The Accidental Native (27 page)

I leaned forward, and asked Mari, “What should I do?”

She sucked in her teeth, bit her lip.

“Ay, Rennie, I really don't know.”

“I really trust your judgment, Marisol.”

She shook her head, stood up and cleared our glasses, went into the kitchen and started soaping them up. I followed her into the kitchen.

“Tell me, please,” I said.

She stopped, her hands full of soap. She brushed back a strand of hair, leaving some suds on it, and stared right at me.

“I'm sorry, Rennie, but I can't start all over again, not like that.” I nodded, unable to look at her. “I have my condo, loans to pay. And what about your house. After all that hassle and expense, and if that bastard has his way, you can get into all kinds of legal mess. Lawyers here are experts in tying up people in technicalities.”

She was pragmatic, realistic, speaking like someone who had witnessed the turmoil wrought by revolution, like an exile trying hard to fit into an adopted land and home, someone content to be left alone to find whatever peace and happiness she could. I sympathized. It made as much sense as anything I could have said. But she must have seen how disappointed, how torn I was over this decision. She came over to me and kissed me on the lips.

“It's hard, I know. But sometimes you have to let the giants battle it out. We little people have to step aside or be stomped on. Your mom's got this, Rennie.”

I nodded again, but I couldn't look at her. I had let down Rita and those others who had died too young and without reasonable explanations. The same way I had let down anyone who ever stood up and did what was right. But the conversation ended there.

She asked me to stay for dinner. After I showered and slipped into some clothes I had at her house, we sat down to enjoy one of her best dishes and finish the bottle of wine. My concerns with Foley had consumed the day; it soon turned to evening. She asked me to stay the night, but I wanted to finish painting the house.

“The break will end soon, and I need to finish before the furniture comes and we resume classes,” I said.

She nodded and retrieved her car keys to drive me home.

On the way back, I could only think about how to approach Julia, now that it was inevitable. I had not told Marisol about Foley asking me to intervene in the lawsuit. That his real mission was not just to stop me from organizing the college community, but to use me as a wedge to stop my mother. Why put her in a position to come between me and my mother? Especially now that Julia was warming up to her. She didn't need to know that part of it. It was clear that she was frightened. The giants were indeed battling,
and I could not avoid getting stomped on, but I would do anything to prevent her from getting hurt. End of story.

She parked in front of my house. We kissed in the car, and I wanted her so badly. She, too, seemed eager to make love for the first time in so long.

“I have so much to do,” I said, and she nodded.

“Go, paint,” she said, brushing me away with her fingers.

She drove off, and I went back into my refurbished home and turned on the boom box. I painted until sunrise.

Several days passed before I got the nerve to call Julia. She recommended lunch or dinner, but I declined, thinking what I had to lay on her should be done in her office.

Ever since my first meeting with her in that office, I had come to appreciate what she had achieved. From various sources, I had learned the respect other people had for her; they also feared her, because everyone knew her to be a fierce and unwavering litigator. Driving to Hato Rey to meet her, I kept thinking of what I would ask her to do. The hours her firm had put into the lawsuit, the costs involved, the defendants grieving over the early loss of loved ones, the moral imperative of what this case represented—everything, dropped. Because I had no spine, because even though she was my mother, I had not inherited Julia's spirit or will to fight. I was so ashamed, but yet kept driving.

Julia had a broad smile on her face when she saw me. I, too, was happy to see her. With the house and everything else, I had not seen her for a few days. She embraced me, gave me a big kiss on the cheek and then proceeded to wipe off the lipstick, as she usually did, with a little saliva.

She prepared two demitasses of coffee and brought them over to her desk. She didn't have to ask anymore; she knew I liked coffee during the afternoon.

“Well,” she asked, stirring her coffee. “What's the big news you needed to come here to tell me?”

I sipped the coffee. Julia raised her eyebrows in anticipation. I sighed and told her. Everything.

It was as if I had thrown a bucket of ice water on her followed by a ton of bricks. She slouched on the lush leather chair, reached
for a cigarette, lit it up and stared at me hard before she even took one drag.

“We can get him on this,” she said, pointing at me with the cigarette.

“Julia, I don't want to fight this man.”

She pushed back from her desk, holding her forehead. She paced like that, holding her hand at her hairline, and then turned to me.

“It's not just about you, Rennie. People's lives have been destroyed. It's about government abusing power. About the senselessness of military proliferation.”

“Julia, I know. But it's also affecting my life, and Mari's.”

She ran her hands down the sides of her sleek dress, straightening the large belt around her waist. Nervous tics for coping with tension and anger. She poured herself a glass of water, her hands shaking.

“It's not like I can pass this case to another firm. No one will touch this, Rennie, do you understand?”

“Julia …” I began.

She banged the glass down on the credenza, spilling the water. “Goddamn it. Call me Mami, mother, mom, anything but Julia,” she said, her eyes burning, her face distorted with anger and frustration. “At least do me that favor when you ask me to sell out.”

Out of breath, almost hyperventilating, she spun the chair around and threw herself on it, her eyes focused on me.

After a pause, in a low voice, I said, “Mom … I'm sorry.”

“Hallelujah,” she said, staring at me as if I were a toddler pronouncing it for the first time. Then she covered her eyes, broke down and started crying, her shoulders shaking, her mascara running, her hair falling out of place.

I went to hug her and she put her hand out to stop. From her drawer she took out some tissues and blew her nose, and with tissue in hand waved me to sit again.

She stared at me with an odd smile on her face, and I thought she would start crying again. She sighed and fell back on the chair.

Then, she grabbed a picture frame from her desk, one which opens up to hold two pictures. “Read this,” she said, handing it to me.

One frame had an old fading Polaroid snapshot of a baby; the other, a quote from Pedro Albizu Campos, the Puerto Rican icon for independence. From what I could make out, the quote was something like, “The law of love and sacrifice does not allow their separation. I have never been absent and have never felt absent.”

“I guess the baby's me,” I said, giving her back the frame.

She nodded, took it back and passed her hand over it.

“Taken at the hospital. The only picture I had of you until recently.”

I recalled the manic way she kept taking photos of me.

“Juanma refused to send me any of you. Your birthdays would pass and not one photograph.” Tears again welled up in her eyes. “But that's in the past.”

Dabbing her eyes, clutching the tissue by the base of her neck, she said, “I found that quote, and it touched me so deeply that I started to cry. Don Pedro was talking about la patria, but the words made me think of you.” The tears trickled down her cheeks, and once again I stood up.

“No, please sit,” she told me.

There was a prolonged, lonely silence in that large office. Outside, my mother's secretary clacked away at the keyboard, phones rang, people chatted. Julia glanced toward the large window. She exhaled, then nodding absent-mindedly, said, “I'll drop the case, Rennie.”

Marisol moved out of faculty housing and into my place. We were living like a couple, doing everything couples do from shopping to cuddling while watching a rented flick. Everything, except sex. We couldn't understand how before we had literally torn each other's clothes off, now we seemed like two asexual beings inhabiting the same space. We loved and desired each other, but that wasn't enough to make things spark when it came to sexual coupling.

The semester was ending, closing a difficult year for me as a rookie prof. I was happy to see it finish, excited to have time to spend with Marisol during the summer. But she was going to teach summer session, as most professors in the college did, just to help ends meet. Summer classes paid time and a half. They were so coveted that a point system, including all kinds of factors, was devised to determine who would receive these summer plums. At the bottom of the list, I had no chance this time around, but I wasn't keen on working the summer anyway. Marisol, on the other hand, at the number two spot, was receiving a regular class.

The others weren't left empty-handed. There were always the remedial summer classes. The majority of students entering the college had to take remedial English classes during the entire month of July. The need was so great to cover these that almost the entire department was involved, and Micco begged me. I agreed and found myself signed up for a month of intensive, week-long, four-hour sessions. After agreeing, I wanted to cry.

But first, I had to teach tedious final review classes, read and evaluate stacks of papers, tabulate and submit grades, with those
pesky borderline cases driving you crazy and attend all the wonderful meetings Micco had lined up for us and the time-consuming committees on which we had to serve.

The calm after the storm did not come. Marisol and I came home tired, exhausted, mentally drained. Add the everyday routine that absorbs so many precious minutes of your life, and it is not hard to imagine how sex gets pushed back to the lower part of your to-do list.

It wasn't all about time, though. Our break-up had shattered an emotional, sexual connection that had flowed, that had been electric and spontaneous. After many disappointing relationships with Puerto Rican men who thought cubiches, a negative term for Cubans, were only good for a good time and ran to marry the first decent Boricua girl they met, she had found someone promising in me. But my foot-dragging made her think I was like the rest, and the break-up deepened her feelings of being unloved and unwanted. She went through a severe sense of loss. I, too, experienced it, not unlike when someone you love dies, but perhaps worse because with death you resign yourself to never seeing the person again and emotionally you make amends. Without Marisol, my world had sunk into a deep crevice, dark and loveless, and just now I felt myself creeping out of it and seeing light.

We carried emotional scars that needed healing as we tried to build our new relationship on trust and a stronger sense of direction. And it wasn't like there weren't sparks, moments that bordered on rekindling the passion. That's what made it more frustrating. Marisol and I joked that fate had determined we would never make love again. One time we had planned to soak in the Jacuzzi and linger into lovemaking. We set up aromatic candles, played soft jazz, popped a bottle of wine, and Marisol scattered the bathroom floor with rose petals. We entered that fragrant bathroom, kissing, undressing each other and then we turned the water on, and nothing.

We had experienced yet another of the typical unannounced, unplanned water stoppages. After we both cursed, we had to dress and gather our water containers and fetch water at a friend's house for cooking and bathing, but not to soak in leisurely, because we
knew it would be a few days before the water was restored. A few times, the lights went out, and similarly we had to get ice for the items in the refrigerator, get candles and flashlights, and suddenly being in the dark didn't seem all that romantic. Living in a developing country is hazardous to your lovemaking.

Urgent phone calls interrupted our tender moments, or things needed immediate attention, and with every one of these setbacks the awkwardness grew, as did the tension between us. Not having consistent sex is something any bachelor gets used to; you're not happy about it. It gets you depressed, nasty and bitter, but at least you can attribute it to not having anyone special in your life, and that gives you hope. But here I shared the same roof with this wonderful, charming woman, sexy and loving, and
nada
. It's an unusual situation that can lead to anger and other ill feelings. When we had minor spats, initiated by one or the other of us, for the stupidest things, I would think: “Man, we both really need to get laid.”

And it's important to get it at home, because outside there are temptations. I'm not saying I condone that. I had been faithful to Marisol during our sexual famine. But that doesn't mean the temptations weren't there, or that I had superhuman emotional control. Marisol didn't fall in love with a stick figure, but a young man made of flesh and bones. And shit happens, or can.

Like what happened at a department function. At the end of the academic year, the department likes to throw the few graduating seniors and honor students a party at one of the professor's homes, usually someone living in Baná or the outskirts. This year Cari Rosas volunteered to have it at her place in Cidra, a spacious, airy house with an expansive backyard ideal for an outside party. Someone had set up a volleyball net and there was a spirited game going on when Marisol and I arrived. One of the students had brought his deejay equipment and was spinning music to the pleasure of the growing numbers grinding and bumping on the grass. The drinking age is eighteen on the island, while it is twenty-one everywhere else in the United States. So, there was liquor at this party, although we restricted it to beer and wine.