Speak to Me of Home

Chapter Twenty-Six

San Juan, Puerto Rico

1991

During the course of the ensuing years, whenever Rafaela and Dolores discussed the change in their family’s circumstances, they did so obliquely, in a code that developed without intention. They occasionally spoke of before or after , but never specified before or after what. Privately, they both worried that their sister had taken the change in their family’s fortune particularly badly, and they both felt lucky (and slightly guilty) to have escaped their sister’s fate.

Here is what Lola saw when she considered her sister’s choices: that Rafaela had been entirely unable to accept their new station in life, so she had sought out a man, a yanqui, who she believed could deliver her back to their previous social status. Rafaela had been seduced by that hair and those eyes, so she’d failed to notice that her beau was not, in fact, rich. (Though Lola could acknowledge that Peter was charming and he was kind.) But Rafaela had also failed to see what Lola did from the start: although Peter loved her, he would be a terrible match for her. He wouldn’t rescue Rafaela from the prosaic life into which she’d fallen. On the contrary, he’d be unable to settle himself in Puerto Rico at all, so he would take her away, and this time, Rafaela’s exile would be permanent. In his own foreign, faraway home, Peter would bequeath to Rafaela some mostly white children, without the ability to extend that whiteness to her. So he’d be marginally ahead of his time in matters of race, but solidly oblivious to the weight of his own chauvinism, or what Rafaela would endure as an outsider in the American Midwest. In the end, Peter would fail, not only to restore Rafaela to the social status she still believed was her birthright, but most important, he would utterly fail to understand her at all.

And here is what Rafaela saw when she examined her sister’s choices: Lola had immediately and entirely given up. When, at the urging of his family, Lola’s high school sweetheart dumped her and then shortly thereafter married her former, still-rich best friend, Lola had taken that indignity like a cloak, wrapped herself in it, pulled it up to her chin, and never emerged again. Or if that interpretation was overstating it, at least it was true that Lola had decided at age nineteen that love was a treachery, that she would rather live in loneliness and sorrow than risk that kind of heartache ever again. Fortunately for her, there was a third option that entailed neither torment nor risk, so she’d thrown herself into her studies instead. She’d become a math teacher and dedicated spinster well before she cracked her first wrinkle. “I prefer the term bachelorette , if you don’t mind,” Lola frequently admonished her sister. But as far as Rafaela was concerned, it was a life of romantic promise entirely wasted.

Both sisters were a little bit right. But both sisters were also a little bit wrong. Because their assessments of each other were skewed by the natural sibling habit of self-comparison, as well as by their tremendous love for each other, by their ardent wishes for their sister’s happiness, and of course, by their failure to imagine happiness as a fundamentally distinct prospect. They wasted an awful lot of time feeling sorry for each other, then, and failing to recognize that, in the end, they were both (eventually) quite happy in their adult lives, never mind some questionable decisions along the way. Rafaela did not appreciate this fact until the summer day of her sister’s funeral, and it struck her as absurd, that she had never realized the fullness and pleasure of Lola’s life.

In the years after Rafaela left Puerto Rico for St. Louis, she spoke to Lola by phone every Sunday evening for at least an hour, and they visited each other no fewer than three or four times a year. So Rafaela knew about Lola’s book club, supper club, and weekly card games. She knew there was one friend she went dancing with from time to time, and another friend who liked to hike or swim or go on long drives around the countryside, visiting the chinchorros. Lola attended mass every Sunday at their old church in Miramar, even after she moved all the way out to Luquillo, where there were at least a dozen closer churches. She spent holidays with Mamamía and Papamío, but also took real pleasure in solitude. Sometimes Lola eschewed her parents’ dinner invitations because, truly, she wanted to stay home and bake a glazed pineapple cake in the shape of a bird.

If Rafaela had a bad day or exciting news, and tried calling her sister before the appointed hour on a Sunday evening, she was unlikely to find Lola at home. But despite all that evidence, it had never occurred to Rafaela, what Lola had discovered: that a full and satisfying life did not require wealth any more than it required a husband.

There was a quality to Lola’s funeral that made Rafaela feel more awake than she had in years, a kind of drugged lucidity, as though she had absorbed her sister’s life force, and its sudden presence in her body had heightened her senses. Thus supernaturally endowed, Rafaela stood trembling in front of the altar at the church where she’d been baptized and married, breathing through her open mouth so as to protect herself from recognizing any odor of death that might drift from Lola’s open casket a few feet away.

“She looks so beautiful,” Mamamía kept saying, and Rafaela tucked their mother’s wrist through the crook of her elbow, and patted her hand.

Lola, who had once been beautiful, had not appeared so in many years, not because she lacked the capacity, but because she lacked the desire, and she most certainly did not look beautiful now. Her illness had been swift, grotesque in its simplicity. In May, Lola developed what she insisted was a summer cold. By June it became bronchitis, then pneumonia, then sepsis. She was dead before the end of the month, so along with their grief and shock, her family also had to contend with a good measure of incredulity. It was unreasonable, that a life force as vivacious as Lola’s could be dismantled like that, without fanfare or warning, without even a good story.

Against the cream-colored lining of the coffin, Lola looked waxen and primordial, as dead people always do after their bodies are no longer animated by what once made them beloved. Lola’s body, now deserted by its inhabitant, was pale and bloated. The expression that had been embalmed onto her face was too winsome, it had none of Lola’s wit. Rafaela did not say any of this to their mother, of course. Instead, she frowned, joking silently with her dead sister because, in the absurdity of this moment, there was nothing else for her to do.

“No offense, but you actually look like shit,” Rafaela said to the Lola in her head.

“Well, yes,” said Lola’s ghost. “But I’m dead. What’s your excuse?”

Rafaela snorted, but she was able to disguise the sound with the context of expectation. She covered her face with one hand, and the mourners who were filing through the church presumed the outburst to be a spontaneous expression of grief, which, of course, it was.

“Mamamía looks good though,” the Lola-ghost said.

“Always,” Rafaela agreed.

“Leave it to Mamamía to bring the glamour to her own daughter’s funeral.” A beat. Then, “Is she wearing Louboutins?”

Rafaela peered down to examine their mother’s heels against the stone church floor.

“Ferragamo, I think.”

The Lola-ghost had no eyes to roll. Rafaela took a deep breath in and blew it out, thinking she might expel her sister’s ghost on the exhale. At the far end of the receiving line, her young adult children, Benny and Ruth, stood on either side of Papamío, whose face was as gray as his suit. Ruth kept leaning slightly out of the line, turning her heart-shaped face toward her mother at the other end. She was both sail and anchor, that girl. Benny was tall beside her, the first one in line, a buffer for the rest of the family. In profile, in silhouette, Benny was the double of his father. Whatever regrets Rafaela may have had about her ill-conceived marriage, the unhappy years had produced these children, and that made every moment worthwhile. In the receiving line, Benny knew everyone, greeted them all by name.

“Papamío, you remember Adelita Cruz?” he said. “She taught at Titi Lola’s school with her. Science, isn’t it, Senora Cruz?”

Papamío nodded and extended his platitudes with his hand. “Thank you for coming. It would mean so much to Lola that you’re here.”

Benny had waited until the day after his last final exam, and then skipped his high school graduation to hop on the first flight back to San Juan, leaving a brokenhearted Amanda pining behind him in St. Louis. When he first left, Rafaela had supported the move, predicting it would be temporary, that he’d soon discover the rosy nostalgia of his childhood belied a hard island life. There was nothing easy here except the weather, and even that had its price. He’d find out. But Benny had been back for nearly three years now, and it was like he’d never left the island at all. He’d rented a house in Carolina with Tiago and a boy from Mayagüez, and even though Papamío griped constantly that he was wasting his big Acuna brain by not going to college, he helped Benny get a job anyway, at a body shop where he could apprentice to become a full mechanic. Benny was good at every part of it—fixing the cars, fixing the prices, fixing the relationships with the customers who adored him. The women all remarked on his eyelashes and tried to set him up with their daughters. Within six weeks, his Spanish was as fluent as the native he’d once been. Within six months, he was running the business end of the shop, and the owner, whose own sons had taken the guagua in the other direction, started asking Benny if he might take over the business one day. Her son was broader every time Rafaela saw him, and she marveled at the man he’d become, unlike anyone she’d ever known. He was not bookish or debonair like Papamío, nor was he gregarious like his father. Benny was steady, resolute, even when all his friends didn’t understand why he’d come back to San Juan right when most of them were trying to get out. Benny had always known who he was, what he wanted, and he wasn’t susceptible to other people’s opinions about his life. He’d fixed his sights on his own clear future, and made himself into a secure man. He’d done all that without resentment.

During Rafaela’s first visit after Benny had moved back to Puerto Rico, he’d taken her out for lunch, insisted on paying for everything himself. Across a plate of bacalaítos (not her typical fare, but delicious nonetheless), he’d let her off the hook for his entire childhood.

“You know, I really never got used to St. Louis,” he said. “I guess I didn’t want to. Maybe I thought if I was miserable enough, if I could make Dad feel guilty enough, he’d bring us home.”

Rafaela kept her eyes on the food because it was unusual for Benny to be so emotionally forthright, and she didn’t want to scare him off by being too attentive. She dipped her fritter into the garlicky sauce they were sharing, and took a crispy bite.

“But I’ve been thinking lately, maybe Dad did us a favor, taking us there,” Benny said.

It was such a startling departure from his usual refrain that Rafaela stopped chewing midbite. All his life, he’d been bemoaning that move they made when he was nine years old. He’d been complaining of homesickness, threatening to run away back to the island, blaming his every passing sorrow on the geography of that exodus. She looked up at him, her hand still clutching the golden-fried remnant of her food.

“If we’d never left, maybe I wouldn’t know,” he explained. “Maybe I would never have appreciated this place, how great it is here.”

Oh.

“I mean, I missed a lot. But then, I also gained a whole different perspective that I wouldn’t have if we’d stayed here. Like Tiago, for example. He talks about moving to New York all the time. Won’t shut up about it.” Benny sucked Coke through his straw and rattled the ice in his paper cup. “He thinks everything is gonna be easier if he can just get off the island. He doesn’t know it’s the same over there as it is here, hustle and grind, and maybe, yeah, you might make more money, but it’s worse too, because suddenly everybody treats you like you’re Porta Rickan. ” Rafaela laughed softly while Benny crunched into his food. He didn’t speak again until he’d swallowed. “So maybe all those years of yearning were the great gift of my life, Mama. Because now I know all that.”

Rafaela set the unfinished corner of her bacalaíto back on her plate, and wiped her fingers on the grease-stained napkin. Her boy was never coming back.

“Well, you’re welcome,” she said dryly. “This was always my plan.”

Benny laughed.

And now she heard him again, laughing lightly at the other end of the receiving line, that bright, sacred sound echoing gracefully among the stone arches. How did he do that, her son? She leaned ever so slightly past the shrinking shape of Mamamía so she could see him, the tall elegance of Benny, his muscular frame contained neatly in his clean suit, his hand gripping another man’s hand, drawing him in for a hug, clapping him on the shoulder. His voice was effortless as he turned the man toward Papamío, passed the man’s hand into Papamío’s hand.

“Pa, you remember Candido.”

“Ay, oh my God, Candido,” Papamío said. “Look at you, my boy!” Papamío stepped into a hug.

Rafaela felt her breath still within her. My God, Lola , she thought. Candido is here . But all was in silence, and that was the worst moment for Rafaela. Because here was Candido, after all these years. And she couldn’t tell her sister.

He was still slender, and his green eyes were just as clear and arresting as she remembered them. He had a neat moustache and there were strands of silver in his thick hair, but mostly, he still looked like her friend, that same boy who had kissed her on her parents’ couch almost thirty years ago.

Papamío’s hand was on Candido’s cheek now, and the intimacy of the gesture startled Rafaela. She wondered at that touch, at the feel of Candido’s skin beneath the warmth of her father’s palm. She found herself momentarily distracted from greeting Senora Cruz, who was now standing in front of her, talking about how lunch in the staff room wouldn’t be the same without Lola and her Tupperware stuffed with tostones and beans, her crazy weekend stories. Rafaela smiled at Senora Cruz, nodding and shaking the woman’s hand, but in fact she was entirely absent from the exchange, her whole body attuned instead to the nearby presence of Candido. Rafaela straightened her shift, smoothed her curls behind one ear. She could almost hear her sister’s urgent whisper as he approached, He’s here for you, Rafaela, not me. He is here for you!

Rafaela spotted the wedding ring immediately, as Candido covered both of Mamamía’s hands with his. It wasn’t a surprise, not really. She’d heard of Candido’s marriage. But still, the visual impact of the ring was startling.

“I’m so sorry,” he was saying, and his voice was just the same, and Mamamía pulled him into a hug then as well, and Rafaela felt the world tilting beneath her, because in all the childhood years they’d shared a home, Rafaela had never seen her parents embrace Candido, and yet here he was, mourning for her sister like a brother. Here they were exchanging the visceral comfort of family. His eyes were closed, and Mamamía’s hair was a puff of gray curls beside his pinched face, and when at last her mother pulled back, she held onto his shoulders before she let him go.

He turned to Rafaela then, and she saw the real tears in his eyes, though he refused to give them leeway. His voice was a croak, a single word, her name. “Rafaelita.”

He opened his arms and she sniffed quickly, but it was too late. All her grief had arrived at once, and Candido didn’t wait, he embraced her, and just like that, they were children again, all three of them together, bright and intact, flying through the quiet, airy rooms of the big house on calle Américo Salas. Hide-and-seek. Potted palms. The aroma of Priti’s quesitos cooling on the stove. Rafaela didn’t worry about the makeup she was smearing onto the shoulder of his suit while she cried.

She met him for lunch at the Vanderbilt in Condado, which had been Papamío’s favorite spot during the flush years. Rafaela thought it was a bit much, but Candido insisted, so she went. She hadn’t been back since her girlhood, and didn’t remember much about it until the doorman tipped his hat to her at the entrance. Rafaela stepped into a memory.

The click of her shoes, once patent leather, against the gleaming tile of the floor. The swooping grandeur of the double staircases, the cool hush of luxury. The staff gliding quickly and soundlessly around the lobby on unspecified errands for the wealthy clientele. The blush of golden light dripping from enormous chandeliers, the canopy of symmetrical arches echoing through the lofty silence. But mostly, it was the scent, an aroma Rafaela had no idea she would recognize until she inhaled it, and it charged across the decades of her life to pull her back. It was the oiled wood of the mahogany bar, the clean shine of leather sofas and tufted velvet seats, the towering bundles of fragrant orchids overflowing their crystal vases, and behind all that, the rich aroma of a five-star kitchen. Further still, from the bank of tinted glass that lined the back wall of the lobby, the distant hint of the salty surf winking in the noonday light.

Only then did Rafaela remember their annual tradition, that once a year, between Christmas and Three Kings Day, Papamío brought them all here for a long lunch, not just Mamamía and his girls, but Candido and Priti and Benicio as well. A holiday ritual, and the single time each year all seven of them dined at the same table together. Priti would wear her best dress, and Candido would wear the new clothes Mamamía had inevitably given him for Christmas. Another scent then: the ruby tang of something jewel-colored in the grown-ups’ glasses, and the pillowy, salty zest of Rafaela’s favorite beef Wellington, which Priti never made at home. She understood at once why Candido had chosen this place, the long balance of its relevance across the span of their lives. It felt as though Rafaela were seated at one end of a seesaw with Candido sitting opposite. The Vanderbilt was the fulcrum between them.

She was too early, she realized, so she hurried into the ladies lounge to retouch her lipstick and powder. She wished she’d had time to visit the hairdresser, to shop for something new to wear. She dawdled in the stall until she felt confident he would’ve arrived, that he’d be seated and waiting for her.

He was, and when he stood to greet her, he kissed her on both cheeks, which unsettled her even though she’d expected this greeting. She was bedeviled by the ancient memory of their jawlines grazing and withdrawing, the feel of his skin against hers. This was not at all how she wanted to begin, flustered and flushed. But then a waiter arrived with their thick leather menus before the host had even finished pushing in her chair. The moment quickly receded, and Rafaela composed herself again. Candido was married, she knew. Happily, she hoped. She smiled briefly at him before turning the bulk of her outward attention to the menu.

“No more beef Wellington, I’m afraid,” Candido said.

“Oh heavens, remember the beef Wellington?” Her mouth filled with anticipation.

“That was your favorite,” he said.

How strange that he remembered.

“It’s probably just as well,” she said. “It’s fine to have beef Wellington for lunch when you’re ten. Probably less so in your forties.”

Candido laughed. “Oh, you can allow yourself the occasional beef Wellington, I’m sure.”

Rafaela pressed her lips together and said nothing.

“The salmon is excellent,” Candido advised. “And the lobster salad.”

She nodded and closed her menu. “Lobster salad it is.”

Candido ordered a bottle of expensive wine, which deepened her feeling of disquiet, though she couldn’t exactly say why, and not enough for her to refuse the glass he offered when the bottle arrived. The wine was excellent.

Rafaela had been divorced for almost ten years, and she hadn’t dated. At first she’d been too busy with the logistics of untangling her life from her husband’s. She’d been overwhelmed by the task of shepherding her children through the minefield of divorce, distracted by the terror and thrill of her sudden independence and everything she had to learn in order to maintain it. And then later, after she’d found her balance, she realized that, like Lola, she rather enjoyed her solitude, her own interests. Peter took the children every second weekend, and at first she worried that those weekends would gape with loneliness, but on the contrary, Rafaela found those empty days to be sumptuous. Not since childhood had she encountered the luxury of unscheduled hours. She took long baths, read frivolous novels and serious novels. She mashed up avocado with honey and vinegar and slathered the goop all over her face to ward off wrinkles. She slept late, and when Peter returned the children after dinner on Sunday evenings, she felt restored enough to greet Benny’s moods with patience.

The years passed, and despite her lack of interest in romance, still she took great care with her appearance, was always impeccably tailored, would rather be late than leave the house with a chip in her nail polish. She enjoyed the dependability with which she could turn men’s heads. But the head-turning was itself enough for her. She discouraged what sometimes came after. She didn’t like the approach, the smile, the cheesy pickup lines. She typically responded with such arrogant reproach that her would-be suitor left feeling not only rejected but also thoroughly humiliated. So in truth, this lunch with Candido was the closest she’d come to entertaining a romantic prospect in a very long time. She felt this truth encroaching on her mind, but she dismissed it by glancing once more at his wedding ring. It was all in her mind.

“So,” he said, after the waiter had taken their order and delivered warm bread and herbed butter to the table. “Tell me everything.”

Rafaela laughed. “Everything?” She tried a joke. “After four hundred years of Spanish occupation, Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in 1898 like a spare toothbrush.”

It worked. He laughed. “I mean, you know I kept up with Lola over the years,” he said. “I saw her once in a while, we’d have her over for dinner, or I’d run into her at mass. She always filled me in.”

Rafaela snagged on the we but shook her head. “I didn’t know.”

In fact Rafaela was quite well informed because her sister kept her apprised of Candido’s every move, or tried to. But over the years, whenever Lola mentioned his name, Rafaela moved to change the subject. It was too painful for Rafa to contemplate that after she and Peter moved to St. Louis, she alone was the missing piece. But now here they were, sitting together in the Vanderbilt, where Lola would never be again, and the chance of reuniting those kindred parts of herself was gone forever.

Candido took a sip of his wine and replaced the glass on the white tablecloth, swirling the stem beneath his fingers. “I see Benny a good bit, you know. He has the contract for our fleet, so I deal with him a lot. Great kid.”

Rafaela smiled, proud. “He is.”

“Takes after his mother,” Candido said.

“Thank God!”

They both laughed again, and then there was a prolonged beat of awkward silence.

“To be honest, he reminds me of myself at that age,” Candido said. “Ambitious, always working. Full of ideas. Some people will haul themselves up the ladder no matter what. You can see that in him, that drive.”

Rafaela nodded. “He was always like that!” she said. “Even when I hoped he’d find contentment closer to home. Well, closer to me, I mean.”

“Well, he’s thriving here, Rafaela. He really is,” Candido said. And then, rather abruptly, “I was sorry to hear about your divorce.”

Rafaela flashed her eyes at him, but then shrugged. “I wasn’t.”

“I just mean I didn’t like to think of you unhappy,” he said.

Her next sip of wine was more accurately a gulp, followed by another gulp. Finally, she spoke.

“I didn’t like to think of me unhappy either.” She smiled sadly. “But here we are. I didn’t plan to bury Lola so young either.”

When he reached over to squeeze her fingers, it didn’t feel alarming or romantic, but there was an unlingering tenderness in it. She rubbed the back of his hand, and remembered it was the same hand that had folded hers into that fresh bag of snow all those years ago. She did not want to let go.

“I still can’t believe she’s gone,” he said quietly.

“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Rafaela repeated, shaking her head. “How can she be gone?”

A surge of grief swelled up between them, but Rafaela let it wash over her and roll out toward the surf. She breathed with the tide until the deepest part of the swell had passed.

She felt relieved when the food arrived, not because she was hungry in the least, but because it provided them with a gap, an opportunity to shift their attention in a new direction. She turned the subject first to the perfectly structured and seasoned lobster salad, and next to Candido himself. She skipped past the parts she already knew well, and went directly to the topic she’d long endeavored to avoid. She hoped for courage when she opened her mouth.

“And how is your wife? A better marriage than mine, I hope?”

“Oh. Well. My wife is a wonderful woman,” he said. “Yasmina. From Fajardo. You’d like her very much.”

She could sense his restraint, but couldn’t determine its source. A hope to spare Rafaela’s feelings, or some muddled confusion about his own? It didn’t matter why, she knew. Rafaela would open the door graciously and usher him through it. So they had known each other since they were children, so they’d loved each other, so what. They were not children now; they were adults who cared deeply for each other, whose shared home and history were now welded by the bond of grief. They would be fine, they would negotiate their impediments with dignity.

“Lola said as much, and I would expect no less for you!” she said. “And how did you two meet?” She skewered a morsel of lobster onto her fork.

“In New York,” he said.

“Oh!” This information nearly startled her out of her composure. She felt it land, felt it furrow her brow, and she hoped, in that moment, that recognizing one’s own hypocrisy might be a sort of virtue. She had met and fallen in love with Peter at that same time, of course. Candido read every single thought on her face even before she could unpack them herself.

“We didn’t date then,” he explained. “It wasn’t until years later when we’d both moved back home.”

Home . There was a clarity to that word when he said it, a comfort and intimacy she’d long forgotten, rather than the sloppy mess that ensued whenever that word issued from her own lips. Rafaela nodded, as if to encourage him to continue, but he faltered on where to go next.

“It was after you and Peter left and moved to St. Louis with the kids,” he said, nonchalantly leaning over to spear a cherry tomato from her salad with his fork. “Maybe a year after you left?”

Rafaela hated how relieved she felt to receive this reassurance, but she was also distracted by the theft of the tomato. What difference did it make, where or when he met his wife? Some, apparently. She watched him roll the cherry tomato in dressing and then pop it into his mouth.

“I ran into her at a friend’s birthday party, and we started to reminisce about the bad old days in New York. We’d worked at the same hotel, but she was already saving up to move home when I arrived. She’s a few years older than me. And ambitious! She was determined to return with enough money to get a nursing degree.”

An older woman! Rafaela was intrigued. “And she did get that nursing degree, right? Didn’t Lola tell me she was a nurse?”

“She is.” Candido couldn’t suppress a proud smile. “She’s in neonatal care at UPR.”

“That’s great.”

Rafaela felt a pang then that she refused to admit was jealousy, but which was very obviously jealousy in several forms. Peter had never been proud of her like that. Not once to her knowledge had her husband ever chased any measure of pridefulness from his voice when describing her to someone. Never had he thanked her for leaving her family, her island, never had he admired her improving English or remarked on her acclimating to a new culture. Hadn’t she done those things relatively well? Hadn’t she borne two bright, beautiful children and raised them to be happy, thoughtful, well-adjusted young adults, despite their growing up in a place where their mother had no family, no friends, no support, where she couldn’t even buy a plantain? So there, beneath some jumble of muddier feelings, it was a miraculous ribbon of joy that Rafaela felt to know that marriage could still look like this. Joy, to see how happy Candido was in his life. The smile that lit her face was unexpected and genuine, but so were the tears that gathered behind her eyes. This was such a humid swamp of feelings she couldn’t isolate a single, coherent one.

“And I heard you have kids?” she asked, hoping to barge through the rest of it by sheer force of will.

“A boy and a girl, same as you. Ten and eight.”

The boy ate, slept, and breathed baseball. The girl loved books. There was a second assault on her plate then, a crouton this time, and the sight of it leaving her salad on the tine of Candido’s fork unearthed a forgotten memory: a thousand such burglaries from their childhood, Candido forever filching food from her plate when no one was looking. Not because he was hungry or underfed, but because they both thought it was hilarious. When they were little, they ate only breakfast together, and then dinner once or twice a week when Mamamía and Papamío were out. The thievery was a game between them, but not even Priti was allowed to know, not even Lola. It was their secret. So whenever the purloined item was something of great value (her last tostone, for example), Rafaela was unable to lodge a verbal complaint without ruining the game. She resorted to pinching or kicking him under the table instead.

Candido reached into his back pocket then, and drew out his wallet. Inside were pictures of his children. He was still chewing her stolen crouton.

“They’re beautiful,” she said. “I hope they have better table manners than their father.”

He laughed, and when he reached for her cucumber, she slapped his hand. She ate the cucumber before he could get to it.

“Remember, you used to get in trouble for guarding your food?” He laughed.

She’d forgotten that too. Priti chastising her for sitting with her arms outstretched around her plate like a goalie.

“This is not a zoo!” Candido said in his mother’s voice. “Get your elbows off that table this instant!”

Rafaela joined him in his laughter.

“Your mother had no idea what I was up against!” She shook her head.

“You’ll be happy to hear that I don’t tolerate that kind of tomfoolery at my own dinner table. It was one of our first rules when the kids were little: Keep your hands to yourself at the table! No touching other people’s food!”

“Well, I suppose you knew the dangers better than most.” Rafaela sipped from her wine. Then, “I bet those kids adore you,” she said. “When you become a parent, when you have a family like that, it changes everything.”

“Well,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “Not everything.”

Holding his gaze felt like barring the door against an onslaught, an invading army, a hurricane, but she did it. Rafaela didn’t even blink.

“But yes, most things,” he conceded. “You were obviously a great mother, Rafaela. Your own kids… Ruth—” He interrupted himself to sip at his wine. He shook his head then, and tried clearing his throat, but he couldn’t seem to push any volume back into his voice, couldn’t get breath into the words. “Your daughter… I obviously don’t know her the way I’ve gotten to know Benny.” He breathed then. “But she seems remarkable too, like Lola. And like her mamá.”

Rafaela nodded, and a single tear escaped to darken the red linen of her napkin.

“You’ve done a great job with them, you know. You should be really proud. I don’t imagine that was easy.”

Rafaela folded her napkin onto the table, and reached across once more to hold his hand. All the years that had passed, all the people she’d been since she’d last heard the timbre of his voice. Their common language was two whole families ago, and still. There was not a single locked cupboard in her heart to which he did not have the key. She said none of this, of course, as she felt the gold band that encircled his fourth finger with her thumb. Instead, she squeezed. She smiled.

“Thank you,” she said.

Because that was all she had. The rest of the meal was uneventful. They talked about Rafaela’s recent move from St. Louis to the East Coast, Priti’s exuberant second act living in Miami, where she was married to a middle school principal and taught step aerobics at the local gym. When Candido asked if Rafaela ever thought about moving home, she didn’t reveal that San Juan could not feel like home now, not with Lola gone and himself happily married to some very lucky woman Rafaela did not want to meet.

She felt a familiar prickle then, a long-buried resentment she’d always done her best to ignore. Candido had a way of conducting all manner of emotional archaeology without even opening his mouth. The feeling within her was laid bare from one moment to the next—he had only to turn his head, a certain angle of light across his cheekbone, and she was flooded with it: Why, why, why had Rafaela been the one to go to Trinidad? Why hadn’t she thrown a tantrum, refused to go, insisted on a better solution? And why had Lola been allowed to remain home in Puerto Rico, close to everyone they loved, while the whole trajectory of Rafaela’s banished life had been set in motion the very day she boarded that cursed boat out of Ponce? Why had she gone without a fight? Rafaela never blamed Lola. She barely even blamed Papamío. But there were times when she felt her life had been stolen from her.

Candido sat across from her. They were middle-aged. He was married.

Rafaela drank wine and moved the conversation along to his freight business, how many employees and government contracts he had now, how rapidly they were expanding their fleet. His humility couldn’t mask his overwhelming and hard-won success. She was proud of him, but it would’ve felt condescending to say so.

“Priti must be so proud of you,” she said instead.

He grinned. “So she often reminds me.”

“I think of her so often,” Rafaela said. “Especially after the divorce, I thought of her every day, what it must have been like for her, raising you on her own, and without all the advantages I had.”

Candido nodded.

“I called her once when Benny was in a snit,” she said. “I mean, he was always moody when he was younger, but this was a particularly awful day. I remember crying after he stormed off to bed. And then the next day, as soon as he left for school, I called Priti to apologize for what we put her through when we were teenagers.”

“She told me,” Candido said. “That meant a lot to her.”

Rafaela shook her head, embarrassed. “It shouldn’t have taken me so long. When I think back to our childhood now, it seems so strange, so lopsided. I can hardly believe it ever felt natural to me, the way we lived.”

Candido shrugged. “It was just how things were then.”

A generous interpretation, Rafaela thought. She gazed at him as he lifted the almost-empty wine bottle from the table, tipped the last of it into her glass.

“Should we order another?” he asked. “I feel like Lola would want us to have another.”

She was tipsy enough to laugh, but not tipsy enough to sanction more wine.

When they parted ways at the curb in front of the Vanderbilt, Rafaela to return to her sister’s apartment by taxi, and Candido to return to his office by foot, she realized that her grief was not only for Lola but also for herself, for everything she’d lost years ago, and then continued to lose, year after year. Even now.

Rafaela didn’t often think back on her wedding, a day that did not lead to the happy marriage she’d hoped for. But when she did reminisce, she preferred only to reflect on the inherent beauty of the day: her gown, her mantilla, the decadence of the orchids, the stained-glass light of the church. Her beautiful groom, so handsome in his dress blues. There had been love there. But as she sat in the back seat of the taxi that afternoon outside the Vanderbilt, and Candido shut her inside, as she buckled herself in and he stepped back, waving from the curb, it was impossible for her to push the other memories away. What had always been repressed there, she now realized, beneath the honorable veneer of her wedlock.

She’d been in love with Peter the day she married him, it was true. But not exclusively. And not fully. It was Candido whose face she’d searched the pews for when she stood beside her darling groom in the church. When the priest asked if anyone present knew any reason why Rafaela and Peter should not be joined in holy matrimony, when Lola had cleared her throat lightly but said nothing, it was Candido’s impossible voice that Rafaela imagined might ring out from the back of the church. Candido who accidentally crossed her mind just as she stepped forward to slip the band onto Peter’s shaking hand, just before she whispered her vows before God.

It was always Candido who’d been too good for her. Never the other way around, not for a single day of their lives. How foolish she had been, with her antiquated notions of propriety and rank. How had she ever believed in such nonsense? Rafaela was so many lifetimes removed from the girl she had once been, she could no longer inhabit a brain where those ancient choices made any sense. All this time, she could’ve been here where she belonged, with Lola, with Candido.

And there he was, tall and broad in the shoulders, the wedding ring gleaming from his hand as he waved her goodbye, his green eyes mossy in the sunlight. This time she waited until her car pulled onto the highway before she gave in to the tears.