The House of Impossible Loves

by Cristina Lopez Barrio

  “Give me two more, Mamá.”

  “It won’t sit well, darling. Be reasonable.”

  “Either you give me two more pieces, or I will throw myself on that platter.”

  Olvido served her, and Margarita tore the pieces apart with her hands, barely chewing before swallowing. She then ripped the loaf of bread in half and began to sop up more sauce.

  “This is divine. Just divine.” A raspberry moustache stained her upper lip.

  Olvido decided to take the last piece of meat into the kitchen before her daughter consumed it.

  “Where are you going, Mamá?”

  “Darling, please don’t eat any more. Let Pierre have this piece.”

  Again, the Frenchman shook that finger Olvido would grow to hate forever.

  “The only thing you care about is your damn circle of inspiration. Well, tomorrow you’ll want me to speak to you, you’ll beg me, but I won’t say a word.”

  “I’ll eat it, then,” Olvido said. “I’m still a bit hungry.”

  “Don’t you dare! That’s mine.” Margarita speared the piece of lamb and gulped it down. “Now give me the platter. I want more sauce.”

  “Please, darling. I know it won’t agree with you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I said give it to me.”

  Olvido let the platter fall to the floor.

  “You did that on purpose!” Margarita yelled as she stood from the table, her face flushed. “I need some air. I’m going outside.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No, I’d rather be alone. You two stay here. You”—Margarita looked at Pierre—“and your circle of inspiration can go to hell. And you”—she looked at her mother—“you and your childish games.”

  Margarita hauled herself out to the porch in search of oxygen.

  Pierre Lesac had begun to draw as soon as he could hold a pencil. He colored the silk walls in his mother’s room, the servants’ legs, the Belgian lace tablecloths. He colored the desk of the banker who was legally his father and the floor tiles in the basement, where the banker locked him when he was bad. Hiding out in his mother’s room, he colored her stepbrother’s pants and the back of the satin-covered sofa. He colored the pews at Notre-Dame in Paris as darkness fueled his eyes and his mother wept in prayer, repenting her forbidden love. He colored the palms of his hands as he filed out of church, a distraction from the terror instilled by those gargoyles. He colored the curtains in the stepbrother’s parlor as he listened, yet again, to his mother’s pleasure. He colored his little bed, surrounded by the loneliness of parents at war. It was not until one morning, when the banker told him his mother had left with her stepbrother, that Pierre Lesac began to color on white paper. He was nine and his eyes were dark as sin.

  In late adolescence, Pierre graduated from colored pencil and paper to oils. He left the banker’s house behind and with it a taste for still life: jars, fruit, tables. From then on he specialized in portraits. The first one he ever painted was thanks to the magic of memory. He spent an entire day in silence, searching for his mother’s features. When he found them in a corner of childhood, unable to forgive, he transferred them to canvas and sold them to an art gallery for more than he’d expected.

  Ever since that exorcism—and as a result of its success—he decided not to speak for twenty-four hours prior to starting any portrait. Eyes, nose, lips, breasts, collarbone, waist, hands, profiles, forearms, eyebrows—among many other features and postures—would race through Pierre’s body and mind to be imbued with inspiration. Since this journey began and ended with his heart, the organ that guided the master’s hands, its complete path traced a circle Pierre called the circle of inspiration. He explained this extraordinary process to Margarita when they first started dating. She thought it a charming approach that set Pierre apart from all the other painters in Paris. Margarita had always respected his silence, but that night, eight months pregnant and struggling to digest a whole lamb poisoned by desire, her boyfriend’s silence unhinged her. She waddled back from the porch struggling to catch her breath.

  “Mamá! My stomach hurts!” she yelled.

  Olvido, in the kitchen doing dishes, came out to meet her.

  “Mamá! It hurts so much!”

  “Take a deep breath.” Olvido stroked Margarita’s hair. “Let’s go into the parlor so you can lie back on the sofa.”

  Margarita plodded along.

  “Pierre, where are you? I need you, Pierre,” she whined before falling onto a cushion, her legs spread.

  Pierre Lesac, as tall and thin as a church spire, came in through the kitchen door.

  “Sit beside me.”

  His dark features moved toward the Laguna women.

  “Breathe deeply, darling. Nice and deep.” Olvido wrung her hands.

  “I’m scared, Pierre. Talk to me. I need to hear your voice. Speak to me in French. Tell me everything will be all right.”

  The Frenchman sat next to Margarita and caressed her cheek but said not a word.

  “Speak to me, damn it! Speak to me!”

  Pierre could not break the circle of inspiration, could not allow it to escape through his lips. All that accumulated desire, all those many nights longing for this moment. Twenty-four hours with her inside his body, racing through it, saturating it—ever since that night in Paris when he saw her photo on Margarita’s bedside table and her beauty became an obsession.

  “Has your damn circle made you deaf? I demand that you speak to me!” A viscous liquid ran down Margarita’s legs.

  “Your water broke! My God, the baby’s on its way!” Olvido cried.

  Leaning on Pierre and her mother, Margarita made it up to the second floor. Olvido guided her to the room where the iron bed awaited the birth of another Laguna girl. Olvido had cleaned the room every week since Esteban’s death and would sometimes spend afternoons under the purple canopy, where she could smell the oak forest.

  “Why here?” Margarita asked, panting.

  “This is where you were born. And besides, it smells of family.”

  “I’m going to have a girl, aren’t I? It’s the curse. Abuela told me everything in a letter the lawyer must have written. I didn’t want to tell you when you came to Paris, in case it made you hate her even more.”

  Fear rose in Olvido’s throat.

  “I’m going to have a girl and Pierre will die, like my father. We’re fated to suffer for love and bear only girls who will suffer, too.”

  Olvido looked at the Frenchman; news of his imminent death did not seem to affect him in the slightest.

  “I shouldn’t have fallen in love. Abuela warned me in the letter. ‘Stay pure,’ she said. ‘Stay pure and do not reproduce. The curse is in your blood, and you will kill the man you love.’ I tried, Mamá. I swear I did. But I couldn’t resist Pierre. I couldn’t, Mamá. I couldn’t. Je t’aime, Pierre.” Margarita caressed his face, but all that mattered to him just then was feeling the circle, completing it successfully.

  A contraction pushed Margarita onto the bed. Olvido pulled back the covers, revealing the scent of lavender in the sheets.

  “I’m going to call the doctor. Please look after her, Pierre.”

  Inhaling the smell in that room, he stared at Olvido’s lips, taking them into his veins.

  From the bottom step, Olvido watched as her mother dipped a glove into the liquid that had run down Margarita’s legs. She then sucked the cotton, recognizing the taste of life. Olvido shot a threatening glance as she passed her mother on the way into the parlor. It had been a year since the lawyer convinced Manuela Laguna to install a phone so she would not have to go into his office every Thursday. Manuela was reticent at first—not trusting the communicative power of an apparatus that looked more like donkey balls—but later agreed. It was becoming increasingly difficult to drag her arthritic bones into town.

  “Dr. Montero, this is Olvido Laguna.” A few tears fell onto the early-sixties black rotary phone. “My daughter’s water broke. Com
e quickly, please.”

  “Olvido Laguna?” Those words meant little to the doctor beyond two breasts that had left him spent.

  “I beg you. Come to Scarlet Manor. I need you.”

  “In that case, señora, how can I refuse? I’m on my way.”

  He hung up the phone and groomed his pubic hair with a fine-tooth comb. Any knots and he simply could not feel prepared. He picked up his bag and left for Scarlet Manor without a care for what people might say.

  From the moment the baby was born, it harbored the sweet taste of Olvido’s nipples on its tongue. Antonino Montero picked the baby up by the ankles, held it upside down, and smacked it on the bum. An angry wail rose up.

  Olvido was wiping her daughter’s brow.

  “Doctor, does that cry mean she’s all right?”

  “She?” Antonino Montero arched his brows. “My dear, take a look at what your little granddaughter has between her legs.”

  Dawn shone in through the balcony, casting its light on the newborn’s genitals.

  “It’s a boy,” Antonino affirmed, “with two perfectly round testicles.”

  “Indeed, it is a boy,” Olvido said, confirming there was no inherited vagina hidden in a fold on her grandson’s little body.

  “Margarita, you had a boy. A Laguna boy! How extraordinary. He is so beautiful . . .”

  “I just want to sleep, Mamá.”

  “You wash him while I tend to your daughter,” Antonino Montero said to Olvido.

  Olvido bathed the baby in the blue arabesque washbasin, just as she had Margarita. She thought of Esteban, the cowlick at the back of his neck, his stormy eyes, his grave damp with memories. When she kissed the baby on the lips, he smacked in response, and she wrapped him in a towel caressed by the cane used for beating rugs. Olvido put him into Margarita’s arms and headed to the guest room, where Pierre Lesac was resting with his circle of inspiration intact. Olvido did not notice two gloved hands hiding behind the bathroom door, waiting for her to leave Clara Laguna’s room. In them was the cane. Sunlight burst in through the balconies. Manuela came out of hiding and moved down the hall. Olvido knocked on Pierre’s door.

  “Are you awake? May I come in?”

  Manuela found the granddaughter she hated lying in bed.

  “Pierre, you have a lovely son.”

  The Frenchman was still dreaming. He was painting a portrait on the face of Notre-Dame, in between Gothic relief and rosette windows.

  “Pierre.” Olvido touched his shoulder, and he opened his eyes.

  “I’ll start painting today. The circle of inspiration is complete.”

  “Your son was born.”

  Pierre sat up in bed. The illusion of the gargoyles he feared so much still circled him.

  “It’s a boy?”

  “Yes, the first Laguna boy.”

  “Would you like him to take my name?”

  “That’s for Margarita to decide,” Olvido replied, hurrying out of the room.

  “Olvido . . .” Pierre heard the door close and felt the gargoyles threaten, pulling the sheet up over his face. Before he could rise, he had to repress the desire to paint the furniture, the blankets, the walls . . .

  Morning moved across the yard at Scarlet Manor. Olvido opened the balcony doors to let the scent of honeysuckle in to greet the man of the house. Instead, the summer breeze brought the perfume of roses.

  “Mamá! Mamá!”

  The door to Clara Laguna’s room was ajar. From the hallway, not all of Margarita was visible. Olvido could see only half her face, half her nightdress. On the bedroom floor was the cane.

  “Mamá! Mamá!”

  Olvido raced in to her daughter, feeling hate refresh her face. At the foot of the big iron bed, Manuela Laguna was holding the baby as Antonino Montero rubbed his head with a pained look on his face.

  “What happened?”

  “This crazy old woman came in and hit me.”

  “That’s my mother. I’m sorry. Would you be so kind as to tell her to hand the baby back to my daughter unless she wants me to cane her brittle bones.”

  “Mamá! Don’t say such horrible things!” Margarita seemed to have recovered her strength. “Let Yaya hold Santiago.”

  “Yaya? Santiago?”

  “Yes, Yaya.” Margarita pronounced that term of endearment with a satisfaction hidden for many years. She had always sought her grandmother’s affection. “Yaya asked me to call him Santiago, after the apostle James, and I agreed.”

  There were tears on Manuela Laguna’s face, a child’s tears. It was the first time Olvido had ever seen her mother cry.

  “Margarita, tell your mother the curse has been broken.” Manuela’s voice sounded different. The bitterness that had characterized it since youth was gone, and it sounded as if it belonged to someone who might harbor a soul. “A boy has been born to the Lagunas.” She stroked Santiago’s genitals. “He will redeem this line of women fated to sin and suffer for love.” Her chin trembled as an undying love suffused her face.

  “Mamá, don’t you see? If the curse is gone, that means Pierre’s not going to die and I can love him with no regrets.”

  “He doesn’t have to die, darling. It’s enough that he break your heart, like what happened to your great-grandmother Clara,” Olvido explained.

  “Tell your mother to let go of the past for the sake of this child.” Manuela had removed her gloves, and her soft, wrinkled fingers were caressing the baby’s skin.

  “Would you two just speak to each other! I refuse to be in the middle any longer. Pierre! Pierre!” Margarita had just noticed her boyfriend leaning against the door. “Come, kiss me, Pierre. Come see our son!”

  “Olvido, are you all right?”

  Olvido did not hear the Frenchman speak. Her mother’s words—let go of the past, let go of the past—beat in the heart she had consoled for so long through cooking. Olvido felt Esteban kiss her in the oak grove; felt his icy face the night the moon died in the sky; felt dizzy as she looked out the window, at her lover’s ancient eyes, their goodbye, red vomit on moss; felt the mournful grave of that man buried under the pear tree, her hands chafed by gunpowder; felt Margarita’s gray gaze through a train window, moving away; felt the lawyer’s hungry lips, the smell of medicine surrounding the jaundiced suitor who once shuffled through Scarlet Manor, leaning on a cane . . . For years she had lived solely for these memories, and now she had to let them go. Olvido sat on the foot of the bed, her gaze lost in an invisible purgatory.

  “Mamá? What’s wrong?”

  But Olvido had fallen fast asleep, curled up on the lavender sheets.

  14

  RIGHT AFTER HER great-grandson was born, Manuela Laguna placed a mantilla over her hair speckled with dried insect corpses and went to town to announce—this time to both the rich and the poor—that the curse of the Laguna women had ended that iris-strewn morning. Divine Providence had at last brought a boy to this line of illegitimate girl-children, and what’s more, he would be named after the apostle who traveled to Spain. Everyone was invited to witness this remarkable event.

  The first visitors arrived at Scarlet Manor midafternoon, hate folded in their pockets like a snot-filled handkerchief. Manuela made them wait a few minutes in the entryway—her teeth ached from gnawing on such joy—before leading them to where Santiago slept. On the second floor, she pointed out the bathroom, saying: “As you can see, we even have a porcelain clawfoot tub.”

  A soft murmur rose up as they continued to the bedroom.

  “Now gather around the cradle,” Manuela ordered.

  She slowly undid Santiago’s diaper and lifted his genitals with a stick for all to see. The baby remained fast asleep.

  “They’re too round,” one masculine voice let slip.

  “Because they are French, my dear man. His father is a direct descendant of that Napoléon fellow.”

  After the ladies contemplated the miracle of the Laguna boy, Manuela invited them to stay for coffee, but none accepted. Some sai
d they had lentils already simmering on the stove; others complained of a migraine. Alone in the kitchen, the old woman slurped coffee as resentment marched through her bowels yet again.

  It was a very hot summer. Manuela Laguna rose at dawn, made Bernarda’s gizzard recipe for breakfast, and slipped up to her great-grandson’s crib to take him into the yard, tucked in the little burrow she prepared between her chest and robe. Once there, she headed for the rose garden. It had grown more twisted and intertwined with each passing year, becoming a giant, labyrinthine knot. No one but Manuela knew how to reach its center. No one knew its secret: a grave covered in roses as black as the deceased’s braids. Sliced by spears of light, Man­uela carried her great-grandson there, where she pulled him out of his lair, revealed his male member, belched the taste of innards and garlic—a second helping of affection and breakfast—and, in her northern accent, begged the Galician woman to look at this little boy who would redeem the family name. Every now and then, Manuela would notice a centipede crawling on the ground and her lips would swell with desire. Should she leave Santiago on the rose tombstone just for a moment to catch it? No, she told herself, swallowing the sinful urge. She would keep him in her arms, rocking him to the beat of menthol puffs exhaled by that grave.

  But before Manuela reached the rose garden, she had to cross the vegetable patch outside the kitchen, where Olvido stood preparing breakfast and caught sight of her mother’s hunched silhouette. The old woman kicked at the plants, glancing every which way, distrusting even the growl of butterfly intestines. Someone might discover her, demand her hidden treasure. Olvido slipped out through the kitchen door and followed her mother at a distance.

  “I will not let you hurt that boy. This time I will be ruthless. I would even kill you, Madre. Although, by some miracle, you do seem to truly love him. I’ve never seen you so happy, never seen you touch anyone the way you touch him. Never once have I felt a single caress from you.” Olvido rubbed her tear-filled eyes with her fists. “But still, I don’t trust you. I will keep my eye on you, Madre. I will not leave you alone with my grandson for even one moment, much less in this cursed place, where your hate vomits up roses as big as calf heads.”