“Take me out to lunch,” she said after hugging him tightly, kissing him on the lips. “I want something fried and greasy, and very salty. Please.”
“No,” he said, teasing her as if she were a child, but he couldn’t help smiling.“It’s bad for you.”
“No, it’s not.” She laughed. “It’s extremely good for me. I’ve been dying for a plate of fried squid and a beer for days. Seriously, last night I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it!”
Without Maribel, everything would have been so much worse, and definitely less interesting.This thought occurred to Juan again as he watched her tuck into the plate of fried squid, hungrily devouring the first few mouthfuls, then slowing down and stopping. To her own amazement, she had to admit that she couldn’t eat any more, even though the plate was still almost full.
“Maybe my stomach’s shrunk,” she said, smiling as if delighted at the prospect.“No need to diet ever again.”
“I don’t think that’s likely.”
“What a shame. Now that I’m never going to be able to wear a bikini again, it would at least be nice if I could stay this slim.”
“Why aren’t you going to be able to wear a bikini?”
“Because of the scar.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Maribel!” said Juan, pleased to be able to reassure her, to take care of her internally as well externally. “The navel’s a scar too, and you weren’t ashamed of people seeing that, were you? This one will gradually fade and seem less obvious, even to you. Once you’ve got used to it, you’ll stop noticing it.”
“What about other people?”
“They’ll be looking at you,” he smiled, and so did she,“not at your scar.”
Internal scars are more problematic, he might have added, but he didn’t because he was looking after Maribel and it made him feel good, needed, the best once more, the most intelligent, far removed from Nicanor and his whispered threats, remote from his own mistakes.Yet it was she, keeping to the script of ambiguity that had always governed their relationship, who freed him of the responsibility of looking after her by confirming that nothing would change between them.
“Christ!” she exclaimed as she got home, looking around the tiny living room that was spotlessly clean.“My mother must really be in a state if she came and cleaned the house.”
“It wasn’t your mother,” said Juan, taking her suitcase to the bedroom. She followed, frowning in confusion.“It was your cousin, Remedios.”
“Remedios?” Maribel sat on the bed, shaking her head as if she couldn’t understand.“Why?”
“Because I told her to. I’ve asked her to come over every two days, until you’re better.”
“Oh yes? And who’s going to pay her?”
“Me.”When he saw the expression on Maribel’s face—a mixture of shock and irritation—he explained,“It’s a present.”
“Well, I’m not happy about it, OK? Not happy at all.” Juan stood in the middle of the room, looking so baffled that Maribel relented slightly: “I’m a cleaner, don’t you get it, Juan? I don’t need a cleaner. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“But you’re convalescing at the moment.” As Maribel calmed down, Juan began to feel a little angry.“Your only job is to rest, and move as little as possible until the scar has healed.That’s all I wanted. If you start moving around the house, carrying things, bending down, filling buckets of water, the stitches could burst and you’d be back to square one.You can’t do any cleaning, not even your own home. Not for the time being.You need someone to help you, and that’s all I was trying to do—help you.”
“Right, well it was a bad idea.Things aren’t like that . . .”
Still shaking her head, Maribel lay down on the bed and gestured for him to lie down beside her. She put her arms around him and put her face close to his.
“I’m sorry, it’s just that . . . it’s a bad idea,” she said again.“Things aren’t like that.You don’t have to worry, I’ll sort myself out on my own. I can call my friends, my sisters-in-law, even my mother if I have to. I don’t need anyone to come and clean for me.What would it look like if you were paying Remedios to clean my place—I mean on top of everything else, she’s my cousin. It’s not that I’m not grateful, I am, but there are some things that just aren’t OK, and this is one of them.” She paused, frowned, closed her eyes, and seemed to struggle with what she was about to say next. “I did a lot of thinking while I was in hospital.Well, I didn’t have much else to do, did I? And it’s all the same now with everything that’s happened, but I think you were right, at the beginning, when you said it was stupid for us to get involved. Stupid.” Juan Olmedo, who could never quite get used to the way Maribel was constantly surprising him, burst out laughing even though he didn’t really understand. She laughed too, but continued, “Very stupid. But we went ahead, and here we are. It’s complicated.Very complicated. That’s why I think we ought to leave things the way they are, because if they change, they’ll only change for the worse. I can’t really explain it, it’s just I’m sure that if things do change, they’ll change for the worse. I ought to go back to calling you ‘usted,’ but I don’t think I’ll be able to, because when I was lying there on the pavement and I saw you arrive, I suddenly knew I wasn’t going to die. So I can’t call you Dr. Olmedo any more, I can’t say ‘usted’ to you, that’s just how it is. But one word doesn’t make a big difference, does it? Or does it?”
He looked deep into her eyes, understood more than she had said, and wondered how far he would be capable of going, at what point the clean, transparent pact—that Maribel had apparently willed into existence and with which she was now again offering to relieve him of any responsibility—would become unbearable, stiflingly comfortable, too narrow even for his guilty conscience. He wondered what would happen afterwards, what price he would pay to give her up or to keep her.
“But you don’t have to spend your life working for me, Maribel.”The words didn’t surprise him as he said them.“You could do something else, find another job.Then everything would be easier.”
“Yes, I’ve thought about that,” she said with a sweet, melancholy smile. “I could try, if you like, I could look for another job. But the thing is, I don’t know how to do anything else. I have a son and lots of other expenses, and the only thing I know how to do is clean houses. I realize there are other jobs for people like me, but they pay less.A supermarket cashier might not have to get dirty or ruin her hands, but she earns less than I do. And it’s not just the money. Sara and you, especially you, and your brother, and Tamara, of course, well, you’re like family now. I’m very fond of you. I’m most fond of you, but I’m also fond of Sara, and I don’t mind doing her favors because I like being with her. Sometimes, when I get to her house in the morning, and we have coffee together in the kitchen and chat, I almost forget why I’m there. I like working for you both and things have never been as good as they are now. But I understand what you’re saying, and I know why you’re saying it. So if you want, I could look for another job.”
“No, no, Maribel, that’s not what I mean.”
Juan shook his head and bit his lip, searching for the right words. “I want things to be good for you. I don’t know, I can’t explain it either.”
“It’s not your fault, Juan,” said Maribel. She took his head in her hands, stroked his face, and showed that she was the more intelligent of the two, whenever she needed to be. “You feel bad about the way things are sometimes—I know, I can sense it—but it’s not your fault, it can’t be. It’s my fault. I was the one who didn’t apply myself at school, I’m the one who left school at an early age and got involved with that bastard, got pregnant at eighteen, and didn’t know how to deal with my mother—I’ve done everything wrong. But that’s just the way things are. I can’t do anything about it, only cry over spilled milk. But I don’t want to cry any more. It’s not your fault, Juan, really it isn’t. I feel happier with you than I’ve felt with anyone, but you were r
ight, it is stupid.”
From then on, Juan Olmedo learned to live with a paradox—he accepted the role of immoral, opportunist boss that the ex-husband’s knife had assigned to him when it put an end to what could previously have been considered as simply good fun. But he did it so that Maribel would feel happy with him, and he never again put money in her hand. When she came back to work, it was a few days later than she had intended. Juan had insisted partly because he didn’t want her to take any risks with her scar, and partly because he liked visiting her in the afternoons, under the pretext of examining the wound, and climbing into her warm bed.“I’ll be very careful,” he promised the first time.“You’re always very careful with me,” she answered. He asked for her bank account number and said, casually, that he’d thought it would be more convenient if he paid her wages by direct debit. She smiled and said that was fine.
So, after a warm summery September, autumn arrived, and Juan Olmedo’s life reverted to its usual routine of work and pleasure. Once more, Maribel drew down the blinds on the mornings following his night shifts, a ritual that retained its symbolism even when their planned encounters began to alternate with furtive meetings on Saturdays and Sundays. And while he sometimes thought that Maribel’s attitude—her insistence on never pressing him, her docility, and their private language that let him speak of love in ways that would always remain oblique and comfortably ambiguous—was simply part of her plan, things returned to how they had been before. Or at least they seemed to.
During the days that Maribel spent in the hospital, and later, while she was convalescing, Sara moved Alfonso and the children into her own home. She did so as if it were the most natural thing in the world, without explaining why it was necessary—either to Juan and Maribel, or to herself. “It seems like a good idea,” was all that Juan had said when he found out. He didn’t exactly thank her,just as Sara had not exactly asked his permission when she told him what she was intending to do. But it was no longer a question of standing on ceremony or favors between them, and perhaps this was why the children didn’t ask any questions either.They’d always had fun together, but this was different.Andrés and Tamara were model guests.They ate everything that was put in front of them, carried their plates to the kitchen when they’d finished, accepted her suggestion that they have their bath or brush their teeth as if it were an order, and when Sara suggested they all go out—for a walk on the beach, or a meal, or to the cinema—they never argued, although Alfonso’s comical attempts to imitate them made them burst out laughing. Sara smiled as she bent down to pick up the broken plates that resulted from his clowning, but in truth she never truly felt worried about the children.
It wasn’t true that children would adapt to anything, endure anything, and Sara knew this. Tamara was still very scared. She was frightened of any shadow, any noise and of strangers. A gust of wind making the awning creak, the telephone ringing late at night, the wheels of a car screeching, or someone suddenly turning to ask her the time, made her tremble and turned her voice into that of a pathetic little sparrow as she asked:“What was that? Did you hear that?”The second night of Tamara’s stay, Sara couldn’t sleep and she heard her coming. It was twenty to four in the morning, over five hours since she’d put her to bed, but when she heard the door handle being turned slowly by a fearful little hand, Sara knew it could only be Tamara. The little girl tiptoed across the room, slipped quietly under the covers, moved her foot carefully until it was touching Sara’s leg, and instantly fell asleep.
“I had a horrible dream,” she explained the following morning. “I dreamed that I was in my old house in Madrid. I was in the bathroom, and my mother was alive, and she was brushing my hair. She kept telling me to be still, but I knew it couldn’t be real, because she was dead, and I didn’t dare tell her. And she just went on brushing my hair, talking to me and kissing me as if she were still alive. And she had to still be alive because I was the same age I am now, and I was wearing the dress I had on yesterday. But then I woke up, and I realized it wasn’t true, of course, because Mama’s dead, but I’d believed it, so it was suddenly like she’d died all over again.When she had the accident, I used to have this dream a lot. Now I only have it sometimes, but it goes away if I get into Juan’s bed. That’s why I came to sleep with you last night. I hope you didn’t mind.”
“No, of course not.” Sara smiled. “If you like, you can sleep with me every night, until you dream about something else.”
“Great!” Looking very relieved,Tamara gave her a kiss.“But don’t tell Andrés, OK? If he finds out he’ll say I’m a baby.You know what he’s like.”
But Sara didn’t know what Andrés was like.At night, she would sometimes chat to Tamara for hours.The girl would ask her questions—what was her room like when she was a little girl, her school, her friends? What marks did she get and what was her favorite toy—and then she’d answer the same questions herself, attributing as much value to Sara’s curiosity as to her own. Finally she’d close her eyes and fall asleep, plunging into sleep as if into a swimming pool, while Sara remained awake, thinking about her former closeness to Andrés. This special child, the first person who’d become important to her when she moved into her new home, was gradually filling up with all the screams, tears, anger, and words that he hadn’t allowed himself to express. Like a dam ready to burst, Andrés hadn’t grieved properly over his mother’s injury yet. At least not outwardly. Sara didn’t know where he went when he disappeared mid-afternoon without telling her or giving any hint of his destination. “I’m going out,” he’d announce in neutral tones at the door, and not even Tamara dared say she’d go with him. She and Sara assumed he wanted to go out alone on his new bike—the ultra-light silver mountain bike he’d been presented with at the start of the summer—so they stayed at home with Alfonso, watching TV or baking a cake, waiting for him to come back.When he did return, he seemed as placid and calm as before, and was always ready to taste the cake, lay the table, or play a game. But his willingness to join in did not conceal his complete indifference to the world around him, including them. Sara felt like shaking the boy, slapping him, forcing him to spit out the slow anger, the shame and grief that was poisoning him, turning him into nothing more than a robot. She tried to talk to him, but ended up chatting to herself when she came up against the brick wall of his silence. She would have given anything to wake him up and convince him that whatever happened, she’d always be there for him, she’d always be on his side.Yet she never felt truly worried about him, because it wasn’t true that children would simply put up with everything, and she knew that sooner or later, Maribel’s son would have to find his own path back to screaming and crying and feeling again. Sara was sure he’d manage it eventually. But still, Andrés’s absence, his blank stares, his forced, empty smiles, the sudden awkwardness of his arms and legs, took her back to her anxiety in Juan’s car, when Maribel had almost died and she’d felt it was all her fault.
At the beginning, there had been Andrés, so helpless, so lost in his hand-me-downs, the ridiculous flowery swimming trunks that were too big for him, and the green T-shirt that was so tight Sara could see his ribs through it when he appeared at the kitchen door, always holding one of those little toys you get inside chocolate eggs. This was how she explained her tenderness, the instant affection she felt for the child, a little boy so greedy for images, for names and sounds, for distant cities that were much more than mere points on a map, for mythic animals and real monsters, for emotion, for vivid colors, for depth.As she spoke to him and told him about her travels, as she asked him about the winds, she had fed his curiosity and turned it into faith, had given shape and solid ambition to it, before inspiring a different ambition in his mother. She never thought she was succumbing to Doña Sara’s weakness in doing this.And she hadn’t wanted to adopt the equivocal mantle of a benefactor when she decided to introduce a little arithmetic and common sense into Maribel’s hare-brained schemes. And yet, especially at the beginning when Maribel was s
till so weak, Sara sometimes felt tempted to consider another version of reality. Sara Gómez Morales, with plenty of money and time on her hands, tied to the memory of the few things that had belonged to her and whose only ambition for the future was to accept her aging, had slipped almost without realizing it into Maribel’s life, but hadn’t recognized herself in the poor, unlucky girl, with family burdens but no home of her own, whom she’d pushed just as she’d always pushed herself.
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