I fell in love with Zorro. Although I could not recount his erotic feats in the book in the detail I would have liked to, I can imagine them. My favorite sexual fantasy is for that appealing hero to quietly climb to my balcony, make love to me in shadows with the wisdom and patience of Don Juan, undeterred by my cellulite and my years, and disappear at dawn. I lie drowsing between the wrinkled sheets without a hint of who the gallant was who so favored me, because he never took off his mask. No guilt assigned.
Summer
SUMMER CAME WITH ITS USUAL pandemonium of bees and squirrels. The garden was at its peak, as were Willie’s allergies: he will never give up counting the petals of each rose. But that has never stood in the way of his monumental achievements at the grill, something Lori also participates in; she left behind her many years as a vegetarian when Dr. Miki Shima, as much a vegetarian as she, convinced her that she needed more protein. Our heated swimming pool attracted hordes of children and visitors. The days grew longer under the sun, slow, with no clock, like days in the Caribbean. Tabra was the only one who was missing; she was in Bali, where they make some of the pieces she uses in her jewelry. Lagarto-Emplumado went with her for a week, but he had to return to California because of his fear of snakes and the packs of hungry, mangy dogs. It seems that he was opening the door to his room and a little green snake slithered by, brushing his hand. It was one of the most lethal snakes there are. That same night something warm, moist, and furry dropped from the roof, landed on them, and then scurried out of the room. They couldn’t turn on the light in time to see it. Tabra said that it must have been an opossum, and she punched her pillow a few times and went back to sleep, while Lagarto spent the rest of the night on guard, with all the lights on and his knife in his hand, with no idea what an opossum might be.
Juliette and her boys spent several weeks with us. Aristotelis is the most polite and considerate member of the tribe. He was born with a slight tendency toward tragedy, like any Greek worth his salt, and from the time he was a boy had taken on the role of being his mother’s and his brother’s protector. Contact with the other children had lightened his load, and he became a comedian. I think he will be an actor, for in addition to being dramatic and handsome, he gets all the leads in school plays. Achilleas is still a little angel, prodigal with smiles and kisses; we spoil him outrageously. He swims like an eel and can spend twelve hours in the water. We pull him out wrinkled and sunburned and make him go pee in the bathroom. I don’t like to think what all must be in that water. “Don’t worry, ma’am,” I was reassured by the pool maintenance man when I shared my doubts with him. “The chlorine content is so high that you could have a corpse in there and still have no problem.”
The kids changed day by day. Willie had always said that Andrea had the same features Alejandro has, but just a little askew, and that one day they would settle into place. Apparently that’s what was happening, though she paid no attention because she lives in her own world, dreaming, with her nose in her books, lost in impossible adventures. Nicole has turned out to be very smart, an excellent student, as well as sociable, friendly, and a flirt, the only one in the matriarchal tribe with that quality; none of the rest of us is dying to seduce anyone. With her esthetic instinct, she can with one appraising look destroy any woman’s pleasure in what she’s wearing—with the exception of Andrea, who is indifferent to fashion and is always in some costume or other, her style since early childhood. For months we watched Nicole going about carrying a mysterious black case, and we prodded her so hard that finally one day she showed us what was inside. It was a violin, which she had borrowed at school because she wanted to join the orchestra. She placed it to her shoulder, took up the bow, closed her eyes, and left us awestruck with a short and impeccably performed concert of melodies we had never heard her practice. Alejandro’s skeleton shot upward with a great spurt, just in time, because I was planning to have the doctor give him growth hormones, the way they do cows, so he wouldn’t end up a shrimp. I was afraid that he was the only one of my descendants to inherit my undesirable genes, but that year, to our relief, he had saved himself. Although he already had the shadow of a mustache, he was still behaving like a madcap, making faces in mirrors and bothering everyone with inopportune jokes, determined to avoid at any cost the anguish of growing up and taking care of himself. He had announced that he planned to live with his parents, one foot in each house, until he was married or was kicked out. “Hurry and grow up before we lose patience,” we often warned him, tired of his clownish pranks. The twins hit the pool in two plastic floating turtles, observed from afar by Olivia, who never lost hope they would drown. Of all the fears that dog had when she came into our family, only two remain: umbrellas and the twins. All these little ones and the friends who often came with them ended the summer as tan as Africans, their hair turned green from the chemicals in the pool that are so lethal they burned the grass. Anywhere the swimmers set their wet feet, no grass would grow.
My grandchildren were at an age to discover love, all of them except Achilleas, that is, who was still at the stage of asking his mother to marry him. The kids hid in the nooks and crannies of the House of the Spirits and played in the dark. Their conversations in the pool often made their parents uneasy.
“Don’t you know that you’ve broken my heart?” Aristotelis asked, breathing heavily through his mask.
“I don’t love Eric anymore. I can come back to you, if you like,” Nicole proposed between dives.
“I don’t know, I have to think about it. I can’t go on suffering like this.”
“Well, think quick, otherwise I’ll call Peter.”
“If you don’t love me, I might as well just kill myself today!”
“Okay. But don’t do it in the pool. Willie will have a fit.”
Rites of Passage
THAT SUMMER OF 2005 I finished writing Inés of My Soul and sent the manuscript off to Carmen Balcells with a big sigh of relief because it had been such a big project, and then, with Nico, Lori, and the children, we went on safari to Kenya. For several weeks we camped among the Samburu and Masai to watch the migration of the wildebeests, millions of them with the look of black cows racing terror-stricken across the Serengeti to Masai-Mara, a time of orgy for other animals that come to feast on the laggards. In one week nearly a million calves are born in this stampede. From fragile little airplanes we saw the migration like a gigantic shadow spreading across the African plains below. Lori had conceived the plan to take the children every year to some unforgettable place that would pique their curiosity and demonstrate that despite distances people are alike everywhere. The similarities that unite us are much greater than the differences that separate us. The year before we had gone to the Galapagos Islands, where the children swam with sea lions, turtles, and manta rays; Nico swam for hours out in open water behind sharks and whales as Lori and I ran from pillar to post looking for a boat we could use to rescue him from a sure death. By the time we found one, Nico was already swimming back with strong, steady strokes. We had hauled to Kenya Willie’s cases of photographic equipment, his tripods, and the gigantic lens that never once captured an African beast because it was too clumsy to handle. Nicole took the best picture of the trip with a disposable camera: the eighteen-inch, blue-tongued kiss a giraffe planted on my face. Willie’s heavy lens was eventually left in the tent while he used other more modest ones to immortalize the always quick smile of the Africans; their dusty markets; the five-year-old children tending the family herd in the middle of nowhere at three hours’ march from the nearest village; the lion cubs and slim giraffes. In an open jeep we drove among the herds of elephants and buffalo, to muddy rivers where whole families of hippopotamuses were disporting themselves, and followed the wildebeests in their inexplicable race.
One of our guides, Lidilia, a pleasant Samburu with snow-white teeth and three long feathers crowning the bead adornment he wore on his head, became Alejandro’s friend. Lidilia proposed to Alejandro that he stay there with hi
m and be circumcised by a tribal witch doctor as the first step in his rite of passage. After that he would have to spend a month alone in the wild, hunting with a lance. If he succeeded in killing a lion, he could choose the most desirable girl in the village, and his name would be recorded along with those of other great warriors. My grandson, terrified, counted the days till he could get back to California. We called on Lidilia to translate when a warrior of some years wanted to buy Andrea as a wife. He offered us several cows for her, and since we refused, he added some sheep. Nicole telepathically communicated with the guides and the animals, and she has a notable memory for details, so she kept us informed: elephants change a complete set of teeth every ten years until they are sixty, at which time no new ones come in and they are condemned to die of hunger; a male giraffe measures nineteen and a half feet in height, his heart weighs thirteen pounds, and he eats a hundred and thirty-two pounds of leaves every day; among antelopes, the alpha male must defend his harem from his rivals and mate with the females, which leaves him very little time to eat, so he grows weak and another male bests him in combat and drives him off. The position of alpha male lasts about ten days. By then Nicole knew what it was to mate. Even though I am not made for the rustic life, and nothing horrifies me so much as not having an available mirror, I couldn’t complain about the comfort of the trip. The tents were deluxe, and thanks to Lori, who arranges things to the last detail, we had hot water bottles in our beds, miner’s lamps so we could read on dark nights, lotions to fend off mosquitoes, an antidote for snakebite, and every afternoon we had English tea served in a porcelain teapot as we watched a pair of crocodiles devour a forsaken gazelle.
BACK IN CALIFORNIA, before summer ended, Alejandro had his rite of passage, though it was somewhat different from the one the Samburu Lidilia had proposed. He signed on for a program Lori and Nico discovered on the Internet, and once the four parents were convinced that it was not a ploy of some pedophiles and sodomites, they allowed him to go. Just as Lidilia had explained, every male should go through a ceremony marking his passage from child to adult. In lieu of such a tradition, several instructors had organized a three-day retreat in the woods in which boys would reinforce the concepts of respect, honor, courage, responsibility, the obligation to protect the weak, and other basic norms that in our culture tend to be relegated to medieval chivalric novels. Alejandro was the youngest of the group. The night he left I had a terrifying dream: my grandson was sitting by a bonfire among a crew of hungry orphans shivering with cold—a scene from a Dickens tale. I implored Nico to go get his son before something awful happened in these sinister woods where he was camping with a gang of strangers, but he paid no attention to me. At the end of the three days he went to get him, and they got back in time for Sunday dinner at the family table. We’d cooked beans, using a Chilean recipe, and the house smelled of corn and sweet basil.
The whole family was waiting for the initiate, who arrived filthy and hungry. Alejandro, who for years had said that he didn’t want to grow up, seemed older. I hugged him with a grandmother’s frenetic love, told him my dream, and it turned out that his experience had not been exactly like that, although there were a few orphans and a bonfire. There were also some delinquents who, according to my grandson, “were good kids who had done some stupid things because they didn’t have any family.” He told us that they’d sat in a circle around the fire, and each one told what caused him pain. I proposed that we do the same thing, since we were in a tribal circle, and one by one we gave our answer to the question posed to Alejandro. Willie said that he was anguished over the situation of his children: Jennifer, lost to us, and his two sons on drugs; I spoke of missing you; Lori, of her infertility . . . and all of us in turn exposed our deepest sorrow.
“And what gives you pain, Alejandro?” I asked.
“My fights with Andrea. But I’ve decided to get along better with her, and I will, because I learned that we’re responsible for our own sadness.”
“That isn’t always true. I’m not responsible for Paula’s death, or Lori for her infertility,” I argued.
“Sometimes we can’t avoid sadness, but we can control our reaction to it. Willie has Jason. As for you, because you lost Paula you created a foundation and you’ve kept her memory alive among us. Lori couldn’t have children, but she has the three of us,” he said.
Forbidden Love
JULIETTE DIDN’T WORK DURING those months she lent her body to carry Lori and Nico’s baby because she had to subject herself to the scourge of fertility drugs. The family had taken on the responsibility of looking after her, but once that dream was put aside she went out to look for work. She was hired by a broker who was planning to buy Asian art in San Francisco for his galleries in Chicago. Ben was fifty-seven well-lived years old, and he must have had a lot of money because he was as splendid as a duke. He planned to commute frequently from Chicago, and in his absence have someone in California look after the precious objects imported from the East. At the end of his first interview with Juliette, he invited her to dinner at the best restaurant in Marin County, a yellow Victorian house set among pines and masses of climbing roses. After several glasses of white wine, he decided that not only was she the ideal assistant, he was taken with her personally. By a coincidence worthy of a novel, Juliette learned during their conversation that Ben had known Manoli’s first wife, the Chilean who had run off with her yoga instructor on her wedding day. He told Juliette that the woman was living in Italy and was in a fourth marriage to a magnate in olive oil.
It had been an eternity since Juliette had felt desired. The year before he died, Manoli had gradually ceased to be the passionate lover who had seduced her when she was twenty; his illness was corroding his bones and his spirit. Ben proposed to fill that void, and we watched Juliette come to life, resplendent, with a new light in her eyes and a mischievous smile dancing on her lips. Her life was turned upside down; she was taken to expensive places, restaurants, walks, theater, opera. Ben showered gifts and attention on Aristotelis and Achilleas. He was such an expert lover that he could make her happy over the telephone; that made his absences bearable, and when he came to California she would be eagerly awaiting him. Lori and I used one of our quiet little mid-afternoon breaks, with jasmine tea and dates, to corral her. It seemed to us that her attitude was slightly evasive, but we didn’t have to press too hard before she told us about her affair with her boss. I heard that alarm bell that comes with experience, and I put in my two cents to warn her that she shouldn’t mix work with love, because she could lose both. “He is using you, Juliette. How convenient! He has an assistant and a lover for the price of one,” I told her. But she was already trapped. Both Lori and I had noticed that Juliette attracted men who had nothing to offer her: they were married, too old for her, too far away, or incapable of making a commitment. Ben might be one of those, because to us he seemed a little slippery. According to Willie, in today’s hedonistic California, no man would take on the responsibility of a young widow with two small sons, but according to my astrologer, whom I had consulted in secret so I wouldn’t be laughed at, it was all a matter of waiting three or four years, when the planets would send Juliette the ideal husband. Ben had moved in ahead of the planets.
When we returned from Kenya, Juliette’s amorous fling had become more complicated. It turned out that Ben had not earned his fortune with a good eye for art; his wife had inherited it. The galleries were just a diversion to keep him occupied and riding the crest of the social wave. Ben’s frequent trips to San Francisco and his whispered telephone conversations were beginning to raise his wife’s suspicions.
“It isn’t a good idea to get involved with a married man, Juliette,” I told her, remembering the foolish things I had done when I was young, and the price I had paid.
“It isn’t what you’re thinking, Isabel. It was inevitable; we fell in love at first sight. He didn’t seduce me or deceive me, it all happened by mutual consent.”
“What are you goi
ng to do now?”
“Ben has been married for thirty years. He greatly respects his wife and adores his children. This is his first infidelity.”
“I have the feeling that he’s a chronic adulterer, Juliette, but that isn’t your problem, it’s his wife’s. Yours is to look out for yourself and your sons.”
To convince me of her gallant’s honesty and his feelings for her, Juliette showed me his letters, which to me seemed suspiciously prudent. They weren’t love letters, they were legal documents.
“He’s covering his back. Maybe he’s afraid you will charge him with sexually harassing you on the job, and that’s illegal here. Anyone who reads these letters, including his wife, would think that you took the initiative, that you trapped him, and that you’re the one doing the chasing.”
“How can you say that!” she exclaimed, shocked. “He’s waiting for the opportune moment to tell his wife.”
“I don’t think he’ll do that, Juliette. They have children and a lifetime together. I feel sorry for you, but I feel sorrier for his wife. Put yourself in her place; she’s a middle-aged woman with an unfaithful husband.”
“If Ben isn’t happy with her—”
“He can’t have everything, Juliette. It’s up to Ben to choose between you and the good life she offers him.”
“I don’t want to be the cause of a divorce. I told him that he should try and reconcile with his wife, that they should both go to therapy, or that he should take her to Europe on a second honeymoon,” she said and burst into tears
I was afraid that at that rate the game would go on until the thread broke at the weakest point: Juliette. I didn’t insist any further, though, because I was afraid I would drive her away. Besides, I am not infallible, as Willie reminded me, and it might be that Ben was really in love with her and that he would get a divorce in order to be with her, in which case, I, for behaving like a bird of bad omen, would lose the friend I had come to love like another daughter.
The Sum of Our Days Page 30
