Havana Jazz Club (15 page)

CHAPTER 28

Dear Billie,

I know you just got a letter from me, and you’ll be surprised to receive another one so soon. But I’m writing to you now because I have important news that can’t wait.

Papa is no longer with us. He had been doing badly for a while and had me very worried. I didn’t want to say anything to you in my last letter because I was still hoping he would get better, as he had before, but this time was different. He kept talking until the very last moment about going to visit you all in Spain and meeting his grandson Nicolás. It was the only thought that seemed to revive him, but then, he would shut down. Every day he grew a little worse, until he finally left me . . . I’m suddenly so alone! Rubén is now in Miami, as you know, and couldn’t attend his father’s funeral because they would have arrested him. Maybe they wouldn’t even have let him onto the island—what do I know. I don’t understand political matters. All I know is that my husband is no longer at my side and that two of my children are scattered across the globe. All I have left is the comfort of your brother Eduardo and his wife, God bless them! That pair of beautiful little grandchildren they gave me are my only joy. If it weren’t for them, I don’t know what would become of me now.

Forgive me, Billie. You’ll have enough to think about with the news of your father’s passing without me burdening you. Don’t pay me any mind. Tell Nicolás that his grandfather loved him very much even though he didn’t know him, to never forget him and always keep a little corner of his heart for him.

I’ll write to you again when I feel better. I need some time to adjust.

Say hello to Orlando from me. A big hug to you from your mother who loves you so much.

Mama

Billie reread the letter a few times, the tears that flooded her eyes making it difficult for her to decipher the words. Her father was gone, and she would never see him again. “Forgive me, Papa,” she whispered from the bottom of her heart. “I know I caused you a lot of pain by leaving like that, and now I’ll never be able to make it up to you . . .” Her poor mother! If only there were some way to move her to Spain, she thought.

When Nicolás came home, he found her sitting on the sofa, with the letter still on her lap, her face deeply saddened, her eyes red from crying.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I got a letter from your grandmother. Your grandfather has died,” Billie replied, her voice wavering.

“Oh, well,” Nicolás said indifferently. “I’m going to lie down for a bit. Let me know when dinner’s ready.”

The boy turned and left, and she heard the door close behind him. She sat there, stunned by his cold reaction. Suddenly, the harsh sounds of a heavy metal group filled the house. Billie jumped up, enflamed by indignation, and headed to her son’s room.

She opened the door without knocking and found Nicolás sprawled on his bed with a cigarette between his lips.

“I’ve told you a million times not to smoke in the house!” she screamed, grabbing the cigarette and throwing it out the window.

“Fuck! You could knock first, you know? The window’s open so the smoke goes out,” Nicolás protested, sitting up.

“And turn off that music! Don’t you have any feelings? Aren’t you capable of showing any respect? I just told you your grandfather died!”

“Yeah, and so what? Are we going to have a year of mourning for the old man?” Nicolás reached out and turned off the stereo with an annoyed flick. “Who cares? Grandfather died, okay. I mean, that’s what happens, right? Old people die.”

“How can you be so cynical? He was your grandfather! My father!”

“And what do you want me to do? Cry? I never even met him. And I don’t know what it’s like to lose a father because I’ve never had one.”

“Why would you bring that up now, Nicolás?”

“Because I’ve never had a father, and you’ve never explained the lies you made up. Who was my father, eh?” Nicolás rounded on his mother, defiant. “Where is he? Oh, right! The poor guy died suddenly. They wouldn’t let him out of Cuba, and so he could never reunite with us. And I guess they didn’t let him write letters either, because I never got any. You could have been smarter and had your parents write me in his name so I could swallow the bull a little easier.”

Billie was speechless. What could she say in the face of her son’s rage? How long had it been building up? It had crossed her mind that something like this would happen someday. She just wasn’t expecting it to happen right then. Caught off guard, she felt ill equipped to deal with it.

“Come on, Mom! Do you think I’m an idiot?” Nicolás continued. “I swallowed your tall tales when I was little, but I learned to think for myself a long time ago. So, who was he? Or do you not even know?”

“How dare you talk to me like that?”

“Did you have an ‘accident’ when you were working at that cabaret in Madrid? Was I the unintended consequence of some one-night stand?” Nicolás continued, implacable.

“I worked as a singer,” Billie said. “I’ve told you that a thousand times. And your father was my husband. I only found out I was pregnant when I was already in Spain.”

“Why didn’t he come with you?” he persisted. “I never got that part.”

“I told you an opportunity arose for me to make the trip. Your father was going to meet me later, but things got complicated. It wasn’t easy to get off the island.”

“The truth will always come out,” her mother used to tell her when she was little. Billie had always believed it would be better for her son to grow up under the loving and protective shadow of a father, even if he were far away. But when Nicolás started asking questions, she found herself having to make up answers.

“Enough. And the fatty, what about him? You must have been giving him something all these years to keep him drooling over you.”

“What are you suggesting?” Billie said, trying to stay calm. “Armando is a great friend. We owe him a great deal, and he’s never asked for anything in return. I thought you appreciated him more. He’s always loved you like a son.”

“Oh, so now I’m overflowing with fathers,” Nicolás said sarcastically.

“I’m not going to let you talk to me in that tone!” Billie warned him.

“I’ll talk to you however I want, okay? Who the fuck do you think you are? Always giving me orders, always pretending to be respectable when you’re nothing more than a—”

“Be careful what you say, Nicolás! I’m your mother!”

“Yes, of course. And that makes me the son of a whore,” he spat out.

Before she even realized what she was doing, Billie’s hand flew up and across her son’s face. The boy’s eyes flared with anger, and he smashed his mother against the wall, his hand around her neck.

“Don’t you dare hit me ever again, or I won’t be responsible for what I do,” Nicolás threatened her, his voice strained.

The past blurred with the present. All Billie heard was Orlando’s voice uttering that same threat so many years before in their tiny apartment in Madrid. All she felt was Carlos Quiroga’s hand clasped around her throat, choking her just as it had back then.

She was horrified as she stared at her son. She wasn’t afraid for her own safety. What really frightened her was the knowledge that she had created a monster. Both men’s worst instincts seemed to have been concentrated inside Nicolás.

The young man let go suddenly, and Billie heard the front door slam. Her back still against the wall, she slid down to the floor, too stunned to go after him. She couldn’t understand how this had happened. That violent and cruel being wasn’t her son—he couldn’t be. What could be making him behave that way?

She awaited his return, just as she had so many times. Nico always did the same thing: he left in a rage, slamming the door behind him, and then came back hours later as if nothing had happened. He never said sorry, that was true, but Billie could discern his remorse in his demeanor.

But several hours went by, and Nicolás didn’t come back. Billie got in bed but stayed awake all night waiting for the reassuring sound of the key in the lock. At five in the morning, she jolted at the sound of the telephone. Her heart was pounding as she picked up, the worst scenarios darkening her thoughts.

It was the police.

A stolen motorcycle, the delirium of absolute power provided by some drug, a winding, dark highway on a winter night, and a patch of black ice that shattered any trace of hope.

Nicolás had just turned sixteen.

CHAPTER 29

Just as I do every day since you’ve been gone, Nicolás, I haven’t been able to resist the temptation to go into your room. It’s just as you left it: the sheets tangled on the bed, your clothes piled up on the back of the chair, CDs scattered across the desk, all out of their cases—later you’ll complain that they’re scratched—mingling with books and notebooks, pens and lighters. How could you study in all this chaos? “I like it that way,” you would say. “It’s my style.”

I always tell myself I should straighten up a little. I can’t hope you’ll do it yourself anymore. But I don’t have the strength. Instead, I sit on your bed and hug your pillow, which still smells like you, as if I were hugging you, since you never let me hug you anymore. And I stay there a long time, thinking about you, feeling your presence in each of the objects around me, in all your things, which are suddenly so inanimate without your presence, without your touch. I contemplate the wardrobe that I don’t dare open because it would spew out an avalanche of clothes, shoes, books, and all kinds of long-forgotten stuff that you heaped in there haphazardly whenever I told you to clean your room. Don’t think I didn’t realize it. It’s just that sometimes, I got so tired of getting angry with you and starting another pointless argument.

I look at the horrible posters plastered on your walls, those hard rock bands that look more like delinquents than real artists, with their aggressive poses and black clothes. Yes, I know you’ll say that I’m old, that I’m not hip.

I frighten myself one more time with the grisly images of bloody knives, inverted crosses, young suicides bathed in their own blood, devils with malignant smiles and threatening looks in their bloodshot eyes, and cadaverous, pallid women with purplish lips—Goths, you said they were. How could you be attracted to such a sinister aesthetic? How could you sleep surrounded by such atrocious images?

And those calendars of naked women that are offensive to behold . . . At first I indignantly took them down from your wall and threw them in the trash, but a new one would always show up there a few days later, and in the end, I gave up. Normal for his age! Armando would say, always justifying everything you did.

Suddenly I notice, in this museum of horrors that are the walls of your room, a charming photo peeking out timidly. It’s of you in your soccer jersey with a ball in your hand, smiling proudly at the camera, smiling at me. You were eight years old when I took it after a game. At the sight of it, I can’t help bursting into tears again. I didn’t think I had any left. I thought I had used them all up during those days when I couldn’t stop crying until I was left dry and breathless. My heart is still dry right now, a piece of cork that’s still bobbing along in my chest but that feels dead, numb.

I feel like I just took that photo yesterday. I remember that day so well. You were thrilled because you won the game. You were always very competitive, and you carried the whole team with your charming energy, as if you were the life of each shot. Armando offered to treat us to lunch wherever you wanted to celebrate the triumph—of course, you picked a burger. We didn’t usually let you have that kind of food, but it was a special day, and we were all very happy. You were still my little boy then. You still depended on me and needed me. I was your “dear mama,” as you would say. I was important to you, and you never tired of showing your affection. I was “the best mom in the world,” “the prettiest,” “the best cook,” “the most fun.”

But as time passed and you rushed perilously toward adulthood, that affection and admiration you felt for me turned to indifference, and then, worse, disdain. Suddenly, I was an idiot who didn’t understand anything, who knew nothing, who was only there to aggravate you. I don’t even want to repeat the word you would use about my continuous warnings.

You distanced yourself from me. Your friends took my place and became your priority. I saw how you were moving away but was unable to do anything to stop it. In fact, I knew I shouldn’t stop it, because you had to move away from me to move forward and keep growing up. So I comforted myself with caring for you from a distance, always ready to be at your side if you needed me.

I remember the moment I held you in my arms for the first time after a long night of waiting. Your dark little eyes, almost worried, looked at me without seeing me. I remember your little body curled against my chest, your voracious appetite, and your willful character. Yes, even then . . . I remember the splendid sun those first days of summer and how it turned into a prolonged rain as soon as we left the hospital. I remember how impatient I was for it to clear up so we could go out on the street and discover the marvels of this world that I had brought you into without your permission. I wanted to introduce you to Armando and Matías, to show you our neighborhood and the neighbors. I wanted to show you the parks and gardens where you would run around tirelessly when you were a little older. Finally, after two long days of incessant rain, the last lead-colored clouds left the sky and we could go out in the street. But you closed your eyes as soon as we crossed the threshold and slept placidly—not woken by unexpected noises or gusts of wind or even the caress of an unknown hand or a strange voice in your ear. Nothing awakened your curiosity until we got home again . . . I discovered that the street was better than sleeping pills for you, and I would take you out at night when you were restless. But then suddenly your eyes opened to the world, and a spark of insatiable curiosity ignited in them.

When you slept in your crib, I could spend hours watching you, admiring the perfection of your hands, your fingers, your nails . . . shivering with tenderness at the sight of your tiny curled body, lying face down with your little bum sticking up, fists clenched, your little mouth half-open. Your minuscule nose seemed to sniff around, as though trying to discover the mysteries of life in a wisp of air. Watching you sleep soothed my spirit. Hearing the steady rhythm of your breathing filled me with peace. I would have liked to stop time, to capture that instant because I knew it would pass very quickly. Soon I would be able to treasure that moment’s sweetness only in my memory.

Other beautiful moments would come, it’s true—like you crawling quickly down the hall in the house; like your first dazzling and breathtaking smile; your contagious, irresistible laugh; your first stuttering steps; your first boo-boos; your first words, which quickly turned into an unstoppable torrent of ideas and questions. The “whys” that tried to get to the very essence of all things and demanded an immediate and convincing response. “Mama is big. Mama knows everything,” you seemed to believe. I sometimes found myself in a bind trying to pass the interrogations you would subject me to. Sometimes, I had to admit ignorance, and you would benevolently forgive me, though only after a firm promise that we would resolve your doubt some other time. You would soon forget about it though, because a new and more fascinating thing would catch your attention.

The joyful day arrived when you managed to join a few letters into a word. You overflowed with pride and the desire to show everyone the fabulous new talent you had just acquired. You wanted me to show you how to scribble your name on a piece of paper and then for me to send it right away to the grandparents, so that they could see what you could do.

Then came the first infantile crushes, and your early reflections on the realities of life. “Why doesn’t the girl I love, love me? And why does another girl love me who I don’t love?” you would ask, perplexed and utterly serious. Not wanting to offend you with my laughter, I had to bite my lip and contain the poignant smile provoked by the tremendous gravity of your unrequited loves.

One fine day, I looked at you, and my baby wasn’t there anymore. You had turned into a restless boy, clever and daring. I had to live in a permanent state of alertness, always chasing you and trying to get ahead of your next mischief. Still, even then, you would look to me in question if you fell off your bike and weren’t sure if the accident was serious enough to merit a few tears. “It’s okay, sweetie,” I would tell you. “You have to fall in order to learn.” When you fell again, you looked at me serenely and repeated, now convinced, “It’s okay, Mama. You have to fall in order to learn.”

As you kept growing ceaselessly, you left behind that charming boy who wanted to be the King of Spain one day and an architect who dreamed of building houses for poor people the next, and then a scientist, and then a magician, rock singer, detective . . .

I was the one who taught you how to fly, how to believe in yourself and become independent. I tried to educate you with love and firmness so that one day you could be free, with wings strong enough to carry you wherever you wanted to go. I knew that time was your best ally and my worst enemy. Every step you took was a triumph that I shared proudly with you but that moved you a little further away from me. Yet I never imagined there would be a day when I would lose you completely, when I would lose you like this.

When you started to bring girls home, I watched them suspiciously. None of them seemed good enough for you. You always deserved someone better . . . “They’re just friends,” you would say with a cheeky smile. “Nothing serious.” But you would shut yourself up in your room with them, “to listen to music,” and I would have to adopt a worldly attitude and not get bent out of shape. It disturbed me to think that my boy was becoming a man. So to leave you alone, I would go out to buy some little trifle that I didn’t need, or I would hide on the other side of the house with the volume on the TV turned all the way up because I didn’t want to hear you, or wonder what my little one was doing in that room.

In the end, despite my best efforts to understand you, something broke between us. I don’t really know how or when I started to lose you, but I felt you getting further from me every day. Worst of all, I saw you going down a mistaken path.

And suddenly, one day, you had become a stranger. What had become of my little one? Sometimes I looked nostalgically at old photographs to remember what you had once been like. Where was the little boy in those photos, the one with the clear eyes and happy smile? It was hard to recognize you in this grumpy, cold, even cruel, teenager who came and went from my house as he pleased and treated me like nothing more than a maid. As if I were the owner of a boarding house who was obligated to serve you food and wash your clothes without being worthy of any consideration on your part.

Now, I would give my life to carry on as we had been. To yell at you to get you up in the mornings; to hurry home every day to make dinner for you and then complain when you ran out, practically still chewing the last bite; to be able to scold you for not spending time at home and never helping me with anything; to get angry with you for coming home at ungodly hours of the night. I would give my life to be able to brood over why you never listen to me, to listen to your impertinent answers, to get frustrated at your insolence, to get tangled in one of our arguments . . . I’ll never again be able to bother our neighbors with our screams or the volume of your frightening music. The house is silent now and terribly empty, invaded by sadness and loneliness.

Could I have avoided it? Should I have been harder on you? Easier, maybe? What could I have done to have you still here, by my side? I’ll never forgive myself for getting angry with you that night.

I don’t know how I’m going to tell my mother. How can I explain to her that she will never meet her grandson, that his sixteen years were broken forever on a dark highway, on some turn that he thought he could conquer? In a way, I’m glad Papa isn’t here. At least he’s saved from this suffering. But, who will absolve me of my guilt? Where am I to find consolation?

Why did you do it, Nicolás? Why did you have to steal that motorcycle? We would have made up, just as we had every other time. We would have forgiven each other and put the argument behind us. Your life was my life. You were everything to me. You were the reason I got out of bed every morning. You gave me the strength to face life and battle with it day after day. You gave meaning to my existence. You were my reason for living, my dream, my hope, my happiness. Who am I now? What will get me out of bed tomorrow? What is the point in carrying on? I’ll never learn to live without you. I can’t do it, and I don’t want to. I need you, Nicolás. This empty house reflects the state of my soul, which has been left desolate without you.

I want to go with you, Nicolás; I want to be by your side. There’s nothing holding me here.