by Maria Duenas
I went with a clear objective and finished quickly, since I was in a hurry to get back and start cooking. When I was on line waiting my turn, I suddenly remembered that I didn’t have any paper napkins. Cursing under my breath, I made a U-turn, wondering where the damn napkins would be. In the middle of the paper goods aisle I saw her. She seemed to be scrutinizing a box of Kleenex, turning it over and over while supporting herself on an orthopedic walker. Her hair was dyed an outrageous shade of blond for her age, and even with her enormous sunglasses her identity was unmistakable: Fanny’s mother, Darla Stern, the former department secretary who was unable to elicit in Daniel Carter the same sympathy he always displayed toward other people.
I subtly turned around in case she recognized me or in case Fanny, who no doubt was close by, suddenly appeared by her side, forcing me to stop and chat. To avoid running into them, I grabbed my napkins stealthily and disappeared.
The day went by amid the smell of Spanish omelets and the noise of pureeing tomatoes. As I worked in the kitchen I chased away the errant ghosts that accosted me, wielding the magic that smells have to conjure our pasts and kindle our emotions. Everything was ready at half past seven. Rebecca’s folding table looked like an immigrant’s dream, and the nostalgic specters peacefully rested in their cages. I wore black, played a new flamenco CD by Ketama, and, to give it the ultimate Spanish touch, placed in my hair a couple of bright red carnations that I’d bought on my way out of G&G.
I had just finished applying a second coat of mascara when the phone rang. I figured it was Rebecca calling to ask if there was any last-minute item I needed, or perhaps someone apologizing at the eleventh hour for not being able to make it to the party. But I was mistaken. The voice at the other end, so many miles away, belonged to someone who more than twenty years earlier had been literally a part of me. Someone several inches taller than I and out loose in the world despite the fact that I would have liked him to be by my side eternally, never growing beyond the height of my shoulder.
“Heyyyyy! Where the hell have you been hiding, Mom?”
My son Pablo, most likely out on the town in the wee hours. He’d been on the beaches of Cadiz since summer, lured by the surf, his latest great passion until some other obsession took its place. Despite all predictions, he had finished his BA in business administration in June, something unexpected given the fact that he’d had to retake three classes. He was impulsive and unpredictable, and so was his decision to take a year off before thinking of anything useful in terms of his professional future. Unlike his brother, who a year earlier had gotten a scholarship for a master’s at the London School of Economics, after graduation Pablo had decided to surf the waves in southern Spain. This weekend, however, he had returned to Madrid and was calling from there in the middle of a night of partying.
“Boy, you’re old, Mom, forty-five . . . No . . . I’m just joking . . . you’re still a kid . . . The prettiest!”
I couldn’t avoid smiling as a pang of melancholy shot through me. Paralyzed inside the bathroom’s small perimeter, I sat on the edge of the bathtub to listen to him. My kid. How quickly he’d grown up.
“Hello . . . can you hear me?” He kept talking at the top of his voice, a hard-to-identify din in the background. “We’re here . . . and we’re talking about you. We’ve gone out for dinner and then for a couple of drinks, and we’ve slowly gotten carried away, and . . . and . . . and this one is going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble when he gets—”
A ferocious peal of laughter completed the phrase. I didn’t know who he was referring to by “this one”; probably one of his friends. He didn’t even give me time to figure it out; he only said, “Wait, let me pass him on to you.”
“Hello, Blancurria. It’s me.”
I could feel the smile that Pablo’s voice had drawn on my face freeze into a grimace. It was Alberto, my ex-husband, with a nasal voice. Using my former affectionate nickname, the one that showed concern, companionship, complicity.
“Here I am with Pablito, who’s got me a little trashed . . .” he continued without waiting for me to say anything. “The kid has turned into a man, with such long hair that I’m wondering when he’ll cut it . . . but he won’t listen to me, as usual. Maybe you can tell him something and convince him; you know he ignores everything I say. Well, so . . . so happy birthday. I’ve got no present for you, since you’re so far away. The other day I saw a painting, nothing much, a piece of nonsense, a marina with some boats, not much of anything, but I thought: For Blanca, who always misses the sea in winter. But then I remembered that you were no longer around, that you’d left . . . well, that . . . that I’d left . . .”
Then he fell silent and I was unable to utter a single word. The background noise was still deafening and made the silence between us all the more tense. We remained like this for a couple of seconds that seemed never-ending, both of us speechless, him at his bar and me in my bathroom, each conscious of the presence of the other in the distance. Despite the physical distance and the open abyss between us, for the first time in a long while Alberto and I felt some kind of closeness. He was the first to speak up again.
“I’m not sure if this has been total madness . . .”
A knot ran down my throat and tears welled up in my eyes. I struggled to contain them and with an effort managed not to shed a single one. The pain was intense, however. Alberto. Like a lightning bolt his face came back to mind, his all-encompassing presence. His noisy step on descending the stairs, his warm back next to mine as he slept. His brown hair, his laughter, his fingers, his skin. For a moment I yearned for him to be right, for it all to be a bad dream. For that child of his growing within another woman’s body to be nothing but a figment of my imagination. I thought that maybe we could still reassemble our lives, start all over again, forgive and forget. And I wanted to tell him.
But due to some strange lack of neural coordination between the faculties of thinking and speaking, or perhaps to the crucial lifeline that lucidity once in a while tosses to us when we are at the edge of a precipice, the words that came out of my mouth were altogether different.
“Good-bye, Alberto. Don’t call me again.”
With hardly any time to process what had just occurred, I hung up just as my doorbell rang. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was past eight: time to begin. Before coming out, I took a fleeting look at my image in the mirror. The Gypsy ornamentation over my left ear came across as somewhat outlandish, so I tore the flowers out of my hair, tossed them into the toilet, and flushed. With a smile as false as Judas’s, I then went out to greet my guests.
The first to arrive, of course, was Rebecca. With a large spinach dip and a gigantic bowl of guacamole, ready as usual to help. Then a Portuguese professor and her Canadian boyfriend and, hardly two minutes later, three students of mine with several bottles of wine. Luis Zarate, the chairman, was next with a bottle of tequila reposado and wearing a pair of jeans. It wasn’t long before the apartment filled with voices, music, and smoke. The plates and food platters emptied at a vertiginous speed while I made an effort to drown, at least superficially, my sorrow. Some were coming in while others left; it got hot and someone opened a window. There were those who did not introduce themselves and those who brought friends along. Another pupil of mine came a while later bringing a guitar and a Uruguayan couple whom I didn’t know. While I greeted them, I felt someone touching my arm to draw my attention.
“I’m off to get some limes and more ice. I’ll be right back.”
It was Luis Zarate, who had spontaneously taken charge of the bar on his arrival. Contrary to what I’d expected, he’d come alone, without the young German professor with whom I’d seen him on some occasion or other and with whom, according to the departmental gossip, he’d been going out for a while. I’d never imagined him as a party man and night owl, but, to my surprise, he was quite skillful at preparing margaritas and caipirinhas as he spoke to everyone go
od-humoredly.
“Perfect, but don’t disappear. We need you to continue preparing drinks: the night’s still young. By the way, where did you pick up that skill?”
“There’s a trick,” he said, coming close to my ear. “Low-impact academic training. I took a cocktail course a couple of years back, but don’t mention it to anyone.”
“Okay, but treat me well, so that I never have to use it against you.”
“As well as you’ll allow me . . .”
He again shortened the distance between us. Judging by his attitude, half the cocktails that he’d prepared since his arrival he’d drunk himself. But he was relaxed and fun, so I played along.
“When you change the printer in my office, we’ll talk,” I answered with a laugh. I had had a couple myself. “For the time being it’s enough that you be in charge of the ice.”
“And how about . . .” and he again came close.
I didn’t let him continue; grabbing him by the arm, I walked him to the door.
“You know there is a 7-Eleven on the corner. Don’t even think of driving.”
“At your orders, my doctorsita,” he said, putting on a Mexican accent. I couldn’t help smiling as I closed the door behind him.
Amid the laughter and mingling of languages, someone began strumming a guitar, which gave way to clapping hands and out-of-tune renditions of old Spanish and English songs sung at the top of the lungs without an ounce of embarrassment.
At some point in the evening, between the verses of a popular Mexican song, I heard knocking at the door. I thought it was finally Luis, who’d gone a good while ago and not yet returned. But instead it was Daniel Carter, wearing a black leather jacket, with a traveling bag in one hand and a plastic bag in the other.
“I almost thought you were going to let me down.”
“Not for the life of me,” he said while removing his jacket and depositing his luggage on the floor. “My plane was delayed; I was on the verge of wringing the pilot’s neck.”
Without giving me time to reply, he took my hand, grabbed me by the waist, and, adding his loud voice to the off-key choir singing a popular Mexican song—“because I’ll be brave enough not to deny it and scream that I’m dying out of love for you . . .”—he dragged me across the room with four artful steps in search of some omelet leftovers, not very likely at that late hour.
The party ended just before dawn without a single piece of my culinary effort left and without hearing from Luis Zarate again. With the departure of my last guests, my responsibilities as a good hostess disappeared as well, so I decided to leave everything as it was and go straight to bed. I had no energy to start straightening up. My fatigue and the drinks allowed me to fall asleep immediately without devoting a single further thought to either the party or my sad telephone encounter with Alberto.
The next day, after a restorative shower, I got down to business. In between balls of napkins, empty glasses, and dozens of bottles without any traces of what they had once contained, I found two items left behind from the previous night. One was a red sweater lying on the floor behind the armchair; I remembered one of my students was wearing it. The other was a plastic bag from Barnes & Noble. Looking inside in an effort to identify its owner, I found a book and an envelope with my name on it. I suddenly remembered the bag that Daniel Carter had been carrying along with his luggage.
The envelope contained a simple card with two sentences written in firm black letters—
May the light of the years let you see your path more clearly.
Happy Birthday
—and a medium-size book with a yellow dust jacket: A History of California. Leafing through it, I did not understand the meaning of that unexpected present, figuring it was a sudden choice of a gift made out of mere courtesy. Nor did I know how Daniel had found out about my birthday, although I figured Rebecca must have told him. After one last look, I put it aside and continued cleaning.
I aired out the apartment, filled three enormous garbage bags, conscientiously mopped the floor, and threw a load of bottles into the recycling bin. I realized I was famished and, having an empty fridge, I went out for lunch. I took the opportunity to buy some newspapers, then went for a short stroll and returned home. A Sunday afternoon in autumn, a difficult time to keep melancholy in check, all the more so after the previous evening’s call.
I turned on the television in search of something to distract myself. CNN spoke of an air traffic accident in Mexico with a death toll of eighteen, the explosion at an old people’s home in Michigan, and the arrival of the new Pokémon movie in theaters. Flipping through the channels, I came upon a repeat of Rambo III, two home shopping programs, a report on dog groomers, and an umpteenth stale episode of Miami Vice. Santa Cecilia’s local channel was again airing a follow-up program on the Los Pinitos project. I watched it for a few minutes as the cameras filmed the grounds and a few passersby were interviewed. With varying degrees of fervor, they were for the most part against the mall. Afterwards they spoke to my student Joe Super, the professor emeritus of history whom I already knew to be an energetic activist in the pro-preservation platform. He hadn’t been able to come to my party, having told me ahead of time that he’d be out of town. He spoke convincingly regarding the disastrous consequences of the mall they intended to build. Four other members of the platform then spoke and I began to lose interest, falling asleep as one of them detailed the uncertain legal ownership of the place.
When I woke up night had fallen. Disoriented, I looked at my watch and realized that I’d had a three-hour nap. Perhaps it was due to the exhaustion of having cleaned the apartment, or the alcohol and the late night’s toll. In any case, regardless of the reason, the crude reality was that I was there, alone, sleepless before a long night. I’d just finished a novel on Friday and hadn’t had time to buy another book or go to the library. After flipping once more through the channels, I ate a yogurt and went through the papers, which in a few hours seemed to have lost their newsworthiness. I read an article on intelligent design and an interview with Oprah Winfrey, then ate a banana, cursing my decision not to take home my laptop that weekend because of the party. When my eye caught Daniel Carter’s book, The History of California, I opened it and began to read.
It soon became clear that his present had not been a mere hurried purchase. During the afternoon we spent together drinking coffee, I’d mentioned the difficulties that Fontana’s papers were giving me lately. As I read further, I began to understand that, in the constant headlong flight forward that seemed to dominate every aspect of my life over the past couple of months, I’d been too impatient in assessing Fontana’s legacy, leaping over barriers and holes, urgently dodging the fissures and obstacles that constantly appeared in his writings.
Fontana’s ex-student was now suggesting another approach, one that made all the sense in the world and that, in spite of being so obvious, I hadn’t stopped to consider. Peace and quiet, along with thorough documentation, would be essential in plotting out the route of the old professor’s writings within the real map of the time and the facts.
I read several chapters in one sitting and already began appreciating with greater clarity the latter years of his work. But the part pertaining to the Spanish presence in California didn’t go beyond the first three chapters and I realized I needed to know more.
Toward four o’clock in the morning I was finally about to fall asleep, when I decided not to leave something important for the next day. I got out my cell phone and texted:
LESSON LEARNED. I’LL TRY TO BE UP TO THE TASK.
Even though I realized that Daniel probably would not read the message until the following day, some impulse had driven me to thank him right away. I had hardly turned off the light when I heard a beep-beep. Half-asleep, I clicked on the envelope icon.
AS ALWAYS.
Chapter 21
* * *
It wasn
’t brand-new but, compared to my old piece of junk from the Pleistocene period, it was a technological marvel. I didn’t even stop to plug it in. Instead I went in search of the person responsible.
“Your getaway is forgiven,” I announced from the door. Behind the desk sat Luis Zarate as he usually was, restrained and professional. Apparently.
“Are you sure?” he asked, raising his eyes from his computer screen.
“We missed your margaritas, but I’ve gotten a decent printer. Not bad.”
“I even managed to buy the ice, you know? But in the end I chose to go home. I was pretty loaded and one more step would have been disastrous.”
“For your hangover or your reputation?”
“Both, I guess. How did it end?”
“Well . . . a little too long, but it was a fun night.”
“Do you think I’ll be able to recoup some of what I missed out on?” he asked as he got up from his chair.
I was still standing by the door, with no intention of stepping inside. The week had just begun and we all had a lot of work. It wasn’t the moment for a laid-back conversation; I’d just stopped by his office to thank him for his gesture, with the intention of taking up no more than a couple of minutes of his day.
“I’m afraid that, as hostess, I’ve fulfilled my share of celebrations for the time being.”
“Then it’s my turn now,” he said, leaning against the front edge of his desk. Closer to me, more at my level.
“Are you going to organize a party at your place?”
“I’d like to, but I’m afraid that, unlike you, I’m a hopeless host. But we have a dinner pending at Los Olivos, remember?”
It was true. Ever since the afternoon on campus when he’d stopped his car beside me to chat at the end of the workday.