Between Here and Gone Page 14

  My fingers stilled on the ring. “I think that was when I truly understood. My family, who I was … who I’d been—meant nothing. Natalia San Martín de Betancourt was dead.” I paused, allowed the taste of the name to linger, before slowly shaking my head, the illusion disappearing. “I was just any girl. Eminently dispensable.”

  “And yet you returned to the school, time and again.”

  My chest burned at the implied accusation in Jack’s question. Standing there in front of the beverage cart, methodically stirring a spoon in a fine china cup, immaculate in his sharply creased navy flannel suit as if his quiet confession and the torment in his eyes had never existed. Or at least, ceased to matter. In that moment I hated him every bit as much as I hated Lazaro and that athletic director and that first boy and all the boys since.

  “For the money, of course,” I snapped. “It’s what you’ve already assumed, after all.” Restless, I pushed myself from the sofa, focusing on the artwork on the walls, on the view out the window, on everything but the flat monotone of my voice.

  “Despite the insults and warnings, I still had every intention of going to the police, even if it amounted to little more than a futile gesture. But that’s when he slid a check across the desk. Hush money—payment for services rendered, I wasn’t sure exactly what it was for and in that moment, I didn’t care. That check was for more than my father earned in a month.” I came to a halt in front of the window but instead of staring out, turned to face into the office, welcoming the feel of cold glass against my back.

  Keeping my stare firmly fixed downward, at the play of my foot as I crossed one ankle over the other, I quietly said, “The old me would have torn it up. Thrown it in his face for the insult it was. But my God, to be able to send money like that home. To these fools, it was a pittance—” I exhaled slowly, seeing not the carpet the pointed toe of my pump played through, but the wide, elaborately tiled hallways of our house, lined with feathery palms, the walls hung with family portraits and fine art dating back a hundred years. “Once upon a time it would have been as much play money to me as it clearly was to them, but now? It was enough to help give Carlito, in particular, something of the life we’d left behind. But I can’t do it anymore. I … can’t.”

  “Sweet God, Natalie.”

  I mustered a smile as I lifted my head and met Greg’s horrified, yet undeniably sympathetic gaze. Not entirely reassured, I looked harder … but no. No disgust. Gracias a Dios. It so easily could have been. I saw it in my own reflection after all—all too often. Through the telltale tightening of my throat I said, “I desperately want something different. Something like what you’ve offered has long been beyond my wildest imaginings. However, do you still think I’m the right person to do this?”

  “You might be the only one who can.”

  Shocked, I stared at Jack. No horror or sympathy or pity or anything in his gaze. Wait. Not entirely true. The longer our gazes held, the more I could detect … weariness. Echoed in the subtle slump of his shoulders.

  He did not want to do this. But he would. Because he felt he must.

  The door clicked quietly behind him as he turned and left, leaving me feeling more unsettled and uncomfortable than if he’d punctuated his departure with a dramatic slam. Something to express all the anger and sadness he was clearly so practiced at holding in and masking. I did not want to have anything in common with this man. Didn’t want to feel a shred of sympathy. After all, had he? Going through my past and ripping off the layers with which I’d tried to protect myself?

  No. I didn’t care what torments might drive him. I would not.

  “Birds of a feather, the two of you.” Greg joined me at the window, shaking his head at the closed door. “He takes his self-appointed responsibilities as family protector pretty seriously.”

  “You don’t think it foolish? That I was so worried about Carlito—wanting the best for him? He left so much behind—his entire childhood, really.”

  “Not foolish, no. He’s your brother, you were even charged with his protection. For all intents and purposes, you had a charmed and enviable upbringing and you feel more than a little guilty that he only experienced a fraction of that.” He regarded me with his frank gaze, the light coming in from outside reflecting off his eyes, turning them opaque. Eerily like images I’d seen of the inside of a glacier, those brilliant, unearthly shades of blue. “But let me ask you something, Natalia—how old is he now?”

  “How … old? Well … he’s—”

  Stunned, I looked from Greg to Constance, to any and everything within the office’s confines, reluctant to consider … trying to find anything else on which to focus but the obvious. My gaze finally ended its restless wandering on a framed photograph hanging on the wall—a stark outline of a mountain, illuminated by the impossibly bright moon hovering high above. The longer I stared, the more the mountain appeared to take on the shape of a head in profile, reclined as if asleep, the moon appearing to take on the role of the proverbial light bulb snapping on overhead. Clearly, my subconscious was going to force me to acknowledge the obvious.

  My boy child of a brother—pesky, always tagging along, wanting to be part of every adventure, clinging to me during that horrific voyage in the dark, teasing me about sharks on the interminable swim. As if gazing into a mirror to the past, I could clearly see the tender, vulnerable curve of his back as he choked up seawater, fingers digging into the sand of our new home.

  He was nineteen now.

  “But … he was the baby.” I shook my head, attempting to dispel the images that were beginning to emerge—Carlito’s face filling out, growing shadowed with a dark beard, the shoulders and chest broadening into those of a young man. Images superimposing themselves over the boy who’d been my shadow. No longer a boy. A man.

  And I had no idea who he was.

  “I always took care … watched out for …” I dropped my face to my hands, the heels of my palms pressing hard against my eyes, trying to dismiss the inevitable.

  “Whatever debt you felt you owed, I imagine you’ve more than paid it—don’t you?”

  Silence fell over the room as Greg allowed me to absorb his words. Consider his question and what, exactly, it meant.

  Carlito was now a man. Older now than I’d been when I married and imagined myself a woman. The same age as when I first arrived in New York. Mami and Abuela had their own business. Did they need me for anything? Had I finally outlived my usefulness?

  But fast on the heels of the self-pity, a second thought emerged. A brighter thought, casting illumination over the jumbled muddle of my emotions much in the way the moon in that lovely photograph cast its light over the mountainscape, exposing trails and niches and ledges from which one could survey the landscape. Areas that had all previously been shrouded in darkness.

  For the first time, I could allow myself to see alternatives. Make choices based solely in what I wanted. What might be best for me.

  If they no longer needed me, I was … free.

  SITUATION NORMAL: ALL FOULED UP

  Thomas Lask

  The New York Times

  February 1, 1965

  * * *

  Twelve

  “You’re angry.”

  For as incredibly loud and chaotic as the kitchen was at any given moment, even during this ostensibly quiet time prior to opening, it was amazing how Remy’s refusal to speak created a vacuum of silence that completely overrode all other extraneous noise. The hush felt so heavy and overwhelming, we might as well have been alone in a church.

  “Remy, please say something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like … you’re pleased for me?”

  Another silence—this one coupled with a dark, narrow-eyed stare. That should have been enough of a sign for me to leave well enough alone. Let him have some time. Wait until after work. Yet, perversely, I felt the need to press ahead, try to get him to acknowledge this was a good thing. Get this difficult hurdle over and done with becau
se I’d know—it would be difficult. Perhaps that’s why I’d done it here. Safety in numbers, both in people and distractions that wouldn’t exist in either his apartment or mine.

  Coward.

  “You’re fixin’ to go clear across the country, to spend God knows how long following around some faded cotillion belle you don’t know from Adam, pretending her life’s important. And I’m supposed to be happy about this, why?”

  “Aren’t you the one who’s harped over and over how I need more than this place? Needed to get out more, see more people?” The last delivered with a wholly unintended edge.

  “You’re no fool, chère and don’t be thinkin’ I am, either.” He returned to his prep station, hands moving across the counter, wiping a fresh coat of oil across the maple wood block, arranging and rearranging bowls and pans and tools, lining them up with a surgeon’s care and precision. He drew a knife from the wood block, appeared to study it, replaced it, methodically repeating the process with each knife. “You know damn well I said most of that before …”

  Pulling the final knife free, he slowly turned it over in his hand, eyebrows drawn into a straight line. Over and over, he turned it in his hand, a fingertip running along the sharp, sensual curve of the blade, before he finally slammed it back into the block with a vicious jab that was enough to shake the entire counter and drop an actual, palpable quiet over the kitchen.

  Ignoring the stares and whispers that swelled in the wake of the momentary silence, I grabbed Remy’s arm and dragged him to the break room where the busboys taking a few minutes before the day got underway rolled their eyes at our appearance.

  “Yeah, we know. Beat it,” one of them said with an exasperated sigh, as they stabbed cigarettes into ashtrays, empty Coca-Cola bottles rattling as they tossed them into the wastebasket. “What’s going on with you two anyway?” he groused, accompanied by a sly, annoying wink, obviously already having drawn his own conclusions.

  As the door closed behind them, I turned to Remy. “That’s a fair question, don’t you think?”

  Snatching the chef’s toque from his head, he shoved a hand through his hair, leaving it standing in unruly black spikes. “I don’t know exactly,” he finally admitted. “But I do know we ain’t gonna be able to figure it out with you all the way out in California.”

  “Being offered this job is a once in a lifetime chance—an incredible opportunity.” I repeated everything I’d already told him in our hushed corner of the kitchen. Gave him the same reassurances. “And I’m coming back.”

  My one stipulation—if a leave of absence wasn’t acceptable to Mrs. Mercier, then I wouldn’t take the job. Perhaps on the surface working as a hostess at Mercier’s was nothing more than a job, one that undoubtedly paled beside the opportunity that Greg Barnes offered. However, this place—these people—were the closest thing to a home and family as I’d had since I’d come to this country. No matter what I might have thought, I couldn’t do it—leave them behind. Leave another life behind. I was done running.

  “Why do you have to go in the first place? Why can’t the rich girl come here if she’s so hellbent on having you write about her?”

  “She doesn’t feel as if I’d get a sense of the ‘real her’ if we were here. Her life and her work—such as it is—are in Los Angeles.”

  Scattered within the stream of disgusted patois, I caught variations on “spoiled” and “entitled” and “ridiculous” along with a few other less than flattering terms. Honestly, I couldn’t say I completely blamed him. I had also assumed I’d be staying in New York. Had thought, given my relative inexperience, that Greg or Constance would insist on overseeing the project.

  And while in no way would I ever consider New York my dream city, it was at the very least a known quantity. For better or worse, I’d made a life here. Plus—my family. They knew I was here. If they ever … needed me. Or simply wanted to find me.

  And now, Remy.

  But at the same time, the more I considered it, the more appealing it seemed, this idea of California. Obviously, it wasn’t Paris—wasn’t even close—but perhaps that was a good thing. The time for that particular dream had long since passed. And the lure of somewhere with no history—no dreams or nightmares attached—was undeniably tempting. Even if only for a brief interlude.

  “I’ll return.”

  Nothing. My words might as well have disappeared into a void for all the response they garnered.

  “I promise.” The only sign he was even paying attention was the increasingly agitated drumming of his fingers against the soda cooler. Finally, the drumming gave way to the sound of coins dropping into the machine, the blast of frigid air as he opened the door, the clink of glass as he pulled one free. Little, mindless tasks, allowing him the freedom to lose himself in his thoughts, his face revealing so much—especially when one knew what to look for. The subtle twitching of the muscles at the corners of his eyes, tiny crescents appearing at the corners of his mouth, the blinking of his eyes growing slower, as if searching for answers—or simply perhaps calm—within those brief moments of darkness.

  “I …” The muscles of his throat worked as he swallowed. “I don’t think you should go.”

  “Remy—”

  His mouth compressed, the crescents deepening. His thumb rubbed the bottle’s ridged surface, methodically tracing each letter. “I don’t want you to go,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of its usual lilt.

  I twisted my hands in my skirt. “Why?”

  “Why?” His knuckles turned white as his hold on the soda bottle tightened. “I already told you—neither of us is a fool and I won’t treat you like one.”

  “I’m not trying to play the fool.” I looked away, unable to meet his steady gaze. “I don’t know enough of … this. To understand why.”

  With Nico, it had had a sense of predetermination—of destiny. It had been gentle and lovely and absolutely inevitable. Befitting the well-bred girl I’d been once upon a time, schooled by the nuns in manners and modest behavior and piety, and by Mami and Abuela on how to dress beautifully, how to cook and run a household, and host anything from a family beach barbeque to formal party for a hundred. Without ever straying into the vulgar, they—the nuns, Mami, Abuela—made certain I was taught all the different ways to keep your man from wandering and if he did, how to turn a blind eye, because ay m’ijita, that was simply how men were. Except Nico would never have behaved in such a way. I knew if I said it, however, I would have simply been met with those looks suggesting I knew nothing of human behavior and real life.

  Of course, these days, I knew far more of real life. A life the likes of which they could never have imagined.

  However, Remy was a different beast altogether—fitting within no parameters, playing by no rules with which I was familiar. With him, I didn’t know anything. Didn’t know what constituted right or proper or if those words even held meaning.

  “Understanding’s different, chère.” The words were achingly soft, spinning a web that drew me closer. “I don’t understand any better than you do. But it’s not about understanding—it’s about knowing and way down deep, you know.”

  Each breath came slower, grew more shallow, ink black dots floating in my vision, an oddly monochromatic kaleidoscope.

  Taking pity on me, he finally said it. Finally put into words what had been between us since that night. “I want more than a body in my bed whose name I’m not going to remember the next day. For the first time, chère, I need … more. With you. So please … don’t leave.” The gauntlet thrown. It was up to me to acknowledge it—to respond in kind, if indeed, I felt the same way.

  Yes.

  God, yes. I wanted … so much. All he’d said and more. And it terrified me, given I’d never expected to feel anything like this again. However, despite those feelings—or perhaps because of them—

  “I have to.” I tried to make my words as gentle as possible. Tried to put every ounce of emotion I had into them, hoping he would understand.
“I can’t just … just give myself over to you without—”

  “You were damn willing to give yourself up before.” Color streaked across his cheekbones, sudden and fierce in its intensity. “Practically beggin’ for it.”

  “Remy, please don’t—”

  Glass shattered, liquid exploding and foaming across the table’s surface. “A thousand times I’ve told myself I should’ve just taken you that night. Fucked you good and proper and gotten you out of my system. A thousand times I’ve told myself I should’ve never let you get under my skin to start with.”

  Pulling open the door, he shoved his way through the small crowd gathered outside. As the distinctive slam of the outside door to the alley echoed through the kitchen, the heads that had turned to follow his progress swiveled back, one by one, marionettes on strings, their expressions ranging from speculative to appalled to sympathetic to outright leers. Heat once again flooded my face as I stood rooted to the floor, tempted to go after Remy. Terrified of what might happen if I did.

  I should never have pushed. Should have let him have time. Because now there were emotions and intents and desires aired, and made more real and I had no idea what to do.

  Into that stunned, indecisive silence, Mrs. Mercier’s cultured drawl flowed like a soothing balm.

  “All right now, y’all. Get on back to work. We’ve only got thirty minutes before the doors open. Charles, be ready to take lead on the line if Remy doesn’t return directly.”

  Her gaze surveying the room’s interior, she disappeared, reappearing moments later bearing a large water-filled bowl and several clean dishtowels. With a stern glare that sent the few remaining stragglers scurrying off, she firmly closed the door. Setting the bowl on one of the chairs, she dipped a dishtowel into the water, wringing it out.