“You heard me, but you haven’t said anything, you haven’t even thought about him, about what he means to me.”
Here she was wrong: ever since I found out that boy had made his way through her interior to plop into this feeling world, I’d been searching for stretch marks on Helen’s thighs, on her buttocks and belly, on the lower part of her back where her silhouette swelled into her hips. I couldn’t believe I’d missed the marks from giving birth.
“I thought we came here to save what’s left of our marriage.”
“We can’t fix anything if we don’t resolve Jackson’s future.”
So Grandma and Grandpa had grown tired of little Jackson. I couldn’t blame them, it must be shitty to be old, on top of having so little time left. Who would want to add dealing with the neglected child of their dizzy daughter, the long-jump princess, to all that?
“I don’t want him to live with his father.”
That line reminded me of my old problem on the court, when I could sense that my opponents’ movements were dangerous, but I couldn’t guess their intentions until my big body was already in a two against one. Helen wasn’t playing the role of the desperate wife; this scene belonged to a movie whose first half-hour I had missed, one that relegated me to a secondary role. It was the story of the war against that Kansas gynecologist, the first husband, whose seminal contribution had resulted in Jackson’s conception.
“They won’t let you take him?”
“Women in the United States are protected by good laws, it’s not like in Spain—I was born in a civilized country. Children belong to their mothers. Daddy arranged everything with a lawyer in Boston. I just need us to get married, more seriously this time, properly.”
Some future that boy had waiting for him, with a mother addicted to playing mankind’s defenseless victim. Whatever his mother might say, people never change, for all the promises they make us. I knew that I was going to be the one making Jackson breakfast while she fought off her hangover with a large black coffee. The paperwork for enrolling him at school would fall to me, the figure with nervous eyes waiting for him after practice (did you doubt I would sign him up for basketball?) would be mine. And if Jackson didn’t feel comfortable with me, if he defied me? Children should really evaporate when divorce papers are signed. I’m not saying they should die, just that they should end up in the same limbo as all the other complicated affairs that build up when a couple separates.
“I don’t know if you’re thinking about this the right way, Freckles. You want to stick him with us in a seventy-square-meter apartment?”
“We’ll look for another, a bigger one. I’ll get a job, things will work again. It has to work again.”
And anyone would have believed her, if only we hadn’t been going at each other since the moment we’d been left alone. Jackson wasn’t going to stop us—it was our way of being together.
“What are you thinking about, John? Don’t look at me like that, if you look at me like that I don’t know what you’re thinking! This is about understanding each other!”
“I’m thinking about problems. One after another, in formation. The kind of army that for you and for me is invincible, one that’s going to split our heads right open.”
“Speak clearly. Can you speak clearly? This is an important conversation, the most important one of my life. I have to understand it!”
“I don’t see it clearly, Helen.”
“See what?”
“It’s a crazy idea. Come home, let’s see how it goes, then we can bring the boy.”
“You’d do it if it were your son, he’d be your family then. But he’ll never be your son.”
I understood the thought disguised under her crazy talk. It was a difficult argument to refute (and it worked in my favor), but the truth is that I had started to feel something like complicity with young Jackson, who, six or seven years earlier, wrapped in a clear, damp chrysalis, had come out through the same opening I’d dedicated myself to working so mightily during my marriage, one I’d kissed out of love every day. We shared an inverse experience of the same ruby red that opened between delicate folds under the silky hair (or do they always shave women in labor?). His tiny little nostrils had enjoyed the same aroma. I was moved at the thought of being part of that family circle of intimacy, but I wasn’t sure how to explain it to Helen. I saw her tongue moistening a new dart, and I knew she would have taken even the most innocent carnal reference as an unpardonable obscenity—some people just don’t know how to avoid taking things personally. But I give you my word that I was reaching the most tender heart of what we had gone there to revive. I would give Jackson good advice, he could have me as a role model.
“You’ve convinced me, let’s try.”
“What?”
“Come on, Freckles. Let’s get in bed, let’s fix this, and in a few days you’ll come back to Barcelona with the boy, with Jackson. With our son.”
“He’s not your son. It’ll be a hassle for me, too, you know, to bring him.”
I’m not saying Helen didn’t love her son. I’m just saying it wouldn’t have been such a bad idea if, when they’d checked her into the hospital, they’d taken the opportunity to fit a heart into her chest. I had the impression she was putting out her cigarette on her thigh, but she must have had an ashtray or something.
“I have to get him away from his father. You don’t know what that man is capable of. He can’t get over me. He’s a jealous animal. He wants to use Jackson to hurt me.”
I think Helen did have the makings of a mother. I confirm it every time I see a forty-year-old woman pushing a stroller with a baby inside. They don’t hide their femininity and they get their share of looks, but those looks just slide gently off, deflected by the bond between woman and child. In Helen’s case, though, the child had arrived too early, when she was a young animal with a character that would flatten you like a wave crashing over your life. Jackson was an annoying obstacle, too soft to contain the fire—and the greed and the natural curiosity—of a twenty-year-old woman. Opportunity, timing, occasion: the same mess as always.
“He’s coming with us, that’s that. I’ll protect him.”
And OK, I don’t think it was too much to ask that she get up and thank me with a big kiss. But I really didn’t expect her to just stay sitting there, her furious expression unchanged, with the same goal: shake off male domination. Only the enemy had changed: the presumptuous macho she had to put in his place was me.
“There’s something else.”
“Go for it, Freckles. I’ve still got a little skin left on my heart.”
“I’m sick of the way you talk to me. You act like I’m nothing but a body, you tell me that with my personality I’ll be selling handkerchiefs in the street once my tits are sagging. It’s emotional blackmail. I still have a long time before that happens. Plus, science can stop it.”
“Don’t you believe that. You Teutonic models wear out faster. Ten years and your lovers will be confronted with stretch-marked rashers of skin…I’m just telling you the facts, you can choose whether to listen or not.”
“I’m not Teutonic, I’m an American citizen.”
“Can you tell me what continent Teutonia is on?”
“You’re not going to provoke me. Spanish men are weak and backward. In case you forgot, I certainly didn’t have to make any effort to seduce you. Things are different in America, especially the women.”
“In New York, Freckles, they would take you for a loud-mouthed doorwoman. Here, at least you’re blonde, and once your tits are saggy you can head to Istanbul—the Turks are innocent and impressionable. Too bad you’re not very tall.”
“They’re a bunch of conceited assholes in New York—anemic vegetarians, they all have low-quality semen and dried-up ovaries. Most of them are homos, that’s why they have to import Chinese and blacks.”
“Come on, they shut the door in your face there, too. You’re a product of Montana, and if I get tired of you you’ll go s
traight back there. How long did you live in New York?”
“Six months. Long enough. I was in training the whole time. You wouldn’t understand because you’ve never done anything that requires discipline, that’s why you’ve lost all your father’s money, that’s why if you can’t feed off my energy you’ll just stay stuck in place.”
“Go back to Montana, Freckles, it’s your natural habitat. The only place in the world you won’t be out of place.”
“We’re talking, now we’re talking, right?”
“Yes, it would seem so.”
“You know why I came to Barcelona? Why I attached myself to you?”
I didn’t bother to reply.
“In Montana there were a lot of high-quality men, but all the women were so sophisticated and beautiful that you had to fight tooth and nail.”
“Right, that’s why you were a virgin when you got to Madrid, a victim of the Darwinian struggle.”
“Next to the big-assed Spanish and the anorexic Catalans, it was easy to seduce you, but in Fuokville it wasn’t enough to have a good body. I had to use my intelligence, I had to use words.”
“You don’t say. Wait, I’ve got to hear this standing up. Just what is the verbal bait one uses to hunt males in Montana?”
“I used to tell them I had a small vagina. Don’t laugh. I don’t know what feeling a tight vagina gives you, and it kills me that I’ll die without knowing, but it was infallible, they melted, they knelt at my feet.”
“You’re an idiot. That’s your secret, Helen. You have a ball full of sawdust sitting on your shoulders, stuck together in the most primitive way humanity has to offer. If you’d let me smash your skull and pry it open, stick some cotton in there to soak up the blood, and drive a needle into your brain to extract a gallon of your cerebrospinal fluid, I’d bet my balls it would be made of greed, provincialism, and malice.”
“You’re jealous.”
“You were the one who came crawling back to me.”
“You’re dying of jealousy.”
“I want you, you damn idiot.”
“You were always a jealous dog, you just hid it.”
“You know what, Miss Montana? If you’d taken that stupid, irresistible face of yours and told them you had a wide and gaping vagina, they still would have crawled after you. You’d get the same result confessing you had two cunts, you can take my word for it. With everything you’ve got, after prancing in front of them, believe me, you couldn’t keep them off even if you announced you were a guy. Arousal is very forgiving.”
“You’re talking too fast, I don’t understand.”
“You know that before I met you I couldn’t even imagine how sexy an idiotic face can be? I liked dark brunettes and their air of mystery. Luckily, when it comes to desire we don’t have to be consistent. If I’d stuck to my taste in fine, soft, well-mannered, tidy women, I would have missed out on all your splendor. You poor fool, poor lovely fool, with your little eyes so full of ambition, with all your mindless nonconformism, you’re marvelous. You’re not going to stop driving me crazy, we’re never going to work. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do you want us to get back together?”
“I don’t want you to leave me, John. I’ve invested too much time in you. I don’t want to be abandoned again, the first time was enough. I don’t want to feel humiliated again, like I’m dirty. Anyway, it’s never how I imagine it’s going to be, and I like the way you talk to me, the way you touch me. I’m not going to let you say good-bye.”
“You know what, Freckles? I’m going to tell you the secret of the world. I’m going to tell you why you’re a miserable person, and why you’ve made me feel so wretched for a year and a half, and the best part is I’ll tell you this for free. Don’t think I’m stingy or one to keep secrets. If I didn’t tell you sooner it’s because, though I’ve had some vague impressions, I’ve only just now pulled the threads together. You know me, I’m not a quick study, but when I know where I’m going I can move like a bulldozer. Are you listening?”
“I’m listening, talk more slowly. This is entertaining.”
“Look, boys act like they’re men before they are. We puff out our chests, we show off our package, we unbutton the second button of our shirts, all in the hope you’ll be impressed. We make you laugh, and that’s good, but you never believe us, we can’t keep up the act. We play at being the stronger sex, but there we are, trembling with emotion in front of the very organisms that hold the key to a paradise on earth. You develop gradually, so none of you understand what it’s like to have those testosterone bombs exploding at twelve, thirteen, fourteen. They burn down entire vines of neurons to their roots, make hair spring out all over our bodies, our features change in fits and starts. We are placed here amid all this sensation to plant the seed in the carnal tunnel and ensure the continuation of the species. Understand?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t matter, because you see it, you get it, you make the most of it. And the thing we hardly ever take advantage of is that you haven’t finished growing either. We give you credit for physical charms that you’ve developed effortlessly, from the force built into your bones, into your cells, into the double helix of the genetic code. But in the end you go on being girls, scared little girls, with your teddy bears and their imagined personalities. We’re afraid of you, and we take what comes out of your mouths seriously, but you’re not sure of anything. Lonely little girls, weak, afraid of the dark, of solitude, of the masculine drive to devour life. Maybe you and I still have a chance. Get in bed.”
“What?”
“Get in bed.”
“Why?”
“Get in bed, you want it.”
“It’s not that simple, we’re having a discussion.”
“And by discussing it we’re only courting disaster. You talk and talk and talk, and I talk and talk. Oh boy, do I talk! And the good intentions float away, lost, like helium balloons. How sad it is when you’re barely three feet tall and you feel the string slipping out of your hand and you watch as the balloon disappears up toward the atmosphere. You know what? I always imagined the sky as a lid. It scared me to think of it being so deep, and that mile by mile its color changed and the blue got darker and darker until it vanished in that pitch-black expanse where living planets float, if there are any, along with the sterile planets and all the planets that have died.”
“You’re making this up as you go. You’ve never in your life thought about this before.”
“See? Words are too much for us, they get tangled up, they lead us to strange places. Get in bed. When have our bodies ever failed us?”
“You want to go to bed? Now? With nothing fixed?”
“We’re not going to fix it any other way, why do you think we were given arms and hands and lips? Get in bed right now, damn it, let’s solve this our way, don’t make me beg you.”
“Don’t do this to me. I don’t agree, I don’t want to, it doesn’t have to be like that. Plus, I’m on my period.”
“And since when has that stopped us? It’s only liquid, juice, bodily fluid, a bit thick, but doesn’t it flow from your beloved body? The body is full of possibilities. It was that way the last time we saw each other, and anatomy’s fairly reliable, it can’t have changed that much. You know what, Helen? I feel life in my hands, you can’t imagine how much I like being alive, how incredible it is! Dying is repugnant, the fastest way to lose what you cherish most. It’s not for you or me, we have too much ahead of us, and we’re going to spend it together, so you’d better get a grip on yourself. Being dead is as sad as the time before you were born. I’m sure you don’t remember that time when you hadn’t yet been born—what could you remember?”
“Shut up. Don’t talk so fast, you’re confusing me. You’re like one of those movies that wants to make you think, and I don’t like thinking that much anymore, it scares me these days. We didn’t come here to fuck, we’re here to make up. This is about love.”
“It’s the same thin
g, one leads to the other. It’s natural, when it comes to love it’s the only way, anyone will tell you the same.”
“It’s not the way.”
“And what is the way, you damned blonde idiot?”
“Talking.”
How I would have liked to pierce the heart of her ignorance with a spear.
“Talking?”
“Yes, I talk and you listen.”
I knew the look she gave me all too well. She wasn’t going to move a millimeter. The part I could see was only the tip of a colossal mass submerged in a mixture of absurd ideas, superstitions, stubbornness, and rich veins of contempt. It would be simpler to separate her head from her neck by spinning it like a screw cap than to get her to change her mind.
So I got up, slammed the door, and left.
“Not like that, not like that, it doesn’t have to be like that. Come back. Come back, John. It’s not like before. That’s why I brought you here…”
After I turned the corner in the corridor I could no longer hear her needling little voice, as hoarse as if she were at the bottom of a cave.
I went down the stairs two at a time. I didn’t stumble even once—none of these clogged arteries back then. Healthy tissue, bright blood, how idiotic to feel washed-up in our late twenties. The dining room was almost empty, there were only a few groups of two or three old folks chewing their infusions; dirty silverware, plates with the remnants of food on crumpled tablecloths. At the other end of the room I saw the open door to the kitchen. In the rectangle of light, two young waiters were smoking, relaxed.
And what now? What was I going to make of my escape?
Outside, only the pool and the terrace and a gloomy night awaited me, two or three degrees colder. But I couldn’t capitulate and go back upstairs. Waves of testosterone and excitement were feeding my fury; I felt like charging at something. So I went down a corridor decorated with fussily arranged aboriginal paintings and little lamps considered “modernist” by the morons who buy them. I opened the door and went into the bar, and I found myself looking around in search of the black man. It was a long shot that he’d still be there, it was already fairly absurd that the place was still open.
Divorce Is in the Air Page 19
