from WBGO holding forth as emcee.

  Vidamía now heard the pacatun-tun-tun of Grandpa Tumba’s congas and Wyndell picking up where Rebecca had left off. Underneath it all Buster Williams was laying down a carpet of rhythm and harmony, the bass traveling up and down, giving the tune its Latin flavor and people already whistling as Wyndell began improvising on the tune with Cliff beating out the clave, one-two-three, one-two, over and over again, the music rushing over the audience, and over Vidamía, reminding her of the surf long ago in Puerto Rico, when she’d sat hypnotized, watching the huge marullos coming in, one after the other, on the beach in Vega Baja.

  The music was inside her, working itself into the marrow of her bones, into the sinews of her muscles, into the fiber of her being so that her soul soared, above the people and the city, higher and higher, until she could see the entire country from one coast to the other, and at that great distance no one was black or white, yellow or red, brown or beige, and there was no distinction as to who was better than another. She closed her eyes then and began to understand that her life would always exist in flux, changing forever into greater and greater insights. And yet one thing would remain constant, and this latest revelation gave her hope, because it appeared to be something that had developed naturally in her.

  A glimmer of this personal quality, which she could not yet name, began to surface just that morning as she rose. She emerged from sleep unusually refreshed given the tension of the past month. No one else was awake in the loft, and as she washed up and got dressed she felt more excited than usual. Initially she thought that the excitement was a result of the upcoming dinner with Elsa, Barry, and Wyn and the subsequent performance at the Village Gate by Wyn and the quintet. After drinking some orange juice and making herself a cup of instant coffee, she let herself out of the loft and climbed the stairs to the roof. She set her coffee cup on one of the tables and surveyed the city, its skyscrapers and bridges, its patches of parks, the highways that lined each side of Manhattan, the traffic even at this hour moving steadily. It was then, as she looked at the sun rising over the northeastern part of Manhattan that she glanced at her watch and realized that it was not even seven o’clock in the morning. In the coolness of the new day, with a tropical breeze blowing behind her, she realized that her feeling of pride and well-being had nothing to do with the upcoming evening’s activities.

  Vidamía thought of Billy Farrell standing on the narrow ledge of the roof, as Lurleen had related it to her when Vidamía pleaded to know everything about him so she might understand why he had ended his life. As if being pulled by him she had an urge to walk her father’s steps, even looking at her shoes to see if they were safe enough to attempt what she was imagining. And then she saw Billy’s face clearly. He was shaking his head, smiling at her as he had sitting in Katz’s Deli when he told her she reminded him of Beara, the daughter of the king of Spain. She had forgotten about the comparison at the time, when she was so engrossed in getting Billy to play again, but later she got curious and went searching until she found a book on Irish myth, and there it was, Beara. She remembered her father telling her about Beara, who lived near the river Eibhear, which they said could be the Ebro River in Spain. In Irish legend she was to go to the river and wait for her husband who would be disguised as a salmon in shining armor. The salmon also represented wisdom to the ancient Irish.

  She saw her father differently in her mind’s eye now. The images were more sharply defined than she had imagined. For a while their roles were reversed and she had been the adult and Billy the child. As the parent she had been responsible for his well-being. She saw a little boy by the name of William Christopher Farrell, once a shy, gentle child who loved baseball and building model airplanes and worshiped his father, whose death had scarred him and left him with nothing but honor and duty and sorrow to hold on to. She saw him in his innocence, skipping up the sidewalk, a book bag slung over his shoulder and his strawcolored hair falling over his eyes. He was mumbling something to himself and then laughing freely without any awareness of being watched. And she saw the same William Christopher Farrell playing the piano, lost in that magical world of jazz he loved so much. And she also saw him walking through a jungle, firing his machine gun, the thick tree branches shattering before his fury. He was all those things: carefree little boy, wounded early in life, sensitive artist, and crazed soldier. Contradiction piled upon contradiction. That’s what Billy Farrell was, and the knowledge made her reflect on her confusion over the events of the previous month.

  She imagined she saw Billy shaking his head and smiling as if to tell her that she didn’t need to prove her courage because she possessed that quality in great abundance. She understood that he’d also had great courage and whatever happened at the end, she was sure his choice had been the only one left to him. Whatever it was she felt suddenly at peace. She finished her coffee and sat to watch the sun rise higher in the sky. Like her father she had no choice but to go forward and take her chances. The challenge excited her and she smiled inwardly as she felt the weight of knowing that, no matter what happened, Billy would always be with her, his courage and strength passed on to her. “Goodbye, Billy,” she said out loud as she raised her face to the warming sun.

  As she sat in the club listening to the music and watching her grandfather giving himself to his congas, Vidamía thought again of the log that Kunta Kinte had gone looking for to make his drum. A strange notion passed fleetingly through her mind and she was at once in the club listening to the music and apart from that reality in a deep wood, aware that she had found the right wood for her own life drum.

  Instantly, she felt free of her own background: white and black, African and European, Puerto Rican and Irish, southern and New York. She now belonged to the world, to life. And suddenly she was standing up with everyone else and applauding. She was glad Wyn had agreed not to mention her father. Wyn had wanted to dedicate the evening to Billy, but she insisted that it would have made Cliff uncomfortable.

  She thought now about her own life and what awaited her. The prospect of studying at Harvard was exciting, but she knew that from now on her life was set. Until she was ministering medically to her first pediatric patients and could call herself Dr. Farrell, she couldn’t think of her life apart from her mission as a physician. When would that be? Ten years? Four, four, and two. That would be in the year 2000; she would be twenty-eight, and then she’d reassess her life. She hoped secretly that Wyn would still be there, but she had to stop thinking about it. Instead she thought about the salmon husband, the salmon of wisdom in Irish myth, and immediately knew that her wisdom would come from within and not from some outside source. Knowledge, information, facts came from outside. Wisdom developed inside. The thought sobered her momentarily, but the next moment tears were streaming down her face,
and she was clapping and Cookie was hugging her and all around her there was light and sound and voices and through them she could hear her father, Billy Farrell, telling her that everything was going to be all right and whatever happened not to let them get you. As if she were speaking to him she said, “Don’t worry, Billy Farrell, I won’t.”

  And then unexpectedly they were playing the song, and she closed her eyes in desperation, her heart breaking. She turned to complain to Cookie, but her sister was gone, and Mario Wong and Meredith Brooks looked at her and shrugged their shoulders. She looked around the club but couldn’t spot Cookie anywhere. When she looked again at the stage, there was Cookie, standing at the mike with Wyn and the rest—Buster, Cliff, Rebecca, David, and her Grandpa Tumba Santiago—behind her, playing the song. Her little sister looking grown-up and stunning, was singing in her smoky voice, “Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey …” like nothing had happened and they were back together in the family band, playing in subway stations.

  Cookie was singing, belting out the song, pleading for Bill Bailey to come home. Vidamía Farrell, wishing with all her might that her father had not left them, knew it was a useless plea. That beautiful time of innocence when everything was possible had disintegrated and in its place something more powerful had emerged and she would explore it and build upon it. As much as she loved her father, he was gone now. She had his courage, but more important she had herself, and as if a current of powerful energy were suddenly coursing through her being, she saw Ursula Santiago and Maud Farrell, her mother Elsa and her mama Lurleen, and knew they had endured enormous pain and had a different kind of strength than the men in the family and she’d continue to draw on their power. Bill Bailey was never coming home again, and the prospect of life without him made her ache. She smiled painfully and even though she knew the entire matter was a rationalization, she felt as if Billy had come home. He had left the horror of his sorrow and stepped out into life, with all its disappointments and pain, to do what he loved and play jazz again. She had helped him to accomplish this, and in return he’d filled her with enormous confidence in herself and her capacity to change her environment and the people in it. It was a confidence that she’d be able to use for everything life demanded.