The Love of a Latino (16 page)

Not bothering to turn around
he shook her off. “There is nothing to talk about.”

His long strides took him
back out into the living room, but Dahlia was hot on his heels. “You can’t walk
away like this. We need to talk.”

She almost collided with his
hard back when he abruptly stopped. Whirling around to face her, Dahlia could
see the throbbing vein in his forehead, his lips compressed but his eyes said
it all. He was battling to stay in control.

When he finally opened his
mouth, he delivered in a firm voice, “I do not have time to talk. I have a
business to run. If you are in need of company you can call
Mamá.”

Dahlia let him leave after
that. What else could she say? Right now she needed to recuperate, to heal
physically and emotionally. Raphael needed time and she would give it to him.
When she was better and stronger she would continue this battle. She had
already lost her son. She was not going to lose her husband too.

****

“You seem to be doing much
better. It is so good to see you out of that dreadful cast.”

Dahlia observed quietly as
her mother-in-law busied herself around the kitchen, wiping and dusting. “Yes,
it feels good to be able to use both of my hands now. How is Alejandro? I have
not seen much of him.”

“Alejandro is Alejandro.
Always busy at work. I tell him it is time he hands over to Raphael, but that
man is stubborn.” Lauralyn stopped her chore to look at her daughter-in-law.
“Dahlia...how are things between you and my son?”

Unable to look the other
woman in the eye, fearful that she may see the turmoil within her, Dahlia
lowered her head. The scraping of the chair on the tile alerted her to Lauralyn
sitting next to her by the island. The woman was as stubborn as her son—she was
not going to give up until she had some answers.

“Look at me, Child.”

Hesitantly, Dahlia raised wet
eyes to her mother-in-law’s caring ones. “I can see it there…in your eyes, the
sadness. You are still grieving for your baby. But there is more. There is also
a sadness there that I know Raphael has put.
Por favor,
tell me.”

This woman reminded Dahlia so
much of her own mother: loving, kind, caring for others. It was never hard to
talk to her, and Dahlia needed someone to talk to.

“He hates me, Lauralyn. I
know he blames me for our baby dying,” she cried.

“Nonsense, Child! My son may
be angry now, but he does not hate or blame you. That was an accident.”
Lauralyn wiped at the tears that trickled down her daughter-in-law’s face.

“Yes he does. He hardly ever
speaks to me and when he does he is
so
cold. I don’t know where he
sleeps most nights, but when he is here he sleeps in the spare room. I just
wish he would talk to me.” Dahlia lamented.

“Sweetheart, men are
stubborn. Raphael is Alejandro’s son, so I know. If he does not want to talk,
then make him listen. Tell him how you feel.” How could she not love this
woman? This woman who, had welcomed her as a stranger and even now, was her
only pillar of strength. “I have to go now, but take my advice. Talk to him,
okay?”

With a promise from Dahlia,
Lauralyn neatened up the kitchen- she had just prepared dinner in for her son
and his wife- and then left. In her car she sat and not for the first time in
the past weeks she cried. Both, her son and daughter-in-law were hurting and
there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

****

At dinner that night, Dahlia
was determined that her husband listen to what she had to say. Too many nights
she had stayed awake in her lonely bed, torturing herself with images of
Raphael and that woman. Too long she grieved by herself for her son.

He sat across from her, much
as he did every night since her arrival home five weeks ago: quiet, cold, and
distant. One fisted hand rested on the table, the other maneuvering the food.
Reaching out a hand she covered his fisted one but he eased his away. She felt
the slam of the hurt against her heart but she was not going to give up so
easily.

“Raphael...can we please
talk?” He ignored her, continuing to eat his meal.

“Raphael….” Dahlia jumped
when he slammed his fist against the table causing the dishes to rattle.

“Damn it, Dahlia! How many
times do we have to go through this? There is nothing to talk about.”

Not backing down she piped up,
“Well if you don’t want to talk you are going to listen. I have plenty I would
like to say.”

“You can talk all you want,
Dahlia, but I am not going to sit here and listen.” Shoving away from the table
he disposed the remaining of his unfinished dinner into the garbage. Thrusting
the dishes into the sink he stalked off in the direction of the front door.

He was not going to do this
to her again. She would not let him. “What, you won’t talk to me so you are
going to run off to your lover?”

Raphael stopped dead, his
hand frozen on the door knob. Slowly he turned to look at her, brows knotted. “What
did you just say?” He asked in a deadly calm voice.

“You think I don’t know about
them, your lover and your child!” Words escaped her mouth, words her brain
didn’t seem to be processing.

Slowly, Raphael came toward
her until he was towering over her. Refusing to back down she looked up at him.
“Would you care to
enlighten
me on what you are talking about?” He
breathed into her face.

Licking dry her lips, she
festered up the courage. It was now or never. “That day…the day of the
accident, I saw you with her—with them. You were coming out of the hotel. I saw
her touching you, you holding the baby. I saw you kissing her.”

There was a deadly silence
before he asked, “Is
that
why you stepped out in front of that car?
Because you saw us?” She tried to look away, but the look in his eyes seemed to
have paralyzed her.

Wetting her dry lips again
she continued, “I was going over to confront you.”

“Let me see if I get this
right. I married you because I fell
in love
with
you.
I would
like to believe that I have taken care of you, showed you my love. Yet, you see
me with a woman and a child and you assume she is my lover.” Dahlia couldn’t
answer. She felt as if her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth.

When he spoke again Dahlia
just knew that something worse was going to come. “Have I ever once given you a
reason to believe that I would be unfaithful to you?” Something in his tone
warned her about impending trouble, so she stepped back. “You saw something,
jumped to conclusions and because of that my son is dead.” There it was, the
rage he was obviously bottling up inside.

“It was not my fault…”

“Yes it is, Dahlia!” He
shouted across the short distance. “If you had listened to me my son would not
be dead. He is dead because of you!” Those words were worse than any physical
blow he could have dealt her but he wasn’t finished.

“I gave you everything and
all that I asked was for you to take care of my son, but you were too selfish!
You took my love for you as a sign of weakness to get what you wanted. Without
a care for me or my son you just had to be running the city and now because of
this, because of
you,
my son is dead. That, I will never be able to
forgive you for, Dahlia.” Every word was like a twist of a knife to her heart.
Her husband hated her. Raphael really did blame her for their son’s death and
he hated her. In the depth of his eyes she could see it all. 

“And for the record, Dahlia.
The woman you saw me with, was Sarafina. The child is not mine. She needed help
and that is all there was to it. There was no affair
then
and there is
not any now. You can believe me or not. I really do not care anymore.”

Long after he left, Dahlia
stood rooted to the spot, eyes brimming over with tears. This was not what she
expected. She was so wrong about him. Why hadn’t she listened to him? She had
acted like a spoiled child and because of that their child was dead. He was right
to hate her. She was nothing less than a murderer.

Dahlia went through the next
couple of days in slow motion. Raphael came in very late at nights when she was
already in bed and he left very early in the morning. She never attempted to
speak to him. The gulf between them grew larger but somehow, Dahlia honestly
believed that they could fix it. They just needed time, but when almost a month
after their verbal battle, she picked up the morning post and saw Raphael’s
lips plastered to supermodel Jasmine Jordan’s, Dahlia’s world began to fall
apart. She had really lost him.

****

Someone was pounding on his
door and it was seriously pissing Raphael off. Who got up this early on a
Saturday morning? Rolling over onto his stomach he groaned putting a hand to
his head. Hangovers were really a bitch. Peeping through the darkness that
still engulfed the room he tried to ascertain the time on the night stand clock
but the blue numbers were just a blur.

The pounding on the hotel
door persisted. Whoever was out there was going to be really sorry. Literally
crawling off the bed, he threw on a robe that had been lying on the floor.
Stumbling through the bedroom door he stomped across the carpeted living area
barefooted. Yanking open the front door he opened his mouth to lay it into his
intruder but clamped his mouth shut when his mother sailed through it.
Okay
then!
She was obviously in a bad mood because there was no customary kiss.
Lauralyn Cavos was a demon when she was in a bad mood. Sighing heavily, he shut
the door and turned to face his mother and was promptly greeted by a whack
across head.

“What the hell, Mom?”

“Watch your mouth,
Boy.”
The older woman warned and proceeded to smack him across the head again, this
time harder.

 “Mom, will you cut that
out?” He demanded, wrestling the paper from her hand. But his mother came
prepared because she reached into the large purse she always carried around and
pulled out another copy. Spreading it open, she shoved it into his face.

“Have you lost your ever
loving mind or are you just plain stupid?”

Pushing away the paper from
his face, Raphael squinted at the article. “Shit!” He spitted out when he saw
the picture. Grabbing this one too, he loosened his grip on the other. Lauralyn
took advantage of the opportunity, snatched it out of his hand and connected
him with it in the head again.

“I told you to watch your
mouth!” She snapped at him.

“How the hell did this get
into the papers?” Raphael moved away from his mother, deeper into the living
room more as a safety measure than anything. He already had a monster sized
headache and his mother’s constant abuse wasn’t helping.

 “No, fool, the question is,
what the hell were you doing kissing some woman when you have a wife at home?”

Raphael knew where this was heading
and he wasn’t going down that road with his mother.
“Mamá
, look, I know
you are concerned but there is nothing to worry about. It was just a friendly
kiss between two friends.” The explanation was poor as hell, but it was the
only one she was going to get.

Lauralyn sailed across the
room and Raphael actually found himself bracing for another hit, but instead
his mother just looked up at him through sad eyes and said, “I don’t know what
has happened to you, but I wish you would stop this part of self-destruction
you are on.”

“Mamá,
I’m fine!”

“No you are not, Raphael. You
are not fine. You came to me a couple months back looking like you lost your
puppy. You told me about the woman you were in love with but you were too
stubborn to get her. So I did what any mother would do for a son she loves. I
brought her to you. I took that girl from a happy home and brought her to you,
and now look at what you are doing?” She shook the papers to emphasize her
point. “Do you have any idea what this is going to do to Dahlia? This will
destroy her.”

“Mom, Dahlia is stronger than
you think. She knows I will never be unfaithful.”

“Does she, Raphael? I know
you are still grieving for your baby, but you were completely out of line to
blame Dahlia for that. It was not her fault.”

“If she had listened to me…”

Lauralyn stopped him with a
palm in the air. “You can stop right there because that nonsense isn’t going to
fly with me.” Raphael moved to the small dining room table and lowered his
large frame.

“Rafe, just for a second put
yourself in Dahlia’s shoes. What if it were you on the other side of that road?
What if it was her coming out of a hotel with another man? What if she was
caressing his face or he was kissing her cheek? What would you have done?” He
hated when his mother took that tone. That was when she was being the voice of
reason and more often than not she was right.

Staring at a coffee stain on
the tablecloth he waited for her to finish. “The Raphael I know, the one I
raised would have walked right up to that man and beat the hell out of him.”
She was
so
right. Dahlia was his wife and he didn’t want any other man
touching her.