Celia Cantú jerked up, gasping for breath. There was no man beside her bed, no ghostly figures lurking in the shadows. It was moonlight, not daylight dimmed by the drawn blinds of a sickroom, that had found its way into her bedroom. By the time her breathing returned to normal, she knew that it was not a dream, at least, not the kind she was used to. It was another attempt by her unconscious to take her back to a time she never knew. The same clarity of mind and strength of purpose she had felt in previous visions had infused her, but in this one the body had run its course. She herself was healthy as a horse, yet for the duration of tonight’s episode she had felt, as surely as Celia Sánchez had felt, the swift approach of a stone-hard end of time.
NINE
JOE knocked three times before the door opened. Celia stood there in bare feet and an oversized T-shirt, which, he recalled, was what she had always worn to bed—although not for long, once he got there. She was half-asleep, dark curls deliciously dishevelled.
“Sorry if I woke you. But, geez, it’s nearly noon!”
“It is?” she asked groggily and turned away, rubbing her eyes.
Joe stepped inside, glad to be out of the dingy hallway that to him appeared not to have been repainted in years.
“What do you want?” Celia demanded, backing away.
“Let’s go shopping.” He beamed.
“Shopping?” She echoed the word as she had never heard it.
“Come on. I’ll make coffee while you get dressed.”
He crossed the small living-dining area to the kitchenette and opened first one then the other door of the single cupboard. It seemed impossibly bare for a functioning household.
Celia pushed him aside with undisguised annoyance. “Get out of here. I will make my own coffee.”
Joe’s impulse was to run his hand up under the thigh-length T-shirt to where he knew for a fact there would be no panties. But he was no fool. He backed out of the kitchen and sat down at the small table. Medical literature might be full of PMS studies, but in his experience, female moodiness was a morning thing. He’d never figured out if it was physical or emotional or, for that matter, if there was any difference, given how readily hurting women became excessively emotional and emotional women developed physical symptoms. All he knew was that until that pre-breakfast prickliness passed, a man who valued his body parts did not put them in harm’s way by standing too close.
Celia filled a dented aluminium percolator with water and ground coffee, slammed it on the stove, and lit the gas burner. “Shopping for what?”
“Everything. I don’t think Mamá has bought a single thing for herself or the house since I left ten years ago.”
As he spoke, Joe looked around the living room. In contrast to the public areas of the building, the apartment was clean almost to the point of sterility and freshened by a sea breeze blowing in through open jalousie windows. Apart from the ugly grey-topped Formica table at which he sat, the room held a sagging sofa facing a small TV set, one wooden rocking chair, a side table upon which was an old-style black phone and a cheap blue vase filled with three big sunflowers, and a bookshelf with a shockingly worn collection. Some of the volumes he recognized as dating back to college.
He was not aware that Celia had come out of the kitchen until she spoke. Voice harsh with scorn, she said, “Por Dios, José. You have become a Yanqui.”
Normally Joe didn’t mind being called a Yankee; on the contrary, he was proud of it. But coming from her, and in that tone of voice! “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked in the aggrieved manner of one wrongly accused.
“The way you sit there judging the quality of our lives by how much or how little we have. That is how it is done up north, no? Stuff is joy. No stuff is misery.”
“Ah, Celia—”
“Cubans have not much stuff, so it follows that we must be miserable.”
“I never said that!” he protested. “It’s just, well, there was Mamá this morning, squeezing fresh orange juice with her arthritic hands and sending over to the neighbours to borrow toilet paper. Toilet paper, for Chrissake! How can things be that bad?”
“Things are not ‘that bad.’ They are far better than they were when you left.”
“Yeah, but Mamá says this change to the dollar economy has been brutal. Her pension is in pesos and Luis’s salary is in pesos and pesos don’t buy a damned thing anymore.”
“True.” Celia thumped a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. “And if her dear son had been sending her as little as fifty US dollars per month, she could have been living like a queen all this time.”
Joe held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay! So I’ve been a jerk. But believe me, it wasn’t easy to get by over there. Now that I am in a position to help, I want to make it up to her; I really do. Come with me, Celia. Help me pick out the things she really needs. Groceries, clothes, household items, whatever. You can decide.”
“You want her to have all the stuff your Miami family had?” she mocked. “The one that fell apart?”
Once again Joe was reminded of how on the mark her laser-sharp retorts could be, and how they had always surprised him, given her essentially compliant nature. But he wasn’t offended. On the contrary, he enjoyed the challenge. If there was one thing he knew, it was how to disarm an angry woman. Lowering his eyes like a chastised puppy, he said softly, “I never said possessions make families happy. But with people who’re already happy, I don’t see how a few presents can hurt. I mean, that is the Cuban way, isn’t it? Sharing?”
He took a sip of the coffee, and although he had long since begun to drink coffee black, like an American, he smiled. “You remembered just how much sugar I like.”
His looked up in time to see her anger turn to red-faced embarrassment. Without a word, she picked up her cup and marched into the bedroom. A dresser drawer slammed, and there was the sound of water running in the bathroom. Moments later she emerged dressed as she had been at the airport, in jeans, T-shirt, and sandals.
“Vamos,” she snapped.
He leapt ahead of her to open the door. She ignored the pseudo-servile gesture, turning back for the sunflowers. Joe wondered why she chose to bring them but didn’t ask. He had got what he came for.
A handful of commercial billboards along the Vía Monumental jolted him; certainly there had been nothing like that when he lived here. Supposedly there were dollar stores selling consumer goods all over the island now. However, from what he had seen so far, Habana still had fewer commercial venues than you would find in a heavily restricted residential neighbourhood in the States.
He drove through the tunnel under the Bahía de Habana and followed the Malecón. It was thronged with midday traffic made up of late-model rentals and pre-1960 cars that had become a Cuban symbol. Cyclists and pedicabs crowded a bike lane along the seawall. In some places waves splashed up and over, leaving sidewalk, bike lane, and the right side of the street drenched in salt spray.
They passed a plaza hung with strange bird-looking metal sculptures, new to him yet somehow familiar. Ah yes, he’d seen it on TV. This was where they’d held the largest of many mass rallies to demand the return of the child Elián. According to network news, half a million Cubans had turned up to demand that the five-year-old, whom the mother had opted to take to Florida in a small boat, be returned to his father. The mother had died en route and Miami relatives had fought sending the boy home. Media coverage at the time made it appear as if all Cuban Americans were in favour of keeping the kid in the States, but privately Joe was pleased when US courts ruled against the relatives and allowed the boy to return to Cuba with his dad. A girl, maybe not. But damn it all, a boy belonged with his papá.