In the Name of Salome by Julia Álvarez

if she could balance them all with her splashy, incomparable presence, Marion, or, la Miss Marion. Camila might have been in love, but what she remembers is being in a state of constant exhaustion. No wonder her voice gave out, and her teacher, Doña Gertrudis, told her she must give up her dream of singing opera.
    When Camila and her father left for a month’s stay in Washington, Marion decided to accompany them as far as New York and then go to visit her family in North Dakota. Camila hoped that that once there, Marion would not come back. She had her own plans. She was almost thirty. She still had a chance of happiness if she finally made the correct choices.
    But at the end of the summer, Marion was back at Camila’s door. “I’ll never let go!” Marion had sworn, even the final time, when she climbed aboard the train that would take her to Havana, and thence, by ferry, to Key West and a job teaching dance up north. Over the years, on and off, the two friends have stayed close, finding each other again and again, especially when their lives are beginning to fall apart.
    Most recently, as they are both crossing the half-century mark, Marion has been hinting that the two friends might “end up together after all.” Especially now that their parents are all gone and they don’t have to worry about awkward explanations. But they are not gone for me, Camila thinks. No doubt her ambivalence is driving Marion away again. But in fact, Marion’s recent lapses in writing and calling have been much more depressing than Camila would have thought.
    Especially given this whole centennial business, bringing back, as she knew it would, that hollowed-out feeling of original loss. And then, the newer losses! Pedro, dear Pedro is gone. And fast upon this grief, another: her cousin Gugú shot down on a beach this past summer.
    Winter upon winter.
Stripping the land of its glorious young
. . .
    Camila is not above improvising on her mother’s poems.
    â€œB UENAS TARDES ,” SHE SMILES at the room of entirely strange young faces. (
Their faces fresh with what they do not know
. . .) In honor of the season, she takes the class through a close textual reading of her mother’s poem, “The Arrival of Winter.”
    â€œÂ¡Excelente!” Chairman Graziano congratulates her after class. Tall and effusive with the broad shoulders of a football player, he seems out of a place in the scholarly confines of the classroom. Beside him stands a young man, brooding and thin, a dusting of cinnamon in his skin. No doubt this is the Dominican student, who has been having some sort of trouble—she can’t quite remember what. He cradles a small parcel in his arms possessively. Her mother’s poems, she thinks. He wants her to sign his copy.
    The chairman introduces him as Manuelito Calderón, a name that sounds vaguely familiar. “Why don’t you two visit right here?” The chairman rearranges two classroom chairs so they face each other, then nods at Marion. “We’ll be back in about twenty minutes.” There is a slight lift of his eyebrows as if to ask, or sooner? Camila understands: the guest speaker must be protected against the eager student or colleague. “Twenty minutes is fine,” she agrees, smiling at the student. “Don’t you think, Manuelito?”
    â€œAs you wish,” he says, quietly in Spanish. In the too-large winter coat he has not taken off, he seems ill at ease. Camila wonders if this is the way her colleagues and students at Vassar view her. Perhaps that is why her neighbors are constantly trying to dress her warmly and acclimate her to a place they can see she does not
cotton to
, as Daddy Reed might have said.
    â€œD ON’T YOU RECOGNIZE MY name?” the young man confronts her as soon as the chairman and Marion have left the room. He is scanning her face for some hint of recognition he seems to feel he