“Second cousin, third cousin. Nobody cares, Angelina,” Inés said. “The dress, tell us about the dress.”
“My cousin? Yes, I think she was beautiful. Yes, I’m sure she must have been,” Vicente said. “I really don’t remember.”
Inés laughed. “You don’t remember the bride? Your own cousin?”
“His third cousin, twice removed, I think,” Angelina said.
“You’re right, Angelina, third cousin, twice removed,” Inés said. “Did you dance with lots of pretty girls? Maybe one particular pretty girl?”
Vicente continued to interlace the leaves into the aparejo that was the jíbaro’s saddle; he and his brother Luisito had learned the skill from their father. Now his fingers fumbled and he saw that he would have to redo a section of the large leaves.
“I danced with lots of girls,” Vicente said. “Nobody special.”
“That’s good,” his mother said. “You’re much too young to fall in love.”
“You fall in love when you fall in love,” Inés said. “Nothing can stop it.”
Angelina smiled at Inés. “I think I meant that Vicente is too young to marry. He’d have to wait a few years.”
“Last year when your brother Luisito married, he was twenty-five.” Inés checked her handiwork. “That’s the custom, isn’t it, Angelina?”
“A son works for his father until he is at least twenty-five years old.” Angelina tapped her son’s arm. “That’s the only way the family farm can survive.”
“That’s four whole years,” Vicente said. “What girl would wait four years?”
“Are you thinking of someone, Vicente?” Angelina’s tobacco-stained fingers held her cigar halfway to her lips.
“Nadie, Mamá,” he said.
When he sat en el balcón with las damas, he noticed for the first time that his company was unnecessary; Angelina and Inés were content with or without him. Vicente even envied his parents the few daily words they spoke to each other at dinner. During the day, Vicente liked the solitude of picking coffee berries; he appreciated the repetitive movement that required only his body and did not task his mind. The sweet scent of the guava trees, the birds flying together in the sky, and especially the red coffee berry clustered in the bright green leaves of the coffee tree filled him with a wistfulness he didn’t understand. At night, when his father was out engaging in his nocturnal pursuits, and the house and its inhabitants—Angelina, Inés, Gloria the servant—settled into peaceful slumber, Vicente took to roaming Cerro Morales, restless as the spirits.
Some weeks after Dalia’s wedding, Vicente and his father rode to town, their horses loaded with sacks of coffee beans. While Raúl Vega haggled with the creditors, Vicente sold for a few dollars the aparejo he had made and exchanged his mother’s list of provisions at the general store for a letter, his name written in an elegant hand. He looked at the unfamiliar handwriting. He felt the weight of the envelope in his palm. Never before had he received a letter. He liked the way his name looked, Vicente Vega, black ink against the white paper. Who would write to him? It had to be the girl. He sniffed the envelope. Did it smell like strawberries? He looked about him to see if anyone had noticed that he had received something so special. The clerk looked at him with curiosity, men usually didn’t sniff envelopes; Vicente tucked the letter in his satchel.
“It must be a letter from my cousin in Paris on her honeymoon,” Vicente said, as if to defend the letter.
The clerk packed the provisions—a box of small cigars, candles, matches, soap, a tin of Danish butter, a can of aceite de oliva from España, two pounds of flour, one pound of sugar, five pounds of bacalao, a small box of embroidery thread—into the saddlebags; Paris meant nothing to him.
Vicente pretended interest in the arroz del país that filled wooden boxes and was sold by weight.
The clerk looked at the paper. “I forgot the rice.”
“Better pack it up,” Vicente said.
Vicente’s father arrived to settle his account.
“I got a letter.” Vicente flashed the envelope. “Remember that wedding in Ponce?”
“No time for foolishness,” Raúl Vega said. “Take the saddlebags out to the horses.”
Vicente didn’t have to worry that his father might mention the letter to Angelina; doing so would require more than their daily allotment of words.
The letter:
Dear Señor Vicente Vega,
As the older sister of Valentina Sánchez, my mother has asked me to write to you and impress upon you that even the merest hint of impropriety may ruin a señorita’s reputation and her family’s good name. I’m sure as an honorable man, you wouldn’t wish ill on my beloved sister.
Sincerely,
Señora Elena Sánchez de Rojas
Vicente paced el balcón like a caged animal. Angelina and Inés tried to ease his distress. Have more coffee, Vicente. Maybe you need to eat something. Or take a nap. Or visit your brother. Maybe you need to go to town and do the things young men must do. What is it, muchacho? Tell us, tell us.
“I’m going crazy,” Vicente said to his mother.
“Inés and I have noticed that you’ve been moody,” Angelina said.
“Moody?” Vicente laughed—if his mother only knew.
“Is it a woman?”
“I think I need a wife.”
“Banish that thought!”
“Mamá, I can’t stop thinking about a strawberry girl I met at my cousin’s wedding and—”
“A strawberry girl! How can a girl be a strawberry? Maybe you got too much sun—”
“No, Mamá, she’s not—forget the strawberry part—this muchacha at my cousin’s wedding—”
“There are women for problems like yours,” Angelina said. “Your father has never had any difficulty finding them.”
Vicente stared at his mother. What about Inés? She had once been his father’s querida. In a rash moment, he packed a clean shirt in his saddlebag and kissed his mother goodbye. He had to pry her fingers from his arms.
“Tell Papá that I’ve gone to Ponce,” he said.
“Vicente, think it over,” Angelina said. “Your father won’t like it.”
He left with Elena’s letter in his pocket.
•
Except for the few dollars he had saved from selling his aparejos, Vicente had little money of his own. Gloria had given him a large fiambrera, a lunch pail of three tins filled with rice and beans and stewed root vegetables like apio and yautía. He drank fresh water from the many streams along the way. At night, he tethered his horse behind a tree, hoping he had chosen a spot that would keep him safe from the bandits who prowled the country roads. He used his saddle as a pillow and protected himself from the mountain chill with a blanket his mother had given him when she saw that she couldn’t dissuade him from leaving. When he had made the trip for Dalia’s wedding only a few months before, Raúl Vega had ridden part of the way with him through the most treacherous parts of the road, warning him of the dangers and advising him where to turn off the road at night. This time he was making the journey without his father’s help; he reminded himself that he was a man, no longer a scared boy. Vicente huddled under the blanket and stared up at the sky without appreciating the moon or the brilliance of the stars, without hearing the night sounds like the hooting owls or the incessant clamoring of los coquís.