by Mariné, Lola
“Damn! Stop nagging me! I’m so sick of both of you,” Nicolás said, and slammed the door to his room. He began blasting his music until Billie, unable to take it any longer, knocked on his door.
“Nico, turn it down please, the neighbors are going to complain.”
Nicolás turned off the music and stormed out of his room.
“I’m going out for a bit,” he said.
“But Nico, sweetie,” Billie protested, “we’re going to eat dinner soon.”
“Well then I’ll be back soon! A person can’t do anything in this place.”
He slammed the door and left Billie feeling helpless in the face of her son’s growing rebellion.
“It’s impossible to talk to him,” she complained to Armando. “He doesn’t listen.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s just his age. It’ll pass.”
But Billie did worry. His behavior could turn into something dangerous, if not irreversible, and create serious complications for her son.
She had grown seriously alarmed a few years before when, one afternoon, almost two months before Nicolás turned thirteen, he arrived home visibly drunk. He didn’t want to eat dinner and went straight to bed, but he spent the whole night rushing to the bathroom to vomit. Billie stayed silently by his side, knowing it was useless to reprimand him or give him a sermon just then, and trusting that the unpleasant consequences would serve as sufficient punishment. In the morning, though neither of them had slept all night, she woke Nicolás for school at the regular time, and didn’t care one bit when the boy complained of a terrible headache.
“That headache is called a hangover, and it’s what happens when you drink more than you should. If you do something bad, you have to deal with the consequences,” Billie said.
That afternoon, Billie asked her son for an explanation. Nicolás told her—wearing his most honest and innocent expression—that he was hanging out in the park with his friends when they found a half-empty bottle, and they had just tried it to see what it was. Of course, Billie didn’t believe him—it was clear from her son’s state when he had arrived home that he’d drunk a great deal more than he claimed. The flagrant lie only made her angrier, but she tried to control herself and make Nicolás see how stupid he and his friends had been to drink from a bottle that they supposedly knew nothing about.
“What if it had been some chemical product? Or poison?” Billie asked.
“We smelled it first, Mom, we’re not that stupid,” the boy countered proudly.
Not knowing how to confront the problem, Billie put an end to the conversation. When she told Armando about what had happened, he brushed it off.
“Don’t worry so much, Billie! This is kid stuff. Nico is at the age of experimenting. It’s normal for him to be trying new things. I’m sure he’ll never want to drink again after how bad he felt.”
And so it was. From what she could see, the boy had never tried alcohol again. He promised his mother himself that he wouldn’t do it again, claiming to have found no pleasure in it.
Nicolás’s promises didn’t reassure Billie for long, however. It turned out to be only the first of many problems she would face in the coming years.
A few months later, she noticed that her son often came home looking tired and acting dazed. He barely listened when she spoke and appeared to be struggling to follow the conversation. If Billie asked about his behavior, Nicolás explained that he had been playing football and was tired. If she asked why his eyes were glazed, he responded that the cold night air had irritated them. He spent all his time shut up in his room. When Billie went to get him for dinner, she would often find him asleep. Sometimes he refused to get up and join her at the table. Nicolás had always been strong and energetic, playing sports without ever getting tired. Billie thought maybe he was sick, or that it was growing pains and he might need some kind of vitamin to stabilize him. She decided he should go see a doctor, but Nicolás flatly refused when she suggested it.
“Nothing’s wrong with me, Mother,” he replied tensely. “You’re just imagining things. Leave me alone!”
Billie didn’t insist, but she couldn’t stop herself from noticing her son’s hooded eyes, his apathy, his irritability, his lack of appetite. An alarming suspicion formed in her mind and, though she didn’t want to, she took to spying on Nicolás discreetly. She eventually came to the terrible conclusion that her son was doing drugs.
She didn’t want to say anything to Armando—she thought he would brush this off too, saying that all boys that age smoked a joint every once in a while, and it was no big deal. But Billie knew her son and was afraid that he wouldn’t stop there. He would want to keep experimenting and would turn from the occasional joint to more dangerous substances, starting down a path that would be very difficult to rescue him from.
She had to do something, but she didn’t know how to bring it up to Nicolás. She knew that if she sat him down and brought the matter up directly, the boy would get defensive and they would just end up arguing. First, she had to find out whether her suspicions had a basis or not. Though she watched him stealthily and went through his room when the boy wasn’t home, she knew she wouldn’t find anything. Nicolás was clever, and he loved demonstrating to both himself and everyone else that he could outsmart them. She tried to bring it up indirectly—referring to television programs or some news item—to send subtle messages to her son, in hopes that she could get him to think about what he was doing and maybe put an end to it on his own. She didn’t know how else she could help him, except to stay alert and always be ready to lend him a hand.
But one afternoon, she suddenly got horrifying proof that there were worse things afoot than the occasional joint.
Nicolás had been receiving phone calls from friends she didn’t know, and others were showing up at their front door. Her son always claimed that he had to go down to the street to return a CD, or a comic book, or to get some assignment for class. Billie started to get suspicious. So one evening after he received a call and Nicolás went down to the door, Billie went into his room. It didn’t take long for her to find the motive for her son’s flashy new friendships. In a shoe box in his wardrobe that she didn’t remember having seen before, she found a cube of hashish the size of a chocolate bar. She had no doubt what it was because the penetrating odor was unmistakable. In the same box, he had also stashed a small knife and a considerable sum of money. She was stunned. Her son wasn’t just doing drugs, he was dealing them too. This was way too serious for her to ignore.
Nicolás stopped dead in his tracks when he saw his mother sitting on the sofa in the living room with the shoe box on her lap.
“What does this mean, Nicolás?” Billie asked in a grave voice.
“Well, you can see for yourself, can’t you?” he replied coolly, after letting out a deep sigh of resignation.
“Are you selling drugs? How did you get into this? Don’t you realize you’re committing a very serious crime?”
“What do you want me to do? I need dough. I can’t get a job because I’m not old enough, and you keep insisting that I waste time going to that shitty school. How did you think I was buying all those nice clothes and music and computer games?”
“It never crossed my mind that you were capable of such a thing!” Billie responded, indignant at her son’s defiant attitude. “Every time I asked you where something came from, you told me a friend lent it to you, or gave it to you, or that you traded it for something. I give you money whenever you ask for it, and you get money out of Armando too.”
“It’s not enough, Mother! Stuff is expensive, you know. Besides, this way I don’t have to be begging you all the time and putting up with your sermons.”
“I’m only trying to teach you the value of money, so that you understand what it costs to earn it. I can’t give in to your every whim.”
“Well, now you can see how far your ‘teaching skills’ got me.” Nicolás made quotation marks with his fingers to emphasize the irony o
f his words.
“Fine!” Billie jumped up from the sofa, resolved. “Well, that’s it. You’re not going to keep selling drugs in my house.”
“What are you going to do?” the boy yelped when he saw his mother heading to the kitchen with the shoe box.
“I’m going to throw it in the trash.”
“Please don’t do that! That’s worth a lot of money, and I still have to pay for it.”
“Well you can pay for it with the money you’ve already got!” Billie screamed, waving around the money that had been inside the box.
“That’s not enough! Please, don’t throw it away! Let me give back what’s left, and I swear to you I’ll never sell again.”
Billie turned back toward her son with an expression of sadness on her face that silenced the boy.
“I can’t trust you anymore, Nicolás. And I swear that if you continue to do this, I will report you to the police myself, no matter how much it pains me to do so.”
Billie’s voice was trembling. She had never imagined she would have to speak so harshly to her son.
Nicolás didn’t answer. He scooped up his money from the floor and went to shut himself in his room. Billie, with her heart clenched and her eyes spilling over with tears, crumbled up the chunk of hash and mixed it into the garbage, then tied the bag and took it down to the street and put it in the dumpster.
As she walked back upstairs, she wondered where she had gone wrong with him. She had always treated him with affection and respect and tried to instill in him good values and principles. Forced to be both father and mother to him, she had tried her best to balance discipline with unconditional love and understanding.
She rejected the horrible thought that her son might have inherited the seed of evil in his soul from his real father. She had believed she could mold his character, make a good and noble man out of him like Armando, but maybe his genetic makeup was too strong for her good intentions.
She wasn’t ready to give up on him. She knew that deep down Nicolás was a good boy, that his intentions were good. He was just at a difficult age. She was determined to remain at his side and support him, to make him reflect on his mistakes and help him fix them, to take him by the hand and lead him down the right path. Together, they would keep moving forward.
But Billie couldn’t save her son.
CHAPTER 28
Dear Billie,
I know you just got a letter from me, and you’ll be surprised to receive another one so soon. But I’m writing to you now because I have important news that can’t wait.
Papa is no longer with us. He had been doing badly for a while and had me very worried. I didn’t want to say anything to you in my last letter because I was still hoping he would get better, as he had before, but this time was different. He kept talking until the very last moment about going to visit you all in Spain and meeting his grandson Nicolás. It was the only thought that seemed to revive him, but then, he would shut down. Every day he grew a little worse, until he finally left me … I’m suddenly so alone! Rubén is now in Miami, as you know, and couldn’t attend his father’s funeral because they would have arrested him. Maybe they wouldn’t even have let him onto the island—what do I know. I don’t understand political matters. All I know is that my husband is no longer at my side and that two of my children are scattered across the globe. All I have left is the comfort of your brother Eduardo and his wife, God bless them! That pair of beautiful little grandchildren they gave me are my only joy. If it weren’t for them, I don’t know what would become of me now.
Forgive me, Billie. You’ll have enough to think about with the news of your father’s passing without me burdening you. Don’t pay me any mind. Tell Nicolás that his grandfather loved him very much even though he didn’t know him, to never forget him and always keep a little corner of his heart for him.
I’ll write to you again when I feel better. I need some time to adjust.
Say hello to Orlando from me. A big hug to you from your mother who loves you so much.
Mama
Billie reread the letter a few times, the tears that flooded her eyes making it difficult for her to decipher the words. Her father was gone, and she would never see him again. “Forgive me, Papa,” she whispered from the bottom of her heart. “I know I caused you a lot of pain by leaving like that, and now I’ll never be able to make it up to you …” Her poor mother! If only there were some way to move her to Spain, she thought.
When Nicolás came home, he found her sitting on the sofa, with the letter still on her lap, her face deeply saddened, her eyes red from crying.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I got a letter from your grandmother. Your grandfather has died,” Billie replied, her voice wavering.
“Oh, well,” Nicolás said indifferently. “I’m going to lie down for a bit. Let me know when dinner’s ready.”
The boy turned and left, and she heard the door close behind him. She sat there, stunned by his cold reaction. Suddenly, the harsh sounds of a heavy metal group filled the house. Billie jumped up, enflamed by indignation, and headed to her son’s room.
She opened the door without knocking and found Nicolás sprawled on his bed with a cigarette between his lips.
“I’ve told you a million times not to smoke in the house!” she screamed, grabbing the cigarette and throwing it out the window.
“Fuck! You could knock first, you know? The window’s open so the smoke goes out,” Nicolás protested, sitting up.
“And turn off that music! Don’t you have any feelings? Aren’t you capable of showing any respect? I just told you your grandfather died!”
“Yeah, and so what? Are we going to have a year of mourning for the old man?” Nicolás reached out and turned off the stereo with an annoyed flick. “Who cares? Grandfather died, okay. I mean, that’s what happens, right? Old people die.”
“How can you be so cynical? He was your grandfather! My father!”
“And what do you want me to do? Cry? I never even met him. And I don’t know what it’s like to lose a father because I’ve never had one.”
“Why would you bring that up now, Nicolás?”
“Because I’ve never had a father, and you’ve never explained the lies you made up. Who was my father, eh?” Nicolás rounded on his mother, defiant. “Where is he? Oh, right! The poor guy died suddenly. They wouldn’t let him out of Cuba, and so he could never reunite with us. And I guess they didn’t let him write letters either, because I never got any. You could have been smarter and had your parents write me in his name so I could swallow the bull a little easier.”
Billie was speechless. What could she say in the face of her son’s rage? How long had it been building up? It had crossed her mind that something like this would happen someday. She just wasn’t expecting it to happen right then. Caught off guard, she felt ill equipped to deal with it.
“Come on, Mom! Do you think I’m an idiot?” Nicolás continued. “I swallowed your tall tales when I was little, but I learned to think for myself a long time ago. So, who was he? Or do you not even know?”
“How dare you talk to me like that?”
“Did you have an ‘accident’ when you were working at that cabaret in Madrid? Was I the unintended consequence of some one-night stand?” Nicolás continued, implacable.
“I worked as a singer,” Billie said. “I’ve told you that a thousand times. And your father was my husband. I only found out I was pregnant when I was already in Spain.”
“Why didn’t he come with you?” he persisted. “I never got that part.”
“I told you an opportunity arose for me to make the trip. Your father was going to meet me later, but things got complicated. It wasn’t easy to get off the island.”
“The truth will always come out,” her mother used to tell her when she was little. Billie had always believed it would be better for her son to grow up under the loving and protective shadow of a father, even if he were far away. Bu
t when Nicolás started asking questions, she found herself having to make up answers.
“Enough. And the fatty, what about him? You must have been giving him something all these years to keep him drooling over you.”
“What are you suggesting?” Billie said, trying to stay calm. “Armando is a great friend. We owe him a great deal, and he’s never asked for anything in return. I thought you appreciated him more. He’s always loved you like a son.”
“Oh, so now I’m overflowing with fathers,” Nicolás said sarcastically.
“I’m not going to let you talk to me in that tone!” Billie warned him.
“I’ll talk to you however I want, okay? Who the fuck do you think you are? Always giving me orders, always pretending to be respectable when you’re nothing more than a—”
“Be careful what you say, Nicolás! I’m your mother!”
“Yes, of course. And that makes me the son of a whore,” he spat out.
Before she even realized what she was doing, Billie’s hand flew up and across her son’s face. The boy’s eyes flared with anger, and he smashed his mother against the wall, his hand around her neck.
“Don’t you dare hit me ever again, or I won’t be responsible for what I do,” Nicolás threatened her, his voice strained.
The past blurred with the present. All Billie heard was Orlando’s voice uttering that same threat so many years before in their tiny apartment in Madrid. All she felt was Carlos Quiroga’s hand clasped around her throat, choking her just as it had back then.
She was horrified as she stared at her son. She wasn’t afraid for her own safety. What really frightened her was the knowledge that she had created a monster. Both men’s worst instincts seemed to have been concentrated inside Nicolás.
The young man let go suddenly, and Billie heard the front door slam. Her back still against the wall, she slid down to the floor, too stunned to go after him. She couldn’t understand how this had happened. That violent and cruel being wasn’t her son—he couldn’t be. What could be making him behave that way?
