VOLUME 2 - 2007-2008
A PRELUDE TO THE MAGIC CITY
She knew this would be the last time she saw the ocean. Her wide-brimmed hat shielded her pale, freckled face from the harshest rays of the afternoon sun. Through her coke-bottle eyeglasses, she observed the always-changing character of her beloved city with a meditative calm. The newspaper galley in which she used to discuss women’s liberation seemed quaint in the face of the fleshy spectacle that whirled around her. Seated on the sand-peppered bench on Ocean Drive, she could catch only a glimmer of the welcoming ocean above the undulating sand dunes and rainbow umbrellas that cluttered the horizon. The public shower’s chlorinated streams ricocheted off a toned young man’s orange sandals and onto her parched arms. The cool drops served as relief from the industrial heat emanating from the exhaust pipes of the cars that slowly cruised the polyglot sounds of South Beach. The passengers of these cars hoped to see and be seen amidst the throng of lusty men and women that strolled the café table-ridden sidewalks.
She attempted to stifle the throaty laugh that flew out of her dry lips when a dreadlocked teenager with multiple facial piercings approached her and asked if she was interested in signing a petition to help save the Everglades. She politely waved her hand at the girl as if to imply that she had no time for such a thing and stood up to leave.
108. I’m older than this city. Brazilian Bikinis they call them. Magazines named after “hot” streets. Dancehalls that once purred the Charleston now thump with electronic . . . well, thumps. And then her. “Save the Everglades.” Perfect. If only she knew. Magic. I’ll never leave this place.
Claudio ushered her into his compact car and she took one last look over her shoulder and caught the faintest glimpse of a foamy wave crashing onto the shoreline. In the distance she could see a cruise ship exiting the bay and entering the Caribbean. She could never understand why such iridescent coastal waters could be considered the cold, dark blue currents of the Atlantic Ocean. They are more suitably categorized as the most northern outlier of the warm, teal blue streams of the Caribbean Sea she would write home when she first moved to the sleepy town on the bay.
With her linen hat firmly ensconced over her frosty, cotton ball hair she embraced the heat-tinged breeze that hit her face while they drove over the crystalline waters of Biscayne Bay and onto the mainland. A pine green sign announced their entrance into Miami’s city limits.
She remembered the large wave of discontent that spread throughout her adopted home of Coconut Grove, Dade County’s bohemian enclave, when it was annexed by the leviathan city of Miami in 1925. It was quite a different story today. While numerous floats at the annual King Mango Strut Parade claimed to be keeping the nut in Coconut Grove, countless neighborhoods, unincorporated areas, and other cities clamored to attach themselves to the Miami image. People who weren’t even eligible to vote for the mayor of the city bragged to outsiders that they lived in Miami. The postal service satisfied the region’s urbane desires by delivering mail marked with Miami addresses to the millions who lived in technically nameless areas of urban, suburban, and exurban sprawl.
As they drove down I-95, which linked South Florida, a state in its own right, to exotically quaint Maine, and merged onto South Dixie Highway, she thought about the tourists.
Their idea of Miami is beaches, palm trees, mojitos, and non-stop partying. Their impression of the city is the art deco skyline of Miami Beach and its hedonistic citizens.
She smiled to herself as they glided down the black section of Coconut Grove on Grand Avenue. Despite being a native Northerner she quickly grew accustomed to and cherished Miami’s relative lack of seasons. Cool winters came and went faster than the time it took for a new housing development to be approved by an environmentally ignorant zoning board. “Freezing” was an adjective often used in January and February when the temperatures reached the 50s at night.
No wonder people are so strange down here. Yes, this lack of seasonal changes must have something to do with it.
They turned a corner and entered a street flanked by imposing McMansions fortified with thick tropical shrubbery. These familial kingdoms were guarded by limestone lions and Mediterranean-colored walls ready to serve as a rococo bulwark against some imminent Viking invasion.
The days become meaningless without a proper fall, winter, spring, and summer. That must be it. There’s no reflection. There is no moment to worry that school might be cancelled because of a snow storm, that the roads may be impassable, that the grocery store will run out of food, that the crops will be ruined. That’s what happened back there. Back when. In Minnesota. In Massachusetts. Not home. There.
The car’s tires crunched their way over the mixture of sandy gravel and glinting marble chips that led to her home.
Then again, there are the hurricanes.
She remembered the storm of ‘26 that nearly destroyed her house while it was still being constructed. The city was devastated. It had rebuilt itself though. It boomed again. Yes, it boomed. Unbelievably so.
That’s why they named it the Magic City. It just picked itself up and went roaring again, louder than ever.
She gave Claudio a kiss on the cheek and slowly opened the door to get out of a Miami rarity and tragedy: an un-air conditioned car.
The city’s population, downtown, economy, glamour, excitement, and culture boomed unlike any other Southern town. Because it never really was a Southern town. You go so far South that your North again.
At first we were a bunch of snow birds and Negroes. Then the Revolución sent hundreds of thousands of Cubans into exile. A supposedly temporary exile.
After all, they were the wealthy, the educated, and the white land owners. Things didn’t change. The so-called Revolución had won. More arrived. The city became international. Soon others came. Not only for political reasons, but for economic ones as well. To remake themselves. From Haiti. From Venezuela. From post-Soviet Eastern Europe.
She breathed in deeply as she shoved open the stubborn, wooden front door with a hand-sized square plate of stained emerald glass in its center.
I just kissed him goodbye without a second thought.
She glanced at a fading black and white photograph of her and her extended family - laced up and ready to attend a Victorian party that would never be thrown again.
Almost 100 years since that afternoon. Almost.
I kissed him. Imagine what Charlotte would have said.
That was Claudio’s Cuban charm. His family didn’t come in the ‘60s like the wealthy expats. His family believed in the Revolución. They were disillusioned. He was a Marielito. Not a criminal. Just “a gay,” as he told her in his best English back in ‘81 when she hired him to be her personal assistant. She loved his quiet sensibilities and she told him so. His manners. His love for life. His hazel eyes and chestnut hair. His insistence on giving kisses on both cheeks. A Cuban custom. A Spanish custom. A European custom.
Yes, we’ve always been too cosmopolitan here for the rest of the South.
Too cosmopolitan without the fame and expectations of New York. Too worldly without the planning and architecture of Haussman’s Paris. Too tropical for cotton. Too hot for oranges. Too liberal for ties with Tallahassee. Too unorganized for parades. Too busy to form a cohesive community. Too conservative for real protests. Too ridiculous to be honored for anything. Too good to leave.
She eased herself into a rocking chair that Claudio carved for her. He told her it was crafted to resemble the chairs that the Havana elite would lounge in when they escaped to their large, countryside sugar plantations in pre-Revolutionary Cuba.
She stretched out her hand for a remote and managed to turn on the stereo system after some frustrating fiddling with her knobby fingers. The Green Hill Orchestra. Although her prized Depression-era Gramophone spun its last record a decade ago sometime in the early ‘90s, Claudio had been able to find her a handful of CDs that replicated the gritty scratches of a spinning vinyl record for her favorite songs.
She reclined in the rocking chair and closed her eyes. The soothing sound of shimmering palm fronds tilting in the wind lulled her to sleep as the evocative trumpets coaxed forward memories of her early adventures in Miami.
