This Too Shall Pass (6 page)

—Now listen, if you don't pick him up, I will.

—That's just perfect.

Just then, Guillem calls to let me know he'll be arriving the following day. Sofía's never met him and is curious to see what he's like. I can't imagine two more opposite people. Sofía is worldly, generous, tolerant, honest, and transparent, as enthusiastic as she is infantile, impassioned, and narcissistic. And Guillem is the most sarcastic, ironic, and unpretentious man I know. His principles are carved in stone and he has zero patience for nonsense. Sofía is capable of calling me first thing in the morning to tell me she hadn't slept a wink all night, she's in the throes of a high creative point and overwhelmed with nifty ideas on how to transform and combine garments from last season. Guillem dresses almost entirely in old T-shirts designed by his students to raise money for their class trip. She's as tiny and delicate as a porcelain doll, and though when we first met he was as skinny as our son is now, he's grown into the solid, vigorous man he was always meant to be. What we have inside always ends up expressing itself. We become what we are; beauty and youth only camouflage it for a time. Sometimes I think I catch a glimpse of the face my friends will have when they're older, though I can't yet see it in my sons; it's too early, they're still flooded by the light of life, they throb. I can hardly bear to look at my own face, only askance, and from a distance. Your face disappeared, Mom, hidden behind the mask of disease. Every day I try to see it again, jump beyond the last few years to once again encounter your true face, the way it was before it turned to stone. It's like carrying a hammer to knock down walls. Or like what happens with sadness, whose wafer-thin layers of crackling glass settle over us gradually, enshroud us little by little. We're like the little pea buried under a thousand mattresses, like a bright light flickering feebly. And only true love can end pain, like in the fairy tales, and sometimes not even then. Time soothes the ache, pacifies us, like a lion tamer.

Sofía drains her glass of beer while Elisa, who has just shown up with Damián, decides on the lunch menu. Sofía is responsible for buying the wine, and I get a pedicure since I'm in mourning, and less is expected of me in the way of domestic duties, which are usually negligible anyway. I'll go to the cemetery some other time, later in the afternoon or tomorrow morning.

There's only one pharmacy in the whole town. It's a tiny seafront place with old-fashioned charm, chock-f of products and perfumes, and the slightly faded smell of talcum powder and roses. There's a tiny cabin around the back for beauty treatments. A middle-aged woman, more middle than me, does my pedicure and tells me that, aside from being a beautician, she's also a witch. I blurt out: —I'm a witch too, and I'm witchy. Both things, I add. She remains silent and looks at me with a kind of dubious expression, squinting her eyes. She doesn't look like a witch to me. Fortunately, she's dressed like a woman from the provinces. Brown knee-length skirt, white short-sleeved shirt with a pattern of tiny pastel-blue flowers, white nurse's clogs. She's blond, well coiffed, and painted, a little on the plump and motherly side. Though nowadays, any woman older than me seems motherly enough that I feel the desire to throw myself into their arms.

I lie back on the couch and she begins massaging my feet. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. Since your death, the only thing that alleviates me is physical contact, however fleeting or casual or light. I've had to close all my books since I'm incapable of reading, of finding consolation in them now; they bring me back to you, your house lined with bookshelves, your meticulous annual library cleaning, vacuum cleaner in hand, our expeditions to London to find yet another treasure of children's illustrations, the hours sitting together on the bed in the hotel poring over them, I more distracted, coming and going and doing other things, you completely absorbed like a little girl.

“You can tell if someone really loves books by the way they look at them, how they open and close them, how they turn the pages,” you used to say.

Same as with men, I thought, and sometimes said. And you would look at me, half shocked, half amused, half grande dame, half woman who lost no opportunity to enjoy herself in life, and you'd laugh. We were never the type of mother and daughter who confided absolutely everything to each other, we were never friends, we never shared intimacies; I think we always tried to be a more decent version of ourselves to each other. I remember how amazed you were the day you told me that maybe you'd have to take me to see a doctor if I didn't get my period soon, and I told you nonchalantly that I'd had my period for two years now, and that I didn't say anything because I didn't think it was your business. We were in the car and you slammed on the brakes, looked at me open-mouthed for a few seconds, and finally accelerated when the people behind us started honking angrily. And we never brought up the subject ever again.

I can't open a book now without thinking of you, but with men it's different. I knew from a very young age, instinctively, that I needed to keep this part of my life from you, or you might invade it too, with your ego, your generosity, your insight, and your love. You watched me from afar when I fell in and out of love, take a good licking and get back on my feet. You enjoyed my happiness and let me suffer in peace, without too much of a fuss or giving too much advice. I guess you were partly aware that you were the love of my life, and no other stormy love affair would ever come close to outdoing ours. After all, we love the way we were loved in childhood, and all the love that comes afterward is only ever a replica of that first love. I owe you, then, all my later loves, even the blind, wild love I feel for my boys. I'll never be able to open a book without wanting to see your calm, concentrated face, without knowing that I'll never see it ever again, and what is perhaps even worse is that it won't ever see me again, either. I will never be seen through your eyes again. When the world begins to depopulate of the people who love us, we become, little by little and following the rhythm of death, strangers. My place in the world was in your gaze and it was so unquestionable and perpetual that I never bothered to find out what was there. Not bad—I was able to remain a little girl until I was forty years old, with two children, two marriages, a slew of relationships, several apartments, several jobs, and now I hope I'll be able to make the transition into becoming an adult and not go straight on to old-ladyhood. I don't like being an orphan; I'm not made for this depth of sadness. Or maybe I am, maybe it's the precise size of pain, maybe it's the only dress left that can fit me.

—I can feel that you have a knot inside. There's a lot of tension here, the beautician-witch tells me. —Can I place my hands on your heart?

I reluctantly say yes. To begin with, my chest is not a place for strange middle-aged women to place their hands, I don't care if she is a witch. She places them gently, and I can feel her heat through the silk of my dress. But I can't relax, I'm too self-conscious of the intimate nature of the gesture. Thirty seconds later, she removes them.

—You're closed, hard as a rock, as if your heart were locked inside a cage.

—My mother just died, I answer.

—Ah, well. She keeps silent, which shows without a shadow of a doubt that she's a complete phony. A real witch would have had more resources when confronted by death. —Well, she finally responds, —I have essential oils that help open the heart, you burn them at night, before sleeping—

—I'm sorry, but I really dislike that New Age stuff, I say, interrupting, thinking I should never have let her feel my tits up. —I don't believe in natural medicine, or homeopathy, none of that stuff.

—Not even Bach flower remedies? she asks, horrified, clutching tightly at the little gold cross with a tiny ruby in the center that she's wearing around her neck.

—No, not even that.

She looks at me with pity, apparently feeling sorrier that I don't believe in her esoteric paraphernalia than that I just lost my mother.

—My grandfather was a doctor, a surgeon, and in my house we believed in science, I apologize.

She finishes her work in silence. She looks at my feet; my toenails are like little flames. When I leave, the beautician-witch gives me two small decanters of essential oil. —You'll see, they'll do you good. Take care now.

I'll give them to the children, I think, so they can concoct their magic potions. They're the ones who really understand.

Elisa shows up sporting a jean miniskirt, white sleeveless top, and silver sandals that just don't match. She's very tanned and her hair is down in a long, flowing cloud. She's dressed for Damián, I think, a little begrudgingly. Dressing up for one particular man is very different from dressing up for men in general, or for nobody, which is how I choose my wardrobe lately. In any case, the most elegant people are those who dress for themselves. Elisa is not tall, but has a nice figure, she's thin and feminine, and everything gravitates toward that butt of hers. When I tell her I like her hands, they're thin and nervy, almost as big as mine despite our difference in height, she answers humbly, “They're hands for getting things done.” And it's true, they're practical, realist hands, not the kind for slaying lions, like the hands of the men I like; neither are they hands for slaying souls, or for calling forth the gods and carrying old rings, like yours, Mom, although I'm sure they too can alleviate a fever and shoo nightmares away. If it weren't for Elisa, I doubt anyone would ever eat. Sofía and I will nourish ourselves by way of yogurt, toast, and white wine, whatever it takes to avoid having to cook. And our children are so healthy and strong that sometimes I think all they need is a little water.

We're having dinner at Carolina and Pep's house and Hugo, Pep's best friend, who is spending a few days with them, will be coming too. Another man I flirt with dreamily while Elisa and Sofía are talking about shoes.

Edgar comes up at that moment, long and flexible, his legs and arms bronzed. Nico is still a scrumptious little puppy, but Edgardo is already turning into a deer. His stride is drawled and languid, he sweeps the air as he drags his feet, which is how he's been walking in my presence since becoming a teenager, as if every place we go is a tedium, as if he's seen everything a million times before. He talks the same way, too lazy to finish his sentences, to relate, to explain, he's just alive and that's it. Suddenly he'll have a talking spell—it happens about once a month—and he'll spout on for two hours straight, telling me all his adventures at school. But since he's almost lost the ability to express himself, at least with me, his words get all tangled up and he splits his side laughing at the same time he's eating—his fits of grandiloquence usually occur precisely at dinner time; and despite making a staunch effort to concentrate and sharpen my ear, I never understand the majority of what he's saying. Then suddenly, once he's repeated each story three times, he looks at me again, as if he's just realized that it's his mother he's talking to, calls me stone deaf, and shuts hermetically up till the next month's bout. Our other traditional monthly conversation is of the life-is-wonderful variety.

—Do you even realize how lucky we are? Look how beautiful the trees are. Just look at that street. Breathe it in, I tell them during these euphoric instants that seize me every once in a while, thanks to the wine, the kisses, or my own body, whose physical strength and last drops of youth are gifts on some days.

Edgar usually looks at me with a long face, Nico pretends to take a deep breath, and Edgar tells me they already know, I've said the same thing a thousand times, today's spectacular street is our same street, the one we walk down four times a day, and what he really wants to do is go to Florence like I promised a few years ago. You always threatened him with not going to Egypt. “If you don't behave, we won't go to Egypt,” you'd say to him. In the end, the revolution and your disease prevented you from going. The last trip you wanted to take was to Florence. When I told you I couldn't take care of both you and Edgar at the same time, that if you had a turn for the worse while we were so far away, I wouldn't know how to deal with it—in Barcelona, the dance of the ambulances and wheelchairs and late-night trips to the emergency room had already begun—you got so angry with me that you told me I always ruin everything. Marisa wanted to go to Rome and I promised that when she got out of the hospital, we would go. We also planned on spending some time at your house where she would teach me how to make her famous gazpacho and legendary croquettes, since she would never be able to return to Cadaqués and live on her own. But it was already too late. I wasn't there when she died suddenly, either. I hadn't been there for two days, completely unaware of how much faster life proceeds inside a hospital, where the wicks burn lickety-split, and life and death run crazed races down the aseptic hallways like the cartoon Coyote and the Road Runner, frantic and frenzied, skidding around the nurses and visitors, screwing up our lives. Maybe we all end up with some untaken trip, we plan journeys when they are no longer possible, as if we were trying to buy more time knowing we've used up our own, and that nobody can give us a single minute more. How unbearable to think while our eyes are still open that there are places to which we'll never return, to realize that an opportunity has closed even before our eyes have.

Edgar looks at the three of us petulantly from the top of the stairs and quips: —I'm hungry—can we go now?

Daniel and Nico come up a second later, accompanied by Úrsula, who looks at us and says: —You all look so beautiful!

Sofía is wearing her spectacular floor-length, wine-colored Indian dress that she bought from an antiques dealer. It's dusted with tiny mirrored lozenges, and she set it off with a pair of big silver earrings. I have on my baggy faded fuchsia cotton pants, a raggedy black silk shirt with little green polka dots, flip-flops, and one of my mother's old bracelets that sometimes I love and sometimes feels more like a shackle. Elisa is dressed as if we were going out to dance salsa. And Úrsula has put on a very tight yellow T-shirt with a silver palm-tree motif and purple jeans about two sizes too small. We look like a troupe of clowns. Fortunately, the children have brought a modicum of summer respectability with their polo shirts, Bermuda shorts, and flip-flops.

Carolina and Pep have a small apartment just a little way uphill from our house. It's part of a summer complex that was built in the seventies, with heavy cement walls painted white and stairways made of reddish wood, long corridors, and huge windows that give fabulous views overlooking the town and the bay. When I was young, the apartments had been a sort of hippie colony, where colorful characters from around the world lived. I remember listening to the music and laughter from my bed at night, the din of that group of beautiful summer castaways who I thought were just the most fascinating and exotic people on earth, who returned to Holland, the United States, or Germany at summer's end. As I got older, so did the hippies, and the apartments began filling with modern people of the nineties, respectable and rich. But those of us who were lucky enough to catch a glimpse through the keyhole of childhood at the tail end of the spirit of the sixties—the sexual freedom, the freedom, period, the desire to have fun, the empowerment of youth, the sheer audacity—weren't left unscathed. We've all lost some paradise to which we never belonged.

Pep and Hugo are preparing dinner. They've dressed for a summer night. Clean jeans, a perfectly old and faded shirt for Pep and a crisp white shirt with rolled-up sleeves for Hugo. They're both tanned. Hugo likes to run and he wears string bracelets. He smells a little of patchouli and vanilla and he owns some sort of business. Pep is a photographer, his head is shaved, and he has a deep voice. Tall and thin, he's the sensitive type, discreet and very funny. You can tell they've been close friends for a long time—they even finish each other's sentences, poke fun at each other, refer to each other as “bro.” There are no fissures, no doubts; they get together every week to watch football and drink beer. Sometimes I envy this kind of male bonding; seen from the outside it seems like a straighter and more effortless style of friendship than what exists between women. Ours is like an eternal courtship, with its rough patches, intense and passionate, while theirs is more like a well-matched marriage, without strong emotions, maybe, but without boundless ups and downs, either.

—So, are we hungry? Pep asks the children.

—Very, Sofía answers, diving into the hummus.

We sit at a table in the garden. Hugo opens the wine and sits down next to me, smiling.

—You look beautiful, he says.

—Well, Nico told me I looked like cat food this morning. And children never lie.

—That's an urban myth. Children lie as much as adults do.

—I guess. I lie all the time. And it's not even my worst defect.

We both laugh. He says: —Why don't we go out for dinner sometime, just the two of us? And I try to convince him that I'm a complete mess and that inviting me to dinner isn't worth the effort. The male technique for seduction involves making a fake list of one's own defects (I'm a sale item, don't waste your time on me); it works pretty well, I see, enjoying myself as I eat and play with my cell phone. I don't lose it all the time anymore. The phone became a diabolical object, the messenger of suffering and anguish during your illness and death. You called every night in the wee hours, demanding that I go to your house, to tell me you were afraid, that the home-nurse tried to kill you. You might have been partly right. I can't count the number of nurses you went through in the last months, but I became an expert at interviewing candidates, most of whom never lasted more than a few days. You didn't allow them a minute's sleep; you'd steal the medication—there were pills scattered all over the house, the floors, in your sheets, in your papers and the pages of your books, I started to fear for the dogs; you fired the nurses two or three times a day, you even punched one of them. What a shame the main character of the story was you. If someone had told us these stories about someone else back in the good old days, we probably would have split our sides laughing. A good laugh was always our best weapon; it's how we dealt with misery and mean-spiritedness. The disease, the pain that some doctors claimed you invented, turned you into a selfish monster. When I told you I couldn't leave the children by themselves at four in the morning, you'd get outraged and hang up on me. Most of our conversations during the last few months ended with you hanging up on me. Every time the phone rang and I saw your number, my heart would skip a beat. Finally I disconnected it, I forgot to charge it, I left it everywhere, I lost it on purpose. Occasionally I'd answer thinking, today she's calling just to tell me she loves me and she's sorry for having abandoned me, and you'd called to talk about money and to reproach me because I was the one who had abandoned you. I did my best, sometimes I did what I had to do, though not always—I'm not very good at facing despair. I'm sorry. Maybe if you'd been in my shoes, you'd have done a better job. For years, you said that you had never loved your mother, that she wasn't a good person, that she'd never loved you. It wasn't until the bitter end that you changed your mind. Those last days in the hospital you mistakenly called me “Mama” a few times. My grandmother had a very distinguished, silent, elegant, and fearless death as befitted her status and character. Yours was total mayhem. Nobody warns you that you have to become your mother when she's dying. And, Mom, you can't say you gave me so much satisfaction as your daughter, either. You yourself weren't an easy daughter.

But since Santi has reappeared, the cell phone has become something playful again, and we're always just one message away from what can happen next. And what can happen next is almost always more exciting than what is happening now. I like sex because it nails me into the present time. Your death did too. Not Santi, no, Santi is the same as a cell phone. I'm always waiting for something wonderful to come that never does. He was separated from his wife when we met. She was having an affair with a friend of his, but the affair didn't pan out, and Santi, who is a very nice man, went back home with the idea of healing the wounds and mending a relationship that had fallen into the trap of substituting comfort, companionship, and children for sex, curiosity, and admiration. And our affair, which had already begun to flag a few months in—most love affairs last either a few months or an entire lifetime—was stirred back to life with the thrill of the forbidden, the unattainable, the fantasy. Both of us swallowed the narrative whole. Me because I hadn't found anyone I liked better. Him because he realized right away that the relationship with his wife was going right back into the rut it came from, the last page before closing a book. There is no reverse in a love story; any relationship is always a one-way street.