This Too Shall Pass (3 page)

One of the best ways to discover your hometown's secret hiding places—and I don't mean those little romantic spots, but more like the truly unlikely ones—is by falling in love with a married man. That's the only way to explain how I got to be in Badalona, I think it's Badalona, eating truly disgusting croquettes that taste so perfectly delicious to us, in a filthy two-bit bar that seems like the most delightful place on earth, promising to return soon, as eager and worldly as if we were at the Ritz. I hadn't seen Santi in weeks. Since before you died. Those months while you struggled uselessly and brutally against the disease and dementia, I, when I wasn't too sad or tired, struggled in the same place, equally uselessly and at times brutally, to prove to myself, to prove to the world, that I was still alive. The opposite of death is life, is sex. And as the disease encroached and grew more fierce and unrelenting, so my sexual relationships also grew more fierce and unrelenting, as if upon every bed on the face of the earth there was a single battle being waged: yours. The desperate fuck desperately, it's a known fact. So farewell to the mornings when I opened my eyes, alone or in someone's arms, and thought, “happy”: the world is a little smaller than my bedroom. Sometimes it felt as though we were both turning into dry, brittle trees, gray as ghosts about to turn to dust. But when I told you as much, you assured me it wasn't so, that we were the two strongest people you'd ever known, and that no storm would ever get the better of us.

Santi's wearing my favorite jeans, they're totally worn out in faded red tones, and a khaki parka we bought together a long time ago. I think he put them on to seduce me, but also as an amulet against the storms that often afflict our relationship. When I see him coming for me straight as an arrow, dodging cars while standing up on his bike pedals as if he were twenty years old instead of twice that age, with those torn red jeans and that tight brown body, my pulse quickens. His body is more toned from the waist down than the waist up from so much skiing and cycling, and his worker's hands, short-fingered and fleshy, are often marked with cuts or bruises, and he always makes my heart skip a beat. I think that's why I keep going back: he takes my breath away every time. You always used to tell me with mock concern: “Your problem is that you like good-looking men.” But I think deep down this one childish, masculine trait of mine always amused you, of preferring something as free, as random and pointless as a pleasing appearance to power, intelligence, or money.

We have a few beers and decide to catch a quick bite; we haven't seen each other for a long time, and we're both so anxious to be together, it's hard to keep our hands to ourselves. I brush his waist, he touches my shoulder, caresses my little finger when he lights my cigarette, we stand about two inches too close for what is proper between a couple of friends. We stroll down the narrow streets looking for a quiet, solitary place away from the sun, and when we find a subterranean passageway, he pushes me up against the wall, kisses me and plunges his hand down my pants. The only reason men's physical strength should exist is to give us pleasure, to squeeze away every last drop of sorrow or fear left inside. A teenager with a backpack saunters by, looking at us sideways, trying to pretend he hasn't noticed as he picks up his stride a little. I've almost forgotten those tangled first kisses, the eagerness and bruises of the awkward times that came before I learned the value of slowness and immobility, the precise movements of a surgeon, when one goes from only fucking with the body to also fucking with the head.

—They're going to arrest us for public indecency, I whisper in his ear.

He laughs, and wrests himself a few excruciating inches away from me, gently smoothing my pants and shirt back to their proper places as if I were a little girl, the same way as when he helps his daughters get dressed.

—We could come back and fuck here some night. Don't you think? I say. —Like a couple of teenagers.

—Sure we can.

—I'll wear a skirt, it'll make it easier.

He grabs me by the hand.

—Why don't we get something to eat first, Jezebel?

—There's nothing like vertical love. Everyone knows that, I say.

And he gives me a fucking kick in my bum.

And there's the ice cube melting woefully in my glass of white wine. The waiter had placed it decisively and without consultation, when I told him that just maybe the wine wasn't sufficiently chilled. Santi is chitchatting chirpily with the owner of the bar and pinching my knee. A man who isn't kind to the waiters, I tell myself, is not kind to anyone, and will end up not being kind to you either. I congratulate him effusively for his wild mushroom croquettes, which are unquestionably of the frozen variety. He looks at my cleavage and smiles.

—Have I ever told you my theory about why some men are so obsessed with food? I ask him. —I think it's because they don't fuck enough. All the city's posh restaurants stay in business thanks to them. Haven't you ever noticed how they're always chock-f of middle-aged couples? Men sporting watches as expensive as cars, busy talking about croquette recipes, and women who look off into infinity with irked, pinched faces, counting their calories.

—And have I ever told you my theory that when you want to fuck around, it's because you want to fuck around?

—It's never occurred to me, no. Could be.

He grabs me around the rib cage with both hands like a human corset and squeezes until his fingers almost touch.

—How can you have such big tits with such a small frame?

—My friend Sofía thinks that big breasts are a hassle and says they should be like dicks: they grow when you need them and then just stay nice and reasonably sized when you don't. Retracting tits.

He laughs. —Your friends are nuts. So are you.

He asks the waiter to pour two more drinks. I feel as though I've drunk a lot already. There's almost no wine left in the bottle and I'm pretty sure it was almost full when we got here. Santi kisses me, holding my face in his two hands, as if I were going to escape. He asks for more croquettes, which I don't touch, and says to the waiter, sighing and looking concerned: —She won't eat for me.

—Eat, lady, eat.

I nibble half a croquette and wash it down briskly.

—Let's make a toast, he says, —to us.

—To us.

We stay quiet for a moment, staring at each other.

—My life's a piece of shit. I'm a total mess, he murmurs suddenly.

—Me too, I answer.

I let out a bark, or what Guillem calls my hyena's cackle, which he taught the children to imitate perfectly, or what my psychiatrist calls my anxious laugh.

—How's work?

—The partners haven't been paid for three months. Not a single architectural firm in this country has work now, there's not a single building under construction. We have no idea what's going to happen.

—What a disaster.

—As of right now, even if I wanted to, I would never be able to get a separation—I wouldn't be able to pay the rent.

Another example of the inevitable triumph in the struggle for gender equality, where it seems as though men have become more like us, instead of the other way around. Now men can't get divorced either, or they'll lose their social standing, I think, not without a pang of melancholy.

—And I wouldn't be able to go skiing, he adds candidly.

—Yeah, well, wouldn't that be the tragedy?

—Don't be such a bitch!

I've been seeing Santi for nearly two years. I've never wanted to be privy to the details of his relationship with his wife, out of tact, respect, and apprehension. Generally speaking, I think it's far better to know as little as possible about people. Though it's really only a question of time, a little, and keeping your eyes and ears open, sooner or later their true self comes out.

—I would have liked to be there with you at the funeral.

—Shall we? I say, standing up.

We locate a nice little hotel, somewhat old-fashioned and family-friendly, right on the beachfront.

—Is it OK? You like it?

—Yeah, it's fine.

He asks for a room with a view for naptime, and I start unbuttoning my blouse. The receptionist looks at us undaunted, and continues typing away at her computer. We ask for a gin and tonic while we wait for the room to be readied and go outside. The beach is nearly empty, only a few bodies scattered around here and there, looking vulgar, made ugly by the stark noonday sun, the lack of privacy, and promiscuity. Even the most uncomfortable, sick, and shattered body can be grandiose and captivating, but a hundred bodies lying next to one another under the sun never are. I button up my blouse.

We go up to the room; it's simple and clean with white walls and two chaste-looking twin beds with speckled covers that match the same blue of the curtains. A few paintings of sailing boats hang above the tiny desk. I let out a chuckle.

—Two single beds. You see? The receptionist's revenge for the little spectacle downstairs.

—Goddammit.

But it's a room with a view, and the sea and the horizon belong to us from our balcony. The beachcomber's bodies look like ants now, they've recovered a smidgeon of dignity. Santi, a builder to the bitter end, incapable of leaving a space be if there's a way to make it better, takes one of the mattresses out onto the balcony, lays me down and starts undressing me. It's so bright I can hardly see him. I close my eyes and my head starts to spin. I open them and try to concentrate on his kisses, moving up along my legs, but I'm feeling woozy and all I want is for him to bring a glass of water.

—You're really pale. Do you feel OK? he asks.

I take two sips and start to gag. I want to get up, but can't stand on my own, so Santi walks me over to the bathroom and I throw up until there is not a solid thing left. I continue retching liquid, and once I've gotten rid of all the alcohol, my body remains staunchly devoted to expelling whatever else it can, just in case. My body—yet another paradise lost. I finally compose myself and stop heaving. I catch sight of our reflection in the mirror, my naked body like a gray spirit with glassy eyes and, behind me, Santi all dressed up, the cyclist-skier, he of the red jeans, who can drink and do drugs to no end and never lose his composure, although later he needs all sorts of stimulants and can't sleep without smoking a joint or taking a sleeping pill. I'm crazy about my asymmetrical body, it's soft, skinny, imperfect, and disproportionate; I spoil it, I grope it, I give it what it asks for, I follow it all over the place, I meekly obey it, I never contradict it. It's the opposite of a temple. I have tried, I have tried and never succeeded, just let my head be a temple, but my body always remains an amusement park.

—Feeling any better? Santi asks.

He passes a damp towel over my forehead and neck. He brings me my clothes.

—More or less.

—I forgot how badly you react to drinking on an empty stomach. I really wanted to spend time with you.

—Don't worry, it's my fault. That last gin and tonic was a very bad idea. If I don't die tonight, I'll be fine by the morning.

Santi loads his bike onto my car and takes me home. I open the passenger-side window and close my eyes. I'm exhausted; all I want to do is sleep. When we get to the front door, he hurries a good-bye peck on the lips.

—There are a lot of schools in this part of town; I could run into someone I know, he explains, looking around. And before he staggers away, he adds: —Some friends have invited us to Cadaqués, so I'm going up with my family for a few days. I'll let you know if I can sneak away at some point so we can hook up.

I close the door and rush up the stairs as fast as I can. I think I'm going to be sick again. I head straight for the bathroom.

The main entrance of my house is jam-packed with boxes. The maid helped me line them up along the left wall, six rows that reach almost to the ceiling, next to the boxes from my last move nearly two years ago, which I haven't even opened yet. When we came to live here, we opened boxes until there was no room left to fit a pin, not another book, not another toy, and then we just stopped. They're all downstairs now, waiting for the day we have a bigger apartment. I can't imagine what's in them. Books, I suppose. At times I've looked for things and have never been able to find them. I'm sure that when the day comes, some two or twenty years hence, we'll open the boxes and find all sorts of treasures. Yours are filled with books, china, tea sets, and linens. It hasn't been easy for me to part with your things, especially the ones I know you loved. There were days when I thought I would get rid of everything, and five minutes later I'd regret it and want to store every last piece of junk. Three hours later, I would rethink it all and determine to give some things away as gifts. I guess it was my way of figuring out how far away from you I wanted to live. It's a tough balance to strike; it's easier to keep a distance with the people who are alive. There's a tall coatrack next to the wall of boxes where guests used to leave their things when we threw parties. Your grayish-blue woolen jacket is hanging there now, the one with the brick-colored stripes. It's the only article of your clothing I've kept. Not because it's a good one, but because we bought it together at your favorite shop and I saw you wear it a thousand times. I haven't had the guts to take it to the cleaner's yet. I guess it still has your smell, though I haven't been able to check on that, either. I'm a little frightened by the thing; it's like a dusty ghost covered in dog hair that says hello to me when I walk through the door. I'm still afraid of the dead. When I saw you dead I wasn't afraid, though; I would have been able to stay there sitting beside you for centuries. It was as if you simply weren't there anymore, as if the light of the summer morning streaming through the window had nothing in its way, it spilled over the room, over the world, and what remained was merely our residue, your grimace of pain, the silence, the fatigue, and a newfound loneliness, bottomless—as if new floors were opening below my feet as they brushed along, one after the other, welcoming me. If your soul, or something like that, survives, it got the hell out of that depressing room, and I don't blame you for it, I'm sure mine would have done the same.

—What's with the scuzzy jacket? Sofía asks when she walks through the door. She's wearing one of her mother's old hippie dresses, white linen with red piping. She took it to the seamstress a while ago and turned it into something fresh, graceful and stylish. Sofía dresses fastidiously and with an attention to detail that's unusual nowadays—I know of only a few older gentlemen who still dress so meticulously—and completely opposite my own choice of uniform, which is composed of faded jeans and men's shirts. I had already spotted the seemingly loopy, impeccably dressed eccentric one afternoon at the main entrance of our children's elementary school, even before we became friendly. She showed up wearing a massive wide-brimmed hat to protect herself from the rain, and the next day she had on fuchsia woolen shorts over a black leotard and leggings. We fell into an immediate platonic crush, the teenage-girl kind, when you meet someone who not only shares the same loves and hates, your passion for white wine, and your quirky way of never taking anything seriously, but who has the same way of throwing herself wholeheartedly into life and everything that comes with it—the result of a passionate character and a protected childhood.

—It's my mom's jacket, I declare. —I haven't taken it to the cleaner's yet. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, in any case, it's the only piece of her clothing I've kept.

I go on to describe the last time I saw Elenita, who was the daughter of my nanny, Marisa. Marisa was an extraordinary woman and my second mother. She died of a heart attack two years ago. Elenita was suffering from cancer and already very ill when she greeted me, wearing one of her mother's flower-patterned housecoats. I recognized it the second she opened the door, and thought how logical that she would wear it, though it also seemed like a terrible foreshadowing for the embrace of death. And I also recall how a friend from school many years earlier, a tall and lanky girl with blond hair, had shown me her yellow socks before running out onto the sports field one day. They had belonged to her father, who had just died of cancer, and reached all the way up to her knees. I was a virgin to death then, and it just seemed so sad and so romantic to me (as a teenager, compassion was as volatile and flickering a feeling as any other). A year later, when I turned sixteen, my father died of cancer. And from then on the dead form a sort of chain, a macabre necklace that weighs a ton, and whose last, closing link will be me, I guess.

—I think you should have it cleaned and then store it on the highest shelf in the cupboard, Elisa says. You'll decide what to do with it later, there's no hurry.

Elisa had come for lunch too, though the three of us rarely hang out at the same time—threesomes never work, not even in friendship.

—Let me go ahead and mix our cocktails now—that'll make you feel better, Sofía says.

Sofía is an expert cocktail maker and can be seen strolling around the city with an exquisite ecru-colored canvas bag loaded with the items necessary for preparing them. Elisa has brought the sushi. I pull some dried-out leftover crumbs of cheese from the fridge, and we sit down at the table. We toast to life, to ourselves, and to summertime. Lately, everyone seems hell-bent on raising a glass with me to toast something or other, summoning some future I'm not sure will ever arrive.

—Well, girls, I say, —I've decided to go to Cadaqués for a few days. Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Who wants to join me?

Elisa looks at me with trepidation, and Sofía applauds the decision enthusiastically.

—Yes! That's it, let's go to Cadaqués! she exclaims while Elisa launches into a scholarly discussion of the effects of drugs, Freud, grief, and the maternal figure—great dangers that are stalking me. One is committed to enjoying life and the other to suffering and analyzing it.

—Have you noticed how she dresses like a Cuban now that she's dating one? Sofía whispers.

—You're totally right…

Elisa is wearing a white flared short skirt, her flip-flops have a platform heel, and her top is covered in red polka dots. Her long, dusky cloud of undulating hair is loose and there's red polish on her finger- and toenails. She seems as happy and pert as a five-year-old. We all look younger when we're happy, but in Elisa's case, she can go from five to five thousand in a two-minute flash. She's almost never in between; when she's older, she's going to have the face of a shrewd squirrel, I think, as she continues talking with a news anchor's gravitas.

—With an ass like that, it was only a matter of time before a Cuban got ahold of her, Sofía goes on, using her inside voice.

The problem with Elisa, I tell myself, is that underneath that gorgeous Cuban ass, or more like above it, there's a brilliant and highly analytical French existentialist philosopher's mind that never sleeps, and that makes her life a tad complicated. The poor thing, she's always trying to balance her Cuban ass with her French philosopher's head.

—You should come with us, and bring the Cuban too, I say when she finally finishes.

—I've told you a thousand times, his name is Damián, she answers.

—Oh, right, Damián, Damián, Damián. I always forget. Sorry. He is Cuban though, isn't he? The only one I know.

Elisa looks at me earnestly and doesn't say a word. My relationships with my friends are always impassioned and often a little troubled, though it's subsided a bit with my mother's illness. I wonder how long it will take for them to go back to the way they were.

—Yeah, why don't you come with us? Sofía exclaims. How's it going with Damián, anyway? Are you happy?

—Yes, but he's very demanding sexually. Truth be told, I'm exhausted.

Elisa can turn any subject, even sex with her new boyfriend, into something brainy and intellectual. Sofía, on the other hand, turns everything into the frivolous and festive, and inevitably everything revolves around her. Each one of us carries our own leitmotif in life, a common strand, a motto, a signature fragrance that envelops us, a background music that accompanies us wherever we go, abiding, silenced every now and then, but enduring and imperishable.

—Who else is coming? Sofía asks.

—Let me think. Oh, um, yeah, my two ex-husbands!

—What? they both cry in unison.

—You're going to Cadaqués with both of your exes? Are you joking? And you think that's normal? Elisa says.

—I don't know if it's normal. But you both spend all day telling me I shouldn't be alone, that I should surround myself with the people who care about me. Well, I think both Oscar and Guillem love me.

—I think it's a great idea, Sofía says. Normal is boring. Let's drink to being abnormal.

—Here's to being abnormal! I shout, and we hug.

When Sofía's had a few too many, she starts kissing and declaring eternal love to whoever is sitting closest to her.

—Oh, and Santi will be there too. With his family, I add quickly.

This time even Sofía looks at me dubiously.

—It's going to be fun—just wait and see.

They both stare at me with eyes like dinner plates. I laugh.