Still, there are limits. I wasn’t going to take things a step further and actually have a conversation with the guy. So I got up from the beach chair and turned on my heel, not caring that my underwear was exposed now that Ugly was inside. I tossed my hair over my shoulder, grateful for my financially unsustainable addiction to lavish hair products that kept it lush and glossy. And I walked away, mentally patting myself on the back for my self-control, but so weak in the knees I must’ve looked like a newborn foal as I tottered back to the house.
Only at the porch doors did I let myself look back. He was watching me with a half-smile, like he’d been waiting for me to do exactly that.
THE FUCKED-UP YEARS: A FINAL HIT
It’s a testament to the kind of parent my father is that when Ugly and Román left our house after moseying by for a Sunday-morning visit peppered with violence and threats, he didn’t knock back a few tranquillizing rums or seek out my mother for a conciliatory quickie to make him feel better about being choked. Instead he came, features softened with paternal concern, to ask me why I’d never told him about the literary shortlists. ‘I didn’t even know you were that into the writing thing. I wish you’d told us, gordita, I’d love to read your stories.’
I exhaled by way of a weak laugh. ‘I never won. There was nothing to tell.’ That was a lie. I’d never won anything but I’d had short stories published in a smattering of literary journals all over Latin America. Plus there was the novel I’d been drafting for over a year back in Caracas, that I fantasized compulsively about getting published if only I could get my shit together and finish the thing.
I couldn’t put my finger on why I’d never shared any of it, especially not the novel that I’d worked on for so long. Maybe it was because so much of my writing was inadvertently about my family. Or maybe it was because I felt I needed something as concrete as a competition win or a book deal to be taken seriously when I publicly declared myself a writer – so I wouldn’t have to tack the word aspiring onto it.
‘Por favor, as if we’d care about winning,’ said Papá. ‘You put too much pressure on yourself.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re so much like Celia, you know that?’
‘I do.’
Which was why I’d only talked with her about my writing and even then I kept my secrets. I had only told her about the novel and the published short stories, never the shortlists. She’d only respect a win.
‘Anyway, you’ll tell us next time you enter a contest, won’t you?’
‘I will,’ I lied. ‘Definitely.’
Fatherly concerns dealt with, he went on to tell me that we’d still be having family lunch together as originally planned, but that everyone would be coming to our house instead of Mauricio’s.
‘There’s a lot to discuss,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want to talk about it somewhere my shoes are sticking to the floors and there isn’t a crumb in the house. Mauricio needs to get a damn housekeeper.’
‘Let him pay Vanessa to cook and clean. Isn’t she here looking for work?’
Papá stifled a smile but didn’t indulge me. ‘Everyone’s coming over for twelve,’ he said. ‘And cut Vanessa some slack. If I can be okay with her, so can you.’
‘I know, I know. The twins are on board with her as well, so who am I to stay up on my high horse. But it’s not as easy as you think.’
‘Well, like I said, you’re like Celia. Being on a high horse comes natural.’
I gave a mock laugh and stuck my tongue out at him before turning back to my laptop and the translation job I’d been working on. But Papá lingered at the door until I looked up from the screen.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘I really do see so much of Celia in you now. It was never as noticeable to me until after she was gone.’
I smiled, my cockles warmed by the power of good old genetics that allowed familial traits of bitchiness to transcend even death.
By lunchtime, the family was gathered at our house, lounging around the living room and the backyard while Zulema and I helped my mother in the kitchen. Whacking the knife against the cutting board as she sliced a cucumber, Zulema leaned in to whisper to me.
‘Who was that man with Ugly?’
‘Román. He’s Ugly’s muscle or something. Gets intel on everyone. He’s Venezuelan, too.’
‘Really?’
She said it like I’d just told her the most eligible bachelor in town was newly available. A flare of proprietary jealousy took me by surprise.
‘How’d you see him anyway?’ I asked.
‘Out the window. Duh.’
I forgot that her bedroom window looked out onto the front yard and the street. She must’ve seen when they came and left.
‘Oh.’ I hoped she couldn’t tell that just the thought of Román was having an effect on me. I could picture his eyes, feel the roughness of his hand, hear the steady control in his voice. My cheeks flushed. I chanted it in my head, a mantra: He’s a criminal. He’s a criminal. He’s a criminal.
‘He was pretty freaking gorgeous,’ giggled Zulema.
I gave her a once-over out of the corner of my eye. My sister and I have the same slim, leggy build, same long Amerindian hair, but with different key assets. She has the tits, I have the ass. I looked at the porn-star-perky boobs trembling while she chopped, then down to the unimpressive slope of her backside. Hoped Román was an ass man. He’s a criminal. He’s a criminal. He’s a criminal.
‘Girls, let’s put everything on the table now.’ Mamá was taking an immense lasagne out of the oven, eyeing my sister and me suspiciously, like she always did when we were whispering. ‘Yola, hurry up with that salad. You haven’t even chopped the tomatoes yet.’
‘I can do the tomatoes!’ Zulema dumped the plastic tub of cherry tomatoes onto the cutting board. Whack! Whack! Whack! I eyeballed her cleavage. Shake! Shake! Shake!
There we all were: one big, happy family coming together for Sunday lunch and to review the details of our collective blackmail. Even little Fidel was there, doing his gooey adorable baby thing. We’d all grown so attached to him that his mother, Camille, dropped him off sometimes on Sundays, her only day off, so she could take a much-needed break from round-the-clock servitude. Now he was bouncing on Vanessa’s knee while she fed him a bowl of mashed pawpaw. Another attempt, I’d noticed, at trying to make herself useful, along with offering to lay the table and help with whatever Mamá needed. I clung harder to my grudge on Aunt Celia’s posthumous behalf. With the twins and everyone else already welcoming her with open arms, I was the only one left who seemed to remember that Vanessa was Mauricio’s seventeen-year-old secret. It might’ve been a flagging, irrational cause to keep up my dislike of her – the girl’s ass-kissing did seem pretty sincere – but it was the last candle I could burn for Aunt Celia.
Plus there was the other thing that was getting under my skin: her shameless flirting with my brother, who clearly wasn’t hampered by any Celia-inspired guilt. Notoriously unscrupulous in matters of the crotch, Sancho was perched on the arm of the couch next to Vanessa, tight curls spilling into eyes that peered straight down the bottomless crevice of her cleavage. Since she was Mauricio’s daughter, not Aunt Celia’s, and therefore not a blood relative, I strongly suspected Sancho was trying to sleep with her. Never mind he was twenty-nine and she was seventeen, and that Sancho had been dating a Trini girl, Megan, who doted on him, for the past year. I thought of all the time I’d invested in small talk with poor old Megan, all those hours I’d never get back – always a waste of time getting to know anyone from Sancho’s ephemeral relationships.