CHAPTER 16

We did not call 911. Rique assured us that Fernando was recently inoculated for rabies, so Eduardo was in no danger. Still, Mamá fussed over him like he’d barely survived being mauled by a grizzly. She cleaned the wound with some Bactine and even though it was just two tiny puncture marks that produced only a trace amount of blood, she wrapped his entire hand, right down to the fingertips, in a gauze bandage.

In case you’re wondering, Fernando is also fine despite my mother wanting to wring his furry, little neck after she discovered chocolate paw prints all over her white couch. Rique caught up with his ferret in the laundry room where the creature was hiding under a load of delicates. Mamá said she’d have to get the room fumigated and burn every article of clothing in it. When Rique protested that ferrets are very clean, she ordered him to take his wayward pet and vacate the premises immediately. This offended Rique’s mother, Drina, who stormed out behind her son. (Truth be told, I think she left because there was no longer any dessert for her to stuff her face with.)

My mother spent the next twenty minutes sobbing about how her wonderful dinner had been ruined. This was just enough time for the rest of us to clean up the mess on the terrace and wash the dishes. Funny how that worked out!

“How can we be out of sangria? How many ways can I be tortured this evening?” I hear Mamá wail as Pilar and I return to the living room where Eduardo is sitting stiff-backed on the loveseat, squished in between Sancha and Raphaela. Naturally, the latter has her sparkly, silver-clawed hand on his thigh.

I’m about to announce that Eduardo and I have to go as I think he’s endured enough for one night when my father asks if he’d care to join him on the terrace for cigars. Eduardo jumps to his feet, clearly very keen to get away from my handsy cousin, and says he’d be delighted. He kisses me on the cheek on his way to join Papá, and I watch with trepidation as the two of them head over to the sliding glass doors.

“You don’t think Papá’s going to get all fatherly and ask Eduardo what his intentions are, do you?” I murmur the question to Pilar so that our mother, who’s busy sampling the various contents of the liquor cabinet, won’t hear.

She shrugs, seemingly unconcerned. “Probably. He had a similar conversation with Ford after we’d been dating a few months.”

“And do you think that made Ford propose to you any sooner?” Maybe something good can come out of this debacle of an evening after all!

“No, he didn’t pop the question until three months later.”

Crap! Three months! That’s an eternity. Of course, things seem to be moving a lot faster for Eduardo and me than they did for my sister and her husband. And Pilar just went with the flow in that relationship while I’ve been making things happen in mine right from the get-go.

“I have to lie down,” Mamá asserts as she sweeps past us with a bottle of red wine in hand.

“Whoa, wait a second.” Pilar scuttles after her into the corridor. “Have you forgotten you still have guests?”

“I don’t care!” my mother declares. “I tried to arrange a nice evening so that Eduardo could relax and enjoy spending time with our family, but noooooo,” she pauses to take a lengthy slug of wine, “you all had to ruin it. My vase, my dinner, my couch, my silk underpants!” She chokes on the last word with an emotional sob.

“Okay, I think someone’s had a little too much of this . . .” I try to take the wine bottle out of Mamá’s hand, but she refuses to give it up. So, we play tug-of-war for a few seconds.

“Just let her have it,” Pilar says wearily.

“Fine.” I let go of the bottle. “But prepare to hear her complaints about having a raging headache in the morning. You know she can’t handle more than two glasses of wine and there’s no telling how many glasses of sangria she knocked back earlier.”

Mamá frowns at me. “You’re starting to sound like Ana. What happened, mija? You used to be the fun one in this family.”

Fun? Over the years, my mother’s called me wild, rebellious, out of control, and a disgrace, but never fun. I guess she views me differently through wine goggles. That being the case, it would probably be in my best interest to keep her drunk permanently.

“I’m still the fun one and I always will be. Fifty years from now, I’ll be leading the conga line at the old folks’ home.” Mamá starts to sway to the side and I have to give her a two-handed shove to get her back into an upright position. Once she’s there, Pilar and I both wrap an arm around her waist to steady her.

“But you won’t have to live in the old folks’ home if you get married and have children who will take care of you,” Mamá tells me as we help her along the path to her bedroom.

“She thinks she’s going to move in with one of us when she’s decrépita?” I whisper furtively over Mamá’s head.

Pilar looks just as horrified by the thought as I am.

“Maybe Ana will want her,” she whispers back. “She and Raymond have that casita behind their house, so there’s plenty of room at their place.”

“I may be tipsy, but I’m not deaf,” Mamá reminds us. “And I am not living with Ana. Ever.”

“Well, we have decades to figure all this out, so I think we should table this discussion for the time being,” my sister says right as we reach the foot of our parents’ king-sized bed and plunk Mamá down onto it.

While Pilar removes the million and one decorative pillows artfully arranged at the top of the bed and places them on an upholstered bench by the window, Mamá gulps down more wine. I note that the bottle’s half-empty now, which means she should be passing out shortly. She sets the bottle down, wedging it between her thighs, and gazes at me searchingly. After a few seconds of this intense scrutiny, I start to worry that I’ve got food stuck to my face or she’s going to tell me I need to get my teeth whitened because all the café Cubanos I drink are staining them.

“What?” I finally query.

“I was just wondering why bringing Eduardo here tonight was something you had to be forced into?”

I sigh with irritation because she’s making me repeat myself. “I told you when you called Eduardo and invited him to dinner without consulting me first that it was too soon. You don’t just spring a family like ours on a guy; you have to build up to it slowly and make sure he’s ready for the onslaught. Otherwise, you run the risk of scaring him off.”

“And this is the type of man you think Eduardo is—weak, fickle, a fair-weather amor?”

“No, I think he’s a stand-up guy, but his family situation is a world apart from ours. The Sandovals are polite, pleasant people, very even-keeled, no one rocks the boat in their house, there’s never any arguing, or crying, or attempts to emotionally blackmail each other. In fact, there’s no drama or scandalous behavior of any kind.”

“They sound repressed,” Pilar comments as she turns back our parents’ custom-made floral-medallion jacquard bedspread.

“I don’t remember asking for your shrink-y opinion,” I bite back.

“Just an observation. I’m not saying that two people from dissimilar backgrounds can’t meet in the middle and learn from each other.”

“The only thing Eduardo learned tonight is that our family is a loud, chaotic, hot mess.”

“Ay!” Mamá throws her hands in the air. “You’re ashamed of us! You don’t think we’re good enough for this rich boyfriend of yours.”

“That’s not what I said.” I thought it, but I didn’t say it.

“Perhaps our family didn’t make the best first impression on Eduardo,” my mother concedes, which is a shock because she rarely admits to screwing up or being in the wrong. “But you can blame your aunts and cousins for that.”

And I spoke too soon. She’s not taking responsibility for anything; she’s going to play the victim (her favorite role).

“I did all I could to make tonight perfecto, but I was thwarted at every turn by those difficult women, and Rique of course. I still can’t believe he brought one of his rats to my dinner party!”

“Ferret,” Pilar and I correct her at the same time.

“Just as repugnante.” She shudders and lifts the bottle of wine to her lips again. “That boy is not right in the head. And he wasn’t even invited! He just showed up with Drina, looking for a free meal like always.”

“Of course, Mamá, it’s all their fault,” Pilar says soothingly. “Here,” she pats the two puffy pillows she’s stacked at the top of the bed. “Why don’t you lay your head down and rest? You’ve had a trying evening.”

Yeah, I’m sure she’s exhausted from her multiple hissy fits.

“I am emotionally spent, and my head is splitting.” She raises a hand to her forehead.

“Well, you’ve got some aspirin right here.” Pilar lifts the bottle of white tablets sitting on Mamá’s bedside table.

“Sí, I’ve been taking one every day for my heart.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your—”

Pilar cuts me off with a quelling glance, and I don’t complete the sentence because I know she’s right. There’s no point in arguing about this with Mamá now, even if the ECG did prove once and for all that her heart is fine. Her mental health on the other hand . . .

“Come on.” I haul my mother up onto her feet and guide her over to where Pilar is standing. She relinquishes the wine bottle to me before reclining, with her head propped up on the pillows. As her eyes drift close, I take a step back, preparing to make a tactical retreat from the room, but her hand shoots out and grabs mine.

“Isidora!” Her thickly lashed eyes are open again. “Please give Eduardo my apologies for leaving the party early and tell him how glad I am he came tonight. We will have to do it again soon, and he can bring his parents next time.”

That’ll be a cold day in Miami, which is to say never since our temps don’t even dip below sixty in the winter here.

“Sure, Mamá.” I try to extract my hand from her surprisingly strong grasp.

“All I ever wanted was for you to be happy, mija. High-spirited women like us, we need a good, strong man to keep us grounded, and that man needs to love us for what’s on the inside, not just the pretty packaging. I’m lucky your father and I met when I was young and I’ve had him by my side through all of life’s ups and downs. I’ve been worried that you’d never know a relationship like ours, but I think Eduardo could be the one to give you that unconditional love and support.”

Mamá thinks my dynamic with Eduardo is comparable to hers with my father? We couldn’t be more different than the two of them! Okay, yes, Eduardo is a smart, successful businessman like Papá, and he has a steady temperament that balances out my more volatile— Oh, God, we are like a younger, more attractive version of my parents! How did I not see this before? All right, well, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. They’ve been happily (sort of) married for four decades and they haven’t killed each other yet, which means that what they’ve got going works. I’ll just focus on that and try not to get squicked out by the fact that I’m sleeping with a guy who shares a personality with my father.

“We’ll see.” I pat her hand. “I should probably go check on Eduardo before Papá gets him sick on one of his Cohibas.”

“You do that, mija.” With an approving smile curling the corners of her lips, she releases my hand and closes her eyes.

I scurry back up the hallway and through the living room where I wave off offers of the mango cheesecake ice cream the rest of my family is noshing on. (Mamá is going to be apoplectic if they’ve wiped out her stash in the freezer.) I slide open the glass doors leading out to the terrace and am met by a pungent cloud of cigar smoke. My eyes instantly water and I almost choke, but I push through to find my boyfriend and father leaning casually against the railing that encloses the terrace, engaged in conversation, looking like a couple of longtime bros.

Eduardo’s back is to me, so it’s Papá who notices me first while he’s taking a draw on his huge Cohiba. He exhales a white plume of smoke and says, “Yes, mija?”

“Thought you should know that Mamá’s smashed and has retired for the evening.”

“¡Qué lástima! I must check on her. If you’ll excuse me, Eduardo.” He offers my boyfriend his hand. While they shake, Papá asserts, “I very much enjoyed our conversation and look forward to continuing it another time.”

“Yo también,” Eduardo echoes the sentiment.

As soon as my father’s gone and we’re alone on the terrace, with the closed sliding glass doors finally giving us some privacy, Eduardo puts out his stinky cigar in a nearby ashtray.

“I’m so sorry. I would have come out here to save you sooner, but I had to deal with more Mamá drama.” The words fall out of my mouth in a breathless rush.

“It’s okay. I really like your father,” he assures me. “We had a nice chat.”

“That’s disturbingly cryptic. You’re sure he didn’t say or do anything that made you feel uncomfortable or pressured.”

“Well . . .”

“I knew it! Argh!” I raise my clenched fists to the sky. “This is the perfect, humiliating capper to this disastrous night. You’ve been cried on; grilled like a murder suspect; groped and propositioned by the family ‘ho; bitten by a crazed, super-sized rat . . . Oh, how’s your hand, by the way?”

Eduardo lifts the bandaged appendage from the railing where he was resting it. “Fine . . . I think. I lost feeling in it a while ago.”

“What? Let me see.” I take his injured hand in both of mine and do a quick examination. “Good grief! Mamá wrapped this so tight; she’s cut off your circulation. It’s supposed to be a bandage, not a damn tourniquet! Why didn’t you say something?” I start unfurling the gauze.

“I wanted her to like me,” he divulges, with an embarrassed smile.

“You’re handsome and you’re loaded. That automatically puts you at the top of my mother’s list. If she could, I’m pretty sure she’d ask your parents to child swap with her.”

“That might be interesting. The Alvarez family is very—”

“Opinionated, obnoxious, melodramatic, combative, deranged.”

Eduardo chuckles. “You did warn me.” He flexes his hand, which is now free from the bandaging.

“Yeah, but my family managed to ratchet up their lunacy to a new level tonight. I felt like I was back on the set of Éxtasis y Engaño.”

“Ah, but if we were in a telenovela,” he snakes his arm around my waist and pulls me close, “wouldn’t we be the star-crossed lovers who fight against all the odds, including their interfering, drama-prone families, so that they can be together?”

“We would, but then you might not be Eduardo. You might be his evil twin, Ernesto, who came back from the dead and threw his brother down a well, then assumed his identity so that he could take over the family business and sleep with me.”

His brow furrows. “But surely you would know that Ernesto wasn’t me when he made love to you.”

“I don’t know. I mean, you are identical twins. Maybe the two of you have the same moves in the bedroom,” I tease him.

“I am suddenly very glad I don’t have any brothers.”

I start playing with his tie, slowly sliding one hand down from the knot, then repeating the motion with my other hand. “And I’m very glad you don’t want to break up with me after undergoing this trial by fire with my family.”

“It was actually kind of entertaining,” he admits, his eyes dropping down to watch me stroke his tie. “Not that I’d want to experience it on a nightly basis or anything—”

“Enough said. I promise I won’t subject you to them in the future unless absolutely necessary, but you have to learn how to tell my mother ‘no.’”

“I’ll work on that. Speaking of work . . .,” he trails off, wincing guiltily.

“Oh, no.” I drop my hands. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“Probably not, but I have to go back to the office and hammer out that contract with Gillian. She can’t finish it without me, and we really need to get all the kinks ironed out ahead of this meeting with our potential distributor tomorrow. Before you get mad . . .,” he holds up his hand to stop me when I open my mouth to protest, “. . . remember I didn’t break up with you over circumstances that were beyond your control, soooooo . . .”

“I guess it behooves me to be a good girlfriend and say, ‘Okay, honey, you do what you gotta do,’ but just know . . .” I brush my lips against his. “. . . that this ruins all my plans to make this cringe-inducing night up to you when we get back to your place. So, good luck staying focused on that boring, old contract when your mind keeps wandering to what you’re missing out on.”

I give him a flirtatious wink and walk toward the sliding glass doors, swishing my hips from side-to-side in an exaggerated fashion.