“Never mind,” Brian murmurs. “It’ll be fine today.” He touches the ridge at the back of her neck, just under her twist of hair. But she is so light-boned, he feels clumsy and lifts his hand. “I have to get to work,” he says like it’s an apology.
She lifts her head, offering him a temple to kiss goodbye.
THE SUN IS RIPER, more golden and potent as Avis stands in the driveway, trying not to show impatience as her assistant roots through her purse, hunting for her keys — first, without looking, just feeling, then plopping the bag on the hood of her car and examining its contents. From over the tiled eave of her house comes a bird cry, so close, deep, and staccato it startles Avis. It’s a new song that she’s been hearing over the past few mornings. Chortling followed by a long whistle, like a dove’s three-note gurgle, then a low-level, agitated squeak — a funny extended song. Catbird? It starts sweetly, then sharpens and escalates: Brian’s complained about the noise waking him, threatens to call Animal Control.
“Listen to that.”
“What?” Nina pulls out her handful of keys. “Hooray already.”
“You didn’t hear that?” Avis asks as she slides into the car. “The loud, angry one? The bird?”
Nina pulls her door shut, adjusts the rearview mirror. She laughs through her nose. “A loud angry bird? Okay, let’s focus. Now, we’re going to the usual place?”
“Please.” Avis stares out the window, trying to find the bird. The flickering bamboo along the perimeter of the drive seems to correspond to her own internal state, a flickering grief or rawness, left over from that morning’s argument with Brian. “You’re just causing yourself pain,” he’d said, several times. “It’s like you’re doing it deliberately.”
Did she love him still? Persist in loving him, her mother would have said. “Oh, don’t marry a lawyer, my dear,” she’d cried. “They’re horrible. They’re venal. At least accountants say what they are. They make no bones about it.”
Was it possible to still love someone when she fantasizes about solitude? She can see the state of separateness so clearly: a house without Brian. A cottage with a fireplace and thatched roof, a morning sky like opal; every inch of the place a kitchen, a bakery. Where would she sleep if she didn’t have Brian to make the bed for? Would she sleep at all? She’s read that the unhappiest, loneliest writers write the sweetest poems. Still, she loves their house, a wonderful old Spanish-style with plaster moldings, fireplace framed with blue mosaic, rooms that flow like river water into each other, a generous, high-ceilinged living room that opens into a dining room, an office, a Florida room, all imbued with subtle lights from a row of French doors that lead to the backyard and pool. She could never give up her house or kitchen.
Nina and Avis pull out onto Vizcaya. They pass through the vault of old black olive trees, the pale houses in ocher, terracotta, and sienna — light-stained, rippling tile rooftops. The neighborhood is filled with key-shaped doors, arches, brick drives, Moorish tiles, round windows, sly turrets and gables, windows in triangles and trapezoids glinting from hidden corners. And this is a restrained, middle-to-upper area. Just a few blocks to the south, Coral Gables unfurls into immense estates, manicured lawns, private docks, the winter homes of czars. Avis has taken strolls past the study of Thomas Edison, an orchard where barefooted Alexander Graham Bell picked mangoes, beyond languid botanical gardens that hug the shore, copses of banyan trees with their preternatural dangling limbs and silvery flesh.
At a cocktail party she’d overheard a realtor referring to Avis’s neighborhood as “the ghetto of the Gables.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” she’d edged into the conversation while cutting a baguette on a sharp bias. “A ghetto?”
The realtor, a woman with a long, corded neck, had seemed to barely register Avis, glancing at her hands on the cutting board. Avis wasn’t the caterer — she merely disliked the way the hostess ripped her loaves into chunks. “It’s silly,” the woman had answered, mainly addressing the man across from her. “Just, you know, four bedrooms instead of eight, balconies but no tennis courts, no servants’ quarters. That sort of thing.”
Avis had coolly revealed her address to the realtor and the woman had replied, “Goodness. Well, at least you’re to the west of LeJeune.”
The scent of jasmine drifts into the windows. Songbird season is over. No more gardenias: hurricane season. The trees have grown dense as rooftops; the plumeria hold their flower-tipped branches up like brides with golden corsages. Avis sits hunched forward, clinging to her tin: she can feel the metal chill through her blouse, all the way to the pit of her stomach. She’d forgotten to eat again. She flips down the mirror in the car visor, batting at her hair — lately it’s started thinning but there’s still enough to twirl into a twist — a smear of chocolate on her cheek. She rubs at it, then slaps the visor back. Her breath gets shallower as they drive, and there seems to be a lump forming in her throat. By the time they’ve reached the Alton Road exit ramp, heading up the spine of the beach to their meeting place, her arms feel rubbery with fear. A small unwelcome voice returns to the back of her head: Please forgive me, please forgive me.
Avis stiffens as they pull over at the corner, pressing herself into the seat. Five months ago: Avis had received one of her daughter’s random calls to meet, and off she’d gone to the appointed place — always against Brian’s wishes — clutching money, a shopping bag of gifts — expensive shampoo, a new sweater, and an iPod — and sat alone for over two hours, suffering miserably through suspense and, finally, disappointment. Today she brings nothing but a wallet stuffed with crisp fifties and the tin of cookies.
Nina waits a moment, engine idling, watching Avis’s profile. After a few long moments, she says, “Hang on.” Nina pulls out her thermos, pours an inch of inky coffee in the bottom of two waxed paper cups—cortaditos. She touches her cup to Avis’s, toasts, “Salud, amor, y pesetas.” Avis can barely return Nina’s smile. She closes her eyes to drink. The richly black liquid tastes of smoke, like the pot of Turkish coffee she stood over throughout her childhood, stirring and watching and stirring. When Avis brought it to her mother, she would take a sip, close her eyes, and mutter, “It takes like dirt.”
Avis would apologize and her mother would say, “No, it’s good dirt.”
Avis’s eyes feel hot: she tucks her empty cup on the dash and touches Nina’s hand, mute and overgrateful. Nina shakes her hand loose, waving at Avis. “You get going.”
The car door opens: the day is mild, the air crystalline, rendering all details in hyper-real clarity. Avis realizes she’s shaking, her teeth chattering. She clings to the edge of the car as if it’s an airplane hatch. She shakes her head. “I can’t.”
SHE’D FELT DISORIENTATION strong as vertigo after they’d first moved to Miami — as if her magnetic poles had been switched. The drivers were appalling, punching their horns, running reds, cutting each other off like sworn enemies. There were certain shops and restaurants one would not wish to enter unless one spoke Spanish — and not at her halting, college intermediate level, either. There were whole neighborhoods and sections of town where she felt scrutinized and sized up. How many times had she waited by counters while salespeople went in search of “the one” who spoke English? One of Brian’s new business associates took the two of them out for “traditional Cuban cuisine” to an immense old restaurant on Calle Ocho, a warren of rooms filled with speckled old mirrors and gilt frames. He rattled off an order in Spanish, and barely five minutes later, the waiter returned with heaped-up plates of ground beef and cubed pork and fish in a blanket of white gravy. While Brian and the other man leaned forward into a discussion of easement disputes, his wife raised a penciled eyebrow at Avis. “This isn’t real Cuban food,” she muttered. “It’s for the tourists. Hector brings Americans here because he thinks they’ll like it better.”