“You’re not happy here, are you?” Elisa asks.
“No, I’m not.”
“Do you think you ever will be?”
“In Palm Beach? Permanently? How could I be? I didn’t choose this. I didn’t want this. It isn’t home. This was just supposed to be temporary, remember? Father said it would take time for everything to sort itself out. Months, maybe. But now it feels like everyone has forgotten. You have a family now. Our parents are so focused on accumulating more money, building the company, our family name, but what about the things we can’t buy back? I miss Magda. I miss my friends who are still in Havana, miss the old house.” I push past the tears clogging my throat. “I want to visit Alejandro’s grave. I want my life back. I want to go home.”
“It’s not the home you remember anymore.” Elisa’s tone is gentle, similar to one I’ve heard her adopt with the baby. There’s acceptance in her voice, as though she has reached a conclusion I am unable to face.
“I know. And that makes me angry, too. It feels like Fidel has won.”
“Not everything has to be a battle, Beatriz. You could just be happy.”
“You say it like happiness is the easiest thing in the world.”
“I didn’t say it was easy. Just that it shouldn’t be so easily discounted. There’s nothing wrong with being happy. Alejandro wouldn’t want you to suffer like this. Wouldn’t want you to punish yourself on his behalf.”
Is that what she thinks I’m doing? Playing the martyr because my brother was murdered? It was Elisa who found me first the day I discovered Alejandro’s dead body; she should understand my motives more than anyone.
“Do you remember that day? Do you remember what I said to you?” I ask.
“I do.”
“Fidel has to pay for what he did. Where is the justice? I can’t live in a world where Fidel reigns over Cuba after all the Cubans he murdered.”
“Beatriz,” Elisa hisses, her gaze darting around the beach before her eyes widen, and it seems to occur to her that we aren’t in Havana anymore, that every word need not be censored for fear of retribution.
For all that I complain about our presence here, I’ve grown used to the freedom to speak my mind.
“How are you not angry anymore? How have you forgotten?”
“I have not forgotten,” Elisa replies. “I will never forget. I can’t forget. But I don’t have the luxury of languishing in my grief or allowing my anger to consume me. I have a son now. He needs me. This revolution has already stolen enough from him.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t. I know how you feel, how you’ve always felt about Cuba. But I worry about you. You can’t stop living just because we aren’t home. Who knows how long we will be gone? We can hope for the best, pray one day we will return, but for the moment, that’s all we can do.
“I know it’s hard when our parents don’t want you to go to school. It must be difficult to fill your days, but this isn’t the way to do it. Hating Fidel is not a way to live.”
“Then what would you have me do? I’m not like you. I don’t know that I want to marry and have children. I’ve spent my entire life being told I’m only good at one thing: my role is to be beautiful and charming, but not to have a thought in my head—or heaven forbid, express a controversial opinion—and I’m tired of it. I don’t want to end up married to some man who will want more of the same. I know you’re happy with your life, but the thought of domestic bliss doesn’t bring me peace. It terrifies me.”
“You make marriage sound like a prison.”
Our parents were hard on all of us, had high expectations for us to make excellent matches, but it was different with me. Whether deserved or not, I’ve always been the one who was touted as the beauty in the family, and while the moniker should have been a benediction, it always felt like a curse. Until now. Now it gives me an opportunity to use my reported beauty for something that actually matters.
“Maybe not a prison. But not something to aspire to, either.”
“Does Eduardo know you feel this way?”
“Eduardo?” I laugh. “I very much doubt Eduardo cares one way or another about my thoughts on marriage.”
“You’re always together.”
“We’re friends of a sort. As much as Eduardo is interested in having friends anyway.”
“He looks at you like there’s more there.”
There it is again, that note in her voice suggesting I’ve missed something important, lack the maturity she’s acquired somewhere along the way.
“He looks at you like he wants you,” Elisa adds, her voice low, a pink flush rising on her cheeks.
“Lots of men look at me like that. It doesn’t mean anything. If Eduardo occasionally glances my way with something akin to interest, it’s because he’s a man, not because he has some secret feelings for me. I doubt Eduardo is even capable of losing his heart to someone. Do you remember what he was like in Havana? The dancers at the Tropicana? The married women they whispered about?”
“If you say so.” Elisa’s eyes narrow. “So if it isn’t romance that’s brought you two together so often, what is it?”
“We’re friends.”
“That’s all it is?”
“That’s all.”
“Now why don’t I believe that? You aren’t ever going to give up on this, are you? Everything I just said to you? None of it resonates with you, does it?”
“I don’t want you to worry about me, too.”
“No matter what, you’re my sister. I’m always going to worry about you.”
I give her a wry grin. “It feels like I’m the younger sister these days.”
“I feel old sometimes,” she admits. “That’s what comes from spending your days chasing after a child, telling him not to put random objects in his mouth, picking strange bits of food out of his hair, always being responsible for someone else’s well-being, for keeping them safe.”
Yes, Elisa is definitely adopting a new mode of motherhood than the example we received.
I laugh. “You’re not exactly tempting me to embrace a life of domesticity.”
“It has its moments.”
“And you love him? Juan?” It seems a silly thing to ask, but I realize this is one thing I don’t know about my sister.