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  Yet, my father knew better. He wanted to know who this Young Man In Cuba was that I was going to see for a second time, just two weeks later.

  “He’s just a friend, Dad,” I responded delicately, sensitive to his concern. Still, it was hard not to smile at the mention of Luis’s name.

  He was silent for a moment and then asked if I could tell him something about Luis’s family.

  What could I say that would make any sense? He is from a communist country, but he is not a communist. He comes from a broken home and moved out at sixteen, only to move back years later. He is a taxi driver, but an entrepreneur at heart, picking and selling avocados at age six so that he could surprise his mom with the much-needed coins. Forget that Luis and I are from different planets; he is wise and strong and I learned so much from him without him ever trying to teach. He’s incredibly bright, kind, and makes me feel safe. He’s dignified in a country where dignity isn’t easy to preserve. He doesn’t speak English, but our connection is strong. He understands me in a way that others haven’t before. But how could I tell my dad that my instincts were taking the lead? How could I tell him that I had found the man I knew I was going to marry?

  I didn’t have to. My father knew all too well.

  I sensed his uneasiness, but he respected my decision and never tried to talk me out of going to Cuba again. It is only today as a parent myself that I can fully appreciate his restraint.

  Though he did make his point that it had not been his choice to go to Vietnam and never again would he go to a country with a dictator in charge. He would never take the chance of being controlled by one man, even if for a brief stay.

  Days later, I trembled my way through Havana’s passport control, answering questions about my stay.

  “Estás sola?” the official asked me.

  Was I traveling alone?

  “Sí.”

  He started to flirt with me. I fumbled my way out of needing any assistance in Cuba and pushed through the door, rattled even further.

  In near torture, I waited for my bags for over an hour. As I exited the building, mobs of people formed a barrier on all sides, but on clearing to the street, I saw Luis off to the right and fled to him. I dropped everything and wrapped myself around his neck.

  The next two weeks were electrifying. We had again become regulars at the Hotel Nacional, and in my love stupor, I still struggled in Spanish to fully express all that I wanted to. Yet, even in my subpar attempts, Luis got me.

  None of it made sense. We should have been a complex system, he and I, but together, we were the most natural thing in the world. Luis took my crude slices of Spanish and more than once cast a net around them, creating some semblance of meaning. He was poetic, in fact, in his return delivery of jumbled words.

  I studied him. When Luis flagged the bartender and stood to pay, his gestures were elegant, his stance confident. There was a contained power about him, as he spoke with directness, respect, and a gentle shell. He reminded me of my father in that way.

  The sun had already come up by the time we climbed the stairs to his apartment. I didn’t even feel tired, but knew I needed to sleep. To the bed I went. Two or so hours into my coma-like state, erratic pounding on the door downstairs jolted me awake.

  Luis quickly gathered me, as I was in a pile on the bed, and shoved my unruly suitcase into his closet, which he then closed firmly. I was too incoherent to ask what was going on and he said he would explain outside.

  Outside? Why do we have to go outside? I thought, but didn’t say.

  “I’ll tell you in a minute, come on.”

  I didn’t actually say anything, did I? I was so confused.

  “Come on,” and he gave me a kiss on my head while giving me his hand to guide me down the stairs.

  I had managed to put on some sort of decent clothing and Luis was in shorts and flip-flops. Ana, unflustered, looked like a twentieth-century movie star descending behind us in her long robe, cigarette box and lighter in hand.

  We stood in the hallway just outside the front door while noxious gas poured from all of the surrounding windows, both in our building and neighboring ones. It appeared that an enormous fire was taking over the city, but no one was running. In fact, everyone was quite calm.

  What the hell is going on? I thought.

  Neighbors greeted one another, like any other morning or afternoon. They yawned. Within minutes they were laughing and telling stories. My brain hurt; I didn’t understand what was happening. Was I participating in a rare episode of The Twilight Zone or some Cuban bloopers show?

  Ana lit a cigarette. Probably not the best time to smoke, I noted to myself. Luis then explained to me that the clouds were derived from diesel gas used to fumigate a particularly lethal batch of mosquitoes in the country. The fumes filled the house, yet there was no way to fend off the intruder. My clothes reeked of it, as did the sofas and cushions, towels, and sheets throughout the house.

  I wanted to tell Luis that at home helicopters buzzed above the streets, unobtrusively in the early-morning hours while we slept, without even a hint of its haze, but I didn’t. There was no reason to make a point about something he didn’t have.

  My coughing outbursts morphed into laughter with the others, as we celebrated nothing more than life in all its insanity.

  A few nights later, Luis and I went to a piano bar. A Cuban Jay Leno-type gave an opening act for the singer, which in its entirety revolved around the Fumigation, and I was happy to understand the inside jokes.

  When it was time to leave Cuba again, we didn’t talk about the fact that I still had a plane ticket to Hungary in the following weeks. We didn’t have to. It weighed on us heavily. He didn’t understand why I was going. I didn’t understand why I was going, though I pinned it on my mom, saying she had left a small sum to me and I would use it in her honor, living and traveling in Europe. On paper, that sounded good.

  “Mel, you can live with us two or three months,” Luis all but begged of me.

  “I can’t,” I said, unable to look him in the eye. “I can’t.”

  Deep within I wanted nothing more than to be with him, but I was scared. I gave myself permission to be scared of living in big, bad Cuba. If I had been honest with myself back then, I would have also admitted that I was scared to jump into that real kind of commitment. It was OK to love him, but to be with him, there, was another thing altogether. My brain and my heart were at war.

  The mood changed drastically my last twenty-four hours and the morning I was to leave, Luis would barely look my way. I tried to keep my mind on the task at hand—packing. Tears rolled down my face and dropped like bullets on my bag.

  The drive to the airport was tense. We could barely get through a sentence without arguing. As we wound into an entrance of the airport and realized we were at the wrong terminal, Luis exploded as his fist slammed the dash. But we both knew none of this was about the airport or the terminal. We were being torn apart and I was the reason.

  As I walked through immigration and waved good-bye, Luis’s head stayed down, his hand up in a send-off. Tears spilled, running the length of my cheeks, and I waited for him to look up, but he didn’t. Finally, I closed the door and turned to go through the security checkpoint, broken.

  A week after I returned to Savannah, President Bush announced from Miami that there would be tighter travel restrictions to Cuba. Accusations were made that Castro was developing biological weapons, which the Cuban government vehemently denied.

  Cuban-Americans applauded Bush’s efforts. My stomach tightened.

  Chapter 23

  Budapest

  April 2, 2002

  Two weeks later I sat in the Atlanta airport, waiting for a flight to Paris. Seven hours later, another to Budapest. I physically ached for Luis, yet there I was, about to go on a plane, taking me farther away from him. What was I doing? From a logical point of view, it made no sense at all.

  I had spoken to Luis the previous night. He called me to say he couldn
’t sleep. He wanted to hear my voice. As I listened to his, my throat quivered. Again, he gave his best shot. He didn’t want to push, but offered Cuba as an alternative to Hungary for just a couple of months.

  I threw in my family. They weren’t ready, I said. My dad would not sleep at night. When he went silent, I tried to make him understand this last ode to my mother. I had a one-way ticket with no plans of any kind. But I said that I would come see him very soon.

  My brain made its case for my independence and freedom, whatever that even means. As I hung up the phone, I felt sick.

  Before my mother died, she became open to the practice of reiki, at the suggestion of her friend, Bobby, who had become a master of the Japanese form of natural healing. From afar, Bobby focused all of his positive energy on my mom, passing his “life force energy” to her, to promote her healing.

  “I love you, I love you, I love you,” I repeated in my head, as if the words would free themselves and fly to Luis. As if my life force energy would escape to find and lift him when I didn’t have the courage to do what I really wanted to do, which was to be with him.

  I knew that Luis was my future. Yet, I hid in my fear, packed in a suitcase headed for Eastern Europe, behind the veil of my mother’s memory.

  The next morning, I pushed myself out the door. In the walls of my self-made steel vault, I told myself that I knew what I was doing, that I was in control of my own path and that I would find my way back to Luis when the time was right.

  April 3, 2002

  Before takeoff, I sat slightly at an incline, trying to drown out my thoughts of Luis, my mom, and the most unfortunate body odor punctuating my space. I was happy to be in a two-seater aisle, not in between four strangers in the longer rows, but I struggled with my new neighbor who was in dire need of good deodorant.

  Eventually the young man fell asleep and snored lightly next to me. I turned on my overhead light and tried to concentrate on Hungarian phrases listed in a book I had bought a couple days earlier. “Szia” is hello and “hello” is good-bye.

  Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért was listed as an actual word, or rather a string of suffixes fastened to one another. Also, Legeslegmegszentségteleníttethetetlenebbeiteknek and Töredezettségmentesítőtleníttethetetlenségtelenítőtlenkedhetnétek.

  Most native speakers wouldn’t recognize these words, the book noted, but still, this was by far the most difficult language I had ever attempted. I don’t speak French, but even in Paris, by myself for three days, I was able to wing it. Hungarian, I wasn’t so sure.

  I read more about Budapest, the “Paris of the East,” its right-banked residential sectors, Buda and Óbuda, and the artistic left-banked Pest, which is also the commercial core of the city. Other chapters praised the country’s classical musical dominance throughout the ages and a burgeoning theater scene. My internal dialogue was one of persuasion, as I tried to convince myself I was going to enjoy my newest adventure.

  My eyes grew heavy and I reached overhead to switch off the light. Restless, I imagined pillows of fluff just outside my window, but questions punctured peaceful thoughts: Why was I pushing myself toward more unknown? Did I think I was going to restore what I had lost in the streets of Budapest, following a hollow promise to my mom?

  I wanted to believe that maybe my mom could guide me from afar. Maybe she could help me find me again, in the notes of the famed opera houses or the walls of some crazy hostel that I was destined to stay in during my first weeks there.

  Chapter 24

  A Mismatched LEGO Piece

  Upon arrival in Pest, I was on my own. A friend of my father’s had very generously offered his apartment to me for a few weeks until I was situated, but with some of his other friends using the space when I arrived, I would have to find my own digs the first two weeks there. Minutes before the plane landed, I scoured the travel book for a decent hostel or hotel. I got off the plane and made my way down the corridors to baggage claim. I did feel a hint of excitement about being in a new country, but my body was in a state of havoc after almost two full days of travel.

  I saw my obnoxiously oversize green backpack on the belt and popped it off with a heavy jerk. On nearly forty hours of no sleep, hoisting all that weight onto my back was not as easy as it had been in Savannah. Hu-umph! The pack had two metal bars with extra storage space that extended above my head. Why did I bring all this stuff? The truth was I didn’t know how long I would stay and I had both summer and winter clothes, with all variants of shoes and boots, casual and spiked, for any occasion. This was totally stupid because I’d probably wear the same five things over and over. But I knew from the airplane report that on this particular day it was still cold and I put on my heavy coat, which made the pack pinch even more.

  I walked toward the exit to an ATM. I extracted some amount of Hungarian currency—the forint—and around the corner at a kiosk, requested an international calling card from the saleswoman. A circular booth of telephones was just behind me and as I turned I almost took out another traveler with my backpack. “Oh, I’m so sorry, so sorry,” I said, putting my hands out as if to take it back. He waved it off and said something to me in some language I couldn’t identify.

  I looked up to see two Hungarian security men laughing at me. I’m sure I was a sight to see. They said something to each other and turned and laughed at me again.

  F off, I thought, and dropped the bag on the ground. I pulled a ripped page from my pocket and began calling hostels to see if any one of them had an available bed. The first two numbers didn’t work, but the third, Backpack Guesthouse, had room. In English, the man politely invited me to stay at the hostel and suggested a shuttle service I could find just outside the airport.

  I thanked him and looked down at the monstrosity on the floor. Not able to muster the energy to throw it over my shoulder and onto my back, I grabbed the top loop and dragged the corpse outside. Thankfully, the shuttle came quickly and I gladly handed my pack to the driver just before ducking in and crawling to the second row of seats. The drive through the old, European city was gray and I felt uneasy, like I was riding a motorcycle with no helmet.

  At the guesthouse, the front-facing wall resembled a gigantic tie-dyed shirt and was strangely alluring, like those Bugs Bunny swirling eyes that I used to watch on TV as a kid. I paid for a week in advance at the front desk and gingerly walked down a narrow set of stairs behind George, the man I spoke to on the phone. He carried my bag, never once complaining of its deadly weight.

  I was introduced to a room no larger than mine in New York, with four mattresses like mismatched LEGO pieces lining the walls. After shoving my bag into a gym-style locker in the room and securing it with a padlock, I was given a tour of the grounds. Each room upstairs was for common use and was painted in other various trippy decor. Bob Marley smiled at me in one room, and a colorful aquarium greeted me in another. All were loaded with pictures of excited and goofy-looking visitors from around the world.

  I didn’t know why in the hell I was there.

  Chapter 25

  Lost Along the Danube

  I had been in Budapest for a couple of days already. Typically, this would be a happy time for me, walking new streets, looking for unannounced adventures, and sorting out new words and expressions with locals. Yet, I moped. I missed Luis terribly. I thought about him constantly, obsessively.

  The day after I landed, I called him to let him know I had arrived safely, but speaking to him was very difficult. He missed me desperately. I missed him, too, I told him, holding back tears. Then he sang a line of “La Flaca” by Jarabe de Palo to me, as he had done in Cuba, and I winced, hearing gravel and hurt in his uneven and lovely tone.

  He said I would never know how hard it was for him. He didn’t have to say he felt left behind. I knew. I told him I would be with him soon and that I would call again the next day. I hung up, feeling as if someone had died. My eyes swelled; my whole body became heavy. I was so far away from him. What had I
done? Why had I run from him? The independence that I clung to felt like an anchor, pinning me to the ocean’s floor.

  Drained, I mulled around the city for hours and then sat in the corner booth of a café for some time, staring at nothing. I drilled myself: Why was I really here? What was I so afraid of? Why had I run from Luis? Unable to answer those very questions, I couldn’t bear to go back to the hostel with swarms of strangers in such close proximity so, for some time, I wandered aimlessly.

  Though I knew I wanted to be with Luis long-term, I was used to, even proud of, being independent. I thought I had the strength to separate my emotional attachment to Luis from my “new and exciting” experience.

  Later that day, when I called Becky from a pay phone on the street, she quickly noted my instability.

  “Mel, you don’t have to stay,” she said. “You can always come home.”

  “I know, I know,” I replied and told her I’d be OK, my voice rattling. The truth was that the thought of returning home again, not being able to manage in another city by myself once again, felt like failure. I didn’t want to be in my hometown. I wanted to be doing something larger than myself.

  Close by I sat on a park bench, watching people pass. A girl about my age sat down and struck up a conversation. She was Hungarian, but spoke English well. She asked me if I would be interested in teaching conversational English to corporate professionals. The agency where she worked was desperate for native English speakers, especially Americans.

  “Sure,” I said, and thanked her as she wrote the phone number and address of the agency down for me.

  The rest of the day, I tried to make the most of the city. That night, I went to see the Hungarian National Ballet perform at the Magyar Állami Operaház, or the Hungarian State Opera House, in the center of downtown Pest on the tree-lined Andrassy út, with its cafés and outdoor seating. Following the performance, I walked under the small lights that filled the trees at night. I thought only of Luis.