Carolyn realized that, if her father were still alive, her parents would most likely have gone the way of many older couples, addressing each other more like siblings constantly spatting than as loving spouses who have spent half a century doing life together.
The call ended, and Carolyn’s mother spouted, “Isobel, she is so persistent.”
Carolyn smiled. “I have a sister like that too.”
“Yes, I suppose you do.”
“What did she want?”
“She wants us to have dinner at her apartment tonight. I told her we would come. We must bring a salad.”
“Would you like me to make the salad?”
“We can make it together.”
Carolyn knew right where the large salad bowl was. All she had to do was open the cupboard, and it tumbled to the counter once again. Her mother had meandered off to the bedroom, so Carolyn chopped and shredded. Her mother appeared just as Carolyn was covering the salad.
“How can you be finished so quickly?”
“I’m speedy.”
“I was going to help you.”
“That’s okay. It’s ready to go. I need to change.”
“Try to be quick. I know they’ll be waiting for us.”
“I’m speedy, remember?”
Carolyn slipped into a fresh skirt and blouse. She wondered what she should wear for dinner tomorrow night.
If I’d known I would be going out to dinner so much while I was here, I would have packed nicer clothes.
As soon as the thought flitted through her mind, she chuckled to herself.
What nicer clothes? You don’t own nicer clothes.
She remembered passing a women’s clothing store on her way to the supermercado. Maybe she could slip away in the morning and do a little shopping. Carolyn reminded herself that she shouldn’t build up expectations about dinner. She wasn’t eighteen and shopping for a prom dress. She was a forty-five-year-old widow going to dinner with her mother and an old family friend.
However, I am a forty-five-year-old widow who just happens to have lovely pink toenails. And there’s nothing wrong with treating myself to a cute little something that will go with these pinkies.
Bolstered by her thoughts, Carolyn mentioned her plan as she and her mother exited the apartment and strolled past the pool to the other side of the building where Isobel lived. The sky was its usual clear, pale blue, and the evening air felt balmy.
“I was thinking I’d do some shopping in the morning. I’m realizing I didn’t bring enough clothes with me. I saw a shop today on the way to the grocery store.”
“Curvas Peligrosas.”
“Yes, that’s the one. What does that mean?”
“‘Dangerous Curves.’ Clever, isn’t it?”
Carolyn loved the idea of buying something new at a store called “Dangerous Curves.” “Would you like to go with me?”
“Only if we go in the afternoon. Tomorrow morning I have my dance lesson.”
Carolyn laughed. She thought her mother was joking. “Dance lessons, huh?”
“Yes, dance lessons. I was hoping you would go with me. The lesson begins at Lydia’s home at ten.”
“You’re serious.”
“Yes, of course I’m serious.”
Carolyn still didn’t believe her. “You really are taking dance lessons?”
“Yes. I have not told any of my sisters because I don’t want to be assaulted with all their advice. I know they would have plenty. All of them dance flamenco. I’m the only one who never made the time to learn. So I decided to give myself a birthday present. I am going to learn to dance flamenco.”
Carolyn stepped in front of her mother, causing her to stop walking. Putting down the salad bowl and her purse, Carolyn took her mother by the shoulders and gave her a kiss on both cheeks, duplicating the women’s gesture at the salon. With an affirming grin, she said, “I don’t know how to say it in Spanish, but congratulations for showing yourself this kindness.”
Her mother’s eyes sparkled with delight. “Gracias, mi niña. Where did you learn this?”
“Today at the salon.” Carolyn wiggled her pink fingernails for her mother to see. “I was congratulated on my way out.”
“Oh, Carolyn, this makes me happy. You have been here only two days, and you are becoming a Woman of the Canaries.”
Carolyn picked up the salad bowl and her purse from where she had placed them on the cooling pavement. Her mother linked her arm in Carolyn’s, and they strolled the rest of the way to Isobel’s apartment.
“So this means you will go with me in the morning to my first dance lesson?”
“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t miss your first dance lesson for anything.” Carolyn grinned at her mother, feeling as if the season of role reversal had begun. Wasn’t it usually the mother who promised to stay with her daughter at her first dance lesson? Here she was, the one in the supporting role. To make her role perfectly clear, Carolyn added, “I’m only there to watch. I’ll be your cheerleader, but I won’t be your dance partner. So please don’t try to sign me up for lessons too.”
With a side glance at Carolyn and a coy look, her mother said, “We’ll see about that.”
It seemed best to drop the subject at the moment, since they had arrived at Isobel’s apartment and the place was once again abuzz with relatives. It was a happy hive of activity and conversations. The only problem, Carolyn discovered, was that as soon as her stomach was full of all the great food, her jetlagged body insisted she lie down and sleep. The sound of so many relatives chatting in Spanish became white noise to her ears. She was too weary to try to pick up any familiar words.
Slipping away from the group, Carolyn motioned to her mother that she was going to lie down in the guest room. Her mother nodded, and down the hall Carolyn went. The peaceful, simple sleeping chamber was ready. The bed was just as she had left it, with the comforter pulled up to the pillow and folded over once. She took off her shoes, opened the window just right, slipped under the covers, and fell into the best sort of deep sleep.
She was awakened by her mother soothingly caressing her hair and patiently whispering, “Do you want to go back to my apartment, or stay the rest of the night here?”
“I’ll go back with you.” Carolyn forced her legs over the bed’s side and fumbled for her shoes. She would have preferred to stay where she was and to keep sleeping, but she needed to take out her contacts. Plus she knew her mother would want Carolyn to stay at her place.
The grogginess had made Carolyn’s vision blurry and her head fuzzy. She and her mother left the apartment with a kiss from her aunt and took the elevator down to the plaza. Once they were in the open air, Carolyn woke up. The night breeze felt cool and invigorating. They stopped by one of the tall cactus plants in the garden area. Carolyn’s mother remarked that the plant had been up only to her hip when she first moved in. Every time she had walked to Isobel’s apartment over the years, she said she took note of how it was growing.
“And now look—up to the sky it reaches.”
Carolyn leaned her head back to take in the cactus’s full height. When she did, she caught sight of a sprinkling of faint stars looking down on her from their heavenly canopy. Her thoughts immediately returned to Bryan and the first time they had walked along the beach at Las Canteras. That night the stars had seemed so close.
She remembered how he had hummed a song as they walked barefoot hand in hand. It was a song she had been listening to one afternoon when Bryan had helped himself to the headphones on her brand-new Walkman and listened to David Cassidy croon “Cherish.” Carolyn loved that song, and when Bryan hummed it, she thought maybe she loved him. But that was midway through the summer, when her thoughts and feelings about Jeff had diminished and thoughts of Bryan monopolized most of her waking hours.
She tried to put those memories aside, as she and her mother made their way up the elevator to the apartment. That was a long time ago. I was so naive. I didn’t understand so much. If I’d c
ome to the Canary Islands that summer with more experience with guys, if I’d been more like Marilyn, I might have seen where things were headed with Bryan. I would have understood why the relationship was never going to work out for us. I would have been loyal to Jeff and stayed focused on the dream that he had for us and our future. It was a good dream, and almost all of it came true.
Carolyn hated the way her insides were curling up with these thoughts. She knew that she had idealized her life with Jeff. They had plenty of problems. But she still insisted on elevating their marriage to deal with the immense loss.
Now that Bryan had reappeared and had opened up so many locked-away memories of that summer of self-discovery and rushing emotions, she realized that not everything about her time with Bryan had been awful. Things had ended badly, but during the weeks they had spent together, many fun and wonderful things happened between them, like the water fight they had in her grandmother’s backyard.
She smiled at the memory and kept thinking about it as she took out her contacts and then brushed her teeth. She looked at her slightly blurry reflection in the mirror. Thoughts of her summer with Bryan warmed her. Memories of Jeff comforted her. How could the two exist in the same moment without one being good and one being bad? That was how she had categorized them all these years. Her relationship with Jeff was good, and what she had experienced with Bryan was bad.
“Did I fall in love with Bryan before I fell in love with Jeff?” Carolyn whispered to her reflection and noticed that the squint lines between her eyebrows lifted. Was this a truth she had never admitted to herself? Jeff knew he loved Carolyn long before she knew she loved him. Once she realized that what she felt for Jeff was real and lasting, her remaining mangled thoughts of Bryan and whatever she once felt for him were buried as if they were a land mine.
When Bryan apologized at the restaurant, it was as if that rusted land mine had been defused. Now she felt safe to walk through that territory in her thoughts.
What do I do with all this?
Her reflection had no reply. So, with a freshly washed face and minty-clean teeth, Carolyn shut off the lights and tiptoed to her mother’s bed. A soft amber haze borne of a streetlight shone through the slightly ruffling curtains and spilled a path on the floor to the left side of the bed, the vacant place that had been her father’s side.
Carolyn felt very young climbing in under the sheet and thin blanket. The year-round consistent mild temperature of the Canaries meant she didn’t need much to cover her. The cool solitude and pristine simplicity of Aunt Isobel’s guest room appealed more to Carolyn than her mother’s roomful of dustables. Even in the dim light, she could make out the assortment of figurines lined up on the dresser. But this was where she needed to be tonight, and that knowledge made her glad she had come back to her mom’s apartment.
Silence tempered the room. Only the muted sound of a neighbor’s television could be heard, followed by the distant hissing sound of air brakes on a city bus.
Carolyn assumed her mother was asleep already. But then her mom rolled over and softly asked, “What is it, Carolyn?”
“Hmm?”
“There is something between you and Bryan. I can see it.”
Carolyn didn’t reply.
“Dígame. Tell me. What is it?”
“It’s nothing. Really. It’s in the past. It doesn’t matter now.”
“What did he do to you, mi niña?” Her mother reached for Carolyn’s hand and held it.
Carolyn didn’t move. She knew the time had come. She could tell her mother the long-hidden truth, and it would be okay.
Carolyn blinked in the darkness, and after a pause she said, “The last night here, on the beach, behind the fishing boats, he, well, we … but … he pressed me to …” Carolyn couldn’t find the right way to explain what happened. Yet it didn’t seem as if she needed to say anything else. Her mother knew.
“And did you?” A tenderness clung to her mother’s question.
It took Carolyn a long, slow minute before she whispered, “Yes.”
She could feel the grip of her mother’s hand tighten. Inside her heart, Carolyn felt something begin to loosen.
“I didn’t think things would go the way they did. I agreed to sneak off to meet him. But I didn’t think about what might happen. I know I should have stopped him. But I didn’t. And then it was over, and I … I don’t know. I just was so naive. And afraid. I was so afraid.”
Her mother reached over and stroked her hair.
“It ruined everything, you know,” Carolyn said. “All the sweet times we had together during the summer—the innocent smiles, the jokes between us, the times we held hands, the stolen kisses at the camel ride—all of that was turned upside down. We didn’t say anything to each other afterward. It was awful. I started to cry, and he … he just left. He walked away.”
“Oh, mi niña, mi niña. It hurts my heart to know that you never felt you could talk about this.”
“I was too embarrassed. I blocked it out and pretended nothing happened. He didn’t come back, and then the next morning you and I left to go home.” Soft, silent tears were falling onto Carolyn’s pillow. She thought they were all her tears, but then in the glow, she saw the glimmers in her mother’s eyes as well.
“That’s why, when I saw him at your birthday party, I was so shaken. It was the first time I had seen him since that night.”
“Oh, Carolyn, I had no idea.”
“I know.”
“You hid your feelings so well.”
“I know. I’ve gotten pretty good at that.”
The two women breathed in steady tandem, both taking time before releasing any more words into the gauzy stillness.
Carolyn spoke first. She wanted to. This part of the story needed to be told as well. “Do you know what he did when I left the table toward the end of your party?”
“No.”
“He came and found me. He apologized to me.”
“He apologized to you?”
“Yes, he asked me to forgive him.”
Carolyn’s mother lifted her head. “And did you?”
“Yes. I told him I was sorry too.”
“Then it is done.” Carolyn’s mother drew in a deep breath and released it slowly, as if she had in her lungs the power to blow away the past. “God has removed this from you. From both of you. You are free from the sadness, regret, and shame, Carolyn. Do you believe that?”
It took Carolyn a moment. She, too, drew in a deep breath and slowly released it before saying, “Yes, I believe that.”
“Good. Then drink often of that truth. You have been forgiven. Both of you. This truth will quench any lingering regret.”
Tears filled Carolyn’s eyes. She believed her mother’s words.
“Hasta el justo se equivocal.”
Carolyn knew that proverb. She smoothed away her tears and spoke the translation aloud. “Even the wisest make mistakes.”
“Yes. You remember that one, don’t you? It is true. Even the wisest. This is why we all need a Savior. We all need mercy. We all need grace. And you—you have always been so generous in giving grace to others. Jeff was good at this, too, was he not?”
“Yes, he was.”
“So, now it’s your turn. Give yourself some of that generous grace and be at peace, mi niña.”
Carolyn drew closer and lightly rested her cheek on her mother’s shoulder. This was a good place to be, sheltered by her mother’s unconditional love, both of them blanketed by the long shadow of God’s grace. Why had it taken her so long to open up to her mother? Why had it taken so long to return to this place? To this person? Now that she was here, she never wanted to leave.
Then, because she wanted to feel the freedom of being rid of all the regrets that harbored inside her, Carolyn added one more disclosure. She told her mother about her misjudgment of Ellis.
“And is he out of your life completely?”
“Yes. He was never really in my life. He doesn’t know where
I live. I made it clear as soon as I found out he was married that I wouldn’t be seeing him again.”
“Good. You do not want to entangle yourself with a married man.”
“I know.”
“Yes, well, your second cousin Tina did not know that piece of wisdom. She ruined her life for many years and hurt many people. Just now she is beginning to get her heart back.”
Carolyn liked the phrase her mother used: get her heart back.
She thought about what had happened when Jeff died. Everything inside her was smashed to pieces: her faith, her hope, her peace. In the weeks following Jeff’s passing, Carolyn’s mother was the only one to whom she felt she could entrust the shards of her broken heart. She handed the sharp edges to her mother bit by bit for safekeeping.
For seven years her mother had held all the pieces with the same kind insistence with which she held on to every gift she was given. Carolyn was certain her mother had carried the fragments with her every morning to the corner of the dining room where she lit her candle and prayed. The dusty remnants remained there until it was evening. Then Carolyn imagined her mother gathered them up, blew out her candle, and took the treasured thing—her daughter’s broken heart—into her bed, where she covered it and sheltered it beside her own heart during the dark night.
Now it was Carolyn who was covered and sheltered, safe and warm beside her dear, wise, praying mother. As they lay together in the thin hours of the night, Carolyn at last understood the unmistakable pull that had drawn her back to the Canary Islands to be with her mother.
Carolyn’s heart had drawn her, and she was ready to get it back.
“Donde caben dos, caben tres.”
“Where there is room for two, there is room for three.”
CAROLYN CAUGHT THE slight scent of smoke as her mother’s morning prayer candle was extinguished in the adjacent room of the small apartment. She could hear her mother’s footsteps as she made her way into the living room and uncovered the birdcage, poured the tiny seeds into the bird’s dish, and opened the window all the way.
The peace that had come to Carolyn after their deep-hearted conversation in the night had remained. This was indeed a new day.