House on the Lagoon (24 page)

Fine. His curiosity is piqued; he wants to find out how the novel will end. That’s the reason he hasn’t destroyed the manuscript or said anything to make me stop writing, confident that, at the very last, he’ll be able to do away with it or prevent me from publishing. But he’ll want to get even one way or another, I’m sure of it.

Quintín quoted the Bible at dinner tonight, just before we began to eat: “Whoever troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind,” he said solemnly. Then he gave thanks for all the “blessings” we have received. That’s fine, too. But at least I’ll have had the satisfaction of having put down on paper the story of our marriage.

Q
UINTÍN AND I MET
in the summer before my junior year in college. It was June and we were both home from school. Abby had taken me to San Juan for the weekend on a shopping trip and we stayed at the house of Aunt Hortensia, one of Carmita’s sisters, who had moved to the capital. It was a sunny day and I had gone out with my cousin to stroll on the Escambrón boardwalk. I liked the boardwalk because of its magnificent view; on the left, one can see the ocean, and on the right there is a small bay with a crescent of white sand. We were wearing our bathing suits and would dive in at the end. The waves are so transparent there that they seem to be made of quartz, pounding the rocks as if trying to reduce them to dust.

The Escambrón’s Beach Club hadn’t been torn down yet; from the boardwalk, it looked like a white whale run aground on the other side of the bay. The heavy black iron chain the U.S. Navy had placed underwater during the Second World War to fend off German submarines still hung at the entrance to the bay, rusted and covered with barnacles. A group of street urchins in rags were playing boisterously nearby, climbing up on the handrail and diving from the edge of the platform like wild pelicans.

Suddenly someone pushed me from behind and I stumbled. When I looked up, I couldn’t breathe; something was strangling me. I clutched at my throat and the gold chain around my neck suddenly snapped; one of the urchins ran in front of me, then disappeared as he dived with the chain over the rail. Everything happened so quickly I didn’t have time to think. When I put my hand to my neck, I realized I was bleeding.

A second shadow rushed past me and dove into the water. I peered anxiously at the ocean below; two shadows struggled under the dark blue surface, until the second one overpowered the first. A few moments later a dark-haired young man swam back to the boardwalk, holding my chain and medal in his hand.

“The Virgin of Guadalupe is the protector of my warrior ancestors,” he said with a polite smile. “I let the boy get away because he was too young. But next time, don’t come to the beach wearing jewelry. Urchins, like pelicans, attack anything that shines near the water.”

He had broad shoulders and walked with a little bit of a swagger. “Thanks for the chivalrous gesture,” I said, laughing.

Quintín took me by the arm. “You’re hurt,” he said with concern. “You’d better come with me.” He escorted my cousin and me to his car and we went to the Emergency Room at the nearby Presbyterian Hospital, where a doctor took care of me. Then he drove us back to my aunt’s house. Before he left, I thanked him again, and gave him my address and telephone number in Ponce.

I went back home with Abby and two or three days later Quintín called from San Juan. He wanted to know how I was and if I had gotten over the fright. I told him I was fine and that I was coming to San Juan the following week. We met again a few days later. After we saw each other several times, Quintín began traveling to Ponce every weekend. One day he asked me to be his steady girlfriend, and gave me Buenaventura’s signet ring, which his father had once given to Rebecca. When Quintín was twenty-one, Rebecca had passed it on to him, because he was her oldest son. I remember the first time I wore it; we were sitting out on the veranda on Aurora Street. I looked at the kneeling warrior beheading a hog, and thought how different it looked from anything that was part of my world.

Father died at the end of the next summer, just before I returned to the States for my last year in college. Carmita’s gambling finally did him in. When we moved to Ponce eleven years earlier, Carmita had been almost cured of her habit; there were no casinos in Ponce, and she had nowhere to gamble. But then the Ponce Intercontinental Hotel opened its doors atop a rocky hill behind the town. The Intercontinental was the first truly modern hotel to go up in Ponce, and it stood in contrast to the town’s elegant turn-of-the-century architecture. All the rooms had panel-glass windows; there were balconies that jutted out over the dry, spiny vegetation, and an absurd cylindrical stairway to the pool area made of round, decorative bricks which faintly resembled the neck of a giraffe.

The hotel had a luxurious casino; the mayor had hoped it would bring American tourists to Ponce. But he was wrong. The three-hour drive from San Juan, the narrow, winding road, the hairpin curves with dark green gullies which lured careless travelers to the bottom proved to be too much of an obstacle. Ponce has no beaches; it has never been a resort town, and Ponceños have always wanted to keep it that way. Soon the Intercontinental was losing thousands of dollars. Faced with a serious situation, the manager began to advertise the casino among the local families, inviting the ladies to its Lady Luck Afternoons, when each dollar would be worth six chips instead of three, until eight in the evening.

Carmita was delighted. She began to go to the casino with her friends, and soon she had a competition going as to who would win the slot machine’s pot. When she lost, she asked her friends to lend her some money. If they refused, she just walked out into the street and asked anyone she met for a loan. Pedestrians couldn’t understand why a well-dressed woman like Carmita Monfort was begging for money, and some began to take advantage of her. They would lend her ten dollars, then knock on our door and tell Carlos they had lent her a hundred. It might very well have been true, but Carmita would never admit it, and Carlos didn’t dare refuse. Months went by and the situation got worse. Every time Carlos went out of the house, there would be someone waiting on the sidewalk, asking him to pay a couple of hundred which Carmita owed.

After a while, Father was so embarrassed he stopped going to the office and stayed home all the time. He left the managing of Mother’s properties to her accountant and didn’t want to have anything more to do with her money. The only thing he liked was to sit under the white-oak tree he had planted behind the house on Aurora Street and to feed his two Florida parrots, Coto and Rita. He liked to see how much his oak tree had grown and would measure the expanse of its trunk every two or three months. White oak was one of his favorite woods for carving furniture, and when the tree was big enough, he planned to saw it down and make at least six rockers and a love seat. One day a tropical storm hit Ponce and felled many of its beautiful trees. The streets were littered with them, their roots exposed like huge molars extracted from the earth. It also uprooted our white oak and knocked down the parrot cage. Coto and Rita escaped. That was the evening Abby went looking for Father all over the house at dinnertime and found him hanging from the rafters in the attic, her shiny new garden hose from Sears tied around his neck.

Father’s death was a nightmare. We only managed to weather the storm because of Abby. “‘It’s when Corsicans lose everything that they know what they’re really worth,’ Napoleon’s mother wrote to the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo,” Abby said stoically as we stood by Father’s coffin at the wake. “So stand up straight; keep your chin up, and don’t cry. Just thank everyone politely for coming.” I had no choice but to dry my tears and do as she said.

At the funeral Abby made a great effort to appear reconciled to her fate. But her mouth was like a bird that didn’t want to fly; her lips drooped every time she tried to smile. Carlos was her only child. After he died, Abby shrank three inches and began to lose her sight. She knew Carlos would never amount to much, but she went on loving him as on the day he was born. When she found him hanging from the rafters in the attic, she put both hands to her mouth and fell unconscious on the floor. The maid and I heard the thud and ran upstairs. Mariana knelt by Abby’s side to try to revive her, and didn’t see Father’s corpse. I saw him first. I ran down the stairs and out into the street, terrified. I wouldn’t go back into the house for hours, but sat on the sidewalk, dry-eyed. Mariana had to call the ambulance that took Abby to the hospital, as well as the firemen who brought down Father’s body. I didn’t cry until the next day, when Abby came back and took me in her arms.

That summer brought a lot of changes. Carmita got worse, and we had to get a nurse for her; she couldn’t be left alone, because she’d wander out into the street and start asking people for money. Abby wasn’t feeling well, but she wouldn’t admit it. She sold the piece of land she still owned in Adjuntas—which had appreciated considerably because Squibb, the pharmaceutical plant, had bought Uncle Orencio’s farm to plant eucalyptus trees instead of coffee—and deposited the profits in the bank.

The following spring, I graduated with honors from Vassar. I had taken every course I could in Spanish literature, because I had made up my mind to be a writer. Abby was very supportive. She liked the idea from the start. She wrote me a long letter about the importance of being able to turn even our most painful experiences into art. Quintín was the only one who came to my graduation in May. From Poughkeepsie we flew together to Puerto Rico and I then traveled to Ponce by myself. When I got home, I ran up the stairs to the front balcony with my diploma in hand. The nurse opened the door. Abby was in bed, she said; she had been failing for the past month. I was upset; I had no idea she was so ill.

I went to her room and tiptoed to her bed. I wasn’t prepared for the change that had come over her. Her eyes were closed and she looked even smaller than I remembered; she reminded me of one of Abuela Gabriela’s miniature dolls in the vitrine in the living room. I kissed her on the forehead and put the diploma next to her on the bed. “Congratulations,” she said when she opened her eyes. “I’ve lived fifty years after Lorenzo’s death just to see you finish what I had to give up when I was nineteen. Now you can write the story of our family, with the dead and the living to help you, and I can rest in peace.” I hugged and kissed her and said she was being silly; soon she would be well again and we would go to the Silver Spoon together.

The next day she woke up very early and got out of bed. She had breakfast with me in the dining room. Just as she was finishing her coffee, she said: “This afternoon I’m going to die, and I’d like everything to be ready. I need you to find me the wedding sheets I brought from Adjuntas, after I buried your grandfather. They’re in a trunk in the attic.” I told her not to joke like that, but my heart balled into a fist. The nurse chided her for talking about depressing things. Abby went on drinking her coffee, without saying another word. When she finished breakfast, she got up from the table and did something very strange. She walked to the terrace where Carmita was sitting in her rocking chair, and kissed her on the forehead. It was the first time she had kissed her since Carlos passed away. Then she went to her room and locked herself in.

A few minutes later I knocked on her door. I had found her wedding sheets; they were in an old chest in the attic, just as she had said. They were embroidered with miniature roses and had a scalloped edging of fine Brussels lace, and they were freshly laundered, as if someone had expected to use them soon. I was surprised at how fine they were. I had always heard Abby talk about how splendid her life at Abuelo Lorenzo’s house had been, but I had only half believed her. I thought she was exaggerating, because one always remembers one’s youth in a favorable light. But her wedding sheets were proof that she hadn’t been making it up; life with Lorenzo must have been very fine indeed.

I gave Abby the bed linen and closed the door. After a while I heard the soft purring of Carmita’s sewing machine. Abby had brought it to her room when Carmita became ill, and she had sewn all the new curtains and bedspreads for the house herself. I thought she must be feeling better and didn’t want to disturb her, so I didn’t knock on her door.

I went out to run some errands in town, and when I came back, I took dinner to Abby’s room on a tray. But nobody answered my knock. Slowly I opened the door and found Abby lying in bed, her wedding linen perfectly ironed around her. She had made a shroud with the delicately embroidered top sheet, and she lay in it like a baby mummy, hands folded over her chest and face edged with Brussels lace. Around the bed lay a dozen envelopes, all duly addressed, with what was left of the money from the sale of the land in Adjuntas. There was a generous sum for the children of the Silver Spoon, and then the payment for her last bills at the house: electricity, water, and telephone. The final envelope held the money for her coffin and her burial expenses.

After Abby’s death, the house on Aurora Street seemed larger and emptier than ever. I knew I had to put Carmita in an asylum, but I wanted to postpone that as long as possible. During the day the nurse and I had to feed and dress her, carry her to the bathroom and get her on and off the toilet; but at night she did everything on the bed. Every morning we had to give her a bath and change the sheets, because she woke up covered in excrement. After Carlos’s suicide, Carmita refused to talk. She just sat in her rocking chair, combing her long, gray hair all day. I liked to sit and tell her about my things, even if she didn’t hear what I said. She seldom smiled, but when she did, I felt as if she were pouring oil on my wounds.

A
FTER ABBY’S DEATH QUINTÍN
came to Ponce to see me every weekend, but it was impossible even to think of getting married, because he didn’t have any money. At the end of the summer we had a stroke of luck. Madeleine Rosich died in Boston, and she left Quintín, her favorite, a considerable amount. Quintín proposed that same day, and we set the date for the wedding a year later. I decided to sell the house on Aurora Street but wanted to stay there with Mother until the last possible moment. A week before the wedding, I finally put her in an asylum.