Thursday Night Widows (26 page)

“
Doctor?
”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Time's running out, Romina, there's only one week left to register,” he had said. And she imagined her father's Rolex chasing her through the streets of Cascade Heights, half-melted like those clocks she has seen in a Dalí painting they once had to copy at school. Ernesto said that he was not prepared to see her lose an entire year of her life. And at the time she wondered what the real loss was, knowing that so much of her life had been lost already. All those years she barely remembers. She had lost her name, Ramona. The father she never knew. The smells. The face of that other mother she no longer recalls. That brother who could have been different, but who was snatched away by Mariana.

The forms present her with two choices of private university: San Andrés or Di Tella. “I can't accept anything less. It's a question of excellence,” he tells her. Excellence. But Romina does not aspire to be excellent. She would like to travel. For a year – not any longer
– she doesn't ask to spend her life travelling, just to satisfy that post-school impulse, to make a journey of discovery – to grab a rucksack and see what happens, with no fixed itinerary. Ernesto laughs at her; he says how can she set off to travel the world when she doesn't even know how to take the number 57 into town? He says it even though he doesn't know either: he wouldn't know how to use the ticket-vending machine. The last time he went on a bus you could still pay the driver with whatever note you had and the driver gave you change. It's true that she's never even been on a bus. But Juani knows what to do. He is one of the few boys of his age who do know. The others get around in minibuses and taxis, or their parents drive them. And they can't wait to get their licences when they're seventeen. It isn't unusual in this area to find young people of that age who know how to drive but not how to catch a bus. Where they live everything is far away: the cinema, the mall, school, friends' houses. You can't walk anywhere. She's thinking of going with Juani. If they can get enough money together for him. She already has hers. All these years, she's been saving it up. And when the moment comes, Ernesto will give her more. He always does: it gives him security, knowing that she has money on her, “in case anything happens”. But she doesn't want to tell her father that she's thinking of going with Juani. She's afraid it will create more obstacles. So instead she tells him: “It can't be so difficult to take the number 57 or to use a ticket-vending machine. It's probably more or less like the one that dispenses condoms and tampons in the toilets at nightclubs.” And Ernesto lifts his hand to give her a slap, but she stops him, catching his arm mid-air, and she says: “Don't ever do that again,” fixing
him with a look of fury before running up to her room, scared that she may not be strong enough to hold him back.

If only she could understand Ernesto. It puzzles her that, unlike Willy Quevedo's parents, he does not think of getting her to apply to a university in the United States. Even though he could afford to pay for an American college, he wants something else. Willy's parents were not sure of being able to meet the cost, so for years they've been paying into a saving plan to guarantee having the funds available to send him to study wherever they choose. Ernesto does not mention the United States. She doesn't know if he means deliberately to thwart her desire to travel, or if it is because he fears that, once abroad, she would not come back. No, it can't be that: she doesn't believe that he would even miss her. Or perhaps
he
would, but Mariana… Mariana would jump for joy. Perhaps he is choosing the local option because it offers more in the way of useful contacts for him. Or because he would not be able to go to her graduation if the injunction preventing him from leaving the country is not lifted. But it can't be that, because Ernesto's relaxed about it: one of his “friends at the Ministry” has told him that it's merely a formality, that the judge has agreed to lift it, that it's only a matter of days. Romina does not know why he can't leave the country, nor does she ask him, because she knows what the answer would be. “Because in this country, they don't bother putting the thieves in jail, they'd rather persecute people like us.” She doesn't know who “people like us” are either, but she can imagine. All she knows is that “San Andres”, or “Di Tella”, are words calculated to soothe Ernesto. Certain words act like a balm on parents. The words
alone, regardless of their meaning. Juani and she once compiled a list of proper nouns and common nouns that calm parents down. The names of certain universities. The names of certain banks. The names of certain “family” summer resorts. The names of a few scant friends. The names of certain schools that guarantee the best English grades in the area and offer IB – most parents don't know what “IB” means, but they still let it sort one school from another. Calming words. Sport. A boy who does plenty of sport is sure to be “healthy and steer clear of drugs”. Any kind of sport, so long as it entails some kind of ball – be it green plush, number-five leather, Slazenger or Nike – and an implement with which to hit it (one's foot, a racket, a golf club, one's hand) and a goal to aim for (a net, a hole, a base line, a hoop).

Romina's sitting at her desk looking at the entry forms her father has sent. She draws little arses all over them. Inside each buttock, she draws another little arse, and inside that another, and more and more, to infinity. The picture within a picture.
Mise en abyme
. That's something else she's seen in art classes at school. The only thing she enjoys at school is art.
Mise en abyme
. Placed in the abyss. It frames them. In an hour an office boy is picking them up to take to the university.

Midway through 2001, the Uroviches announced officially that they were moving to Miami. “They're not the first and they won't be the last,” I wrote in my red notebook, and made this the general heading of a new
chapter. A little further down I wrote: “June 2001, the Uroviches leave Cascade Heights, thus baptizing the ‘** Effect'.” I left blanks because I didn't know its name, or if it had one yet. But the preceding pages of my notebook had featured, one by one, the names of all the different economic effects of the last few years. Who gives them their names, I wondered. Hard to imagine some serious economist coming up with such creative labels. I awaited the new baptism as anxiously as someone in the Caribbean might listen out for the name of an approaching hurricane. I carefully reread the earlier pages in my notebook: “1994, Tequila Effect. Salaberry, Augueda and Tempone, all three of them owners of downtown financial companies, sell their houses. I don't know the names of their firms. Pablo Díaz Batán is also selling up; he's a retired empresario who had put all his money into Tempone's financial business.” Díaz Batán had made his fortune on the back of an idea considered “brilliant” by many in The Cascade. Since the beginning of the 1990s, he had been registering in Argentina the brands of any number of American chains (that is, from the United States) which had yet to set foot on our soil. Ann Taylor, Starbuck's Café, Seven Eleven, Macy's – the sector was unimportant; all that counted was that the company not yet be installed or registered in our country and that there be a high chance that, in some prosperous moment, it would decide to come. And when that prosperous moment arrived, Díaz Batán presented his registered brand – their one, the one they wanted to register but which legally belonged to him. And even though it would be impossible for him to win a court case, these well-oiled companies balked at the slowness of Argentine justice, so they agreed a
settlement to speed up the process and, in the long run, save themselves money. “He's a very skilful man,” said Andrade, when someone told him how Díaz Batán had made his fortune, during a dinner party at the Scaglias' house. “In my book, Housemann's what you'd call skilful,” put in Ronie, and all I knew was that Housemann had been a football player for some club – but I understood perfectly what my husband meant by the allusion. Salaberry's house had gone for seventy per cent of its true value and Tempone's for eighty per cent. Augueda's turned out not to be his but his father-in-law's. And Díaz Batán's was sold at a judicial auction, in which he himself bought it back for less than half its worth, through a frontman.

I flicked on ten pages in my red notebook. “1997. Asian Crisis. Fall of Juan Manuel Martín and Julio Campinella.” Campinella's house was bought by Ernesto Andrade, whose business really took off that year; he swapped his Ford Mondeo for an Alfa Romeo, bought Mariana a people-carrier and a golf buggy for the maid and the children. They say he clinched God knows what deal with God knows what bonds. Or that he was left with some bonds after a deal. Or that he went to court over some bonds. I don't really know – but he paid my commission in cash.

Five pages on: “1998, Vodka Effect”. And two pages later: “1999, Caipirinha Effect”. Clearly there was a drinking theme at work here. I turned back to the Uroviches' page and, in the blank space I'd left before “Effect”, I wrote in “Yerba Maté”, because I could not think of any alcoholic drink that was authentically ours. I don't know why I put “Yerba”, but “Maté” on its own sounded insubstantial. I went back to the page
with Caipirinha, the last effect to have warranted its own name. That was when the bank where Roberto Quevedo worked left the country and he lost his job. He still had not put his house on the market, but he was considering it. The fund that had bought the retail company where Lalo Richards was operations manager had already achieved a more than satisfactory return from the country and was leaving. The company was for sale, but so laden with debts that it was unlikely anyone would want to buy it. Lalo had had his house valued, fearing that the creditors would descend and he would be left with nothing. The case of Pepe Montes was similar to these others. And the Ledesmas, too. And the Trevisanis. The thing is, many of our neighbours made the mistake of thinking that they could keep spending as much as they earned for ever. And what they earned was a lot, and seemed eternal. But there comes a day when the taps are turned off, although nobody expects it until they find themselves in the bath tub, covered in soap, looking up at the shower head, from which not a single drop of water falls any more.

The vertiginous pace of the decade that was ending had shocked me. When I was a child, money took longer to change hands. There were families, people we knew, who were very wealthy and whose surnames were endlessly repeated in different double-barrelled combinations – usually they owned land. The land passed on to their children, who employed labourers, rather than work it themselves, but who could still make a good income, albeit one that was shared out among several siblings. But those siblings would also die one day, and then the land passed on to the grandchildren and there were more squabbles, more people to share
the inheritance. Each person was allotted a parcel that was too small to work, and the land ended up neglected or sold in lots. But even so, and although no one can ever be sure of anything, two or three generations had to pass before the money that had been thought safe turned out not to be so. Whereas, in the last few years, money changed hands two or three times within the same generation, and no one had time to work out exactly what was going on.

I wrote: “2001, Yerba Maté Effect. The Uroviches leave, followed by…”

Lala surveyed the objects around her: the blue vase that Teresa Scaglia had given her; the imitation Tiffany lamp she had bought less than a year ago; the glass bell in the middle of the coffee table. To one side, Ariana was combing, almost obsessively, the hair of one of her Barbies. She thought back to when she was eight years old. At that time, Barbies didn't exist. She had had Piel Rose dolls. She would have liked to be eight years old now, and not to have to worry about anything except combing her doll's hair. She had filled in the form and sent it by post. That same afternoon they had called her: if it was urgent, they could organize everything for the following weekend. Lala wanted to do it as soon as possible. It was not the journey that was pressing – the tickets were for two months' time – but if they were going to leave, then she wanted the house emptied once and for all. The house had a hold on her, so long as her things remained in it. And she must not feel held back.
Every object around her had a story – looking at them was enough to spark a memory. And memory brought rage, hatred almost – she could not pinpoint it exactly, nor make sense of or find a reason for this feeling. Much less avoid it. All she knew was that she never wanted to see these things again. She wanted nothing that reminded her of the life she had lead in the last few years and that she could no longer keep leading. “Hold a garage sale,” Teresa Scaglia suggested. “You'll get rid of the old stuff in a day and with that money you can buy everything you'll need over there.” And she had given her the number of the company that Liliana Richards had used to clear the flat of her mother-in-law, a week after her death.

It was her father who had suggested they move to Miami. To start with, Lala didn't take the idea seriously. And Martín wouldn't hear of it. There was nothing for them in Miami: no relatives, no friends, no job offers. She did not even know how to speak English. “Why Miami?” Martín had asked.

“Because it's a city where you can do things; everything works well; there are all sorts of job opportunities flying around – you can feel it in the air. In Miami, with a bit of money you have a future. Here we soon won't have anything.” Lala was repeating what her father had said. After eight years in a multinational company, Martín had lost his position as Planning Director after some internal restructuring failed to include him on the new organizational chart. His dismissal hit them hard – they hadn't seen it coming – but Martín had an excellent CV, an MBA from an American university and plenty of contacts. It was just a question of being a little more patient, Lala told herself, as time went by. However, for
all that she tried to keep looking ahead and living as though nothing had happened, her husband's patience was directly proportional to the balance of their savings account and, month on month, their expenditure was eating away at both. One night, Martín sat her down opposite him at the desk and showed her a chart full of numbers. Why would her husband do something like that? She couldn't understand it. Lala was never any good at numbers. What was written on the paper looked jumbled up and rather hazy. Martín talked, explaining that eighty per cent of their savings were in government bonds and that the value of the bonds was falling. If they continued to live in Cascade Heights, sending Ariana to the same school, with Ariel starting university the following year, without cutting back on trips or new clothes, tennis, golf, painting classes and swimming, the nanny and other costs – what was left would be finished in exactly five months. Lala felt faint. She may not have followed all the details, but she understood the deadline. Five months was too soon. Five months was next summer. Five months was just short of Ariana's birthday. “And what will we do in five months' time?” she asked.