Isabel went to Mass with him once in a while, but he knew her religion was only skin-deep. She prayed with her lips, she didn’t pray with her heart. She knelt next to him on the cathedral’s mahogany bench and played with her rosary’s crystal beads, as her eyes roamed lazily under the dusty archways of the cathedral, looking for an open window to gaze out of. Who was she praying to, Quintín wondered, Jesus or Elegguá? Since she had fallen under Petra’s influence, he couldn’t be sure what his wife believed in.
Pain changed everything; it made you look at the world in a different light. Gourmet Imports didn’t seem so important to Quintín any longer. He had begun to think more about his art collection. If he could never be an artist, at least he had managed to put together a magnificent collection of works of art. Maybe he still had time to turn the house on the lagoon into a museum, into a shrine of art. That way, he would always be remembered, and so would his family, as the founders and donors of the Mendizabal Museum. The house on the lagoon, Pavel’s masterpiece, was a landmark on the island. To turn it into a museum would be relatively easy. All he had to do was start proceedings to create the Quintín Mendizabal Foundation, which would make it all possible after his death.
Once he hit on this solution, Quintín immediately felt better. But he didn’t want to lose the attention Isabel had begun to lavish on him after the doctor’s diagnosis, so he masked his newfound feeling of well-being. Isabel had ordered Georgina and Victoria to cook Quintín salt-free meals, and she now did the shopping at the supermarket herself. She insisted on getting up at six every morning to walk briskly with him around the lagoon. Quintín was very grateful—but he didn’t completely trust her.
One night he could hold out no longer, and went into the study to look for Isabel’s manuscript. There were four new chapters since he had last searched for it. He sat with them on his lap for a long time, trying to decide what to do. He felt miserable. Not knowing what Isabel had written made him feel as if he were sinking into the mangrove swamp, as if he were losing his grip on reality. But he didn’t dare read the new chapters. He put them back unread in the secret compartment.
33
Willie and Manuel
LIFE CHANGED AFTER WILLIE’S ADOPTION. Quintín pulled out of his depression and began to go to the office regularly, shoring up business with his European partners and those in the United States. He became quite devout, and we frequently went to church together to pray for Ignacio’s and Margarita’s souls. In time, I was able to put what had happened with Carmelina out of my mind, and Quintín kept his promise and never looked at another woman again.
We were both in good health and our lives were reasonably pleasant. Sometimes we read books and discussed them; we traveled to Europe every two or three years, and had a relatively active social life. We enjoyed seeing our children grow up and shared in their upbringing. Manuel had begun to work with his father at Gourmet Imports and Willie was painting, happy to be enrolled at Pratt. They were both on a steady course.
I had made up my mind not to worry anymore about Ignacio’s reason for committing suicide or Buenaventura’s secret account. If I wanted to be happy, it was wise to lay the family ghosts to rest. “Time is like water,” I told myself. “It wears even the sharpest knives down, and oblivion will eventually overcome us all. Why should I keep painful memories alive, when the rest of the world has forgotten?”
The island was going through a tranquil period also. The political instability of the sixties had disappeared as if by magic; in the seventies, people seemed more interested in making money than in finding out whether they were Puerto Ricans or Americans. The national obsession—should we remain a commonwealth or become a state in the Union or an independent nation—seemed to be in temporary remission, and politics ceased to be the seed of angry arguments at every bar and corner drugstore on the island. And the same thing happened in my heart, which had calmed down considerably. If in my youth I had discussed politics heatedly with Abby and later with Quintín, I now experienced only a faint stirring of embers and was more interested in keeping the peace than in whipping up controversies.
I was content to be Quintín Mendizabal’s wife and willingly took over the role of mistress of the house on the lagoon. I kept myself looking as young as possible, was concerned that our children perform well at school, saw that the cooking and the laundering were impeccably done, took care that Brambon fed the dogs and kept the mangroves properly pruned so that they wouldn’t encroach on the house. I even joined several charity associations, like the Carnegie Library Ladies Club, the Red Cross Charity Ball Committee, and the Cancer Committee, and would often give tea parties for its members. Once in a while I also invited Quintín’s friends to the house, San Juan’s most successful businessmen and their elegant wives.
Quintín and I didn’t talk to each other very often, but fortunately we had common interests. I had begun to enjoy our beautiful house more and more, and, like Quintín, found comfort in being surrounded by paintings, sculptures, and antiques. I had fallen in love with Pavel’s mosaic terrace, which gleamed like a pool of gold in the late-afternoon light. I took pride in the Tiffany-glass windows, the alabaster skylights, the sculptures and paintings, and supervised their upkeep. Every minute of my day was full, and I wrote very little, if at all. At night I lay awake for hours, thinking of everything I would write the next day, and when I got up the next morning, I would rush from one thing to the next and wouldn’t put down a single word. Was my hard-earned marital bliss keeping me from my goal? Did Isabel Monfort, who at her wedding twenty-six years before, had vowed to become a writer, still exist?
It was only three months ago—on June 15, 1982, to be exact—that I began to write The House on the Lagoon. I was tired of playing Penelope, forever postponing my own accomplishment.
I had been writing for a long while and had filled pages and pages, but I didn’t know if what I was working on was a biographical novel, a diary, or just a handful of notes which would never take a definite form. Then, after Willie was born, I set my manuscript aside and didn’t write another word for years. When Quintín and I came back from Manuel’s graduation at Boston University, I finally heeded Willie’s prompting. He was always telling me how important art was. It was the one thing that helped make the world into a better place, he insisted. I was a writer; I only had to believe in myself. He had been after me for months to stop scribbling aimless pages and write a novel, and I told myself that now was the moment to begin.
Willie was born in 1966, and he brought a breath of fresh air into our home. Manuel was my own flesh and blood, but when I looked at Willie, something curious happened. He didn’t have a drop of my blood in him and yet in many ways he was a lot more like me than Manuel was. Willie wore his heart on his sleeve and was sensitive to everything, as if his nerves were made of silk. He was intuitive by nature. If I was worried or sad about the slightest thing, he perceived it immediately and would kiss me on the cheek.
Petra was seventy-seven when Willie was born, but she didn’t look it. It was as if she had gained a new lease on life. She followed him everywhere, flapping her arms like a mother hen. Her feet were deformed by age and arthritis, but she cured them herself very effectively, slicing aloe from a large plant in the garden and making compresses with it. Petra was very proud that Willie was Buenaventura’s grandson as well as her great-great-grandson. But she kept her promise and was silent as a tomb about his secret. It annoyed me that both boys went to her for permission for just about everything, coming to me only later to tell me what they had already done: gone to a baseball game, for example, or for a swim with friends. The boys worshipped her, and I finally gave up trying to compete.
Petra went out of her way to make sure the boys got along with each other. There was always space enough in her lap for both—she had wide, strong thighs, and when she sat down, her starched apron crumbled into deep folds, so both boys could burrow into them and fall asleep. At other times she’d let them climb on her back and jan
gled her metal bracelets gaily before them, and they laughed and shrieked as if they were riding a humpback whale. She sang them the same songs, told them the same stories, and always tried to be affectionate to Manuel, so he wouldn’t feel that Willie had displaced him.
One day when Willie was no more than three years old, I was out on the terrace reading while he was playing with his toy train. Suddenly he collapsed. His eyes rolled upward, and he had a speck of foam at the corner of his mouth. I raced with him to Alamares Hospital, and the doctors diagnosed a mild epileptic fit. I was terrified: there was no epilepsy in the Mendizabal family; I didn’t know about the Avilés side. That night I visited Petra in the cellar. “Can you do something to cure him? Is there any medicine he can take?” I asked her in anguish. She quietly reassured me. “There’s nothing to worry about, Isabel,” she said. “In Africa, what Willie has is not a sickness. It means there are great things in store for him.”
Manuel loved sports, and sometimes Quintín played basketball with him on Sundays. Or they would sail out of San Juan Bay in the Bertram yacht and go fishing in the choppy waters of the Atlantic, coming home on the verge of sunstroke, but happy. Quintín had taken Manuel to statehood political rallies since he was five, and when he asked the child what he believed in, Manuel would cry out, “U.S.A.!” which amused Quintín no end. Manuel did everything effortlessly. He learned to swim practically the first time he went into the water; he was a star player on his school basketball team, and he was a clever fisherman. But it would take him twice as long as Willie to do his homework. Quintín had mellowed and he taught Manuel the lessons he had learned from his father, but without the rough edges. There was no need to bring Manuel up the spartan way Buenaventura had raised him.
Willie was more artistic than athletic; he had inherited all of Rebecca’s and Ignacio’s creative talent. He was truly inspired and lived for his art. Petra and I both believed him to be a child prodigy. At ten, he could play one of Mozart’s early sonatas on the piano; at eleven, he was a star in the drama club at school; and by twelve he already knew he wanted to be a painter. Petra used to call him her “little lightning rod,” because “he turned everything into a flash of inspiration.”
Willie had a sixth sense which told him when it was better to be silent and toe the line, to keep his father from losing his temper. Quintín scoffed good-naturedly at his avant-garde paintings, but he let him do as he pleased. He never took him to political rallies or to basketball games. He was obviously relieved that Willie had no interest in business and wanted to strike out on his own as an artist. That way, Manuel would be by himself at Gourmet Imports, and there would never be any strife between the brothers.
34
Fire Coral
THE WEEK MANUEL GRADUATED from Boston University, his father had him start working full-time at Gourmet Imports. Manuel was pleased; he had studied business administration and had planned to go into business with Quintín when he got out of college. Manuel’s office was small but nicely furnished; his basketball trophies shone on his desk, his framed diploma hung on the wall, along with an old tapestry of Valdeverdeja which Buenaventura’s aunts had embroidered for him long before.
“This is where you’ll be working,” Quintín told him, “right next to me. From now on, you’re going to be my right hand. You’ll have to learn everything from the bottom up, and I want you to learn it quickly because I’d like to retire.” And he gave Manuel Buenaventura’s gold signet ring, the one I had given back to him when Willie was born. “This ring belonged to your grandfather, Buenaventura Mendizabal,” he said. “And before Buenaventura, to our ancestor, Francisco Pizarro, Conquistador of Peru. Take it and wear it as a sign of authority. That way, when I’m no longer around, everyone at Gourmet Imports will obey you.” Quintín was proud to have Manuel working by his side. He was carrying on a tradition and was glad to be able to treat his son better than Buenaventura had treated him.
A little later Quintín came back into Manuel’s office, carrying four large leather-bound books. “Buenaventura was an accountant, and he believed the secret of every successful business was keeping the company books in order,” he said, putting them down on Manuel’s desk. “Father kept the account books himself. He said a good businessman should never trust them to anyone, because they were as precious as his wife. Eventually Buenaventura made me his chief accountant, and I kept track of every penny that was spent and earned at Mendizabal & Company. I want you to do the same at Gourmet Imports, from your first day.” Manuel looked at him with grateful eyes. He trusted his father and was happy that Quintín had confidence in him.
That summer Willie was also home. He had done well his freshman year at Pratt and wanted to devote his vacation to painting in Old San Juan. He loved to get up when it was still dark, ride his red Vespa to the Old City, and set up his easel near the walls of El Morro Castle, to paint the sunrise.
One Sunday, the day Willie and Manuel discovered the Ustariz sisters had come back to the island, Manuel decided he would go with him to San Juan. It was a date to remember, and later Willie told me all about it in detail.
Manuel planned to jog for an hour in El Morro’s open field while Willie painted. Manuel could do five laps on the fort’s rolling grounds easily, and afterwards they would breakfast together at La Bombonera—coffee and toasted mallorcas, the sweet, turbanlike muffins they had loved since childhood. They arrived at La Rogativa late; unlike Willie, Manuel wasn’t an early riser. Willie had waited for him until nine and finally knocked on his door. Manuel still didn’t wake up, so he poured a glass of water on him. Manuel wasn’t fazed. He simply sat up and blinked, like a heifer after a shower. “What’s up, kid? Practicing to become a fireman?” he said, tackling him at the knees. And they both fell laughing to the floor.
They parked their Vespas—Manuel had a blue one exactly like Willie’s red one—next to one of the old bastions of La Rogativa’s square, near the bronze sculpture of the Bishop’s Procession. The statue was one of Manuel’s favorite landmarks in San Juan. “It’s a perfect example of how propaganda can have a positive effect on one’s life,” he said to Willie. “San Juan was besieged by the English during the eighteenth century, and there weren’t enough soldiers to defend it. The Bishop roused the women of the city and they had a procession around the walls with lighted torches; the English believed there was a huge army stationed inside. They fled, and the siege was lifted.”
Willie set up his easel in the square, put a canvas on it, took out his tray of oils, and began to paint. He enjoyed the cool breeze that rose from the bay forty feet below. Manuel began to warm up before jogging, doing stretching exercises, then pushups. Several pigeons scattered around him as he flexed his arms. Willie looked up when he heard a noise, and stared at the pink house behind them, a red bougainvillea vine clinging to the balcony. Suddenly his brush stopped in midair. “Just look at that!” he cried. “I think I picked out the wrong subject; there are two much more interesting sculptures than La Rogativa on the balcony above us!” Two girls in bikinis were sunning themselves, lying on colorfully striped deck chairs. One was a redhead and the other one had raven-black hair.
“I think I know who they are,” Manuel said. “Didn’t we visit that house with Mother when we were children? I remember the steep marble stairs and the prickly bougainvillea. We both got scratched when we ran up the steps.”
“That’s Esmeralda Márquez’s house, Mother’s best friend from Ponce,” said Willie. “Don’t you remember Perla and Coral Ustariz, who moved to the States? I remember them clearly.”
Manuel was always amazed at his brother’s memory. Willie couldn’t have been more than four years old when Isabel visited Esmeralda, and yet Willie remembered the episode better than he did. Manuel got up and they stood side by side, staring open-mouthed at the two pigtailed brats turned into Venuses, whose bikinis seemed no larger than postage stamps. “They must have glued them on,” Manuel said in wonder.
“Perla and Coral Ustariz, hear us
! God bless your beautiful tits, as well as your gorgeous bottoms, the best foundations possible for an old friendship!” Manuel shouted, climbing on the Bishop’s billowing cassock and waving exuberantly at the girls from La Rogativa’s pedestal. He let out a whistle which landed on Coral’s ear like a pesky mosquito. Willie climbed up on the medieval walls and began to wave his arms at the girls, too.
Coral nudged Perla with her foot. She was barefoot and her toenails were painted a bright red. Perla had fallen asleep on her chair, cooled by the breeze that wafted through the mahogany balusters. “Get up and get the pitcher of lemonade from the refrigerator,” Coral told her, “so we can get rid of those monkeys pounding their chests down there.” Perla opened her eyes and looked down. “What a pair! The short one looks like a hairy caveman and the tall one looks like a Viking. What do they think we are—birds in a cage for them to ogle?”
Manuel replied promptly, “We don’t think you’re birds at all, just two beautiful chicks! Come down and say hello to your old friends.”
Perla laughed and stared back. The short one had dark skin and a curly—almost kinky—cushion of hair on his head. But his features were finely chiseled, and she found him very good-looking. He was wearing orange shorts and a Save the Earth T-shirt, the same as the tall, brawny one. Coral, annoyed, nudged her sister again, and Perla went inside and came back with a ceramic pitcher full of iced lemonade, which she promptly emptied over the balcony’s rim.
House on the Lagoon Page 31
