“Sorry for the rough welcome. It’s not the greatest neighborhood, to be honest. We get our share of rowdies pouring out of the bars on Duval Street. A car like that draws some notice.” I gesture toward Ruby’s behind me. “You can wait inside if you’d like. Get a break from the mosquitoes.”
“I’m fine out here, but thank you. I need the fresh air. It’s been a long day with the ferry crossing.”
“Is Key West your final destination?”
We get our fair share of people passing on to other places. One of my favorite things to do when tourists come through the doors is hear where they’re headed. Sometimes I’ll look up the places on the map in the public library, imagining what it would be like to go there myself. I’ve had hundreds of adventures that have taken me all over the world. If a place strikes my fancy on the map, I’ll ask one of the librarians for a book about it. When Tom’s away, those hours spent reading in the cottage are some of the happiest I’ve ever experienced. When he’s home, the books go back in their hiding spot. Tom says too much reading in a woman—which is any reading at all, really—is a dangerous thing.
“We’re headed up to Islamorada,” she answers. “For our honeymoon. Then to New York later on.”
Islamorada’s not the sort of destination I envisioned for someone so glamorous, but I suppose if they’re searching for privacy on their honeymoon, they’ll certainly find it.
Her gaze drifts to my stomach. “How much longer?”
“A couple weeks. It’s my first,” I add, fielding the question about other children before she can ask it. It’s such a seemingly innocent discussion that can bring so much pain.
Her gaze lingers on the simple tin band on my ring finger. “You and your husband must be very happy.”
I lay my palm over my stomach. “I have always wanted to be a mother,” I say simply.
As scary as this change in my life is, as uncertain as the future that lies before us, my love for this child is the only thing I don’t doubt. I don’t tell her about the losses preceding this one, the times I couldn’t be sure if it was Tom’s fists or my own body failing me, how desperately I prayed for this babe, even as it felt like a wholly selfish wish considering the life I had to offer my child.
Her brow furrows at my response, and there’s something in her expression—
“Are you all right?” I ask again.
Her eyes well with tears. “It’s nerves, right? Every new bride experiences this.”
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully, surprised by her candor, her manner at odds with her flawless appearance.
When I married Tom at sixteen, I practically ran down the aisle with excitement, and look where that got me.
“Do you think he’s a good man—your husband?” I ask. “A kind man?” He seemed polite enough at the restaurant—people tend to show the truest parts of themselves when they’re dealing with those who serve them, and I’ve certainly waited on a ruder person—but I’ve given up thinking of people in absolute terms. People are what circumstances make them.
“We married quickly. There wasn’t much of a chance to get to know each other.”
I can’t help it—my gaze drops down to her waistline.
Her cheeks flush. “My family wanted us to marry.”
“I wish you the best, then.” I pause. I don’t normally share so much with strangers—or anyone, really—but despite the obvious differences between us, there’s something about her that is so familiar. I know what it’s like to feel alone. “Marriage is complicated. It’s no easy thing to bind yourself to another, for their moods to dictate yours, for your needs to come second to theirs, to bend yourself to the will of another. It’s exhausting,” I confess.
“I’m sure. My name is Mirta,” she offers after a beat.
“I’m Helen.” I try to smile. “I hope your experience is different.”
“I’m sorry yours isn’t.” She swallows. “Was it always like this?”
I think back to the beginning, nine years of marriage eclipsing my memories of when we were young and Tom used to visit me at Ruby’s, when he returned from the sea smelling like salt, and fish, and sun, and freedom, and I loved nothing more than to bury my face in the curve of his neck, wrap my arms tightly around his body, his strength a sturdy barrier that I thought would keep the world’s problems at bay.
There were happy times, weren’t there? There had to have been. They’re muted and faded now, as though they belong to another person, as though I am another person, but they existed once. Somehow, though, those moments drifted away before I realized it, and the other parts of our marriage that used to be sources of shock and fear became ordinary events.
“No, it wasn’t,” I reply. “It was a different time when we married. We were poor, of course, but it was a different kind of poor. We had a good run before things started to go bad. We had a little house and maybe one day we’d have a baby, and there were plans to be made.”
We had hope back then. Even after things got bad, Tom had his boat. He used to say a man who was willing to work with his own two hands could do anything. But it turned out the boat wasn’t enough. He had the ability to catch food, but fish weren’t useful for much when people didn’t have money to buy them.
“He changed,” I answer finally, decisively now. “Or life changed us.”
And at the same time, there are plenty of good men in this world who lost everything like the rest of us and didn’t start beating their wives or drinking away the remainder of their paychecks. Maybe those qualities were always inside Tom, and I never saw them.
“How do you know?” Mirta asks, her face pale, her eyes wide.
So young.
“How do you know if you’ve married the sort of man who would change?” I finish for her.
She nods.
“I’m not sure you can know. Did you want to marry him?”
Was she like me—swayed by a pair of broad shoulders? Did she have fanciful thoughts of ocean air, the breeze blowing in her hair? Did she seek adventure? Was she so recklessly in love that she knew her own heart but not his?
“I don’t know. I wanted to be a wife. To have a family. I thought I’d have more say in the matter.”
I want to do more, say more. Despite the differences in our circumstances, I remember what it felt like to be a new wife, trying to build a family and a home with little to guide me. At least I had the benefit of moving down the road from my parents when I married Tom. I can’t fathom what it must be like to move to a new country with a spouse who is little more than a stranger.