I go and see António in the lounge. I sit at the opposite end of the sofa and smile, a little embarrassed.
“Young Joana’s turned into quite a woman,” he whispers.
“You think so?”
“I’d never have guessed. You’re always so well-behaved...”
“Looks can be deceptive...”
“Isn’t that the truth.” He pauses, then, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, the pleasure was all mine, believe me.”
I’d still like to know where all this femme fatale talk is coming from all of a sudden.
“Well in that case, when you need to go and fetch more wine, you can count on me,” he says with a knowing look.
“I don’t think we’ll be drinking any more tonight. But as a matter of fact, I was thinking of tidying up the cellar on Monday. If you want to help me…”
I have got to be out of my mind. Instead of telling him what’s what and nipping things in the bud, I’m inviting him to repeat the scandal? In the house I share with my husband, where I’m going to bring up my child? I must be possessed by some demon. Vade retro.
“What time?” he asks.
“Any time between nine and six, I’ll be home alone all day.”
“No cleaning ladies or gardeners?”
“They don’t come on Mondays.”
“I’ll be here at two.”
What have I just done? Mummy in heaven, I hope you’re not seeing this. Now I see how easy it is to get involved in this kind of adventure. I used to think it only happened to people who went looking for it, people with problems and no decency, but the truth is that in less than an hour I’ve turned from an honest woman, an upholder of traditional values, a woman above all reproach, into a common strumpet who arranges meetings with her lover while her husband’s not ten paces distant. I can’t explain how this happened, how I let myself get carried away, how I let it happen.
Calm down Joana, it’s not the end of the world. The truth is, I don’t actually feel too bad about it any more. It’s a bit like they say about all sorts of things; it only hurts the first time. At this exact moment I don’t feel any kind of regret and to be honest, I think this affair might even do my marriage some good. It’s certainly going to make me more cheerful and tolerant. And it may well divert my attention from any marriage problems. Anyway, that’s irrelevant now, not least because my belly is soon going to start growing and I won’t be in the mood for these adventures. I think. However it goes, I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.
Kati comes staggering into the lounge. It looks like the mixture of alcohol, cocaine and weed is turning out badly. António rolls his eyes, revealing his impatience with what must be a recurring situation. How I understand him. When André gets into states like this I just want to give him a good beating too.
“Well then, darling? Are you throwing in the towel already?” he asks, mocking her.
“No…” Her voice is thick. “I’m just going to lie down here for a bit to rest my feet.”
“In that case you better take your shoes off,” I put in quickly, not wanting her to put a stiletto through my capitoné.
“Oh no we don’t,” says António harshly. “We’re going home, that’s where we’re going. Since you don’t know how to behave.”
“I don’t want to…” she simpers.
“It wasn’t a suggestion, Cátia Sofia; it was a statement. Stand up right now. Look at the state you’re in! I can’t take you anywhere.”
“António,’ I say in a conciliatory tone, ‘if she wants she can go and sleep for a while in the guest room, or you can even spend the night here.”
“Thanks, Joana, but no, she has to learn when enough’s enough. One thing’s making a spectacle of herself in front of you lot, but imagine if it was business partners or something.”
“If it was, no way there’d be so much alcohol and drugs.”
“Oh Joana,” he laughs, “you can’t imagine the type of parties those people have. This is like an adolescents’ tea party in comparison. Except for the food of course, which was divine.”
“Did you like it?”
“A lot. And I liked afters even better,” he says, and he slaps my bum.
I go purple with embarrassment. Not because of Kati – the state she’s in she wouldn’t even notice if we were kissing – but for the saucy gesture, and because I enjoyed the saucy gesture.
“So are you going to leave me here to endure all these filthy drug fiends?”
“I’ll make it up to you the day after tomorrow, I promise,” he whispers in my ear, making my skin come out in goose bumps.
“Where’s my handbag?” asks Kati, who’s momentarily come to her senses.
“How should I know? Don’t worry about that now. If it isn’t in the car, I’ll come back here to get it, do you mind?” says António, winking at me.
“Go out this way, so you won’t have so far to walk to the car,” I say. “I’ll tell everyone goodnight for you.”
“Thanks, Joana,” says António.
“Thanks, Joana,” repeats Kati, her voice thicker than ever. “I think you’re really cool. We’re going to be best friends, aren’t we?”
“Of course, Kati. Now go and rest. See you tomorrow.”
António bundles her roughly into the car. I stay at the door until they’ve disappeared around the bend, picturing him giving her a ticking off, and tomorrow making love to her while he thinks of me.
I’m at a bit of a loose end now. It wouldn’t do to go to bed, but then again I really don’t want to go and join everyone else, completely sober and not getting half the jokes. Maybe I’ll go and make some biscuits. That’s it. It will help me relax and stop thinking about things I shouldn’t. It only takes ten minutes in the oven and André loves this recipe. It’s also a way to make up for doing wrong to him.
As I’m making the dough I try to drive off all the conflicting thoughts that are plaguing me and I remember what Maria said to me early in the evening. Maybe I really should think about making food to sell, but something classy, obviously. I’d only supply certain clients and certain events – besides, with the baby, I won’t be able to spend much time in the kitchen. António can introduce me to lots of people. Who knows, maybe I can meet him in one of those crazy parties he talked about. I can just see him coming into the kitchen and pulling me into the pantry and taking me right there, standing up, against the shelves...
Don’t be absurd, Joana! Stop it once and for all! Mummy, forgive me. It’s not my fault you left me so soon, before you could teach me what it is to be a woman. If you were here I’m sure none of this would have happened. Now I’ve no one but God and all the saints, and obviously I can’t tell them about my sex life. And what’s more, there’s no patron saint of adulteresses. The best I can do is accept that I’m human and that I can’t undo what I’ve done. Not that I want to. It was so good…I don’t want to repress my desires, not even when I’m a mother. Mothers don’t have to be sexless creatures, like saints or something. If I feel good about myself, I’ll be a better person with my children, won’t I? It makes sense. I need to explore this new thing I’ve discovered about myself and my body. I want to recover lost time. Maybe one day I’ll even feel like doing it with my husband. Until then, I’m not going to feel guilty. Oh no I’m not. No one needs to find out, no one needs to get hurt. In the end, it’s only sex. What’s the problem?
Maria
Well then, it really does look like I’m going home alone tonight, unless I turn lesbian or something like that. I don’t exactly get what’s been happening. One minute I was in Filipe’s arms, nearly kissing him – you could feel the chemistry in the air –, and the next he’s frozen stiff looking at Isabel as if he’s known her for years. And maybe he does know her, though I can’t imagine from where. I’ve known Filipe for as long as I can remember and I’ve never heard him mention any Isabel, nor any woman who made him go like that. Not unless it’s the Bé, the girl who broke his heart when he was a te
enager...
When I first met Filipe he was very shy and practically didn’t speak to girls. At university he was always in a corner with his guitar, playing tunes he’d made up or others we all knew. He wasn’t one for parties and whenever we tried to fix him up with a girlfriend, things went badly. Once he forgot his date and left the girl waiting in a café for three hours. She stopped speaking to me afterwards, because I was the one who’d persuaded her to go on the date. Another time he arranged the first date at the cinema. It was a difficult European film. Needless to say she fell asleep halfway through, and when she woke up she said she had to go and get some study notes from a friend’s house, and disappeared. Then there was the time he went for dinner with a colleague of mine and found her so stupid he got up to go to the bathroom and never came back, leaving her there alone without so much as a by-your-leave.
One day I lost my temper with him. Partly because I was afraid all the girls he’d rejected would gang up on me for having been such a bad matchmaker. I asked him what he wanted from life and why he was so disrespectful towards girls. That was when he confessed to me the case of unrequited love he’d had with this wonderful girl he met one summer when he was sixteen or seventeen. It was no use trying to make him see that first love’s like that, that nearly everyone in the world thinks they’ve found the love of their life at the age of sixteen, and that if he’d gone out with her it would probably have been over within months. No use at all. For him, that girl was the only one he could ever have been happy with. And he was so convinced of this he didn’t mind boycotting any relationship he found himself in.
“What if you looked for her?” I suggested at one point.
“It’s not worth it. She’s not interested.”
“How do you know? Maybe she’s changed her mind. When did you last speak to her?”
“About three years ago.”
“Do you know where she lives? Where she’s studying?”
“No. I mean, I think she was studying law in the Clássica.”
“Then it’s simple. You go to the university secretary’s office and you ask them what year such-and-such finished her course, then you try to find out where she worked as a trainee, and then, softly softly, you persuade them to give you the address that’s on her file.”
“Forget it.”
“Why forget it? If you say she’s the love of your life, if you can’t get involved with anyone else because of her ghost, then what’s the problem in going to look for her? Telling her all that?”
“What’s the point? For her to say no again? To find her happy and content with some guy? No thanks.”
“Well I don’t know then. But I’ll tell you now I’m never setting you up on a date with one of my friends again.”
Not that he needed me to. He’s always had a way with women. Firstly because he’s always been (and still is) a very good-looking guy, and secondly because I think all women like that rebel, couldn’t-care-less, loner attitude of his. It’s as if he was challenging us, sort of, “I bet you can’t make me smile”, “I bet you can’t make me look at you”. The challenge of attracting his attention can get exciting. Conclusion, since I've known him, Filipe’s love life has been a succession of women of all shapes and sizes, all doing their utmost to find their way into his heart, none of them making it; and all because of this adolescent passion of his.
After a long moment standing there paralysed looking at each other, Isabel steps forward and touches his face, almost as if she’s checking he’s real. Filipe keeps looking at her, immobile and speechless, his eyes filling with tears, his hand running through her hair. We’re all looking at them, dumbfounded. You can feel a different energy in the air.
“So you two know each other?” asks Pedro, breaking the silence.
“Yes...” says Isabel.
“But we haven’t seen each other for years” says Filipe.
“Years and years…” she echoes.
Now that that’s cleared up, the party continues and people’s attentions wander elsewhere. I’m certain Isabel is Bé. It’s incredible. It really is a small world. What cosmic forces have been at work to make their paths cross again, so many years later, without either of them having made the slightest effort in that direction? Tonight, of all times, here, of all places. It’s mad.
Another joint is making the rounds. Now it’s Pilar who comes and sits beside me.
“You know, Nuno’s right,” she mumbles in my ear. “You can’t expect to find the love of your life in every man you meet. It doesn’t work like that.”
“How does it work, then?”
“One day, when you’re least expecting it, you’ll meet him, and after a few minutes you’ll know he’s the one.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes. Just like that. There’s no point in looking, no point in pretending that this or that person fits the bill. Sometimes it would be good if they did, don’t I know it, but that just increases the frustration. And that’s where the problems begin. We start trying to change the almost into the everything. And almost will never be everything.”
“How do you know it’s like that?’ I ask. ‘Have you found the love of your life?”
“No. But I’m in no hurry. I know she’ll appear.”
“She will. Of course she will, I say, with every conviction.”
What an incredible night. I’ve been through every possible emotional state. I got here alone and terrified and I’ll be leaving here alone but tremendously happy. Happy that I’ve finally brought my episode with Nuno to an end and that I can still have him in my life as a friend. Happy that I’ve met women as fun and inspiring as Lu and Pilar, who make me want to have more self-esteem, more confidence. Happy to be in this exact place, alive, healthy, full of dreams, plans, and reasons to get up every morning, even if the bed’s empty and there’s only one toothbrush in the glass in the bathroom.
It’s funny how we’re here together again. The last time we all met for dinner, we were still a gang of kids full of hope for the future, thinking life was like school and it was enough to do your best, to study and to play by the rules to win. (What utter nonsense. How can they let people leave university believing in this?) A gang of kids who thought they were invincible, immune to all the things that irritated us in adults. We’ve all seen each other lots of times over the years, of course, but someone was always missing. There was always a wedding, a falling out, a career, a child. This is the first time in years we’ve all been here. It’s the end of a cycle.
Now, thinking about the paths we’ve taken since we met, how we’ve grown up and turned into adults so different and distant from one another, I can finally understand that life is too unpredictable to try to control it. Everything, absolutely everything, can change in a second, and nothing, absolutely nothing, is exactly how we dreamed it would be. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Learn to live with that, without fear and without self-pity, and you’re on the way to happiness. I know I am. Now I am.
Filipe
I don’t know how long we’ve been standing here looking at one another. I have a thousand questions that I can’t find a way of asking, a thousand things I want to tell her, a thousand phrases honed down to the smallest detail over the course of over ten years. Yet I can’t manage to say anything. She’s the one who breaks the silence.
“You’re just the same.”
“You think so?”
Great answer, you cretin.
“Yes. The same hair, the same check shirt, the same All Stars...”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It’s cute.”
“You’ve changed. You’re more elegant, more feminine.”
“What do you mean by that? Wasn’t I elegant before?” she asks, smiling.
“No no, it’s not that, but I’d never imagined you in high heels. In my imagination you’re always in a bikini and jeans.”
“So what’s up, anyway? What are you doing? Tell me everything.”
“I work in
the marketing department of a company. Nothing exciting.”
“Really?” she asks, surprised. “I was certain you’d follow a career in music.”
“Yeah, so was I... But no. My life is boring. What about you? Are you really a painter or is this exhibition thing just a hobby?”
“No, I’m really an artist. I’ve been one for a few years now.”
“Didn’t you study law?”
“I dropped out after third year and enrolled in fine arts.”
“What about your dad? He let you?” I ask, taken aback.
“He only found out on the last day of my final year. He was already dressed and ready to leave for my graduation ceremony, when I came into the living room, still in my pyjamas, and told him I hadn’t finished my course. Or even followed it. He was mortified. He stopped talking to me for two years. He threw me out and everything.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to live with some student friends and paid for my art degree with part time work here and there. Call centres, restaurants, the usual.”
“Well that’s what I call wanting to study.”
“That was my ambition. I wasn’t going to give up on it so easily, don’t you think?”
“Of course not. So…?”
“So I got by one way or another and was lucky enough to meet a gallery owner who let me exhibit some pictures in his gallery and introduced me to my husband, an artist too and an excellent teacher. Now I sell the odd painting and I get a great price for it, I do some illustration work here and there, enough to pay the rent at least.”
”Ah, so you got married...“ I say, disappointed.
”Yes. But I’m divorced now. You know how I never liked feeling trapped. And then Manel was the typical artist, temperamental, jealous, twenty years older than me. But all that’s in the past and doesn’t matter. And what about you, why did you give up music?”
“Oh, because everyone knows being a musician in Portugal is a joke.”
Thirty Something (Nothing's How We Dreamed It Would Be) Page 11