This Too Shall Pass (10 page)

The big redwood table with its iron foot the color of lapis lazuli takes up the entire dining room. My uncle designed it. There's a small wood-framed hatch that connects this space to the tiny kitchen so the dishes can be passed straight through without having to get up. It was designed when there were no children and everyone usually dined out. The windows and doors were arranged strategically, to keep the air circulating and the room swathed in gauzy light, with no shadows. Oscar and Guillem treat each other respectfully and behave graciously, and treat the other one's son with something close to paternal love. I'm not sure how we got here; we're each so impassioned and manic in our own way, so allergic to the gratuitous promiscuity and soft tolerance that's so characteristic of our generation. Oscar jokes with Edgar about the little fuzz on his lip, while Guillem ties Nico's napkin around his neck so he doesn't stain his shirt. Sofía flirts with Guillem, who disagrees with her on everything, poking fun at what she says, which is also one of the oldest forms of seduction in the book. Elisa and Damián whisper secrets to each other, plunged into their stormy world of besotted lovers. She rolls joints for him. Her hands work fast and determinedly, using precise movements that are feminine, almost maternal, with her head cocked to one side as if she were sewing, a soft curtain of hair covering her face. When she's finished, she places them delicately in front of the plate like an offering. Suddenly, it seems as though I were witnessing a voluntary act of submission, and there's something slightly erotic and improper about it, the type of things that should only happen in the bedroom and in private; a form of service, an act much more intimate than swimming in the nude. You brought me up so fervently and effectively against any form of submission that isn't for fun or something playful, that I never had any need to become a feminist.

Guillem bought four pounds of mussels, and we devour them as if we haven't had enough of the sea yet. We drink chilled white wine as if it were water. Elisa silently disapproves of our greedy, selfish way of eating, which is exacerbated by the time spent outdoors and on the boat—more than once she's been left without meat or salad or cake because she was in the kitchen preparing something. I regard my children's metamorphosis from city princes to golden, salty-skinned little barbarians. Every once in a while when I catch him looking the other way, I take a lick of Nico's chubby little cheek that's peppered with freckles. He pretends to get angry and tries to get me back, only to end up dying of laughter. At our best of times, we're just like a pride of lions.

Sofía explains to Oscar for the umpteenth time that she manages an important business.

—How can a crazy goat like her have a job like that? he whispers. —Or is she just making it up so we think she's interesting?

And his majestic bull's head, with its deep, symmetrically square jaw and strong, thoughtful forehead, belts out a laugh that sounds like that of a mischievous child, the way so many men's laughter does. Just like the children, and like Guillem, whose worn, determined hands have something poignant about them, and look a lot like Oscar's. And his soft, dark eyes suddenly fade into those of Santi's, a little more timid, and crazed, and then again they transform into the clearer, more sorrowful eyes of the mysterious stranger I met a little while ago, moving like parts of a magical kaleidoscope capable of summoning the fragments of the past, the present, and the future.

We don't have to say anything. As soon as we see each other, even if it's only to have lunch or go to the pharmacy, we immediately turn into a couple again, as if the sum of the parts couldn't be found anywhere else, as if we were the exact and perfect formula for something, even though we've never succeeded, and maybe never will, in figuring out exactly what.

—Why aren't we together again?

The sun filters in through the faded pink of the curtains, bathing the entire room in a warm, golden radiance with glimmers of red. I feel the silly and irresponsible happiness of waking up after a night adrift in kisses and nibbles. Oscar opens an eye and sniggers at me. I remember one of the first times we slept together—he left early to go to work and texted me a little while later: “I like opening an eye and seeing you by my side.” We jumped headfirst into the maelstrom that turns mere mortals into invincible gods and makes them think they're not alone. When my relationship with Guillem ended, I thought it meant I would be exiled from that territory forever, and here I was back again for a while, with the same certainty and euphoria and blindness and appreciation as the first time. One of the most amazing things about love is how miraculously it rekindles. I haven't set foot on that island whose secret location is lost to us all until the day we open our eyes and there it is again, like magic, we're back.

—Come here.

—No, seriously.

Morning sex takes away the energy that I've accrued while sleeping and turns me into a willowy convalescent for the rest of the day, as if I didn't have any bones. And today I want to visit you in the cemetery.

—Come here, check it out. He raises the sheet with a sheepish grin and shows me his awakening.

But I don't want to jump back into that sea, I need to touch the earth, the gnarled olive trees, feel burning stones, watch the high, anemic clouds.

—Seriously, Oscar, I want to be your girlfriend, I repeat in a tone that sounds sort of like a girl trying to convince her nanny to buy an ice-cream cone, or let her see a movie meant for adults. It's a catty blend of plea and command.

—Blanquita, there's nothing I would like better, you know that, but after a few days you'll send me to hell again.

—No, no. I shake my head vehemently, trying to sweep away all doubts with my straw-like strands of hair. —I won't fuck anyone else but you.

Every time we're together, my body screams out that I'm made for this man, and I still don't heed its irrefutable evidence. Somehow life always gets in the way, insists on negating that evidence with equal and opposite vehemence.

—That's not enough. It's not bad—he looks at me grinning like a wolf, —but it's not enough. You know that. He suddenly looks tired, like an actor who's been playing the same part for years opposite a much younger and less experienced character.

—But it's a lot, I say, remembering with a slight shudder last night's feelings of wonder and plenitude. —We're still attracted to each other after so many years—that's a lot.

—Yeah, it's amazing. I smile. Give in. Go ahead, give in to the flattery like everyone else, and to the golden light bathing the room, and to his round and slippery shoulders and your own vigorous and supple teenage body, incapable of rejecting anything sensual that's not harmful.

—As soon as I see you my mind says: “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

—And we love each other.

—Yes, we do love each other a lot. He's quiet for a minute. —But we can't stand each other. You can't stand me. And you drive me nuts. I've never lost it so entirely as I have with you.

I laugh, although it's been many years since I considered the ability to infuriate my significant other as something of merit, or one of the lowest rungs on the ladder of passion.

—Do you remember that time on the motorcycle when you got so angry—I don't remember why—and you made me get off and you left me standing there in the middle of the street?

—And you threw the helmet at my head and almost caused an accident?

—Let's get married, I say frivolously and with the lightness I usually use when I talk about serious things. I'm only able to talk seriously and for hours about nonsense. For the important things, like love or death or money, I always have to joke, raise an eyebrow and let out a nervous cackle, maybe out of modesty, or because I have a weak, lethargic character. Oscar is aware of it, and he's too clever to take a proposal like that seriously, which for one reason or another—love, jealousy, fear—we've had on the table for many years.

He hoots.

—Are you nuts? Where would we live? I don't fit in your house.

—Ah. I consider how the presence of a man might upset the status quo of the loft where I now live with the boys. It's like a cozy little burrow hanging between trees, smelling of currants and roses, butter cookies, wood and pepper and moss. I could never leave my loft, my wooden, light-filled loft. It's something I love.

We're quiet for a minute.

—You see? You're incapable of making sacrifices for anyone.

—That's not true, I protest weakly.

—Incapable of renouncing anything from your disorderly, infantile life, always trying to be different, doing the opposite of what everyone else does.

—Not true. And what about you, so rigid and uncompromising? I saw the look on your face yesterday when the children were eating a third chocolate crêpe.

—Because it's completely idiotic. Three chocolate crêpes does not a dinner make. And I don't see why you have to eat out every night. It's like spending money just to spend it.

I remember the endless arguments over whether Nico really needed another pair of sneakers, and my blatant profligacy with money—it was always my own money, never his—and how the children shouldn't leave the table until they'd eaten everything on their plates, and they shouldn't be allowed to watch more than an hour of television a day, or they shouldn't be permitted to sleep in our bed, or they shouldn't have too many toys. And the cleaning lady who didn't steal, but she was so incredibly lazy that he would pay her a few days late to show disapproval with her performance. And yes, the restaurant is charming but we could have eaten the same thing at home. And the day it snowed in Barcelona and we had to rescue the children from school, walking all the way across the city. I lived the experience as an adventure—the heroine whose boots were soaking wet battled the elements to save her young, who couldn't get home with the babysitter because the subway stopped working and there wasn't a single taxi, amid a cottony and festive chaos where the cars' lights, like Christmas lights, illuminated the tiny snowflakes that stuck to my lips and eyelashes—and you thought the whole thing was just a huge nuisance. The scaffolding that structures Oscar's life—being reasonable, realistic, and doing what's obligatory—are like prison bars to me. And my constant tidal waves are tantamount to all that's trivial, haughty, and reckless in the world.

—All right, lovers it is, then.

—No. For me it's all or nothing.

—Wait a second. Let's talk this through.

—We've talked it through a thousand times, Blanquita. You don't want a relationship. He says it jadedly, quietly. —At least not with me, he adds in the neutral tone that cuts to the quick, and in the same fell swoop takes off both our heads. —And anyway, I have to leave, I have a lot of work in Barcelona.

I know it's not true, it's Friday, it's summer, and that lately he spends the weekends with his girlfriend.

—You're going out with that bitch again, right? I don't want to feel sorrow; it's too fine an emotion, it's modulated and deep, and long-winded. I prefer to get angry.

—She's not a bitch. She's actually really nice, he says.

I jump out of bed groaning.

—Oh, “nice.” Well, isn't that just a stimulating virtue? I murmur. And slam the door behind me, turning a deaf ear to his joking pleas.

For the rest of the morning, Oscar cheerfully attends to his cell phone, sending and receiving text messages. He leaves after lunch.

—I'll always be here for you, he said on his way out, —you'll never lose me.

—Really? I respond.

—Of course. Nobody will ever love you the way I do, he answers with a serious expression.

—Well, someday someone else might think the same thing.

Acting as if he hasn't heard me, he says: —Life goes around and comes around. Anything's possible.