Legacy of the Tropics

Chapter Two

Chapter Two“Why don't you sleep in our house, Mama,” Pablo asked. “So we can be a family, like my friend Jose next door. His mama and papi live together. A renter lives in their cottage.”

Rico smiled, raised his eyebrows to her, evidently pleased his son loved her as much.

“Mama and Papi will be married soon,” Ciara said. “Then we'll be together forever.”

“When?” Pablo asked, rubbing his sleepy eyes.

This time it was Ciara's turn to smugly glance over at Rico.

“Soon,” he said, stroking his son's hair. “Soon now.”

“Really?” Pablo asked. “And I'll have a mama for real?”

“Soon,” Rico said. But Ciara realized that again he had not mentioned when. He bent over to kiss his son goodnight.

Pablo reached up and wrapped an arm around his father's neck, then raised his other arm to her. Ciara bent down too. “I want my mama to live with us. Promise me she'll be my mama. Promise?”

“Go to sleep, Mi'jo,” Rico said, momentarily emotional. “Pray the storm goes away so we can sail. We'll talk tomorrow.”

When they left the room, just before shutting off the light, Ciara watched Pablo bring up his hands and clasp them below his chin under the covers. He closed his eyes real tight. She smiled, imagining him praying for the storm to end. Or would he pray for a mother… or both?

Strange how Pablo looked nothing like his father. If anything, even with an absence of freckles, he looked more like her with those big hazel eyes and brown hair. His complexion was also fairer than Rico's. Even his bone structure was noticeably different.

Pablo had evidently taken after his mother's side of the family although his father's big green eyes could have influenced his eye color. Ciara had met quite a few Cubans since living in Puerto Rico. She learned just because Cubans were of Spanish descent did not mean they all had black hair and brown eyes.

A lot of lore she had learned in her small hometown in Colorado did not hold true in the world at large. During her late teens, she began to write stories for children because she felt they needed to know how the world really was. Her teachers said she was getting better and better at it. Yet, the expense of college was out of her family's reach and she wanted to work anyway. Earn money. Be independent. Then she found the workaday world boring in that all jobs she found, with her lack of higher education, were clerical. Then finally, she hit upon a part time job that allowed her to pursue classes in writing. Before starting that part-time job, she opted for a vacation in the Caribbean to clear her mind of past disappointments. It was during her visit to Puerto Rico that her mother had a massive heart attack and died. After returning home for the funeral, Ciara learned her mother's life insurance policy left her with enough money to last while she started over. Her father encouraged her to set a new course. She chose to do it in the little beach shack she had seen while on vacation in Puerto Rico.

Ciara wondered if the fact that Pablo looked more like his mother might play on Rico's mind, remind him of the woman who had walked out on him. Still, if Rico was troubled by the resemblance, he never showed it.

Later inside her cottage, Ciara peered out of the louvered bedroom window and through the rain and saw the light flick on in Rico's home office. Pablo's bedroom was in the center of the far side of the house. One rear bedroom across the yard from her own was Rico's office. His bedroom was across the yard from the living room of her cottage.

Inside the half-opened jalousies, Rico's shadowy form moved about. He would probably want to finish some last-minute paperwork before leaving for more than a week. She had seen him in there on many occasions working into the wee hours. Now he would also be listening to the weather reports to learn when the storm might blow over.

The smooth terrazzo floors under her bare feet felt cool. Ciara went to the refrigerator to double check that she had readied all the foodstuffs that would be packed into coolers in the morning. She went into the living room and looked at the opened suitcase on the sofa where all her shorts and tops, swimsuits and other necessities lay neatly in place. How many times would she inventory what she wanted to take on the trip? The rain and Rico's unfounded fear of something bad happening every time it stormed must have brought on the anxiety.

She would have to help him get over that one-and-only fear he seemed to harbor before it had an adverse affect on her too. Or was her apprehension due to the fact that they were secreted lovers? That had always weighed upon her conscience.

She walked to the TV and turned it on, checked the time and switched channels until she found the news. The hippies who had settled in California and all along the West Coast continued to be a problem. Scenes flashed showing longhaired young people glutting the streets of the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco, bedecked with flowers and carrying signs touting, “Make love, not war.” The commentator said that more and more people were migrating west. Except for those who fled to Canada to protest or escape the draft. Those young people were from all walks of life, forsaking the lives well-intentioned parents had lovingly provided them, opting for drugs, free s*x and acid rock.

Most likely, with the hippie movement happening at the end of the decade, that is what the sixties would be remembered for. Hippies and the Viet Nam war would overshadow memory of the President's assassination till some new horror claimed the limelight.

The storm would be lifting, winds dying, the weatherman was saying. Still, he warned, hurricane season was only half over. Boaters were cautioned to watch for squalls and put in at the nearest harbor should the weather become too disturbed.

The weather report predicted that after the storm passed, calm weather could be expected. That meant they would sail. Maybe she could get Rico to talk about wedding plans once they were on the boat and away from work.

She looked at the engagement ring on her finger, a huge round four carat diamond in a Tiffany setting on which he had been able to cut a deal. He knew everyone in the Cuban community on the island and knew where the deals were to be had. Not to mention everyone liked him for choosing to be the father he was and always tried to give him the best deals possible. Yet, Rico made lots of money in construction and always paid his own way. But she could not fault him for dickering for a discount on the expensive ring. She had not seen a diamond like that on anyone she knew on the island. Maybe only on the hands of snowbirds, wealthy winter visitors, who could afford to relocate to the warmer tropics for months at a time when home snow became too deep in which to live.

The incessant rain pelting the roof droned on. Ciara always thought of rain as being cleansing, restorative. She could not remember anything bad having happened to her during rainy weather. Rico's upbringing and hers were worlds apart. Maybe omens were something that had been ingrained in him from childhood. She would have to help him understand that his fears were unfounded. Even now, in whatever way she could, she would assure him that something as simple as sailing was joyful and fun, in spite of the unpredictable tropical climate.

Ciara turned off the TV and lights in her small living room and walked down the hallway past the tiny kitchen and bathroom. At the bedroom doorway, she looked at her empty bed and sighed heavily. The most disturbing aspect she learned to face when first moving to Puerto Rico was culture shock. In the local culture women remained subservient to their men. Ciara could allow only so much of that and Rico knew and accepted her American way. He teased saying she was a woman liberated and blossoming. Together they created their own culture, one in which they could lovingly express the individual people they were. That included Pablo. Or, perhaps Pablo's innocent precociousness is what promoted such liberal thinking.

Ciara was every bit a modern-day American woman. However did she learn to wait for a man to make all the moves? She wanted to see Rico in her bed when she looked at it, or wanted to share a bed they both called theirs. Why did they have to wait to be married? Certainly the living arrangement was for the sake of respectability in a Spanish culture, worlds apart from her own in Colorado and from the free s*x of the hippie movement that swept the nation. Casual s*x did not appeal to her anyway. But if she expected marriage any time soon, she was going to have to be the not-so-subtle American woman she could be and push for it. She did not like being kept dangling.

She loved Pablo as much as she loved Rico. For the time being, Pablo filled the empty spot in her life a child of her own would have occupied. Pablo was a bright and innocent boy. How could she not always love him? He would be a great role model for her children, hers and Rico's. She would be a real mother to Pablo and he would be a great older brother to his siblings.

Ciara hugged herself and remembered the feelings she and Rico shared as they held one another before dinner. She wanted him then and they would have made love on the spot had the opportunity presented itself. But there he was now, working in his office into the night as the Coqui, those itty-bitty island frogs, echoed their name in the dark.

She turned off the lamp and climbed into bed only to toss and turn, sleepless as the rain pelted harder than ever.

Sometime later a noise woke her. Everything was dark, except for the small night-light kept burning in the hallway socket. She rose up on an elbow and peeped through the jalousies again. No light shone from Rico's office or bedroom. The entire house was darkened. Then her front door closed. Rico had come in. Her heart quickened. She settled back against the pillows and suddenly he stood over her, unfastening his clothing. By the time he stripped, he was already excited. He slipped into bed and came to her with the same hunger she had stored up.

The storm raged into the night. Neither could sleep. Then, hours later, they noticed the wind had died down. Peeping through the jalousies, rain no longer pelted but came down in fine drizzle illuminated by the distant streetlight. Moonlight leaked through the slats and laid down stripes across the bed.

“Look,” Rico said. “Pablo's prayers are being answered.”

“So are mine,” Ciara said as she pulled Rico to her again. The thought of Rico planting his seed and that they would eventually have children together, sent her passions soaring.

“Woman, you're gonna kill me,” he said, nibbling her lips.

“We won't have a chance to do this on the boat.”

“Yeah,” Rico said, laughing easily. In the dim light, he lifted up to an elbow. “No spare room to hide away from Pablo.”

Ciara's mood shifted. She felt guilty again. “Rico,” she said softly. “I'm tired of hiding. I'm beginning to feel like a Viernes Social mujer.”

“Sh-h!” he said. “You're not that kind of woman.”

“I don't want to hide our love anymore. Pablo's suffering too.”

“Yes, I know,” he said with a sigh. “I see it every day.” Then he smiled quickly. “I guess I can tell you now,” he said.

“Tell me what?”

He traced the outline of her lips, and then kissed her gently. “While we're away on this trip, away from work and distractions, we should make our plans for marriage.”

Ciara gasped. That was what she wanted to hear more than anything. She wrapped her arms around his neck and felt her body respond to the moment. He squeezed her to him as hard as he dared and she was again reminded of the desperation he, too, felt. “I want you, Rico…forever,” she said, whispering.

“Tu eres mi vida, Ci-Ci,” he said softly.

“Rico, I don't want to be your life. I want to share your life. There's a difference.” She said it tenderly and finished with a kiss that turned fiery.

He pulled away, but not far. “If I last long enough,” he said, because the comic in him could not resist. Even his Spanish accent enticed. His expression showed he was determined to respond to the suggestions her body offered. “Tonight is going to have to last us a long time,” he said.

“A whole week,” she said. She could barely speak as Rico worshipped her body.

His heavy warm breath was all over her. “I want to give you my child,” he said in a desperate whisper.

She could no longer respond with words.