Page 180 of The Moon Sister
‘He is doing nothing, Mamá! He has made his choice and he has gone. That is the end of it. He chosehimself, not me, like all men do in the end.’
‘At least try to take a mouthful of food.’ María spooned up some sardines and offered them to her daughter.
‘I cannot. Every time I look at sardines it reminds me of Meñique and that alone makes me want to vomit.’
‘Okay,querida, I will leave you for now, but I will be here if you need me, I will not go to Times Square with the others,’ María said, walking to the door.
She left the room, leaving Lucía alone. Lucía stood up and looked at the lock on the door. She fiddled with the key for a while, then turned it and heard the chunk of steel slip smoothly into the frame.
She took a few steps back, pointing at it as though it was a venomous snake.
‘Thatis what he wanted for me! To lock me away from my family, to close our front door on them and my career. It is good he has gone,’ she told the sofa and the two chairs. ‘I am better off without him, yes! I am!’ Nobody answered back, and she walked round the vast empty room, thinking how peaceful it was not to have the eternal sound of Meñique strumming on his guitar in the background, hispayonewspapers strewn on the floor and the table.
Unable to settle, she went to the window, peering below to see the jubilant crowds of people streaming down Fifth Avenue to get to Times Square. Traffic was at a standstill. She opened the window and was immediately assaulted by a barrage of horns, shouts and whistles. It seemed that the whole of New York was celebrating beneath her, and she winced as she saw couples embracing and kissing in the street.
She slammed the window shut and tore the curtains closed. Then she squeezed her eyelids together and hugged her arms round her thin frame. The silence in the room was endless and deafening and she could hardly bear it. She fell onto the sofa and pressed her face into the cushion, feeling tears begin to threaten.
‘I will not cry! I must not cry over him!’ She thumped the cushion with one of her fists, wondering if she had ever felt as desolate as she did now.
Maybe he will come back. He has before . . .
No, he won’t, he offered you a choice . . .
He loves you . . .
He does not love you enough . . .
I love him . . .
‘NO!’
Lucía sat up and breathed deeply.
‘I have spent my life working to make all this! If it is not enough, then . . .’ She shook her head violently.
‘I miss him . . .’ she whispered. ‘I need him, I love him . . .’
Finally giving into her sorrow she buried her face in the sofa cushion and sobbed her heart out.
*
‘What is wrong with her?’ José asked his wife as thecuadroate in Lucía’s apartment after another sold-out show at the 46th Street Theatre.
María paused, thinking that her husband had not yet asked her why she had moved out of his bedroom.
‘You know what is wrong, José. She misses Meñique.’
‘So, how can we bring him back?’
‘Life is not as simple as that. He has gone for good this time.’
‘Nobody goes for good, as you well know, María,’ he suggested as he swigged some brandy straight from the bottle.
Before she slapped him hard across his alcohol-ruddy cheeks, or took a knife and stuck it into his treacherous heart, María stood up.
‘Sometimes they do, José, and Meñique has been gone for two months. Now,’ she said as she rose, ‘I am tired and will say goodnight.’
She left the room, knowing it was pointless continuing any kind of conversation with him when he was drunk. He would not even remember what he had said the next morning. María went to her own tiny bedroom and locked the door behind her. Breathing hard in the darkness as she tried to still her beating heart, she walked over to the bed.
