by Andrés Barba
María Fernanda always looked the same in pictures: same open smile, same shiny hair, exact same expression in her eyes. Seeing her grow up, in successive photo albums, was like viewing an art exhibit about the passage of time on a beautiful and immutable face that, despite undergoing no structural change, seemed to wither ever so slightly with each passing second. Sometimes she thought that if María Fernanda hadn’t been so aware of her own beauty, it would have been impossible to feel anything but proud to be her sister, in much the same way that she enjoyed being Manuel’s wife, though it relegated her to a sort of secondary status. If she’d been envious, it was never of María Fernanda’s beauty but of her self-assurance, of her ability to adapt to any environment, any conversation. And if liking things about her sister that she often disliked about her mother was contradictory, she wasn’t too concerned about it, just as she wasn’t too concerned about the fact that it was Monday and she was using up vacation days to look after Mamá. It would be awhile before Antonio returned to the hospital, and María Fernanda, with her constant phone calls from Valencia, did nothing but get Mamá worked up, make her complain about how uncomfortable the hospital room was rather than accept it, which would have made the whole thing less of a struggle.
Later, she called the school where Manuel taught and listed the facts:
1. Mamá looked worse.
2. The doctor was talking about some sort of complication with her digestive system.
3. She’d had broth and yogurt for lunch.
4. There was no news from Antonio.
5. Mamá’s caretaker had left a message saying Joaquín called.
She made an effort to describe the facts, to explain them as clearly as possible to Manuel, as though this might shed light on her peculiar reactions to them, or on the fear that she again felt at being in the hospital, or on the utterly astonished feeling she—who had always considered herself a victim of Mamá—got by contemplating the possibility that perhaps Mamá hadn’t been so uncaring, that perhaps she herself was more to blame than she’d thought; and she tried to examine the thornier world of her rancor, struggling to identify concrete facts that could justify her inability to forgive her mother. She saw, then, that even the times when she’d most clearly found Mamá to blame, there shone a tiny glimmer of doubt that suddenly turned against her, made her all the things she’d never wanted to be: unfair, cynical, judgmental, incapable of understanding; the image of Mamá changing (“The fracture could lead to a progressive, more generalized degeneration of the whole organism,” the doctor had said), fighting for her (“we’ve noticed a few reactions”), becoming if not lovable then at least comprehensible (“not necessarily related to the fracture that reveal a deterioration of other organs”); and the worst thing was, maybe it was only the fact that the doctor had spoken this way, in the grave tones of a man not discounting the possibility of a quick demise, that forced her to face the logical—and yet absolutely absurd—fact that Mamá, like every human being, would one day die.
She bought magazines in order to conceal her bafflement, to hide it, if possible, behind the frivolous sorts of comments that had always gotten a rise from Mamá, and although the strategy worked that afternoon, there was a notable phoniness to her chatter, one that in any other situation she would have called fear, but now had no idea what to call it.
“Antonio looks like Papá, don’t you think?”
Her question was only part of the real question, the easiest part, and Mamá, who seemed to have been open to this veiled conversation all day, closed down (“Sometimes”), as though wanting to believe she had more time, as though reserving a longer response for later (“But only sometimes”).
For as easy as it was to talk about María Fernanda, it was just as difficult to talk about Antonio, or Papá. Papá, always the memory of his funeral that didn’t seem like a memory, always the image of the charcoal portrait of him in the living room, in the factory office, but the conversation never went beyond his flat forehead, which Antonio had inherited, or his meek inept expression, which Antonio had inherited, because whenever she asked about him, Mamá responded with a superficial portrait that seemed more like some folksy nineteenth-century novel than an honest description of who he’d been: an unnecessary man.
That was why she didn’t mention that Joaquín had called. Telling her mother would have been a new victory for Mamá, perhaps the only one she’d taken seriously since the factory burned down. Joaquín having asked for severance pay after the fire, and Mamá having fired him without any (a symbolic gesture that she knew from the start would cost her dearly) were things that had disheartened Mamá the same way a woman is disheartened by contemplating the arrogance of her spoiled child, and although in the end Joaquín got his money, he paid for it with his reputation after attempting to set up his own business using Alonso Woodworks’ customers.
The only truly cruel thing Mamá had done, the one time she herself might admit to being deliberately cruel, was to wait for Joaquín to invest all of his money and then destroy him, and since all it took was a couple of phone calls, she did it over a space of time and so subtly that not even Joaquín himself could understand how he went bankrupt. Mamá was clean and unerring, and simple—the definition of a perfect crime—but in order to seal her victory she needed Joaquín’s repentance, needed to have him at her feet once more, like a dog that returns home starving after having tried unsuccessfully to run away.
Not telling her that Joaquín had phoned was also the ultimate proof that, even after admitting that Mamá’s neglect might not have been entirely voluntary, she wasn’t so easily going to let herself be beaten by this sudden pity for her mother, this desire to offer forgiveness when her mother hadn’t even asked to be forgiven yet.
“It may be more than a complication, it may be more generalized,” the doctor had said, laying new ground, using a completely different tone than he had on the first day, his may nothing like the initial, sure-sounding “it will be a slow recovery,” and not telling Mamá anything about the doctor’s assessment, either, now left her in a privileged position, like someone watching a blind man stride confidently toward a wall and doing nothing to stop him.
Twenty-two years ago she and María Fernanda slept in the same room. It seemed absurd to think of that now, but in fact it wasn’t, because something in Mamá’s expression had merged them—Mamá and her sister—had turned them into a single perception, simpler, more concrete. On the wall by the top of her bed, María Fernanda had put up a photo of Kirk Douglas, in Ulysses, half-naked, in underwear that looked more like a rag, about to take on someone much bigger than him and looking as though he were going to ravish him rather than punch him; and she’d hung it there because she was crazy about Kirk Douglas, crazy in particular about the dimple in his chin, his rugged face, so like the rugged face of that boy from Somontes who was a skeet shooter, the one she’d slept with; and after María Fernanda had told her about it she’d imagined her sister, legs spread, in such detail that she couldn’t help but feel revolted by María Fernanda’s sexuality, and also by the goofy expression Papá always had in photographs, where he was never touching Mamá (“It’s impossible to predict the reactions an elderly person’s body might have in these circumstances,” the doctor had said). Deep down they weren’t so different, not even now that María Fernanda had gained weight and Mamá was so hollow and pasty, her skin like beige clay. If she’d initially feared introducing Manuel to María Fernanda, it was not only out of insecurity but also out of fear that he might be captivated by her sexuality. Mamá allowed María Fernanda to wear the kind of skirts she herself was hardly even allowed to try on, with the sorry excuse that there was “a right way to wear them” and while María Fernanda looked natural in them, she looked like she was about to go street-walking (“A hooker, that’s what you look like”), and this comment, made in the cruel tones Mamá often used when returning from the factory, was enough to dissuade her. But not only did Manuel not fall at her sister’s feet, he ha
rdly even noticed her, and this was the first and best victory she’d had over María Fernanda: a man, finally, had chosen her. The fact that it took some time to establish their intimacy, physically, didn’t matter to him, once she stopped worrying about Manuel’s sexuality. In the car—it didn’t matter if it was late but they did have to be someplace secluded—she could feel his hand slip through the undone buttons of her blouse, resting lightly on her chest (“Indeed, this deterioration could be related to her arthritis,” the doctor had said) or his fingers slip beneath her bra, but more often not, without wanting to take off her clothes, because she felt more at ease being sexual with clothes on, Manuel’s pants getting a wet spot, him smiling and opening the windows to clear the steam; and this was no doubt more comfortable than María Fernanda’s sexual acrobatics with the champion skeet shooter from Somontes who looked just like Kirk Douglas taking aim, his rugged face just the same, his cleft chin just the same, the same boy who, when María Fernanda broke up with him, came calling day and night like a lost little lamb, like a hunting dog, like Joaquín striding into the dining room on Sundays back when the factory was still in business, saying, “María Antonia, we have to deal with the saw contractor,” and her mother replying, “Later, Joaquín,” and him taking slow satisfied sips of his wine as though he’d just wanted to prove he could speak to her so informally—not to the woman now writhing from hip pain (“It’s one tragedy after another”) but doña María Antonia, the woman who died nine years ago when the factory burned down and left in her place, in her bones, this other woman who’d inherited only the silent desire to know everything about everyone, the desire to control everyone.
She went home for dinner, making the most of Mamá having dozed off. When she walked in Manuel was giving the kids their dinner, and the ordinariness of the scene seemed almost ridiculous compared to the intensity of what she’d been ruminating on all day.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“OK.”
“Your brother called. He sounded on edge. Did something happen?”
“No. What did he say?”
“For you to call him. Are you sure everything’s OK?”
“Yes.”
Antonio was home; Luisa answered and passed the phone to him immediately, cautiously, treating it as an important call.
“What the fuck was all that yesterday?” Antonio barked with the brusqueness other people’s reactions always brought out in him.
“All what?”
“What do you mean all what? That scene Mamá made. What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Don’t speak to me that way, Antonio.”
“I’m sorry.”
She couldn’t pretend the conversation was not, on some level, satisfying. It essentially revealed that she, the big sister, was the only authority figure Antonio recognized.
“You know how Mamá thinks of us: you’re the failure and I’m the dimwit.”
“So what was she trying to do?”
“Prove it to you, prove it to both of us, I suppose.”
Admitting this so openly tinged her words with a sort of fearfulness that made Manuel look up. He hadn’t stopped watching her since the conversation started, and the kids were fussing, perhaps surprised at this unjustified interruption to their dinner.
“But why? Why prove it to us?”
“I think she’s dying, Antonio, and what’s worse: I think she’s perfectly aware of the fact that she’s dying. She’s acting really weird: she hardly spoke at all today, and she’s so pale; I think she’s dying.”
She’d poured all this out so quickly that Manuel hardly had time to react. Nor did Antonio, and suddenly it seemed fake: the words she’s used, Manuel’s expression, Antonio’s silence; it was as though it were impossible to discuss death without turning it into a performance, an affectation.
“Did the doctor say something to you?”
“The doctor just makes these comments, you know, like he’s washing his hands of the whole thing. He says her condition may deteriorate progressively.”
“What’s she saying?” Luisa whispered, barely audible, from behind Antonio.
“Shh, I’ll tell you in a minute,” he replied. And then, “Are you going back tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“María Fernanda has to be told.”
That was Antonio’s classic way of saying he wasn’t going to be the one to do it.
“I’ll tell her, I’ll call her from the hospital tomorrow.”
“She called this afternoon,” Manuel said, guessing at their conversation.
“What did she say?”
“That she’d call back later.”
“I’ll take care of it,” she said, addressing Antonio again, “I’ll call her tomorrow.”
“OK.”
And they hung up. Manuel’s look suddenly made her uncomfortable.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I have no idea.”
Fear. Fear that they’d be mentally or physically disabled, or ugly, or too fat; and nightmares, she had nightmares in which, from the moment she found out they were going to be twins, she pictured them joined at the back, forced to wave a single arm or kick a single leg, offspring whose ugliness was like her, but a grotesque version. Now they were three and it seemed idiotic to have thought those things, but at the time, starting halfway through the pregnancy, her age, and all those years on the pill, and all those women’s magazines, had made her feel petrified and almost entirely certain that something horrific would be wrong with the kids. Mamá became a grandmother without so much as conceding that her fears were not wholly groundless, without even understanding, really, that the reason she’d waited so long to become a mother was because she wanted to prove something, to show that—like María Fernanda—she too could have a professional life. There came a moment when she thought that Mamá actually cared more about being named godmother at the baptism than about the fact that they’d been born, and it made her so sick that she was on the verge of asking some random girlfriend to be their godmother instead.
In the end, it was Mamá, of course, but Manuel had had to do everything he could to calm her down so that her hostility wouldn’t be evident throughout the ceremony. And then afterward she was afraid, absurdly and unjustifiably afraid—like she was now, after having spoken to María Fernanda—about having more or less argued with her mother.
Sex with Manuel did nothing for her that night, but she needed it, in a compulsive sort of way. It was, in fact, a dodge, something she pounced on knowing that it wouldn’t make her feel any better but also that it would make the night pass more quickly. And then afterward she returned to the hospital, because she didn’t want to stay with Manuel, either: staying would have meant having to explain too many things.
Walking out, she got the strange sense that she was abandoning them, and all the words she hadn’t said to María Fernanda began to fill her throat. As always, after arguing with her sister, being upset filled her with uneasiness and made her feel impotent, made her pore over their exchange, searching for the words she should have said, for comebacks that would have hit the mark, and also made her regret what she actually had said. And because she went through this same routine every time, her sense of failure was like a familiar story, one repeated since adolescence.
Mamá was asleep when she arrived but awoke from the sound the armchair made, as she sat down beside the bed.
“Where have you been?”
“At home. I went back to feed the kids,” she lied.
“Ah.”
Mamá’s mouth was dry, which made her look even more pitiful, so she went into the tiny bathroom and came back with a glass of water, which her mother drank quickly and also, since she couldn’t sit up very well, spilled onto her nightgown. Her lips trembled theatrically.
“I want you to get me out of here,” she said.
“Get you out of here? Where do you want to go? You’re not in good shape,
Mamá, the doctors need to see you, you’re in no state to go home.”
She’d adopted that phony tone again, as though speaking to a little girl, trying to talk her out of some ridiculous whim, but Mamá’s tragic tone had been no more natural.
“I’m not talking about going home. I want to go to another hospital, a private hospital, the doctors here are killing me.”
“For God’s sake, nobody’s killing you.”
“I want to leave.”
“You don’t have the money, Mamá.”
She said it knowing how cruel those words would sound to her mother, but they didn’t produce the effect she’d hoped for, the normal one, the grimace of disgust people made when confronted with some trivial, impulsive peccadillo they’ve committed; instead she gave an intent serious look, one that seemed to have predicted her daughter’s response and now almost delighted in having been right.
“I want that million,” she replied, looking her in the eyes.
“What million?”
“The million pesetas I gave you and Manuel for the house.”
“That was fifteen years ago, Mamá.”
“I want it back.”
She remembered the money perfectly, of course, because over the years it had been one of Mamá’s favorite bones to pick, a specter that made stormy appearances, often after arguments, one that made even Manuel, who was generally so laidback, so angry that he’d refuse to speak to Mamá. And now it had appeared again, this time with a seriousness that bore not the hallmark tone people used when bringing up a favor they’ve granted as the prelude to a request but the intransigence of a legal summons.
“I don’t have it, you know perfectly well that I’m drowning in bills and paperwork.”
Those words were the only way she could find to ask for clemency, though she saw immediately that forgiveness would not be easily granted.
“If you loved me you’d give me the money, if you really loved me you couldn’t stand seeing me in this piece of shit hospital.”