When Tito Loved Clara (36 page)

She remembered all that had happened since the morning she had fled in Javy's cab, remembered how she had lived in her mother's apartment for two years, commuting into Manhattan to attend classes, remembered how she'd found a parttime job with a filing service that worked in law libraries all over Midtown, remembered how, when Yunis's baby was born, she took her turn in the rotation of feeding and changing her, sharing these duties with her mother and sister. She remembered taking her $512 and buying a crib and bedding and formula for the baby, remembered how tired she had been all the time in school and at work, remembered realizing one day that months had passed since her last period. She told nobody about it and went by herself to have it done in a place in Manhattan, a place whose address she'd gotten from an ad in the subway.

One day Yunis had stopped talking about Deysei's father, stopped talking about moving to Florida. Not long after that, she met the ex-sailor from Virginia, who had an apartment up in Inwood, where Yunis and Deysei moved. She remembered the long, slow thaw that took place between her and her mother, how it wasn't until she had gotten married and had a child of her own that she felt a real bond develop. She remembered library school and the early days of her courtship with Thomas, a heady time when, she thought, nothing could go wrong for her anymore. But of course it could. Not much later, right around the time she and Thomas had moved in together, she got the phone call telling her that her father had been murdered. He had been killed during a holdup of the store, shot four times in the chest and head. He'd been robbed before and had always just handed over the money. But Clara was willing to bet that he'd gotten sick of it, that he'd put up a fight and paid the price.

That call had come from inside the house she was looking at now. Clara stayed parked there for half an hour, partly in the hope of seeing one of the house's current residents and partly because she was still reeling from all that had happened that afternoon. All these years later, Tito still carried a torch for her. It sickened her to think of it, to admit that the unborn baby had always been more important to her than the loss of Tito—that she pined for it much more than she had ever pined for him. It shamed her to think how little she had accounted for him. But what was she supposed to do now? He was unstable. A reasonable relationship between them was not possible. To see him again would only encourage his outrageous hopes.

And then there was Thomas. Had he really gone to Washington? Or was he somewhere else entirely? At a bed-and-breakfast in Vermont with the blonde from the photograph, sleeping in a four-poster bed decorated with an absurd number of pillows, which they would use to experiment with different sexual positions, sleeping late and waking to classical music and buckwheat pancakes. Or perhaps they were in a hotel suite in Atlantic City, where her husband, who never gambled, would play roulette, the blonde, in a slinky dress, clutching his arm and jumping up and down as the ball landed on his number, bringing him a small fortune, which he would spend on her. Or perhaps they were in a cheap motel on Route 22, the two of them running out to get fast food between fucks, eating it while watching the free HBO.

Clara's imagination could conjure a string of these appalling scenarios with little effort. She'd had her suspicions all along but had always pushed them aside because Thomas was so unflirtatious with other women, so straight, so square, because, until the last six months or so, she had always felt herself to be the main object of his desire. It had been a difficult year, she would admit that. But she was used to difficulty, used to waiting out the bad times. She had counted on Thomas being the same way but, really, what
difficulties had he ever faced in his life? Raised in the suburbs. His prosperous parents had divorced, but it had never seemed like a traumatic event for him. He was in college by then and often said that divorce had been the right thing for both of them. It was easy to romanticize hard times when they happened to someone else, even someone you loved. It was much harder when it happened to you. Maybe Thomas was only now finding that out. Yet, she felt that her willingness to trust her husband had somehow made her complicit in his cheating.

It was almost five and no one had come or gone from the house. She took a final look and started the engine. If she didn't get out of there, she was going to have a panic attack. She drove home. The next day, when she tried to reconstruct everything that had happened, she would find that she could not remember anything about the drive home, no landmarks passed, no tolls paid, no fool pulling a dumb move in front of her. It was a quarter to six when she turned onto Passaic Street. Someone on the block must have been having a party because there were a half-dozen cars parked on the street. As Clara pulled into her driveway, she understood that the house where the party was taking place was her own. Through the window, she saw Dominicans: Dominican men holding beer bottles, Dominican women in bright summer dresses. Reggaeton was playing loud enough to vibrate the aluminum siding. She wondered if any of the neighbors had called the police yet. Doubtful—it was still daylight and the party did not seem to be out of control (so far). Last Fourth of July, the Samuels across the street had waited until ten o'clock to call the police on their next-door neighbors, the Carlisles, who were hosting their annual Independence Day bash. A mild scuffle had broken out when LeShon Carlisle had refused, at first, to send his guests home. That was the last thing she needed today.

Clara went in the back door, her mouth still tasting like tin, preparing herself for the worst—for her dining room table to have
been broken in half by someone dancing on it, for her kitchen walls to have been charred by someone trying to extinguish a grease fire with a glass of water. The actual state of things was not nearly so bad. It was just a party, the sort of food-drink-and-dancing gathering that accompanied every significant Dominican life event, from a birthday to a graduation to Mother's Day. Clara assumed that this was an impromptu welcome home for her sister. This is certainly what would have been going on at Yunis's apartment this afternoon if she had been able to return there from the airport. Clara's only wish was that her sister had asked her first.

“Clara!” said her cousin Manny, who was standing at the kitchen counter, slicing chunks of meat from a
pernil
in a tinfoil baking dish, his three-hundred-pound body shaking with the effort. Nearby a platter was dressed in a grease-soaked paper towel on which a single
pastelito
was marooned. Glasses everywhere. Bottles everywhere. Plates with bones and crumbs and grains of rice on them. The music thumping away.

“Hi, Manny.” She kissed him on his pillowy cheek.

“Yo, you should try some of this. It's slamming. Erlinda outdone herself.”

“That's OK, thanks. Where's Guillermo?”

“Downstairs.”

“I'm going to go check on him.” She nodded and went down to the basement. Guillermo was on the couch, a Hot Wheels car in his hand, Deysei at his side, with her arm around him. The robot that Thomas had bought Guillermo was on the floor close by. They were watching
Tom and Jerry.
It was the one in which Jerry goes to Manhattan, gets scared out of his wits, and comes running back to Tom.

“Mommy!” said Guillermo, getting off the couch and hugging her.

“Hi sweetheart.” She hugged him back. No matter what, there was always Guillermo in her life. “How's everything?”

“We're watching cartoons,” he said.

“I see that. Deysei's looking after you, huh?”

“Yes, Mommy. It's too loud upstairs.”

“I agree. It's too loud. How are you, Deysei?”

“Tired,” she said. She had a scowl.

“Have you had a chance to talk to your mother?”

“A little. Manny and Erlinda got here right after you left—like they were waiting around the corner or something. Then everyone started coming.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Not yet. I just want to get it over with now, but she ain't interested in me. Too busy having a good time with her friends.”

“All right. You guys did the right thing coming down here. Let me go upstairs and find your mother.”

Manny was no longer in the kitchen. A woman Clara had met once at Yunis's was reaching into the fridge for a beer.

“You want one?” she asked Clara.

Clara said no and went into the living room. Seven or eight people were in there, drinking and talking. It smelled like at least one of them had been smoking a joint. Someone called out her name, but since her sister was not in the room, she did not bother to respond. She looked into the dining room, where the table was intact and laden with food and her best china. Four or five people were in there getting seconds or thirds for themselves. Again, her sister was not among them. “This is off the hook!” someone exclaimed.

She finally found Yunis in the sun room, on the love seat, holding a bottle of Corona and a cigarette. A guy Clara didn't recognize was sitting next to her, trying to get cozy. Yunis was talking on the phone while laughing and fending off the guy's advances. A third person, a younger guy, maybe in his late teens, was sitting at her computer playing some kind of online video game. The guy who was trying to get friendly with her sister looked up and said, “Oye.”

This got Yunis's attention. She said something into her phone and snapped it shut. “Hey, Sis,” she said, nonchalantly.

“What the hell?” said Clara. “Huh, Yunis? What the hell? I leave you here to look after my child and you have a party!”

“I told you Manny and Erlinda were coming.”

“Yes, you did. Who are the rest of these people?”

“I'm Carlos,” said the guy on the couch next to Yunis.

Clara ignored him, kept her gaze on her sister.

“Word got around,” said Yunis. “I guess I got a lot of friends.”

“Jesus, Yunis. This is
my
house. If you're going to stay here you can't be doing this shit. No wonder Mami kicked you out. This isn't Washington Heights.”

“C'mon, Sis. Chill out. Have a drink. And whatever you do, don't bring Mami into this. How was your date?”

“It wasn't a fucking date!”

“Not so good, huh?” said Yunis sipping her beer, smiling.

Clara shook her head in exasperation. She wanted to slap her sister. From far away, there was the sound of shattering glass, as if a heavy crystal vase had been dropped on the floor.

“Oh, shit,” said Yunis.

Clara left the sunroom and walked through the dining room, turning off the stereo on her way to the stairs. At the top of the stairs, two young men in baseball caps and football jerseys were bent over, laughing uncontrollably. Right behind them, in the bathroom, a stepladder straddled the shards that remained of a light fixture.

“What happened?” asked Clara.

The two young men straightened up and tried to control their laughter, but the giggles escaped from their mouths. They were responsible for the joint she'd smelled downstairs, she was sure.

“Why is my light fixture broken?” she asked, hoping a more specific question would produce an answer.

“The bulb burned out,” said the first, who wore a Miami
Dolphins jersey. This was all he could manage before breaking up again.

“We were trying to put in a new one,” said the second, who wore the silver and black of the Oakland Raiders. “But we didn't screw it in right.”

“I guess we screwed up!” said the first.

Clara looked at them for a long moment, at the completeness of their amusement. When was the last time she had laughed like that—high or not? She couldn't remember. “Out of my house!” she finally said.

This got them to stop laughing. “This is
your
house?” the second asked.

“Yes.
My
house. I pay the mortgage here. The party's over.” Just as she said this, the music came back on, even louder than before.

“Damn,” said the second. “I can't believe that. I thought this was Yunis's place. I thought she bought it with the inheritance money she got.” They walked down the stairs, leaving behind the mess on the bathroom floor.

Clara watched them go and thought it best to check the three upstairs bedrooms before following them. With some relief, she discovered that the master was empty and, apparently, untouched. The guest room—now Deysei's—was likewise unoccupied and undisturbed. But opening the door to Guillermo's Pixar-themed room, she heard voices. The room was darkened, with the curtains drawn. Under the Buzz Lightyear quilt there was a mound that could only be a body—or two. Clara turned on the lights and immediately saw two pairs of shoes on the floor, a pair of Nikes and pair of red strappy fuck-me heels.

“Come on out,” she said. “I know you're under there.” This was a game she played with Guillermo sometimes in the morning and she used the same tone now.

The quilt was thrown back, revealing an old friend of Yunis's from Inwood named Aurora and a guy Clara didn't know. The
guy's bare, muscular brown arm, emerged like a rifle from under the quilt.
Who the hell are all these people?
she asked herself. Hadn't she come to New Jersey to escape them? Aurora was sitting up now, buttoning herself back into presentability, her unhooked bra strap hanging out the armhole of her sleeveless blouse. The guy was reaching under the covers, obviously pulling his pants back up. He was sucking his teeth and sighing as he did so. Guillermo's Lightning McQueen lamp had been knocked over during their tryst and lay on its side. Some of the books in the bedside stand had also been bumped to the floor.

“Christ, Aurora!” said Clara.

“In my son's bed?” “Sorry,” she said in the Dominican-inflected way—
So
-ree—getting out from under the quilt and stepping into her heels. She smoothed her blouse and her skirt.

“You too,” Clara said to guy.

“Out of the bed now.”

“In a minute. I've got a boner over here.”