Page 40 of The Night We Became Strangers

Valeria

S omeone was following us.

Graciela and I had just left Tío Bolívar’s house to go to the movie theater. The sun had already set and above the mountains, the twilight sky displayed a cocktail of yellow, ruby, and indigo.

Steps echoed close behind us, and for a second, I hoped it might be Matías.

When I turned around, I could only make out a black wool fedora tilted so low it covered the man’s face almost entirely.

On the fly, I spotted a thick mustache. His body was engulfed in a beige gabardine trench coat, his hands buried in his pockets, making it impossible to assess the man’s age or shape.

I didn’t say anything to Graciela as I didn’t want to scare her, especially minutes before planting ourselves in a dark room full of strangers for the next two hours. And besides, when I turned around again, he was gone.

I forgot all about him during the movie.

Abajo el telón was a popular comedy featuring one of México’s biggest talents, Cantinflas, and I managed to get immersed in the story.

After the movie, as Graciela and I animatedly pointed out to each other the actor’s dance performance and his delivery of certain lines, and as the street became less crowded, I thought I saw the strange man again with my peripheral vision.

That was it. I was going to confront him. I stopped and abruptly turned around. Behind me was a woman with a basket. She was so distracted by her own conversation with another woman that she bumped into me.

“Sorry!” I said.

The woman screeched, dropping her basket and its contents—potatoes and yucas —all over the cobblestone.

I continued to apologize as I picked up tubers and searched behind the incoming bodies for the man in the hat, but with such an abundance of legs and coats passing me by, it was a useless effort, especially not knowing who exactly I was looking for.

“What’s come over you?” Graciela said, as we collected the last of the potatoes and renewed our walk home. “You’re so jumpy.”

“A man has been following us,” I said.

“What?” She turned around and searched behind us. “Are you sure?”

“No, I’m just making it up to be interesting.” I fixed the strap of my purse. “ Of course I’m sure.”

As we resumed our walk home, Graciela murmured something about my wild imagination.

I’d been considering telling her what Mati and I discovered about our parents in the morning—mostly to know if she’d heard something about it from her parents, but I didn’t want her to blame it on my so-called imagination .

I wasn’t crazy or delusional. A man had followed us from the house to the theater.

And I was almost sure I’d just caught a glimpse of him.

I hastened my pace, offended and annoyed at her distrust, and thought about the poems in my mother’s box. I still hadn’t come to terms with the possibility that my mom might have had a relationship with Matías’s dad. It would’ve been wrong on so many levels!

There had to be another explanation. Maybe Matías and I had confused the handwriting and assumed it was my mom’s and his dad’s.

But what if it belonged to someone else?

Then again, if there was nothing illicit going on, why had my mom hidden the notes?

I had a couple of notebooks my dad had left behind with story ideas for radionovelas , and the penmanship in the poems was certainly different.

No, it wasn’t unreasonable to believe there had been an affair between my mom and Don Agustín. After all, there had to be a reason why Matías’s mom despised my family so much and, by extension, me. Especially after being so close to my mom for most of their lives.

When I got home, I waited until Graciela went to the lavatory to hide my mom’s box in the bottom of my valise, which I then slid back under the bed.

I couldn’t sleep that night. My stomach ached the way it did every time I was nervous.

I kept heading to the window and looking down—just to make sure there was no one in the street.

Surely, I was imagining things. It was perfectly normal that a man had been walking behind us.

The street was a public place! He might have been going to the movie theater himself, and really, how many men with fedoras and gabardines walk the streets of Quito?

Probably hundreds.

I dropped the curtain and was about to go back to bed when I spotted a dim light by the post across the street.

I drew closer to the glass. Someone was lighting a cigarette, and the flame in the man’s hands partially illuminated his silhouette.

He was medium-sized, wearing a long coat and on top of his head was, in fact, a dark fedora.

An irritating sound woke me up from a very pleasant dream where I was in some kind of paradisiacal beach taking photos of Matías. It was my cousin’s voice calling my name relentlessly. Maybe if I didn’t open my eyes, she would go away, and I could go back to my dream.

“Valeria, Valeria, Valeria, your suegra is downstairs waiting for you!”

Suegra ? But I wasn’t even married, let alone have a mother-in-law.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted to go back to the dream where no one was chasing me down a deserted street and I didn’t have to marry a man I didn’t love.

Graciela pulled the pillow from my head. “Did you forget she was coming to take you to the seamstress?”

Oh, yes, the seamstress. Tía Marga had mentioned her during dinner last night, when I couldn’t think of anything else but Matías’s warm lips on my hand.

Dona Caridad Recalde had told my aunt she wanted to make sure I went to her seamstress—the only one she trusted—for my wedding dress.

With the movie and the mysterious man standing across the street, I’d forgotten all about Félix’s mother.

I hadn’t fallen asleep until dawn, when my mind had finally given me a rest from all my worries.

“You can’t make her wait,” Graciela said. “She’s paying for your dress, you know?”

In spite of the old tradition that the bride’s family had to pay for all wedding expenses, Félix’s parents had graciously offered to take over the burden. They’d known better than to assume that my uncle would pay for anything.

“I’m going to tell her you’re almost ready—but hurry up!”

Graciela vanished just as suddenly as she’d appeared by my bedside.

I was going to have to put an end to this engagement.

But how? Perhaps I could fake an illness?

I ran my hand by my forehead, but it was cool to the touch.

When I was small and didn’t want to go to school, I would pretend I had a fever by hopping up and down to get warm and sweaty before my mom walked into my room to wake me up.

It worked once, but after the initial thrill of my successful deceit, I’d been so bored at home I never tried it again.

Today, I didn’t have the energy. I could barely keep my eyes open. But if I went to the seamstress and she got started on my dress, it would be much harder to back down from this ridiculous commitment later. I hadn’t been myself when I’d agreed.

Maybe if I talked to Félix’s mom in private? She looked like a nice, reasonable woman. It was in her best interest that her son married a woman who loved him, not someone who just didn’t know how to say no and whose uncle was willing to marry her off for money.

Hesitantly, I slipped out of my nightgown and donned a magenta gingham shirtdress that had belonged to my mother.

Lately, I’d been using her old clothes more and more.

An idea came to mind. If I managed to make it so the Recaldes rejected me as a potential wife and not the other way around, then my aunt and uncle would have to resign themselves to the dissolution of my engagement.

More important, they wouldn’t be cross at me, and I wouldn’t have this awful feeling of being a stray cat that somehow owed my only relatives loyalty and obedience.

But I had to be smart about it. If I behaved like a dunce, Mrs. Recalde would tell my family.

I had to be more subtle than that. I took a final glance at myself in the mirror.

Every hair was neatly tucked inside my ponytail and a light coat of strawberry lip gloss added the finishing touch.

She didn’t even answer my greeting, much less smile, and her arms didn’t budge one millimeter from their tight cross over her generous chest.

How could I have thought that she might be reasonable?

“Finally,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes.”

My aunt was with her, smiling and apologizing for me. “You know how girls are nowadays.”

But Mrs. Recalde didn’t seem to know or care.

She kept staring at me, flying hairs escaping her bun, and a thin layer of sweat varnishing her face.

The oil in her skin had apparently smeared a mole close to her mouth.

Ever since Marilyn Monroe had showed us that moles could be sexy, lots of women were mimicking hers with eyeliner.

“Well, I’m here now,” I said.

Tía Marga stood up. “Isn’t this exciting? I’ll go grab my purse.”

She was coming, too? But what about her hundreds of obligations?

Mrs. Recalde continued to assess me from head to toe with a loud sigh, and I wondered if this woman was the reason why her son hadn’t found a wife yet.

The older women did most of the talking while I sat on the back seat of Mrs. Recalde’s black automobile.

Since she had a chauffeur, Félix’s mom sat on the passenger seat while Tía Marga and I were in the back.

As far as I knew, not even the Monteros had a driver.

No wonder my uncle was so impressed with this couple.