When Tito Loved Clara (32 page)

The door opened and two couples entered. It was a moment before Tito realized that the fifth person, who came in behind them, was not with the first four. The fifth person was Clara. From the doorway, she made eye contact with him and crossed the bar in the direction of his booth. There was enough of a crowd that she had to work her way through them, saying, “
Permiso,
” and “Excuse me.” This gave him a few seconds to take her in as she turned and squeezed through the Yankee jerseys. She was much closer to him now than she had been the days he parked outside her house. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a navy blazer with a white T-shirt under it, low heels on her feet. It was not, he noted, funeral attire. Her hair was up in a
moño.
She looked good, he confirmed to himself. Definitely older, definitely a little heavier (and definitely a little more filled out in the breasts, if he wasn't mistaken), but still good. Still beautiful. Still Clara. He wasn't disappointed and hoped that she would feel the same way about him. He'd put on a pair of charcoal gray pants and a white shirt. He was going to borrow a black blazer and tie from his father before the funeral—an excuse to show Clara off to his parents, to take her to the old apartment. He'd gotten his hair cut the night before, gotten those crazy tufts of his trimmed. He felt ready, excited.

As she neared the booth, he stood. What was it going to be? A kiss? A hug? A handshake? He was feeling unsteady on his feet, dizzied by seeing her again. He let her decide and was disappointed when she extended her hand. He shook it and they sat down.

“Hello, Tito. Sorry I'm a little late.”

“No, no,” he waved. “No problem. I was watching the game.” He hoped she couldn't smell the rum on his breath.

“I have to tell you, this is a little weird for me.”

“I know,” he smiled. “It's a little weird for me, too. But we're
here. Thank you. I mean it. You didn't have to come. It
has
been a long time.”

“Yes. A long time,” she agreed, and smiled, as if in relief. “But I felt like I had to come. I owed it to you. At least that much.”

He nodded and smiled. So far so good, but don't push it. “You want something to drink?”

“Sure, what are you having? Is that Coke?”

“There's a little rum in there, too.”

“Oh. Well, maybe a glass of white wine. Whatever they've got.” When he returned with her drink, she was still sitting straight-backed with her elbow on the table. She had not looked over at him even once while he was at the bar. “Thanks,” she said, accepting the glass. He wasn't getting much from her, but at least she was
here,
he reminded himself. “So, can you tell me how you found me? Not that I was hiding, but, you know, there are ten million people in greater New York. I've been wondering how it happened. It just seemed so random.”

He grinned with inordinate pride. “Yeah, sure.”

“I mean, you were looking for Raúl—that's what Deysei told me. Why were you looking for him?”

He held up his hand. “Wait. Let me go back to the beginning. Not to the beginning beginning, but the start of this part. About a month ago, I got a call to do an estimate for a move in New Jersey—Oradell, you know it? No? It's in Bergen County. Guess who answered the door? Ms. Almonte. Even though I never had her as a teacher, I remembered her. I mean, how could I forget? Especially since you used to talk about how great she was.”

“Wow. Where was she moving to?” asked Clara.

“She was moving back into the city, back here to Inwood, to look after her mother. Did you know she grew up on Academy Street?”

“Yes, she told me that once. She said she wanted to help other Dominican girls do what she did—get out. That's what the Word Club was all about.”

“I guess she succeeded,” said Tito, realizing too late how that might sound. There was an awkward silence. “Anyway,” he continued, “she told me her husband didn't want the mother-in-law moving in with them.”

“Harsh.”

“Yeah, can you believe it? Probably some uptight white guy.” He winced. The same might be said of Clara's husband. He needed to watch his mouth. “So Raúl was on my crew for that move. You know he used to work for Cruz Brothers?”

“I did,” said Clara. “But I never thought
you
were still working there.”

“The only job I've ever had,” Tito said with more melancholy than he intended. He got back to the point: “A couple of weeks after the move, Ms. Almonte calls me up and tells me that something was stolen from her dresser during the move.”

“The bangle.”

“Right. Anyway, I knew that there was no way Hector—the other guy on the crew—had taken it. Very religious. Sends half his money home to his family in Guatemala or El Salvador or wherever. He wasn't going to risk losing his paycheck. Besides, I also heard that Raúl had been in Rikers.”

“Yeah,” said Clara. “It's true. He's definitely a little suspect.”

“So I tracked him down. The address we had was on Cooper Street. I guess that was your sister's apartment. I didn't know you had a sister.”

“She's my half-sister. Yunis. From my mother's second marriage. I have to tell you, I was kind of relieved when she broke up with him.”

“Yeah?” “I never liked the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't looking at him. Go on.”

“Right.” He almost asked about Deysei, but thought better of
it. That would come later. The conversation was going well. Finish the story first. “So anyway, Santiago, you know—the super in your sister's building—is an old friend of my papi's. He gave me your address in New Jersey. Of course, I didn't know it was
your
address. I was looking for Raúl, and because of that, I was careful. I kind of hung out on the street for a little while checking out the comings and goings. No offense, but for all I knew it was a crack house—Rikers and all. That was when I saw Deysei with the bangle on her arm. And that was when I saw you.”

Clara nodded thoughtfully, as if pondering his story, as if look-ing for flaws in it. “Did you ever find Raúl?” she asked.

“No. Once I took the bangle back to Ms. Almonte, she was cool. Besides, her mother had just passed.” He said nothing for a long moment. Then: “So that's how I found you, Clara. Now it's my turn. What happened to
you
?”

Clara did not speak at first. To Tito, it seemed like she was trying to get the facts straight in her head, like the moments before an exam in school. “My mother happened,” she said, at last. “She was at a party my father took me to that summer after you and I graduated from Kennedy. This was right around the time of—you know, that day in the apartment. I hadn't seen her since before my father brought me to New York when I was six. I had the chance to go live with her in Queens. I knew it had to be an all or nothing deal. My father wasn't going to share me with her. I wasn't going to be able to come back. I couldn't show my face around the neighborhood. My mother and her second husband came and got me and I went to live with her. It happened so fast. I'm sorry, Tito. I'm really sorry. I didn't have a chance to tell you. But I just couldn't keep living with my father and Dolores. I had to get out of there.”

“I would have gone to Queens to see you,” he said, trying to be reasonable, trying not to get mad. “That would have been no big deal.”

“I know, but I was really worried my father was going to find me, that he would come and make trouble for my mother. I felt like I needed to break all ties with the neighborhood. What did you think happened to me?”

“I don't know. I guess I thought you'd just gone to Cornell early. I went up there, to Ithaca, looking for you. So I had no idea. They told me that you weren't at the school, told me that you'd never been there. I thought maybe something terrible had happened to you.”

“That's why I wrote to you,” she said. “I didn't want you to worry.”

“And then I ran into your stepmother in December that year and I asked her about you.”

“What did she say?”

“She went all crazy. Started yelling at me. I got the hell out of there.”

Clara nodded again.

“I wondered if maybe you'd killed yourself, but I didn't believe it. Man, so all that time, you were living in Queens. And you didn't try to contact me?”

Her features fell. She looked spent. “I'm sorry, Tito. It was not an easy time for me.”

He nodded. “It wasn't easy for me either, Clara. I was in love with you. I still am. I'm still in love with you.”

She glowered. It was the same look he got when he hit on an unreceptive woman, a look that he was all too familiar with. “How can you say that? We haven't seen each other in so long. You're telling me you don't have a wife? A girlfriend?”

“No, Clara. I don't have a wife. I don't have a girlfriend. And I can say it because that's how I feel.” Here they were, already at this point. He'd thought it would take longer to get there. “How do you feel, Clara?”

“About you? Tito, I don't know you.” She brought her hand to her face.

“Sure you do. I haven't changed much.”

“You
should
have changed. It's been fifteen years. You want to know how I feel? I feel lousy,” she said. “I feel lousy that I had to do that to you, but I didn't know what else to do. I was eighteen years old.”

“It's OK,” he said, trying to settle things down. He lifted his glass and finished his drink. Clara sipped her wine and looked around the bar. “It's OK. It's OK,” he repeated, under his breath. Then: “You hungry? You want something to eat?”

“No, that's all right. I'll need to get going soon,” she said.

“Already? You don't want to come to the wake?”

“I don't know. It would feel a little weird. I bet there will be a bunch of teachers from the school.”

“I think Ms. Almonte really wants to see you again. Come on. You said you felt lousy. Maybe this will help you feel a little better.”

“I don't know,” she said. “A wake?”

“All right,” he said. “I'm not going to force you. But maybe we could just pass by the apartment.”

“What apartment?”

“My parents' place on Seaman.”

She looked unsure about this.

“Come on, they'd love to see you. Especially my father.”

He could tell that the idea intrigued her. “Did they know that . . . you and me?” she asked.

“No. I never told them,” he said, and this seemed to make the difference.

“OK,” she said. “But really, I can't stay long. I've got to get back to New Jersey.”

They stood and left the bar. Outside, he had to blink about
fifty times before his eyes got used to the light. He led her across Broadway and they walked up to Isham and turned left toward the park.

“What the hell is this?” asked Clara.

The intersection was blocked off by police barricades and each side of the street was lined with tables piled with produce and baked goods. One of the first stalls promised
THE BEST PICKLE IN NEW YORK
. Another featured tubs of fresh mozzarella. Farther along there were loose pyramids of Indian corn, apples, and tomatoes. People—Dominican and white, young and old—moved among the stalls pushing strollers, carrying canvas totes that said
NOT A PLASTIC BAG
, chatting while sipping warm cider and eating fresh-baked scones.

“The farmers' market,” said Tito.

“Inwood has a farmers' market? Since when?”

“A couple years now,” said Tito. “It runs from Labor Day through Thanksgiving.”

“Wow,” said Clara. She took it in as if the circus had come to town.

“It's not the neighborhood where we grew up, Clarita. Things are changing.”

“I knew things were changing, but not this fast.”

“I'm going to get some flowers for the wake,” he said. “Do you think that's a good idea?”

“Sure,” she said, and they headed for a stall that sold potted plants and fresh-cut flowers. Tito selected a bouquet of autumnal blooms in a plastic vase.

The market had not been part of his plan. Nonetheless, it seemed to have relaxed Clara a little bit. Had she become such a suburbanite that her old inner city neighborhood freaked her out? It could be that she simply felt dislocated as you do when a bodega you are used to seeing every day is suddenly replaced by a bank. Or was it him?
Probably me,
Tito thought. Still, he was enjoying walking
beside her, enjoying the possibility that the people milling among the stalls might assume that he and Clara were together, that they were married. As he collected his change, he saw something else that had not been part of his plan, something that was almost too good to be true. Coming toward them was the basic family unit: Tamsin, her husband, and Wyatt. The husband was giving Wyatt a piggyback ride. Tamsin carried a bag with purchases from the market. They looked like they were off to a picnic. Tito waited for, and registered with pleasure, the moment when Tamsin recognized him. As he waited, he put his arm behind Clara's back, not touching her, but holding it there, just behind the small of her back, in a possessive, guiding gesture. Tamsin looked startled, her mouth falling slightly open, but recovered quickly, smiling and pointing, while saying something to her son. Tito lowered his hand before Clara could notice what he was doing.

“Tío!” shouted Wyatt, clambering down from his father's shoulders and running at them. This was too much. Tito could not believe his luck. The kid jumped into his arms.

“Hi Wyatt,” he said, setting the boy down and tousling his hair. “Where are you guys going?”

“We're going to Fort Tie-Ron Park,” he said, enunciating carefully. By that time, Tamsin and her husband had caught up. Tito saw Tamsin take an appraising look at Clara before saying hello.

“Hi,” Tito replied, and introduced Clara to them, deliberately not mentioning what his relationship to her was.

“So, how have you been?” Tamsin asked.