The House of Impossible Loves

by Cristina Lopez Barrio

  “It’s best if your grandmother stays away from you and you stay away from her. Don’t love her. She’ll only break your heart.”

  “If she’s so awful, then why do you live with her?”

  Cicada trills rose from nearby fields.

  “So she’ll never forget.”

  During summer vacations, Olvido and Margarita read stories and poems as they sat on the porch in the midafternoon light. At first it was Olvido who read to her daughter, but once Margarita learned to read, Olvido would beg her to—especially if it was Saint John of the Cross. She loved to hear Margarita’s voice, so like the burbling of a river, as her blue eyes stared off toward the cemetery. The two of them baked cookies and cakes, went for walks in the oak grove, braided honeysuckle and daisies into each other’s hair, like wood nymphs. They planted tomatoes, lettuce, and squash, and sunbathed naked in the clearing, of course—even though men from town fell and broke bones climbing the rock wall to watch the most beautiful woman in the world bronze herself alongside her bastard child.

  Meanwhile, stripped of her power, Manuela Laguna watched from a distance so as not to arouse suspicion. Her chicken massacres continued and were so brutal that the birds whimpered in terror whenever Margarita came home to Scarlet Manor. Manuela’s other victims—centipedes, cockroaches, and roses—were more fortunate; they were attacked less often. Their executions were not nearly as bloody and so did not soothe her as easily. What the arthritic old woman wanted most was to regain control over her daughter. Olvido was not yet thirty; there was still time to marry her off to a rich man.

  Margarita’s vacations passed all too quickly for Olvido. Year after year, as the day of her departure approached, she considered keeping her daughter home. But then she would be tormented by dreams of small, white coffins and photos of dead little girls pasted to headstones. “Let her go back to Madrid,” Olvido would say to herself as the dough for cinnamon cake rose in the kitchen. “She’ll be safer with the nuns. No one can hurt her there.” A few days later she would take her daughter to the station, handing her over to the respectable matron who would chaperone her to school. The locomotive would whistle white steam, and the train would set off. “Goodbye, darling,” Olvido would whisper, lost in a cloud of dust. “Be happy.” The rails would squeal and the car windows would observe her. The entire station would begin to smell of moss, rain, and lavender.

  Olvido would race to the cemetery, hide in the vault, and, after six o’clock, lie on Esteban’s grave until magpies woke her in the morning. With a mouth full of soil and fingers perfumed by flowers, she would go home to Scarlet Manor. Manuela, stationed in the kitchen plucking chickens, would hear her climb the stairs to Clara Laguna’s room. She let her go again, Manuela would think, delighted, sharpening a knife. “Well done, dear. Maybe next time I’ll have the opportunity to take care of her once and for all,” she’d murmur, licking the droplets of blood that speckled her lips.

  Manuela followed through on her threat when Margarita Laguna was thirteen. The cinema came to town that summer, like it had before the war. There was no more rationing, and the taste of white bread, not brown, of lentils, not weevils, returned to the old women’s palates. The Civil Guard no longer hunted fugitives in the hills, and young people could afford to spend a little money on a film. There was only one showing, Saturday evening in the town square. A recently released prisoner set up the folding chairs, a man who drank what little he earned to wash away the taste of bullets and prisons walls. Manuela saw him drinking a bottle of wine by the fountain one morning. She waited until dark, hauled her arthritic body up into the cart, and headed for town. This time she found him sleeping in an alley, half-dressed and drooling. The town was immersed in the magical half-light of the cinema. Welcome, Mr. Marshall! was playing. Manuela kicked the man awake. When he opened one hazel eye, she tossed a wad of bills onto his chest.

  “Crush her skull with a rock,” she said.

  “Who, señora?” The man patted the money with a shaky hand.

  “Crush it,” Manuela insisted. “I want to see if it’s the same excrement inside like her father.”

  “That’s awful, señora. I might be a wretch, but I’m no murderer.”

  “Tomorrow at noon you will be,” Manuela replied, flipping more money in his face. “All this will buy a lot of wine, whiskey even. You will kill her tomorrow without fail. Now, let me tell you who and where to find her.”

  The man took a long pull of wine from a bottle and stuffed the money into his flea-infested pants pocket.

  That Sunday burned hot from dawn, and the August heat stuck to the skin. Near midday, sparrows gathered in the treetops in search of shade as bees fainted onto roses. The nearly adolescent body of Margarita Laguna lay sunning in the honeysuckle clearing. The drunk Manuela hired found the gate open and stared up at the words on the funeral bow: WELCOME TO SCARLET MANOR. He could not actually read them, but he shivered all the same. In between swigs from a new bottle of wine, he entered that fertile yard. He tried to remember the directions Manuela had given him, and he left the daisy-strewn drive behind him. The closer he got, the more his heart demanded wine. He stopped in front of the house several times. No one saw him. Finally, after circling it and crossing the vegetable garden, he found a clearing where the smell of honeysuckle was more intoxicating than good cognac. In the midst of that paradise, he saw who he had come to kill. He saw her long, pink back; he saw the outline of what would be a breast; he saw raised calves and feet casting shadows on two round buttocks; he saw chestnut hair; he saw the tip of a tongue following a nib as it moved across the page of a sketchbook . . . Instead of pulling the sharp rock out of his bag, he stuffed the wine bottle in and approached the girl as he undid his pants. A cloud hid the sun and the air grew nauseating. Margarita heard leaves rustle, turned—a triangle of light-brown shadow below her stomach—and found a stranger with his pants around his ankles. She did not feel afraid. She dropped her pencil and stared at his greasy hair, his wine-stained shirt, and that thing rising between his legs. Shots rang out. The man fell to his knees, staring at Margarita through the eyes of a newborn, reaching out—wanting to touch that skin as smooth as glass—but died before he made contact, on top of the girl’s drawing of a farm with ducks and cows.

  Olvido Laguna stood holding the rifle. Her breathing was rapid and steam rose from her temples. She had seen the man from her bedroom window, weaving his way toward the clearing.

  “He fell on my drawing.” Margarita cocked her head, narrowed her eyes, and looked down at the dead man reeking of wine.

  “You can make another.”

  At sundown Olvido dug a hole at the base of a pear tree and buried the body. Streams of sweat ran down her skin. Her arms hurt, her back hurt, but she could not rest.

  Manuela was removing her dressing gown when she saw her daughter waving her cane. She did not part her lips—pride would not let her be the first to shatter their long-standing silence—but looked into Olvido’s eyes—sword blue—looked at the cane—resplendent in new hands—and waited. The bedroom curtains were open. Manuela felt the cane on her back just once, startling at the dry crack on brittle bones. She did not scream. Moonlight poured through the window, and Olvido let the cane fall to the floor. Its sound as it hit the ceramic tiles made Olvido nauseous, and she stalked off to Clara Laguna’s room wishing for only one thing: death.

  The summer cinema left town that night. Several employees searched the tavern and the streets for the man who’d set up the chairs.

  “He must be sleeping it off wherever he happened to fall,” one of them said.

  “We’re better off without him,” the owner declared. “The rows were crooked whenever he drank too much, and customers hate that.”

  The man rotted beneath the pear tree. The only time Olvido thought of him was after a nightmare in which her hands were covered in gunpowder. From the moment she killed him, she promised to keep Margarita away from Scarlet Manor even more. Olvido now spent Christmas at a gues
thouse in Madrid, where she slept soundly. Her daughter was allowed back only on summer vacation. But before Olvido left for the station to meet her, she set the cane next to the fireplace in the parlor. Her mother needed to know the cane now belonged to her, and with it, all power over their cursed home.

  12

  THE SUMMER MARGARITA LAGUNA turned eighteen she graduated from boarding school. One late-June morning she came down the steep staircase from the dormitory into the entryway adorned with saints and crucifixions. She held a suitcase in each hand; her hair was curled with an iron, her eyes big and stormy, her lips painted pink. Margarita was not as gorgeous as her mother but still very beautiful. She was wearing a white blouse with lace trim on the sleeves, a wide plastic belt, and a lizard brooch. An A-line beige skirt and stiletto heels completed her outfit.

  When Olvido Laguna saw her daughter, she leaned back against a drawing of Saint Lucia and wanted to cry.

  “You look lovely . . . and so grown-up, darling.”

  “Mamá! I’m so happy to see you.” Margarita laced her fingers with Olvido’s. “There’s something I have to ask. It can’t wait. I’m too excited . . . My entire future depends on it.”

  The girl’s gaze burned brighter, and her mother glimpsed Esteban’s stubborn nature.

  “And what is it?”

  “First, you need to know that if you refuse, I’ll die.” Margarita pouted.

  A ray of sunlight bounced off Saint Lucia’s crown of angels, illuminating the crease between Olvido’s brows.

  “Then I’ll have to visit your grave and eat your favorite cinnamon cake, just to make you jealous.”

  “Mamá, I’m serious. My life is in your hands.”

  A tremor ran through the scars on Olvido’s back, and she knew that, sooner or later, they would come to bear on her daughter’s destiny.

  “That’s quite a responsibility, then,” Olvido whispered.

  “It’s about Paris,” Margarita said. “I want to go to university in Paris. It’s the only place to study art. All of the great modern masters lived there. Painting is in the very air. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mamá?”

  The wood paneling gave off the warm scent of varnish. Engrossed in the upside-down crucifixion of Saint Peter, Olvido Laguna repeated the name of that city: Paris, Paris. Paris is so far away. Good, she thought. For months she had been unable to sleep, unable to concentrate and give her cooking the passion it required. She worried Margarita would want to come back to Scarlet Manor after graduation. And yet, on that summer day teeming with swallows, all of her fears disappeared at the sound of one word: Paris. Nothing could reach that far, not Manuela’s claws, the town’s disdain, or the Laguna curse. She’ll be so far away, Olvido lamented. I won’t see her often. Olvido then mourned for the blood pouring from Saint Peter’s wounds. But she’ll be safe, studying art. Olvido smiled. The martyr’s face radiated peace, the kind that came through dying for a loved one.

  “Are you all right? Say something, please.” Margarita had just noticed her mother’s rapt contemplation. “Sister! Bring me a glass of water. My mother’s lost in a trance!”

  The Augustinian nun, confined to a box of a room to watch the door during Mass and rosaries, looked at Olvido Laguna. Rather than the glory of God, she saw the cobwebs of nostalgia in her eyes.

  I’ll have to meet with my dear friend the lawyer, Olvido thought, completely unaware of her surroundings. I’ll need a lot of money for her tuition, lodging, food, and other expenses. I’ll have to keep him happy.

  “Drink, Mamá!” Margarita took the glass of water the nun handed her.

  “Paris,” Olvido blurted out. “That’s an excellent idea, darling. You’ll go to Paris and you’ll study art.”

  Margarita dropped the glass, water miraculously splashing onto the illustration of Saint Lawrence burning on an iron grill, and curled up in her mother’s arms.

  For two years Olvido and her daughter wrote each other every week. All around the seascape on Olvido’s bedroom walls were postcards of the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, Sacré-Coeur, the Invalides, bridges over the Seine. In many of them Margarita apologized that she would not be home for Christmas or summer vacation. Some seminar or class trip always came up to prevent her from returning to Scarlet Manor. “You’re doing the right thing, darling. Don’t come back. You’ll never be happy here. Don’t come back. Enjoy your freedom in Paris,” Olvido murmured as her life passed in slow motion, like a dying river.

  Olvido spent mornings in the yard, even when winter encased her heart in a blanket of snow; she tended the tomatoes, lettuce, and squash, their aroma permeating her skin; she read Saint John of the Cross next to the mossy stone where Esteban’s skull had shattered; she swept the cobblestone drive. The only place Olvido never went was the rose garden. That tangle of thorns and giant petals belonged to her mother.

  When it was time for the midday meal, Olvido went into the kitchen to delight in cooking her recipes, even though Manuela still left pots on the stove. Over the years, however, with Margarita gone, the contents of those pots went from nothing but scorched leftovers to delicacies Manuela prepared hoping to soften her daughter’s resentment. Olvido would sometimes find gifts as well: gold rings, silver bracelets, and crystal baubles accompanied by a note in the lawyer’s hand. “There will be more if you marry me.” But Olvido never accepted a thing.

  Afternoons belonged to the lust of cooking. Olvido spent hours and hours remembering Esteban in that sanctuary of taste. Esteban’s features—the dimple in his chin, the cowlick at the back of his neck, his gray eyes—and his young body—firm thighs, sun-toasted hands, soldier’s chest—became more present in her mind. The only thing that bothered her was the smell of fresh blood from chickens massacred on the wooden table, an area she avoided in disgust. Olvido and her mother shared the kitchen but always used it at different times: Manuela in the mornings, Olvido in the afternoons. And there were certain territorial limits. Her mother was not allowed to set any entrails on the countertop where Olvido brought her ingredients to climax, and in exchange, she did not clean the sacrificial altar in case the smell of innards that reminded Manuela of her childhood should disappear.

  One or two afternoons a month, Olvido had to leave her culinary paradise and go to the lawyer’s office. Dressed in flannels and silks, he kissed her neckline while confirming there were more than enough pesetas in her checking account to cover Margarita’s expenses. But as time went on and age was not kind, he grew more and more demanding.

  “My dear,” he said, licking her cleavage, “if your mother finds out I am diverting funds to you and your daughter, I will be in a great deal of trouble. I’m afraid that, next time, if you don’t”—he slipped a hand under Olvido’s skirt only to find a petticoat as rigid as iron—“if you don’t come less heavily attired . . . You understand? I mean, it’s like you’re wearing a chastity belt. Yet we all know you have a daughter, and children, my dear. Well”—he pinched her thigh—“you know what I’m trying to say. Either you come prepared for the act—I cannot wait any longer—or the money will stop.”

  “How much does my mother allow for Margarita’s expenses?”

  “One quarter of what she needs. Your mother is not very generous with her fortune and even less so with her granddaughter. Therefore, if you do not want the girl to be mired in the hell of poverty, then come here next Monday without that chaste armor and our private arrangement will continue.”

  Out in the street, Olvido took a handkerchief from her purse and wiped down her neck. Between the rooftops, autumn was beginning to show. Hunters had returned. Exhausted packs of hounds relieved themselves on the stone fountain in the square as their owners, rifles on shoulders, the smell of the hills saturating their green attire, sat drinking in the tavern. It was almost six-thirty. Olvido sat down on a bench.

  Drawn by the current of modernity that surfaced in the late 1950s, Padre Rafael had set up a public address system in the church. At that time of night several speakers attached t
o the church and town hall as well as several lampposts along the main street would broadcast a program on religion, culture, and social concerns. The first time sound boomed through town, the old women—who watched the speakers and cables being installed, who heard Padre Rafael announce this invention at Sunday Mass—thought for a moment the good Lord himself had come down from heaven to speak, as dogs and cats scampered into ditches, eardrums aching. Excited by these new times, microphone in hand, sitting still so the reverberation of his life would not disturb the waves, Padre Rafael reminded parishioners of times for catechism, Mass, and funerals, commented on the latest film—La gran familia—or delighted listeners with cassettes of Gregorian chants. Once they grew accustomed to the priest’s tinny voice, the packs of hounds snuggled down and snoozed to the sacred music. Olvido had become a fan of these programs—a distraction from her solitary existence—and tried to be there for both the noon and evening shows.

  “May I say that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” a hunter said to Olvido that day.

  Sitting on the bench, she looked up at his damp cloak, the cartridge belt hugging his waist, his pants tucked into tall boots, his black hair and dark green eyes. A desire not her own stirred inside. Olvido thanked him for the compliment and set off for Scarlet Manor, pressing her purse to her chest to contain the tension rising in her throat as Padre Rafael’s words were lost on a liquid wind.

  The next week Olvido walked to the lawyer’s office through the pine forest. She had not put on a petticoat or underwear. He sat waiting for her behind his mahogany desk in a houndstooth suit.

  “Sit, my dear Olvido,” he said, scratching between his legs. “You’re looking lovely for the occasion.”