Chapter Twenty-Four
San Juan, Puerto Rico
2022
In late April, Grandma came to visit, and on her second night in San Juan, she invited Daisy to dinner at the Vanderbilt in Condado.
“Wear something nice,” Grandma said.
Daisy wasn’t offended because she understood that her funky thrift-store style was unpredictable, and she appreciated the heads-up.
“Have you been to the Vanderbilt before?”
Daisy had not.
“Oh, it’s just marvelous! You’ll love it!” Grandma said. “Very classic, right up your alley. Think old Hollywood starlet.”
“Ooh, nice!” Daisy said. “Are we talking… like Bette Davis? Or more Brigitte Bardot?”
“Well, it’s still San Juan, dear,” Grandma said. “Go for the bombshell, of course.”
The Vanderbilt was categorically upscale, perhaps the fanciest place Daisy had ever been for a meal, and she felt perfectly dressed in a silver and cream brocade wiggle shift, vintage, of course, which she paired with black Converse. When the host showed her to their table, Grandma had already arrived, and was seated behind a glass of red wine.
“Oh, very mod!” Grandma said as Daisy leaned in to kiss her cheek. “You got it just right!”
Daisy stood back and did a turn so Grandma could admire the dress before she took her seat, which was a huge leather armchair, heavy enough that it required the assistance of the host to push toward the table.
“This place is amazing!” Daisy said, as the host placed the leather menu directly into her hands. He lifted the bottle of red wine from the table and showed Daisy the label before pouring some into her waiting glass. When he was gone, she leaned in to whisper across the low candle between them, “So luxurious!”
Grandma smiled and settled deeper into her own leather armchair. “This is the life!”
Daisy kept one eye on Grandma as they studied their menus. They all agreed— they being Daisy’s mom and brothers, Benny and his family—that Grandma’s memory issues seemed to have eased up in recent months, or at least the decline they’d witnessed before the pandemic had been arrested. Daisy suspected that her grandmother had gotten herself onto medication, but she didn’t know for sure. Grandma still refused to talk about it, but whatever secret methods she was using to treat her symptoms, she’d managed to allay the worst of their collective fears. Still, she was seventy-four, and Mom and Benny didn’t like her traveling on her own. They handed her off like a baton in a relay race when she insisted on flying solo, Mom getting her as far as the gate in JFK, and Benny waiting in the arrivals hall at Luis Munoz Marín International Airport on the other end. When she was in San Juan, however, there was nothing they could do to curtail her independence. Grandma called friends, booked cabs, scheduled shopping trips, made dinner reservations, and almost never told anyone where she was going. They all watched the Find My dot on her cell phone map to provide themselves with the limited relief of that information. To Daisy, Grandma seemed as sharp as ever.
“What’s good here?” Daisy asked.
Grandma looked up from her menu. “Oh, everything!”
Daisy laughed, running her finger down the menu and noting that the selections were not local, the cuisine not Puerto Rican. This restaurant could’ve been in any cosmopolitan city, Paris, Dubai, Tokyo. She felt a twinge then, a wish that this fancy place might assert its Puerto Ricanness. Still, Daisy, who had taken to eating cereal at least two meals a day and who, since moving back to San Juan for her second try, occasionally made a whole cheap, lazy dinner out of carrot sticks and hummus, was very much onboard with the meal, which arrived on bone china plates covered with silver domes that the waiter removed at precisely the same second and whisked away. Grandma’s was a curried swordfish with chickpeas and pancetta. Daisy’s was a Berkshire porkchop with colorful lentils in a tomato glaze.
“Good, right?” Grandma said, after her first bite.
The whole experience of the meal was a delight, all five of Daisy’s senses sparked and hummed.
“We used to eat here when I was a little girl, all the time,” Grandma said. “It was Papamío’s favorite place.”
Daisy stopped chewing while she mulled this over. “It’s been here that long?” She looked around, and realized that, though she hadn’t given the idea any conscious deliberation, she had vaguely presumed that all of this old-world glamour was artificial, manufactured for the wealthy clientele.
“Forever!” Grandma stabbed a glazed mushroom onto her fork. “The Vanderbilt is a San Juan institution!”
And just like that, Daisy’s mind hauled open yet again. It was a feeling she’d become accustomed to since coming back to live here this time. She thought she knew San Juan from her summers here, from her pandemic-shortened stint a couple years ago. But there was still so much she was learning about her new hometown. She recognized the feeling of an assumption being blown apart. The Vanderbilt, a San Juan institution. And why shouldn’t it be? If Paris or Dubai or Tokyo had restaurants like this, then of course San Juan would too.
“You want dessert?” Grandma asked.
They ordered crema catalana with toffee popcorn, and it was perhaps the best thing Daisy had ever put in her mouth. When it was gone, Grandma grew uncharacteristically quiet, looking into her steaming cup of coffee as if trying to read some omen there. There was still half a bottle of wine on the table.
“You okay, Grandma?” Daisy asked.
Grandma smiled, gesturing to Daisy’s empty cup. “You all done with your coffee?” she asked.
“Yeah, but take your time,” Daisy said. “I’m in no hurry.”
“Oh no.” Grandma chuckled. “You misunderstand me, dear. It’s time for you to run along. I’m meeting a friend for a drink.”
“Oh!” Daisy laughed. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises!”
“You don’t know the half of it!”
“But how are you getting home afterward?” Daisy asked, hearing her own mother’s voice coming out of her mouth.
Grandma used her face to visibly disapprove of the question. “I have spent a good few decades on this planet, and some number of those decades right here in this beautiful city! I am well capable of getting myself home!” she admonished Daisy.
“Sure, until you go and drink three bottles of wine,” Daisy said, gathering up her tote bag. “I know what you get up to, young lady.”
Grandma laughed. “Yes, well. It’s a hotel. Worse comes to worst, I’m pretty sure they have beds upstairs.”
Daisy laughed, wrestling herself out of the enormous armchair and leaning over to kiss her grandmother’s cheek. “All right, try to stay out of trouble,” she said. “And thank you for the most amazing meal I’ve had in a very long time. Maybe ever.”
“You’re welcome, dear. Now scram before my boyfriend shows up and feels obliged to entertain you.”
“Boyfriend!?” Daisy said.
“Shoo!”
Daisy’s days in San Juan had taken on an erratic but comforting rhythm in the months since her return. Once she found the perfect space, and negotiated and signed an excellent lease, she spent every available hour preparing for the grand opening of the Double Down, and as little time possible worrying about the rupture this decision had caused with her mom. She was too busy and exhausted to actively fret about it, but Daisy missed her mother, and felt hurt that Mom was too stubborn to support her. They still talked every week or so by phone, but their conversations were stilted in a way they never had been before. Daisy spent most of her energy trying not to talk about the store, but because her whole life right now was the store, she had little else to say. On the far end of the phone line, she could sense her mother sifting through possible topics, searching for something safe to discuss. What could they talk about that wouldn’t tip them back down the same old chute? Daisy’s refusal of college, her doomed future, her mother’s intractable disappointment. The conversations either blew up or petered out. There was never a happy, healthy end.
“I’ll call you next week, Mom,” Daisy would say.
“I’ll be here.”
Daisy still worked with Benny, managing the properties that were closest to her apartment, but she now thought of that job as her side hustle. The Double Down was her calling. Her new space was large and airy, more warehouse than shop, in a low-rent neighborhood full of nightclubs. She’d procured two major investors, a half dozen micro-investors, and a small business loan with Grandma on board as cosigner (under the condition that she never reveal her cosigner’s name to her mother). Her Kickstarter campaign had also been a success, and Daisy applied every single dollar to her budget. Friends helped her install the new lighting and replace the cracked toilet in the tiny bathroom, but she had to hire a contractor to refinish the concrete floors. By early spring of 2022, the space was nearly ready. Next she had to fill it, and for that, she would need a truck. She called Benny to see if he had any leads on something cheap through the garage.
“Yeah, Mama’s friend Candido has a huge fleet of trucks and he replaces them pretty frequently,” Benny said. “He’s always got something for sale. Let me give him a call.”
By the end of that week, Daisy was the proud owner of a rusty 2002 Chevy Silverado of indeterminate previous color. The truck was a year younger than she was, and she drove it to every corner of the island, filling its bed with castoffs, the occasional gem hidden among the detritus. She hauled everything back to her new space, cleaned it, polished it, and arranged it artfully. At the end of each day, she was physically sore from manual labor. Her hands were chapped from scrubbing and washing, and she felt like she was now permanently covered in a thin layer of sticky dust. Sometimes, after a full day’s exhausting work, she would have to drive herself back to Condado and spend the whole evening cleaning bathrooms and changing sheets at one of Benny’s apartments, getting it ready for visitors arriving the next day. Occasionally she’d fall asleep on the couch in one of those apartments waiting for the towels to come out of the dryer. Through every hour of it, she was aware of her good fortune.
Late at night, Daisy retreated to her own little apartment, her paradise, where she’d kick her shoes into the closet and drag her bare feet along the shag carpet while she waited for her toast to pop. Then she’d spread the newspaper out across the table and cover a yellow legal pad with notes about upcoming estate sales, auctions, foreclosures, going-out-of-business sales. She called and visited literally every single hotel, big or small, in Puerto Rico (she believed), where she worked hard to ingratiate herself to any willing party who might tip her off when they were about to refresh their decor. Now she had a lead on a sick chandelier in Ponce. Daisy had never been happier or more exhausted. She imagined this was how a newly ordained priest must feel. She’d found her calling, and thrown herself in with abandon. Sometimes in the quiet of those nights, she thought about the choices she’d been making, and she reflected on the fact that she was only free to make them because hers was a life of privilege. On the nights when she felt clear enough to broach this conversation with her mom, to acknowledge her entitlement and lay herself open to honor her mother’s grievances, Daisy invariably looked at the clock and realized it was too late to call home. Maybe tomorrow , she would think.
Meanwhile, her final decision would be when to open. Carlos thought a soft opening would work best, would allow her to begin recouping some of her initial investment even while she worked on finishing touches. Then again, Carlos had also suggested that she call the shop the Other Cheek, so his ideas weren’t necessarily dependable. Daisy knew she’d only get one chance to impress her first-time customers. She had to wow them. Her forays to Arecibo, Rincón, and Humacao had turned up treasures, but not enough of them. Daisy’s inventory wasn’t quite there yet. She needed a line on more old people. Stylish old people. She wondered if hitting up the nursing homes was too macabre.
One of Stefani’s friends had come through with an antique cash register that still functioned, and which weighed about a thousand pounds. Daisy was in the shop late, fiddling with the buttons and trays, figuring out how everything worked, when her phone rang. It was an ancient landline, of course, with the same shrill jangle Daisy had come to expect from a telephone, but it still scared her enough to send a wash of goosebumps up the back of her neck when it rang late at night in the quiet shop.
“Hello?”
“Daisy!” It was Grandma. She’d been here almost three weeks and, between Daisy’s grueling work hours and the rigorous demands on Grandma’s dance card, they’d hardly spent any time together at all since their swanky dinner at the Vanderbilt.
“Grandma, hi!” Daisy said, wiping sweat from her forehead. She was trying to save money on air-conditioning until the customers came.
“Hello, dear,” Grandma said. “Listen, I know you’re busy. Are you at the shop?”
“Yes!” Daisy decided not to tell her that she’d just called the landline at the shop. “Getting ready to head home for the night,” she said instead.
“Such a hard worker!” Grandma said.
“Tell that to Mom, would you?”
“She’ll come around, dear. Give her time.”
Daisy sat down on her stool.
“I hope I’ll get to see the shop before I head back?” Grandma asked then.
“When do you go?”
“Tuesday.”
Daisy looked around the space, tried to see it through someone else’s eyes. What would it feel like to walk in here for the first time? A friend had made paintings for the walls, all of which were gorgeous, La Perla at dusk, a cascade of ruffled skirts in the motion of bomba, a gap-toothed child holding a mound of bright red beans in the bowl of his cupped hands. The colors were warm and vivid, and the lighting all around the shop was opulent. The merchandise gleamed from salvaged bookshelves and dressers and tables. Every imaginable color of chintz, gauze, gingham, and lace draped from hooks and hangers. A dressmaker’s form wore a tangerine jumpsuit and a silk scarf. All the treasures of a bygone world surrounded Daisy, everything restored and repurposed and made meaningful again because of her efforts and imagination, her ability to illuminate the magic in ordinary things. She turned in a full circle, surveying this sanctuary she had created out of nothing, and she literally swelled with pride. It came in through her lungs and stood her up a little taller. So she wasn’t ready to open just yet, but in that moment Daisy decided she was ready to share it with her grandmother. Her first customer.
“What about tomorrow?” she said.
“Oh!” Grandma said. “Is it ready?”
Daisy shrugged. “Close enough.”
“Oh, I can’t wait! That sounds perfect,” Grandma said. “But there’s something else I need you to help me with first.”
Daisy caught El Suspiro before it escaped from her lips. So she had a lot to do, so what? Her grandmother would be leaving for New York in three days, and Daisy’s heart would ache from stretching after her.
“Of course,” she said. “Name it.”
Grandma gave her an address in Luquillo, and Daisy jotted it down.
“Can you meet me there around noon tomorrow?” Grandma asked.
“Sure thing.” Daisy studied the address in her own handwriting. She thought she recognized it. “Isn’t that one of Benny’s apartments?”
Daisy had keys to all of Benny’s properties, even the ones that weren’t on her roster, so she let herself in when she arrived. Grandma was already there, sitting quietly at the round dining table in front of the sliding balcony doors. She must have arrived only a few minutes before, because the air conditioner was running but it was still warm in the room.
“Hello, sweet girl!” Grandma stood up and kissed Daisy on the cheek.
“Hi, Grandma!” Daisy dumped her bag on the table. “Do you really have to go back on Tuesday?” she asked. “Can’t you stay a little longer?”
“Oh, stop fussing,” Grandma said, walking into the kitchenette and drawing a glass out of the cabinet, which she promptly filled with water from the tap. She handed it across the counter to Daisy. “Drink this, you look overheated.”
Daisy resisted the urge to smell her own armpits. Hygiene had been minimal lately. There was no time. She gulped the water and tried to blow her sticky hair off her forehead. Grandma emerged from behind the counter.
“Have you been to this apartment before?” she asked Daisy.
“I don’t think so. I’d remember that view.” She moved back toward the table and stood beside her grandmother, looking out at the ocean.
“It was my sister Lola’s apartment,” Grandma said.
“Oh!”
“She left it to me, and I gave it to Benny to manage. That’s how he got started in the property business. He saw there was good income in it, good potential.”
“Wow, I had no idea,” Daisy said.
“Lola lived here, though, she didn’t rent it out,” Grandma went on. “But she had a great mind for things like that. She knew how to make smart investments.”
Daisy nodded. “I’ve heard so many stories about her from Mom over the years, I feel like I knew her.”
Grandma nodded. “Come,” she said. “I want to show you something.”
She turned and wandered back through the living room and down the short hallway that led to the bedroom and bath. Daisy set her drained glass on the counter and followed. At the end of the hall was a locked door. Grandma drew a key out of her pocket and fitted it into the lock, which was sticky from disuse in the salty seaside air. Eventually, the key turned with a squeaky scratching sound, and Daisy stepped back to give Grandma space to haul the door open. Inside, the closet was much bigger than Daisy expected, almost the size of another small bedroom, and it was stacked floor to ceiling with boxes and bags.
“What is all this, Grandma?” Daisy had become an expert in assessing a possible mother lode of old stuff. Her heart quickened.
“Storage,” Grandma said. “Help me. Grab that one.”
Daisy lifted the cardboard box Grandma indicated and pulled it down from the top of the stack. Its flaps were tucked in on themselves, but it wasn’t sealed.
“Go ahead, open it.”
Daisy did as she was instructed. Inside was a collection of cloth drawstring bags with names printed on the outside that Daisy recognized. Dior. Louis Vuitton. Chanel. She forgot to breathe as she pulled out the first bag and opened it. Inside was an unassuming camel-colored handbag with navy trim and a gold buckle. Daisy pulled the bag out and examined it. She opened the clasp and found there was still a receipt inside. Someone had paid an ungodly amount of money for this Gucci handbag in January 1951, and it was in mint condition. It did not have the tag still attached, but it did appear to be barely used. Every item in her shop taken collectively might not match the value of this single handbag. She placed it carefully back in its bag and pulled the drawstring closed. Her hands shook as she opened the next bag to discover a pair of black slingback heels with a crusting of jewels across the toes, size eight, also like new. Daisy examined the immaculate, unscuffed soles. The tag inside the left shoe said Prada.
“Gorgeous,” Daisy whispered reverently.
“You like them?” Grandma asked. “They don’t really seem like your style.”
“Maybe not,” Daisy laughed. “And they wouldn’t fit me anyway.” She held the right shoe at arm’s length and watched the way the jewels shifted in color beneath the light. “But so beautiful,” she said.
“Well,” Grandma said. “I’m glad they’re not your size, so you won’t be tempted to pilfer the merchandise.”
Daisy glanced up at her grandmother’s face. “Merchandise?”
Grandma ignored her. “Grab that one.” She pointed to another box, and again, Daisy hauled it out. Again, she found treasures inside.
“But where did all of this come from?” Daisy asked.
“It was Mamamía’s,” Grandma said. “My mother’s. When she died and Benny went to clean out their apartment, I couldn’t decide what to do with all of it, so I asked Benny if he could just store it for me until I had a chance to go through it. He brought it here.”
“But wait, I thought Mamamía and Papamío were broke?” Daisy said. “How did she afford all of this?”
“Well, they weren’t always broke,” Grandma said. “Some of it was from before, when they were rich. But the rest… this is how Mamamía got them back on their feet.”
“What do you mean?” Daisy asked. There was a grainy shhh sound as Daisy pulled another heavy box out of the closet and into the light. “Didn’t she have to sell all this when they lost their fortune?”
“No, on the contrary, she used it to start her own business.”
“What?”
“You think you’re the first hustler in this family?”
“I just, I had no idea. I’ve never heard this story before. What did she do?”
“Well, Mamamía had always been known for her style,” Grandma said, reaching into the box at her feet and retrieving an evening bag in the shape of a seashell. “Look at this one. So beautiful. I remember she wore this to Easter mass one year.” She set the bag aside. “She was such a beauty in her day, and so charming. She was friends with all the big designers, and they would give her things, just like they do now with A-list movie stars on the red carpet. They knew that if Mamamía wore a gown to a dinner at La Fortaleza, they’d get a half dozen orders for the same gown before the end of the season. All the society ladies would copy Mamamía’s style, and then, when they went abroad to Paris or Madrid, they’d strut around looking like a pale imitation—literally a pale imitation, ha!—of my mother. We’d see them sometimes in the society pages, wearing a shift Mamamía had debuted the year before. And then in New York, word got around that Mamamía was the ticket. She was the tastemaker for a whole new market.”
“Amazing,” Daisy said, picking through the treasures while they talked. “But then, it seems like it would’ve made perfect sense for her to sell all this stuff when they needed the money.”
“Yes, but she decided to rent it instead.”
“What!” Daisy stood straight up out of a box, and put her hands on her hips.
“Yep,” Grandma said. “There was no word for what she did back then, but she became a kind of stylist. She got new pieces every season, began to expand her library of sizes. But more than that, even, she became a kind of matchmaker between the designers and the ladies.”
Daisy was astonished. “Well, what a little genius!”
“I know! And it was all very hush-hush back then, pure word of mouth. Everyone wanted to pretend the impeccable eye for fit and color was their own. But for years, Mamamía was dressing every wealthy woman in San Juan.”
“I can’t believe I’ve never heard this before.”
“Well, she kept it quiet. Both because her success depended on discretion, but also because she never wanted to take credit. She didn’t want to hurt Papamío’s pride.”
“But he got back on his feet, too, didn’t he?”
“Of course, yes! Once they straightened all that mess out, he got a good job in the private sector. Cleared his name, too, though they never got back to the kind of lifestyle Lola and I grew up with,” Grandma said. “I don’t think they wanted to. It wasn’t easy when it happened, not for any of us. But eventually, when they got used to it… I think Mamamía and Papamío were happier being liberated from all those expectations.”
“Well, amen to that!” Daisy said. She wanted to ask Grandma if she’d been happier too, after she got used to it, but she worried about the answer. So she stayed quiet, watching while Grandma picked up the seashell bag again, and flicked open the clasp to examine its silken interior.
“Think I’ll keep this one for myself,” Grandma winked at Daisy.
“So then.” Daisy folded her hands into a prayer-knot and used her chin to gesture at the rest of the boxes. “What about the rest of it?
“Well,” Grandma said. “I think we should invest it.”
Daisy nodded, gritting her teeth.
“Think you can use it in the shop?”
In that moment Daisy, who wasn’t usually a crier, understood that it was possible for a person to change. All her words lodged in her throat, and she threw her arms tearfully around her grandmother. This was the culmination of a dream that had been dormant within Daisy since childhood, one that had only recently begun to sprout and grow. Here was fertilizer, sunshine, rain. Here was inheritance, approval, a direct line that ran through her mom and all the way back to Mamamía. All Daisy had ever wanted was to forge a meaningful life without doing anything to make the world worse, both of which seemed almost impossible given the current parameters of how to be a human being on planet Earth. This closet full of riches would change everything. Maybe even for Mom, maybe it would help her understand.
“I’ve been reading up since you showed me your business plan,” Grandma said, disentangling herself from the hug. “You have to begin with the most dramatic, most splendid inventory, right? This is the perfect way to launch your brand.”
Daisy nodded, then stepped into the dark bathroom for a tissue. She blew her nose and tried to get herself together, to meet Grandma’s professionalism. She couldn’t believe her grandmother was using words like launch and brand . Maybe any fear at all about her cognitive function was preposterous.
“If I start out like this, super upscale, like Mamamía, then my reputation will be established from the jump,” Daisy said.
“And then finding good inventory is easier if you have that reputation?”
“Of course, once you’re established like that, the inventory comes to you.” Daisy folded her tissue and blew into it again, a honking sound.
“Just don’t do that in front of your customers, dear.” Grandma gestured at the rumpled tissue.
Daisy laughed, and then turned to survey the abundance of boxes once more. “I’m going to be the go-to place for luxury consignment in San Juan,” she said.
“You should put that on your sign.” Grandma elbowed Daisy in the ribs.
Daisy hugged her again. Grandma squeezed and let go.
“We can’t stand around all day hugging and weeping,” she said. “Let’s get this to your shop!”
Daisy stood back and surveyed the bounty once more. On tiptoe, she couldn’t quite see the back of the enormous closet. It would take several return trips in her Silverado to retrieve it all. She glanced at Grandma, an undeniably fit seventy-four-year-old.
“Why don’t we just take these first couple of boxes for now?” she said. “I know you’re not big into manual labor.”
“You got that right. Never was.”
“I’ll find out from Benny when his next booking is. Then come back later today or tomorrow and get the rest.”
“Suit yourself.” Grandma curled her biceps to show off her muscles. “But let the record show that I offered to help.”
“You did,” Daisy laughed.
“Which means you owe me lunch.”
Daisy was broke, and knew Grandma had expensive taste in lunch, but a single shoe from this closet would pay for a month of meals.
“Lady, you got yourself a deal.”