The Sum of Our Days

by Isabel Allende

  A Peculiar Daughter-in-Law

  LET ME GO BACK FIVE YEARS and remind you how your sister-in-law appeared in our lives. In 1988 I was living with Willie in California, you were studying in Virginia, and Nico, alone in Caracas, was finishing his last year at the university. He had announced during a telephone call that he was in love with one of his classmates and wanted to bring her to meet us, his feelings for her were serious. I asked straight out whether he wanted me to ready one room or two, and he answered, rather ironically, that from the point of view of the Opus Dei sleeping with a boyfriend would be unpardonable. Celia’s parents were outraged by the sin of their traveling together without being married, even though she was twenty-five years old, and worse, that she was going to the home of a divorced Chilean atheist, Communist, and author of books banned by the church: me. That’s all we need, I thought. Two rooms, for the present. Two of Willie’s sons were living with us and my mother decided to come from Chile at just that time, so I improvised an army recruit’s sleeping bag for Nico in the kitchen. My mother and I went to the airport to pick them up. We saw your brother, looking like the same clumsy adolescent, in the company of a person striding along with strong steps and carrying a bundle on her back that from a distance looked like a weapon, but turned out to be a guitar case. I suppose it was to annoy her mother, who had been a queen in some Caribbean beauty contest, that Celia walked like John Wayne, dressed in shapeless olive drab pants, mountain climbing boots, and a baseball cap pulled down over one eye. You had to look twice to discover how pretty she was; she had fine features, expressive eyes, elegant hands, broad hips, and an intensity in her gaze that was difficult to look away from. The young woman my son had fallen for came toward us defiantly, as if saying, “If you like me, fine, and if not, well, fuck you.” She seemed so different from Nico that I was sure she was pregnant and they were planning a hasty wedding, but that turned out not to be true. It may have been that Celia just needed to get away from her surroundings for a while, and that feeling as if she were in a straitjacket, she had grabbed onto my son with the desperation of a person drowning.

  When we got to the house, your brother announced that the sleeping bag in the kitchen would not be necessary because things had changed between them, so I put them in the same room. My mother took me by one arm and dragged me into the bathroom.

  “If your son chose this girl, there’s a good reason; your role is to love her and keep your mouth shut.”

  “But she smokes a pipe, Mamá!”

  “It would be worse if she smoked opium.”

  It was easy for me to love Celia, even though I was a little shocked by her bold frankness and brusque ways—we Chileans tiptoe around a subject as if we were walking on eggs—and in less than half an hour she had expounded her ideas on inferior races, leftists, atheists, artists, and homosexuals, all of whom were depraved. She asked me please to let her know when anyone in any of those categories was coming to visit, she would prefer not to be present. That night, however, Celia kept us laughing with off-color jokes we hadn’t heard since the easy-going days in Venezuela, where happily the concept of “politically correct” does not exist and you can make jokes on any subject you choose, and then took her guitar from its case and sang to us in an engaging voice the best songs in her repertoire. We were captivated.

  SHORTLY AFTER, Celia and Nico were married in Caracas, in a long, drawn-out ceremony during which you threw up in the bathroom—I think out of jealousy because you were losing exclusive rights to your brother—and from which my family took early leave as it seemed that we didn’t fit in. We knew almost no one there and Nico had warned us that his bride’s relatives did not feel kindly toward us. We were political refugees and had escaped Pinochet’s dictatorship, and therefore we were probably Communists with no social standing, or money, and we didn’t belong to the Opus Dei. We weren’t even practicing Catholics. The newlyweds moved into the house I had bought when I was still living in Caracas, though it was too big for them, and Alejandro, your first nephew, was born a year later. I shot out of San Francisco, flew hour after hour—counting the minutes and shivering with anticipation—and in Caracas took into my arms a newborn smelling of mother’s milk and talcum powder while out of the corner of my eye I studied my daughter-in-law and my son with growing admiration. They were two little kids playing with dolls. Your brother, who only a short time before had been an irresponsible boy who risked his life climbing mountains and swimming with sharks in the open sea, now was changing diapers, warming bottles, and cooking pancakes for breakfast, side by side with his wife.

  The one worry in the lives of this couple was that the criminal element in Caracas had targeted their house. They had stolen things countless times; they had taken three cars right out of the garage, and now alarms, bars on the windows, and electrically wired grilles that would roast a careless cat that brushed them with a whisker had no effect. Every time they came home, Celia stayed in the car, holding the baby and with the motor running, while Nico, pistol in hand, got out and, the way you see in films, checked the house from top to bottom to be sure that some cold-blooded intruder wasn’t hiding somewhere. They lived in fear, which worked out well for me since it made it easier to convince them to move to California, where they would be safe and could count on our help. Willie and I fixed up a wonderful little bohemian garret with a tower overlooking the panorama of San Francisco Bay. It was on a third floor and there was no elevator, but they were young and strong and they could fly up and down the stairs with baby paraphernalia, shopping bags, and the garbage. I waited for them with all the nervous anticipation of a bride-to-be, prepared to squeeze the last drop out of my new status as a grandmother. More than once I wound the little music boxes and the mobiles hanging from the ceiling of Alejandro’s room and sang in whispers the nursery songs I had learned when you and your brother were little. The wait seemed eternal, but time inevitably passes and finally they arrived.

  At first my friendship with Celia stumbled along in fits and starts. Mother- and daughter-in-law came from widely divergent ideologies, but if we had any idea of bickering over differences, life eliminated what might have been bad blood with a few knocks to the head. Soon we forgot any germ of discord and concentrated on the demands of raising a child—and then two more—while adapting to a new language and our situation as immigrants. Although we didn’t know it then, a year later we would have our most brutal test: caring for you, Paula. There would be no time for foolishness. Celia very quickly cut the strings that bound her to her fanatic Catholicism and began to question other precepts that had been hammered into her head in her youth. As soon as she realized that in the United States she was not considered white, the racism faded away, and her friendship with Tabra had swept away her prejudices against artists and persons with leftist leanings. Of homosexuals, however, best not to speak. She hadn’t as yet met Sabrina’s mothers.

  Nico and Celia enrolled in an intensive English course, and the happy task of taking care of my grandson fell to me. As I wrote, Alejandro crawled around on the floor, kept captive by the dog gate we installed at the door. If he got tired, he would stick his pacifier in his mouth, drag over his pillow, and fall asleep at my feet. When it was time to eat, he tugged a few times on my skirt to pull me from the trance I tend to sink into when I write, and I would distractedly reach for his bottle and he would drink it without a sound. Once he unplugged the cable of my computer and I lost forty-eight pages of my new book, but instead of throttling him, as I would have any other mortal, I ate him up with kisses. The pages weren’t good anyway.

  My happiness was nearly complete; you were all that was lacking. In 1991 you had recently married Ernesto and were living in Spain, but you already had plans to move to California, where we would all be together. On December 6 of that same year, Paula, you went to the hospital with a stomachache and a cold too long ignored. You don’t know what happened there. Hours later you were in intensive care in a coma, and five eternal months would go by before
you were handed over to me in a vegetative state, with severe brain damage. You were breathing; that was your only sign of life. You were paralyzed and your eyes were black pools that no longer reflected light, and in the months that followed, you changed so much that it was difficult to recognize you. With the help of Ernesto, who refused to admit that in reality he was already a widower, we brought you to my home in California on a harrowing flight across the Atlantic and the continental United States. Then Ernesto had to leave you with me and go back to his job. I never imagined that the dream of having my daughter close to me would come true in such tragic fashion. Celia was near the time of giving birth to Andrea. I remember her reaction when they lowered you from the ambulance on a stretcher. She clung to Alejandro, retreated, trembling, her eyes wide with shock, as Nico paled and took a step forward; he leaned down to give you a kiss, as his tears rained down on you. For you this world ended on December 6, 1992, exactly one year after you entered the hospital in Madrid. Days later, when we scattered your ashes in a nearby forest, Celia and Nico informed me that they planned to have another child. Nicole was born ten months later.

  Green Tea for Sadness

  WILLIE REALIZED WITH DESPERATION that Jennifer was gradually committing suicide. An astrologer had told him that his daughter was “in the house of death.” According to Fu, there are souls who unconsciously try to achieve divine ecstasy by way of the expeditious path of drugs; maybe Jennifer needed to escape the gross reality of this world. Willie believes that he has transmitted bad genes to his children. His great-great-grandfather had arrived in Australia with shackles on his legs, covered with pustules and lice, one among a hundred and sixty thousand wretches the English sent to that land to serve out their sentences. The youngest of the convicts, sentenced for stealing bread, was nine years old, and the eldest was an old lady of eighty-two who’d been accused of stealing two pounds of cheese and who hanged herself a few days after her ship docked. Willie’s ancestor, accused of who knows what rubbish, had not been hanged because he was a knife-sharpener. In those years, having a trade or knowing how to read meant that instead of being hanged you were sent to Australia. The man was among the strong ones who survived, thanks to his ability to absorb suffering and alcohol, an aptitude he passed on to nearly all his descendants. Very little is known about Willie’s grandfather, but his father died of cirrhosis. Willie himself spent decades of his life without tasting a drop of alcohol because it triggers his allergies, but if he started, the amount gradually crept up. I have never seen Willie drunk. Before he reaches that point, he chokes as if he had swallowed a fistful of hair and is rendered inoperative by a ferocious headache; we both know, however, that if it weren’t for those blessed allergies, he would have ended up like his father. Only now, after reaching sixty, has he learned to limit himself to a single glass of white wine and feel satisfied. It is said that we cannot duck our heritage, and his three children—all drug addicts—seem to confirm that. They do not have the same mother, but in the family lines of his first and second wives there is also addiction, handed down from their grandfathers. The only child who has never waged war against Willie is Jason, his second wife’s son by another man, whom he loves as if he were his own. “Jason doesn’t have my blood; that’s why he’s normal,” Willie tends to comment in the tone of someone reporting a natural event like the tides or the migration of wild ducks.

  When I met him, Jason was a boy of eighteen, with a lot of talent for writing but lacking discipline, though I was sure that sooner or later he would acquire it. That’s what it takes to deal with the rigors of life. He planned to be a writer some day, but in the meantime he was contemplating his navel. He would write two or three lines and come running to ask me if maybe there was potential there for a story, but it never went any further than that. I myself pushed him out of the house to go study at a college in southern California, where he graduated with honors, and when he returned to live with us he brought his girlfriend, Sally. Jason’s biological father had a volatile temperament that tended to explode with unpredictable consequences. When Jason was only a few weeks old, there was an accident that was never clarified. His father said that the baby had fallen off the changing table, but his mother and the physicians suspected that he had been struck on the head, denting his skull. They had to operate, and by some miracle the baby came out sound—after spending a lot of time in the hospital while his parents were getting a divorce. From the hospital he was passed to the care of the state; then his mother took him to live with an aunt and uncle who according to Jason were true saints, and finally she brought him to California. When he was three, the boy went to live with his father because it seems that the building where his mother lived did not accept children. What kind of building would that be? When she married Willie, she reclaimed the boy. Later, when they were divorced, the child picked up his belongings and without hesitation went to live with Willie. In the meantime, his biological father made sporadic appearances, and on occasion again mistreated him—until Jason was old enough, and had the physical presence to defend himself. One night of heavy drinking and recriminations in his father’s cabin in the mountains, where they’d gone for a few days’ vacation, the man starting hitting Jason, who had promised himself he would never again allow himself to be victimized, and he responded with all the fear and rage that had accumulated for years, and used his father’s face for a punching bag. Horrified, he drove several hours through a stormy night to get home; his shirt was stained with blood and he was nearly sick with guilt. Willie congratulated him; it was time to lay out the ground rules, he said. That distressing incident established an accord of respect between father and son. The violence was never repeated, and now they have a good relationship.

  THAT YEAR OF MOURNING, of too much work, of financial difficulties and problems with my stepchildren, was undermining the foundation of my relationship with Willie. There was too much chaos in our lives. I wasn’t adapting to the United States. I felt that my heart was growing cold, that it wasn’t worth the effort to keep on rowing against the current; the energy needed to keep us afloat was disproportionate. I thought about leaving, running away, taking Nico and his family to Chile, where at last, after sixteen years of military dictatorship, democracy had been restored, and where my parents lived. Get a divorce, that’s what I have to do, I would mutter under my breath, but I must have said it aloud more than once because Willie cocked an ear when he heard the word divorce. He had gone that route twice before and was determined there would not be a third time, and he pressed me to go with him to see a counselor. For years I had made fun of Tabra’s therapist, a wild-haired alcoholic whose counsel consisted of exactly the same package of platitudes I would have given without charge. In my opinion, therapy was a mania of North Americans, a very spoiled people unable to tolerate the normal difficulties of life. When I was young, my grandfather had instilled in me the stoic notion that life is hard, and when facing a problem there is nothing to do but grit our teeth and keep going. Happiness is pure kitsch; we come into the world to suffer and learn. Fortunately, the hedonism of Venezuela shook my belief in my grandfather’s medieval precepts and gave me permission to enjoy myself without feeling guilty. At the time of my youth in Chile, no one visited a therapist—except for certifiable lunatics and Argentine tourists—so I strongly resisted Willie’s suggestion, but he was so persistent that finally I gave in and went with him. More accurately, he took my arm and dragged me there.

  The psychologist turned out to look like a monk with a shaved skull, who drank green tea and sat through most of the session with his eyes closed. In Marin County, at any time of day, you see men riding bicycles, jogging in shorts, or savoring a cappuccino at little sidewalk tables. “Don’t these people work?” I once asked Willie. “They’re all therapists,” he’d answered. Which may be why I felt so skeptical when we met with Bald Head, who was really very wise, as I soon found out. His office was a bare room painted a kind of pea green and decorated with a large wall hanging—a ma
ndala, I think they’re called. Willie and I sat cross-legged on cushions on the floor while the monk sipped his Japanese tea like a little bird. We began talking and soon a whole avalanche was unleashed. Willie and I each tried to get our stories in first, to tell him about what had happened with you, about the terrifying life Jennifer lived, about Sabrina’s fragility and a thousand other problems, and my desire to say, The hell with it, and disappear. The tea-sipper listened without interrupting, and when only a few minutes were left to end the session, he opened his heavy lidded eyes and looked at us with an expression of genuine sorrow. “What sadness there is in your lives!” he murmured. Sadness? Actually, that hadn’t occurred to either of us. All the air blew out of our rage in an instant, and deep in our bones we felt a grief as vast as the Pacific Ocean, a pain we hadn’t wanted to admit out of pure and simple pride. Willie took my hand, pulled me to his cushion, and we hugged each other tight. For the first time, we admitted that our hearts were broken. It was the beginning of our reconciliation.