Miranda Read online

  “Enough!” I took the envelope. “Take care of yourself, Hernandez. Thanks for everything.”

  Alex took my arm, and I began walking. Even though I had my back to him, Hernandez drew out his goodbye.

  “Likewise, Miranda Wise. Likewise.”

  Before getting on the plane, I dropped the white envelope. There was no room on the plane for anyone else.

  ***

  Some footsteps were softly coming close. It was Rosa. She paused by my side. She brought me a cup of orange juice. She placed it on the parquet floor and a hand of consolation on my shoulder, just as she had done every evening since I agreed for her to stay in the cabin.

  Rosa’s presence was the thing on which Norman and Luis Bartolome insisted as a condition to leave me alone after having learned of my escape. I agreed, not for their sake, but because I didn’t feel like even getting myself a drink of water.

  I turned toward her with a weak smile, and thanked her. She, Norman, Luis, Julio, Alex, and Margaret had stopped asking me questions and offering me words of encouragement. All of them gave up, allowing me to sink into bitterness, alone. They noticed that the only way they could support me would be from a distance.

  I took the cup and barely could take a sip. The tartness hurt the wounds to my soul. I continued drinking, but not for myself. If that were the only reason, I would have already starved, or pursued one of those crazy ideas that, at times, seduced me.

  Rosa left the house and, within minutes, I heard other steps approaching. I didn’t want to turn around, not even when I knew the presence was unusual. They were firm footsteps and they advanced rapidly. I knew those footsteps. I knew them very well. They paused by my side and remained that way.

  I didn’t want to look at him. I kept my eyes fixed on the shadows that the sun was drawing on my skin. The breeze took it upon itself to confirm the identity of the visitor. That scent… that unforgettable scent. I closed my eyes. I imagined him sitting on the floor, by my side, because the parquet boards creaked distinctively.

  “Miranda…”

  He spoke my name as he always did, with that spicy sparkle that can be known only through the pleasure of hearing it. I knew that the day would come. I wouldn’t have predicted it so soon. I wasn’t prepared. Not yet.

  “Everything is over, Miranda,” he paused to clear his voice. “At home, we are very worried about all of you. You must return, take care of yourself, and seek help if necessary… please.”

  His voice exuded the same tone as always. It was the same icy voice that a few months ago could ignite every cell of my body. Could it be that man would never change?

  “I may be the last person that you want to see. I understand. You have every right and, even though I refuse to accept it, you’re absolutely right. Nevertheless, the others haven’t been successful in their aims, and I can’t keep my arms crossed.”

  I was incapable of reacting. I had turned to stone. Not even my enlarged breasts moved with my breathing. Tears rolled down my cheeks, which surprised me, because I had come to think that I would never again be capable of crying–that I had no tears left in my eyes.

  “Would you take care of the baby? Would you take responsibility?”

  I tried to keep my voice firm. That was the only plan I could formulate: that Eliezer would give me his word that he would take care of the baby when born, because I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.

  “That won’t be necessary,” he paused innocently. “He has both of us.”

  I laughed for the first time in months, but it wasn’t exactly out of joy.

  “Don’t you realize how screwed up I am? I don’t want the baby to have to live a shitty life with a screwed up mother like you had.”

  He got close and tried to give me a hug that I avoided with a scream and a look of anger, fear, and disgust.

  Eliezer didn’t give up. He tried to hug me again, using as much force as he could without hurting me.

  “Let me go! Leave me alone once and for all!” I wanted to scream, but I could only muster murmurs. “If you had only hugged me like that a few months ago, Eliezer, that night in your office and those many other nights. It was so simple, Eliezer, very, very simple.”

  He squeezed me harder.

  “I know, Miranda. I know! But please understand. You met me when I was a shit of a man, when everything was a mess. I wish I had done many things differently. I wish I had been able to protect both of you.” His voice cracked. “But it didn’t happen that way, and I live cursing every second that I was incapable of making the right decisions. I live cursing that moment that I let you leave my office with so much pain on your face. Do you remember that Christmas day when I said that my life on January first would be the same as my life on December thirty-first?” He pulled away slightly and held my head between his trembling hands. “Miranda, that was the biggest of my mistakes. My life changed from the instant you uttered the words ‘I love you.’ Shit. And how could it not, since you turned my world upside down? No one has ever said ‘I love you’ to me, not even Isabel. Do you understand that? Can you imagine that?” He sighed. “My silence that night wasn’t a gentlemanly rejection. No! It was caused by ignorance… not knowing how to love. I didn’t know how to feel loved, and that night, damn it, I felt so many things that I felt like my emotions were going to suffocate me. Even today, I can’t describe what I was carrying on my chest that night. There are no words to describe it. There will never be words to describe it, Miranda…. I should have… I should have told you how much I need you, how much pain I feel when you aren’t by my side. I should have told you…”

  I moved my hands to interrupt him.

  “You shouldn’t bother continuing, Clausell.”

  He took my hands, as he did so well on many other occasions.

  “Please, listen to what I have to say. Let me tell you my side.”

  “There’s no need. I have a thousand versions… a thousand damned versions, and I don’t understand any of them. Another one won’t help.”

  He placed a finger on my lips. He drew his face close to mine with that dangerous closeness that intoxicated me with his scent.

  That scent…

  “If you don’t want to do it for me, don’t do it for me.”

  He placed a hand on my abdomen. I so fantasized about such a moment. The tender touch of his roughness caused a sensation in me like the warmth of the sun on my feet after spending so much time in my personal winter.

  “Do it for the baby.”

  He succeeded in breaking down my walls. I had no choice but to listen. After all, it was the least I could do for the baby that I was determined to not care for, and it was the least that I could do to feed my curiosity.

  “I know that Norman told you the reason we left him.” I nodded. He searched for the strength to mention the names of the two people who, one way or another, at different times in his life, had contributed to his cold personality. “When Norman had the accident, Isabel saw the opportunity to come back, to get the money she expected if he died. She wanted to be present to be sure that no one would take even one cent of what, according to her, belonged to us. Norman didn’t die, so she began to weave her first plan: we would take control of the company and sell it. I was so blinded by the anger and hatred I had for Norman,” another pause interrupted the story, “and you, that I agreed to be Isabel’s puppet. You had robbed me of Norman’s attention, time, and love. I needed to get you out of the way, and I was Norman’s Achilles heel. What wouldn’t he do for me? What would he, my father, not do for me?”

  My father. It was the first time that I heard him say those words. I wished that Norman could have been there to hear them too.

  “I didn’t rob you of anything, Eli…”

  He pressed his finger against my lips a little more.

  “Listen to me, just listen to me… I grew up with that reality. That is the story that Isabel turned into my reality.” He smeared his hands on his head and was teary eyed. “You don’t know what it was lik
e to grow up with her, Miranda. You don’t have the… slightest… idea. My paintings were no more than a reflection of my upbringing. The pain that Isabel caused me was splattered on them. My sorrow was engraved on my back. Do you know what it’s like to live like that? It’s a constant reminder of how shitty a boy’s life can be. Every time she would get drunk or inhale the white powder that she would lay out on the same table where we ate, she would repeat the same old thing over and over. She would repeat and repeat the same story: ‘Your father doesn’t love you, Eliezer. He loves some girl instead. That’s why he abandoned you… because you’re nothing.’ What more could you expect from a child that grows up hearing that? Seeing that? What more can you expect from me, Miranda, if I continue being that child?”

  For a brief moment, I understood. That child of whom he spoke was peering out through his eyes, and he was frightened, very frightened.

  “I didn’t understand why my father was no longer around, why my world had changed from one day to the next, because I only remembered a monster who was about to beat my mother to death, and not the affectionate man that existed before that terrible night.”

  “You had the chance to get close to him again.”

  “Yes, but that wasn’t my motivation. I wanted to see him suffer. I wanted to hurt him just as he hurt Isabel, and just as he hurt me.”

  “All of these years you were tearing yourself apart…”

  Again, he used the finger.

  “I didn’t realize.” A tear fell. It was the first time that Eliezer displayed such strong emotion. “Until you came. I was doing nothing more than blaming the world for my unhappiness. I was filled with nothing and no one… until you came, Miranda Wise, with your rose-colored glasses, immune to my sarcasm, my insults, my offenses, and my insensitivity. You dared to walk barefoot over the broken glass surrounding my life. And, anyway, you had the nerve to tell me that you loved me. You had the character to show me how wrong I was about you, about Norman, about Medika. I, who later sought to destroy my father after destroying his insufferable company, in time began to appreciate its mission. Medika wasn’t bad. I was the one who was behaving badly. In time, I discovered that Isabel was a schemer and that Norman was not the man I had imagined. You were the one who opened my eyes, who dazzled me with the possibility of living a different, perhaps pleasant, kind of life.”

  Nature was conspiring with him… The breeze carried every word he spoke and cleared the way for him to continue.

  “I supposed, well, that at Medika’s helm, I would be in control, that I could handle the situation, control Isabel’s impulses, make her abandon her idea, or at least, give her part of the money that was hers so that she would leave us alone. So I met with Paul at the airport. On that day, I understood that Isabel was planning something worse than I had imagined.”

  “What made you think that?” I asked, but I answered my own question. “Ah, what he told you at the airport that changed your mood.”

  Eliezer agreed.

  “Paul said, ‘good work.’ I didn’t know to what he was referring, but it raised my suspicions. He supposed that Isabel’s plan was our own alone. We would handle it, and no one else. I had known Paul a few years before. Isabel said that he was a businessman. They would meet at cafes, bars, and at home. She never wanted to tell me what business she had with him. Nor did I ask many questions. Isabel’s life didn’t matter much to me. When you and I were on our way back, when I unexpectedly saw Paul in New York, I wanted to confirm another link between Paul and Isabel. Norman said that he didn’t know. I didn’t believe him. Elizabeth, his sister, was the one who told me the truth. I was searching for evidence during those days when I disappeared that so infuriated you. When I found it, I confronted Isabel. She arranged a meeting for Paul and myself at her apartment. They had no other choice but to tell me about the plan that they had conceived so far. Paul wanted to kill you because you may get part of his inheritance. I couldn’t believe what they were telling me, but I didn’t show it. Together, we hatched the perfect plan.”

  “Together? Hatched?”

  “Yes… I made them believe that I would support their plan. In fact, I offered a suggestion to make it ‘better.’ We agreed on the date, place, and method. As you can now imagine, everything went badly. Isabel suspected that I had stopped hating you. Apparently, I’m also not a very good actor and, of course, Norman… Norman committed a very grave error.” His eyes looked at my face with tenderness. His hands fixed a few locks of hair that were coming out of my ponytail. “He confessed to her that you were pregnant and that I was the father. So Paul and Isabel’s plan changed, and obviously they didn’t tell me. The place remained the same, but the date changed, and their method would be more cruel, impersonal, and quick. I kept Inspector Hernandez informed. We had counterattack plan: gathering the evidence we could, arriving at the location right before it would happen, and sending them to jail for attempted premeditated murder. I wasn’t cautious enough. I shouldn’t have been so confident. They played me, Miranda…. They played me.”

  His fists held so much frustration that his knuckles turned white and looked as if they would explode. I put my hands over his fists, in an attempt to diminish the tension. It worked. I still had that power over him.

  “That night, when you went to the office looking for an answer, I couldn’t give it to you. There were so many things that I was hiding, that I couldn’t give you a ‘yes.’ You marched away at my silence. Within minutes, Norman called me to follow up, thinking that you had told me about your pregnancy. He was sure that after speaking with you, you’d change your mind. I couldn’t even respond to his cordial gesture. I hung up the telephone and went out to look for you. I had only your eyes filled with pain and frustration burned in my mind. I wanted to reach you, to tell you that I’d be there for you… for both of you… that I wouldn’t disappear, that I wasn’t Paul Wise, and that I… I love you, Miranda Wise.” He closed his eyes, opened them again, and took a breath.

  “On a corner of the block where your house is, there was always a black car. Did you notice it? Hernandez and I had your house under surveillance. We wanted to protect you, whatever the cost, 24 hours a day. I got to your neighborhood and stopped next to the contract bodyguard. That’s how I noticed that looked like he was watching but wasn’t blinking, and that a trickle of blood was coming down his lips. I imagined the worst. I reached into the window and took his gun. I went to your house, to the nightmarish scene. I think you know the rest, and there’s no reason to make you relive it… You were on the way to the hospital when I went out searching for Isabel. There she was, in her apartment, drinking champagne with Paul. I snuck in and had him at gunpoint. Isabel screamed as always, as if she owned the world. I fired into the ceiling, and she got down on her knees and begged for me to not lose control. But I had already lost control. I gave her a blow to the face with the gun and she fell unconscious, gushing out blood on the floor. Then it was Paul’s turn. I gave him a beating like I had never given anyone before. Now I have to go to court every few weeks, and I have had to bear the consequences of my actions for a few months. They are behind bars, but I think it’s not punishment enough. She should rot in jail, and I should have blown his head off… Ironically, it was you and the baby that you’re carrying that saved them. I thought of both of you. I can’t leave you alone in this world that has turned to shit.”

  He touched my abdomen again, and the baby kicked. He smiled.

  “I’m no longer the same, Eliezer. You can’t come here with your beautiful words and erase the memory… my memory.”

  “For the past five days, I’ve done nothing but watch you, because I didn’t know how to approach you or how to speak to you. At 6:45 in the morning, you sit on the third step of the stairway to this terrace. By twelve, you had already gotten up four or five times, but you would always return to the same spot. When night would fall, you’d move to the big chair. You’d still be awake at midnight. I know by the frame of light that shines out of
the bedroom where I had you for the first time. You still have hopes. I still have hopes. Come with me. Take my hand. We can give it a try.

  “I’m not the same person.”

  “You are Miranda Wise… International,” a tone of timidity and an attempt to smile colored that last word.

  “I no longer know who I am.”

  “You are the marvelous woman who managed to awaken the will to change in me.”

  “Someone marvelous doesn’t get into bed every night thinking about a thousand and one reasons to not get up the next morning.”

  “I know what it is to be scared. You don’t owe me any explanations.”

  “No, no. You don’t understand. Marvelous people aren’t dragged out of an abortion clinic. A marvelous person doesn’t go with the idea of having an abortion.”

  “We aren’t perfect, Miranda. Sometimes we don’t make the right choices.”

  “I’m even afraid of my own shadow. The sound of my breathing keeps me awake. What have I become?”

  He gave me a hug.

  “I’m here, Wise. I’m here and I’m not thinking about leaving. I don’t know what tomorrow, the next day, or the day after that will be like. I don’t have the slightest fucking idea, but…”

  My Eliezer had returned. I smiled to myself.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have….”

  I put my fingers on his lips.

  “Don’t worry. I missed your expressions.”

  He kissed my hand.

  I held his face and kissed his lips. I felt that, with that kiss, I brought life back to my body. I brought the shine back to that look… that look… that look….

  If that’s how, stuck to those lips, this damned life becomes complicated, I would never want to pull back, because I want to relive those moments over and over again, in which nothing and no one else exists other than us. Let it be nothing more than he and I alone… only he and his teasing, and I and my agitated heart and my frustration at hearing him.

  Maybe it was a lie. Maybe it would be another act where the curtain would fall. Maybe it was a pause in time to get the answers to my questions. Maybe the most beautiful thing awaits me.