The Plimsoll Line (12 page)

We went out to eat at a cider bar on the other side of the valley. There was a playground and a garden and a reservoir with boats, and the sun made my arms itch. Uncle Óscar turned up on his motorcycle. His latest girlfriend was sitting behind him—a girl with a perky butt and a fish face. I like Uncle Óscar a lot, so slim, with his boots and fighter pilot sunglasses. One day, Uncle Óscar came to pick me up at school on his bike. Everybody in the class’s jaws dropped open when they saw me put on my helmet and race away. The noise of the engine reverberated down the street and I clung to his waist. I could see the asphalt flying past, and his gloved hands, and his strong arms covered in blond hair. One day I’d like to have a boyfriend like him
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I didn’t say a word the whole meal. What would I talk about? My mother staring at Uncle Óscar’s girlfriend out of the corner of her eye, my father staring at her, as well, and Uncle Óscar telling jokes and asking me, “Lo, what’s up with Lo? Sighs come out of her strawberry mouth.” He’s the only one I allow to say such things
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My father went to the car and came back with the present under his arm. There was no need to ask what it was—a painting. Uncle Óscar started singing Happy Birthday. His girlfriend moved her silicone-swollen lips. My mother tore open the wrapping paper—St Mark’s Square in winter. “It’s by a very promising local painter. He has presence and a sure touch, see,” said my father, pointing at the cathedral and horses. She blew him a kiss off the palm of her hand. Then Uncle Óscar got out a camera. He said he’d bought it on his latest trip to New York. The camera shone in his hands when he lifted it toward us. He told us to move closer together, he was going to use it for the first time to take a family portrait of us. “Look at me, Lo,” he said. The sun was behind him, and the leaves on the trees were reflected in the water, which looked like a sheet of gold
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Monday the 21
^st
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Had my period all day. From my bed to the sofa, from the sofa to my bed. Pale face, legs as heavy as two logs
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Tuesday the 12
^st
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I knew they wouldn’t like Antonio. He’s six years older than me, he smokes, drinks, has a ponytail, and drives an old, beat-up car. When we went into Samby, Sandra told us to look at the boy in the black T-shirt. Claudia said he was an old man, but I liked him, so slim, with his pirate ponytail and deep black eyes. I stared at him, and he stared back. He came over, and we started talking. He cracked a joke about my eyes, said they were very pretty, looked like two minerals. Then he opened his wide. He made me laugh. My friends were burning with envy, especially Sandra, who was the one who’d spotted him first. Sandra isn’t ugly, but if I were a man, her pimples would give me the shivers. Claudia watched us from the other side of the bar while sipping a pi
ñ
a colada. We talked about movies. He also liked horror movies. He knew a lot about movies, and about music as well. He studied computer engineering. He told me all about computer viruses and the effects they can have on a computer, and I could see out of the corner of my eye that my friends were growing impatient. After a while, Sandra came over and asked me what I wanted to do, since they were going home. Antonio said he had a car and could take me. I shrugged my shoulders. I smiled at Sandra, but she twisted her mouth and left. It got late. As we were leaving the city, I watched the orange streetlights and the wet asphalt going past on the other side of the car window. He asked me if I would like to go to the movies, we arranged to meet the following weekend. When he started calling me at home, I rushed to grab the phone before my parents. Mom was dying of curiosity, so she did her best to be near the phone. I remember the expression she got when she put her ear to the receiver and heard a man’s voice asking for me. She raised her eyebrows and handed me the phone as if it had turned into a snake. Then came the questions and the conversation with cups of green tea on the porch table, just like the day she explained to me where children come from. Since then, we hadn’t spoken about sex. The poor woman got all flustered, and I didn’t know what to do with myself, either, when she told me we had to take precautions because she didn’t want to see my life ruined by a slip-up. That’s the word she used—a slip-up. And she added,“If you want, we can go and see the gynecologist . . .” She reminded me I was still under age. “Mom, please . . . ,” I begged her. I thought that was the typical kind of legalistic argument my father would use. She would never have come up with something like that. I reminded her it was only a few months until I turned eighteen. Her face hid behind the steam coming from the teapot as she hurriedly discussed condoms and pills. Poor Mom. I wonder how they do it. I can’t imagine my father putting a condom there. I don’t think they do it very much. In fact, I don’t think they do it at all. My father steered clear of the subject of Antonio from the very beginning. He played dumb, didn’t want to know who this guy calling his daughter was, but I felt he was watching me, especially when I left home with eye makeup on while outside Antonio kept honking the horn
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Wednesday the 13
^th
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My parents met Antonio on the day of Grandpa’s funeral. They were too sad to think about their daughter’s boyfriend. And I was too sad to think about the impression Antonio would make on them, with his ponytail and black T-shirt. There were my father and Uncle Óscar, in black ties, and my mother with her chin on her chest. After the funeral, there were people I’d never set eyes on in my life, kissing me on the cheek and saying how pretty you are, Laura, really, how pretty. Then it all became very distant, especially when we went outside and I saw Antonio’s head poking out from the crowd. I hugged him. Felt his cold, sweaty skin. I hadn’t cried all day. When my father told me Grandpa had died, I couldn’t shed a single tear, I could only imagine him in bed, asleep, but dead—dead, but asleep—his heart having stopped, without making a noise, like an old clock, under his pajamas. And that image was the only thing I could feel. I only started crying when I felt my head resting on Antonio’s shoulder. That was when the floodgates opened, in front of everybody. He took me by the arm and shook my father’s hand very seriously and said,“I’m sorry,” and my father replied,“Thank you.” And that was it
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Monday the 30
^th
.

I hate math, I hate matrices, the number
e
, equations. When I’m not interested in something, I’m incapable of giving it my attention; numbers evaporate, signs, unknown quantities that have to be cleared. So I’ve flunked math again. Unless I’m careful, I’ll flunk it again in June, and that would be a disaster, just the excuse my parents need to redirect their daughter’s path far away from Antonio, they’ll send me off to a summer school abroad. To Ireland. I’m not logical, and sometimes that makes Antonio nervous, though what he does isn’t all that logical, either. Otherwise, why spend so much money on cocaine? My father surrounds himself with books, looks after his hydrangeas, my mother listens to opera and drinks green tea. What’s logical about all of that? When we’re in the car, I say to him, “Look, Antonio, what a beautiful sunset,” and he smiles without looking away from the road and then strokes my cheek. To begin with, I was ashamed for him to see my breasts, they’re so small. I shouldn’t have swum as a child, but my mother insisted on taking me to swimming lessons and off I went each day to swim, so now I look like a boy from behind. But Antonio says I have a very nice body, and he strokes my shoulders and kisses me on the neck. Then I don’t have any doubts, and everything strikes me as clean and perfect, pure, the way numbers are supposed to be
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Wednesday the 11
^th
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The cleaning lady couldn’t come today, so it’s up to me to tidy the kitchen. My father has just finished eating as I collect the plates. I can see his head, so similar to Grandpa’s, his short hair, a little gray. He’s wearing that loud tie my mother gave him. He doesn’t like it, but he wears it all the same. I take the plate from under his nose while he polishes off his glass of wine. I wait for him to finish, standing behind him. He leaves the glass on the table, a little white wine still in the bottom. I look at him and for a moment feel like giving him a kiss on the head, like he was a child, and telling him,“Dad, I love you very much,” but instead of that, I take his empty glass and he leaves the kitchen, his tie like a yellow stain in the middle of his weary figure
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Sunday the 16
^th
.

I’m not what others think I am. Only I know the truth. My parents think I’m spoiled, Antonio thinks I’m good, my teachers say I’m very intelligent, but only I know I’m selfish and bad and sometimes have terrible thoughts. I don’t know why I have these thoughts, but I do. Sometimes I would like nothing to exist—those trees, the air—and for my parents not to have brought me into the world. On days like today, I think this and I know it won’t pass and that these thoughts will come back another day, and another, from time to time, like the clouds coming over from the other side of the valley. I’ve spent the afternoon looking at photo albums. My mother so pretty, with a miniskirt and a white purse, my father wearing a tuxedo, on the deck of a cruise ship. They’re happy. At least, they look it. They remind me of the characters in those boring, black-and-white movies who drink champagne and a piano plays and then they kiss on the deck of the ship, or they drink tea in a garden with hedges, under a white parasol, because it’s always sunny, like on a Sunday that never ends. At the bottom of the photograph is written, “Cyprus, 1972.” The island is visible in the background. Then there’s me, in another photo—a round head peeping out from a long gown, and my mother, looking pale, holding me on her lap. My father’s head appears in one corner, he’s standing next to us. He smiles shyly, but looks proud. His face hadn’t fallen back then, it didn’t even look like that could ever happen to him, with that sharp profile and those dark black bangs, and in the center of his forehead there was a shine, a ring of gold that’s gone now, and doesn’t shine. On the back, my mother has written in her pointed handwriting, “June 11
^th
, 1981.” My birthday
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Friday the 31
^st
.

Antonio has gone to Amsterdam with some friends. Now that I think about it, I still haven’t met his friends. He introduced me once to a man with a pockmarked face and very thin lips. He was the owner of a club. He told us to drink whatever we liked, his treat, he was very attentive, but I didn’t like the way he smiled at me. Antonio told him to wait for him. Then the two of them went off and left me alone. They sat at a table in the back of the club and talked for ages. That’s Antonio’s only friend. He said he’d call me as soon as he got to Amsterdam. I didn’t even consider the possibility of going with him, nor did he suggest it. I haven’t seen my girl friends for a while, but I don’t feel like calling them. They’ll have gone to the movies. I took my poster of Tom Cruise off my bedroom wall some time ago, but I’ll bet they’re still discussing who’s better looking, Mel Gibson or Brad Pitt. Then they’ll have gone to drink apple liqueur in the bar district. I miss Antonio. I hope he calls me
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Wednesday the 10
^th
.

Yesterday Polanski caught a blackbird. The porch was covered in black feathers, and drops of blood glistened on the tiles. It was a very pretty bird—an orange beak, the color of a peach. I said to him,“Polanski, you’re a bad cat,” and he just looked at me from the deckchair like he didn’t know me
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Sunday the 8
^th
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I talked to Antonio and I think that was the best part of the day. He sounded very happy. I was waiting for him to tell me he missed me, but he didn’t. Uncle Óscar came for lunch. He whistled when he saw me. “Shame you’re my niece, otherwise I’d make a pass at you, Lo,” he said. “Me too,” I said and had a fit of the giggles. My mother gave him a reproving look. I like it when he says these things. I think he’s the only member of this family who could understand me. Mother had cooked a dish of green-colored roe. Uncle Óscar made a very funny remark about the food, and I had another fit of the giggles. He then explained that he was going to Thailand to do a photo-essay for an American magazine. My father didn’t open his lips the whole meal. Last night he had a fight with my mother. It was worse than other times. I pressed my ear against the wall, but could barely make out what they were saying. I could hear his hoarse voice and mother crying on the other side of the wall. I got a little bit frightened because I heard the sound of a glass object hitting the floor and my father’s hoarse voice again. Then nothing. And yet the sound seemed to float over us during the meal—my father slicing into the roe in silence, my mother laughing halfheartedly at Uncle Óscar’s jokes, me at one end of the table, Grandpa’s empty chair at the other. Over dessert, Uncle Óscar said he’d broken up with his girlfriend. “How many is that now?” my mother asked. My father answered for him,“He’s lost count.” Deep down, he’s jealous of him. Uncle Óscar comes and goes as he pleases, rides a 1000 cc motorcycle, and has lots of girlfriends. He’s capable of discussing any subject and can tell very amusing stories about some of the people he’s met: drug traffickers, mercenaries, gangsters . . . My father, on the other hand, writes art reviews, gives classes, has a house he bought thanks to his wife’s inheritance, and a daughter who’s started wearing too much makeup
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Thursday the 11
^th
.

My birthday. I was expecting something different; after all, one doesn’t turn eighteen every day. I thought it would be something special, but it wasn’t at all. Antonio gave me an old, silver lighter he brought back from Holland. He insisted I try some coke to celebrate, but I said no. We saw each other for barely half an hour in VIPS, he had to study for a computer exam. He was very nervous. He’s grown thinner. While talking, he kept an eye on the entrance to the restaurant. He looked like a frightened animal. A blond man had been following him all day, a Russian with almond-shaped eyes. I asked him who it was and why they were looking for him, but he said it was better I didn’t know. He kept on looking over his shoulder at the street. On the other side of the window, there was only a blind woman selling lottery tickets. Nobody else. He didn’t fix his eyes on me, they seemed to run all over the table. After he’d left, I felt a heaviness in the pit of my stomach
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