Tell Me Something True (29 page)

“Well,” says Elisa in a tone that implies everything is settled, but not really. “At least, my dear, your mother was discreet.
Because I can’t imagine your grandmother is all that pleased, is she? Or has he been able to win her over?”

“She hasn’t met him,” Gabriella answers, feeling suddenly very, very small.

“Oh?” says Elisa, raising her eyebrows. She starts to say something, but because there clearly is nothing to say, she looks
closely at the newspaper picture. “They say he’s very good-looking,” she allows, letting an ounce of charity into her voice.
“A little dark, but very good-looking.” She sighs. “It’s hard to tell here.”

Elisa is dismayed at the turn the afternoon has taken. She’s gone from substitute aunt to acolyte to inquisitioner in less
than an hour, all roles she detests. “If you like him, then enjoy him, Gabriellita,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s hard
enough to find people you love, or even like, in this life.”

Gabriella feels miserable now, devoid of answers, devoid of tea—because she’s barely taken a sip—devoid of spirit.

She is in love with him. And she can’t even bring herself to say it out loud. Why does loving Angel come accompanied by an
apology?

She remembers the first time they made love, on that very first date, high up in the mountains, where he assured her they
wouldn’t be seen. “Because people never look up. They always watch their feet instead of the sky,” he had whispered as he
took off her shirt, her tennis shoes, her jeans, her plain white cotton panties because she had never thought to wear black
lace on a very first date.

She hadn’t thought of consequences then, but now consequences follow them everywhere, as closely as his phalanx of bodyguards.

As if reading her mind, Elisa puts her hand softly on her shoulder. “Things are never that simple, are they?” she says. “Just
be careful, okay? He is—well, you know all about him.”

If it had been Helena, she would have told them all to fuck themselves. She wouldn’t have been ashamed or concerned.

And, thinks Gabriella with sudden clarity, neither will she. “Yes, I know all about him. And he’s wonderful. And loving. And
I’m going out to dinner with him tonight, Elisa, and I’m going to have the best time. And I want everyone to know it.”

I
didn’t have the heart to wake Gabriella up, even though she begged me to. She still sleeps like a rag doll, so funny. Her
arms wide open, her legs wide open, her mouth open, the covers all tossed aside. I ran a finger down her cheek, so soft, then
pulled up the sheet, at least, to cover her up. But she tossed them off, still asleep, before I even left her room.

It was still dark outside when the taxi picked me up.

I’ve always loved Los Angeles at that time of the day, the fog still clinging to the roofs of the houses, the roses on my
front porch heavy with dew. The streets that meander from my home down to the 405 are deserted, but once we hit the freeway,
the traffic was already getting heavy, a reminder of this city’s perpetual motion. It took me years before I began to think
of this as my home, before I stopped feeling like a tourist when I drove to and from the house.

I stared out the window at nothing, wondering exactly what it was I would do when I got to Cali.

For a split second, I was tempted to tell the driver to turn around, because after all, what was the point really? But then
we reached the first exit signs pointing to the airport and the moment slipped away, like a hesitant bride who wanted to say
no, until finally, she had to say yes.

S
he chose Azul, the new, trendy Thai place Juan Carlos keeps talking about, located on a second story in Granada, a newly hip
neighborhood where picturesque homes have been converted into upscale restaurants and shops, conducive for barhopping and
see-and-be-seen outings. It’s a beautiful evening, the kind of evening that compels skeptics to stay in Cali. The city is
blanketed by the gentle breeze that has swept down the mountainside in the afternoon and pushed the day’s heat away.

Earlier, as her grandmother lay reading in her room, the blinds closed against the afternoon sunlight, Gabriella had knocked
timidly. Her grandmother’s bedroom—with its tall windows and vast bed—has always been her sanctuary, the first place she heads
to when she sets foot outside the elevator doors. But in the past week, the closer she gets to Angel, the harder she studiously
avoids the beckoning intimacy of this room.

Nini is surprised at the visit, her expression both apprehensive and hopeful. She’s been at a loss for the past several days,
unable to outright forbid her granddaughter’s choices yet reluctant to send her packing and risk losing her entirely. She
justifies her silence, to herself and to Marcus, by reasoning that she’s already lived through this once, with the unhappiest
of possible outcomes. That she lost Helena when they were so at odds with each other, the unresolved issues left hanging forever,
still keeps her awake at night.

“Nini,” her granddaughter says now, and in the voice she hears a question and a tentativeness that harks back to a month ago,
when Nini was planning this trip, before everything went awry.

Nini puts the newspaper to one side and looks at Gabriella, trying not to appear too eager or too nervous or too anxious with
this simple visit, this simple little word.

“Sí, Gabriellita?” she answers as neutrally as possible.

“I’m going out to dinner tonight?” says Gabriella, reverting to her habit of speaking in questions when she’s nervous.

“With Angel?” she adds. Swallows.

“And, I wanted him to meet you. I m-mean,” she stammers, “he wants to meet you. I wanted to know if he could come upstairs
to pick me up, I mean, instead of me just going down, and you know, just say hi.”

Of all the things Nini expected to hear, she doesn’t expect to hear this, and she stares nonplussed at Gabriella, standing
hopefully at her bedside, not making things right, but trying to make them better. Her first impulse is righteousness, to
say she doesn’t allow people like Angel Silva into her home, and that she, Gabriella, should know her place.

She can remember another time, when divorces and illegitimate children were studiously avoided, when last names meant something—a
pedigree, respectability, hard-won through generations of decent living. It has come to this: her only granddaughter asking
for her blessing to sleep with a drug dealer’s son.

What would her husband have done? she wonders.

“Gabriellita,” she begins to say, and sees the doubt she’s feeling already reflected in her eyes. She goes with her heart
then, because her conscience is tired of arguing. “Of course. Bring him up. I would love to meet him.”

“My grandmother would like to meet you,” she tells Angel over the phone, an hour before he’s scheduled to pick her up.

“Really?” he blurts out, frankly shocked.

“Yes, really,” she says with a smile in her voice. “Don’t worry, nothing formal, just a little hi, how are you. Encantado.
You know?”

“Why does she want to meet me?” he prods, mulling over this sudden turn of events. From the onset it’s been quite obvious
that Gabriella wants to hide him from her family, a fact that for him is par for the course, but that he increasingly resents.
That uptight cousin, for example, who thought nothing of going to his house and drinking his booze and fondling his friends,
but looks the other way when they run into each other. He’s tempted to send a couple of his guys on him, just for fun.

“Well, she wants to meet the man her granddaughter is dating!” insists Gabriella. “I think that’s pretty normal, don’t you?”

“Sure,” he says nonchalantly, although he doesn’t feel nonchalant. He feels—he admits to himself—overjoyed, but also leery,
as if he’s about to be tricked.

“Sure,” he says again hesitantly. “I’ll just get there a little early.” He pauses to give himself time to think. “Do I call
you when I arrive?” he asks timidly.

“No,” she says. “Just tell the guard you’re coming to see me, he’ll tell you where to go.”

Angel hangs up his cell phone slowly. He’s going to meet his girlfriend’s grandmother. Girlfriend. She
is
a girlfriend. For the first time in months, he wishes he had a confidant other than Julio. For the first time in years, he
wishes he had a mother, an aunt, someone other than Chelita, to run this by.

But Chelita is what he has. “Chelita!” he shouts from his bedroom, but Chelita, tuned to her perpetual TV, doesn’t answer.

“Chelita!” he shouts again, walking into the kitchen, turning the set off.

“What, what?” she cries, startled, because Angel never screams.

“I’m going to meet Gabriella’s grandmother,” he says with no preamble.

Chelita looks genuinely puzzled. She’s an expert in the complexities of class structure, as shown on the soap operas she tirelessly
watches on TV. But it has never occurred to her that her Angel, as rich as he is, could be ostracized. “What do you mean,
Angelito? You haven’t met her yet?”

To his dismay, he blushes, feeling a wave of embarrassment sweep over him.

“No.” He’s going to give her the explanation, then stops, because he can’t bring himself to say it out loud, especially not
to her. “No,” he says lamely. “We just never had time.”

“Well, put something nice on, mi niño. Take her some flowers. That would be nice,” Chelita offers with a smile. “Why are you
so worried? She’ll love you! How couldn’t she?” Chelita says, looking at him with such genuine love, he impulsively goes to
her and hugs her, as he used to do when he was a little boy, helping her cut up the dough for empanadas in the kitchen.

“That’s a good idea, Chelita,” he says gratefully, glad in the end that he interrupted her show.

He goes with the most classic, most generic outfit he can think of: jeans, a starched white linen shirt, and a blue blazer
that hides the gun he keeps tucked behind his belt. He sends Julio for flowers, almost going for an outrageously expensive
orchid before settling for the safe two dozen long-stemmed roses.

In the elevator, he cradles them in the crook of his arm, adjusting his shirt collar, stamping his feet to make sure the hems
of his jeans haven’t bunched up around his ankles.

When the elevator door opens, directly into the apartment, Gabriella is waiting for him, wearing the short red dress she adores
and would have worn the night she met him had she stood her ground then. She leads him in by the hand, kissing him chastely
on the cheek, doing all the things that nice girls do when their nice boyfriends come to visit, a vignette so normal it constricts
his throat with how alien it seems to him, like a movie he’s paid to see.

“Wow, for me?” she says delightedly, reaching out for the flowers.

“No, no,” he says firmly. “For your grandmother.”

“Well, how nice,” she says, letting a touch of awe and pleasure slip into her voice.

From the hallway, Nini stands silently watching, taking in how tall he is, how assured he looks next to Gabriella’s height.
And how Gabriella literally sparkles in his presence, how the color of her skin rises, how she tosses back her hair when she
puts her hand on his arm, how wrapped up they look in each other’s presence. Helena never reacted like this to Marcus, or
Juan José for that matter. She was always looking beyond what she had, always thinking she had missed out on something. Had
it not been Juan José, Nini now acknowledges, it would have been someone else, and afterward, maybe someone else again. Nini
shakes her head, resigned, composes her face, and smooths down the jacket of her fuchsia suit.

“Buenas, buenas,” she says now, stepping into the foyer, extending her hand with the relaxed practice of a socialite who can
turn graciousness on at the drop of a hat.

“Doña Cristina,” he says politely, shaking her hand firmly, not kissing her, she notices appreciatively—kissing strangers
is something she tolerates but doesn’t take kindly to—and instead proffering her the roses, beautiful roses, handpicked from
Impoflores, she can tell from the pink cellophane, the most expensive florist in town.