99 Days

by Jessica Galera Andreu

  Exhausted, he stopped moving while I stroked his hair. The water was still pouring over our heads and their cheeks were covered with blush, a consequence of the heat that embraced us. Marcos kissed me on the collarbone and let me put my feet back on the shower. Words were superfluous at a time like this, because what we felt was an electric current that was transmitted with the slightest gesture.

  CHAPTER 9

  When I woke up and extended my arm, I noticed the bed was empty. I lit the lamp and confirmed that Marcos wasn't there with me. I ran to the living room and found him there, sitting on the sofa, his face sunk in his hands, and a glass of water on the bedside table. When he noticed me, he turned and smiled in a different way.

  "Are you ill?" I asked him.

  “A little.”

  I walked towards him and sat beside him, grabbing his arm and resting my cheek on his shoulder.

  “Do you want me to call a doctor?” He shook his head, slowly.

  “No. No need, I'll be fine.”

  It had been almost a month since we had been married, and at times Marcos had managed to completely forget his illness. We made a couple of trips not too far from here. His brother Luis had insisted that a real honeymoon should lead us to disconnect even from the environment, but at the very least, he agreed to our request not to move too far, because we didn't want to waste time in terminals, trains, platforms and airports. We spent five days in a little house in the mountains, surrounded by mountains, a fantastic lake whose waters looked like a crystal and a blue sky like Marcos's eyes.

  Summer was approaching and the heat allowed us to extend days on the beach, much more crowded with people, although for the two of us there were only two of us in a meaning very different from the rest gave it. Everyone was looking for fun there. We were looking for our inner peace.

  Marcos hugged me and placed his head on my chest. I kissed him on the head and tying my fingers between his hair, we fell asleep on the sofa.

  A week later and taking advantage of the fact that Marcos had never felt bad again, I woke him up early. The sky was still orange when I straddled him and kissed him on the lips. He smiled but continued without moving, so I descended to his neck, his chest naked and... He held my face with his hands and made me return to his face to kiss me again.

  “So early, Delgado?” You're a bully.

  “Get up, Saavedra.”

  “What time is it?”

  “There's no time. Get up.”

  Marcos sat down on the bed, without me having moved away from his lap, and looked at the window, thus realizing how early it was. But he didn't ask me any questions or complain. He got up and, while he was getting dressed and showering, I prepared a quick breakfast.

  Once at the door, I walked up to his motorcycle and got on what had always been his seat. Marcos looked at me in a suggestive way.

  “Do you want to take her?”

  “Do you trust me? She's the only 'woman' I'm jealous of...

  With the pampering you give her.”

  Marcos approached me and kissed me on the lips again.

  "I pamper you much more," he complains.

  “Okay, do you trust me?”

  “Have you brought any?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, but don't run.”

  We put on our helmet and I turned on the motorcycle. I had worn one or the other a long time ago, so much so that Marcos had to give me one or the other indication, but he wanted to experience the sensation of feeling him behind me, clinging to my waist and the wind hitting me in the face in a different way than when I was traveling behind him.

  We reached an old abandoned polygon and, without that being the planned place, I left the road. There was no planned place, so what did it matter where. Just at the entrance to the polygon was a small park with two swings and a broken slide.

  "What is this place?" he asked me, as he took off his helmet, without even getting off the motorcycle.

  I had already gone down and walked towards the swings with a surprising determination. I turned and shrugged in answer to your question.

  Marcos got off the bike and followed me, slower. At times I was fascinated by the blind confidence he had in me; he didn't question anything, he didn't ask anything, he didn't protest. He just followed me anywhere.

  "Do you know that this place would seem to anyone a horrible place?" I asked him, as I climbed the swing.

  He fastened himself to the sidebar of the structure on which they were built.

  "Now... Anybody would have run away," he said with a smile.

  “But you're not just anyone.”

  I sat on my side on the swing, with the chain I was supposed to hold on to facing me, and the other one on my back. Marcos did the same thing on the next swing and so we stayed for a while, looking at each other, in silence.

  "I have something to tell you," I said.

  He kept silent and I assumed that if he was worried about what I had to say to him, he didn't tell me.

  “I'm pregnant.”

  Marcos prolonged the silence, although the brightness of his eyes showed the effect that the news had generated in him.

  “And what are you going to do?”

  The voice did not come out when he asked the question; it was only a whisper.

  “Why do you ask me that?”

  My tone was identical.

  “Because you're going to be alone, Claudia. And what you want will be...”

  I'm very clear about what I'm going to do, Marcos. But I want to know what you would like me to do.

  “To have it,” he replied immediately. “Let it be born. I’m going to have it, Marcos. We're going to have it.”

  He hurried down from the swing as I passed my leg to the other side. He knelt in front of me and embraced me with all his remaining strength, while, for the first time since I had met him, he started to cry. God knew that I tried everything not to end up the same, for pulling him in that moment when he was collapsing but I couldn't and we both cried without telling us anything until he was able to move away and look at me, smiling but with reddened eyes and his face bathed in tears. He placed his hands on my cheeks and I knelt beside him.

  "I swear he won't miss a thing," he said, "even if I'm not there. I am going to leave you enough money so that you can subsist for a long time without discomfort. It won't last forever, but at least it will give you a wide margin. Ask my parents for help when you need it, they'll be there for whatever it takes, my brother. Take the child often, please. And tell him about me...”

  "Marcos, that's enough," I asked him, as I caressed his face. He lowered his head, unable to hold my gaze.

  “I don't want you to talk to me about that. I'm going to work, and our son won't lack anything.”

  Marcos smiled.

  "Our son..." he muttered.

  "Our son," I confirmed. “We have many things to decide, things that concern his father and his mother. We're here, together, and we're going to decide them.”

  "His name," he said to me after a silent lake.

  "I'd love it if you'd choose him, although I have a couple of suggestions.”

  “I can't wait to hear them.”

  “Marcos, if it's a boy; Mar, if it's a girl.”

  “How original, Delgado.”

  I smiled and hit him on the shoulder affectionately.

  "I'm not in favour of calling children the same as parents," I explained, "it seems to me to be an obsolete and old-fashioned question, but I think that, given the circumstances, this is different."

  "That is fine with me. I was just kidding.” Even though he was smiling, I still wiped a couple more tears from his eyes. “My mother will love it. Can you imagine the look on his face when Luis told him they were going to give his daughter Daphne?”

  “It must have been similar to the moment your brother gave him a sequined dress for your wedding.”

  Marcos laughed and his face was illuminated again in a sincere way.

  “More or less.
Seriously, I love it.”

  “Well, one thing decided. Would you like us to baptize him?”

  “I'm not much of a believer but... I don't know, it's been a kind of family tradition. I'd like to do it, unless you want something else.”

  “Baptism. Communion?”

  “Aren't you going very far?”

  “I want to make all the decisions with you that are possible and concern our son's life. Come with two months, two years or two decades.”

  “I trust that with two decades he will know how to make his own decisions.”

  I looked at him and held his hand to play with his fingers. There we were, both of us, at six in the morning in an abandoned polygon, kneeling next to some swings, talking about what would be the life of our son, Marcos's son and mine. Just the kind of situations we had managed to make different from the rest of the world; just the kind of situations I would always remember.

  "I'd just like to know what you would do at any given moment, Marcos" I said at last. “I'm terrified that I'm in a situation where I have to decide, ask myself what you would like and not find the answer.”

  “Claudia, our son will live his life and will find himself faced with a thousand dilemmas in which he will ask for your help and advice. And it won't matter if you would know what I would say because you are going to be an exceptional mother and at every moment you will decide what is best for him. Take it for granted that whatever you say to him, I will be behind you, supporting you. Always.”

  ***

  Three weeks later we had already told everyone, we had received all kinds of congratulations and even gifts. Since we didn't know if it would be a boy or a girl, the color of the clothes used to be white, yellow, or those tones that one couldn't associate with the gender of the creature.

  With the passing of that same time that filled us with happiness with that news, Marcos' health began to suffer. Soon our wild, unaddressed outings turned into serene afternoons at home, huddled on the couch or in bed. He was reluctant to go to a doctor and when things got complicated it was the doctor, a friend of his parents' family, who came to see him at home, among his protests and complaints. From what the doctor had told me, Marcos didn't feel well at all, but his determination not to express it was contradictory to me. On the one hand I wanted to talk to him about it, to help him in everything, to prevent him from getting up when the forces were not giving him, to urge him to ask me for help, to express his discomfort without complaint. But on the other hand, I wanted to continue giving our life together normality, frightened perhaps by the idea of a prompt farewell. Marcos and I had lived in a permanent countdown but I always wanted to place it as something distant and uncertain. The good energy that he gave off, his eternal smiles, the continuous going from one place to another, his crazy occurrences helped to that. But all that was beginning to miss me and before me was only the crudest reality. Marcos was leaving me; it was extinguished little by little and my temperance threatened not to endure him.

  That morning it was 12 o'clock and he hadn't gotten up yet. Every time that happened, the minutes became a hell for me; I was afraid to go looking for him and not find him anymore, just as every night, when we went to bed, I was afraid that there would not be a tomorrow together. But when I opened the door, Marcos looked at me and extended his hand. I approached, slowly and tried to smile.

  "How are you, my life?" I whispered as I kissed him on the forehead.

  "Please call my mother," he replied. “Call them all.”

  He tried to smile at me without succeeding, and I noticed how he was trying to squeeze my hand. I held him and kissed her, swallowing my tears. My emotions were like a dam about to explode but Marcos was dying and although he had always confessed not to be afraid, I wanted him to know that I would be there for him, that I would not hesitate to shake his hand when the time came, that I could trust my strength, for myself and for his mother, for his father, for his brother and for all of us who were going to need a lot of help after his death.

  “Everything's going to be all right, do you hear me? Everything's going to be all right, Marcos.”

  I held him tightly and pulled his hair away from his forehead. He had always worn it rather short, but in the last few weeks it had ceased to matter. His lips pronounced something that his voice did not endorse: "I love you". he said.

  “I love you too. Always together, Marcos. Always. I'm going to take care of your mother, of our son. I'm going to talk to him about you every day, I swear. You can rest assured.”

  Alejandro, Carmen and Luis, as well as Diana, arrived in time to say goodbye to Marcos before the doctor sedated him. He had always shied away from any medical intervention but it was only to alleviate the pain and any discomfort he might be suffering, to make the trance more bearable. And after a night resting by his side, with my head on his chest and our hands intertwined, after a gray morning, this one arrived. It was 14:26 in the afternoon of June 25, 2014. 99 days after our reunion. 99 days after finding him repairing his motorbike in the garden; 99 days after he looked at me with those eyes which were the same sky and invited me into his house. 99 days after we made love for the first time. And 99 days after the rest of our lives. It was curious: we studied together for five years; each one made his life for another 14. And yet, it took us 99 days to create a whole universe, our own world, to truly know ourselves, to fall in love, to get married, to conceive a child and to learn to live, nothing less. My husband had been the most wonderful teacher I could have had for all that.

  The day of his burial was one of the strangest in my life. As we received visitors expressing their sorrow for such loss, I had the feeling that a wall of silence and solitude had risen around me. It did not matter that it was crowded with people, for among all those faces I would never again see the light of those eyes that had become the beacons of my life. And it was as if the madness into which we had turned those three months together had exploded, leaving behind an enormous and incomprehensible nothing.

  During many of our days together, those in which I sought a truce to collapse thinking that he did not know and discovering that yes, that night we had dinner at his parents' house, I used to try to instill in me the idea that time would prepare me for this day, that no matter how painful it might be, I would know how to fit it in and I would only feel a serene sadness. But that was not the case. Firing Marcos for good was devastating. I needed him and only him to make his way through the crowd, hug me and whisper to me that everything was fine, that he didn't want to see me like this, and that he proposed a crazy getaway to any place. But that would no longer happen.

  In the afternoon, Carmen, Alejandro, Luis and I scattered their ashes in the sea. For a moment I felt like a goddess giving her soul back to a son. The day was sunny and hot; the sky was completely blue, with not a single cloud that dared tarnish it.

  Luis and Alejandro moved away a bit, giving Carmen and me a necessary intimacy. She was completely broken in tears, while I embraced her.

  "Marcos told me one day that his grandmother used to compare him to the sea," I said. She looked up and nodded.

  "Rough as the waves," she replied; "serene as the tide; deep in her thoughts; enigmatic by its secrecy... and blue..."

  "Through his eyes" I said

  "When he was a little boy he used to get angry with the latter; he said that he was not a Smurf.”

  Carmen and I laughed, evoking that, imagining him.

  “Your son wanted us to look for him in the sea when we needed him, Carmen. And you see, today he's in a good mood. Marcos lets us know he's all right.”

  "But I want him here, with me," she protested, desolate.

  The tide, which hadn't been coming to us until that moment, hit our feet and we reclaimed a little bit, unprepared. I looked at Carmen and knelt in the water, caressing the fine wet sand, while I watched the horizon.

  "That's it, darling," I mumbled. “It's all over now. No more pain, no more suffering. It's over.”

  Carmen bent
down beside me and threw her arm over me.

  “I thank heaven that my son knew you, Claudia. I was right about you being magical.”

  I held her hand and kissed her.

  “Marcos was, Carmen.”

  A new wave hit us at that moment, even pushing us.

  "Marcos is," I corrected, shouting. "It is because it's still here," I added in a whisper.

  Carmen laughed, unable, however, to let the tears stop running down her cheeks. I stood up and helped her up.

  “I love you! I love you, Marcos Saavedra!”

  The pile of bathers there looked at me as if I were a madwoman; they searched among themselves, as if the questioned man were there. But I didn't care about anything but him. Marcos and I had always ignored all those who crowded the beach when we were together on it. And that's the way we would always do it. He wasn't there, among the people. He was much more than one body in a million; he was an essence, a different way of understanding life, vastness, freedom, love, everything. He was my husband and the father of my son.

  I threw my arm over Carmen and we followed in the serene footsteps of Luis and Alejandro. We would return to the beach each and every day of our lives; in those sunny days of happiness, in the storms of fury; in the clouds of sadness and in the nights of secret accomplices. He would always return to Marcos, as he had once done. It didn't matter how much time passed because life was something to be measured in beats.