Tell Me Something True (8 page)

Gabriella’s mother isn’t there.

She’s in the Gómez mausoleum, an ornate little monument with marble slabs and a wrought-iron gate that you must open with
a key if you want access to those inside.

Gabriella’s great-grandmother is on the left, and on top of her is her great-grandfather, and on top of him, her grandfather’s
brother.

Her grandfather is on the right, and on top of him is her mother.

“It’s a temporary arrangement,” says Nini.

“When I die,” she always reminds Gabriella, “you have to put me on top of your grandfather, and your mami on top of me.” She
always adds, by way of apology and explanation, “I have to be beside your grandfather.”

Edgar wipes the gate clean with a moist rag before unlocking it. There are coins and flowers and paper icons on the floor,
offerings her grandfather’s patients keep leaving for him, even seventeen years after his death.

Nini collects them in a bag but takes them outside. She doesn’t like to keep foreign objects in the family crypt. Then she
instructs Edgar to sweep the little entryway, clearing it of dust and cobwebs, until it again looks shiny and visited. “These
dead haven’t been forgotten,” she always mutters under her breath.

“You want to go first, Gabriella?” she asks matter-of-factly as Edgar walks back to the car, leaving them alone with their
ghosts. “I’ll go to the chapel.”

“Okay, Nini,” Gabriella responds, and gently kisses her on the cheek because she always looks so grimly cheerful here.

Nini used to go in with her. The first years Gabriella came here, she was terrified. Of the casket, of the crypt, of all the
dead people in this place. The two of them would visit together then; Nini would talk to her daughter, Gabriella to her mother.
Nini would talk about Gabriella’s horseback lessons and her awards and what she had done with her hair. Gabriella would listen
solemnly, and nod. But it never felt comfortable, what Nini did. Talking to a dead woman she couldn’t see, who didn’t answer.

And then, Gabriella can’t even pinpoint when it happened, but it just did. She started to have her own stories to tell her
mother.

Now, she likes to close the gate and sit in the middle of all the coffins. Nini has a little chair for her in there, and when
Gabriella sits down, she’s still tall enough that she can rest her head on top of her mother’s casket.

Gabriella likes it there. She likes to lay her head on her mother’s chest and picture her, sleeping, face up, with her hands
folded quietly over her chest. Her hair is long—because it’s been growing all these years—and it falls in endless, gorgeous
curls over her shoulders and her breasts and down to her ankles. She looks beautiful like this, like a resting Lady Godiva.
And she always smiles, because she’s happy to see her daughter, to feel her and listen to her.

“Mami,” Gabriella says, speaking very softly, very close to her so Grandfather won’t hear. He’d be pissed. And then she tells
her what she couldn’t bring herself to tell her father. “I met a boy. His name is Angel.”

She pauses, trying to bring it all back.

“It’s a beautiful name, isn’t it? But the thing is, he’s the wrong kind of boy. That’s what Juan Carlos says, and honestly,
that’s what I think today, too.

“But he felt so right. And… and I guess he could be right. We danced last night, and he’s a great dancer. And he’s so tall.
You have no idea how hard it is to find someone who’s taller than me! And he’s so, so beautiful. He’s a beautiful boy, with
beautiful skin and cool hands—not clammy! I hate clammy. Just really cool and firm, you know?

“I don’t know how to explain it, Mami. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this about a boy. I don’t know that I ever
have. It’s—” Gabriella stops. She tries to rationalize if it was the drinks or the moment.

“It’s like there was no one else,” she says, shaking her head. “And, you know what? He had your book! He had your
Valle del Cauca
book in his library. He told me they’d bought one of the farms in the book because of your pictures. I think that’s a good
sign, don’t you?”

Gabriella stops, feeling guilty. She can’t bullshit her mom. She’s dead; she knows everything. Gabriella sighs. She can’t
pretend not to know what her mother already knows.

“Mami, his dad is a mafioso,” she continues, lifting her head up and looking down at the casket, trying to see her mother
beneath the marble and the wood.

“Actually, I think he’s a pretty big deal mafioso. And I wonder, Mami, if I should just walk away? Now you see why I can’t
tell Daddy. He’d make me fly back in a second if he knew.

“Although.” Gabriella pauses, but even before she speaks, she can hear how unsatisfactory her explanation sounds. “I mean,
he’s
not the mafioso. It’s his dad. He’s a victim of… of fate.

“Do you hold people accountable for what their parents do? People can change the circumstances they were born with, don’t
you think? It’s what free will is all about. It doesn’t seem fair, Mami,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s not his fault
that he is who he is. I wish…”

Gabriella doesn’t know what she wishes, but the wetness on her hands startles her. She realizes she’s started to cry because
the tears are sliding from the casket onto her hands.

“Mami, he might not even call me. He hasn’t called me. It doesn’t matter. But Mami. I still wish I could talk this out with
somebody. I wish I could talk this over with you.”

She stops for a bit. “Please don’t tell anyone,” she says, looking around.

Gabriella wipes her eyes and scrambles through her purse for a tissue. Long ago she learned she couldn’t do without tissues
when she came here. You just never knew.

“Anyway, Mami,” she goes on, and this time she looks outside the gate at the trees and listens, for the first time that day,
to the birds that are quietly chirping out there. It’s a fine place to rest in, she always thinks. She imagines that at night,
when everyone’s gone, her mother and grandfather get into these big, lively discussions with the great-grandparents—who were
supposed to be partyers—and if there’s such a thing as afterlife wine, they probably drink gallons of it.

“I’m fine. I really am. I’m graduating this spring, and I’m making my mind up about what I want to do with my music, you know?
Sometimes I think I should bag the classical stuff and just write jingles. Daddy says it will be inane, and I can make a ton
of money and he can retire. Of course, he’d hate for me to do that. He thinks I’m some kind of prodigy, but it isn’t like
that at all, Mami. Sometimes I think it’s pointless to have studied music. I mean, who am I kidding, right? I’m not going
to be a serious classical pianist. God, I’m a wreck every time I have to perform. But I’m going to score a short film that
my friend Patsy is directing in the film department. Daddy thinks it’s a great opportunity, and it can open doors in the business.

“But Mami, I’d like, for a change, to decide on my own. Maybe to not run it by anyone at all, because then everybody has an
opinion, and it’s not even about me anymore, you know? It’s about what they think I should do and what they think I should
want, and never about what I might really like. Last year I told Daddy I was taking a semester off to study Italian in Rome.
Oh my God, he almost had a heart attack!”

She sighs.

“Well, then he spoke with the conservatory in Rome and set me up there for classes, and of course, I didn’t want to do it
anymore. The whole point was to have a change of air, of perspective.

“Anyway. I’m just going to try and relax here. Think things over. Go to the club. Run. I’ll let you know what happens.

“And Daddy is well. He’s shooting a movie right now, and he’s getting all these accolades. He was nominated for a Golden Globe,
you know? He could win. He really could. It’s this story about a gay magician. I know, very esoteric. But the book was written
by Ann Patchett—do you remember, Mami? She’s the one who wrote
Bel Canto,
that book I told you I loved so much. The cinematography is just beautiful. Daddy really has such a great eye.”

Gabriella tries to think of all the things she would have liked to tell her mother this past year alone, but of course, they’re
lost now. Gone with the moment in which they happened.

“Record it now or lose it forever” is one of her dad’s favorite phrases, what he uses to justify his ever-present digital
cameras.

“He painted the house,” she says suddenly, the image springing to her mind. “It’s yellow now. It looks really, really dramatic,
but stylish, because the bougainvilleas finally grew in, and they’re purple and fuchsia. Great contrasts. You would like it,”
she adds with a smile. “At least, I think you would.”

In the distance, Gabriella sees Nini walking toward them and turns to her mother one last time.

“Bye for now, Mami,” she tells her, giving her coffin a kiss.

“Adiós, abuelo,” she says, giving Grandfather a kiss, too. Today she’s ignored him and now it makes her feel a little guilty.
But she needed a girl-to-girl talk. She thinks he’d understand.

“I’ll be back soon,” Gabriella promises and steps out into the sunlight.

Querida Gabriella:

No, I will not let you forget where you come from. Half of you is from the Northern Hemisphere. Half of you is from the South,
from here. It doesn’t seem like a world away, but it is.

On a clear day, from this terrace, you can see the snow peaks that are three states away.

You’ll see that the grass is greener and the sky is bluer, and no matter how long you stay away, you can always come back.
There was a time when I thought I had lost this, when I was lulled into thinking that I didn’t need it. I used to scoff at
these people—the fake Latinos, I would say to myself—who stop going back.

And then I became one myself.

One year. Two. Three.

There is such comfort in predictability. It makes you brave, the capacity to function in a world that actually works, where
there is little risk in getting up in the morning, where mundane tasks are truly mundane. You can be brave because you know
nothing can hurt you.

You grow, because nothing prevents you from growing. Until you need something else again, and then you go back. I waited.
For as long as I could. Until the colors started to fade from my comfortable days.

I didn’t even know what I missed, or what I needed, until I went back.

He called at nine this morning.

What was it about these Cali men, I thought, who can go to bed at 4 a.m., having drunk a liter of whiskey, and wake up three
hours later feeling as if nothing had happened?

“Helenita, telephone,” my mother said, softly but insistently knocking on my door before pushing it open.

“It’s Juan José, doll. I’m sorry, I told him you were asleep, but he said it was urgent.”

My mother, who is the most consummately considerate person I have ever met, had turned off the ringer on the phone in my room
and drawn the double blinds on the ceiling-to-floor windows, so I’d never be woken up unless it was absolutely necessary.

In bed, I lay still, considering the implications of this call.

There were none, I finally decided. Or none that I could discern with just five hours of sleep.

“Helena,” my mother insisted, from the door.

“Okay, okay,” I finally answered. “I’m picking up.”

And I did, holding the phone against my shoulder until my mother, who looked more than a tad inquisitive, quietly shut the
door behind her.

“Hello,” I said huskily.

“Hey, wake up, sleepyhead!”

“Isn’t it too early to be this cheerful?” I answered crossly. Was the man on amphetamines?

“Of course not. It’s a beautiful day outside.”

What was I supposed to answer to this? Chatting about the weather was not an urgent matter. This was ridiculous.

He sensed my impatience, because he started to speak, and I could tell he was a little bit nervous. I mean, he really was.
Jamming his words together in one breath, like people do when they’re given ten seconds to give a five-minute speech.

“Listen, I woke you up because I’m going to the farm in Ginebra this morning to take care of some business. I have to be back
by five, so I have to be there by eleven. I thought it’d be good for your book. It’s a great house, and you could look around
all you want without anyone else there. We could stop in a couple other places on the way back if we have time. And”—he went
on before I could say anything—“my mayordomo knows the area like no one else. He can tell you the history of every house.
He can tell you about every legend and every ghost.”

“Ghosts. What ghosts?” I laughed despite myself.

“Hey, if you want to find out, this is your chance,” he replied. “I can pick you up in forty-five minutes. Can you make it?”

I curled my hair around my finger, my nervous tick.

Could I make it?

“It just happened,” my brother Julián had told Mercedes the night she found out he’d been having an affair with his assistant.