All My Life by Your Side

by Claudio Hernández

  - "You have not kissed me for many years."

  - "I know."

  - "Then what? Where is that Laura I met at seventeen?"

  Laura shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. She was sitting in a chair at the dining room table.

  - "Yes, I love you, Pedro." -And Laura's eyes gleamed like two large drops of water in the sunlight that came through the window silently.

  - "Then why not a single kiss?" -Pedro lowered the volume of his voice again and cleared his throat at the end of the question.

  - "A lot of things have happened ..."

  - "It started much earlier," -Pedro cut her off like a freshly sharpened blade.

  - "I know Pedro, too."

  - "Since you went alone to Amarilla or Cocoreros Beaches." -Pedro paused, his fist covering her mouth and continuing. - Ever since you met that girl."

  Laura's heart sank, like a hammer blow. At that moment, she thought that Pedro would have discovered something of her history with Adèle.

  - "What did you see?" -Laura asked, leaving the half-cup of coffee on the small plate on the table.

  - "Me?" -Pedro opened his eyes almost to the maximum of his musculature showing red basins and two white balloons.

  Laura relaxed a little, and her noticeable white color of her skin turned pink now. He does not know anything, she thought, and that comforted her.

  - "So, you do not know anything at all ..."

  - "What do I have to know?" -Pedro was still wide-eyed and an idiot expression on his face.

  - "Nothing. That I met a friend, and we talked about a lot of things about women, and that way I spent the afternoons when you took your naps, or when you were working.

  - "Repairing trains," -said a more relaxed Pedro, his eyes sunken this time.

  -That! -She took her right hand to her chest instinctively.

  - "Does something hurt you?"

  - "No."

  - "Oh!"

  And then the short conversation ended. Pedro knew she still loved him, but the marriage was broken. He also thought that if he had been more fiery or detailed or perhaps more affectionate, as was said in Murcia, things would have been different. But also, thought about all the events that happened in only two years and thought that was what ultimately struck her. Now he needed time, he thought, and he thought until his brains melted. Always the same rhetoric.

  Outside a car stopped in the dry with a creaking noise and a sudden smell of burnt rubber. Then he heard insults in Catalan and a horn sounding over the murmur of the people. Neither Peter nor Laura rose from their posts to see what had happened.

  It did not matter now.

  And Laura discovered many things until 1986, many revolutionary inventions, new experiences, a new open society and beer and wine and what had more than ten degrees of alcohol.

  16

  Year 1986

  The Death of Her Husband Is Not Everything

  1986 marked Laura's fate again, and despite everything, she felt that she truly was still in love with Pedro. Sometimes, one must pass certain things to realize what you feel for that person. And Laura knew that the candle flame was still on, but it was too late. The faint flame died suddenly on a cold morning under the blankets of the double bed.

  Three years ago, certain little things revolutionized Laura, only her life. As a child, she saw all those rubbish as something magical and unsettling. It was the Color Television. She had already seen one in black and white before, but it did not matter, before the portable record player, the HiFi music chain later, the Cassettes player. Accustomed the whole life listening to the hoarse voice of the radio, all this seemed magic. In the conversations, she had with his son Claudio, she mentioned them and said that it seemed impossible to be living all that revolution in her life.

  - "Do you know Claudio?" I bought a portable record player to listen to my vinyl records anywhere. This is a small suitcase that opens in two; one part is the speaker and the other where you put the disc of both sizes and has an arm with a needle that is the one that plays the music and sounds so good."

  - "Yeah Mom, life progresses, here we keep the radio as the main option anyway. But I've seen it in the downtown appliance store. It is still for sale. I think I'm going to buy a more fashion one that has already come out, compact because I want to have all the records from Alaska and Dinarama, Mecano or Tino Casal."

  - "What?"

  - "The record player is in many homes since the seventies Mom. I bought one. And now the second will fall."

  There was silence. That had been disregarded for Laura; she was more interested in the refrigerator or the washing machine than the record player.

  - "Ah!"

  On the other side of the communication, a giggling sound accompanied by an electric hum.

  - "And change the phone ..."

  - "Oh! Yes, son."

  - "And since the seventies, there is the cassette also known as cassette in French. It is like a pack of tobacco that carries two serrated wheels with a very long brown tape that plays music on the player. Do you remember those Camilo Sesto' s songs that I put in the house?"

  No, she did not remember. Laura pushed the receiver away from her ear and frowned at it. So, misplaced I am, she wondered and put the receiver back in her ear.

  - "And since the year 80 is the color television and the HiFi stereo sound.

  Decidedly, Laura had disregarded all that that now had found out with the little girl eyes.

  - "Well..." -her voice hesitated. - I just discovered now" -and her dimples appeared, wrinkled that Claudio did not see that year.

  And the conversation ends it to that point.

  She was so out of time.

  In 1985 Laura was already a hardened alcoholic, and even though Paula was not in the group since she left this world for a diabetes complication, she still had Montserrat as a friend and only comrade until 1986. Besides, her relationship with Pedro and as expected had deteriorated even more to the point of whispering the word "divorce" on her lips. She had sixty-one years old, and she still was finding out new things in the cosmopolitan Barcelona and all Cataluña. On more than one occasion she asked herself, why the hell had not stayed living in Cataluña after the return from France.

  They were going, both, holding of the arms, walking by the Ramblas of Barcelona, passing by endless kiosks, little stores selling flowers and others that have small dogs inside their cages barking for one thousand pesetas as new pets. At the end of everything, at the port, was the Colon's statue with his finger always pointing to the same place, to the sea. And the shit of the pigeons, each time, were more visible in the head of the statue and its large arm. They were walking nearby the tied ships and turned again to go up the steep hill of the Ramblas, this time in opposite direction.

  - "Paula suffered until the last moment" -explained Montserrat while Laura face turned white. No, it was not the appropriate time to talk about the death. Her heart jumped under her skeletal chest. - "But there is nothing to do, the day less indicated, take us all."

  - "But I do not want to suffer" -Laura said with her weak voice.

  - "Well, neither do I" -Montserrat said holding more to Laura's arm. The wind caresses her long hair without any speck of the blond hair she had.

  - "Why we do not talk about anything else?" -Laura asked, looking at her with her blue eyes, something she still held but they stopped illuminating as intensely as when she met Pedro or ... Adèle.

  Montserrat made a sudden stop in which his foot slipped slightly and with a grim expression in her eyes, said, - "okay, we will talk about the animals of the Zoo."

  - "Yes, that's good. That would be great, " -Laura added with a forced smile on her face.

  Things were starting to go wrong between the two of them, except when they drank together until they got drunk as a skunk. Montserrat stopped holding her arm. Laura felt like she was free of weight, which would have produced sciatica if she had. And that is that Montserrat was over ninety pounds and walked with a choking ch
ugging under her chest, except when she drank. There, the breathing left over.

  That night they did not stay at Laura's house to play Parchis or drink a glass of wine. Not tonight. Neither the next nor the next week that came after. Neither in the first months of 1983. In this sense, Pedro was glad not to have to endure so much chattering and giggling while trying to sleep and while their marriage screw up and everything ended there.

  After two weeks Pedro, retook advantage to speak with his wife.

  - "I'm going to die without you giving me one last kiss," -he said with tears in his eyes.

  The beer can lay on the table, dripping with drops of water that had once been frost in the refrigerator.

  - "Pedro, I've told you a thousand times that I'm going through a bad time. That I love you and that everything will return to normal." -She paused to take the beer can with her long fingers. - "If I do not go to the other neighborhood first."

  - "Take it as a joke. You're drinking too much lately."

  - "What?"

  - "What do you think? You think that I do not realize what you and your friends are doing lately?

  Laura took a sip of beer.

  - "She and I," -she corrected. - "Remember, Paula died three months ago."

  - "Well, whatever! You and the friend you have left. You only know how to make noise with the pachisi's dice and to laugh when you get drunk. -Pedro put his right thumb to his lips.

  - "Pedro!"

  - "The other day you told me something I never expected from you ..."

  - "What?" -Laura's throat sounded like a clogged, bubbling drain.

  - "Divorce." -Pedro bowed his head and his bald head crowned in the sunlight that entered throughout the open window.

  - " Did I say that? " -Laura knew she had said it, she had wanted it, and she even got to know the procedure and everything. Laura did not seem to love him anymore, and according to her, she had to escape from the terrible cage that she was.

  - "Yes!" -A fist of Pedro struck the couch, causing a muffled thud.

  Laura took another sip from the can, and her throat rang again like a drain ...

  - "I'd be dreaming," -she said, moving her eyes upward, showing two large white marbles.

  - "No. You were not dreaming," -Pedro said, with both hands on his knee, and as a small child, his eyes began to moisten.

  - "You know?"

  - "What?"

  - "In the kiosks, they sell sex magazines explicitly. The girls come out completely naked and are young. They are perfect, and you can kiss them if you feel like.

  Pedro stood with his mouth open.

  Had she really seen that?!!

  Laura remembered the first time she had one of those magazines in her hand, hiding behind a newspaper display as if she was doing something wrong. But that nevertheless she glimpsed with a strange anxiety and mixture of intense sensations that took her to the most beautiful memories that she had with Adèle and saw another magazine of naked men, but they did not call her attention. She preferred the women. Her libido at her advanced age still worked. She felt dark desires. Returning with Adèle, kissing her fleshy lips again, gently caress her hard breasts, her nipples, her sex.

  - "And have you seen that?"

  Laura turned her head toward the window to let out a faint smile.

  - "No. When you walk, you see things out of the corner of your eye. That's what Paula told me."

  - "Oh! Okay, but I do not need that," Pedro explained, leaning back on the couch.

  - "Do you need me?" -Laura changed her demeanor. - "Look at me! I'm a mummy. I'm all bones, and I would not put you even if I put my pussy in your mouth ..."

  Pedro alarmed, and his eyes widened as his mouth drew a perfect O filled with stupefaction.

  - "What? You got excited! -Laura never spoke to her husband like that, of course, he had not talked about their relationship after drinking since six o'clock in the morning, and it was now twelve o'clock.

  - "I only asked for a kiss before I died." It was Pedro's last words.

  The next morning, when the sun had run through the crystal window with his shiny, hot fingers, Pedro was no longer breathing, and his face was eerily cold. Not even those long fingers of the sun that caressed his face as soon as the blind went up, they could give him heat. Pedro was dead.

  - "Pedro?" -Laura was surprised that he was not rubbing his eyes like every morning. He was so asleep, -she thought-, something bad was happening with him. So, it was. - "Pedro?"

  Outside the cars were still buzzing and spitting bluish columns of smoke and the murmur of the people was already absorbing the singing of the birds and the strange noise of the pigeons.

  Laura approached Pedro. His face was bare and pale. White. And dry lips. Tight. His eyes were closed, and his eyelashes were drooping. The blanket was up to his neck, and one hand was clinging to her with stiff fingers with no glow on the skin.

  Laura put her hand up to his face and then her old fingertips felt cold and she was frightened. Laura's eyes widened, and they played inside their sockets like two empty, airless balls. She touched the back of her hand and indeed, it was cold. Laura's heart turned a greyhound running behind a hare and felt a cold sweat running all over her body. Then a lump in her throat, so painful that it was hard to breathe, and then her wet eyes began to shed the first tears of desperate crying afterwards. And only then, she knew that she had loved him too. To her husband. Her first love. But it was too late to say it to his face, and she remembered.

  - "Will you kiss me before I die?"

  That was the day before, and Laura ducked her head, and her lips searched for his, which were no longer there, but kissed them. A very cold kiss and of farewell. Laura kissed him after he died, not before, how much she regretted it bursting into an uncontrolled cry!

  - "Claudio."

  - "What do you do? Mom? -Her son's voice sounded sharper now because Laura had already changed the phone six months ago.

  - "Dad's dead."

  Suddenly, the silence took over the line of communication broken only a moment later by Laura's cry.

  Claudio made all preparations and the transfer of his father's corpse even though he was so sad, more than his mother. But he had to draw the strength to carry the whole paperwork job forward. That was the first and last time he visited Barcelona.

  When he entered his mother's apartment, there was only silence and profound emptiness. Dad was in the morgue waiting to be transferred. When Claudio saw the bluish face of his father, he threw himself on top of him, clenching his fists until his nails bleed and crying disconsolately. He kissed him again and again and struck the coffin with a fist that moved uneasily.

  During the whole trip, back home with Dad in the coffin inside a hearse that was running at high speed, Claudio could not contain his tears of sadness and rage. His mother, Laura, was repenting at his side, of everything that she made happen to his father since 1963. Well, everything she had not done.

  Arriving at Aguilas, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and friends, they were waiting for them in the San Jose Church with haggard eyes. The pain had once again entered the family and had broken the course of life. And suddenly inside, the word "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye" was repeated.

  He was buried two days later from the moment of his death and had to keep the coffin closed because his body was already swollen and began to stink unpleasantly. Nobody paid attention to the mass, and at the end, they followed the custom of making the journey from the San José Parish located in the Plaza España to the cemetery. Dragging their feet on the pavement, like heavy souls, if they had a chain snake pulling it attached to the ankle.

  The undertaker was the same as always. He had not yet died, and he recognized the family, so he dedicated a few words that they thanked him heartily. Pedro, in the darkness of the cushioned coffin and dressed in his best suit-because he said so when he was alive, was part of the other deceased inside the children with their feet touching the stone, they continued to rot with the passa
ge of time.

  Claudio was fifty-four years old.

  17

  Year 1990

  From Madrid To Heaven

  Laura lived her most agonizing years in Aguilas, after the death of her husband and repentance. And even if she was with her family, she did not feel complete. And once again she was wrong, but as it had already happened, she would not know until later. But for the moment she had mourned for almost four years and it was time to start again, a new life. This time the chosen destination was Madrid. Laura was already seventy-six years old and had become rebellious.

  - "Claudio, I'm leaving with Ana to live in Madrid," -Laura said quietly.

  - "But you have me now." Besides, are all your grandchildren and great-grandchildren who love you madly." -Claudio's voice was rising, and he began to count with the fingers of his hand. - "My children Jean and Ambre who are your grandchildren adore you and then there are your great-grandchildren Aroa, Rosa and Jesus who also eat you with kisses - Claudio was desperate.

  - "And my granddaughter Ana and my great-granddaughter Claudia are in Madrid," -Laura said, wrinkling her forehead. - "It is decided, I go to live a season with them. Continuing to live in Aguilas produces so much pain that I cannot stand it anymore." -Her hand went directly to her heart that was throbbing now.

  Claudio ducked his head down and pressed his lips together. It was not a matter of better or worse grandchildren, but his mother was already at an age who had divided her two legs, one in the graveyard and one in the ground. In 1990 and at seventy-six years, although she suffered cancer and healed, she had nothing, everything could be complicated in a matter of minutes by simple climate change. Aguilas was warm, and it was time to rest with her family, Claudio thought, but she ignored him. Also, Ana, along with her husband Juan, who had known a summer in Aguilas, came three or four times with her great-granddaughter Claudia, who grew like a well-rooted spike on the ground.

  - "Do whatever you want, Mom. I'm not going to tell you what you have to do with your life. But remember something." -The index finger was now pointing to Laura, who was sitting in a blue chair in Claudio's dining-room, in an intense white light projected by four light bulbs coiled in a designer lamp.