Maldeamores (Lovesick) (Heightsbound #0.5) (18 page)

I look up and Belén is cowering away from me. She’s shaking and tears are running down her face and she’s as white as the pillowcase.

“Len, hold up! What’s wrong? What did I say?”

“Luciano, are you my brother? Please don’t tell me you’re my brother!” she screams and covers her face. Her whole body shakes with sobs and I pull her into my arms. She fits next to my body so perfectly, it’s like she was made for me to hold.

“Shhh! Baby girl, it’s okay,” I say, rocking her and stroking her head. “Shit, it ain’t
that
bad. But it
is
about incest in our family.”

And I tell her about that heat wave in the Bronx the summer I was born. How my ma’s apartment building burnt down and she had to arrive out of the hospital with a newborn to her uncle’s house, a man she hardly knew but who was willing to take her in. How Betty was already living with him. He drove a livery cab and had nice clothes and always took Betty out dancing on the weekends. Betty and Awilda were young and clueless and pretty dependent on their deceased mother’s only sibling. Betty fell in love and she fell for him hard. She was just nineteen when she arrived and he was already a big man of New York. He swore up and down he’d take care of her and the baby. But what they didn’t bank on was all of the neighbors gossiping. Luis had introduced Betty as his niece when she’d arrived and now she was pregnant and Awilda had a new baby too, but no one ever saw their boyfriends—so, soon the whole neighborhood was talking. They said that Luis had taken advantage of them—the poor ignorant girls from the island. Somebody call the authorities, call the police, get Luis arrested before he corrupts all of our daughters. You know how they talk, Bey. It turned into hell for all of them. When really, my ma’s man had ditched her to go back to Puerto Rico and Luis was paying for all of my diapers and Similac and even the doctor’s appointments. And Betty, well, she was in love. Luis didn’t cheat on her and he stayed away from the gambling and drinking Brugal to save up for her bassinette. They were both really excited about the baby. They knew she would be a girl and Betty could already tell that she’d be smart from the way she felt inside her.

But the neighbors talked trash and they cornered Betty and Awilda in the hallway. Told her the baby would be deformed and that it would come out retarded. They got Luis so on edge, he started hitting the bottle. Then he crashed the fancy Cadillac and lost the medallion. Got himself a summons and a deportation letter to boot. He pulled all the cash out of his sock drawer and the wad from his wallet. Kissed his nieces goodbye and got on the next flight back to Santo Domingo.

Betty was so messed up she went into early labor. The beautiful baby girl was born and they named her Belén and took her home screaming from the hospital with a healthy set of lungs. They laid her in the crib next to me and they started figuring about how they would pay the rent and what they could do for work to support their babies. They swore to help each other out and overcome their circumstances. They also decided to hide the truth about Belén. Betty was brokenhearted because Luis was the first man she ever loved. But they didn’t want the bad luck to follow them around. So they made up a man who came from PR. Who romanced Betty blind, got her pregnant and fled. They made him up so well that even they believed the story.

“So you and I, Belén, are related even more than you thought we were.”

Belén watches me with her face drawn, her eyes dark and distant. She rubs the bottom of her nose and nods her head, but she’s looking off into space. I reach out my hand to her.

She looks up and takes my hand and I pull her into my lap again. “You okay? It’s a lot of story. But I thought you needed to know the truth.”

“Thanks for telling me, Lucky. I can’t believe she never told me,” she says, but she seems to be fixed on the distance and not really in the room with me.

“She was trying to protect you, Belén. She loves you so much.”

“She should have told me! It’s not okay to lie to your kid about who their father is. Maybe she’s ashamed of me. Maybe she wants to lie to herself because I’m something she’s ashamed of.”

I didn’t tell her to make her hurt more. I told her to try to explain why I try to keep my distance from her.

“I love you, Len. I always have. Nobody is ashamed of you, you’re the very best part of us. You’re the jewel, Bey. The whole rest of us are just a bunch of amateurs trying to keep up with you.”

“So that’s the reason you won’t sleep with me, Lucky? Because if we slipped up, we’d create something terrible?”

“It’s more than that, Bey. If I took you once, I’d never let go. I’d go smash Jeremy’s head in for even looking at you and I’d seriously fuck Jaylee up for touching you.”

I pull her in closer and caress lightly by her temple. She’s frozen and distant and it seems like all hope drained right out of her.

“You deserve the kind of life where your man parades you around and cares for you openly. You deserve to have kids and be proud of your family. Our love would be rejected by everyone we know—our family, our friends, the whole fucking neighborhood. What’d we do? Go into hiding and never see no one?”

I kiss her sweet forehead.

“Loving you, Bey, should not be something that’s hidden from the world. Your love should be a privilege, not a dirty secret. I want you to have a happy life, one that you’re proud of.”

“I just want you, Lucky. I don’t care about anything else,” she says and buries her face in my neck. She doesn’t cry; she’s a strong girl. She just holds me tighter.

I’m so sure of these things in my head but when I got my arms around her I can feel my will breaking. I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. I just know that Belén feels so good I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to know what it’s like to face a life without her.

Belén

We stay locked in an embrace as the sun rises and the light changes in the room. There is nothing more frightening than letting him go. Not just back to the base or back overseas again, but really letting go—like stopping my infatuation with him. Did we resolve all of my problems last night and now it’s time to move on forever? I marry some guy and picture Lucky between my legs whenever I’m in bed with him? I scream someone else’s name but it will always be Luciano who I’m thinking about.

I make Lucky coffee in the kitchen while Jeremy’s still sleeping.

“Tell me about your deployment—where did you go?”

“Iraq, Len. I’d rather not talk about it.”

I turn and look at him over my shoulder as I butter some toaster waffles I found in the freezer.

“Was it really bad? Traumatizing?” I ask him.

“Nope. It was mostly boring, but I learned a lot of new skills over there.”

Lucky is watching me with pain on his face. I’m confused because I thought we’d moved past something last night, I thought we were okay. His eyes seem to wander to the couch where the scene from last night played out.

“Are you thinking about what happened? Did you lose all respect for me?”

“No, Bey, never. You know how many times I used sex to make myself feel better? Without giving a fuck about how the girl felt or what she hoped to get out of it? How can I disrespect you for wanting that release?”

“Then why are you so pensive and quiet?” I ask, putting breakfast in front of him.

“’Cause every time I see you I get scared it’s the last time I’m gonna hold you. Not cause I’m gonna die on a tour or any shit like that, but we’re getting older, Bey. Things are changing. Things changed last night.”

“Because of what you told me?’

“Naw, because maybe that was a breakthrough for you. Maybe you’ll move on and get married and I’ll see you on holidays. Jeremy’s whipped, but I doubt some husband of yours is gonna let you sleep in my bed or make out with me.” A little sad smile flashes across his face.

“There’s a way to avoid that, Lucky. All you have to do is say it.”

He takes a sip of his coffee and pulls my hand into his. He looks into my eyes and there is a spark of fire there. I know I’m in love with him but I can never really tell
how
Lucky loves me—if it’s the kind of love that makes your heart soar, or if it’s an obligatory love, like the love of brother.

“What would happen if it didn’t last? Would we turn our parents against each other?”

“We would be adults about it, move on with our lives.”

“I’d never get over you, Bey. I don’t think that’s something I could recover from.”

I look up and Jeremy is standing and staring; he slept in boxers in and a T-shirt and his hair is all messy. I pull my hand out of Lucky’s and hide it in my lap.

“Hey Jeremy, good morning. Would you like some coffee?”

He looks smug, like he caught us red-handed. But if Jeremy didn’t already know that there was something between Lucky and me, you’d think last night would have clued him in. If he’s still in the dark it’s because he’s walking around with his eyes closed.

“I should get going,” Lucky says, draining his coffee.

“I’ll walk you out,” I say, grabbing my sneakers.

Jeremy gets a cup of coffee and pours in some cream. He pulls a chair out at the table and lazily slumps into it. “See you ‘round, Luciano,” he says, his voice flat and unreadable.

“If you fucking hurt her, I’ll come find you and kill you,” Lucky says in a low voice, walking by Jeremy and roughing up his hair.

I walk Lucky out to his truck and each footstep becomes heavier with my fear of saying goodbye. I feel like it’s a sad one and I wish it could be different. Lucky gave me a huge gift last night, but he seems crushed regardless.

The sun is out and it’s warm already. We’re not far from the water and I can smell the salt in the air and feel its lingering softness on my skin. The breeze blows my hair into my face and I turn toward the wind.

I haven’t even begun to process the information about my parents. It’s too much to handle on my own; I’d rather work through it with my therapist. But even though I never knew who my dad was, I liked to imagine him as someone special and someone who loved me but couldn’t deal with the circumstances. But my dad was my great-uncle and I don’t know what that makes me. It makes Lucky more afraid of how he feels about me and makes my mother terrified to even tell me where I came from. Everyone lied to me to keep the truth under cover, because the truth is that I was cut from bad cloth—I’m a product of incest.

My chest heaves when Lucky hugs me goodbye.

“Don’t cry, Lenny. I hate it when you hurt. Be happy we figured some stuff out. I’m glad I got to see you.”

I nod and wipe the tears from my eyes.

“I love you,” he says and kisses the top of my head.

“I love you too, Luciano, so much it’s painful.”

He gets into his car and closes the door. He starts the engine and lowers the window.

I step back to give him some room. I fold my arms across my chest and the wind whips my hair around.

“Bye, Len,” he says and then starts to back out of the parking spot.

I run to the car on impulse and lean into the window. Lucky grabs my neck and kisses me hard on the lips.

“Please don’t let it hurt. I wish it wasn’t like this.”

I smile at him and fold my arms around me.

“I love my pain, Lucky, and I love how it hurts me. When I no longer feel it, it means I’ve lost my connection to you, and I never want that to happen. I love this pain because it’s part of loving you.”

Lucky stares at me with a ferocious intensity, his pulse-beat playing visibly on his temple.

“I don’t know what’s right, Belén,” he says and rolls up the window. The clouds chose that moment to roll over the sun. The shadow chases away the brightness that was cheering us up. Lucky leaves in that shadow and the distance between us widens.

I
do
know what’s right because my heart always tells me. It says the same thing, whispers it like a prayer:
only
Lucky, always Lucky
.

Chapter 19

Belén

“B
elle, it’s none of my business and I don’t want to assume things. But you and I’ve been friends for a while,” Jeremy says as he’s dropping me off.

I cringe because I think I know what’s coming—Jeremy has some insight he wants to share about my “problem.” I’d rather he just kept it to himself.

“I took pre-law courses—my dad made me—to see if I’d be interested in law school after graduation. First cousins can marry in lots of states. Including here in New York. Just so you know, it’s actually an option.”

I blush a thousand shades away from my natural color. Lucky and I would get married over our mothers’ dead bodies—not in a million years would that ever fly. Plus Lucky doesn’t seem like the marrying type.

“Thanks, I think, for the information, Jeremy, but I’m afraid it’s not like that. It’s more like an addiction than a relationship.”

I’m frustrated that I don’t have a better explanation and embarrassed Jeremy already knows so much. He leaves me in front of my apartment and we promise to keep in touch. Our weekend was weird, but I guess everything between Jeremy and me has always been strange. He probably thinks I’m fucked up, but for some reason he stays in my life—boyfriend or not, I guess because we’re friends. We never continued with the sex-ploration after Lucky and Jaylee left the timeshare. The moment passed and Jeremy still isn’t all that attractive to me. I must be unreadable with my hot and cold reactions, always wanting but never giving back enough.

I don’t confront my mom about who my father is, but I look at her differently now that I know. I wonder what she went through and how hard it was for her to go on with no one to help her. I sneak through her things while she’s away at work. I find pictures of my great-uncle and he looks familiar—maybe he looks like me. There is only one photo of the two of them together. Mom looks so beautiful and her man looks smitten. The photo is faded and their eyes are red. Mom is dressed conservatively for a girl her age and my great-uncle/dad looks dapper, like he had slick style to go along with the Cadillac. I tuck the photo into my suitcase. I know it’s her property but I feel the need to study it a little. I also write down his name and everything I know about him. It’s four words on a sheet of notebook paper. Not much to go on.

Mom tries to convince me to stay—to not go back to Poughkeepsie. I’ve technically almost graduated already but I won’t walk until May.

“Belén, you could get an internship in the city. I can have some people in the hospital look into research positions that match your experience.”

“I don’t have any friends here anymore, Mom. All my friends are at school. I’d just rather stay there and work in the library.”

Which translates to: I want to hang out with Lucy and my therapist and Bryan my sponsor from co-dependency group. She lets me go with a lot of tears, two bags of toiletries from the dollar store and four Tupperware containers packed full of Spanish food for Lucy’s and my dinner.

Lucy and I have a place about twenty minutes from campus. Our house is small and falling apart, but it’s got a front porch and a backyard. Lucy adopted a pit bull terrier from the local shelter. She named the dog Napoleon, even though she’s female. She’s got a long chain so she can stalk around our whole house and claim her territory. She tries to kill the landlord and the mailman and all of Lucy’s poor dates. But she cuddles with us like a baby and keeps the house upbeat. Lucy is struggling with twenty-one credits and I’m turning into a pale ghost, alone in the library.

I tell Lucy about the weekend, how Jeremy and I ran into Jaylee and Lucky and about how I finally lost my virginity.

“Like a three-ring circus, Belén. I wouldn’t expect any less from you. Did you make a graph for each guy and then pie-chart the experience?”

“I had an orgasm. That’s all that matters.”

“Did you teach them a thing or two about rim jobs even though you were the only virgin in the mix?”

“I was the ringleader.”

“You still in love with your cousin?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Good. ‘Cause that guy Jeremy, I’m convinced is a serial killer.”

I become, in one semester, the goddess of Google medical paranoia. Ever since Lucky told me about my father, I’m convinced that I’m tainted and I study all of the genetic outcomes and statistics for consanguineous reproduction. Instead of sleeping, I lie in bed at night and terrify myself by believing that any little tic or cough or itch will grow into the terminal flaw I’m now convinced I possess. I reread Shelly’s
Frankenstein
and sob at our similarities. I spend four hundred dollars, money I don’t have, on ancestry.com only to come up with no answers. Guess they skipped the Dominican Republic and overlooked the Heights. I waste hours in the library poring over research on recessive gene mutations. I study the marriage traditions of North Africa, West Asia and South India, especially the populations where uncle-niece relationships are commonplace. I research everything I can find about double cousins. I cry because reproductive cells only have twenty-six chromosomes. I secretly wonder if my attraction to Lucky is a biological malfunction and not caused by abstractions like love or attraction. I’m a mess, a disaster. I’m perpetually forlorn and feel like I might break in half from the weight of this.

But, twice a day I walk Napoleon, and I prepare her fancy cooked meals from a celebrity blog on cooking for pets. I grow sprouts on the windowsill, even though the sun has gone into hiding and left some white, blurry, cold circle dangling in its place.

One day, leaving the library, I see a bright pink flier for research assistants in the lab. It catches my eye immediately because across the top it reads: Chimera.

I apply for the position as soon as I get home. After sending in my résumé, I get a call from the lab head, John, and he asks me to come in for an interview. My assignment will consist of isolating embryonic cells of tiny pond frogs in a petri dish. I’ll also be responsible for watching the resulting chimera frogs for any outward signs of mutation, or irregular behavior within their eating, mating and reproductive habits.

I accept the job and quit the library after my stint of three years. I’m done researching mutations; I’m ready to become a firsthand witness to reproductive experiments.

Lucy says I’m crazy and I need to get out. But the more I study, the more in control I feel, and it’s easy for her to talk when she’s not made up of homogeneous parts and a one-sided family.

At night I dream of tiny beating frog hearts and their soft, bloated, silver underbellies staring up at the moon. I dream of frogs jumping through the snow to come find me at my house. I dream that Lucky’s battalion gets lost in a giant sandstorm and he disappears piece by piece, de-pixilating like sand grains right before my eyes. I dream of us standing on the blacktop in the playground, holding hands and smiling. I dream of that first kiss in the kitchen and how it got my heart running.

I still see my therapist, Dr. Davidson. Almost a year has passed and we’ve moved on to sex toys. I get assignments to masturbate. I’m a regular customer at both pleasurechest.com and babesintoyland.com even though I don’t invest much time in pleasuring myself. I study the toys. I turn them on and off and store them in a box in my closet. It’s not like you can donate them to the local church bazaar or to Goodwill for charity. I think my therapist has given up on trying to get me to date people. I still watch porn on the internet, but I think I watch it like a scientist, not like the rest of the human population does, and I never seem to get turned on.

Lucky calls me on Christmas Eve. He hasn’t dialed my number since that night in the bar, which now seems like a really long time ago. Mami is taking the train up to spend the weekend with me. Lucky is at home with Titi in the Heights.

“I miss you, Len, it ain’t Christmas without you here, you know?”

“I had stuff I had to turn in for work. I’m the only one here to take care of Napoleon. And Mom thought she’d get out of the city for once.”

“I’m about to get deployed again in a couple of weeks. Thought maybe I’d come see you before I go?”

His voice sounds so tentative it pulls my heartstrings. How can Lucky possibly think that I’d ever not want to see him? Do I tell him yes? What do I say? My cells are knocking around inside my body; I vibrate and buzz like I’ve been plugged into a socket. How many chromosomes do I share with my cousin? How similar is our DNA? Every little piece of me, no matter how tiny or how it originated, still tells me it wants him.

“Lucy is gone for the whole month, that’s kind of why I have to stay. Mom will be here until Monday. Maybe you could come up after that?” My body is still physically humming, waiting for him to reply.

“I’ll drive up on Tuesday. I’ll bring you food from the city, what do you want?”

“Bring me
mofongo
and roasted chicken from that place on Broadway and some of Titi’s
coquito
if there’s any left.”

“I can’t wait to see you, Len.”

Mami ends up cancelling the trip. Not because she wants to but because an epic snowstorm has been predicted and the trains aren’t even running. There’s a warning for all of Dutchess County. I guess Napoleon and I are staying inside for Christmas. I make a festive meal of ramen and popcorn. Napoleon eats a few kernels but she seems depressed and disinterested. I fall asleep watching
Nosferatu
for the thirtieth time.

I wake up suddenly to the sound of coughing. My foot is asleep and I shake it and try to run toward the kitchen. Napoleon is sick—she vomited her food all over the floor. I clean it up and give her a fresh bowl of water, sitting down to pet her. She’s panting and it’s cold in here. I scratch the top of her head and she whines like she’s crying. She puts her head into my lap and her eyes look up to me for reassurance that everything is okay. It’s past midnight. On Christmas.

I search our corkboard for the vet’s number. I dial in vain and get an answering service that they’re closed for the week. Napoleon whines and her eyes are glazed. I’m afraid she’s been poisoned. She vomits again and this time it’s accompanied by retching and heaving. I search on my phone for an emergency animal hospital. There’s one forty miles away and I dial the number; the vet answers on the third ring. He runs the hospital out of a converted barn on his property. He agrees to see Napoleon for three hundred dollars. I tell him I’ll be there in an hour. I’m probably ruining his Christmas but he assures me that it’s okay.

I grab the keys to Lucy’s car and lure Napoleon into her crate—she doesn’t even sniff the doggy biscuit, she’s just agreeing to the crate because she loves me. We have a small garage next to the house. I slip outside and unlock the side door. The snow is floating down fast and covering every surface in a delicate powder. When I hit the garage door button it jerks and groans but doesn’t open. It’s frozen shut. Everything’s fucked.

I walk outside and almost lose my footing on the slippery ice hiding under the snow. I catch myself on the door handle and step with more caution. The storm drain is solid ice; the water looks like it froze mid-escape. I head back into the kitchen and drag every pan we own out from under the sink.

“Don’t worry, Napoleon. I’ll have us out of here in no time.”

I grab the metal ladder from behind the fridge and wrench it down the back steps. When I place it against the garage door, I have the foresight to see that this might be more dangerous than waiting until morning. The steam in the kitchen is thick with condensation that drips down the black windowpanes. With two hot-pads, I grab the first pan of water and return to the garage. The snow in the air mixed with the steam from my pot suddenly has my face wet, with stray hairs sticking to it like cotton candy. I take the first step onto the ladder and boiling-hot water sloshes over the side onto my fingers. I let go of the pan; the water surges and I go down, breaking the landing with my elbow. Hot water scalds my hand and my shoulder through my wool jacket.

“No!” I cry and clutch my elbow. I swear it’s shattered.

I limp inside and examine my injuries in the bathroom mirror. The elbow is red and looks traumatized but there is no compound fracture, no floating bone fragments from what I can tell. I reassure Napoleon and grab another pan of hot water. The snow blankets everything, muffling all sound. The snowflakes are thick, like they’re arriving in huddles. This pot I toss against the garage door where the seam meets the structure. I repeat twice more and then run in to check the door mechanism, which protests but reluctantly opens.

I jump for joy and cradle my elbow. Now I’ve got to get the crated dog into the car and I’m already down to one arm.

It’s a heroic feat, it would be even without the weather, but twenty minutes later, Napoleon is in the backseat and I’m backing down the driveway. The visibility is awful, almost white-out conditions. We crawl down the residential streets where the houses are dressed up for the season. Their Christmas lights are completely covered in snow, making the rooftops look like they’re outlined in glowing, multi-colored marshmallows.

I try to remember everything I know about driving as we make our way out to the highway. I know that you pump the brakes instead of slamming them when you hit ice to keep from skidding. My complete driving experience can be summed up in under a dozen times—five times for behind the wheel exercises, twice for tests; the first one I failed and the second one I passed. The other few times could all be considered emergencies, when there were absolutely no other qualified drivers and I pulled out my license. Lucy normally won’t let me drive her car. But for whatever reason, I’m confident we’ll make it.

The streetlights appear with more distance between them. I have the windshield wipers on full power but they can barely keep up with the onslaught of monster snowflakes. I’m barreling along at the speed of someone’s ninety-year-old grandmother. There isn’t a single other car on the highway.

“Napoleon, it’s okay. I’ll get us there, I promise. A benevolent God would never let a Caribbean girl like me die in a snowstorm and even less on Christmas—we’ve got nothing to worry about. This girl is going to be under a palm tree when she kicks it.”

My headlights pick up the red of the taillights of another vehicle. It seems to be off the road and I glance at the centerline to make sure it’s not me who is off-kilter. As we get closer, my headlights illuminate the scene. I realize it’s an accident and that the car is angled over the snow bank and appears to have crashed into a telephone pole. I slowly pump the brakes and pull Lucy’s car over, keeping my lights aimed at the accident in order to see it.