“Tell me again what emergency got you out of bed in the middle of the night,” Ariel said, pausing between kisses. “What was it, something about Vivian and a baby?”
For a moment, I thought about telling Ariel about the baby switch, but I thought that would be betraying Vivian. I simply relayed what Vivian had told Anabel and me at lunch the day before, then told him about picking up the child at the rectory. Ariel was so intrigued that he stopped trying to get me worked up. He knew Vivian well, and he was astonished that she had decided to become a mother, and in this fashion.
“Vivian really kept this a secret from you and Anabel?” Ariel said, a puzzled expression on his face. “I wonder why.”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I was a little hurt.”
Apparently Ariel decided he’d devoted enough time to trying to figure out Vivian, and he began to stroke me again. When he saw me respond he jumped out of bed.
“Just a second,” he said. He went to the bedroom door and locked it. “Just in case.”
I nodded in agreement. Now that he was ambulatory. Marti had gotten into the habit of walking into our room first thing in the morning. “Good planning,” I said.
It was probably too early for Marti to be up and around, but the last thing we wanted was for him to come into the bedroom and catch his parents in a compromising position. He had almost caught us in the act a few weeks before, which had taught us to be vigilant. Jacinta knew by now that if she heard him struggling with our bedroom door, she should scoop him up and take him elsewhere until his parents emerged.
After he locked the door, Ariel dropped the towel from around his waist and lay on the bed next to me. He took off my shirt and began fumbling with the clasp of my brassiere. No matter how often he tried, or however many different models I wore, he always had problems with bra clasps. I used to tease him about his lack of coordination, and tell him he needed to go back to high school and learn that particular skill.
Ariel then moved on to relieving me of my jeans and panties. Then, lying on top of the sheets, we made love slowly and sweetly. It was reassuring and comforting, feeling the familiar contours of Ariel’s body, and afterward we dozed off for a little while in each other’s arms.
I lay there, completely satiated, drifting in and out of sleep until my eyes opened wide. I couldn’t help comparing what had just happened to my experience with Luther the afternoon before. Then, and now, I had been able to give and receive pleasure with a man I knew and loved. I knew I should be feeling crushing guilt.
But I didn’t.
I looked over at Ariel sleeping peacefully next to me, his strong features relaxed in a sexual afterglow. If he had even suspected there was anything amiss between us, he surely would have said something. Ariel was sensitive to me, and he knew whenever I was troubled. But he had said nothing.
If he did see anything clouding my mind, he would think it was the looming decision I had to make soon about returning to work. It was a subject that he hadn’t brought up in a couple of days. But he would. And I knew that I wasn’t a good enough actress to maintain my passion and enthusiasm with him without eventually revealing my confusion. I wondered, though, if my passion that morning had somehow been inspired by my experience with Luther. It didn’t feel at all strange to make love to two men in a twenty-four-hour period.
I wondered if I was becoming like a Cuban man, compartmentalizing my life and staying one step ahead of guilt feelings. I had been worried about being with Ariel, how I would act and feel, but it melted away.
Before Luther, I could never even conceive of having a lover while married to Ariel. And, at first, I had been deeply uncomfortable even listening to Luther’s declarations of love for me. I had felt more guilty before having sex with him than afterward. Maybe I felt that physical fidelity was less important than emotional. I remembered reading about prostitutes who would do anything a client wanted, except for kissing them on the mouth. That they reserved for their boyfriends.
Now, why had that come into my mind?
I was becoming too introspective, which I’d always dreaded. I always thought introspection was an indulgence for people with too much time on their hands. Cubans are not, as a general rule, introspective people. We’re too busy getting ahead and making money. And having affairs.
Just then, Ariel rolled over, turned to me, and opened his eyes.
“I forgot,” he said. “Your mother called early this morning, while you were still out with Vivian.”
“Oh, God.” I sat straight up. “She left a message on my voice mail yesterday, and I forgot to call her back!”
Ariel chuckled. “Well, I think she suspects something weird is going on. You weren’t home at seven A.M., and I left it pretty vague about where you were.”
A feeling of dread came over me. My own mother was going to expose me. My own husband didn’t suspect that I had been unfaithful to him with an old lover, and yet my mother had immediately picked up something. Cuban mothers!
But before I judged her too harshly, I reminded myself that I was a Cuban mother as well.
“What’s so funny?” Ariel asked.
“Oh, nothing,” I replied. “What did Mamá want, anyway?”
Ariel sighed deeply, like a diver taking one last breath before diving into the depths.
“She wanted to remind us about the family dinner at your parents’ house tonight,” he said.
I had completely forgotten. A family dinner. Mierda.
[26]
I planned to sleep for a few hours after Ariel got out of bed, but that proved to be impossible—I immediately heard him and Marti laughing and joking in the hallway outside. Yawning, I put my clothes back on and went to join them on the terrace, where Jacinta was serving breakfast. I was just going to have to accept my state of sleep deprivation.
Ariel was intently reading the Miami Herald and looking particularly handsome in a dark-green linen suit I’d bought him about a month before and which he was wearing for the first time. He wore neither a tie nor socks, and his feet were in black leather loafers. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and between his Italian clothes and his two-day beard, he had a bit of a Miami Vice look going on—rough, ready, and casual. It really suited him.
I sat down at my usual place and poured a café con leche from a silver pot on the table. I served myself twice the usual amount of coffee I drank. I was so tired I had to hold the cup with both hands as I raised it to my lips. After a few careful sips, I sat back and waited for the inevitable jolt from the caffeine. Cuban coffee was like mother’s milk for Cubans—we could be weaned off it, but the craving never quite went away. The aroma alone was nearly orgasmic. I drank some more, and felt life begin to flow through me.
I looked over at Marti, wondering why he was so quiet all of a sudden. He was dressed in his favorite zebra-patterned pajamas and was completely engrossed in his project, which was to make as big a mess as possible of his breakfast in the shortest amount of time. I knew I should say something to him, but I simply wasn’t up to it. Instead, I looked away from the sight of Marti pouring orange juice over the Cheerios he’d plucked from his bowl and piled in a mound on the table.
Ariel looked at his watch, oblivious, and gulped down the last of his coffee. “I’d better get going,” he said, then kissed me and Marti good-bye. “I don’t know if I’ll have time to come home first, or if I’ll have to meet you at your parents’. I’ll give you a call and let you know how it’s going.”
With that, he waved good-bye and was gone. I poured myself another cup of café con leche, ignoring the pounding in my heart, and looked out over the bay. Even though it was still early, heat from the sun was making the air over the water shimmer in waves. It was going to be a scorcher, which shouldn’t have surprised anyone. In Miami, we have two seasons—hot and too hot. I didn’t know why the meteorologists announced the barometric pressure on TV every night. We can all measure the humidity by the degree of frizz in our hair.
I heard a squi
shy sound from Marti’s place at the table, and looked over to see him moving around his orange-juice-soaked Cheerios. I probably should have stopped him, but I hated to do anything to inhibit his creative side. No one in our family is even remotely artistic—the sad truth is that we’re all too busy making money, so I encouraged Marti whenever he showed the slightest interest in anything creative.
Finally, he tired of smearing the mess around. He looked up at me expectantly, wondering what we were going to do next. It was barely nine in the morning, and I groaned at the thought of enduring the day ahead in my state of exhaustion—culminating with, horror of horrors, dinner with my family at my parents’ house.
It was all too much to contemplate. In a burst of maternal spirit, I turned to Marti.
“Hey, kiddo,” I said. “How’d you like to play in the swimming pool with me?”
His face lit up as though I’d told him Santa was on the way and I could hear the reindeers’ hooves on the roof of the house. He sprinted out of his chair and headed for the water.
“No, wait! Not in your pajamas,” I said, laughing. “You have to change into your swimsuit.”
I got up and stopped Marti just before he jumped in. “Come on, I have to put on my suit, too.”
Jacinta appeared, and I asked her to take Marti to his room and change him into his bathing suit. I could see from her expression that she thought we were crazy, but she didn’t say anything.
I hurried into my bedroom to change. Even as I took off my clothes, I wondered why on earth I’d decided to go swimming at that hour of the morning. I was probably feeling guilty, I realized. I was inviting him to his favorite activity because of how I’d spent the afternoon before. I pulled on my demure one-piece black suit, and decided that I was simply going to enjoy the time with Marti. I was on leave from work, I reminded myself, and I didn’t have to be a slave to the clock. That would probably change in the near future. For now, I wanted to splash around mindlessly in the pool, and not think about all the other things that might change as well.
Marti and I played in the water so long that our skin started to wrinkle. I decided that we’d been in the pool long enough, even though he clearly wasn’t ready to get out. I ordered him out of the water, wrapped him in a thick towel, and carried him to his room. He had grown so much that I was surprised to find myself having trouble walking steadily with his weight by the time I reached his bed and lay him down softly.
I couldn’t remember ever having difficulty carrying him before. My baby was growing into a real little boy, and I had barely noticed. I guessed the clichés were true, that children really did grow up without their parents noticing. And then, one day, they left. I wondered if the same was true of adults.
I changed him out of his bathing suit and into dry clothes just as exhaustion hit him; he was having trouble keeping his eyes open, so I covered him with a blanket and kissed him. I knew that he would be down for at least a couple of hours.
Softly, I closed the door to Marti’s room and went down the hall to mine. I slowed down to look at the many photographs on the wall, stopping before a picture of Mamá and Papa taken just after they arrived in exile in Miami. They looked so young and—in spite of having been forced out of their homeland—full of hope. Their arms were wrapped around each other, and they were looking into one another’s eyes, seemingly confident of their future together in a new country.
I moved on to a picture of Ariel and me taken on our wedding day. We were standing close together, but we were neither touching nor looking at each other. Although we were in our mid-twenties, to me we looked painfully young. Instead of getting married, we might as well have been dressed up for our First Communion. I remembered the day like yesterday. Ariel had very little family in this country, so the wedding guests were overwhelmingly from my side of the family. I knew with confidence that bets were being placed, even while we were at the altar taking our vows, that the marriage wouldn’t last. We were simply too different and, although the fact that we were both Cuban was the basis of a strong bond between us, the general consensus was that the disparity in our backgrounds doomed our lives together.
Standing in my wet bathing suit in the air-conditioned hallway was giving me a chill. I shivered, hurrying into my bedroom, where I took off my suit and got into a hot shower. I luxuriated in the water caressing my body.
I turned off the water and wrapped a towel around my wet hair, then put on my white terry-cloth bathrobe and lay down on the bed. Between the time in the pool with Marti and the shower, I felt completely waterlogged. I looked over at the clock on the bedside table and blinked several times with astonishment to see that it was only a little after ten.
It was going to be a long day. I meant to nap only a few minutes, but the next thing I knew the phone was ringing. I opened my eyes and saw that it was noon already.
I had told myself a few hours earlier that I no longer needed to be a slave to the clock; still, I didn’t want to be caught napping in the middle of the day, so I cleared my throat before answering.
It was Maria from the office on the line. I cursed under my breath when I remembered her call that I hadn’t returned. I hadn’t called Mamá, either.
“Margarita,” Maria’s voice sounded even more agitated than usual. “You have to come into the office today!”
Maria was normally never so direct with me, and I was immediately concerned.
“I got your message yesterday, and I’m sorry I haven’t called you back yet.” A little groveling always helped with Maria. “Please forgive me. I’ll be in as soon as I can to sign those papers.”
“Margarita, this isn’t about any papers,” Maria announced. “It’s getting far more serious than that.”
I sat straight up in bed. More serious than signing off on work so we could bill accounts? Now I was really worried.
“What is it?”
I could barely bring myself to ask.
Maria took a deep breath and exhaled loudly into the phone. “A huge case has come in, one that has lots of immigration law points that are going to take a lot of work. It’s a really big one.”
“What’s going on, Maria?” I demanded. “Give it to me straight. I need to know.”
“The partners are talking to an attorney from another firm,” Maria said, speaking in a tentative, quiet voice. “He’s been here about five times, and he’s met everyone here.”
“So?” I didn’t see the problem. “They talk to attorneys from other firms all the time. You know that.”
“It’s not so simple.” Maria took another deep breath. “He’s an immigration attorney. From what I’ve been able to piece together, they’re talking about bringing him in as a partner.”
“A partner!” I almost screamed. “I’m the partner who specializes in immigration law!”
Silence.
“What time can I expect you this afternoon?” Maria asked sweetly. “Because you know what this means.”
“I’m on my way.” I hung up the phone.
I flung off the bathrobe and headed for the closet to pick out the best power outfit I could find. This situation called for nothing less than Armani.
[27]
Less than an hour later, I stepped out of the elevator and into the reception area at Weber, Miranda, et al. I knew that office gossip traveled fast, but it was measured in nanoseconds that day, because Ashley was already up and waiting to greet me when I arrived.
Ashley had chosen to come to work dressed as her own version of Carmen Miranda, the “Brazilian Bombshell.” Her body was poured into a tight-fitting, long green-sequined dress adorned with flourishes and ruffles that accentuated her curvaceous figure—especially her breasts, which were struggling to break free from her bodice with every breath of her healthy lungs. I tried to hide my disbelief as I took in her costume—and that was the only possible word to describe it. I actually found myself feeling a bit nostalgic for her micro-minidresses. The only thing she needed was a basket of fruit on her head, and a t
oucan sitting on her shoulder. I felt positively dowdy in my two-piece, light gray gabardine suit.
“Hola, Margarita,” Ashley called out in a bright, but slightly nervous tone as I crossed the reception area. Something sounded false in her greeting. No question, she had heard that the partners were interviewing.
“Hi, Ashley,” I replied evenly. “How are you?”
Asking in such a disinterested manner was my way of trying to avoid a prolonged conversation. I wanted to say something about her outfit, but I couldn’t think of anything sufficiently neutral. In the years since she started at the firm, I could never remember her wearing anything that outrageous. If I hadn’t been so infuriated about what my partners were trying to do, I’d have been more in the mood to stop for a chat.
Looking at Ashley, I was reminded of how speechless I felt when, a couple of years ago, I went to visit a friend and her newborn baby. It wasn’t just any baby, I realized when he was shown to me, it was actually the ugliest baby in the history of the world. He had slitty eyes, a scrunched-up face, sallow skin, and a blotchy bald head. I was left stumped for what to say. All I could muster was “What a baby!” In Ashley’s case, I couldn’t trust myself to get away with “What an outfit!” so I knew I should move on quickly.
I hustled to the door leading to the partners’ offices, and punched in my security code. I heard a familiar click, which meant they hadn’t gotten rid of me yet. The door opened. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and began my campaign.
Instead of going straight to my office, I made a point of slow-walking the entire corridor, greeting each and every secretary, clerk, and paralegal by name. I even chatted with the repairman in the copy room. I felt like a politician courting voters. After this performance, it would be impossible for anyone not to know I was in the office.
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