The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien

by Oscar Hijuelos

  Shyly she asked him, “And are you?”

  “Bored, here and now? Why, no! But if you’re asking me do I find certain kinds of companions dull, yes.” Then: “Really, when I first noticed you in the movie house and on the street, I looked into your eyes and told myself, ‘Now, there’s a girl who would appreciate things.’ I suppose you know that you have beautiful eyes. They’re blue, aren’t they?”

  “I inherited them from my father.”

  Then the waiter came over with the menu, each of them choosing steak with Brussels sprouts, and while they dined, Mr. Thompson related, in his rather guarded manner, some of the circumstances of his life: good and proper breeding, college at Princeton, a year in business school, and before the war a year spent on a Grand Tour of Europe—the “good life.” (In those days he’d never mention the aloofness of his family.)

  “And who is it that I remind you of?” she had asked him that night.

  “Oh, just someone I knew in France, a girl named Jeannette.”

  And he looked off, absorbed in a sweet memory.

  “She was dark-featured and very pretty like yourself, and with a lively spirit. Have I told you enough?” Then: “But that was long ago, in another life.”

  And she told him about her circumstances, that she came from a large family, that she had thirteen sisters, and about her greatest love, books. He, in turn, mentioned that his father owned quite a large private library, containing over two thousand books, some very old; he himself had received for his sixteenth birthday an edition of Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars that had been printed in London in 1638, a fine edition made when “paper was really paper.”

  “I have it back at my house and, if you like, I’ll lend it to you sometime.” Then: “And in fact, if you like books so much, I can take you into Philadelphia one day and we can go browsing in the rare-book shops there. I’m not much for collecting, but I’ve always liked the works of Dickens, and anything, absolutely anything, containing the illustrations of Gustave Doré.”

  “How wonderful.”

  “Not really—just a little sideline. Mainly I like to look around for French publications—like to keep my French up, and so, now and then, I make trips out to New York, where you can find anything.” He sighed. “Of course, the best thing would be to go to France, but these days I’ve seemed to come into a bit of responsibility. And that can get dreary. In any case,” he said to her cheerfully, hoisting a glass of root beer, “I toast you, my dear. And wish that we could sip on good French wine instead of this rot.”

  And they clinked glasses.

  ***

  That first night, Mr. Thompson did not kiss her, did not attempt as much as a touch of her legs. He had driven her back to her house, and in those brief moments as they sat before the white picket fence, she decided that she liked him very much, and was suddenly overcome with the impulse to embrace him: she did, nestling her head against his neck and kissing him. She had blushed and he had moved away from her, saying, “Well now, I suppose it’s best that you get on home.” He got out and opened the passenger door to his Packard and stood watching her as she made her way toward the house, turning every so often to wave goodbye to him. And then, through the screen door, she watched that considerate and dapper gentleman drive off.

  — A Drive in the Country —

  The sisters got to know Lester Thompson as a more or less formal fellow who’d show up at the house on Sundays in his Packard so that he could take Margarita out for a drive. Not much was said about their “dates,” although there was a rumor in town that the only reason a man like Thompson would consort with someone like Margarita was to take her to bed—of course—and even though this was not the case, her father, Nelson O’Brien, had a hard time bringing himself around to the idea of having this man visiting the house so often, though Mariela had concluded that this quiet and private fellow was decent enough. And he was gracious, even while immersing himself in the persistent clamor of the household and subjecting himself to a certain dizziness that a man might feel around too much female influence. Wondering how the family could deal with the crowded nature of their existence, he had asked, “Where do you sleep?” and Margarita had shown him the rooms with three or four beds and he nodded with sympathy, doing the same when reviewing the outhouse and toilet, his nostrils assailed by the pungencies of the air. Joining them at their breakfast table, he would partake of waffles and eggs, with some bacon thrown in, chewing his food carefully, never parting his lips too wide or making the loud mastication noises of the lower class. (Their meals were chaotic sometimes, the littlest sisters stabbing, flinging, dripping food, while at the main table the older sisters, having hearty appetites, devoured turkey, chicken, pork, platters of steaks, of plantains, pots of stew, with disorderly impetuosity, the worst offender being Irene, who, despite her graceful name, would sometimes eat so much that she would lose her ability to move.) And then they would retire to the garden, where the younger ones would play and the blossoms and insects proliferated. On those visits, Mr. Thompson, who was not the most spontaneous man in the world, found time to play with the children. He would bring them candies, and they came to like him: he was rich, his trousers pockets thick with bills, so rich that he had an odd, almost metallic smell about him, his skin saturated with the smell of money. Although at first he seemed strictly business, Margarita must have had a liberating effect on him because he had started to dress more cheerfully, taking to bright bow ties and boater hats.

  He always looked her straight in the eyes, and although he never so much as held her hand, she had the impression that he wanted to but restrained himself because he had so gentlemanly a nature.

  On Sundays they’d go driving around the countryside, along the winding roads, Lester behind the wheel and Margarita always impressed, even though she knew how to drive. But one day Lester got it into his head to give her a driving lesson, and to please him, she pretended that she didn’t know a thing about the business of automobiles.

  As he drove along, he told her to pay attention as he explained the workings of the clutch, the choke, the accelerator and brakes, and then pulled over and told her to try sitting behind the wheel. And for reasons that she would never quite understand, she initiated a number of jolting, disharmonious starts and stalls. His face turned red and he began to lose patience, and then effortlessly, having taken in his instructions again, she guided the automobile down the road, and when he encouraged her to increase her speed, she pressed the accelerator down and began to fly through the world at fifteen miles per hour. With that, she began to laugh like a child, and kept turning to see if Mr. Thompson was pleased, and he was, his face the epitome of happiness and pride. They drove through arching shadows of bending willow and oak trees and must have been out on that particular road for half an hour when Mr. Thompson suggested they turn off onto a road that cut through a dairy farm, which would eventually lead them back to Cobbleton. But they came on a team of horses dragging a harvester as wide as the road, and when he told her to stop and pull over, she accelerated, jerking the wheel to the side of the road and then braking. The car rolled into a shallow ditch, the elegant bumpers of the machine grazing the trunk of a moss-covered tree.

  It could have been a bad situation, but the farmer helped Lester to haul the automobile out of the ditch, and afterward Mr. Thompson decided that they should rest for a bit and led Margarita into the field, where they found a nice tree to sit under. After a while Mr. Thompson told her, “The truth is, honey, I’m glad we came out here—even if you nearly wrecked the jalopy. The truth is, honey, I want to kiss you.”

  And with that he pulled her close and, as they used to say in those days, planted a long, lingering kiss on her mouth, the coarseness of his upper lips on her, the pearly hardness of his teeth against hers, and though she had never kissed a man before, it seemed perfectly natural that she open her mouth to let his tongue in. “You know how to kiss, I see, in the French style,” he had told her, the lewdness of the act, the fles
hiness of his tongue, making her face turn red. He closed his hand on hers.

  That afternoon he was wearing a blue blazer and gray trousers, a straw hat, and spats, and she had worn a sleeveless pink dress, this being mentioned to help describe the movement of Mr. Thompson’s hand, which slid down from the back of her neck to rest on her right breast, without further movement, until he judged it appropriate to press his middle finger against her nipple, which under her camisole and brassiere grew to the size of a sewing thimble, which much pleased him and made him shift his position. When he finished caressing her, he drew a breath of air and shifted her clothes so that he could suckle her breast, which he did for a long time.

  Sitting with his arm around her and peering down, as if to contemplate a squirrel which, cheerfully feeding on a chestnut, had scampered into view, he attempted to lift her skirt, and when she pulled away, he stretched out and seemed to be dreaming. Despite her reluctance to comply with all his wishes, she perceived within his creaseless trousers the quill-shaped outline of his erect penis, roughly the length of her smallish hand. Later, when he stood up and helped her to her feet, the quill was still evident, and when they were sitting in the automobile and he was again explaining the mechanical workings of the engine and its gears, she noticed that his ardor had not subsided, and though it was not anywhere as spectacular as what she had seen on bulls and horses in the fields, she felt flattered.

  That night, her body burned with a desire that had precipitated in her breasts and was a constant blush between her legs. It was so bothersome that at three in the morning she got out of bed and made her way to the toilet, where she pulled her underdrawers down to her ankles and then proceeded to work her fingers through the denseness of her pubic hair, plucking and pressing, until her body, in a quite un-Catholic and unladylike way, began to double up on itself and expanded, wept, and then burst. It had not been the first time she experienced such bodily pleasures while thinking about a man (there was the aviator, and Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), but it was the first time she had done so because of a man she knew.

  — Lester Keeps His Promises —

  To that time, she remembered years later, Lester had kept his promises to her. He did take her to rare-book shops and always seemed happy when she liked a particular book, its cost sometimes beyond her means, and he would delight in buying that book for her. And when Margarita, flustered, would try to refuse, he was blunt in his answer: “Really, I’m rich and a few dollars are nothing to me.” She had learned in those days, despite her strong urge for independence, simply to nod and thank the man. And on days when she felt particularly grateful and wanted to please him, she would find some quiet spot, usually along a country road, where they would stand against a tree, kissing, her hands touching him in the manner that she had once read about in one of her father’s books (not a photography manual) entitled A Gentleman’s Guide to Love, rubbing him until this earnest gentleman’s face would crumple up with exertion and he would moan with pleasure. Sometimes, when they were together, he would tell her, “I’m a dull man whose passions are aroused by you.” On some of those days she was very nearly tempted to remove her dress and to rest back on the ground waiting for him, but her sense of propriety (and the occasional sensation that her mother and her sisters were somehow watching her) kept her from doing so.

  After a year, even though he was kindly and always spoke of her good “heart,” her intelligence and lively spirit, she still did not understand why he had started, in his own words, to “feel a strong attraction and affection” toward her, and yet she had also come to believe that in his eyes she was beautiful. She had long become accustomed to the fact that he was often aroused in her presence (though rarely in the house), and to the way he doted on her. There were times, however, when she noticed his “darker” side, when, suddenly displeased with his life, he would go for weeks without seeing her—his activities unknown to her—only to change again. He would then come to the house or find her in the movie theater, a bouquet of flowers and a gift of chocolates or a book in hand, Lester saying, “If you only knew how much I’ve missed you, my enchantress.”

  On some of those days, he would return from spending a weekend with his family, whom she had never met, and in speaking about them, he would always seem bitter. His eyes would screw up; he’d turn away and get crazy, his hands shaking. He’d become a spoiled child. And sometimes he would seem a little drunk, a slight odor of whiskey on his breath, as if, while driving down from their estate, he had guzzled booze from a flask. He would speak differently, the careful, measured cadences of his speech giving way to a surprisingly mundane slang. “You know what the scoop is, my dear. My folks drive me nuts, that’s what. To hell with ’em, I say!”

  And that’s when, if they were not in public or standing in the lobby of the movie house or in the back office of his store, she would pull him close and, with great feelings of love and an almost maternal concern, she’d hold him and, caressing his head, say, “Forget all of that, my love. I’m here, your Margarita. And I will take care of you.”

  In such a mood one day, and perhaps feeling that Margarita Montez O’Brien was the kind of woman he needed in his life, he proposed marriage.

  With thoughts of European trips, many rare books, a grand house, the companionship of a sometimes moody man who would, however, offer her a chance for a gloriously fulfilled life, she told him yes. She had been confident in her decision. A girl had to look out for herself and seize opportunity. And yet she was anxious about leaving her family. In a dream one night, in the days after Lester proposed marriage, Margarita found herself in a dentist’s chair (much like the chair in Dr. MacIntyre’s office on the main street of town, with the great tooth hanging outside his doorway). Looking over her mouth (that’s how she perceived men, always looking at one part of her or the other), the dentist said, “I have to pull this one out,” and she started to cry. Afterward, when she looked at her remaining teeth in a mirror glazed by a pinkish light, she saw that her teeth were gold, copper, bronze, silver, tin, iron, glass, seashell, porcelain, stone, and wood, and awoke with the sensation that her sisters were vaporous sprites who were forever destined to play tricks on her, and to whom she would always be drawn.

  — The Gentleman’s Guide to Love —

  The night before Margarita’s wedding in 1925, the fourteen sisters were gathered in the house for dinner. Two long tables had been pushed together for the older girls, a few smaller tables set out for the children. Although it was late spring, their father, Nelson O’Brien, prosperous and happy and a little tipsy, and having always liked a fire “for the hearth of the home,” had thrown some logs into the fireplace, as he claimed to feel a slight chill. They’d dined on turkey with potatoes and gravy and a good dessert of perfectly baked apple and blueberry pie, compliments of Irene, and he, a little wavery but content, proposed a toast, his hand touching Margarita’s face and a glass of bootleg beer raised to the glory of his daughters, to the impending marriage, and to the fact that his wife, Mariela, was once again, for the sixteenth time in her life, pregnant.

  Nearly twenty-three years had passed since his first daughter, Margarita, was born, and Nelson O’Brien had been a good father, making babies, one after the other, and loving them. But each time he was blessed with a new daughter instead of a son, he would brood, as if his inability to produce a man like himself was a curse. When Mariela became pregnant—which was often—his evenings home would find him sitting before the fireplace, his prized Dutch pipe in hand, floating regally through a cloud of manly speculation about the condition of his wife, whom he much loved, and the sex of the baby, who he hoped, as everyone else knew, might be a boy. Year after year, with this wish in mind, and in the middle of the night, usually in the autumn, when the winds were blowing and the shutters banging, he would undertake the act of love with the efficiency, he imagined, of a great and virile man, always in the same way, for he remembered the rules of coitus that he had once read in
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love, published in London in 1900, the joke wedding gift of his friend Harrington. This manual instructed the male first to indicate his interest with a few playful caresses, then to admonish the female with the lines of a love poem—a sonnet by Shakespeare that begins “So are you to my thoughts as food to life” coming most highly recommended—and then perhaps to break into a song so that the “nervous, delicate, and extremely changeable disposition of the female might be more receptive to the demands of male ardor.” His wife, Mariela Montez, loving affection and bored with the dry mundanities of her life, always responded, without fear and with an enthusiasm that often astounded him. After completing the preliminaries of what had become a ritual in their canopied bed, he would reach over and part the folds of his wife’s nightgown, seeking out with his tobacco-stained fingers the mat-haired opening of her femininity, which without much effort on his part would grow plump and moist with his touch, and she, his little Spanish darling, that petite and pensive dark-eyed woman whom he had met many years before in Cuba, would become a transformed being, almost greedy with desire, yanking at that part of him that he sometimes considered a nuisance, and fondling him nearly to the point of anger, as it was his considered opinion that only the man should initiate and control the act of love.

  Even when the manual explained that a “man should never be surprised by or show disapproval at the sudden appearance of unbecoming unladylike behavior,” he would sometimes turn away, stonily silent and unmoving, until his marital rigidity gave way to his desire and he would cover her face and body with kisses. Then, with quivery aim and for the sake of continuing the family line, Nelson O’Brien would descend again and again into his wife’s mysterious and fertile depths.