The Weight of the Heart
Page 29
Vicente steps in. “We’ve received a complaint from a neighbor about violent behavior in the street. We need to report this to the police in any case.”
Marcus reaches for his wallet. “Let me give you a card with my information.”
Paco takes the business card and looks at it suspiciously. Maybe the German name sobers him up. He returns the card. “If you clear out of here in the next thirty seconds, and we see Miss Anna inside the house, we’ll take her word for the incident,” Paco says with a stern face. “Otherwise, the police will be here in a few minutes and you can explain it all to them.”
Marcus and I look at each other with a pang of mirth mixed with sorrow. You see, Anna, it’s not just us, the world always seems to come in between, to entrap us away from each other, he says with his eyes. Yes, Marcus, it’s clear now that this Earth is not wide enough to hold the likes of you and me; it’s not perfect enough to reflect our true fate written above. It can only refract our constellation, splinter it into variations of mangled, broken tales. But then, neither does it have enough power to tear us completely apart, does it?
I want to rush over to Marcus and hug him, cling tight to his body even if it’ll get us arrested, I so can’t bear to lose him again. But Paco and his colleague won’t have it. “Please, sir,” they say, as they flank Marcus and walk him to his car. “And be assured we’ll be watching until morning.”
Marcus sighs. “Get some rest, Anna. I’ll come get you first thing tomorrow.”
“No, no, meet me at my place in three hours.”
“But that will already be morning.”
“All right, morning then.”
The two security guards watch with crossed arms as he drives away.
Paco turns to me. “You sure you’re good, Miss Anna? I hope you understand that this is in everyone’s best interest. Let me see you into the house.” He pushes the gate open and lets me in.
“Thank you, Paco.”
He nods, his face smug with accomplished professional and gentlemanly duty.
CHAPTER 23
The house is dark and silent. I walk toward the library, and as I pass through the living room, I stop and stare at the broken window. I cannot walk up to it, as I would like; it would be my bare feet against the myriad shards of glass scattered all around. A graveyard of crystals with the moonlight shimmering on each and every broken piece, giving the room the feel of a ghostly constellation, a mangled reflection of faraway star formations shining up above. There’s always a softening of features when faces are played on by the light of night, so different from the harsh, unrelenting disclosure of sunlight. This is how I see the room, with its open, broken mouth and jagged crystal lips parted toward the cooling night. The house has exhaled, breathed out all toxic memories, and now rests under the moonlight, with that rejuvenated, simple beauty displayed by the dead. No more fretting to do, no more tormented fury to withhold. The show is over.
Now, it’s just silence.
A sweet scene awaits me back at the library. My two sisters are huddled around the fireplace, whispering and laughing softly, drinking from large crystal cups filled with burgundy wine. They’ve pushed aside sofas and chairs and piled up rugs and blankets on the floor before the fire, where they lay sprawled as if on a large bed, the way we used to with Nanny, when Father was away. They’ve lit candles to take the edge off the darkness that now fills the room. They turn expectant eyes toward me as I walk in and slide onto the carpeted heap between them.
“What happened?” Marion asks.
“Did he accept your resignation?” Julia asks.
“Nope.”
“What did he say?” Marion asks.
I shrug. Where would I begin?
“I am going to need your car in a couple of hours, though,” I say.
Julia and Marion ooh and aah, laughing, poking fingers in my ribs.
“How did I know it?” Julia snorts.
Marion pulls at the goo in my hair. “Wow! There was a tumble in the hay and all!”
“Can’t trust that one to let go of you,” Julia says.
Marion laughs. “C’mon, Julia, give the guy a break! Who’d want to lose Anna?”
“Who am I to criticize?” Julia sighs. “Still holding on to my own story like a freakin’ barnacle.”
“It seems to be a family trait.” Marion motions me to move closer, puts her arm around me and presses her cheek to my shoulder. Julia reaches over and pours me a glass of wine.
We lie in silence, staring at the fire. The wine floods into my body like a stream of nectar, loosening up strained tissues, pumping sweet, bubbly sap into my fatigue. I struggle to keep my eyes open.
The ravenous flames that towered over the coconut a while ago have given way to smaller tongues that lick away at the incandescent mass of wood. The glowing pile crackles softly as it breaks down, creating different shapes in its collapsing structure. The embers now form a sort of beehive configuration, with rows of glowing cells lying on top of one another, crumbling, caving in, and toppling over each other. And within the effulgence of every tiny chamber of the hive, a small scene plays itself out. Fernando being gored by the bull and Marion bending over the lips of his wound; Julia’s pensive brushstrokes delineating Alina’s curves; Father’s hands locking Egyptian statuettes in the cabinet; Marcus and I climbing, reaching for ever-receding sierra peaks, making love, while red, burning earth falls away at each pounding of our bodies. The house is here too, with its smoldering rooms filled with scenes of love, of rage, sadness, or jesting; snippets of human stories in each vanishing little alcove, reenacted time and time again since the beginning of the world. All of them muffled in the sounds of the burning, crackling, and hissing, the dull hum that sweeps up all the music, the laughter, the pain, the poetry, and the fury into the swirling column of smoke rising above.
I think of the fire as the energy that consumes and reconfigures matter, the energy that shapes it along its relentless destiny toward death and transformation. Human passions, like fire, also consume and reshape us, they take hold of us and spend us in merciless progression. We sway in the grasp of their power, dreaming empty dreams about freedom and self-willed changes, unconscious of our true shackles, of our dark prisons. And just sometimes we may come across strange opportunities to bend the course of our fate. May we be lucky to identify them and brave enough to follow them through to the end.
“What are you thinking about, Anna?” I hear Marion ask beside me.
“Nothing. Just nonsense that comes with wine on an empty stomach.”
Marion raises her cup. “Let’s have a toast.” She thinks for a moment. “To the Hurts!”
“Marion, you’re not pronouncing it properly.” Julia laughs. “We’re in Spain, it’s the Hooorts.”
“It sounds terrible,” Marion says.
“I love it,” Julia says.
“Me too,” I say. “It always reminded me of the onomatopoeia of an exotic trumpet note.”
“Precisely,” Julia says. “It’s exotic, if anything English ever was.”
Marion raises her cup again. “Here goes, then. To the Hooorts, a lineage of obstinately passionate, impossibly wistful individuals!”
Julia giggles. “That was a bit much too much, Marion!” Her cheeks are flushed, she’s slurring her words. “Me, despite all I said before, I’ll toast to Delia and Constantine, for their weird but awesome ways,” she says. “And to Anna, as always the boldest, for carrying the day to the end.” A drowsy smile dances in her pupils as she raises the cup in my direction and takes a sip. She’s plastered too.
“And you, Anna, what will you toast to?” Marion asks.
I think for a moment. I’d like to toast to Marcus, to our undying patience for each other, to our unbroken bond. To the poetry I’ve stifled through the years and the way it’s fed this crazy love. To Father, whose warfare unwittingly fueled our passion. But most of all, I want to toast to the night that gallops fast toward the morning sun and will soon bring the retu
rn of my lover.
I’ll toast to tomorrow.
My sisters look at me, and wait. Their gaze is tinged with disquiet. They can feel my pulsing transport. Are they afraid I will slip out of our newly found sisterhood?
Tomorrow. The sound unfurls along the base of my tongue toward the tip, in a long, lazy, wavelike motion that fills me with unease. Tomorrow is the word I’ve been clutching all these years, clawing at with the same frenzy of one who’d try to hold the wind. What’s tomorrow? That dim, unreliable light bobbing ahead that mesmerizes the traveler and pulls her away from the beauty of the trail below. Whatever sweetness tomorrow could hold for me, whatever promised bounty, nothing could beat this moment that is already escaping into the dusty twilight of the past. It is here and now, with my heart bursting in my chest and my gaze spilling over with the light of my lover’s eyes, that my body tingles with the certainty that, if I were to die right here, in this very instant, I would be taken at the crest of my happiness, at the peak of my flight.
Shouldn’t this be what I raise my cup to?
I say, “I’ll toast to this amazing moment. To our freedom, after everything that has happened this day. And to the three of us, that we may always stay close.”
Marion and Julia smile, they relax. We clink our cups and drink.
* * *
Outside, the wind rustles in the trees, swishing long branches into gentle beating against windowpanes. Flurries of thin air stream through the old cracked frames, making the room quiver. The crystal beads of the chandelier above jingle.
I close my eyes.
The house, of course, is also clinking its glass.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would have never come to completion without the invaluable help of my amazing agent and good friend, Jeff Ourvan, and Kensington’s brilliant editor, John Scognamiglio, both of whom I need to thank for their editorial help, keen insight, and ongoing support for bringing my stories to life. Also thanks to Kensington production editor Carly Sommerstein, who made sure to put the perfect finishing touches on the novel’s text. Instrumental also in the writing of this novel have been the members of my New York writers’ group, who have read and critiqued my writing relentlessly until it became the book it is, particularly Dawn Rebecky, Aaron Parsley, Tom Walsh, John Casey, Judy Karp, Maureen Meehan, Monika Patel, David Ranghelli, and Jeremy Goldstein.
A very special thanks to my mentor at Manchester Metropolitan University, Livi Michael, for her continuous support, and to my colleagues Helen Steadman, Nicola Ní Leannaín, Bee Lewis, Fin Gray, Marita Karin Over, Zoë Feeney, Sue Smith, Jane Masumy, JV Baptie, and Kate Woodward. Also to my other colleagues and friends of the British and American Madrid Writers Circle, who took me in and made me feel a part of their amazing literary group: Felicity Hughes, Joseph Candora, Ryan Day, Anne MacMillan, and Lance Took.
I am also grateful to my brother, Nicholas Aikin, and my sisters, Helena Aikin, Carola Aikin, Olga Aikin, and Anabel Aikin, all artists themselves, and always enthusiastic of any individual or collective family projects. To my cousin Nancy Condardo and to my friend and writing colleague Carlos Mayor, both of whom have supported my writing from the start. A special thanks to Melissa Burch whose friendship is essential to my artistic endeavors, and to Sally Ekaireb, who has stood by me in every instance of struggle and success.
Last but not least, to my cool sons Ivan and Daniel, and my lovely daughter-in-law, Paola, always supportive of every artistic project I undertake.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
THE WEIGHT OF THE HEART
Susana Aikin
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included to enhance your group’s
reading of Susana Aikin’s The Weight of the Heart!
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. In the novel the Hurt sisters’ family house is haunted with memories from the past that make it difficult for them to make any decision about the property. Do you believe that houses and other structures can hold memories of past events? Or do you think that memories are solely attached to people? Have you ever had any experience where you felt an imprint of something that might have happened in the past attached to a particular space?
2. Different cultures have, and have had in the past, different ways of dealing with people’s problems. In the novel, Delia is a Cuban Santería priestess who believes that cleansing the energy of the family house will help liberate the Hurt sisters from their unresolved emotional issues. How do you feel about alternative ways of dealing with personal dilemmas and difficulties? Have you ever tried any alternative way, besides classical Western psychotherapy, to tackle any personal situation?
3. In the novel, James Hurt is an accomplished entrepreneur and self-made man, who is nonetheless insanely possessive of his three daughters and a master manipulator over their choices and their lives. Have you ever come across anyone like him? Do you think there is a tendency for powerful parents to overwhelm their children and dictate their lives?
4. What about children engaging in toxic loyalties toward manipulative parents, as Anna seems to do in the first part of the novel? What do you think makes her behave as she does? Is it just blind love and admiration for her father, or fear? And fear of what?
5. How does the absence of the mother affect the structure of the Hurt family? Do you think that if the mother hadn’t died earlier on, James Hurt would have established the same controlling relationships with his daughters? Can you think of any other stories or novels with similar father-daughter relationships?
6. Anna hides her relationship with Marcus from her despotic father in order to protect her lover, but ends up paying a hefty price for it. What do you think made her act like this? Do you think she could have done things differently? Can you think of any other love stories where passionate relationships are concealed? Do they always end tragically?
7. In the beginning of the novel, Anna and her sisters are at odds with each other, but as the “cleansing” progresses, they slowly bond again. Do you think their lack of solidarity was a result of their father’s abuse, or on the contrary, do you think their father was able to better exert his tyrannical power over them because of their lack of unity?
8. The title of the book, The Weight of the Heart, implies issues of accountability and guilt over circumstances that maybe could have been dealt with very differently. Do you think that Anna’s coming to terms with her own responsibility in past events and relationships is the tipping point of her healing process? And do you think that James Hurt’s revelation of his feeling of guilt toward the end of the novel redeems him in our eyes as readers?