The Sum of Our Days (13 page)

The woman who impressed me most was undoubtedly Wangari Maathai, who works with women in African villages and has planted more than thirty million trees, changing the soil and the weather in some regions. This magnificent woman glows like a lamp, and I felt an irresistible urge to put my arms around her, something that occasionally happens in the presence of certain young men, but never with a lady like her. I hugged her for a long time, unable to let go, she was like a tree: strong, solid, quiet, content. Wangari must have been frightened, and she unobtrusively pushed me away.

The Olympic Games opened with an extravagant spectacle in which thousands of actors, dancers, extras, musicians, technicians, producers, and many more people took part. At a certain moment, about eleven p.m., when the temperature had fallen to below zero, we were led to the wings and given the enormous Olympic flag. Loudspeakers announced the climactic moment of the ceremony and the Triumphal March from Verdi's
Aïda
was rousingly sung by the 40,000 spectators. Sophia Loren walked ahead of me. She is a head taller than I am, not counting her luxuriant hair, and she walked with the elegance of a giraffe on the African savannah, supporting the flag on her shoulder. I trotted behind on tiptoe, holding my section above my head with my arm extended. I was dwarfed beneath the damned flag. Of course all cameras were focused on Sophia Loren, the eternal symbol of beauty and sexuality, and that worked in my favor because I appeared in all the press photographs, even though between Sophia's legs. I confess to being so happy that according to Nico and Willie, who with tears of pride were urging me on from the gallery, I was levitating. That circuit of the Olympic stadium was my four magnificent minutes of fame. I have kept all the articles and photos because it is the one thing I do not want ever to forget when senile dementia erases all my other memories.

B
UT LET
'
S GO BACK
, P
AULA
, and not get lost in time. We grew very fond of Sally, Jason's sweetheart, a discreet girl of few words who kept herself in the background, although she was always attentive and participating. She had a fairy godmother touch with the children. She was short, pretty without being flamboyant, with smooth blond hair and never a drop of makeup. She looked about fifteen. She had a job in a center for juvenile delinquents, which required courage and a strong hand. She got up early, left, and we wouldn't see her until evening, when she came home dragging with fatigue. Several of the youths in her charge had been arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, and although they were minors, they were the size of mastodons. I don't know how—beside them she looked like a sparrow—she earned their respect. The day one of the troublemakers threatened her with a knife was the day I offered her a safer job in my office helping Celia, who by now could not keep up with the load of work. They were very good friends; Sally was always ready to help with Celia's children and spend time with her because Nico was gone, working and studying English. Over time, I came to know Sally, and I agreed with Willie that she had very little in common with Jason. “Keep your nose out of it,” Willie ordered. But how could I do that? They lived in our house, and Sally's bridal gown, a vision of meringue-colored lace, was hanging in my closet. She and Jason planned to get married as soon as he finished his studies. That was what Jason told us, but Sally showed no sign of impatience; they acted like a pair of bored fifty-year-olds. These modern courtships, long and easygoing, worry me. Urgency is inseparable from love. According to Abuela Hilda, who saw things that were invisible, if Sally married Jason it would not be because she loved him, but to stay in our family.

The only work Jason could find after graduating from college was a temporary job in a mall, sweating in a ridiculous Santa Claus suit. At least it had the effect of teaching him that he would have to continue his education and get a professional degree. He told us that most of the Santa Clauses were poor devils who came to work with several jolts of cheap whisky under their belts, and that some fondled the children. In view of those revelations, Willie decided that our children would have their own Santa Claus, and he bought a convincing beard, patent leather boots, and a splendid costume of red velvet trimmed with real rabbit fur. I wanted him to choose something less expensive, but he proclaimed that he never wore anything ordinary, and besides, it would serve many years and the cost would be amortized. So that Christmas we invited a dozen children, with their parents, and at the appointed hour we turned down the lights, someone played Christmas music on an electronic organ, and Willie came in through a window, carrying his bag of gifts. His entrance produced a stampede of terror among the youngest, except for Sabrina, who is not afraid of anything. “You must be very rich if you can get Santa on such a busy night,” she commented. The older children were enchanted, until one of them declared that he didn't believe in Santa Claus, and Willie angrily replied, “Then no presents for
you
, you little shit!” That was the end of the party. The children immediately suspected that it was Willie hiding behind the beard—who else would it be?—but Alejandro put an end to any speculation with this irrefutable logic. “We don't want to know. It's like the tooth fairy that brings money when you lose a tooth. It's best if our parents think we're stupid.” That year Nicole was still too young to participate in the farce, but three years later she was consumed with doubt. She was terrified of Santa, and every Christmas we had to stay in the bathroom with her, where she closed the door and shivered until we assured her the terrible old man had left on his sleigh for the next house. This time she hunkered down beside the toilet, wearing a long face and refusing to open her presents.

“What
is
the matter, Nicole?” I asked.

“Tell me the truth. Is Willie Santa Claus?”

“I think it would be better if you asked him,” I suggested, afraid that if I lied to her, she would never believe me again.

Willie led her by the hand to the room where he kept the costume he had just worn, and admitted the truth. He cautioned her that this would be a secret between the two of them, one she shouldn't share with the other children. My youngest grandchild returned to the party with the same long face, took her place in a corner, and wouldn't touch her presents.

“And what's the matter now, Nicole?”

“You've always made fun of me! You've ruined my life!” was her answer. She was not yet three years old.

I told Jason how helpful my training as a journalist had been in my work as a writer, and suggested that it could be a first step toward his literary career. Journalism teaches you to investigate, sum up, work under pressure, and use language efficiently, and in addition forces you to keep the reader in mind, something authors tend to forget when preoccupied with posterity. After a lot of pressure—he doubted himself and didn't even want to fill out the admission forms—he applied to several universities and to his surprise was accepted in all of them. He could give himself the pleasure of studying journalism in the most prestigious of them all, Columbia University in New York. That put physical distance between him and Sally, and it seemed to me that their lukewarm relationship would become frigid, although they kept talking about getting married. Sally stayed close with us, working with Celia and me and helping with the children. She was the perfect aunt.

Jason left in 1995 with the idea of graduating and returning to California. Of all Willie's children, he was the one who most liked the idea of living in a tribe. “I want to have a big family, and this blend of Americans and Latins works great,” he told me once. To fit in, he had spent a few months in Mexico studying Spanish, and spoke it well, with the same bandit accent as Willie's. Jason and I were always friends; we shared the vice of books, and we liked to sit on the terrace with a glass of wine and tell each other plots for possible novels. He felt that you, Ernesto, Celia, and Nico were as much his siblings as the ones fate had given him, and he wanted all of us to be together forever. However, after your death and Jennifer's disappearance, we all sank into sadness, and bonds were cut or altered. Jason says now, years later, that the family went to hell, but I remind him that families, like almost everything in this world, metamorphose or evolve.

C
ELIA AND
W
ILLIE ARGUED
at the top of their lungs, as passionate over trivialities as they were about serious matters.

“Put on your seat belt, Celia,” he would say to her in the car.

“You don't have to in the back seat.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No!”

“I don't give a shit whether you have to or not! This is my car and I'm driving. Put it on or get out!” Willie would roar, red with rage.

“Fuck you, I'm getting out!”

Celia had rebelled against masculine authority from the time she was a child, and Willie, who himself exploded at the least provocation, accused her of being an ill-mannered little brat. He was often furious with her, but everything was forgiven as soon as she took up her guitar. Nico and I tried to keep them separated, but we were not always successful. Abuela Hilda stayed out of it; the most she ever said was that Celia was not accustomed to accepting affection, but that with time she'd get the drift of it.

Tabra was operated on to remove the footballs and replace them with normal breasts, sacks of a solution less toxic than the silicone. As an aside, the doctor who put in the original ones has become one of the most famous plastic surgeons in Costa Rica, so the experience he gained with my friend was not wasted. I suppose that by now he must be a doddering old man and doesn't even remember the young American girl who was his first experiment. Tabra this time was six hours in the operating room. They had to scrape the fossilized silicone off her ribs, and when she came out of the clinic she was in such pain that we brought her home to stay until she could get along by herself. Her lymph nodes were so inflamed she couldn't move her arms, and she had a reaction to the anesthesia that left her nauseated for a week. She couldn't keep anything down except watery soups and toast. By coincidence, Jason had left for New York to study and Sally had moved to an apartment she shared with a friend, but Abuela Hilda, Nico, Celia, and the three children were temporarily living with us. The Sausalito garret had become too small for Nico's family and we were in the final stages of buying a house for them; it was a little farther away and needed work but it had a pool, a lot more room, and untouched wooded hills at the back door, perfect for bringing up the children. Our house was filled to the brim, but in spite of how bad Tabra felt, the atmosphere was usually festive, except when Celia or Willie got heated about something and then the least spark set off a fight. The day Tabra arrived, one exploded over something relatively serious that had happened in the office: Celia had accused Willie of not having been clear about some money and he went at her like a man possessed. They exchanged noisy insults and I wasn't able to soothe their rage or get them to lower their voices and work out a solution on reasonable terms. In only a few minutes the tone had escalated to the level of a street brawl, which Nico finally stopped with the only yell any of us had heard in his lifetime and that paralyzed us with surprise. Willie exited with the slam of a door that nearly brought down the house. In one of the rooms, Tabra, still dazed from the effects of the operation and the painkillers, heard the screams and thought she was dreaming. Abuela Hilda and Sally, who was visiting, disappeared with the children—I think they hid in the cellar among the plaster skulls and the hidey-holes of the skunks.

Celia was acting in what she believed was my best interest, and I failed to jump in and go to my husband's defense, so the suspicion she had unleashed was left floating without being resolved. I never imagined that their argument was going to have such far-reaching consequences. Willie was deeply wounded, not by Celia, but by me. When finally we could talk about it, he said that I excluded him, that I formed an impenetrable circle with my family and left him outside. I didn't even trust him. I tried to smooth things over, but it was impossible. We had sunk pretty low. Willie and I didn't speak for several days, and we harbored a grudge for weeks. This time I couldn't run away because Tabra was convalescing with us, and my entire family was there in the house. Willie built a wall around himself; he was silent, furious, preoccupied. He went to the office early and returned late; he sat by himself to watch television, and stopped cooking for us. We ate rice and fried eggs every day. Not even the children could get through to him; they went around on tiptoes and got tired of inventing reasons to go to him: Grandpa had turned into an old grump. Nonetheless, we held to our agreement not to speak the word
divorce
, and I think that despite appearances, we both knew that we hadn't come to the end of our rope, we still had a lot in reserve. At night we slept on our own corner of the bed, but we always woke up with our arms around each other. Over time that helped us toward a reconciliation.

I
MAY HAVE GIVEN THE IMPRESSION
in this account that Willie and I did nothing but argue, Paula. Of course it wasn't like that. Except for the times I went off to sleep at Tabra's, that is, at the most heated moments of our skirmishes, we went hand in hand. In the car, on the street, everywhere, always holding hands. It was like that from the first, but within two weeks of our meeting that custom became a necessity because of the affair of the shoes. Given my height, I have always worn high heels, but Willie insisted that I should be comfortable and not like the old-time Chinese women with their painful bound feet. He gave me a pair of athletic shoes that still today, eighteen years later, sit like new in their box. To please him, I bought a pair of sandals I saw on television. They had shown some slender models playing basketball in cocktail dresses and high heels . . . just what I needed. I threw away the shoes I'd brought from Venezuela and replaced them with those prodigious sandals. They didn't work, I just kept walking out of them. I was so often flat on my face on the floor that for reasons of basic safety Willie has always grasped my hand tight. Besides, we're fond of each other and that helps whatever the relationship. I like Willie a lot, and I show that in a number of ways. He has begged me not to translate into English the love words I say to him in Spanish because they sound suspicious. I always remind him that no one has ever loved him more than I do, not even his mother, and that if I die he will end his days alone in some home for old folks, so it's worth his while to spoil me and celebrate me. Willie is not a man to squander romantic words, but if he has lived with me so many years without strangling me, it must be that he likes me a little. What is the secret of a good marriage? I can't say, every couple is different. The two of us are bound together by our ideas, a similar way of looking at the world, camaraderie, loyalty, humor. We look after each other. We have the same schedule, we sometimes use the same toothbrush, and we like the same movies. Willie says that when we're together our energies are multiplied, that we have the “spiritual connection” he felt when he first met me. It may be. All I know is that I like sleeping with him.