A few days later, Vicente was on the doorstep of her parents’ yellow house, hat in one hand, her sister’s letter in the other. The girl who answered the door was a proper señorita, from the chaste collar of her white cotton dress to the hem of the long skirt that brushed her shoes.
“It’s you,” Valentina said.
She stood just inside the door. People walked by them on the street, and one greeted the girl.
“I wanted to see if you were real,” he said. “That night—”
“I didn’t think that I would see you again.” When she gave him a sidelong glance, he knew that he’d never be bored.
“Are your parents home? Your sister Elena?” He fumbled with his hat.
“My sister! What about her?”
He gave her Elena’s letter.
“That Elena, que entrometida, always in my business.” Valentina handed the letter back.
“I would never do anything to hurt you or your family,” he said.
They stood smiling at each other, right there outside her door.
“Can we sit out here en el balcón and talk?” Maybe he could hold her hand.
“Come back when my parents are home,” she said. “The neighbors are spies.”
He looked for the spies in the painted houses; he turned back at the click of the door. Sometimes in his nightmares, his horse would speak to him. Today he read the horse’s thoughts in its big brown eyes not dissimilar to the girl’s: Remember what your mother said? You work for your father, what do you have to offer a strawberry girl?
After Dalia’s wedding, with the exception of Juan Moscoso, who sent an offer via his mother to her mother, no one else offered Valentina a marriage proposal. So after months of boredom in her parents’ house, if el viejito Juan Moscoso had promised to take her to Paris immediately after the wedding, she might have joined her life with what was left of the old man’s. But Juan Moscoso’s mother was too old, too ill, too lonely, too something. Juan Moscoso had said what kind of son would he be if he abandoned his mother, old as she was? Besides, Valentina was young and strong and would be the perfect companion for la doña Moscoso. No, Valentina told her mother. No, she would not be companion to the old lady or wife to the son. Nunca.
Mamá reminded her daughter that it had taken many afternoons of visiting Juan Moscoso’s mother to secure his proposal for Valentina; a man didn’t reach the age of fifty, sixty years as a solterón without a certain nimbleness required to avoid the married state. When Valentina refused Juan Moscoso, it had put Mamá in a terrible lío with his mother. If Valentina expected men to come to their door begging to marry her, bueno, look around! The men were off to university in Europe or marrying rich girls or too poor to take a wife, according to her mother (or too old or too ugly, according to Valentina), and there was nothing she could do except say a few rosaries while she waited for her youngest daughter to accept what was written in the stars.
“I can’t read the stars,” Valentina said.
“Don’t be such a tontita, I didn’t raise you to be stupid,” Mamá said. “You’ll be a wife and mother, that’s what is written in the stars. What else is there for a girl in Puerto Rico?”
“I don’t want to marry a viejito.”
“Juan Moscoso is here and now,” Mamá said. “Snap him up quick before you find yourself an old maid tolerated in the home of some relative.”
Valentina watched Vicente from the window. He looked like he was from el campo with his country clothes, not the sophisticated man from the wedding. But he was young. And the way he’d looked at her . . . She thought that he must be very strong, unlike Juan Moscoso. She’d thought about him now and then since Dalia’s wedding while she went about her chores and waited for something to happen. Maybe it was the way he looked up at the house, confused and uncertain like a boy, that caused her to feel a tiny pang of—love. No, not love, and not quite affection, but something close to understanding—he wanted her to love him. How long could she wait for someone like Rudolfo to take her to Europe? It was then, at that moment, at her window, that she decided she would consent to be his wife, if he asked her. Surely, as Dalia’s cousin, he would want to visit Paris. It was very likely that they could stay with Dalia in Paris for many months, maybe forever.
When Vicente presented himself that evening, the family gathered en la sala. Valentina sat next to her mother on the cane love seat. Mamá held her fan, ready to flick Valentina’s wrist if she opened her mouth. After a few minutes of small talk about the difference in weather between Ponce and Utuado, they sat without speaking. The family stared at the prospective bridegroom while Valentina peered at him beneath her eyelashes. Vicente examined every piece of furniture in the room, the comfortable cane table and chairs, the pictures on the wall of the Virgin Mary and of a male saint holding a skull, and the framed needlework of a Spanish coat of arms. He stifled a laugh. His father made fun of Puerto Ricans with a coat of arms, saying how could they all be descendants of Spanish royalty?
Vicente cleared his throat and declared his intentions. His gaze caught Valentina’s and she couldn’t help smiling.
Mamá tapped her fan on Valentina’s wrist.
Papá asked Vicente a few questions about his family then invited him to return the next evening.
At midday when the pharmacy closed for la siesta, Papá went to Dalia’s father, who was a wealthy Spanish merchant, to learn that it was true that Vicente’s father Raúl Vega owned coffee land. Everyone knew that Puerto Rican coffee was prized all around the world and commanded high prices. To Papá’s surprise, Dalia’s father didn’t recommend the marriage; Vicente was beholden to his father for some years, and even though Puerto Rican coffee was prized today, that could change tomorrow. Better to wait for a more desirable offer.
“I’m still going to marry him,” Valentina said.
“That’s what you think, señorita,” Mamá said.
“Mamá, I’ve only had two offers. This one and the old man’s.”
“And you refused the superior one,” Mamá said.
“Mamá, do you want your daughter to become a solterona como Tía Evangelina?”
“I—” Mamá pursed her lips.
“Valentina, don’t be so impulsive,” Elena said.
“You’re still young,” Papá said. “There’s no hurry.”
“Ponce is Ponce. With your farmer, you’ll be stuck out in the country with nothing to do. Except the cooking and cleaning,” Elena said.
“You never even learned to cook,” Mamá said.
“They must have servants,” Valentina said. “He’s related to Dalia’s family after all.”
“We won’t see you more than once a year,” Mamá said.
“The farmer’s life is a hard one, always at the mercy of the weather and the markets,” Papá said. “Think it over carefully.”
Valentina appealed to their sad faces. “He came all the way from the country for me. Isn’t that romantic?”
Elena took her sister by the shoulders and shook her a little. “Don’t let a few kisses persuade you. This isn’t a French novela.”