The American

Epilogue

Six Years Later

The beginning was strung with illusions. There had been a letter, a shy one, cast in parchment and bundled in a red envelope for the woman with mahogany eyes. Written by the most romantic man in Begur, he delivered it in his bicycle. At the time merely eighteen and hopeful, he dropped it by her door—but the letter somehow fell into the hands of the wrong woman. And this curse, this tiny miscalculation by fate, changed the trajectory of their lives.

It is a story I think about often, a story that crosses my mind every year as we approach the anniversary of Papa's death. I think about the first time I heard it: that night all those years ago, in the middle of a magical, invincible summer—a summer that six years later feels like a nothing but a slip of the imagination.

Papa waits outside Maria's door, his eighteen year old self. Today is the day that he will have his answer. He had detailed it in his letter: answer the door at exactly 8 PM, darling, if you feel the same way. If you don't, I will move on. This is my promise.

Someone does answer, but it isn't his mahogany eyed woman. It is a different woman, one who bears a face similar to the one he wishes was his, but with irises lined in hazel. A smile distending her ivory face, her body is clad in a satin dress."Yes, Hugo," she says, her eyes glistening with tears. "My answer is yes."

Two days later, there is a meeting. A confrontation.

"She is so sure Hugo," Maria says. "She's so sure you're the one. I can't be with you, not unless I want to destroy her."

"This is ridiculous, Maria—"

"It's not. She's my sister. And I want her to be happy."

And so Papa indulges the hazel eyed woman's advances until it is too late to break free. What began as a game of preserving her heart would destroy them all even more in the end—but he doesn't know this. Not then. He insists, through the nights he and Maria are immersed in their platonic affinity, that there is a way out. They can escape, perhaps to the south of France or America. They can rebuild a new life away from everyone and everything they know. And there, they would no longer have to face the burden of pretense. They can be together. Really together. Just him and his mahogany eyed woman. But human beings are flawed. I am quite sure one day they will be responsible for their own ruin. And Maria is no exception.

"You are asking me to betray my little sister for what could be love, amor. How do you ever expect me to agree?"

"Maria," Papa begins.

"Stay with her. If you love me, you will. And if it is too painful for you, leave us both. There is no other way."

Papa concludes then that a life with his lover in the sidelines is better than a life without her at all. And so he takes her on, my mother, the other woman, a woman who he could never truly love because he saw in her the haunting reminder of everything he could have had. And the years go by, years in Girona and then in Tribeca, Papa and Maria united by their sacrifice. By a cruel play of fate, that sacrifice becomes their boldest declaration of love.

"Did you ever tell him, Maria?" Mario asked. "Did you tell him how you truly felt?"

Once, we would eventually find out, and Mario had been the product. It was no coincidence that he had been born in Begur and I in Tribeca. It was no coincidence that he was a Spaniard in his soul. It was no coincidence that Mama had left us, all those years ago. Nothing was a coincidence.

I sigh as the memory draws an end: the memory of that night, when Mario had then given his mother his father's letter. We found out years later through a bewildered telephone call from her that the letter had been the same one Mama had received by accident, the letter that had triggered their chaos.