Free Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Revolution by Luisita Lopez Torregrosa Page B

her from a pay phone at LAX but could hear only broken phrases. Passengers, couples, families, American accents, murmurs of lives swirled around me, but I was shut off, unable to engage in even the most casual conversation. Arriving home exhausted in the middle of the night, I saw a lean and tall figure walking in my direction at the airport gate. It was Andy, dandy Andy, waiting for me, grinning. He picked up my bags and drove me through streets that now seemed bleak and unfamiliar, and when I got to my apartment, nothing seemed familiar to me. I glanced around, trying to orient myself, but felt only the emptiness of the place. Andy sat with me, drinking wine, listening with a frown to my decision to leave the paper, worried that I was moving too fast.
    On the first day back at work I noticed a difference on the desk. Some editors shook my hand, the foreign editor gave me a friendly slap on the back, and everyone asked about my trip. But I caught the sidelong glances, the eyes that glided quickly away from my face. I had the definite impression that I had stepped into the middle of a conversation about me that I was not supposed to hear.
    Later, when I went to Tim’s house to have a drink with him, he lifted me in his arms and hugged me, his barrel chest a warm refuge, but after a drink or two, he said, “Everyone’s talking about it, you and Elizabeth.” I thought I detected disapproval. Perhaps it was his caring. I could no longer tell. I only knew that I wanted him to understand, to support and protect me. I tried to explain, but how
    could I explain?
    He did try to understand, he did say he was on my side, but the situation pained him. It was not easy to defend me.
    “She’s going to tear you apart limb from limb,” another friend warned me. She reminded me of past relationships she had heard me talk about and how bad I had felt then, and she reminded me, as if I needed a reminder, of the obligations I had to the paper, and my aspirations. “What happened to you before will be nothing compared to what she’s going to do to you.”
    People are going to say you’re crazy, the managing editor said when I told him I was leaving. His Irish altar-boy face was furrowed, his blue eyes widening. He was shocked at my decision, the last thing he expected, he said, playing with an empty coffee cup. We were seated in the cafeteria, midafternoon, when the lunch crowd had thinned out and we could talk without ears prying around us. I looked out the window, giving myself time, and burned my tongue on my coffee. He was rolling his wedding band, clasping and unclasping his hands.
    I responded the way I do when I doubt myself, with a smile that is both a grimace and a narrowing of the eyes.
    I have to do this, I said, I have to go. I couldn’t begin to answer the questions I knew he had in mind, everyone’s questions. I was beyond reasoning, beyond his reach. We left the table and, his hand gently at my elbow, walked down the long hallway. As we walked, I brought up Elizabeth’s name lightly, inserting it between one thing or another. He noticed.
    On the day I had to take the last step, to tell the editor of the paper, I crossed the length of the newsroom to his corner office and stood awkwardly at his doorway, putting on a smile, what I hoped was a smile, to win him over, to disarm him. He came around from behind his desk and invited me to take a seat on his leather couch. He sat next to me in an armchair and took sips of iced tea, his arms crossed on his chest, a finger scratching his elbow. We began with a desultory chat about Southeast Asia, his passion for it, which began when he was a war correspondent in Saigon. I was so nervous, I could feel red splotches appearing on my neck, spreading to my face, burning. He already knew why I was there, but he was letting me take my time and tried to ease my way into it. He showed me a layout of a new newspaper section he was planning, and brought over an ashtray for me, ambling