Golden Earrings (49 page)

She sniffed and stared out the window.

I left, wishing that Ramón had never revealed the truth about Conchita. I was now her unwilling collaborator in the most vile of secrets.

I
didn’t wake up the following morning until ten o’clock. Mamie was moving around the kitchen; I could hear her opening and shutting cupboards and talking to Diaghilev. I closed my eyes again for a moment and tried to take in my new identity: the granddaughter of the world’s most famous flamenco artist. Was it possible that I had dreamed the whole thing? That Ramón Sánchez had never existed to tell me such a fantastic story? Overcome by everything I had discovered since yesterday — that Mamie wasn’t my blood grandmother, that she had been wrong about la Rusa’s betrayal and had been deceived for years by Conchita — I wept quietly. I was sorry for la Rusa, for Xavier and Ramón — and for Mamie too.

‘Paloma, don’t you have to practise today?’ Mamie called from the kitchen.

I couldn’t stay in bed all day unless I wanted to end up with muscle cramps. But I didn’t want to face Mamie either. Knowing what I did now, I was frightened that the bond between us might have been severed.

I came to myself and wiped my eyes. I tore a brush through my hair and put on my dressing gown.

Mamie beamed at me when I entered the kitchen. ‘Look at what I found,’ she said, holding up a red cloth-covered scrapbook. At first I thought she had discovered something from
her days in Barcelona but then I recognised the swirly patterns on the fabric. It was my scrapbook from when I was a child.

‘Do you remember?’ Mamie asked, her eyes shining as she turned the pages. ‘You and I made this together when your parents were touring America. You were four years old. It was a special time for me. I had you all to myself.’

I looked over Mamie’s shoulder at the pictures of fairies, ballerinas, birds and rainbows. The scrapbook was a collection of my childhood whimsies and dreams. I forgot my earlier doubts as we pored over the drawings and pictures.

‘Look,’ I said, pointing to a photograph of a cat lying on a cushion. ‘There’s your old cat, Tigre.’ Some of the writing in the scrapbook had faded and a few of the drawings had bled, but I remembered those weeks when Mamie and I had been together as special to me too. ‘It was raining,’ I said. ‘That’s why we had to do something inside.’

I saw a photograph of Mamie and me sitting in a
bateau mouche
, one of the tourist boats on the Seine. It must have been Mama who had taken the picture. I’d pasted it in my scrapbook and written in huge letters above it:
Me and Mamie
.

Tears filled my eyes and I feigned a cough. I rushed to the sink to pour myself a glass of water. But you’re not my real grandmother, I thought. So much of what we have lived has been a lie! I wondered if Mamie would have let la Rusa see Julieta if she hadn’t thought her responsible for Xavier’s death. Did she ever intend to tell Mama who her real mother was? Only Mamie could answer that question, and it was something I could never ask her.

Mamie held up another page for me to see. It was a drawing of my mother in a pink tutu.

‘You were a talented artist,’ she said. ‘Even at that age you managed to capture Julieta’s large eyes and expression. You got that gift from your grandfather.’

Avi! My beloved grandfather wasn’t mine any more either. I wondered if he ever suspected the truth about whose
child Julieta was when she grew into a dusky beauty. Even I recognised la Rusa now in Mama’s exotic looks. But who was Mamie thinking of when she said ‘grandfather’ — Xavier or Avi? Or had they become one in her mind?

The emotional rollercoaster was getting too much for me. I was about to make an excuse to leave the kitchen when Mamie opened the scrapbook to a page where I had glued the tickets for the first ballet we had seen together: a matinee session of
Cinderella
.

I watched the delighted expression on Mamie's face as she savoured the memory, and saw something that I had not noticed before. I saw myself through Mamie’s eyes: how much she loved me; how precious I was to her. She was the woman who had been there for both the good and the difficult times. Whatever I thought she might have done differently, I realised that she had done her best. And when I thought of how people like Conchita had behaved, I could see that Mamie had acted much more honourably than most. It was futile blaming her for a set of circumstances that was not her fault.

I looked at the scrapbook with Mamie for a while longer. The glimpses of my four-year-old self were both beautiful and sad. Over the page there was a drawing of me, my mother and Mamie holding hands. Papa was standing in the background. Even as I child, I’d sensed their distance, I thought. I’d simply forgotten it.

‘Mamie,’ I said, ‘I need to repair my relationship with Papa.’

‘I know. I told you that you should.’

I held her gaze. Perhaps Mamie had known all along that it was Mama who’d had the affair. Perhaps it had been easier to collude with me in blaming Papa so that we could both go on believing that Mama had been perfect. Maybe Mamie’s heart attack had made her realise that I might need my father one day. I sighed. My family was nothing like Jaime’s, where everybody told each other everything, and nobody could keep a secret. Mamie and I certainly had our secrets. I couldn’t tell her
that I knew la Rusa was my blood grandmother or that I knew she wrote letters to her dead sister. But I realised that all it really meant was that we were more complicated than most people; and if we kept secrets it was to protect each other.

I put my arms around Mamie. As soon as I felt the warmth of her body I knew that everything was all right. She was still my Mamie and always would be.

‘I love you, Mamie,’ I told her and kissed her cheek.

I drove to Carmen’s apartment to fill Jaime in on what had happened after he’d left the cemetery. Ernesto was in the living room, listening to the radio quiz program
1000 francs par jour
and shouting out the answers to the questions. Everyone else was at work. Jaime and I sat on the floor of the studio. When I told him everything Ramón had related to me, he looked shocked.

‘You didn’t say a word of this when you called me last night,’ he said. ‘You just sounded tired.’

‘I had trouble making sense of it all myself.’

He reached out and brushed my cheek with his hand. ‘Promise me that we won’t have secrets from each other?’

‘I promise,’ I told him.

I unclasped the bat pendant from around my neck and handed it back to him. ‘I think I’ve seen through enough illusions for a while,’ I said.

‘I think you have too,’ he agreed, putting his arm around me and giving me a hug.

We both fell silent, contemplating the revelations the past day had brought.

‘No kissing!’ Ernesto’s voice suddenly boomed from the living room.

Jaime and I both jumped with surprise at the outburst. Then we looked at each other and laughed.

‘We weren’t kissing!’ Jaime shouted back.

‘Well, I’m warning you,’ said Ernesto. ‘It’s too quiet in there.’

Jaime cocked his eyebrow at me. ‘Do you want to swap a family with secrets for a crazy one?’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want both.’

Before heading home, I drove to avenue de l’Observatoire to see my father. I wandered around the jardin du Luxembourg for a while, gathering up courage. I remembered what Mamie had said about Conchita’s relationship with Feliu: ‘There are some things about the past that can never be fixed.’ Was it too late to repair the relationship with my father?

I sat down on a bench and watched the people strolling past. A slim woman walking a dog caught my eye. She was wearing a rust-coloured jumpsuit with slingback shoes. Her stride was confident and she looked chic. Then I realised it was Audrey I was admiring! How differently you see a person when you no longer despise them, I thought.

‘Audrey?’ I called.

She turned around and took off her sunglasses. She was an attractive woman, I had to admit. She had captivating green eyes.

‘Are you heading home?’ I asked her.

I glanced down at the dog. I would have imagined Audrey owning a pedigree poodle or a Bichon Frisé, but this dog was a mutt. A very cute mutt with enormous brown eyes and a shaggy caramel-coloured coat, but a mutt nonetheless.

‘Yes, I am going back to the apartment,’ she said.

I sensed she was wary of me. I couldn’t blame her.

‘Is it all right for me to see Papa?’

I realised how our roles had changed. It used to be Audrey accosting me on the street. I bent down and patted the dog to hide my embarrassment. He smelled like green apple shampoo. He might have been a mutt but he was a pampered one.

‘You are always welcome to see your father,’ Audrey replied. ‘But I don’t want to be the messenger for either of you any
more, is that understood? Whatever you need to sort out, you sort it out between yourselves.’

I straightened up. ‘I’m sorry I treated you the way I did. I didn’t understand.’

Audrey was taken aback by my apology, but then she shrugged. ‘You are young, you were upset … it happens.’

I nodded, humbled by her graciousness. As we walked to the apartment she asked about my first performance with the Ballet and when rehearsals began.

‘I have another month’s break and then we’ll be rehearsing for
Swan Lake
,’ I told her. ‘It was the first ballet my mother performed in too.’

The concierge opened the door for us.

‘Come on, Pelé!’ Audrey called to her dog when he strained at his leash to greet an Afghan hound passing by with its owner. I smiled to myself.
Pelé
? Audrey had named her dog after the famous Brazilian soccer player. There was so much about my stepmother that surprised me.

As we climbed the stairs to the apartment, Audrey said, ‘We didn’t get to celebrate your father’s birthday with you. I was thinking that you and your grandmother might like to come on a holiday with us to Saint-Tropez before you start with the Ballet? Pierre will come too.’

‘And Pelé?’ I asked, bending down to give the dog another pat. I’d always wanted a dog.

‘Of course,’ she said, smiling.

Audrey told me that Papa was practising in his studio on the next floor up. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she said, kissing my cheeks and then leading Pelé into the apartment. She gave me a wave before she shut the door.

Papa was playing ‘El Corpus Christi en Sevilla’ by Isaac Albéniz. It was the piece of music that he had given me on the cassette. I felt a twinge of pain when I remembered how abominably I had responded to his attempts to reach me.
The piece was so evocative of Spain it was almost as if Papa had known that I needed to come to terms with that part of myself.

I waited until he had finished playing before slipping through the door into his studio. He turned when he heard me. I was struck by how much he looked like his old self in this room. His hair was shorter, of course, but that was the only real change. The cosy space was a reflection of him with its simple polished floor and lopsided bookshelves sagging under the weight of hundreds of novels and music scores. A black-and-white photograph of a ballerina above the mantelpiece caught my eye. I realised it was a picture of me performing an arabesque, taken a couple of years ago. I thought of the picture I had drawn of my family in the scrapbook: me holding hands with Mama and Mamie, and Papa standing apart. I didn’t want it to be like that any more.

Another framed photograph of me caught my eye. I was four or five years old and standing in front of the clocktower of the Gare de Lyon.

My father turned to where I was looking. ‘You used to be so happy to see me when I came back from touring,’ he said. ‘Your mother and grandmother had to hold on to you so you wouldn’t tumble over in your excitement to embrace me.’

‘I’m still happy to see you, Papa,’ I told him. ‘I’ve just been very confused.’

He studied me a moment before moving over on his piano stool and making a space for me to sit next to him.

‘I’m sorry for the way I treated you,’ I told him, sitting down. ‘I’ve missed you.’

Papa put his arm around me. ‘I never was very good with words, Paloma,’ he said. ‘It’s why I became a musician. I’ve been thinking a lot since our last conversation. I really did have the best intentions … but I went about everything the wrong way. The last person I ever wanted to hurt was you.’

It felt good to be close to my father again. His warm grasp was comforting, especially in the aftermath of all I had learned yesterday. It was ironic that while everyone else in my life seemed to have changed, Papa was still who he had always been.

‘Audrey is busy with meetings next week and Pierre has examinations,’ he said. ‘I was thinking you might like to come to Vienna with me … if you are free?’

I remembered the trip we had made there together when I was seven, getting around the city in an old Volkswagen and eating
sachertorte
in elegant cafés.

‘I wouldn’t miss it for anything,’ I told him.

My father smiled at me and rubbed my arm. I smiled too … and then we both laughed. And just like with Mamie, I sensed the bond between us had been restored.

When the curtain rose for the second act of
Swan Lake
and I and the other dancers of the
corps de ballet
pranced into the silver-blue light of the Paris Opera’s stage, I experienced the most magical moment of my life. Tchaikovsky’s beautiful music swelled around us as we configured and reconfigured our swan maiden formations, using our wrists, elbows, arms and shoulders to convey the graceful sweep of wings. The
corps de ballet
of the Paris Opera was the most famous in the world for its precision — every arm, leg, and head had to be positioned exactly so as to create a sense of perfect unison.

When Odette — danced by the beautiful and lyrical Dominique Khalfouni — rushed onto the stage to beseech Prince Siegfried and his hunting companions not to harm the swans, I was deeply moved. There was so much in the story I could relate to everything I had heard from Mamie, Feliu and Ramón about what had happened in Spain. In the same way the swan maidens’ fates were tied to the love story of Odette and Prince Siegfried, I felt that my life and my identity were inextricably linked to what had happened in the past. In the
final act, when Siegfried told Odette of how he had been tricked by the evil Odile and her father, and the lovers ended their lives so they could be united in death, I saw a parallel with the tragic stories of Xavier and la Rusa.