He hugged her warmly, patting her back and rocking her back and forth. Charlotte felt as high as a kite when Bobby spoke like that, including her in the family. The children danced on tiptoe, waiting to be hugged, first Maria Elena, then Cisco. Over their heads, Charlotte caught the raised brows and the surprised glance shared by Luis and Marta.
Luis stepped forward, clasped her hand between his two enormous callused ones and kissed her soundly on the cheek. “Welcome to the family,” he said. He’d said the right words, but there was little enthusiasm in his voice.
Charlotte forced her wide smile and replied, “Thank you.”
Marta leaned toward her son and whispered something to Michael in Spanish, low and furtive, and he replied in like. Charlotte wondered wildly if his mother was inquiring if she was pregnant or some such. Then Marta advanced in a hesitant shuffle, reaching up to kiss Charlotte on the cheek and repeating Luis’s congratulations in a soft voice. Her large, dark eyes were round with worry despite the smile. Manuel stepped up, scrunching up his dry lips and kissing her briefly on the mouth. Rosa puffed up her cheeks and left the room without a word.
Charlotte bore the reserved reception with a grace that belied her hurt, because she wanted so much to be a part of Michael’s family. It was only natural that they’d be hesitant about the first woman Michael had brought home.
The awkward tension was broken by the timely arrival of dinner, and it was with relief that Charlotte found herself seated at the table beside Michael and Bobby. His brother was one of those people who couldn’t sit comfortably in a silence. She’d come across many like him in Hollywood. Bobby worked hard telling amusing stories about the family she was about to join, making everyone laugh. Michael frequently leaned over to pat her thigh or turn his head and wink with encouragement.
As the honored guest, it was she to whom all the stories and questions were directed. She replied in answers she thought were not only polite but politic.
“When will you be married?” Luis asked in that gruff manner of his.
“I’m not sure. We have to talk about—”
“Soon,” Michael interjected firmly.
Charlotte closed her mouth tightly, eyeing him across the space.
“Will you be married in the church?” This from Marta.
Michael shrugged. “I don’t care where—”
“Certainly.” This time it was Charlotte who interrupted. She met Marta’s gaze and sensed from the gleam in his mother’s eye that Marta approved.
“You’re Catholic then?” asked Luis.
“I am. The Polish are staunch Catholics.”
“That’s good. At least she is Catholic.” He nodded at Marta as if to say, “Maybe there is something we can salvage here.”
Marta nodded in agreement.
Michael rolled his eyes.
Charlotte brought her hand to her head, rubbing gently on her temples. She looked up to see Michael staring at her hands with an expression of worry. Looking at them, she saw a tremor in her fingers. Quickly, she tucked her hands in her lap.
“So you are staying in the cabin?” Marta asked cagily.
“Maybe you will be more comfortable living in this house? With us? We have a spare room. Of course he is your
novio,
but…” It was understood that Marta would be more comfortable with that arrangement. “I think Michael and Bobby can stay in the cabin, no?”
“No,” Michael replied firmly. “She’s quite comfortable where she is, Mama.” Michael glanced briefly at Charlotte, who was stirring the food on her plate.
“Rosa stayed at home in her parents’ house until the day we delivered her to Manuel,” Luis said, as though making a proclamation. “At the steps of the church!” He looked at Rosa approvingly, his eyes stroking her virtue as though it were a family jewel.
Rosa smiled then and raised a challenging glance at her.
Charlotte swallowed thickly, unable to defend herself. How could she blurt out that she’d been a very good girl, the best. That Michael was not only her first and only lover—but her first boyfriend! She glanced quickly at Michael. He appeared unconcerned about his parents’ opinion. When he looked at her, his eyes brightened, as if to tell her not to worry.
He
knew.
“How did you get to be an actress?” Maria Elena wanted to know. “I want to be an actress, too, when I grow up.”
“Shhh, she doesn’t want to talk about that,” Rosa replied sharply. “Can’t you see she’s tired?”
“I don’t mind,” Charlotte replied, smiling warmly at the child, grateful that she’d changed the subject. Her mind felt as though she were thinking through a fog, but she didn’t want to disappoint the little girl who looked up at her with awe shining in her eyes. Too often in this business, once someone reached a certain pinnacle of success, he or she would ignore the questions of people they considered unimportant. She always thought it revealed lack of character.
“It all happened very fast,” she explained. “I wanted to be an actress when I was a little girl, too. Just like you. When I grew up, I came to California and was very, very lucky. And I worked very, very hard. I think that’s the secret, Maria Elena. To want something enough, then to work hard enough. I hope you’re lucky, too.”
“I don’t want my daughter to be an actress,” Rosa said.
“I have better things in mind for her.”
Bobby shot her a quick glance, his water glass stilled at his lips.
“Neither did my mother.” Charlotte smiled sweetly.
“But here I am.”
“Where is your mother?” Luis asked.
“She lives in Chicago.”
“Ah, Chicago, huh? And your father? What does he do?”
“He passed away when I was a child. I never knew him.”
A sigh of regret came from Maria Elena.
“I hope to meet your mother,” Marta said quietly. “Will the wedding be here or in Chicago?”
“Here, definitely,” Charlotte replied. “My mother—” She looked at her hands. “She probably won’t come to the wedding.”
Michael swung his head around to stare at her, surprise evident on his face.
“Not come? Not come to her daughter’s wedding?” Luis boomed.
Charlotte blushed and stammered, unwilling to begin another round of lies.
“My mother is angry at me for coming to California,” she explained. “She doesn’t approve.”
“She doesn’t approve of my Miguel?” Luis was thunderous.
“Oh, no,” Charlotte hurried to correct him. “My mother’s never met Michael. I’m sure she would like him.”
Luis nodded, appeased.
“She didn’t approve of my becoming an actress.” She cast a quick glance and smiled at Rosa, who was listening intently. “She thought it was wrong of me to travel to California alone. She’s not forgiven me. She refuses all contact with me.”
“Virgencita,”
Marta exclaimed, her hands at her cheeks and shaking her head.
Oddly enough, this minor tragedy seemed to break the ice with the Mondragon family. Charlotte felt a bit like a lost puppy picked up by a kind family.
She managed to get through the rest of the meal well enough. There were, after all, plenty of props. There was a plate overflowing with food to push around, water to drink and the stem of her wineglass to fiddle with. It was after dinner, however, that she began to feel the strain. The family rose, chairs scraping, and settled into familiar after-dinner patterns. Charlotte watched as Luis ordered Manuel back to the table for a game of dominoes, and he quickly trotted to comply. Michael and Bobby fell in with them to Luis’s hearty welcome. The children returned to their game of Monopoly while their mother, Rosa, sat on the sofa and made a show of reading a magazine, her back to the dining room.
“Rosa, go to the kitchen and help your mother,” Luis gruffly commanded.
“Why should I? Just because I am a woman? I don’t want to do it. You’ve got two strapping sons sitting around. And Cisco.” She turned to her young son. “Do you think that just because you’re a boy you don’t have to do dishes?”
Cisco’s jaw stuck out defiantly. “I don’t have to. You can’t make me.”
“What did you say?” Rosa was inflamed, rising from the sofa.
Cisco visibly shrank inward but held his ground.
“He is right,” Luis boomed. “This is not our way. Go on, Rosa. Set an example for your daughter.”
“I
am
setting an example for my daughter.”
She saw Bobby and Michael exchange glances. Interesting, Charlotte thought.
“Don’t talk like that to your father,” Manuel muttered, coloring. He darted a warning glance at Rosa.
Rosa seemed unconcerned with Manuel’s warnings. “It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before.”
“Enough,” Luis barked. The children flinched. “You shame your family with this behavior,” he replied. Charlotte noticed that he glanced impatiently in her direction. Rosa, as stubborn as her father, attempted a careless shrug, but her eyes flashed in a dare and her jaw was set. She straightened her shoulders and continued flipping through the magazine.
“Why don’t you ask our guest to do the dishes? She’s a woman, too.” She turned her head and gave Charlotte a cool once-over. “Or are her movie star hands too delicate for kitchen work?”
“Rosa,” Michael exclaimed sharply. “Have you no manners at all? Charlotte is our guest. Man or woman, she doesn’t have to lift a finger.”
“Michael,” Charlotte interrupted. Everyone appeared poised at the edge of their seats, waiting to see what move she would make. She sympathized with Rosa’s feelings of injustice. This wasn’t her fight, however. Charlotte had played so many roles in her life. She thought that this time she’d like to do what
felt
right. And what felt right to her was helping Marta clean up the mountain of dishes on the table. It seemed wrong that everyone else should sit and relax and leave all the work to the one person who had slaved at the stove to prepare the feast. Helping seemed the only decent thing to do, for a man or a woman.
“I’d like to help,” she replied. “May I?” she asked Marta, walking to the table and picking up a large platter of food.
Marta looked up and rewarded Charlotte with a warm smile without a trace of reserve in it. “
Sí
, if you wish,” she replied.
Emboldened by her approval, Charlotte struck up a conversation with Marta as they carted stacked dishes to and from the kitchen and dining room. They might only have been discussing the various kinds of Mexican peppers, a subject on which Marta was an authority, but it seemed to Charlotte that as they spoke, the words acted as the needle and thread that tied them together.
As she worked, Charlotte caught Rosa’s hostile glare from the sofa. She obviously felt betrayed by Charlotte’s action, for indeed, it worsened Rosa’s position considerably. Beyond her, Luis watched her with a small smile of satisfaction carving his tanned cheeks.
To her great pride, however, Michael stood up and walked to the table. He picked up a handful of plates and carried them into the kitchen, commenting on how he still couldn’t recognize one pepper from another when he went to the grocery store.
She thought he’d never spoken sweeter words of love.
That night, while lying in his arms in the cabin, Michael asked her about her mother.
“You never told me she didn’t approve of your coming here.”
“No, I didn’t.” She was being evasive. The walls seemed to be closing in on her.
“Or that your mother isn’t talking to you.”
“I was embarrassed.”
“To tell me? I thought we told each other everything. It’s one of the things I love most about our relationship. Our complete honesty.”
She swallowed hard, his words cutting deep. “Sometimes the truth is very hard. It hurts. Does it matter?” She turned to face him, lifting herself up on her elbows.
“Does what matter,
querida?
That you tell me everything? Of course. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us.”
“What if…well, aren’t there some things in our pasts that we don’t need to share? I don’t want to know about every girlfriend of yours. You wouldn’t want me to know that detail about your past, right?”
He considered for a moment, then shook his head. “There is a difference between uncovering, gradually, bits of our pasts together and deliberately keeping secret a vital truth. I look forward to growing old with you, taking long walks and hearing you bring forth a story of something that happened to you as a child. Some new bit of information that I’ll relish and add to my store of knowledge. But secrets?”
He thought suddenly of Bobby and his father, how they could never speak the truth between them. How shallow their relationship was as a result of the lie.
“Let’s make a vow. We will only speak the truth to each other. No matter how painful. This is very important to me.”
Charlotte looked into Michael’s eyes. She’d thought about this for days as she rested. He was wrong, she thought to herself. There
were
some secrets that should be kept. What possible good could come of his knowing about her surgery? About the pitiful creature that was Charlotte Godowski? He loved her for who she was now. Charlotte Godfrey. The woman she made herself. No, she decided. There were some secrets that should be kept.