The first time we were together, Luther must have held back because he feared I would be frightened off by the expertise he’d gained since we were law students. He shouldn’t have worried—I was his eager and willing partner. I was surprised that an American could be so daring and imaginative in bed, especially one who gave off such an impression of propriety and control. But this was Luther. He had learned an entire language to win me over, so I shouldn’t be surprised by anything he did.
I lay there in bed feeling the sweat dry on my skin. I tried to remember making love with him back in Durham, when we were at Duke. I had always thought of our sex life back then as pretty steamy and passionate, but we had been in our mid-twenties and really not all that experienced. Neither of us had been virgins when we met, but we weren’t all that worldly, either. Something about the passing of years, and experienced gained, made certain inhibitions fall away.
I lost my virginity my senior year in high school, to a Cuban classmate I had known since first grade. It happened during a weekend at his family’s condo at the Ocean Reef Club in the Keys, while his parents were away. We planned our getaway, which included me lying to Mamá and Papa about the arrangements—I told them I was going there with a girlfriend, and that there was going to be parental supervision. Like every teenager, I was an expert at inventing stories.
I didn’t really have sex with my boyfriend because I was in love with him; I did it more to satisfy my curiosity, to experience firsthand what all the fuss was about. When I thought about it, having sex when we did was completely my idea—although I was careful not to let him think that. I maneuvered the situation to ensure that he thought he was pulling off a great conquest. I certainly didn’t want to be labeled a slut—and it didn’t take much, back then and in Catholic school.
My boyfriend, Gabriel, was the hunky and lusty captain of the varsity soccer team at our school. He was extremely eager to be the first man to sleep with me, and couldn’t get over the fact that it was really happening. The whole time in bed he kept his eyes wide open, so that he would record every instant of having me alone on the twin bed in his room, on sheets printed with soccer balls. I lost my virginity with Pelé looking down from a poster on the wall, his fists raised to the heavens in triumph. The bedside lamps had ceramic soccer balls at their bases. Looking back, it was a wonder that Gabriel didn’t shout out Goal! at the moment he deflowered me.
The experience would have been great, but Gabriel was so much in love that he worried he was hurting me; he kept asking me how I was doing, effectively reminding me that I was supposed to be feeling pain and not pleasure. The real pain came later, when I went to a clinic in Miami and was diagnosed with cystitis. Three days of nonstop sex with a born athlete turned out to be more than my poor virginal body could take.
I suppose it was then that I learned firsthand the underlying lesson of Catholicism—that pleasure is always accompanied by pain, and that I would always pay a price for behaving badly. It was a lesson that I would learn again and again throughout my life. Sometimes it made me resentful. I didn’t think Unitarians had to lug around the burden of original sin, always looking over their shoulders every time they were enjoying themselves.
I had met Luther exactly at noon on the street parallel to his apartment building. I still couldn’t bring myself to use the set of keys that he had given me. I followed his car into the driveway, and we repeated the actions of our first meeting, as though already settling into a routine. As before, we didn’t encounter anyone on the way in. I was starting to think of the building as sterile and uninhabited.
I had stopped along the way at Scotty’s, an upscale grocery store on Bird Avenue, where I bought lunch. Like most Cubans, I’m constitutionally unable to skip a meal, even for sex. I bought some smoked salmon and its accompaniments, capers and lemon, along with French bread, a couple of deli salads, a big juicy peach, a ripe mango, and a quart of Häagen-Dazs dulce de leche ice cream. I figured it was time to reintroduce Luther to real Cuban eating. I also stopped at a cart by the side of the street where a vendor sold fresh flowers; mindful of Luther’s apartment decor, I selected two dozen white roses and an armful of calla lilies. I had already paid for them when I spotted a bunch of the palest pink orchids. Deciding restraint was a thing of the past, I bought those as well. I hoped there were plenty of vases in the apartment.
When Luther saw me getting out of the Escalade with the grocery bag and all those flowers, he rushed to help me. I could tell he was touched that I had brought lunch, and he thanked me profusely. Once inside, we went straight to the kitchen. I found out then that Luther had made some preparations of his own.
First he opened a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and poured us both glasses. He scrounged around for a couple of jars to serve as vases for the flowers, while I put the meal together. I couldn’t help but notice how natural our domesticity felt, the way we moved about the kitchen with ease. Once the flowers were in their makeshift vases I placed them around the apartment, most in the living room and the orchids in the bedroom. The air from the ceiling fans spread a sweet scent, perfuming the place. We left the meal on the counter for later, and picked up our champagne glasses.
“Daisy, you shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble,” Luther scolded me lightly as we moved to the sofa. “I was planning on ordering out.”
“It wasn’t any trouble,” I told him. “I enjoyed it.” And I had. I was no Martha Stewart, but I enjoyed planning and executing a meal.
We sat on the sofa and sipped our champagne. Luther had come straight from the office and was still dressed in a light-gray pinstriped suit over a blue shirt with French cuffs and discreet gold studs for cuff links. He also wore a dark-blue tie with a silver diamond pattern. He might have stepped out of the pages of GQ. Even Violeta would have agreed that he took away her hiccups. No matter how good he looked, though, this time I was determined to actually finish a glass of champagne before we went into the bedroom.
“How’s your case going?” I asked him.
I wasn’t particularly interested in Luther’s work at the moment, but I thought we should at least have a conversation. I didn’t want to turn into Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate—I remembered the scene in a hotel room, when Dustin Hoffman realizes they never speak, and that their assignations are composed of sex and sex only. Luther launched into a digression on the complexities of his case.
“If we aren’t careful,” he said wearily, “we’re going to have the SEC on our backs.”
I listened distractedly, perking up only when he mentioned in an offhand manner that the case would be concluded in a couple of months. Apparently he hadn’t noticed my reaction, because he kept talking without interruption. I almost pointed out that, once his services were no longer needed on the case, he would be returning to New York. But I decided against it. He knew the truth as well as I did, and this wasn’t a good time to talk about messy reality. I was drinking champagne in the middle of the day, in a white room that looked like heaven, looking out over the water in anticipation of great sex. There was no reason to be a masochist and ruin things. The only thing that could have possibly made me happier was hearing that Fidel Castro had died.
Luther got up and went to the kitchen for the champagne bottle; he returned with the food also. Instead of sitting at the dining room table, we put the food on the coffee table in front of the sofa and ate like at a picnic. It felt so erotic that I was barely able to keep from pouncing on him. I remembered feeling the same way on our first date back in Durham, when I had been forced to restrain myself because I had my period. Well, on this day I had no such mundane concerns.
We may have had an appetite for each other, but that didn’t stop us from devouring the entire meal. We spoon-fed each other dulce de leche ice cream straight from the container. Luther said he’d never had a better lunch—probably a white lie, but I liked to hear it. Along the way, we made a serious dent in the Veuve Clicquot.
There was little mess to clean up, so we were free fr
om getting too domestic. And we were in no mood to start loading up the dishwasher.
Luther took me by the hand. “Come on, Daisy.” He led me into the bedroom and turned down the covers on the bed.
He carefully undressed me for the second time in a week and carefully put my clothes on the dresser. Then he took off his own clothes and slipped in next to me. We still hadn’t touched. Luther propped himself up on one elbow and turned to look at me; his blue eyes shone so brilliantly they seemed almost unreal.
“I can’t believe you’re here, Daisy,” he whispered, his voice heavy with emotion. “I still can’t.”
He didn’t seem to expect a reply, so I moved closer and kissed him. A couple of hours later I realized I must have dozed off after lovemaking. I opened my eyes to see Luther staring at me, his expression serious. The air in the room felt suddenly heavy.
“Daisy, I need to talk to you,” he said.
“Luther—”
“I know it’s been a shock, my coming back into your life,” he said quickly, before I could stop him. “I understand that you need some time to adjust. But you have to realize—I’ve been thinking about you, about us for a very long time.”
My heart sank. I was still enjoying the afterglow of everything we’d done together, and I didn’t want the spell broken by a heart-to-heart conversation about the state and future of our relationship. It felt too early, and I didn’t want to face making the inevitable choice between Luther and Ariel. The moment I started to consider the future, my thoughts cascaded down.
“I know, Luther,” I said. “You explained all that when we were sitting together at Dinner Key.”
I started to kiss him again, mainly to keep the conversation from progressing into territory I didn’t want to think about.
Luther gently pressed me away. “Daisy, please. I’m serious. I really want to talk about this.”
I chewed my lip and tried to look at him.
“I love you, Daisy,” Luther said. I felt him tense up. “I love you, and I want to marry you.”
I might have killed to hear him say that years ago. We had talked about getting married at Duke, but only in the abstract, in the same way we talked about prospective job offers. Thinking about it, I felt a quick surge of irrational anger.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me that years ago?”
The words came out before I could stop myself. But they carried truth. It was as though we had stepped into a time machine, into a possible future. But I had changed; my life had taken on weight and irreversibility; I had created a new life in Marti. Luther’s voice echoed like a ghost’s.
Luther rested his forehead on his hand, miserable. “I know. I realize now I should have.” He reached over and took my hand. “Trust me when I tell you I’ve been beating myself up for years about it.”
A terrible sadness came over me as I thought about marrying Luther right out of law school. I considered the life we might have led together, but then I thought about Marti. Marti, my angel, the spitting image of his father—he never would have existed. It was impossible for me to look at Marti and not also see Ariel. I wondered if it would always be that way.
“Luther, my life is too complicated now,” I said gently. “You know that. I can’t just walk away from everything and marry you.”
“Look, Daisy, I let you get away once,” Luther said. “I learned my lesson the hard way.
I’m not going to let it happen again.”
Luther pulled me closer.
“This is too much, it’s happening too fast,” I said. “I need time to sort it out. You can’t expect me to unravel my entire life at a moment’s notice just because you ask me to.”
The whole thing—the white room, the bed, the trees, the sea, and Luther—was becoming too surreal. Luther had come back into my life just days before, and now he was talking about getting married. It was easy for him—he didn’t have a wife, and a child, and other lives to completely disrupt. He had also been thinking about the situation for years, while I’d just realized I still had feelings for him.
My life was starting to feel like a train moving down a steep mountainside without brakes—I was still on the rails, but I didn’t know how much longer I could keep it up. I had to admit that being with Luther felt right. But the cost of following that feeling could be total devastation. I knew what divorce could do to children, and I hated to think of Marti growing up with that kind of pain and uncertainty in his life. I had made the decision to marry Ariel years ago and, just because Luther had come back into my life, I shouldn’t forget that that commitment had meaning. I had taken vows, and I had lived for years in what I thought was happiness and contentment.
Ariel would be so shocked.
“Take all the time you need, Daisy,” Luther said softly. “I understand how difficult this is, how crazy it seems. Just remember one thing. We belong together. We always have. You know it, and I know it. It’s just the way things are. We got sidetracked somewhere along the line, but eventually we’re going to have to make things right.”
Dios mio. The gringo was right.
[32]
“How long has it been since the three of us got together, Maggy?” Anabel asked, as we walked up the driveway to Vivian’s house.
Anabel and I had decided that it was time that we formally welcomed Margarita Anabel into our world. Earlier that week we had announced to Vivian that we would be coming by to visit and to see her daughter. Of course, I had already met her, but not under the most auspicious of circumstances—once in the car when I had driven Vivian to fetch her, and the other when the baby was sleeping, so I felt I had not really met her. I was almost resentful I was going to have to give up one of my precious afternoons with Luther to visit Vivian, but this was something I had to do.
I had not mentioned anything to Anabel about my suspicions surrounding the adoption, figuring that she was so blind that she could not even match the child in Vivian’s home to the one in the photograph we had been shown at Greenstreet’s a few weeks ago. It was up to Vivian to say something, if she felt it necessary.
That afternoon Anabel had outdone herself in choosing her outfit, and, given her history, that was quite a track record. I had driven over to her house to pick her up, so we would go in one car. I think I was still in shock when I saw my friend emerge from her house dressed in several different shades of yellow, looking like a demented chicken who had escaped from an Easter basket. I resisted the temptation to reach for my sunglasses to ward off the glare. Anabel was wearing a skin-tight pair of canary yellow jeans with an even brighter-colored T-shirt on top. I know it was probably my imagination, but I thought I could discern a fluorescent yellow brassiere under her shirt.
For some unfathomable reason, Anabel had decided to sport a lime-colored straw hat adorned with daffodils. Apparently, the flower motif had greatly appealed to her, for both her platform shoes and belt also had variations of the same flower. As Anabel got into the car, I could swear I was able to smell the scent of daffodils, whatever that might be, emanating from her.
I was so stunned at my friend’s appearance that I was rendered speechless for much of the ten-minute drive over to Vivian’s house. However, Anabel did not seem to notice, because she chatted on about inconsequential matters all the way. I knew Anabel well enough to realize that something was worrying her. I also knew not to press, as she would eventually get around to bringing up whatever it was that was troubling her.
Sure enough, just as we pulled into Vivian’s street she suddenly stopped telling me a long-winded story about the triplets’ swimming class at Waters-R-Us, and asked, “Maggy, what do you think about Vivian going out and adopting this child?” Anabel reached over and grabbed my right elbow, surprising me with her intensity.
My heart thumping, I took my eyes off the road for a second and looked at her squarely. Anabel’s huge blue eyes zeroed into mine as might a laser that had located its target. It was almost impossible to believe that eyes with a gaze as powerful as
hers could be lacking sight. Not wanting to cause an accident, I looked back at the road and concentrated on my driving. Clearly, Anabel did not expect a reply, for she continued: “She kept such an important secret from us! Us!” Anabel shook her head in disbelief. She could not keep the anger out of her voice. “Her best, closest friends! You know the rule we have always lived by, ever since we were eight and played on the soccer team. We have no secrets from each other—we never have, and never will.”
I shrugged, trying to appear as nonchalant as I could, even as I felt myself beginning to break into a light sweat. I had been on the receiving end of Anabel’s anger a few times, and therefore knew from painful personal experience that my pint-size friend was nothing to be trifled with.
“Well, at the lunch, she explained to us the reasons why she had done it.” I knew my answer was weak, but just then I did not feel comfortable discussing Vivian, especially since I had such a momentous secret of my own.
Mercifully, just then we arrived at Vivian’s house, so the conversation ended. I had sensed that Vivian’s actions had bothered Anabel, as they had me, but I had not realized exactly how much until she spoke. I knew my answer had not satisfied Anabel, but there was nothing to do except to park the car and go inside.
As this was a formal visit, Anabel and I had come prepared. We were both clutching oversize packages, large boxes wrapped in the distinctive shiny gift-wrapping from F.A.O. Schwarz, the upscale toy store. I noticed that our boxes were almost identical in size, and hoped we had not bought the same gift, a miniature Victorian wooden dollhouse. Oh well, Vivian could exchange one, if not both of them. She was good at that.
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