Tell Me Something True

by Leila Cobo

Genres: Family Life; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A young Colombian-American woman uncovers the truth about her deceased mother's secret past in this beautiful and poignant debut novel from journalist Leila Cobo. Gabriella always loved the picture of her mother kneeling in front of a bed of roses, smiling, beautiful and impossibly happy. But then she learns that her late mother hated gardening; that she had never wanted the house in the Hollywood hills, the successful movie producer husband, and possibly, her only daughter. When Gabriella discovers a journal--a book that begins as a new mother's letters to her baby girl, but becomes a secret diary--the final entry leaves one question unanswered: the night her mother died, was she returning to Colombia to end an affair, or was she abandoning her family for good? Tell Me Something True is the bittersweet story of a daughter learning to see her mother as a woman, and not just a parent.

Release date: September 10, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 308

Sample

The air feels sweet and moist and just the slightest bit warm when you get off the 9 p.m. flight to Cali. It clings to your
skin, but in the faintest, most tenuous way, like the sheerest of gauze blouses touching but not touching your arms as you
breathe. When Gabriella tries to explain the sensation to her friends, they just don’t get it.


“How can you feel or smell any air,” they always ask, “if you arrive into an airport terminal?’

“It’s not a real terminal,” she is forever responding. And it isn’t, to her at least. It’s a building with open windows and
no air-conditioning, and if it’s raining, drops of water sweep in, like a mist, and it makes her feel as though she’s arrived
somewhere real and tangible and alive, so far from a carpeted airport terminal you feel like you’re in another world.


Her friends from up there never come down here. They’re afraid of getting killed, or worse.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with these people,” she complained to her father as he watched her pack the night before. “It’s
extraordinary, really. They go to Singapore, to Turkey, to Peru! But Colombia is too dangerous.”


Her father didn’t say anything, because he’s as guilty as they are, absent from her trips for over a decade.

“They’ll go down,” he finally contributed. “They’ll fall in love with a Colombian, and then they’ll have to,” he added with
a laugh, a laugh that tried to tell her it’s okay that once again she’s going without him.


She could sense his unease, could see it in his worried blue eyes, in his tall lanky frame that tonight was coiled tight,
his legs crossed, his arms crossed, sitting on her bed, trying to look nonchalant but swinging his foot incessantly, making
her nervous as hell.


“Try and use your time there wisely, Gabby,” he said. “Think about where you want to be a year from now. You have to make
a plan.”


Gabriella wanted to say that maybe it could be wise not to have a plan for a change, that plans interfered with creativity, but he interrupted her thoughts before she could put
them into words.


“And remember, I don’t want you driving alone, okay?” he said for the third time that evening. “And I don’t want you walking
around without Edgar,” he added, referring to her grandmother’s bodyguard. “And I want you to call me as soon as you land
and as soon as you get into Nini’s house. And I want you to keep that cell phone on at all times.”


“Daddy!” she finally exclaimed, exasperated. “Daddy,” she repeated softer, picturing him alone in their big house for a whole
month while she’s gone. “It’ll be okay. Nothing bad’s gonna happen,” she said placatingly, even though they both know bad
things can happen, bad things have happened.


But they happen to other people, not to her.

“I’ll be fine,” she added, sitting next to him on the bed, her dark, curly head close to his straight, blond mane. She ran
her fingers through his soft hair, twirling it at the nape of his neck, like she used to do when she was a little girl. “I’ll
be fine.”


Thinking of him now reminds her she has to call. A quick call.

“Two dollars and fifty cents a minute,” he’s reminded her a dozen times, because she is a fiend with her cell phone and her
text messages, and roaming fees to Colombia are outrageous, even for someone like him. When he answers, she speaks rapidly,
almost furtively, and he laughs just to hear her voice, because she always makes him laugh. And she laughs, too, happy that
he’s finally happy, that she’s arrived, that she’s fine, and that now she can embrace her days here without guilt.


Tonight it smells like rain, and the wind carries a whiff of sugarcane from the refineries in the valley. She breathes deeply,
taking in the burned, bittersweet smell, a smell most people can’t stand but whose familiarity she embraces. For a moment,
she feels physically lighter, feels the weight of her worries loosening their grip on her: what she wants, what she’s supposed
to do, who she’s supposed to be in six months when she graduates.


“Extraordinary.” That’s what they say about her. Her father, her grandparents, her teachers. They say it to her face, and
they talk about it when they don’t think she’s listening, ticking off the long list of potentials she could be. And if she
could get off the treadmill of endless expectations, maybe she could focus for a moment, but she never seems to have the time.


She looks out at the airstrip from the open window and gets the strongest urge to go out there and run into the darkness,
caution be damned, beyond the point where the airport lights end and the planted fields abruptly begin. She suddenly remembers
one summer afternoon, several years ago, when they parked the car on a dirt road and climbed up to a grassy knoll, where her
cousin Juan Carlos and she watched the sun set and the planes take off. The sky was stunning, with sweeps of orange and purple
and pink, and for a few minutes, they felt like the only people alive, the only ones who knew that such beauty existed and
was available free for them.


They stayed there until it was dark, and by the time they got home, it was nine and Nini was so mad.

She’ll be here for four weeks. Same as it’s been every Christmas, for as long as she can remember.

“Gabriella,” says the immigration agent, looking at her American passport, then speaking to her in Spanish. “Razón por la
cual viaja?”


“Vacaciones,” she replies.

He grunts. Thumbs through the passport. Stamps. Then finally looks up at her. Unsmiling but polite, and yes, gratified that
she’s there, a foreigner in a city that discourages foreigners.


“Bienvenida a Cali, Gabriella,” he says and hands her the passport.

Outside, Cristina Gómez waits. She waits and she frets, her perfectly glossed lips pursed, both arms clutching her handbag,
even though Edgar is standing right by her side. Cristina hates airports in general and this airport in particular. Because
it’s hot and chaotic. Because the cement outside of customs is always slick with rain and aguardiente and trampled fruit.
Because hordes of people, wound tightly together like spools of yarn, strain against each other to get a glimpse of the arrivals
through the tinted glass, their shouts of recognition blending with shouts of drunkenness as bottles are passed back and forth,
back and forth over her head.


Because she’s petite and claustrophobic and always thinks she’ll suffocate while she waits, and because it invariably reminds
her of the accident. For years, she couldn’t bring herself to come here. Regardless of who was arriving, she would dispatch
Edgar and go out someplace else—never staying home—so as to dispense with any semblance of waiting. But when Gabriella turned
ten and started to fly alone, she took it as her cue to take responsibility again.


Before that, Marcus would bring Gabriella for a week or two, in a gesture of solidarity with Cristina, even though they lived
in Los Angeles and the trip was long and involved two flights. If Cristina had a soft spot for her son-in-law before the accident,
she became his fiercest advocate afterward, supporting him through what she would teasingly refer to as his “dissolute lifestyle”—one
girlfriend after the other. He never remarried, he didn’t have any more children. She had never demanded that he give her
time with Gabriella, but he had understood it was the correct thing to do, and she was grateful. As the years passed, he stopped
coming altogether. But he never denied her Christmas, even the few times Gabriella herself had begged not to come because
she was dating one boy or another.


Eleven years she’s come to pick this child up. Always at this time, from this gate, from this flight; the same flight her
mother used to take. The wait takes place outside, and it involves throngs of people, all anxiously leaning against the railing
that leads to the exit door. They hold signs, toddlers with flowers and gifts, cameras. Moisture sticks to her skin, and she
feels something wet on her face. Panicking, she swats her hand against her cheek, then stops, feeling foolish as she realizes
it’s her own perspiration damaging her matte makeup.


Someone in the crowd recognizes a passenger exiting the glass doors, and the bodies heave against her. Edgar firmly takes
her arm and steadies her, his huge presence shielding her from the others, his right hand gently resting on the gun at his
waist.


She sees Gabriella before her granddaughter sees her, and she doesn’t say anything for a few moments, not until she can quell
her tears. She is so tall, so striking, this girl, with her straight black eyebrows, pale skin, and slate gray eyes. How had
her tiny daughter managed to produce such a specimen?


“Not to brag, but you haven’t seen a more beautiful girl” is her mantra, repeated through the years at countless luncheons,
dinners, and tea parties. She knows her love for this girl borders on the pathological, but she simply doesn’t care. Eleven
months of the year she devotes to Juan Carlos—her twin soul, so old and proper inside that boyish exterior—the son of her
only son.


But Gabriella.

With Gabriella she only has four weeks to make up in every way for the other forty-eight without her, and she caters to her
every whim. The only daughter of her only daughter. She is entitled.


“There she is, Edgar,” she finally tells him, and he immediately clears a path for her to walk through the crowd.

“Gabriella!” she shouts, waving frantically.

“Nini!” Gabriela pushes through the crowd, the porter behind her lugging three bags and her laptop. “Nini,” she repeats, crushing
her small grandmother and rumpling her linen suit with her hug.




Querida Gabriella:

You were born today, July 7, at 7:32 a.m. Weight: 8 pounds, 6 ounces.

A big girl! A perfect baby girl, the doctor said.

Wow, you came into the world with a bang!

I think you wanted to make a statement. We were at a gallery opening and my water broke. Oops. In the middle of the show.
I was wearing a black dress, so it wasn’t that obvious, but obvious enough. I mean, I literally dropped a bucket of water
to the floor. I thought your daddy was going to have a heart attack as he drove to the hospital. He thought he’d have to deliver
you himself!

But you waited, my sweet. Very patient of you. I even had a chance to get an epidural (I’ll tell you what that is some-day).
And here you are. Your hair is black, your eyes are blue, but they tell me that can change. Will they be like mine? You have
your father’s mouth—a big, fat Cupid’s mouth. You look utterly beautiful to me.

You are, dare I say it? Not what I expected. I didn’t know what to expect. An alien, perhaps. A creature bent on tearing my
body apart, on changing my life beyond repair. I always wondered how these calm mamas did it: Push a living child out of your
own body. How it must hurt!

But here you are, looking up at me with those bizarrely huge eyes. I already forgot the pain!

Your name is from the Hebrew Gabriel, which means “Strong Man of God.”

And you’re a woman! Strong woman.

Like Gabriela Mistral. Like Gabriel García Márquez.

Like you, my Gabriella Richards.

Do you notice how easily you can say Gabriella in English and in Spanish? Because you’re going to have to speak both.

You notice I’m writing to you in Spanish?

Spanish only in this book! This is your book. From me to you, so you don’t forget who you are and where you came from.

So, my love, good night on this first night.

Bienvenida, querida Gabriella.

Te adoro.

Mamá

I had never been a writer. My means of expression had always been visual, out there for everyone to see. Then I got pregnant,
a totally unplanned occurrence. At first I was truly furious with your dad, even though I knew it wasn’t his fault. It was
the last thing I wanted, a baby. I mean, yes, I knew one of these days I’d be a mom. I just didn’t figure it had to be quite
now, when things were just starting to happen, when I had finally lined up shows and assignments.


And then, you started to grow inside me. It’s quite extraordinary, really. One thing is to get pregnant and intellectually
know that you’ll have a baby in nine months. Quite another is feeling that baby evolve within you.


“There is a maternal instinct,” I told your dad one night as I rubbed lotion onto my ever-growing belly, “and it’s been awakened!”

I began writing this diary the day I felt you move inside me for the first time. Quite a jolt. Your dad was away and I was
lying in bed, watching TV. And then, the barest of flutters, like butterfly wings. I thought it was my pregnant mind’s imaginings.
And then it came again, so soft but so persistent. My belly was almost flat still. But now, the truth was undeniable. Something
alive was inside me. I’ll have you know that I quit smoking cold turkey. I quit drinking, too.


I’ll admit. All my life I’ve gotten exactly what I want. But you. You made me responsible.

I bought a red diary because it’s my favorite color and because I figured it would contribute to generating a strong personality
for my Gabriella.


Marcus thought this writing kick was funny at first. Then he thought I would drop it in a few weeks. He humored me, because
he always does, but I knew he thought it was a short-term project.


Ha!

I’ll show him, you’ll see. I’ll write you. Forever. So you and I can remember everything that happened today, and ten, twenty
years from now, we can laugh together.


Or cry.

Just joking!



Can we go see Mom?” she asks, snuggling against Nini in the backseat, letting her stroke her hair.


“Of course, princess. Whenever you want.”

“Did you fix the squeaky pedal on the piano?”

She hates the squeaky pedal that whimpers every time her foot rhythmically pumps it, bringing back memories of sagging beds
in college dorms.


“Yes. I told you I did last week,” Nini says patiently. “You can play until your fingers fall off, you won’t hear a thing
from the pedals.”


Gabriella doesn’t say anything for a moment. She wants the pedal fixed, even though the last thing she wants to do right now
is lay her hands on the keys and practice endlessly for something she can’t pinpoint.


“Is Juan Carlos home?” she asks instead.

“No, he went out tonight. But he’s taking you to some party tomorrow,” answers Nini.

“Ooh. Nice,” she says, contented. Juan Carlos knows the right people. Always. And he always knows the right parties. “Is there
soup for me tonight?”


“Of course. Vegetable soup. And shredded beef.”

“And my Diet Coke?”

“Yes. I got you a whole case.”

“Can Edgar take me to the club tomorrow?” she asks, sitting up straight in her seat. “I need to go running.”

“Of course. I also reserved a horse for you to ride, if you wish.”

“I’d love that, Nini. Thanks. Thanks, Edgar,” she adds, leaning forward toward the front seat and patting his arm. Edgar emits
a half smile, half grunt. He’s been making this drive for as long as Nini has, seeing each year pass by on the face reflected
in the rearview mirror. When she was thirteen, he taught her how to drive stick shift, making her learn in reverse first,
one hand on the steering wheel, her other arm draped around the passenger seat to easily allow her to turn her head back.
That, said Edgar, was the way the pros drove.


Gabriella smiles, settles back. Nini is a wealthy, patrician woman. Her dad is even wealthier than that, she knows. But in
L.A. there is no driver, no army of cooks and maids, and certainly, no grandmother taking care of every single detail in her
life. Since she can remember, she’s done things on her own, down to meticulously scheduling her piano practice so it wouldn’t
interfere with her father’s activities at home.


But for one month of the year, she needn’t think about a single responsible thing. Someone else takes care of her. Completely.

Heaven.



Gabriella, just put on something normal people would wear,” says Juan Carlos.


Juan Carlos is twenty-four. He’s her uncle Julián’s son; the only son of her only uncle on her mom’s side. Gabriella knows
he loves her, because he has to—he’s three years older and responsible for her while she’s down here. He’s taken her under
his wing even when he hasn’t wanted to, like the year he dated Marisol Vázquez, who hated her and still hates her now.


He also thinks she’s weird, because she studies piano, which in his mind is useless. And that’s cool, he always points out,
since she’s well off and should be able to do whatever the hell she wants with herself. Except that she practices eight hours
a day, and he figures if anyone is going to put that much effort into anything, shouldn’t it be something a little more practical?


“Tennis,” he says. “Tennis, I get. If you played eight hours of tennis a day, you’d be the best player in the world, and you’d
make tons of money. But all this practicing to have one hundred people go hear you? I mean, play guitar in a band or something.”


“Really, Juanca, you are so incredibly superficial sometimes, I have to wonder if we’re even related,” she snorts, although
lately she’s been wondering herself if all this piano playing is worth the grief.


“Gabriella is my crazy cousin,” Juan Carlos often tells people, and compared with his other cousins, who are all MBAs, she
knows she is. And she loves it. She does things just to provoke him, like the time she visited him at the New York firm where
he was working as a summer intern, wearing a dress with oval cutouts along the sides.


“Gabriella,” he muttered under his breath as they rode down in the elevator. “Could you try not to look like an artist for
just one day?”


One night, in a moment of weakness, she tried to explain the psyche of the musician. “We dress like musicians to hide our
insecurities, Juanca,” she explained earnestly after smoking half a joint. “All musicians are nerds, and all classical musicians
are bigger nerds. We need to make it up, somehow.”


Ever pragmatic, he really looked at her as if she were high. “Insecure people don’t get onstage,” he said quite logically.

“They do. They have to,” she countered. “That’s the only time they can show off.”

“But you don’t even like getting onstage, Gabriella,” he said smugly. “I’m the one who likes it!”

Gabriella always waves him away dismissively when he says things like this, but she knows he’s right. She is like her father,
more comfortable behind the scenes than on the spot. And yet, everyone expects her to be in the forefront: her grandmother,
who considers her perfect, her father, who tells her anything she wants to do is fine with him, and yet, she can almost touch
the voids he wants to fill with her actions. He may not say it, but he wants her—no, he needs her—to shine.


When she’s down here, she can physically feel the pressure of perfection easing from her chest. She is almost someone else;
a glamorous stranger whose depths are rarely plumbed, who is never here long enough to make an impact, who can glide effortlessly
in the shadow of an older cousin with just the right connections.


Juan Carlos has the golden eyes and pixie, youthful looks of her mother’s family. He looks so young sometimes he’ll go without
shaving for days at a time, like tonight. He really, really thinks this makes him look tougher, more manly. She’s always thought
it makes him look like an overgrown schoolboy, and that’s why girls cling to him. They want to take care of him. She has never
told him this, because he would genuinely be offended; more so because he is her designated protector. A traditional kind
of guy who will still open the car door for her.


Gabriella likes it.

She thinks it’s the Nini in her. Maybe her outfits are crazy, but she likes guys who dress like prep schoolers and introduce
her to their parents.


So she lets Juan Carlos be a little dictator about her outfit tonight. It’s his party, not hers. And he’s playing it safe,
with an untucked, dark blue polo shirt over his jeans, loafers, and a handwoven bracelet that all the preppie guys are wearing,
the kind. . .