SHE MET MAJOR ANDREWS at a reception in the White House over two years ago. It was during one of their numerous trips north in quest of Pancho’s post. Camila had wandered off in the direction of the powder room but took a wrong turn, and ended up in a stately, lamplit sitting room presided over by a portrait that made her stop in her tracks. The face was, of course, a man’s face, but Lincoln’s eyes were the same sad, heavy-lidded ones as her mother’s!
Behind her, Camila heard footsteps, turned, and was surprised to find a guard, as she believed him to be, coming to apprehend her. Scott Andrews was on detail at the White House that night, and his job was to keep guests within the reception area. Ever since Mrs. Harding had opened the White House to the public, small knickknacks had been disappearing: ashtrays in which Teddy Roosevelt had tapped the ashes of his cigar, tassels from Martha Washington’s time torn off lampshades. Scott Andrews told her this later, one of those bits of information that he liked to offer her, knowing she delighted in the harmless gossip that made her feel in the know. And although he had not meant for her to draw this conclusion, Camila understood that his first impression of her—a tall, serene woman from a Spanish-speaking country—was that she was engaged in petty thievery.
And now, this May of the borrowed elegant address, this month of May with the heat of summer already creeping about the edges of the nation’s capital, Camila dresses herself in her least shabby outfit to go begging again for her father. She has set up a rendezvous with Scott Andrews to ask if there is anything he can do about arranging one last meeting with the president for Pancho.
In the course of her conversation she hopes to touch upon the Other Matter, as she likes to think of it so as not to scare herself. She must not keep ignoring her own interests in order to take care of her father. Besides, she is weary with his anger. Some days she does not want to get up from bed. Mon has told her how her mother suffered as a young girl from depression, which was called melancholy then. Camila feels it, lapping at her knees, and rising.
This is her twenty-ninth spring: it is time for her to be happy.
“DEAR MARION,” CAMILA WRITES:
Washington is worse than ever I remember it. The heat here is as oppressive as Santiago de Cuba. Certainly not as pleasant as Havana with its sea breezes. How can one believe in a nation that built its capital in a swamp?
She is almost sure she can say these things to Marion about her country, as Marion is the first to criticize this “nutty nation,” as she calls it. Marion, after all, followed Camila home to Cuba from the University of Minnesota. For the past two years, Marion has been busy, opening the first modern dance school in Santiago, teaching “shopping English” to the wealthy daughters of sugar barons, learning to ride horseback, shoot, play tennis, croquet, and to drink Mary Pickfords, a combination of rum, pineapple juice, grenadine, and ice, which despite its name Marion would not be allowed to drink in her “dry” United States.
When Camila and her father left for Washington, Marion accompanied them as far as New York, then took a train west to spend the summer in North Dakota with her recently widowed father, who is worried sick about her. How can she of her own free will choose to live in a savage country like Cuba instead of in the best country on God’s earth? Marion counters with news of her dance academy, the antics of the Henríquez household with its numerous unusual pets, among them a bear, a monkey, and a small pink pig called Teddy Roosevelt (which is, her father writes back,“downright disrespectful”).
I think often of how strange it must be for you, Marion, going home after two years away. Speaking of sagas, yours has been an odyssey! I’m sure the last thing Daddy Reed expected when he sent you east to college in Minnesota from North Dakota was that you would end up in Cuba! He must be so happy to have you back.
Marion is planning to return to Santiago at the end of the summer, and as soon as their Washington mission is over, Camila and her father will return there also. Unless something happens, Camila thinks, as she kisses her friend goodbye at Grand Central Station. Although Camila has mentioned Scott Andrews to Marion, he has never seemed a threat. He is a vague figure, even to her, like the mother she has made up and the brothers she talks to in her head since the real ones are never around.
Do you remember my bringing up S.A.’s name from time to time? The young marine who was so kind to us during our last trip here? The one who kept writing me those letters you were always so curious about! Anyhow, we had dinner together last night. We went to the Madison Club, which is supposed to have a speakeasy in back where you can get alcohol. Of course, we ate in the formal dining room in front. Twice during the meal, S.A. excused himself, saying he had to use the facilities. He came back to the table, flushed and red-faced, so I can imagine what facilities he meant! I am glad he wears civilian clothes when we go out. I could not bear sitting across from someone dressed in the uniform of our occupying force.
Because of the three years she spent in Minnesota, Camila writes quite well in English. But she always writes to her best friend in Spanish so that Marion can keep up her español. Otherwise, she will lose her fluency in North Dakota where no one (underlined three times—Camila calls Marion “the passionate punctuator”), not even the Spanish teachers at the land grant colleges, speak it or write it well. In part, too, Camila suspects, Marion prefers her mail in Spanish to ensure privacy in their communications, as her father, Daddy Reed, has been known to open Marion’s mail “by mistake.”
Now, for a description. Tall, slender, with the fair complexion of his English ancestors—a Douglas Fairbanks lookalike. Truly, people have stopped him on the street and asked him if he is any relation. I’ve always wondered why such a good-looking man is a bachelor. But there is a timidity to him which I think he meant to throw off by joining the Marines. Now he is a military aide at the White House, a position which suits him better. His people are from New Hampshire. Early abolitionists, he makes a point of telling me. He is a kind if timid man. I think you will like him.
His timidity has impeded any progress on the romantic front. And yet when they are apart, Scott Andrews writes Camila fond letters that arrive in Santiago de Cuba with the White House crest on the envelope. Camila has to be on the lookout. Should her father spot the return address, he would tear open the letter, thinking that President Harding or Secretary Hughes is finally conceding that the United States is in the wrong, having invaded another country and forced its president to live in exile on a neighboring island. As for Marion, should she read the letters, she would throw one of her jealous tantrums.
But in person, Scott Andrews withdraws into a correctness that baffles Camila. Perhaps it is a handicap of his profession, immersed as he is in protocol. She wishes he would come boldly forward and champion her father’s cause, use his connections to get them close to the power he is always gossiping to her about. But all Scott does is bring her “souvenir gifts” from the Harding White House: a little ashtray meant as a joke after their first meeting; a deck of cards with Laddie Boy, the First Dog, posed before the American flag; a lady’s watch in a gift box inscribed—so Scott Andrews claims—in Mrs. Harding’s hand, Time for Normalcy, Time for Harding.
Time is running out! Her father sinks deeper into his theory that there is a plot afoot between the United States and the Peynado group to annex the island. His health is worse every day. It is difficult to ask Scott for help. His timidity brings out her own shyness. On one of her earlier visits in the winter, he grazed her breasts as he was helping her with her old Minnesota coat, and he blushed, yes, blushed. In fact, during this trip, she is surprised to discover that he is breaking the prohibition law and drinking. But then, as he has told her himself, President Harding throws late-night parties all the time, with trays full of bottles containing every conceivable brand of whiskey. When Scott Andrews is on White House detail, he drives many a drunk senator or Supreme Court Justice home.
I explained to S.A. about Papancho and how we must have an interview with Mr. Harding before thi
s Hughes-Peynado plan is put through, and S.A. said the usual, that there is nothing he can do, we must go through the proper channels. Proper channels! We have to go through proper channels to protest this country’s outlaw actions toward us!
Enough! she tells herself. She is starting to sound like her father: every thought, every remark going back to the same angry place. It is what caused his breakdown last year. What has made him crazy with worry and overwrought with constant indignation. In fact, she is not sure she would grant him an interview were she the president of the United States. She herself cannot live like this. Nights, in the attic room, she paces, then goes downstairs to the front door, opens the spyglass panel, looks out.
Anyhow, Marion, dear, I imagine you are enjoying the peace and quiet of your golden prairies. Remember that summer I spent with you and Daddy Reed and Mother—you must miss her so! Perhaps Daddy Reed is right, and you should stay put in North Dakota. Paste snapshots of your years at the University of Minnesota in an album. One day your little girl will ask, And who is that? And you will say, She was my Spanish teacher. I followed her to Cuba. I lived there with her and her family for two years. Periodically, I would throw tantrums to get her attention. I would threaten to leave. One day I did leave and never went back.
Ay, Marion, is this then the end of our story?
But she must not say so, or the next thing she knows, Marion will be on a train headed east. Now that they are apart, Camila must use this opportunity to make it clear that Marion should not come back. She must get free of their special connection. But she cannot think of a way to tell her dear friend except by writing these letters that outline a new situation for both of them.
“About the Other Matter,” Camila writes, trying to finish this interminable letter of longing and complaint.
It did not come up. I thought at one point S.A. was about to say something, but instead he excused himself a second time and was gone a good five minutes. When he came back, more flushed than ever, he seemed to fall into a study of my face, but then quickly, he brought up Papancho’s interview and said he would do what he could. He then confided that Washington is very tight right now. Some big scandal is breaking that might go all the way to the top. The president is distraught and has scheduled a trip to Alaska to relax. “Why not encourage him to go to the Caribbean?” I asked curtly. “He practically owns all of it now . . .” I enumerated all the occupied or supervised islands: Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, as well as the Dominican Republic. I am afraid I am becoming as shrill as Papancho, Marion, and this nice man will run hard and fast in the other direction.
But Scott Andrews does not run off. A few days later, he invites Camila to accompany him to the Paradise Jazz Club. Jazz! She thought jazz was the sassy music of white flappers with boyfriends in fur coats and Model Ts. But jazz belongs to us, she thinks, colored people, as they are called here, and it is the saddest music in the world. Of course, the only apparently colored people in the room are up on the stage, and no one would guess that Camila, pale-skinned with her wavy, marcelled hair, is one of them. She throws her head back, eyes closed, and lets herself be summoned by the braying saxophone. She can sense Scott Andrews’s eyes on her long, bare neck.
Between numbers, he announces that he has thought of a way to get her into the White House: one of Mrs. Harding’s garden parties! If Camila can get the ear of Mrs. Harding, the president will consent to a meeting with Pancho. “Everyone says she runs the country anyway,” Scott Andrews confides. “In fact, the president calls her the Duchess, and the public calls them the Chief Executive and Mr. Harding.”
“I don’t know,” Camila says, looking down at her hands hidden under the table on her lap, keeping time with the musician playing the piano on stage. She should tell him that she can no longer afford to buy outfits for these fancy parties, that she is shy and mortified whenever she finds herself tongue-tied at large social gatherings.
Before she can voice her reluctance, he reaches across the table for her hand. Quickly, she brings it up from her lap to be kissed. He seems relieved that he has successfully completed his mission and grins. “I’ve been waiting a long time to do that,” he admits.
“That makes two of us.”
The wail of the saxophone has made her brave and the slim-slamy way the large negro is playing the piano.
PEDRO ARRIVES FROM MEXICO the next day with his pretty young bride, Isabel María Lombardo Toledano. He has brought her north so she can meet some members of his scattered family. In a few days, Max will arrive with his wife, Guarina, and their two young boys. Tío Federico is due in as well, white-haired and flinty-eyed, a fierce old warrior. The whole family is assembling, not just to meet Pedro’s bride, but in answer to Camila’s wires. Something must be done with Papancho. The brothers have come to help. Camila is not sure what Tío Federico is coming for, as he is the one who is always urging his brother Pancho to fight to the death. The death of what? Camila wants to ask.
The first night of Pedro’s visit, before the others arrive, she chats with the happy couple in the sitting room. Pancho, who usually excuses himself about this time to go up to bed, lingers, flirting with his new daughter-in-law as if he, too, must make a conquest.
“I am trying to arrange a meeting for Papancho,” Camila explains when Pedro asks how matters stand, meaning only one matter, which has obsessed their father for the last seven years of his life. Camila goes on to explain that she has a friend in the State Department.
“What friend?” Pedro wants to know.
“The sailor,” Pancho pipes up. This is what her father calls Scott Andrews when he is not calling him Camila’s puppy dog.
“My friend, Scott Andrews. He has invited me to a White House garden party where I will try to speak with Mrs. Harding.”
“What?” Pancho challenges. This is the first he has heard of this plan. “We must not beg!” he thunders as the young Isabel looks on, shocked at this sudden change in her new father-in-law.
“We will not go in the back door!” he continues, his voice trembling with rage. “We do things with honor or we leave them alone!”
Camila falls silent. She cannot reason with him when he gets this angry.
When Pancho has finally climbed the stairs to bed, Camila explains to Pedro and Isabel how every morning, she accompanies her father—protest and proposal in hand—to the outer offices of the State Department’s Latin American division. A minor official always greets them, takes Papancho’s calling card, and goes away for a long time. Finally, he comes back with regrets. Secretary Hughes cannot receive them today.
“We have got to stop this,” Camila tells Pedro. “He’s just going to make himself sick again.”
But Camila is surprised by her brother’s reaction. “Papancho has every right in the world,” Pedro says, his voice rising, his hands closing into fists. Beside him, Isabel seems startled for a second time this evening. Who is this stranger she has married? What a worked-up family of fervent idealists! “Look at what the Yanquis have done in Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico. Who is going to stop them?”
Not Papancho, Camila thinks.
“As for you, my little sister,” Pedro changes the subject, reaching for her hands and giving one to Isabel to hold as if he is sharing a prize with his young wife. They sit there, sweetly, holding hands as if they were at a seance. (Scott Andrews has told her how Mrs. Harding frequents a clairvoyant on R Street!) It is rare for her brother to be so outwardly affectionate. But Camila has noticed a warming in his manner since he heard of Marion’s departure from Cuba. “Let me give you some advice, since I am your older brother and I have already made all the mistakes you are headed for. Don’t let Papancho’s politics take over your personal life. This friend you mentioned, just enjoy getting to know him. He is American?”
“Yes,” she says quickly. Why does she suddenly feel she should apologize for Scott’s nationality. She knows her brother is glad she is seeing any man at all. Ever since he surprised them in
Minnesota, Pedro has worried about Camila’s friendship with la norte-americana. “Scott Andrews’s people are from New Hampshire. They were early abolitionists,” Camila adds, trying to make the Marine major sound appealing to her brother.
“Does he know about Mamá?” Pedro asks, casting a knowing glance in Isabel’s direction. Back home, everyone expects these mixtures. Isabel herself obviously has a little Indian in her golden skin, and a lot in her black hair and dark, almond-shaped eyes.
“Things have not progressed that far,” Camila answers quietly.
“When he meets me, he will know right away.” Despite his effort to speak lightly, Pedro’s voice is edged with bitterness. Camila remembers hard moments in Minneapolis for her brother, rentals suddenly unavailable, entry refused into certain clubs. Pedro and Max have turned out to be the sons who look most like Salomé’s side of the family, darker-skinned, a kink in their hair, all the telling features. Camila thinks of the musicians on stage at the jazz club; how they came in a separate door; how she saw them sitting on crates and eating outdoors when she and Scott left during a break in the music. They could have been her brothers, especially the light-skinned saxophone player. She recalls how Max once earned his living playing the piano in New York. Where do they eat in the winter? she wonders.
“When will we meet him, Camila?” Isabel asks after several moments of silence. This is the first time she has spoken up. She is nineteen years younger than Pedro; perhaps she believes she has to ask permission of her elders to speak up!
If Pedro should say anything at all about Scott Andrews, Camila will say, You of all people should know the heart chooses strangely if it chooses at all. Look at you, the old man in the family, picking a child bride; or Max, a talented musician, with his deaf Guarina; or Mamá choosing a boy obsessed with her talent and great causes.