When We Left Cuba

Though the missile crisis has ended, Nick and Beatriz still disagree over her wish to work for the CIA. He wants her to let the American government negotiate the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners, and Beatriz believes the American government has abandoned Cuba. They return to Palm Beach, and Beatriz moves into Nick’s Palm Beach house. On Christmas, Beatriz visits Elisa’s house in Coral Gables to see Eduardo, who has been released from prison. He is thin and bitter. He tells her the Americans knew from the beginning that the expedition would fail, but let the invasion go ahead. Eduardo thinks Beatriz should choose between Cuba and Nick; he insists that she can’t have both. Beatriz realizes that the Americans are always going to act on in their own best interests, not Cuba’s. Eduardo admits that he loves Beatriz and says he was due to have a woman break his heart.

Beatriz enrolls at the University of Miami and lives in Palm Beach with Nick. She feels “the tension between our countries, the pressures from outside pushing at the seams of the private world we have created here” (291). One morning her father visits to scold Beatriz for living with Nick out of marriage and causing a scandal.