The Sum of Our Days (39 page)

“And what gives you pain, Alejandro?” I asked.

“My fights with Andrea. But I've decided to get along better with her, and I will, because I learned that we're responsible for our own sadness.”

“That isn't always true. I'm not responsible for Paula's death, or Lori for her infertility,” I argued.

“Sometimes we can't avoid sadness, but we can control our reaction to it. Willie has Jason. As for you, because you lost Paula you created a foundation and you've kept her memory alive among us. Lori couldn't have children, but she has the three of us,” he said.

J
ULIETTE DIDN
'
T WORK DURING
those months she lent her body to carry Lori and Nico's baby because she had to subject herself to the scourge of fertility drugs. The family had taken on the responsibility of looking after her, but once that dream was put aside she went out to look for work. She was hired by a broker who was planning to buy Asian art in San Francisco for his galleries in Chicago. Ben was fifty-seven well-lived years old, and he must have had a lot of money because he was as splendid as a duke. He planned to commute frequently from Chicago, and in his absence have someone in California look after the precious objects imported from the East. At the end of his first interview with Juliette, he invited her to dinner at the best restaurant in Marin County, a yellow Victorian house set among pines and masses of climbing roses. After several glasses of white wine, he decided that not only was she the ideal assistant, he was taken with her personally. By a coincidence worthy of a novel, Juliette learned during their conversation that Ben had known Manoli's first wife, the Chilean who had run off with her yoga instructor on her wedding day. He told Juliette that the woman was living in Italy and was in a fourth marriage to a magnate in olive oil.

It had been an eternity since Juliette had felt desired. The year before he died, Manoli had gradually ceased to be the passionate lover who had seduced her when she was twenty; his illness was corroding his bones and his spirit. Ben proposed to fill that void, and we watched Juliette come to life, resplendent, with a new light in her eyes and a mischievous smile dancing on her lips. Her life was turned upside down; she was taken to expensive places, restaurants, walks, theater, opera. Ben showered gifts and attention on Aristotelis and Achilleas. He was such an expert lover that he could make her happy over the telephone; that made his absences bearable, and when he came to California she would be eagerly awaiting him. Lori and I used one of our quiet little mid-afternoon breaks, with jasmine tea and dates, to corral her. It seemed to us that her attitude was slightly evasive, but we didn't have to press too hard before she told us about her affair with her boss. I heard that alarm bell that comes with experience, and I put in my two cents to warn her that she shouldn't mix work with love, because she could lose both. “He is using you, Juliette. How convenient! He has an assistant and a lover for the price of one,” I told her. But she was already trapped. Both Lori and I had noticed that Juliette attracted men who had nothing to offer her: they were married, too old for her, too far away, or incapable of making a commitment. Ben might be one of those, because to us he seemed a little slippery. According to Willie, in today's hedonistic California, no man would take on the responsibility of a young widow with two small sons, but according to my astrologer, whom I had consulted in secret so I wouldn't be laughed at, it was all a matter of waiting three or four years, when the planets would send Juliette the ideal husband. Ben had moved in ahead of the planets.

When we returned from Kenya, Juliette's amorous fling had become more complicated. It turned out that Ben had not earned his fortune with a good eye for art; his wife had inherited it. The galleries were just a diversion to keep him occupied and riding the crest of the social wave. Ben's frequent trips to San Francisco and his whispered telephone conversations were beginning to raise his wife's suspicions.

“It isn't a good idea to get involved with a married man, Juliette,” I told her, remembering the foolish things I had done when I was young, and the price I had paid.

“It isn't what you're thinking, Isabel. It was inevitable; we fell in love at first sight. He didn't seduce me or deceive me, it all happened by mutual consent.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Ben has been married for thirty years. He greatly respects his wife and adores his children. This is his first infidelity.”

“I have the feeling that he's a chronic adulterer, Juliette, but that isn't your problem, it's his wife's. Yours is to look out for yourself and your sons.”

To convince me of her gallant's honesty and his feelings for her, Juliette showed me his letters, which to me seemed suspiciously prudent. They weren't love letters, they were legal documents.

“He's covering his back. Maybe he's afraid you will charge him with sexually harassing you on the job, and that's illegal here. Anyone who reads these letters, including his wife, would think that you took the initiative, that you trapped him, and that you're the one doing the chasing.”

“How can you say that!” she exclaimed, shocked. “He's waiting for the opportune moment to tell his wife.”

“I don't think he'll do that, Juliette. They have children and a lifetime together. I feel sorry for you, but I feel sorrier for his wife. Put yourself in her place; she's a middle-aged woman with an unfaithful husband.”

“If Ben isn't happy with her—”

“He can't have everything, Juliette. It's up to Ben to choose between you and the good life she offers him.”

“I don't want to be the cause of a divorce. I told him that he should try and reconcile with his wife, that they should both go to therapy, or that he should take her to Europe on a second honeymoon,” she said and burst into tears

I was afraid that at that rate the game would go on until the thread broke at the weakest point: Juliette. I didn't insist any further, though, because I was afraid I would drive her away. Besides, I am not infallible, as Willie reminded me, and it might be that Ben was really in love with her and that he would get a divorce in order to be with her, in which case, I, for behaving like a bird of bad omen, would lose the friend I had come to love like another daughter.

J
UST AS WE FEARED
, Ben's wife traveled from Chicago to sniff the air in San Francisco. She installed herself in the office of her husband, who had the good sense to disappear, using a variety of excuses, and within a few hours, her instinct, and what she knew about him, had confirmed her worst fears. She decided that her rival could be no other than his beautiful assistant, and she confronted Juliette with all the weight of her authority as Ben's legitimate wife, along with the confidence lent by money and her pain, which Juliette could not ignore. The wife fired her, and warned her if she ever tried to communicate with Ben, she herself would see that something bad happened to her. Ben hadn't shown his face; he limited himself to a phone call, offering Juliette a small compensation and asking her, if you can believe it, to train her replacement before she left. His wife supervised that call, and the whining letter, last of the series, that closed the episode.

Two days later Willie came home to find Lori and me in the bathroom holding Juliette, who was curled up on the floor like a whipped child. We brought him up-to-date on what had happened. He said that he had seen it coming; it was not an original drama and everyone recovers from a broken heart. Within a year, he said, we would all be enjoying a glass of wine and having a good laugh as we recalled this unfortunate adventure. However, when Juliette told Willie of the wife's threats, he found it less amusing. He offered to represent her; she was, after all, entitled to file suit. The case could not be more attractive to a lawyer: a young widow with no money, mother of two young boys, and the victim of a millionaire employer who sexually used and then dismissed her. Any jury would crucify Ben. Willie already had the knife between his teeth, but Juliette wouldn't hear of that possibility because it wasn't true. They had fallen in love, she wasn't a victim. She did allow Willie to send a scorching hot letter announcing that if they threatened Juliette again, the matter would be taken to court. On his own initiative, Willie added that if the wife wished to resolve the problem, she should control her husband better. A letter wouldn't stop her if she was the kind of person capable of hiring mafiosi to do harm to a rival, but it proved that Juliette was not without protection. In less than a week, a lawyer in Chicago called to assure Willie that there had been a misunderstanding and there would be no further threats.

Juliette suffered for months, wrapped in the tight embrace of the family, but I wouldn't be recounting this lamentable episode had she not given me permission to do so, and had Willie's prognostication not come to pass. I hired Juliette to be my assistant; she began studying Spanish and soon was a participant in the Sausalito literary brothel, where she could work in peace with Lori, Willie, and Tong, who charged themselves with protecting her and with keeping at bay any unfaithful husband who rang the doorbell with lustful intentions. Before the year ended, one night when the whole family was eating dinner at the table of the Mistress of the Castle, Juliette lifted her glass in a toast to love affairs of the past. “To Ben!” we said in a single voice, and her laugh was loud and heartfelt. Now I am waiting for the alignment of the planets that will bring the good man who will make this young woman happy. It's likely that that could be happening soon.

F
OR SOME TIME
, Abuela Hilda had lived with her daughter in Madrid, where she and her second husband were carrying out a diplomatic mission. It had been a year since this peerless grandmother had come for one of her long visits with us; she had aged suddenly and was afraid to travel alone. In the 1960s, in Chile, I was a young journalist juggling three jobs at once to survive, but the births of my two children didn't complicate my life since I had help. In the mornings, before going to work, I went by and left you either at the house of my mother-in-law, our adorable Granny, or with Abuela Hilda, who took you, still asleep and bundled in a shawl, and looked after you all day until I came to pick you up in the evening. When you started school, it was Nico's turn; he too was cared for by those fairy-tale grandmothers who spoiled him like the firstborn of an emir. Following the military coup, we went to Venezuela, and what you and Nico missed most were those two grandmothers. Granny, whose only life was her grandchildren, died of sorrow a couple of years later. When Abuela Hilda was widowed, she came to Venezuela since her only daughter, Hildita, lived there, and took turns between Hildita's house and ours. My relationship with Abuela Hilda had begun when I was seventeen. Hildita was my brother Pancho's first girlfriend; they met at school when they were fourteen, ran away, were married, had a son, divorced, married again, had a daughter, and were divorced a second time. In all, they spent more than a decade loving and hating each other, while Abuela Hilda witnessed the spectacle without comment. I never heard her say a disapproving word against my brother, who perhaps deserved it.

At some moment of her life, Abuela Hilda had decided that her role was to help her small family, in which she generously included me and my children, and she did it to perfection, thanks to her proverbial discretion and good health. She was as strong as a mule, which was why she was able, for example, to take you, Nico, and another half dozen teenagers camping on a Caribbean island that had no water. They reached it by crossing a treacherous sea in a small boat, followed closely by sharks. The boatman left them with a mountain of equipment and, to their good luck, remembered to pick them up a week or two later. Abuela Hilda survived the mosquitoes, the nights drinking rum and warm Coca-Cola, the canned beans, the aggressive mice that nested in their sleeping bags, and other inconveniences that I, twenty years younger, could never have endured. With the same magnanimous attitude, she sat herself down to watch pornography when you were studying psychology and decided to specialize in sexuality. You went around everywhere carrying a suitcase filled with paraphernalia for erotic games that seemed in very bad taste to me, but I never dared voice my opinion, fearing that you would have teased me unmercifully for being such a prude. Abuela Hilda sat down with you, knitting without looking at her needles, and watched some hair-raising videos that included trained dogs. She was an active member of our ambitious home theater company; she sewed costumes, painted scenery, and played any role she was asked, from Madama Butterfly to Joseph in our Christmas pageants. As time passed she grew smaller and her voice thinned to a birdsong, but her enthusiasm for participating in family madness never faltered.

Abuela Hilda's last days were not spent with us but with her daughter, who cared for her during her rapid decline. It began with repeated bouts of pneumonia, a vulnerability left from her days as a smoker, the doctors said, and after that she began forgetting her life. Hildita recognized her mother's final stage as a return to childhood and decided that if you can squander patience on a two-year-old child, there was no reason to deprive an old woman of eighty of the same indulgence. She watched lovingly to see that her mother bathed, ate, took her vitamins, and went to bed. She had to answer the same questions ten times and pretend that she was listening when her mother finished telling a meaningless anecdote and then like a recording repeated the same words over and over. Finally, Abuela Hilda tired of swimming through a nebula of confused memories, of being afraid to be alone, of falling, of the creaking of her bones, and of the assault of faces and voices she couldn't identify. One day she stopped eating. Hildita called me from Spain to tell me what a battle it was to feed her mother a spoonful of yogurt and the only thing I could think to tell her was not to force her. That was how my grandfather died; he lost his appetite when he decided that one hundred years was too much living.