Roses in the Dark, page 7
"Por qué, mujer, why do you say you are suffocating? You lack nothing; I do not stop you from going into the city when you please. Unluckily, there are no niños clamoring at your skirts. In the beginning you were content to be simply my wife."
"In the beginning we were on our honeymoon. Then as our lives assumed a daily routine, I begged you to let me work, at a commercial establishment, at the nightclub, anywhere, as long as I could exercise mind and limb. You said a working wife was beneath the dignity of a Pereira. Yet it’s not beneath that dignity to let my mind deteriorate under boredom. Niños clamoring at my skirts would not solve our problem. Not to mention that I don’t care for skirts. Yet in your house I’m forced to wear them, because it is beneath the dignity of a Pereira to wear jeans or slacks. I can’t even visit my brother as often as I want. Under your traditions, it is not proper for a Pereira wife to travel such a distance without the company of her husband, and for the past two years you haven’t been able to spare the time from your business to accompany me. Why didn’t you tell me about these restrictions when you first declared your love for me?"
"I did not consider a husband’s duty to protect his wife a restriction."
"Protect me! I protected myself well enough for years before we met."
"Basta! I will not let you go. On our wedding day we exchanged vows before God. I expect you to honor your word and mine." A boyish look surfaced on his face. He struggled with the ensuing confession. "Querida, I will admit that my excuse that I could not spare the time to accompany you was a deception on my part... to keep you with me." He hesitated saying more.
"Why, Esteban, why the stranglehold?"
"Very well, since you insist on trampling my pride. I was afraid that once you set foot back in your country of birth, you would not return with me to our home. I have not been blind these past years. I know you have been unhappy. I also know that you still love me. Querida, your lips may tell me differently, but when you are in my arms, your eyes and your body do not lie. That is why I will not let you go."
Doreen turned away. He refused to understand. But sadly for her, he was correct in his latter assumption. It wasn’t for lack of love that she wanted to leave him.
She felt depressed and in need of air. She opened the glass paned door leading to the terrace and stepped out. Esteban followed her into the terrace.
It had begun to rain, softly for now, but later it would pour. This was August. During the early part of the year the sun glared down upon the landscape and it was hot and humid. The remainder of the year rain fell in bucketfuls. One side of the city was close to the Panamanian jungle. Behind it in the distance the scattered mountains rose, shrouded in a blue mist. The Pacific Ocean boarded the coastal side of Panama City. The ocean breezes made the nights bearable.
"Querida, I must leave now for the club. Let us not part with angry words."
Doreen turned beseechingly, "Take me with you to the club tonight. Let me work alongside you."
He did not answer straightaway, but when he did, she fared no better. "No, your place is at home. When I am not present, you are the head of the household, and must be here to make decisions."
"What decisions? To approve the dinner menu?" she inquired. "Or should we hang the damask drapes or the lace ones this month."
"There are more important matters for you to attend to. Ramon and Rosaria are still minors. They need your supervision," Esteban reminded her.
"Your twin siblings are seventeen years old. They rarely listen to my advice."
In part Esteban had to agree. "True, Ramon is a boy and capable of finding his own diversions. But Rosaria is a girl... a young innocent. She also grows bored when there is no one to speak to except for the servants and a very old abuela."
"Your grandmother may be old, but she has all her faculties, and she’s a lively old woman."
"I meant no disrespect to my grandmother. I love her very much. But she is ninety-two. At twenty-six, you are better fit to entertain my sister."
Doreen fell back, stunned. "You’ve just portrayed me as a useful commodity, rather than a human being. You’re fortunate I don’t frequent your sister’s company. I might contaminate her thinking with my ideas on the modern woman and a thirty year-old chauvinist tyrant living in Panama." She had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes widen with surprise.
Esteban did not know whether to laugh or be insulted. No one had ever called him a chauvinist tyrant. He was a businessman and conscientious head of his household since his father’s death ten years ago. He was considered the liberal in his family. Nor had he in the past, nor did he intend to in the future, aspire to a dictatorship of his country, or his home. His wife’s malcontent was affecting her mind. He blanked the remark from his mind, answering simply, "Rosaria is young and vibrant and needs your companionship, and you are not a commodity. You are my wife on whom I rely to watch over my home and my family in my absence."
He silenced further argument with a quick kiss to her lips and walked down the terrace steps, then around to the front of the house where his convertible waited. Doreen wasted no time hurrying after him. "Esteban, what’s to stop me from leaving when you are at the club."
"These, my beloved," he said, pulling two sets of keys from his hip pocket - Doreen’s keys to the Cordoba and the spare set. "And this," he said, replacing the keys in his pocket and retrieving her passport from his breast pocket."
"How did you—" Did it matter how, Doreen contemplated, her shoulders slumping as despair gnawed at the pit of her stomach. In some unguarded moment he had deprived her of the instruments of her freedom and she was powerless to stop him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Mi cuñada bonita, oh I am so glad you have returned. I have the most wonderful news," Rosaria greeted, as Doreen re-entered the vestibule. Rosaria’s flowery skirt swirled about her legs and her chest heaved under the shirred peasant blouse as she hastened toward Doreen and wrapped her arms about her sister-in-law’s slender waist. Doreen returned the hug, resting her chin upon the girl’s head. Rosaria’s hair was jet black, pulled away from her face and twisted into a braid that reached the small of her back, and smelled of carnations. Doreen recalled seeing Rosaria in the garden earlier that day, gathering flowers.
The girl’s resemblance to Esteban left no doubt as to their relation. Except for her gender, and slightly plumper features and shorter height, she was Esteban from the top of her wide brow to the tips of her sandaled feet.
"Come, entremos en la sala de estar," Rosaria said, pulling her sister-in-law along. "What I wish to tell you is a secret, and you must promise to say nothing to anyone... especially Esteban."
They entered the living room through a massive double door patterned in cuarterones in keeping with the room’s Spanish decor. The dark supple leather of the couch crinkled under the weight of their bodies as they sat. Their calves felt cool against the fat brass nails fastening the leather to the couch.
"Do you promise?" Rosaria’s eyes were filled with entreaty as she waited for Doreen’s promise.
"Very well, I promise."
"Then I will tell you that I have met the most wonderful man. He is handsome and elegant, and he has told me that he loves me. Oh but he is a beautiful man!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands as her exuberance overflowed. "Dios himself has sent him to me. It was in Church that we met, during the Holy Mass. Mi abuela was busy with her Rosary and did not see Jose watching me. Naturally, I lowered my eyes modestly, in the manner taught me, but he continued to watch me. There were tears in his eyes. I did not understand why until this morning in the garden, when he explained his tears were because of me."
"He was allowed in?" Doreen asked.
"He climbed over the wall and we hid behind the bushes. He asked me to be silent, then he whispered such words of love to me as I have never heard before."
Doreen listened, somewhat skeptical and suspicious of the man’s zealous behavior, or was it play-acting.
"Why do you frown, mi cuñada?"
"I can’t help mistrusting his intentions. According to your customs, he should present himself to Esteban and your grandmother and ask permission to call on you."
"He cannot present himself. He has no wealth or status to impress my brother. Esteban would never allow him to come near me again. No! Esteban must not know. You yourself know how strictly he follows the old traditions."
Doreen nodded. Yes, she knew. She cupped the girl’s chin affectionately. "You’re so young and inexperienced."
"I am seventeen. Several of my friends are already engaged to be married."
"And you are not," Doreen said, about to laugh.
"Esteban has received three offers of marriage for me, from sons of good families."
"None of them were to your liking?"
Rosaria looked downcast. She shook her head sadly. "No, I felt nothing for them." Her eyes filled with excitement. "But Jose," she placed her hands over her chest, "See how quickly my heart beats at the mention of his name."
Among the members of Esteban’s family, there were two who exercised a modicum of influence upon him... his grandmother and Doreen herself. "Perhaps if I explain to Esteban—"
"No, no, you promised!"
"What did you promise, mi cuñada?"
Both women turned their heads as Ramon Pereira’s cocky tenor intruded in their conversation.
Rosaria hurriedly improvised. "Doreen promised to take me to the cinema tomorrow, and now she is saying she will not."
Ramon shrugged and deposited himself in an armchair. The pale cream leather struck a sharp contrast with his black Quianna shirt and pants. He was almost as tall as Esteban and his resemblance to him also undeniable. "Perhaps our cuñada has more pressing matters than to accompany you to the cinema."
The tone of his voice gave Doreen cause to wonder what exactly he knew. It was not foreign to Ramon to stand unobserved, and watch and listen where he had no right to."
"I’ll take Rosaria to the movies," Doreen assured him. "But we’ll need someone to drive us. I no longer have use of the Cordoba."
Something about his grin, and the self-satisfaction with which he stretched his legs, caused her to suspect that he had been instrumental in Esteban reaching her at the airport before she could escape. His next words confirmed her hunch. "A pity that at times my brother can be most difficult."
Disgusted, Doreen excused herself to go and change for dinner. Doña Maria’s bedroom faced the top of the curving staircase. Doreen had reached the last step when she heard the old woman calling to her. "Niña, entrase, I will speak with you, sit."
In her black lace afternoon dress and mantilla, Esteban’s grandmother was no less imperious than the men of her clan. Her eyes were rheumy with age, her body thin and bent, but she retained the keen intelligence and the feisty spirit that had attracted Esteban’s grandfather.
"I sense that all is not well between you and my grandson," she said.
Doreen surmised that sensing had very little to do with the old woman’s concern. More likely, the sound of their voices as they argued earlier had penetrated the walls of Doña Maria’s bedroom.
"What is happening between you two?" Doña Maria inquired worriedly. "I was against your union, but on your wedding day you and Esteban burned with such love that the guests at the wedding feast proclaimed they could almost see the torch flaming between you. Now the flame flickers and threatens to extinguish."
Doreen dropped her gaze to the dainty black handkerchief in the old woman’s hands. The fingers that held the wisp of linen and lace were gnarled with arthritis, and wrinkles that appeared etched with a sculpture’s tool, criss-crossed and chased each other across the backs of her hands.
Doña Maria had been a farmer’s daughter, working alongside her father tilling the soil and planting the seeds of the crop that would feed her immediate family. Doreen had heard the story from Esteban. How his grandfather, then a dashing Spanish aristocrat, caught a peasant girl stealing fruit from his orchard. The penalty he imposed was that she sleep in his bed for three nights, the alternative being that she and her family would be imprisoned and their small farm confiscated.
The girl paid the penalty. But her spirit and self-sacrifice so impressed him that on the last night of her sentence, he sent for the Padre and married her, there, in his bedroom, and remained faithful to her for the rest of his life. The girl, of course, was Doña Maria herself.
"Will you not tell me what is destroying your affection for each other?"
"I can’t live like this any longer." Doreen replied, lifting her head. "In the name of love, Esteban has made me a prisoner of his heritage."
"You tried to escape earlier. I saw Esteban’s face as he searched for you when he discovered you and your suitcase were gone." The worry lines on her brow deepened. "Esteban is not like his father. My son was of an even and benign temperament. If his wife had asked him to, he would have fallen on his knees before her in homage. She, herself, was of a gentle nature, and worshipped and respected my son above all things. In temperament Esteban resembles my husband, God rest his dear soul. He has a Spartan core. Had it been Esteban on that long ago morning in the orchard, I would not have fared any better." She craned her neck as if to see Doreen more clearly. "What has changed you, niña? You did not mind Esteban’s power when you first came here. I would venture to say you admired him for that power and his strength of character."
"Perhaps I did. But that power now threatens to crush my strength of character. His attempts at dominating me are a constant irritation. His Old World attitude towards a wife’s role infuriates me. His refusal to end our relationship is sheer Latin stubbornness on his part. I will not remain here with nothing to do than look back on honorable memories!"
"You are as hard as he is!" Doña Maria accused. Her backbone arched like a cat’s and her crinkled features grew stiff as the starched black lace of her dress. "I will speak to my grandson. Such as you do not belong in this house. You are not worthy to bear the Pereira name. Kindly leave my presence."
The old woman’s rejection shook Doreen as though cold water had been thrown at her flushed face. Doña Maria had always kept her place and never interfered in the couple’s affairs. She left her chair and fell on her knees before the old woman. "Señora, don’t be unkind to me as well. I didn’t want to marry Esteban, but there was no denying him. I had no weapons against the allure of his charms or the strength of his will. And now I have no weapons to break his chains. Doña Maria, please," she implored. It seemed so important that someone understand her plight.
The old woman’s features softened. She placed a consoling hand on Doreen’s shoulder. "My son and his wife were content with one another. When Esteban’s mother died, my son would look at no other woman. He grew old quickly, and gladly followed his esposa into the world of the angels. Can you and Esteban not close your eyes to the world about you and see only each other?"
Yearning for the comfort of her own mother who had died years ago, Doreen laid her head on the old woman’s lap. "I cannot love a jailer," she said. She thought of her brother in the States and how easy to write to him and solicit his help. Somehow the idea of pitting brother against husband revolted her. She must fight her own battles. There was the chance that in time Esteban would relent and grant her freedom. But how much time? How long before he finally broke her spirit, before she grew used to the yoke and became docile? No more than a fixture and a prospective breeding mare. And after, how long before he grew bored with her and looked for more palatable charms, elsewhere?
Doña Maria ran her hand gently over Doreen’s darkest brown hair. Doreen lifted her head slightly to acknowledge the gesture and her hair draped her temples gracefully. "You are a very beautiful young woman. I cannot blame my grandson for refusing to let you go."
Tears threatened and Doreen stood up. "Doña Maria, forgive me, but I’m weary." The old woman nodded. "Go, niña. It has been a trying day for you. I will pray that all will be well between you and Esteban.
She retired early, slipping into the large bed with its carved headboard inlaid with ivory and pulling the silk sheets about her, as if hiding from her unhappiness. Sleep was her ally. In its blessed oblivion, she could forget the tight nervousness in her chest and the depressing thoughts in her mind. She could dream of her emancipation from Esteban. Sleep overtook her suddenly, and as suddenly Esteban was beside her, and drawing her into the curve of his arm.
Part of her brain slept. Part had come awake. She recoiled from his hold. He groaned and drew her back into his arms.
Being locked inside a cage that was too small for her proportions would have been preferable to being held thus, immobile, restrained. "Esteban, please, you’re hurting me!" Doreen cried, trying to twist free.
"What am I doing that is hurting you?" he asked. "I but hold you as you have held me hundreds of times before."
"Mental anguish can rival physical pain," she replied, squirming to free herself. "Let me go!" she fairly screamed, communicating all the aversion and intolerance that threatened to send her into a fit of hysterics, if he did not let go. Esteban released her. She moved to the edge of the bed and turned her back on him.
She heard his anguished intake of breath but he dared not touch her. "I do not deserve your rejection," he said. "I have never betrayed you, nor done you harm, that you should turn from me with such loathing."
Doreen did not reply, but she did not fall asleep until nearly dawn. Several times during the night her glance strayed to her sleeping husband. He lay on his back with the silk sheets flung casually across his waist. The black beard on his chest was dense. In sleep his rigid jaw was relaxed, the full mouth parted slightly as if his nostrils were not wide enough to admit all the air necessary to sustain his long, lean form. She was thankful he slept, his eyelids shuttering for the moment the denunciation with which his eyes, deep-set under black brows, had earlier regarded her. A thin stubble of hair covered his prominent cheekbones and jaw, continuing to just above his neck, giving him a gaunt appearance.
