Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [168]
“So your solution is to send them away?”
“The governor’s recommendation, Leonor.”
“It didn’t occur to you to talk to Miguel about this before banishing him from the island?”
“He’s not being banished; he’s being given a rare opportunity to do something he loves. At the same time, we’re distancing him from associates who might tarnish his good name. He’s seventeen years old, Leonor, and hasn’t traveled beyond the walls of this city except for weekends at our friends’ fincas and for patron saint celebrations in nearby towns. He’s never had to fend for himself.”
“Why is that wrong? What else would we do with our wealth but to make his life easy?”
“I’m not talking about material things; of course we’d give him every advantage. What I mean is that Miguel is easily influenced. He lacks … a sense of adventure, I suppose.”
“Look what a sense of adventure did for our sons.”
Eugenio grimaced. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “We can’t protect him so much that he doesn’t know when he’s moving on his own, or is being pushed by others.”
“He’s a boy!”
“He’s a man, Leonor, young, but a man nevertheless. The problem is he’s incomplete. He lacks the confidence of a man who knows his own power. He’s too passive, has never challenged us—”
“So you’re sending him away because he’s too respectful?”
“I’m sending him away so that he can learn to stand on his own convictions and not be so easily swayed by anyone, including me, and especially not by a charismatic man whose activities could land him in trouble. We can’t give him a sense of his own strength without sending him into the world to be knocked about a bit.”
“You resent him for his easy life.”
Eugenio had had enough. “You’ve resisted every suggestion I’ve ever made about what I believe to be best for him.” She started to protest, but he didn’t give her a chance. “I didn’t argue when you and Elena took over his education.” His voice rose, but he didn’t care. He was in the right, and even Leonor’s recent delicate health didn’t keep him from trying to get her to acknowledge it. “I didn’t insist when you refused to send him to military training. I haven’t forced him to learn the intricacies of business. I haven’t interfered in his upbringing except to teach him what I know about how to be a man and to be a positive example for him.”
“Please lower your voice; they can hear you.”
Eugenio wiped his forehead, behind his ears, around his mutton-chop whiskers. The handkerchief was soaked. “Sometimes I look at him, and I’m disturbed by his passivity.” He paced up and down the chamber, his arms behind his back. “We’ve raised a man, Leonor, who doesn’t know who he is, a man with no goals or ambitions. I feel as if I’ve failed him.”
“So you want him where you’re not reminded you’re a failure?”
Eugenio stopped pacing and looked at his wife’s haggard face. They’d been married almost fifty years, and as she aged, she’d always seemed beautiful, worthy of his love and admiration. They’d argued often, even before they were married, sometimes in loud voices, but he almost always came around to her point of view. There was no one whose good opinion mattered more to him. In their lifetime, however, in none of hundreds of arguments, had she ever said anything so cruel. “You haven’t known me, then, our whole lives, if you think I’m a failure.”
“Forgive me.” She stood to run into his arms, but fell against the divan as if struck. “Oh!” she said, and a look of panic crossed her face as she brought her hands to her chest. He reached her just as her body went slack and she slumped to the floor.
“Miguel! Elena! Come, please, hurry!” He crouched over her, tried to sit her up, patted her cheeks to bring the color to them, but he knew there was nothing to be done.
Eugenio had been to so many funerals that except for Ramón’s, he couldn’t remember