House Arrest (12 page)

“Oh, as well as can be expected without you here.”

“I miss you guys too,” I said, gazing at Isabel, who was taking my Victoria’s Secret purple nightgown out of the drawer, holding it up to herself. She ran her hands along its smooth satin, gave her hips a shake.

“I got a note from the school today,” Todd went on.

“The school?” I panicked.

“Oh, it’s no big deal. They said we missed a tuition payment in December, but I thought you’d paid it.”

“Maybe I forgot.”

“You forgot?” The tension rose in his voice. We divide our tasks carefully. He walks the dog; I make breakfast. I shop for produce; he buys staples. Here was a domestic task for which I was responsible—short-term finances, we called it, which meant bills, one of which was for Jessica’s private-school tuition.

Of course, we didn’t want her to go to private school. We
had resisted because we both had public-school educations and we believed in it, but given our neighborhood and all the cuts (our school district didn’t have an art teacher until last January and then only because the PTA paid for it), in the end it seemed inevitable that she would have to go to the private school near our house, which was where all our friends’ children went.

Still it was a sacrifice, financially I mean. Perhaps I hadn’t paid December because our bills seemed very tight around Christmas. Or perhaps I’d just forgotten. But somehow in that hotel room with a blackened sky outside and the rain cascading down and Isabel going through my dresser drawers, examining my clothes, I didn’t seem to care. “Look, can you just pay it?”

“Of course I can, but …”

“Todd, is this why you called me?”

“No, I said I wanted to hear your voice.”

“Yes, well, I’ve wanted to hear yours as well.” Now Isabel had taken other clothes out of my drawers—a slip she seemed to like, a silk pantsuit. A sweater of silvery cotton that she held up to herself in front of the mirror. “Nice,” she mouthed to me. I stifled a giggle, turning away from her.

“Maggie, you seem distracted. Is anyone else there?”

“Well, yes, a friend.”

“What kind of friend?”

“A woman I know.” Isabel was taking off the T-shirt I’d given her, slipping my cotton sweater on. It was too short-waisted so she picked up the Victoria’s Secret nightgown again and danced past me around the room, my nightgown held across her chest.

“Well, then, I won’t keep you.” His voice relaxed; now he was somewhat reassured.

“Yes, I probably should go.” And then I asked him, “Is there anything else I forgot?”

“Yes, you forgot to say that you love me.”

“I love you,” I whispered into the receiver, not wanting Isabel to hear, though the words had little resonance for me at that moment as Isabel puckered her lips and blew me a kiss. “I love you too,” she whispered, then turned away from me, laughing.

“You’re terrible,” I said when I got off the phone. She shook her head, peevishly, still holding the nightgown. “If you really like that, you can keep it. I can get another one.”

She clasped it to her, smiling. “Oh, do you mean it?”

“Of course I mean it,” I said, wondering what I’d tell Todd when he asked me where it was.

“So, I’m going to go now and get ready for tonight. What time shall I pick you up?”

“Eight o’clock,” I told her.

“Good,” she said, smiling, kissing me on the cheek. “Be downstairs.”

Though I was downstairs at eight, Isabel arrived just before nine with a flurry of apologies and we went off to the Palacio de Salsa, where the music blared and Isabel danced in the strobe for hours without stopping. She danced with me, and then she danced with anyone who would dance with her—and there were many who wanted to. Her body shook in an odd, frenzied way, oblivious to her partner or to whether or not I was with her. Sometime after midnight I walked out of the disco without saying good-bye.

The next day I went looking for Isabel. Of course, I had a million things to do, but I was concerned that she had gotten home all right and felt bad that I’d left her there alone, so
instead of doing what I needed to do, I took a cab to her apartment. When I rang, Milagro answered, the scent of incense (eucalyptus, perhaps, or cedar) wafting around her, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts that were tight for her. Music blared in the background. “I was hoping to find your mother.”

Milagro made a face, pointing inside to where the music was too loud. She disappeared, turned it off, then came back to me again. “She’s out, but please, come in,” Milagro said, leading me across the flower petals that were sprinkled on the floor. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Yes, I would, it’s very warm.”

She opened the refrigerator, which was filled with packages of cheese, chocolate, and soft drinks. “It’s so good of you to come and see us. You have been so nice to Mummy.” Milagro poured me a glass of Fanta, a drink that I detest. I sipped it slowly as she sat across from me on the sofa, drinking the rest out of the bottle. I sat in a large, soft chair.

“Well, I wish I could do more.”

Milagro sighed. “Oh, it’s not easy. Mummy is so unhappy. Everything is so terrible for her here.”

“Yes, she seems sad.”

Milagro wiped her brow with her hand. I had the feeling she had been dancing alone in the apartment. “I wish she could leave. I want her to go away.”

“You want your mother to go away?”

“Of course, I want to be with her, but she needs to get away.”

“Yes, I can see that she does …” I glanced around the apartment at the pictures on the walls, the windows open, the breeze blowing in. “This is a nice apartment,” I said. “It’s cozy.”

“We do the best we can,” Milagro said with the wry smile I’d seen on her mother’s lips many times before.

The sweetness of the Fanta stuck to my mouth. Suddenly I felt awkward being there, as if I was spying on them. Perhaps in some way I was. I rose without finishing the drink. “I must get going.”

“I’ll tell Mummy you stopped by.”

“Yes, please do that.” As soon as Milagro closed the door, salsa once again blared from inside the apartment, and in the window I could see her shadow, dancing. I paused for a moment in the overgrown garden, thinking about all the things I’d pull out if it were my garden. The weeping bottlebrush and the hibiscus were dwarfed by the giant screw pine that extended its tentacles through the garden. High in its branches I saw a white bird-of-paradise, its petals about to bloom.

I
N THE EVENING Manuel comes to have dinner with me at the hotel. He is dressed in a linen jacket, tie, white shirt. His hair is slicked back with Brylcreem like a gangster. “Oh, you look beautiful,” he says. “I love this cream-colored jumpsuit.” He touches it with his hand, runs the fabric between his fingers. “I wish I could take you out to El Colibrí, then dancing at the Club Tropical,” he says, escorting me with a moist palm on my waist into the restaurant in the lobby, “but this will have to do.” El Colibrí is the only restaurant where dollars and pesos mix. It also serves the best rice, beans, and
ropa vieja
around, but I have to settle for dinner within the confines of the hotel.

The hotel restaurant is virtually empty and the waiters mill in the corners. On the menu there are scant offerings—a fried chicken dish, a seafood salad that I had for lunch. “Why don’t we try the roof terrace?” Manuel suggests, closing his menu. Nodding to the waiters, who shrug with indifferent smiles, he guides me to the narrow elevator, which climbs
slowly to the sixth floor. The numbers in the elevator are set wrong and we cannot tell what floor we are on.

The elevator doors open to a roof illuminated with strings of Christmas lights. We take a table near the bar and both order the lamb on the spit. The lamb is scrawny, so it shouldn’t take that long to cook. It is a balmy night and Manuel orders two daiquiris. We sit at a dimly lit table, listening to the crackle as the grease falls into the fire. Looking up, I see a half-moon over the city. A gentle sea breeze blows through the palm fronds on the deck.

“Do you think,” Manuel asks, pressing his mouth to my ear, “that it’s safe to talk here?” I decide I better get used to whispering. I tell him I don’t know. I’m not sure what safe is anymore, but I’m pretty certain that the roof is better than my room. “It took them two hours to get the room ready. Believe me, it doesn’t take two hours to make a bed.”

“I want to know whatever you can tell me. What do you think has happened to you?”

I tell him that I was stopped at the airport and not allowed in, that after a night they brought me here. That a man named Major Lorenzo is in charge of getting me home. But today they questioned me all morning about whom I met the last time I was here.

“And did you mention anyone?” Manuel asks, a tremor to his voice.

“No, I said I didn’t remember who I met.”

Manuel nods. “They must think you are a spy,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Me?” I laugh, though this does not strike me as funny.

“Yes, they are treating you decently for now, but they probably suspect you of spying.”

“But I’m not …”

“Of course.” Manuel pats my hand. “We know that. You must convince them.”

Despite its scrawniness, our lamb is slow to cook. Manuel and I watch it turning on the spit, the fat dripping down. Music comes on, a lively salsa beat, from the speaker beside our table. The group is Calle Ocho, Manuel informs me, named for the street in Miami’s Little Havana where they originate. Pirated music, Manuel says. “Dance with me.” He takes me in his arms and we dance, our cheeks pressed together.

He seems to be all arms, like an octopus, and I never know where a hand will appear next. On my bottom, on the side of my breast. I try to push them down, but they only reappear. We are about the same height and I can smell the pomade in his hair. His arms are stronger than I’d imagined and he holds me so hard I can scarcely breathe. “I’ve missed you,” he says. “Two years is a long time.”

The waiter signals that our lamb is done and I pull away, leading Manuel back to our table. The lamb looks sinewy and underfed, more like a roadkill than a meal. I poke it with my fork, not at all sure I can eat. “Do you think,” I ask Manuel hesitantly, “that they know about what happened between me and Isabel?”

Manuel picks up his fork, sampling his lamb. “Probably,” he says. “I think they must.”

“I’m afraid,” I tell him, “I really am.” I breathe a deep sigh, thinking Lydia was right. I was stupid to come back. “But will they let me go?” I ask, truly frightened for the first time.

He smiles. “Oh, I’m pretty sure they will. They are just trying to teach you a lesson.” He takes a bite, though he does not seem very interested in the meal.

“What has happened to her?” I ask him. “Why hasn’t she ever written to me?”

“Oh, my guess is that she wants to put it all behind her. She is just living her life.” I am shaking my head and he touches my cheek. “You know,” he says, “I still want you. Nothing has changed.” He puts down his fork. “Come,” he says, “dance with me again.”

The music is a pretty good salsa and Manuel definitely knows the beat. I am less sure of it, but he is the kind of dancer who could guide a moose around a dance floor. His feet slide and manage to bring me along, and whenever I miss a step, he fills it in for me. He can switch his samba to a rumba to the mambo without skipping a beat. Todd can dance American-style from the sixties, where you never touch, but Manuel knows how to guide a woman along the floor. We pause only for another round of daiquiris while the kids at the bar put on a new tape and then we rumba around the roof deck again.

It is late when Manuel walks me to my room. My muscles ache from the dancing and my head spins from the daiquiris, but Manuel wants to come inside my room. I tell him no, that I want him to go home, but he wants to come inside. We have both had too much to drink, he more than I, but I am sober enough to know that I do not want him in my room. I had a very pleasant evening, I tell him, though of course I paid for it, and I am hoping he can help me get home but I cannot let him come in. You must go, I tell him, bracing the door with my foot. His cigarette smoke curls in the air between us as he tries to convince me otherwise.

Of course, Manuel wants to sleep with me and I cannot say that I would not like to sleep with him. But I know what my main attraction is; it is my resistance. My refusal. I will go
so far, but not far enough. In this way I am chaste and true to my marriage. I cannot live feeling that I have something to confess.

Manuel thrusts his face close to mine, asking one more time if he can stay and I am tempted to say yes. His hands touch my face, my neck, but I tell him no, pushing the door closed. He must leave. I listen for a few moments as he stands outside, deciding what to do next. Then I hear his footsteps as he shuffles away.

I crawl into my narrow bed. It is odd to be sleeping alone. I am used to bodies in the bed—husband, child, dog. I curl up, trying to imagine that Jessica is there. I am the one who puts her to bed at night. She wraps her arms around my neck and holds me there until she is asleep. Often I fall asleep as well and Todd has to come and wake me. He nudges me until I stumble into bed. When Jessica was born, I counted all her fingers and her toes. I checked to see she had all her parts. Now at this distance I try to remember her child’s body, miniature arms and legs. I sniff for her odor. I try to reconstruct her, piece by piece.

The room smells of Manuel’s cigarette smoke and of the pomade he puts on his hair. The sheets that had been so cool and comforting to me before begin to itch. I get up and throw open the balcony doors. It is a beautiful night—balmy and clear. I take a deep breath. Then, clasping the railing of the balcony, I peer down.

Music comes from somewhere, salsa with that strong Latin beat, and I tap my fingers. In the plaza below dozens of people mill about. Lovers kiss on the banquettes beneath the waving palmettos. Men with beer bottles play cards under a streetlight. But mainly what I feel are bodies. It is as if I can
smell them up here. Warm bodies, bodies that will mingle and blend. Skin will rub against sticky skin on this warm night. Closing my eyes, I try to imagine hands on my breasts, my hips. A tongue gliding over my body, dipping into my openings, my cracks.