one hot summer (15 page)

I drove as fast as a teenage boy on the way to a Friday-night date, but I was still almost half an hour late for meeting Vivian and Anabel. I called on the way and placed an order for tuna fish on whole wheat and an iced tea, so my tardiness didn’t really delay our lunch. I would have liked a glass of wine instead of tea, but I knew that my drinking had really picked up ever since Luther came to town. Besides, I had drained that glass of Morgan in the middle of the night, so technically I’d already had a drink that day.

Greenstreets was one of the outdoor restaurants—a café, really—in the heart of Coconut Grove, on the corner of Main Highway and Commodore Plaza. Its menu was pretty basic: salads, sandwiches, and omelets. But it was centrally located, and there was parking nearby. Vivian and Anabel were waiting for me inside, because it was far too hot even to contemplate eating in the sun. Outdoor dining in the Miami summertime was strictly for tourists. After a quick glance once I was inside, I saw that my friends had already started their lunches. My tuna fish sandwich and iced tea were waiting in front of an empty chair.

“
Hola,
sorry I’m late,” I apologized as I kissed them. “I had a hard time getting out of the office.”

“Busy working? Just like old times,” Vivian said, rather dryly. For some reason, she was annoyed with me.

Instead of replying, I shrugged and started my sandwich. Vivian wasn’t usually so crabby. I hated to invoke her time of the month, but maybe that was what was going on. The three of us concentrated on our lunch; whatever Vivian wanted to talk about would have to wait until we were finished.

Anabel was off in her own world, making serious headway on her omelet; that was a good thing, considering the effect her clothes were having on Vivian and me. I wished Anabel had consulted with someone at home before venturing out that day because her outfit screamed to the world that she was color-blind. She was dressed in a grungy green, like a female Peter Pan on St. Patrick’s Day. But none of the shades of green matched, so her pants, T-shirt, and jacket made her look like an urchin who had put together an outfit at Goodwill. The greens clashed violently with her flaming red hair and brilliant blue eyes. I was used to Anabel’s sartorial felonies, but I would remember this one for a long time.

Vivian saw me glancing at Anabel and knew exactly what I was thinking.

“I know, Margarita. I already talked to Anabel about her outfit. She’s promised never to wear it again,” Vivian said, delivering this devastating pronouncement in an icy-cold voice. She could be ruthless about a fashion faux pas, and Anabel’s color blindness didn’t earn her an exemption.

Vivian was dressed in her latest Armani, a form-fitting, tailored slate-gray suit with color-coordinated purse and shoes. Her blond hair, although real, was streaked through with lighter tones. It was impossible to tell whether it was natural or not. Of course, I knew the truth.

The contrast between the three of us was normally stark, but that day it was even starker. As usual, I was somewhere in the middle, between my two friends. My dress and jacket were nondesigner, but at least they matched. Anabel made me feel like a fashion plate, while I was a frump next to Vivian.

The waiter cleared away our plates, took our coffee orders—three double espressos—and then left us alone. It was time for Vivian to talk.

“You two are my best friends in the world,” she said in a halting voice. “That’s why I’m telling you this first.”

Anabel and I looked at each other. This was a new Vivian, hesitant and unsure of herself. I began to think that she had been so short with us because she was worried and preoccupied with the news she needed to deliver. Was she getting married? Coming out of the closet? Pregnant?

No, not Vivian. She would never stand for pregnancy, losing her figure and suffering stretch marks.

The waiter appeared with our espressos. I could have strangled him because the interruption made Vivian lose her nerve. The three of us sipped our coffees until she was ready.

Suddenly, she blurted out, “I’m adopting a child.”

That was a good one. It certainly proved that Vivian never did anything half-assed.

“She’s a little girl,” Vivian added.

Anabel and I clinked our coffee cups down onto our saucers at the same instant, as though we had rehearsed it. Nothing had prepared us for this news, no warning or premonition.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” I said to Vivian. “But I think you just said that you’re adopting a baby.”

“Not a baby,” Vivian corrected me. “A child. A two-year-old little girl.”

Vivian reached into her purse and produced a photograph.

“Look,” she said, suddenly beaming.

Anabel and I pulled our chairs together and huddled over the picture. Anabel, being nearly blind, had to hold the picture up to her face, which made it hard for me to see. I made out the form of a small child.

“I don’t understand.” Anabel looked up. “You’ve never seemed interested in kids, Vivian. I mean, you’re great with your nieces and nephews. But adopting a child?”

“You’ve never talked about this with us!” I cried out, hurt that my friend had gone out and done such a monumental thing without telling me first.

“Okay. I should explain.” Vivian held out her hands to calm us down.

Anabel and I nodded, our heads going up and down as though we were bobbing for apples. Vivian was exactly my age, we were born just two months apart. I wondered if she was going through a midlife crisis. First I had thought it was her period, now I suspected early menopause. Maybe that explained why I was going crazy, too.

Of course, I was also sick and tired of having every aspect of a woman’s behavior attributed to hormones.

“All three of us are thirty-five,” Vivian explained. “Both of you are happily married, with children. Anabel, you have the triplets. Margarita, you have Marti. But my situation is totally different from yours. There’s no man on the horizon that I would even consider marrying, much less having children with. And my biological clock isn’t ticking anymore—the alarm’s gone off.”

She took a deep breath. I was amazed by how hard this was for her.

“I’ve had to do a lot of thinking,” Vivian continued. “I decided I don’t believe in having a child out of wedlock just to satisfy my own maternal feelings. It just seems selfish to place that kind of burden on a child.”

Vivian looked imploringly from me to Anabel. “You know what I mean. No matter how liberated we think we are, none of us could deal with having a child outside of marriage.”

I had to agree with her. Regardless of how far we’d come, we were still the product of our shared background. In the Cuban social circles in which we were brought up, unwed motherhood was a huge taboo. Many a Cuban girl had entered into a loveless marriage because her belly was expanding. I knew lots of brides who had to get their wedding dresses let out before they walked down the aisle.

Thinking about it, I couldn’t recall any girl or woman in my social circle who decided to have a child on her own. Somehow a husband and father always magically materialized at the critical moment to ensure the child’s legitimacy. In some cases, the name on the birth certificate might not have been the biological father’s, but the important thing was that the child
had
a father. No one commented if a child had no resemblance to its father, as long as the child had a last name that wasn’t its mother’s.

I finally got to look at the photograph that Anabel left on the table between us. It was fuzzy, out of focus. All I could make out was a barefoot little girl dressed in a too-big cotton dress, her dark hair chopped unevenly around her face. She was standing in the middle of an unpaved road.

“Here.” Vivian took a little magnifying glass out of her purse and handed it to me.

I wondered how many times my friend had looked at this photo. Most women didn’t carry a magnifying lens close at hand. I peered closer until I could make out the little girl’s features. Her face was delicate, almost doll-like, but her eyes immediately captured me. They were huge, black, and round; even in this poor photograph, they shone with intensity.

“This is her?” I asked, feeling stupid for asking the question. “Your daughter?” I added, as though speaking the word could make the reality settle into my mind.

I thought I saw tears glisten in her eyes, but this was Vivian. Apart from the scene at Caballero Funeral Home a few days past, when she bumped into her married lover and his wife, she hadn’t cried since the sixth grade, after her archenemy, Maria de la Concepcion Immaculada, won a prize for best student that Vivian had thought she had in the bag. I wondered if this was a new Vivian, with some of her barriers of protection dropped.

Anabel still seemed shell-shocked, but she was always practical and wanted to know the details.

“So it’s official and legal?” she asked.

I knew exactly what Anabel was getting at. We needed to know if this was a done deal before we went any further. If the adoption had already gone through, there was no point bringing up the obvious arguments about Vivian adopting a child on her own.

“The paperwork is finished,” Vivian said. “All the little girl needs is a visa from the U.S. Consulate. I’ve been told it’s just going to be a couple of days before she comes to Miami, a week at the most. One of the nuns from the orphanage is bringing her here.”

I had to admit, Vivian had a glow about her that I’d never seen before.

“Do you know this child?” I asked. “I mean, you’ve met her, haven’t you?”

I knew about bait-and-switch tricks, when a prospective adoptive parent was shown a picture of a cute, healthy child, only to end up with another one entirely. I had heard horror stories about children adopted from Third World countries, with problems that didn’t surface until they reached America, so I was skeptical.

“I’ve met her twice,” Vivian said. Then she told us about the adoption and how it took place. Vivian had heard about the agency that arranged the adoption through her church. She was close to her priest, Father Tomas, and he had been telling the congregation about an orphanage in Honduras and the sad plight of the children living there. Sermon after sermon, he mentioned the poverty, hopelessness, and despair there. He brought pictures to Mass and described the conditions. The little girl Vivian was adopting had lived in the orphanage since her birth—her parents were dead, and she had no known relatives. It was a tragic story. Along with Father Tomas and three other members of the congregation, Vivian had flown to the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. When Vivian met the child, she fell in love with her instantly.

Anabel and I listened spellbound. Vivian, who talked over everything with us, my friend who could not keep a secret, had gone to Honduras and back without ever mentioning a word. And, hell, I never knew she had a maternal bone in her body. I don’t know how Anabel felt, but I was a little hurt that Vivian hadn’t confided in us. I suspected Anabel felt the same. I wondered if Vivian feared we would have disapproved and tried to talk her out of it. We both knew how stubborn Vivian was; how if she wanted to do something, no one and nothing in the world could discourage her from her goal. Throughout her life, that had been both her greatest strength and weakness.

Vivian must have sensed we were not wholeheartedly enthusiastic about her plan. She held up the little girl’s picture like a magic totem.

“Look,
chicas,
I know you think I’m nuts to do this,” she said. “But I’ve thought it all out carefully. I’m financially secure enough to be able to take care of a child. I love my house, but I know it’s too small, so I talked to my neighbor with the house on El Prado and made an offer to buy the place. I know he’s taking advantage of me, and I’m paying too much, but I can’t help myself.”

Vivian shrugged, as though resigned to the injustices of life.

“I need the space to expand,” she added, “because I need to put in an extra room for a live-in nanny. I’m going to need one because, obviously, I’m not going to put her in day care while I’m at work. I’m not bringing her all the way here to do that.”

She caught her breath. “The architect is drawing up the plans right now,” she added. “Once the city of Miami approves the drawings and the permits, then we’ll begin construction. I wish everything could be ready when my daughter arrives, but it can’t be helped. I’m making everything happen as fast as I can.”

“You’ve already done all that?” I asked. I was flabbergasted on two fronts: hearing how little I really knew about the intimate details of my friend’s life, and hearing her use two words, “my daughter,” in a sentence. I couldn’t understand how she would casually discuss with us the most intimate details of her affairs with married men, but kept mum about wanting to adopt a child.

“It’s a good thing I won the Carrillo case,” she said breezily. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to afford all this. I hope I keep on a roll because I’m going to need the income. I mean, think about it: I’m going to have two extra mouths to feed—and a salary to pay.”

Vivian laughed, seemingly carefree about the difficulties she had ahead of her. All I could think about were the layers of secrets in people’s lives. Vivian had gone to Honduras, adopted a child out of a Third World orphanage, bought the property behind her house, and drawn up plans to build an addition on it. And I had known nothing about any of this.

But, of course, I was in no position at all to pass judgment on Vivian. I hadn’t told my friends anything about the situat
ion with Luther since the first lunch at Nemo’s. Probably I didn’t want to hear them tell me I was crazy for jeopardizing my life with Ariel and Marti for an old lover from law school. And I feared them judging me, and losing respect.

Vivian and Anabel, I’m sure, would have sworn that they knew everything about my life, but the envelope of keys in the zipper pocket of my purse proved that not to be the case. I looked over at Anabel, wondering what secrets she was keeping.

“What’s that look for?” she asked, blinking.

“Nothing,” I said. Anabel went back to trying to see the photo of the little girl, holding the magnifying glass right up to her eye, struggling to see what she could.