Carmita was delighted. She began to go to the casino with her friends, and soon she had a competition going as to who would win the slot machine’s pot. When she lost, she asked her friends to lend her some money. If they refused, she just walked out into the street and asked anyone she met for a loan. Pedestrians couldn’t understand why a well-dressed woman like Carmita Monfort was begging for money, and some began to take advantage of her. They would lend her ten dollars, then knock on our door and tell Carlos they had lent her a hundred. It might very well have been true, but Carmita would never admit it, and Carlos didn’t dare refuse. Months went by and the situation got worse. Every time Carlos went out of the house, there would be someone waiting on the sidewalk, asking him to pay a couple of hundred which Carmita owed.
After a while, Father was so embarrassed he stopped going to the office and stayed home all the time. He left the managing of Mother’s properties to her accountant and didn’t want to have anything more to do with her money. The only thing he liked was to sit under the white-oak tree he had planted behind the house on Aurora Street and to feed his two Florida parrots, Coto and Rita. He liked to see how much his oak tree had grown and would measure the expanse of its trunk every two or three months. White oak was one of his favorite woods for carving furniture, and when the tree was big enough, he planned to saw it down and make at least six rockers and a love seat. One day a tropical storm hit Ponce and felled many of its beautiful trees. The streets were littered with them, their roots exposed like huge molars extracted from the earth. It also uprooted our white oak and knocked down the parrot cage. Coto and Rita escaped. That was the evening Abby went looking for Father all over the house at dinnertime and found him hanging from the rafters in the attic, her shiny new garden hose from Sears tied around his neck.
Father’s death was a nightmare. We only managed to weather the storm because of Abby. “‘It’s when Corsicans lose everything that they know what they’re really worth,’ Napoleon’s mother wrote to the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo,” Abby said stoically as we stood by Father’s coffin at the wake. “So stand up straight; keep your chin up, and don’t cry. Just thank everyone politely for coming.” I had no choice but to dry my tears and do as she said.
At the funeral Abby made a great effort to appear reconciled to her fate. But her mouth was like a bird that didn’t want to fly; her lips drooped every time she tried to smile. Carlos was her only child. After he died, Abby shrank three inches and began to lose her sight. She knew Carlos would never amount to much, but she went on loving him as on the day he was born. When she found him hanging from the rafters in the attic, she put both hands to her mouth and fell unconscious on the floor. The maid and I heard the thud and ran upstairs. Mariana knelt by Abby’s side to try to revive her, and didn’t see Father’s corpse. I saw him first. I ran down the stairs and out into the street, terrified. I wouldn’t go back into the house for hours, but sat on the sidewalk, dry-eyed. Mariana had to call the ambulance that took Abby to the hospital, as well as the firemen who brought down Father’s body. I didn’t cry until the next day, when Abby came back and took me in her arms.
That summer brought a lot of changes. Carmita got worse, and we had to get a nurse for her; she couldn’t be left alone, because she’d wander out into the street and start asking people for money. Abby wasn’t feeling well, but she wouldn’t admit it. She sold the piece of land she still owned in Adjuntas—which had appreciated considerably because Squibb, the pharmaceutical plant, had bought Uncle Orencio’s farm to plant eucalyptus trees instead of coffee—and deposited the profits in the bank.
The following spring, I graduated with honors from Vassar. I had taken every course I could in Spanish literature, because I had made up my mind to be a writer. Abby was very supportive. She liked the idea from the start. She wrote me a long letter about the importance of being able to turn even our most painful experiences into art. Quintín was the only one who came to my graduation in May. From Poughkeepsie we flew together to Puerto Rico and I then traveled to Ponce by myself. When I got home, I ran up the stairs to the front balcony with my diploma in hand. The nurse opened the door. Abby was in bed, she said; she had been failing for the past month. I was upset; I had no idea she was so ill.
I went to her room and tiptoed to her bed. I wasn’t prepared for the change that had come over her. Her eyes were closed and she looked even smaller than I remembered; she reminded me of one of Abuela Gabriela’s miniature dolls in the vitrine in the living room. I kissed her on the forehead and put the diploma next to her on the bed. “Congratulations,” she said when she opened her eyes. “I’ve lived fifty years after Lorenzo’s death just to see you finish what I had to give up when I was nineteen. Now you can write the story of our family, with the dead and the living to help you, and I can rest in peace.” I hugged and kissed her and said she was being silly; soon she would be well again and we would go to the Silver Spoon together.
The next day she woke up very early and got out of bed. She had breakfast with me in the dining room. Just as she was finishing her coffee, she said: “This afternoon I’m going to die, and I’d like everything to be ready. I need you to find me the wedding sheets I brought from Adjuntas, after I buried your grandfather. They’re in a trunk in the attic.” I told her not to joke like that, but my heart balled into a fist. The nurse chided her for talking about depressing things. Abby went on drinking her coffee, without saying another word. When she finished breakfast, she got up from the table and did something very strange. She walked to the terrace where Carmita was sitting in her rocking chair, and kissed her on the forehead. It was the first time she had kissed her since Carlos passed away. Then she went to her room and locked herself in.
A few minutes later I knocked on her door. I had found her wedding sheets; they were in an old chest in the attic, just as she had said. They were embroidered with miniature roses and had a scalloped edging of fine Brussels lace, and they were freshly laundered, as if someone had expected to use them soon. I was surprised at how fine they were. I had always heard Abby talk about how splendid her life at Abuelo Lorenzo’s house had been, but I had only half believed her. I thought she was exaggerating, because one always remembers one’s youth in a favorable light. But her wedding sheets were proof that she hadn’t been making it up; life with Lorenzo must have been very fine indeed.
I gave Abby the bed linen and closed the door. After a while I heard the soft purring of Carmita’s sewing machine. Abby had brought it to her room when Carmita became ill, and she had sewn all the new curtains and bedspreads for the house herself. I thought she must be feeling better and didn’t want to disturb her, so I didn’t knock on her door.
I went out to run some errands in town, and when I came back, I took dinner to Abby’s room on a tray. But nobody answered my knock. Slowly I opened the door and found Abby lying in bed, her wedding linen perfectly ironed around her. She had made a shroud with the delicately embroidered top sheet, and she lay in it like a baby mummy, hands folded over her chest and face edged with Brussels lace. Around the bed lay a dozen envelopes, all duly addressed, with what was left of the money from the sale of the land in Adjuntas. There was a generous sum for the children of the Silver Spoon, and then the payment for her last bills at the house: electricity, water, and telephone. The final envelope held the money for her coffin and her burial expenses.
After Abby’s death, the house on Aurora Street seemed larger and emptier than ever. I knew I had to put Carmita in an asylum, but I wanted to postpone that as long as possible. During the day the nurse and I had to feed and dress her, carry her to the bathroom and get her on and off the toilet; but at night she did everything on the bed. Every morning we had to give her a bath and change the sheets, because she woke up covered in excrement. After Carlos’s suicide, Carmita refused to talk. She just sat in her rocking chair, combing her long, gray hair all day. I liked to sit and tell her about my things, even if she didn’t hear what I said. She seldom smiled, but when
she did, I felt as if she were pouring oil on my wounds.
20
The Wedding Vow
AFTER ABBY’S DEATH QUINTÍN came to Ponce to see me every weekend, but it was impossible even to think of getting married, because he didn’t have any money. At the end of the summer we had a stroke of luck. Madeleine Rosich died in Boston, and she left Quintín, her favorite, a considerable amount. Quintín proposed that same day, and we set the date for the wedding a year later. I decided to sell the house on Aurora Street but wanted to stay there with Mother until the last possible moment. A week before the wedding, I finally put her in an asylum.
Quintín gave his mother all the money he had saved from working at Mendizabal & Company, and he asked her to buy me an engagement ring. Rebecca went to see Doña Salomé Beguin, the Arab woman who sold jewelry in Old San Juan, and she picked a beautiful almond-shaped solitaire for her oldest son. It was an uncomfortable piece of jewelry; the diamond was razor-sharp, and it snagged my nylons every time I put them on. One day I was playing tennis with Quintín when the racket hit the back of my hand and the diamond split in two. I was terribly upset, thinking it might be a bad omen, but Quintín reassured me that his love would last forever, even if diamonds did not.
Quintín and I were married in June 1955, after two years of courtship. The ceremony was in the Church of San José in Old San Juan, the oldest church on the island—and still one of my favorites. I’ve always liked the way it sits unassumingly in a corner of the square, its simple colonial façade rising like a whitewashed wave against the blue of the sky. There are no Conquistadors buried there; Ponce de León, whose house is just down the street from the church, is buried in the Cathedral of San Juan, several blocks away.
We had wanted a small wedding, but it didn’t turn out that way. Quintín and I had invited very few people: my Antonsanti aunts and cousins from Ponce, whom I hardly saw any longer; Aunt Hortensia, Carmita’s sister, in whose house I used to stay when I came to San Juan on visits; Norma Castillo, my ballet teacher; and several of my friends from the Kerenski Ballet School, among them Estefanía Volmer, who came to the wedding in a semi-transparent shocking-pink gown, her breasts trembling under the delicate gauze. Esmeralda Márquez, who was still one of my best friends, hadn’t been invited, but she sent us a beautiful present, a Madeira lace tablecloth I still use for formal dinners. Quintín, for his part, had invited several of his friends from Columbia University, as well as his Rosich cousins from Boston, but, unfortunately, very few of them could make the trip to the island.
Rebecca insisted that the reception be held at the house on the lagoon, on Pavel’s golden terrace, and she asked us to let her take care of the festivities. She drew up a list of guests, and before we knew it, we had a full-blown affair on our hands. Rebecca invited all her San Juan socialite friends, Buenaventura’s cronies from the Spanish Casino, and his diplomatic and business relations. Ignacio added a good number of his artist friends. Patria and Libertad wanted to have a good time also, so they asked several of their teenage friends. In all, almost three hundred guests were invited, and we had no choice but to accept graciously.
Rebecca seemed always to be in a bad mood and hardly ever spoke to me; it was as if she was jealous of our happiness. I didn’t have much time to worry about it, however, because I was in a whirlwind. I had finally shut down the house in Ponce, and had moved to San Juan for the wedding. My dress was taken care of; I was to wear Abuela Gabriela’s Chantilly lace gown and her point d’esprit veil, which Aunt Hortensia had graciously lent me and Doña Ermelinda had secretly altered in Ponce to fit me. My bouquet had been decided on also: a wreath of coffee blossoms from Río Negro—Abuelo Vicenzo’s farm in the mountains—where Mother’s family still owned a plot of land. But I had to see about my trousseau, and make a list of the presents that began to arrive by the dozen, so I could later write thank-you notes.
With the money he had inherited from Madeleine Rosich, Quintín bought a small apartment with a view of the ocean, in one of the new buildings of Alamares, and we went shopping together for all the things we would need: sheets, towels, dishes, kitchenware. We furnished it in part with the pieces I brought from the house in Ponce. My books were the first thing I unpacked; I lined one of the back rooms of the apartment with them, making it my study. Then I put Father’s rocking chairs and settees in the living room, their crests gaily decorated with hibiscus, lilies, and bougainvillea. One of his wonderful marble consoles found a place in our dining room. When Quintín and I looked at ourselves in its beveled mirror, we felt truly happy. We embraced and kissed in front of it, as if sealing a pact. Having our apartment ready meant we would finally live our own lives and be able to get away from the house on the lagoon.
The day of the wedding, we rode to church in Buenaventura’s silver Rolls-Royce, with Brambon at the wheel, wearing his black twill uniform. Abuela Gabriela’s dress fit me like a glove and Quintín looked like a storybook prince, dressed in tails and wearing his father’s silk top hat. Rebecca had kept it all those years in her closet, wrapped in tissue paper, so her sons could wear it on their wedding day. As we walked down the aisle together, I couldn’t help thinking of Father, of how much he would have enjoyed being there with me. Abby would have liked to be at my wedding, too, but only if I had been marrying someone else. She wouldn’t have wanted to see me marry Quintín.
After the ceremony, we drove back to the house on the lagoon for the reception. The house looked beautiful. The terrace’s handrail had been decorated with a garland of white orchids, and tables for the guests had been set near the water. Petra herself had baked the wedding cake, a three-tiered fountain covered in icing, with two sugar doves drinking at the top. The morning of the wedding, she called us into the kitchen and showed us the cake before anyone else saw it. “Love is the only Fountain of Youth,” she said to Quintín and me, her smile a half-moon shining on her face. “That’s the secret Rebecca will never learn.”
Buenaventura had decided that only Codorniu champagne would be served at the reception—the brand he imported from Spain—and the waiters hovered over the tables, pouring glass after glass for the guests. He had made his toast to the bride and groom and the orchestra had begun to play Tú y yo, the elegant nineteenth-century danza Quintín and I were supposed to dance together, when from under the golden terrace a whole string of rowboats floated out, lit with paper lanterns and full of people singing, accompanied by guitars. It was a serenade Petra and the servants had organized in our honor.
As the celebration continued, Quintín and I were absorbed in our own little world. We sat quietly next to each other, drinking champagne from the same glass, holding hands and feeling a little like strangers at our own wedding. We were counting the minutes until everything would be over and we would go to the airport, board a plane to New York, and from there fly to Paris. The terrace gleamed before us like a golden stage, and all of a sudden it made me think of Rebecca and her unhappy performance as Salomé. Rebecca had wanted to be a writer and a dancer, but she became neither, because of her unhappy marriage. I swore I wouldn’t let that happen to me.
21
Rebecca’s Book of Poems
COMPARED TO THE MENDIZABALS, my family was little more than middle-class. The Antonsantis’ inheritance was negligible next to the kind of money the Mendizabals had, and they probably would have preferred that Quintín marry a girl from one of San Juan’s old, established families. Abby’s side of the family, of course, didn’t count. Buenaventura and Rebecca never mentioned the Monforts; even though they were landowners, they were too controversial for comfort.
In the eyes of Rebecca and Buenaventura, I was overeducated and far too Americanized. Sending me to study in the States had been my parents’ great mistake; I had evidently enjoyed too much freedom during my years at Vassar. Patria and Libertad would both go to a finishing school in Switzerland after graduating from high school. Rebecca herself had studied only as far as her freshman year, marrying Buenaventura when she
was sixteen. A university diploma was a sign of prestige, but it was also a subtle threat. A woman’s education was supposed to be an asset; she could bring up her children better and it would give her the opportunity to help her husband at social gatherings. A degree from La Rosée in Switzerland would have been much more appropriate. Not only would I have learned to be a polished hostess; I would have made friends among the children of European royalty. Being an orphan, on the other hand, and not having anyone but Quintín in the world was a point in my favor because it cast me in a vulnerable light. His parents could adopt me without reservation; I was to be part of the Mendizabal clan and participate in all their activities.
During the first months of our marriage, I got to know the Mendizabals better. Dinner was a very important occasion for Buenaventura, and the dining room was the most prominent room in the house. Up to forty guests could sit at the mahogany table, which had griffin feet and gargoyles carved at each end. The chairs had leather seats and backrests embossed with helmets of Spanish Conquistadors. At one end of the table, under the rug, there was a butler’s bell that rang in the kitchen, so Rebecca could silently summon the servants.
Meals took forever, but Sunday dinners were the worst of all. Sometimes the family would sit down at two o’clock, and at five we’d still be there, like birds glued to a branch. I was very much in love with Quintín and wanted his parents to like me. But, still, it took all my willpower not to get up in the middle of the meal and run out to the garden to do a couple of jumping jacks, or simply to take a breath of fresh air. After a few months of this, however, I found a way to make dinners more bearable. I would simply sit there and closely observe everyone, finding out as much as I could about the Mendizabals by listening to the stories they all told me.
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