No Matter How Much You Promise Read online

  She hated herself so much because what she should’ve done was not accept the pizza and simply run home in the rain and not sit there with him as if he really liked her. When the elevator came, she got in, pushed the number five on the panel, and, as the elevator climbed, she began to relax once more and even considered that perhaps Carlos “Papo” Marcano really liked her. She then asked herself whether she liked him and her heart gave an unnatural tug and she saw his face once more, his green eyes behind the heavy lids toying with her and she smiled slightly, the only awareness of the event in a vast and complex universe being her own private witnessing. It was like she’d had her first date, but she wasn’t going to tell anybody. She blushed deep red and shook her head in chiding disapproval of her folly. Deep within her, however, she felt satisfaction at her conquest.

  51. Threats

  Elsa Santiago’s rage was monumental as she sat alone on the train speeding out of the 125th Street Station, the station situated, ironically, in Harlem. She once again opened her briefcase and stared at the eight-by-ten glossy photographs of Vidamía leaning against the young black man, her eyes closed as they rode the subway; the two of them holding hands as they walked in the park or lay on the grass, kissing unashamedly; them sitting at an outdoor café in the Village, staring into each other’s eyes; him feeding her daughter sushi with chopsticks in a Japanese restaurant. There were other photos of them simply walking down the street, her arm through his as he carried his saxophone case.

  Elsa’s jealousy was overwhelming as she took in her daughter’s radiance, her face shining with love for this “Wyndell Ross,” so named in the report, which also gave his address and the time she’d spent in his apartment—indicating that on at least six occasions during that month of April, Vidamía had spent the night in his home, most likely cohabitating although this couldn’t be ascertained. For a slightly higher fee the detective agency would attempt to plant a bug in the apartment, and for a somewhat higher fee they could photograph the lovers in the act, although this was generally restricted to infidelity and divorce cases. Elsa shook her head violently and insisted that neither the phone conversations nor the explicit photos were necessary.

  She was going crazy, she thought, because she was now fantasizing about watching Vidamía make love to Wyndell, imagining an enormous black organ swollen, pulsating and entering her daughter who was writhing with delight beneath him.

  That night she made love to Barry wildly, devouring his mouth with such ardor that, although he enjoyed himself, he wondered what had come over his wife. She rode him violently and when her orgasm took over she bit him and pounded his arms and chest with such force that he grabbed her and shook her until she was crying, and then he raped her brutally. He apologized but she was lost in her world. He got up, turned on the lights, and asked her what was the matter.

  Elsa got out of bed, not bothering to dress, her body still lithe and well-formed, still appealing to Barry, although for the moment all he felt was soreness, both on his member and throughout his body. She walked over to a chest of drawers and from it extracted the report and photographs. She took everything out of the manila envelope and spread the pictures on the bed.

  “A black man,” Elsa said.

  “Handsome,” Barry said. “A cross between Denzel Washington and that football player for Minnesota who married Bill Cosby’s wife in the show. Mrs. Huxstable. Ahmad Rashad.”

  “Stop it, Barry,” Elsa had said through gritted teeth. “This is serious.”

  “Give me a break, Elsa. All I said is that he’s handsome. Are you going to deny this?”

  “Yes, I am,” Elsa said, pulling a nightshirt over her head as if the young black man could see her from the photos. “I don’t think he’s that handsome,” she lied. “He’s ugly, in fact.”

  “Because he’s black?”

  “Barry! Dammit, whose side are you on?”

  “Nobody’s side. But I have to tell you something. You’re going to lose your daughter. And when you do, you’re going to regret it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what I said. She’s going to get fed up with your trips and disappear from your life. She’s too smart and has too much dignity to put up with this kind of harassment. And let me tell you something else. She has a tremendous amount of character. Threatening to cut her off financially isn’t going to affect her one bit. Look at how she’s managed to pay that money back. She’s helped her father’s family set up a video store, and it’s turned out to be very profitable. At her age I had nowhere near her business acumen.

  “Well, she had a pretty good consultant,” Elsa said, sarcastically.

  “It was her idea all the way. All I did was set up her books.”

  “Oh, sure. Take a look at the rest of the pictures,” Elsa said, pointing at the photos on the bed. “There are pictures of their operation and a detailed account of the undesirable characters that go in and out of the store. Drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, thieves.”

  “Hey, since when did participating in illegal activities disqualify a person from renting and watching a videotape in their own home?”

  “That’s not the point and you know it.”

  “No, I don’t. You’re saying that in a neighborhood that is mostly Puerto Rican, everybody is some sort of social deviant. You know that’s not true, and saying so is a gross generalization.”

  “She probably borrowed the money from drug dealers to set up that store.”

  “Wrong again,” Barry said, perhaps a little too smugly.

  “Oh, really?” she said. “And where did she get it? From you?”

  “That’s right,” Barry said, standing up and reaching for one of his infrequent cigarettes. Elsa was stunned. She turned away and looked out into the night. “She came to me with a business proposal and I had no choice but to accept it.”

  “Just her books? You are a liar, just like her,” she said. “Just get the hell out of here.”

  The next day she canceled all of her appointments. She remained in the house, pacing, and eventually took her silver Porsche out, heading north, driving very fast, until she was nearly a hundred miles from her home, somewhere in Connecticut, before she turned around and came back. On her way home, the rage no longer threatening to consume her, she knew she had no recourse but to go to the authorities with the case. Her daughter was, after all, a minor. She’d be eighteen in three months, but for the time being she was a minor, and if she understood the law correctly, Mr. Wyndell Ross, whatever his charm, and whatever his attraction to an unbalanced young woman, was guilty of statutory rape.

  She didn’t move immediately to formulate a plan for punishing the deviant, cradle-snatching Mr. Wyndell Ross, who almost nightly appeared in her dreams, as if in a motion picture, once dressed in a vampire outfit, like Morgan Freeman as the Count on The Electric Company, announcing himself boastfully and then counting the times he had ravaged her daughter, except that he was pointing at her, at Elsa. Another time Wyndell Ross was dressed in white tails and tap shoes, his black skin shimmering like polished ebony, while she, not her daughter, wore a beautiful black gown, her skin alabaster white and equally shimmering, and the two of them joined for an elaborate dance number similar to those made famous by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, spinning and twirling in wide arcs across the glistening glass-like dance floor of a mansion, the columns rising to an ornate ceiling, a crystal chandelier above them, the musical production of Hollywood proportions, the two of them spinning madly, tap-dancing, and she, smiling sensuously at him. Often she woke up sweating, her vagina wishing to be entered, causing her to masturbate in her now lonely bed. When she didn’t dream, she woke up in a bad mood and cursed her rift with Barry and her now loveless life, insisting still that he sleep in one of the guest rooms at the other end of the house.

  Two weeks later, understanding that she had been foolish, Elsa phoned Barry at work and asked if they could meet somewhere in the city. He agreed, and they went to dinner
at a French restaurant in Midtown and then went dancing at a club in Tribeca. At two in the morning she said it didn’t make sense to go home, and they ended up staying at the Waldorf and making love in a huge suite of rooms, the two of them drunk and angry, he cursing at her and she crying and accepting the abuse as though she deserved it, although she knew that she was partly acting, to induce a catharsis, if you will. In the morning, over their room-service breakfast, she told him about her plan to have Wyndell prosecuted.

  “She’ll hate you for the rest of your life, Elsie,” he said. “I understand how you feel, but you don’t know the guy. Just cause he’s black doesn’t mean he’s some sort of undesirable.”

  “It’s not that he’s black,” she said, sheepishly.

  “Okay, then. Leave it alone.”

  “What are the Marreros going to think?” she said, almost in a whisper.

  “The hell with the Marreros, baby,” Barry said. “I’m thinking of selling my part of Spantax and moving on. Someone was telling me about the Internet and how it’s going to explode in the next ten years. I’m not so sure, but I’m watching things closely.”

  She nodded and snuggled against him. They kissed tenderly and then made love slowly, and for the first time in a while she felt safe again with Barry. They eventually got up, made phone calls, and before eleven they were back to the routine of their lives.

  Elsa, however, couldn’t leave the issue of Wyndell alone and one evening about a week later, feeling edgy, she coaxed Vidamía into the library and began to ask about her college plans, congratulating her once more on her acceptance into Harvard and the other colleges, wondering if she ought to look at the other schools before finally deciding.

  “No, I went up to Harvard and I loved the campus and Cambridge and everything. Really, it doesn’t make sense to go running around, wasting time and money.”

  “As long as you’re not going to regret it later,” Elsa said, nodding thoughtfully.

  “I won’t, mami,” Vidamía said. “Don’t worry.”

  “So, how’s your love life?” Elsa then said, matter-of-factly, almost jokingly.

  “Oh, there’s this girl that I’ve been seeing, but it’s not serious,” Vidamía said, mischievously.

  “What?” Elsa said, momentarily off balance, then realizing she was being put on. “That’s all I need,” she said, feigning relief.

  “No, really, there’s nobody special. I’ve been on a couple of dates, but that’s all.”

  “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” Elsa said, looking into her eyes.

  “I’m capable of it,” Vidamía said, with as much aplomb. “But I’m not.”

  “My friend Amelia Boswell said she thought she saw you with someone in Central Park.”

  “Really? That’s possible. A musician?”

  Elsa couldn’t believe she could be so cool and lie so expertly.

  “Yes, she thought so.”

  “Oh, that’s Wyn, a friend of Cookie’s.”

  “Is he black?”

  “He certainly is. His father’s a doctor. Not like you. I mean, he’s not a Ph.D., he’s an M.D. By the way, I’ve pretty much made up my mind that I’m going to go into pediatric medicine.”

  Elsa could no longer stand what she perceived as Vidamía’s arrogance. She stared out through the opened French doors, through the sliding screen door, and into the garden, the fragrance of the spring night wafting in to intoxicate her fury.

  “You’re lying to me,” she said, as if she were speaking to the night. “He’s your friend.”

  “What if he is? That’s none of your business.”

  “Well?” Elsa said, facing her.

  “Well, what?”

  “Is he your friend or your lover?”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t wanna go on with this. I’ve got things to do.”

  “I have a right to know these things. I’m your mother.”

  “You’re my mother but you don’t have a right to pry into my life. If I were going out with him, I’d tell you. I don’t have your kind of hang-ups about race.”

  “You’re a liar,” Elsa said, the rage now boiling over. She reached behind her to a reading table and from a large atlas she removed the folder with the photographs, the report having been safely locked away, and slapped the folder on the table. “What’s this about?”

  Vidamía came over and looked at the photographs and shook her head. She laughed sarcastically and looked at her mother with intense hatred.

  “Well?” Elsa said.

  “Well, nothing,” Vidamía said. “You’ve been snooping around, and about the only thing I can say to you is that if I trusted you, I would have come and told you about it.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “So?”

  “I’m your mother.”

  “And I’m your daughter.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You lied to me for twelve years.”

  “I did nothing of the kind.”

  “Yes, you did. About my father. Whenever I asked you about him, you evaded the question so that I had to go find him myself. You even told me that he had abandoned us, which is a huge lie. Or have you forgotten that?”

  “Is that how you met this Wyndell Ross of yours?” Elsa said, avoiding the challenge.

  Hearing Wyndell’s name shook Vidamía violently. She was ready to ask how she’d learned his name, but knew that Elsa had either been following her, checking up on her, or had hired someone to do so. She went rapidly through the photos, recalling each instance, but unable to remember whether she’d seen someone with a camera. They must have used a miniature for the shots in the subway. She wanted to scream at her mother, to tear the pictures up, but thought better of it. She had to remain calm to best her mother. She smiled smugly and with immense pride addressed Elsa.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?”

  “Beautiful? You call that Harlem or Bedford Stuyvesant deviant beautiful?”

  “Oh, yes, very beautiful. And you don’t have to worry about all those esoteric psychopathologies that you’re so familiar with, Doctora. He’s so straight he comes pretty close to being boring sometimes. Very well-off family in Denver, Colorado. Father physician. Mother owns an art gallery. One sister is a college professor and the other a painter who lives in Paris and is married to a Swedish musician in the Stockholm Philharmonic. They made all their money the old-fashioned way, they earned it. No drug deals, no bank holdups, no underworld hits. Actually, my boyfriend’s family is the only black family in the United States that doesn’t earn their money from drugs or crime. The only one.”

  “Stop the sarcasm, dammit.”

  “Only one nondysfunctional black family in the entire country and your daughter happens to be involved with their son. You should be very proud.”

  “Oh, so you admit it.”

  “Admit what?”

  “That you’re screwing him.”

  “Regularly and with passionate abandon. He even gives me head to hasten my orgasms.”

  Elsa felt slightly nauseous and she banged her fist on the table.

  “Stop it,” she said. “How can you talk like that?”

  “On occasion I reciprocate and it drives him absolutely wild. His penis is sort of a purple color. Get it? The color purple. Like a large grape and just as sweet.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Cut the bullshit, Mom,” Vidamía said. “What kind of a fucking hypocrite are you?”

  “Don’t talk to me like that, young lady.”

  “Young lady, nothing. When the hell are you gonna get off this young lady crap? I have a name. Vidamía. Grandma told me what happened. You wanted to call me Katherine or Samantha or some bullshit name like that. I asked Lurleen about my name and she told me what my father said. He said you had called out “vida mía” or something like that when you were, pardon me, screwing.”

  “Stop it right this minute.”

  “I’m assuming this outpouring of passion didn
’t take place while you were decorating my Lower East Side nursery, but in a moment of supposed ecstasy in which you were playing the lead in some imagined soap opera and you thought it would sound cool to utter “vida mía.” Believe me, it doesn’t matter. In fact, I love the name. It’s so unique I’m thinking of having a large neon sign made in multicolored letters, like Fruit Loops, and getting a harness and carrying the whole fucking thing wherever I go. The name blinking on and off. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re having a nervous breakdown and you need help.”

  “Bullshit. You’re the disturbed one, snooping around on her daughter.”

  “Fine, treat the whole matter of my concern with disdain.”

  “Disdain? I don’t feel disdain. I’m actually pissed off and ready to fucking kill, I’m so angry. You didn’t have any right to do what you did. He and I are in love with each other.”

  “Oh, that’s lovely,” Elsa said, sensing Vidamía retreating from the argument. “The two of you may be in love, but I’m seriously thinking of turning the case over to the authorities. Whether you know it or not it’s been established that you spent time in his apartment and by your own admission the two of you have been sexually intimate. That’s considered statutory rape. You look shocked. That’s right. Having sex with a minor is statutory rape. Whether that minor gives her consent or not, the law treats the case as rape. Remember, sweetie, you’re not yet eighteen. Three more months, so all of this took place prior to your birthday.”

  Vidamía was suddenly seized by an attack of panic. She vaguely recalled a case such as the one her mother was describing. She knew that Elsa was sufficiently driven to do as she threatened. Her mind was suddenly flooded with images of Wyndell standing before a judge, having his career ruined and possibly having to serve time in jail. And then a cold, slicing swath of illumination cut through the building despair and she smiled kindly at her mother.

  “Do you know what I’m going to do if you even raise the subject of Wyn and statutory rape again? I’m going to go upstairs, pack some clothes, go directly to Manhattan, and tell him what you’re up to. We will immediately take a plane and go somewhere and get married. How’s that?”