Chapter 13
I had already swept the porch, but just for good measure, I got the broom and swept it again. And went over the little windows in the door with glass cleaner and a rag (it turned out that the movers hadn’t stolen them after all), and pulled out two weeds I had missed when I went over the yard earlier. I wanted the house to look perfect.
Iván was on his way back from the airport with his parents, who would stay with us for two weeks. We had spent the Sunday after Santa Cruz getting the in-law apartment over the garage all ready for them, and it was by far the most furnished and completed spot in the house. I ran up the stairs and looked around, scrutinizing everything in the apartment, adjusting the flowers I had put in a pretty vase on the little kitchen table, and running my finger along the windowsill to check for dust.
I went back into the house and started fretting around there, wishing we had more furniture and it looked a little more pulled together. I was trying to tug the couch in the living room a fraction further to the left when I heard Iván’s car pull into the driveway. They were here. I smoothed down my hair and made myself stop biting my lip. I wanted them to like me. I really, really wanted them to like me.
“Maura? Hello?” Iván called as he walked into the living room. He was carrying a huge suitcase. His mother and father came after him, and my first thought was that I understood where he had gotten his good looks. Iván was a perfect blend of his handsome father and beautiful mother, although neither of them was much taller than I was. Where his height had come from was still a mystery.
“Hola,” I said. Very carefully, I pronounced, “Bienvenidos a California. Soy Maura.”
His mom, Belén, kissed me on both cheeks and then hugged me. “Maura! We are so glad to meet you in person, finally!” Santiago, his dad, kissed me too, but he seemed less comfortable in English, or maybe he was just less effusive. I was going to make a huge effort to speak Spanish to them so they felt at home.
I had made lunch, which they were thrilled about. They seemed to be thrilled about everything: the neighborhood, the house, their apartment over the garage, and to my genuine surprise, they seemed especially thrilled about me. His mom couldn’t stop complementing me. She thought I was smart, and organized, and sweet, and beautiful, and she told me so. Iván’s dad was less lavish with the praise but seemed equally pleased with me.
At first I thought they were putting me on. “Your mom is going to turn my head,” I said quietly to Iván.
“What does that mean?”
“It means she’s giving me a lot of complements, don’t you think?” I paused. “Does she really mean what she’s saying? Or is it a language barrier deal?”
“She likes you. She’s not saying she likes you because she can’t understand English.” He started to laugh.
“They don’t even know me!” I protested, still feeling like something was off.
“They know me,” Iván said, and kissed me softly. I looked up to see his mom smiling at us from across the room.
It was easy to settle in with Iván’s parents because they made it easy. They understood that we were both busy with school and work, so they kept themselves occupied when we couldn’t be around, sightseeing and getting the most out of being tourists, guiris, as they called themselves (then they laughed). They both helped with projects in the house. Santiago and Iván reorganized the kitchen so everything’s location made more sense to the person cooking. I mentioned that I wanted to make curtains for one of the bedrooms upstairs, and Belén immediately wanted to help me when she learned that I really didn’t know how to sew.
“I used to sew with my mother,” she said. “I learned so many things from her, and she helped me in so many ways.” Her eyes got very misty. “Iván says that you didn’t have that with your own mother, and I’m sorry. I hope that I can be something like that for you.”
I was genuinely shocked.
“Belén, es demasiado,” her husband told her, and she got very brisk.
“Santi and I are going to get a sewing machine today, and you and I can make the curtains, if you want.”
“Thank you,” I managed to say. Sure enough, when I got home that night, there was a sewing machine set up in the office, and the next day Belén and I went fabric shopping before I went to work and made curtains together.
I carefully pinned along the bottom hem. “Tell me about Iván as a little boy. I’ll bet he was a handful.”
“What is that?” She pressed gently on the foot of the machine. “¿Ves? I go very slowly. See where I put my hands to guide the cloth?”
I watched her carefully. It looked so easy when she did it. “When a kid is a handful he causes trouble,” I explained.
“Iván was a very good boy. There were no handfuls. He was always so hardworking. No one would believe it, because sometimes he acts so silly. But he was very serious, too. I don’t know how to say it, the qualities he has to make himself successful.”
“Determination? Drive?”
“Both. He could not have been such a swimmer without them. If one boy swam five laps, Iván swam ten. If a coach told him to practice flip turns, he would be there for hours until I said enough.” She shook her head, remembering. “His brother liked to swim, too. But he didn’t have the same thing, the desire. If Iván wants something, you know he will get it.” She looked at me pointedly.
I swallowed.
“Here.” Belén got up. “You take my seat and tell me about the boy Ben that Iván mentions.” I was happy to talk endlessly about Benji, and as Belén had raised two boys herself, I trusted her when she said that it sounded like I was doing a good job with hm.
I found myself telling both of Iván’s parents over one late dinner all my worries about Anouk. She was still finalizing the details with her investor, she had told me, and she still wasn’t listening to my objections.
“It sounds…” Santiago hesitated. “Sucio.”
“Dirty,” Iván supplied. “Crooked.” He frowned at me. “I don’t want Maura involved.”
My temper flared up. “I am involved, because Anouk needs my help,” I said carefully and calmly.
“If Anouk is involved in money laundering, you shouldn’t be anywhere near her,” he insisted.
“Iván, no seas cabrón,” his mother told him. After I had talked to her for a while in Spanish, I fully understood where her son got his mouth. “I’m sure Maura is being careful. Are you?” she asked me.
“I’m not sure how careful I can be,” I admitted. “I’m really…scared. I’m frightened for her. If she loses her business, she won’t have anything. And I’m scared to work there if this investor is as bad as I’m guessing he is, but I don’t want to leave her because then she would be all alone to deal with a criminal. I’ve talked her out of some bad decisions before, but I feel like I’m over my head.” I looked at Iván. “Just telling me to run away isn’t helping. I can’t.”
There was silence around the table. “I didn’t understand all that,” Iván told me. “It makes more sense to me now.”
I nodded at him. “Thank you.”
“But I still think—”
“I know,” I interrupted him.
Iván came to my door that night while I read for one of my classes, propped up on some pillows in bed.
“What if we found another investor for Anouk?” he asked me.
I put down the book. “I don’t think there are a lot of people jumping to invest in a marginally-successful dance studio. She runs it really poorly, Iván. Even if someone did want to give her money, I couldn’t recommend it. She cheats on her taxes, her finances are a mess, and she gambles!” I had to laugh a little. “I mean, right now it’s not really a golden investment opportunity. I think the studio could be successful, but not with Anouk in charge, I’m sorry to say.”
“What if someone was her partner? She could own the building and teach the dance, but the business side would be run by someone else.” He crawled onto the bed with me and lay on his side, propping his head on his hand.
“If she would agree to that, I think it would be great.”
He nodded at me. “I’m glad you’re loyal. I just don’t want you to be hurt.”
“I know. I’m glad you care, even though we disagree.”
Iván pulled back the sheet.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m tired,” he told me. He tugged the sheet and blanket over himself and settled on his stomach, spread out across the mattress.
“Your bedroom is across the hallway,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but I’ve decided that we’re going to sleep in the same bed. Good night.”
“Iván.” I poked him. He didn’t move. “Iván!” I kicked him this time, and he grunted.
“Go to sleep, Maura. It’s late. Old people need a lot of rest.”
I made an exasperated sound in my throat. “Fine, you can sleep here tonight. This bed is too small for you, though.”
“I agree. Tomorrow we’ll start sleeping in my room.”
“How do you say ‘bossy jerk’ in Spanish?”
“Iván,” he answered me.
I did turn off the light, and slid down under the covers. It actually felt nice, having him there. I liked listening to his breathing and feeling the warmth exuded by his big body. I liked being sure that I wasn’t going to wake up with him on top of me—
Where had that come from? I sat up in bed, the breath caught in my throat. Iván had the ability to fall asleep in only a few seconds, and he was dead to the world already. I went down to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and when I came back up, he was lying on his side. I crawled into bed and scooted over to him, picking up his arm and putting it around me. I curled up against him like I had done before, when he was sick during final exams. He pulled me closer and sighed into my hair, and a few minutes later, I fell asleep too.
∞
“What about this one?” I pointed to the ad.
Santiago pulled on his glasses and looked at the screen. “Too many miles. This one is best.” He tapped the paper we had printed out. “You and I will go.”
“And me,” Belén said. “You forget who negotiated for our car.”
“I remember you had to leave,” Santiago said, and laughed just like his son.
“It was a misunderstanding,” Belén explained to me. “In a negotiation, things become hot.”
Iván was at Saturday swim practice, a long one today. Over the lovely coffee that Belén had made in the special Spanish pot she had dragged over in her suitcase (no pig leg, though, to my utter happiness and Iván’s distress), I had started talking about buying a car.
“I need to be able to drive into the city for interviews and really, I just need to be able to get myself around and not have to depend on public transit all the time. And on Iván.”
Santiago had nodded. “I know cars.”
He did, too. Way more than I did, that was for sure. With my minimal budget, the choices were limited, and he and I had picked through the online listings I had already flagged as possibilities. Then the three of us took Iván’s car over to check on the one Santiago and I had decided on.
Santiago went over every inch of the car, inside and out. He and I took it for a test drive with the seller and he had me put it through maneuvers I wouldn’t have thought of (and probably would never do with the car again).
Meanwhile, Belén was going to town negotiating. “You didn’t say it had so many scratches,” she told the seller, pointing to the passenger side door and pursing her lips.
“They just didn’t show up well in the pictures,” the guy protested.
“Hm.” She shrugged. “Well, you know, Maura, I really liked the one we saw before. It was cleaner, had less damage. Santiago, you agree, don’t you?” she called to him. “We’ll take the other car, the one with fewer repairs?”
In the end, I got the car. Belén drove the price down and Santiago approved the engine, and I bought my first car. We did the paperwork, drove to my bank for a certified check, and then I took it home. Belén drove Iván’s car behind me. Watching in my new rearview mirror, I understood where he had gotten his driving abilities. The woman was a terror on the roads.
Iván was already home and I told him to come out to the driveway for a surprise.
“What’s this?” he asked, pointing to my ride.
“It’s my new car!” I announced proudly.
He walked around it, looking closely. “It’s used,” he said finally. “Is it safe?”
“Yes, of course it’s safe. Your dad went over it with a fine-tooth comb. It’s the first car I ever owned.” Why was he not excited?
“Iván,” his dad said, and he glanced up. They stared at each other for a moment.
“We should go celebrate,” Iván said suddenly. “Maura, you pick where and you can drive us in your car.”
I smiled. “No, Santiago and Belén should pick. You’re our guests, and I couldn’t have done this today without you.” I patted the top of my car. I planned to wash and wax it tomorrow, like I used to do to Robin’s.
“Why don’t we go to that restaurant you always talk about, Mamá?” Iván said to Belén.
“La Raillerie?” Her eyes lit up. “Could we get in?”
“Is there somewhere else you’d like to go?” I blurted out. The three of them turned to me. “There are a lot of restaurants around here.”
“Have you been there before?” Iván asked.
“Yes, I’ve been there.” With Robin and his parents for our last meal together.
“Isn’t the food good?” he questioned further.
“The bread was very good.” He was staring at me, but I looked away. I had only gotten a bite of roll before leaving to walk home on that horrible evening in the fall.
Iván kept watching me. “We’ll find a great place,” he told his parents. “La Raillerie is probably all booked. Maura, let’s go inside and make a reservation somewhere.” Belén and Santiago went back up to their apartment and I followed Iván into the living room.
He sat down on the couch and pulled me onto his lap as I started to walk by. “Now, why didn’t you tell me that you were going to buy a car?”
I squirmed. “I don’t know. Is there a law or something?”
“A law that you have to tell me about car purchases? Not as far as I know.”
“I thought you’d want to try to get it for me. I didn’t want you to. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to.”
“Maura, if I can do something for you—”
I took his face in my hands. “You do. You do so many things for me. I needed a car and I wanted to get it myself. Your dad looked at it for me, and your mom haggled down the price, and I’m really happy with it. Ok?”
He nodded solemnly. I leaned forward and kissed him and he broke into a big smile.
“Now, tell me why you don’t want to go to that restaurant,” he said.
Now I put my head down, hiding my face in his neck. “I really don’t want to explain it.” He tickled my ribs, making me jump and twist. “Stop! Iván, stop! Ok, I’ll tell you, but don’t get mad.” He always got upset when I mentioned Robin. It was hard not to sometimes; I’d spent ten years with him, and that was a large part of my life. I hadn’t ever planned to tell anyone, though, about the awful night at that restaurant.
Until now. I sighed. “La Raillerie is where Robin’s mom broke up with me.”
Iván was silent. I could almost feel him hold in his anger. “Wait a minute,” he said suddenly. “It’s where his mom broke up with you? What does that mean?”
“They took me there, I think because they knew I wouldn’t make a scene in the restaurant. And Cynthia, Robin’s mom, told me that Robin was going back to Orange County with them, and that it was better to have a clean break. From me.”
“His mother broke up with you. He couldn’t even do it himself, the little—”
“I don’t think he really wanted to,” I interrupted Iván. “You heard him on the day you helped me move out. They were going to stop giving him money if he didn’t do what they said. But he was pretty…attached to me.” Parts of me, anyway. Like my breasts. “He liked everything I did for him.” Like cooking and cleaning, his laundry, and sometimes his schoolwork. “He liked that I was available.” For sex, whenever he wanted it. When I thought about it, it was just terrible. Dreadful.
“I don’t know whether to laugh at him for being such an idiot to let his mother throw you away, or to go to his house to thank him and his parents for being so stupid to let you go. It was a bad night for you, but a lucky one for me.”
My heart swelled up. “You say lovely things to me.”
“I mean them,” he told me. “I just need you to believe me.”
After a moment, I nodded against his neck. “Let’s just not talk about Robin. I’m not going to defend him anymore, and I really don’t even want to hear his name. But I’d rather go somewhere else for dinner.”
Together we chose a lovely restaurant, not La Raillerie. Iván worked for a while at the kitchen table and I messed around with some sewing I was trying to do in the office. I had thought I would make something for Benji, soft pj pants to wear. I had bought a pattern and everything, but something was just not turning out right. Really, nothing was turning out right. The instructions made no sense, in English or when I tried to read the Spanish version. I picked up some of the various fabric pieces I had cut out and went to ask Belén’s advice.
Iván was talking to his dad in the living room. I slowed down when I heard my name, but they were speaking so rapidly that was about all I could understand. “Hey,” I said, coming into the room. “What’s going on?”
Iván turned to me. “Nothing.” Was he blushing? “My dad is angry at me.”
I peered around him to Santiago. “Why? What did he do?”
Santiago scowled just like his son did when he was mad about something.
“He thinks I was rude about your new car,” Iván told me. “He says I’m turning codicioso and fachendoso, two words I don’t want to translate right now.” He wasn’t blushing, I realized. He was flushed because he was so pissed.
“He,” Santiago said, then stopped. “Joder, Iván..." He talked very rapidly for a while but there were a bunch of words that I recognized. "Enfadado...orgulloso...por fin...querer...casarte—”
“He likes you a lot,” Iván translated, interrupting his father. “He and my mom both.”
I was pretty sure that wasn’t what Santiago had said. Not all of what he had said. “I don’t want you two to fight about my stupid car, ok?” My voice sounded a little too loud. “It isn’t worth it. Please don’t fight.”
“Maura se pone inquieta porque discutimos,” Iván said to his dad. “Basta ya, ¿vale?” He turned back to me. “We’re disagreeing,” he told me. “But he still loves me, because no one could have a better son.”
His father rolled his eyes. “I love him,” he told me. “Usually.”
I thought that the dinner out would be tense and strange with them fighting, but everyone acted just as they always did, and I relaxed. They got angry, but then they got over it. There was no need to be afraid that they would never make up. Iván had admired my car on the way over, so that made me feel better, too. Not that I needed his approval, but I didn’t like the disapproval.
Iván asked me what Benji had been up to lately, and I related multiple stories of making him play sports with me or at least go outside. All that had improved since his Christmas in Georgia, but he was still kind of a drag about exercising. “Next week, I have time for more swimming,” Iván told me, and I nodded.
“I told Maura how hard you always worked on your own swimming,” Belén said approvingly. “Always a good boy.”
Both Iván and his father snorted. “Always?” Santiago asked. “I remember his…” He paused. “Apodo.”
“Nickname,” Iván supplied.
“Yes, I remember his nickname from his teachers in school.” Now the three of them laughed. “Iván el Terrible,” Santiago explained. “He was—”
“Perfect,” Iván said smoothly. “Only sometimes a little mischievous. No more than most children.”
His father shook his head, but his mother nodded. “That’s right. No more than most children.”
“There was once when he stole the car,” Santiago put in.
“What? This you have to tell me,” I said.
“Not stole,” Iván clarified. “Borrowed. I just borrowed a neighbor’s car, temporarily.”
“You were thirteen!” Santiago told him.
“Let me explain, so that Maura doesn’t think I’m a criminal,” Iván said. I saw the change in his expression the moment he remembered that my brother and my purported father, were, in fact, convicted felons.
I held up my hand. “It’s ok. Please explain why you were boosting cars at age thirteen.”
“I had to get to the pool! It was imperative, there was a coach coming from our national team to see me. Something happened and my mom wasn’t there to take me—”
“An accident on the highway. I couldn’t get home,” Belén added.
“I knew I had to get there, and it was too late to run or ride my bike. Our neighbor, Mrs. Tanco, kept an ancient Dodge Dart in her garage. I didn’t even know if it would start. But I knew she left the keys in it, in case she needed it in an emergency. To me, this was an emergency.”
“I came home and Mrs. Tanco was in her driveway screaming for the army and the Civil Guard to come and save her from the terrible thieves,” Belén said, wiping her eyes. “I can never forget it, because she was holding a swim cap. She said the thieves left it behind. I knew immediately who took the car and I went straight to the pool. There was the Dodge in the parking lot. Late that night Santiago drove it home and parked it in Mrs. Tanco’s driveway. She had been to church to pray about it and thought that God had stepped in and returned her Dart to her.”
When I stopped laughing I asked Iván, “Well? Did it pay off for you?”
Iván nodded, smiling. “I was the youngest swimmer ever on the national team. And I drove the car very, very well, all the way to the pool. It was the beginning of lifetime as an excellent driver.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Are you sure? Or was that where it all started to go wrong for you behind the wheel?” I asked him.
“What do you mean?” Belén asked. “Iván has always been an exceptional driver.”
“That’s why he never received his license in Spain,” Santiago told her.
“I like your parents so much,” I told Iván as I got into bed. It really was much easier for him to sleep in his own room, because he didn’t fit too well in my bed. And it had made sense for me to trot across the hall with him, because…because I liked to be close to him. “I wish they weren’t leaving.”
“They want us to come visit them. Maybe right after the spring semester ends and you graduate, before it gets too hot. Although you would probably enjoy the temperature.” He turned his head on his pillow to face me. “What do you think?”
“Maybe I should start with a short flight first, to LA or something. To test it out.”
“I’m glad you’re not saying no.” He reached across and tucked my hair behind my ear. “They like you, too. I think it’s good that we’re in California, though.”
“Why?”
“My sister-in-law and my mom sometimes fight. My mom can be a little too much.”
I thought of how she talked about being a mother to me. “I can understand that. But I think it’s all out of love, right?”
“Sure, definitely. She forgets, sometimes, that we’re not still children. For example, for the past two weeks I’ve brought my lunch to the pool every day in a little box. The other coaches haven’t laughed about that at all.” He paused. “Are you laughing too?”
“I thought of something else funny at the same time,” I explained.
“Liar.” He grinned at me.
“What do they think about us?”
He raised his eyebrows.
I felt my cheeks get hotter. “Like, do they know we’re sleeping in the same room? In the same bed?”
“I don’t think they’re checking. It’s no one’s business but ours.”
“If you want to, we can…we can have sex.” My face was literally on fire.
Iván looked a little pained. “That’s quite an invitation.”
“I’m trying to be—” Normal? An adult? His girlfriend? “I’m just trying to move to the next step.”
“And what would the next step be? Me rolling over on top of you and getting it over with?”
I didn’t answer.
He sighed. “Is that what you really want? Or is that what you think I want?”
“I think you’ve been pretty patient with all my weirdness and I think there are about a million other women who would like to have you roll on top of them. You know what I mean.”
“I told you I wasn’t going to force this.”
No, he wouldn’t force me. I knew that. “But you must have expectations. And honestly, blue balls by now.”
“Blue balls.”
“It’s when—”
“I know what it is!” He flopped back down on his back. “Joder.”
I lay silently next to him. I kept quiet even when he got up and went downstairs and at one point I must have fallen asleep.
When I woke up in the morning, Iván had never come back to bed. I wandered down to the kitchen and found his parents at the breakfast table.
“Good morning!” Belén chirped. Santiago nodded to me.
“Have you seen Iván?” I asked casually.
“He left about fifteen minutes ago.” Santiago looked at me closely but I looked away. Probably it showed that I had been crying. I was being ridiculously emotional and I needed to tamp it down, immediately.
“Would you like some coffee?” Belén asked, holding up the pot.
My stomach turned over. “No thank you.”
“Toast with jam? Or some cheese instead?”
My stomach flipped again, and I put my hand over my mouth.
So did Belén. “Oh! Dios mio. Are you…Maura, are you morning sick?” A huge smile spread across her face. “Are you and Iván going to have a baby?”
“No,” I managed to say. “No baby.” I made it back upstairs before I puked and then started to cry again.