All Yours (8 page)

Teenage girls seem to take pleasure in tormenting their parents. It’s as if they were making us pay for something we’ve done to them. What did we ever do? They’re all the same: unfair, resentful and pig-headed. Simply by asking them to do something you can guarantee they’ll do exactly the opposite. And this really wasn’t the best night to spend at the whim of a grumpy teenager. So I decided to start an argument; I picked one of those subjects that never fail to get a rise. There are a few of them. I could have talked to her about the state of her bedroom or criticized some tarty friend. But I decided to go for something more reliable and chose a subject I know always upsets Lali: food. I told her that she was looking rather round, that recently I had seen her eating a lot, that she wasn’t like me – someone who can eat whatever she likes without getting fat – that if she went on this way she would end up spherical, that nowadays boys feel disgusted by fat girls. I showed her a diet that I had earmarked in a magazine. That did the trick! She threw the magazine at my head, shouted “Evil witch!” and ran off crying to her room.

Ernesto arrived home at a quarter to eleven that night. By then the floral oil was starting to smell of burnt sugar. He ate almost nothing – a bit of potato, that was it. “I had to work late so I had a snack in the office.” I remonstrated that he had not let me know that.

“Yup, I didn’t let you know,” he said.

We went up to bed. When I came out of the bathroom, wearing the babydoll, Ernesto had already turned out the light. I switched it back on, but he didn’t open his eyes. I turned it off again. When I rubbed his calf with my foot, he instantly moved away. “My foot must be cold,” I thought. I decided to be more direct. “Erni, do you want to come over?”

Ernesto put on the light and picked up a blue folder that was lying on the bedside table. He opened it and started reading. “Inés, I’m really worried about this trip. I have to make a presentation at the conference and I can’t stop thinking about it. I think I’d rather read over my notes and then perhaps I can get off to sleep feeling more relaxed.”

Well, everyone has their own method of relaxation. “That’s fine, Ernesto, get a good rest,” I said, and pulled the covers up over me.

The following morning I offered to take him to the airport. The company’s sending me a cab,” he said. He went upstairs to say goodbye to Lali. They seemed to spend ages shut in that room together. Without a doubt Lali was bleating to him about the previous evening’s argument. It was typical of her to go filling his head with stories that put me in a bad light. She had been doing it since she was a tiny girl. Besides, both of them hated saying goodbye – to each other, that is, because if I ever had to go anywhere there wouldn’t be half as much drama. Lali was the worst. I could picture them, talking, gazing at each other, her weeping crocodile tears, him comforting her. As if Ernesto were never coming back!

Lali and Ernesto are like that: over the top, mawkish and melodramatic.

20

“Are you asleep?”

“…”

“Lali…”

“What do you want, Daddy?”

“To say goodbye. I’m going away until Monday.”

“Bye then.”

“Don’t I get a kiss?”

“Leave me alone, Dad, I don’t feel well.”

“Have you got a headache?”

“No.”

“What is it then?”

“Nausea and vomiting.”

“What did you eat last night?”

“Nothing, Dad, I didn’t eat anything.”

“But that’s not good, Lali. That must be why you don’t feel well.”

“…”

“Shall I tell Mummy to bring you up some breakfast?”

“No!”

“Lali, this isn’t about thinking you’re fat and you need to diet, is it?”

“My, you’re sharp today. You got it in one.”

“I’m your father, Lali.”

“…”

“Don’t you realize that you could end up anorexic?”

“Dad, don’t talk rubbish.”

“It’s not rubbish, Lali. I’m going to tell your mother to bring up some breakfast.”

“No! I want to sleep a bit more – all right?”

“…”

“…”

“All right, then.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“I have to go, a cab’s coming for me.”

“Bye, then.”

“I’m going to Brazil, you know?”

“…”

“I’m off to Rio.”

“…”

“For work.”

“How lovely for you.”

“Shall I bring you something from duty-free?”

“…”

“Some perfume?”

“Bring me whatever you like.”

“Well, give me some pointers then. I’m a bit useless when it comes to things like that.”

“OK, bring me some perfume.”

“Any one in particular?”

“No, Daddy, any one of them.”

“Eat something, won’t you?”

“…”

“See you soon.”

“Bye.”

21

A horn sounded outside the front door. It was Ernesto’s cab. We kissed each other goodbye. It wasn’t a
Wow!
kiss, but at least it was a kiss. Which, for a couple that’s been together as long as us, was pretty good going. Married couples stop kissing as time goes by. Everyone knows that, although no one says it. And it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just the way things are. Sometimes couples kiss in public, so that others can see them kissing. It’s as if they’re saying “Look at us two kissing!” But when they’re alone it’s different, they don’t feel the need. Or, if they do, it’s because they fear that there might be something wrong in not kissing; since nobody ever talks about it, they don’t know that it’s the same for everyone. Everyone. Even people who have a more or less active sex life. Perhaps they make love once a week, without fail. Twice a week at best. But kissing is something else. Kissing loses its charm all too soon.

I walked him to the door and waited there until the car pulled away. I waved him off. He made some motion with his head and raised a hand, without exactly waving it. I went to the kitchen and made a coffee. I took my time over the newspaper. The prospect of a weekend on my own didn’t bother me in the slightest. Lali was going to a friend’s country house, which was just as well, for both of us. After the previous night’s argument, relations were bound to be strained. I was going to lavish some time on myself, doing all those things which you never usually get round to. An intensive conditioning treatment, manicure, bubble bath, shopping, renting some highly romantic film of the kind Ernesto loathes, eating whatever there was, not having to cook for anyone. The more I thought about it, the more enticing the prospect was. It was going to be like spending a weekend at a spa, but in my own home.

I went upstairs to get dressed. When I entered the bedroom, I didn’t see it at first, although it must have been there. I changed, brushed my hair, put on a bit of make-up and it was only when I was just about to go out that I saw it, as if it had been calling out to me: the blue folder. It was on Ernesto’s bedside table, exactly where he had left it the previous night, after reading over his presentation for the conference. “What a bird-brain, Ernesto, you forgot the folder,” I said to myself. And without thinking twice, I jumped into the car and set off for Ezeiza airport. Any wife in my position would have done the same.

I drove faster than usual. I had to get there before Ernesto boarded the plane so that I could give him the blue folder. In my mind, I followed his steps, trying to calculate whether I could catch him in time. He must have arrived at Ezeiza quite a while ago. He had left in very good time; early enough to have avoided a long queue at check-in. Nobody bothers with that airline rule about arriving two hours before your flight. Ernesto does, though, because he’s very punctilious about such things. And methodical, besides, so it would be logical for him to go straight up to the departure lounge after checking in. What would be the purpose in staying downstairs? As for me, I had my work cut out with my timings. At the motorway toll, just for a change, only half the barriers were working and that delayed me considerably. Then at the airport it took ages to find a parking space. As soon as I was out of the car, I broke into a run, the folder in my hand. I didn’t wait for the automatic doors to finish opening before whipping through them and into the hall, looking around me for Ernesto. I went from counter to counter, searching among the check-in queues. He wasn’t there, so I went to look at the departures board. The flight to Rio was the only one leaving at that time. It was a Varig flight, so I returned to their counter and asked if Ernesto was already checked in. They told me that they could not give out that sort of information and I could tell, from the employee’s monotone, that it was no use persisting. I looked in some of the little bars lining the route to departures. Ernesto drinks a lot of coffee, not that it does him any good – but he loves it; perhaps he had stopped off there. Nothing. He could be in the lavatory, or buying something. I looked for him in the souvenir shops, at the news-stands, and waited a prudent amount of time at the door to the men’s lavatory. He didn’t appear. I could invent a reason to have him summoned via tannoy, but I preferred to leave that as a last recourse. Ernesto hates any kind of embarrassment and something like that would be excruciating for him, even if his life depended on the contents of the blue folder. The best thing would be to wait beside the escalator leading to departures. If he had not gone up yet, sooner or later he would have to come this way.

I was walking towards the escalator when I saw Ernesto’s jacket. A jacket just like Ernesto’s. It wasn’t Ernesto wearing it, though, but another man, someone who was going up the escalator with his arm around a woman. She was tall and dark. The man was whispering things into her ear. Wearing Ernesto’s jacket. And with trousers just like the ones Ernesto had been wearing that morning. With a well-defined crease, the way I iron Ernesto’s trousers. And in his hand – Ernesto’s bag. The bag that I had packed. For Ernesto. He turned his head to kiss her. Ernesto kissed her. And she, Charo, returned the kiss.

The escalator carried them away, up out of view, and I wanted to scream. I must have suffered something like a momentary paralysis, because my voice wouldn’t come out; I opened my mouth, but no sound emerged. In fact, all other sounds seemed also to have disappeared. As if someone had turned down the volume of the ambient sound. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t hear. I could only see.

Until there was nothing to see but their shoes: Ernesto’s and her sandals.

And then I saw no more.

22

Inés went into the house, shut the door and turned the key twice in the lock. It was half-past ten in the morning. Lali had already left. She threw her bag down somewhere. Next she went to each window and lowered all the blinds until only a few shards of light penetrated the dark. She disconnected the telephone. Upstairs she repeated the same process. She looked at herself in her bedroom mirror. She went to the bathroom and searched in the cabinet for her tranquillizers. She shook the bottle, weighing up how many were inside. The tablets rattled in the still air; there were quite a few, at least half a bottle. She unscrewed the cap and tipped a few of them into the palm of her hand. Keeping two of them, she returned the rest to the bottle. These two she put in her mouth. She poured out some water. Before drinking it, she took one of the pills out of her mouth again and threw it into the lavatory. The other one she swallowed. Back downstairs. In the kitchen the breakfast things were still out. As if nothing had happened. She tried to wash a cup. But she ended up breaking it against the side of the sink. The handle flew off it and bounced three times on the tiled floor. She splashed water onto her face and stood without moving for a while, with her face wet. Then she dried it with a damp tea towel. She felt revulsion. She wept. She placed all the other breakfast things in the sink, including the butter dish containing melting butter. She went to the living room. She wanted to go to the garage, but she went to the living room. She walked around the coffee table several times. She poured herself a whisky and drank it, without putting the bottle back on the bar. She put the glass down. But not the bottle. She went outside, to the garage. She walked inside and, pulling the door closed behind her, walked straight to the back wall. She pulled out the brick, meaning to take out the things that were hidden behind the brick, but she didn’t do this. She left everything as it was. She went back to the kitchen and looked for some rubber gloves. Nowhere to be seen. Roughly she pushed the breakfast cups in the sink to one side and found the gloves underneath everything. Wet and dirty. She washed and dried them. She returned to the garage. Wearing the gloves. Once again, she made for the back wall. She took out the things from their hiding place behind the brick. She looked for somewhere else to put them. She found the tool box. She threw its contents onto the floor. She put in Truelove’s letters, the tickets to Rio, the nude photographs of Ernesto, the inscribed box of condoms, and locked it. The rest she put back in the hollow then returned the brick to its place. All that remained was the revolver. She went to her car and opened the boot. She took out the wheel and there it was, where she had put it on the day she brought it from Alicia’s house. Gently, respectfully almost, she lifted it out. Then she put it in the tool box. She left the garage with the box in one hand and the bottle of whisky in the other. She took the whisky back to the bar, and left the tool box there. She went to the kitchen. She returned the gloves to the sink. She turned on the tap and washed her face with plenty of cold water.

Then, only then, did she decide to reconsider her options – and start again.

23

Ernesto and Charo had gone up the escalator to departures, kissing each other.

There were no two ways about it – I had seen this with my own two eyes. And the eyes do not lie. Unless you close them, I suppose! But it was too late for that. I had to face up to this bombshell. But just because I had seen Ernesto and Charo kissing on the escalator, that didn’t mean I understood all the other elements of the story. There were so many different alternative versions. I spent the rest of that day weighing them up, looking for evidence to support them, or inconsistencies that ruled them out. By mid-afternoon, there was such a tangle in my head that the different possibilities had all become muddled and I couldn’t remember which ones I had ruled out and which were still on the table. Then it occurred to me to make a diagram. At school, when we were studying something really complicated, I used to draw a spider chart, with lots of arrows, lots of keys, everything tiny, ordered; even if it didn’t help to clarify my thoughts, at least it was a useful crib sheet. I was never that good at school. I just wasn’t interested, my mind was always on other things. At the beginning it really bothered me. I was scared that people would say I was thick. Until one afternoon – I must have been in fifth grade – when I was trying to remember the names of different kinds of triangle: equilateral, isosceles, scalene. I could never remember the isosceles. I felt like a moron – I kept saying it over and over again, but as soon as I closed the book it went out of my head again. As if I had some handicap. Mummy saw that I was upset and she said: “Darling, don’t worry, because if there is one thing that is never going to be of any use to you at all in life, it’s knowing what an isosceles triangle is.” And she was right: they teach you some really stupid things. As if an isosceles was ever going to help me sort out this problem with Truelove. Those are the sort of triangles nobody teaches you about, you have to learn about them all on your own. And boy, it’s hard! You nearly always end up flunking. Even when you thought you might be close to triumph. Because, at the least expected moment, at the point of solving one side of the triangle, you discover there’s another side, a new angle to this shape. Lo and behold, the triangle has become a square. It happened to me. It happened to Alicia.