Happy Families

  I swear to you, Lavinia—

  Don’t interrupt, please. I was at an age, nine years ago, when you still believe you can begin your life over again, throw the old baggage over the side, and remake yourself from head to toe. I confess I already carried that inside me. Restlessness, the little worm, whatever you want to call it. My career had given me successes, compensations. Being a top publicist is something. It’s enough for a lot of women. They marry their careers.

  They say a professionally successful woman always has a lover in her bed: her career.

  Agreed. A career is very erotic. And yet I was dissatisfied. My career was just my dish of mole. But the sauce needed spice. Well, I was fertile ground, as they say . . . The fact is that on the afternoon he came into the office, our eyes met, and we both said in silence what we repeated to each other afterward in a quiet voice, you understand, both of us in half-light. Love at first sight. An infatuation. I’m telling you this with no shame at all. Cristóbal came into the office, and I undressed him with my eyes. I guessed what he looked like naked, and he did the same to me. We found out that night. Do you care if I tell you about it just the way it happened?

  No. I like it. If you kept anything secret from me, you’d be an egotist.

  You’re a savage. In the bedroom, he took off my panties, picked me up still dressed, with tremendous strength he picked me up and took me with my legs wrapped around his waist . . . I’ve never felt pleasure like that. Except with you.

  Thanks.

  But not the first time. With you, I had to get used to you. With him, I was afraid so much pleasure right away could only produce a kind of backlash of reduced sensations as time passed and we became accustomed to being together.

  The law of diminishing returns.

  But no. The truth was that the initial excitement lasted a long time. Danger helps, of course. Trysts, places that are nice but of necessity secret, fear of being discovered.

  One’s companion always viewed as a temptation, not as a habit.

  Exactly. Heaven on earth, isn’t it? Everything’s so unpredictable, so risky, so destructive to everyone if you’re discovered, that . . . Well, I admit it all feeds the vanity of a woman who feels herself needed, admired, without the humiliating sensation of just being there like a piece of furniture.

  It’s the good thing about being the mistress and not the wife.

  Why?

  The wife makes the bed after love. The mistress has a maid who makes it for her.

  Don’t kid around, Leo. I’m talking to you seriously.

  Like a piece of furniture, you were saying . . .

  Waiting for the man to sit on you, eat on you, urinate on you without even looking at you. Cristóbal made me feel unique. Queen of a kingdom with only two subjects, he and I, both subject to the desires—all the desires—of the other, which, because it was what the other wanted, belonged to both and to each, to me, to him . . .

  Fornication is a universal and inalienable right.

  At first he filled me with enthusiasm. He made me ecstatic. He told me things like “You have a fragile beauty and an intense sadness.” How could I not love him? It’s an ornate sentence, vulgar perhaps, but you’re not told that every day, Leo, you’re told what time we’ll see each other, I’ll be back at seven, order me some tacos, where did you leave the keys, you’re not told that your beauty is fragile and your sadness profound, no, not that . . . Nobody but a passionate man tells you he doesn’t know if you’re beautiful because you’re proud or proud because you’re beautiful, things like that. I would watch him combing his hair and get terribly excited. He combed his hair with his fingernails, you know? I spied on him when he tidied up in front of the mirror alone pushing his hair back alone before returning alone to the bedroom alone with the strength of an animal and with my own secret animality maintaining the very human love of the looks I gave him without his knowing I was looking at him. We made love, and he called me whore bitch in heat shameless tight cunt with a clit as cute as a golf course he told me all that with no shame and finally:

  “If you deceive me, I want you to be faithful to me. If you’re faithful to me, I want you to deceive me.”

  In everything, almost, you’re very frank. And you have a good memory.

  What? Do you think something like this can be forgotten?

  Not everyone knows how to mix memory and desire. When the second ends, the first goes away.

  Leo, the most attractive vanity can become repellent. Habitual surprise can stop surprising one day. No, he’s always given me the best. The best hotels, the best restaurants, the most beautiful trips, everything first class, always. I have nothing to complain about. But do you know something, Leo? Even the unexpected became routine. I can’t reproach him for his desire to pay attention to me, to always take me to the most elegant places. The moment came when I wanted everything except the exceptional. Because I began to anticipate the extraordinary, you know? Then the ordinary threatened to come back. With indomitable strength, the strength of the exceptional. Normalcy began to appear in every first-class section of Air France, every suite at every Ritz, every table at El Bodegón, truffles began to make me itch, pheasants left me cross-eyed, lobsters grabbed at my hands to pull me back to the ocean floor . . . Love can suffocate us, Leo. It’s like eating candy all the time. You have to give tedium its due. You have to be grateful for the boring moments in a relationship. You have to . . . You have to stop anticipating the extraordinary. You have to learn to foresee the foreseeable.

  It’s the best thing about love.

  You said it! What happens is that nobody foresees the moment when you no longer want to be as happy as you were and you desire a little of that unhappiness called ordinary life. Well, what you give me, Leo.

  X kills Y and Z kills X.

  You pay attention to me—

  I’m referring to proofs.

  You never talk about yourself. You listen to me.

  I pay attention only to you, Lavinia.

  Aren’t you ever offended?

  You and I never had to pretend. Not before, not now.

  I admit there are confidences I don’t like to hear.

  I’m just the opposite, Lavinia, I love hearing yours. Please go on.

  Do you know what I began to detest in him?

  No.

  His laugh. The way he laughed. At first I thought it was part of his charm. You’re pretty solemn, if truth be told.

  Just serious. A little serious.

  He had an elegant laugh. Spontaneous. Joyful. Everything well rehearsed.

  Have you ever heard sad laughs?

  Something worse. There are laughs with significance.

  I don’t understand.

  Of course you do, you know. Those people who never laugh at somebody else’s jokes and die laughing at their own, though nobody else finds them funny. I mean, Cristóbal began to laugh to redeem his defects. I realized he wasn’t only laughing at a joke or to lighten a tiresome situation. Not to liven up the conversation and even life itself. He laughed to excuse himself. When he did something wrong. When he said something inopportune. When he forgot an anniversary. When he was late for an appointment. When he fired a servant without consulting me first. When he didn’t like my makeup, my dress, the book or magazine I was reading, he laughed. He laughed at me. He excused himself for throwing out my lipstick or giving half my wardrobe to the Red Cross or grabbing away the book by Dan Brown or my copy of Hola!, laughing as he said bad taste, trash, I have to educate you.

  What did you say?

  Hey, don’t play Pygmalion with me. That popped out. It was our first disagreement. After that, he enjoyed criticizing me with an eyedropper, always smiling.

  Did you say anything to him?

  I’m untorturable. That’s what I told him. It was a mistake. He began to annoy me more and more. I didn’t let him. Your successes bore me, I told him. Don’t tell me about them anymore. Stop presenting yourself to me as a man who makes important decision
s every half hour. Your decisions bore me. Every night you come into my bedroom shouting “Land ho!” You had a good time colonizing me, Cristobalito. Don’t you ever put off a decision? Don’t you ever reflect, don’t you ever take your time? And not only that, Leo. Slowly I began to realize that behind the boasting about successes, Cristóbal wanted to impress me with a very powerful love, bigger than any affection for me. Love of manipulation. Loyalty to lies. That’s what was behind his boasting.

  How did you find out?

  It was incredible, Leo. Priscila Barradas, my best friend, you know, the fat woman, made a date with me at the bar in the lobby of the Camino Real. We were drinking margaritas and gossiping very happily when suddenly, fat Pris very calmly stood up and walked out to the lobby. Cristóbal came into the hotel, and she stopped him, holding his arm, whispered something into his ear with her nasty bean breath, and he looked toward the bar nervously, not meeting my eyes—not like the first time, you see?—and hurried away. Shameless Priscila went after him, leaving me flat, sitting in front of a margarita getting warmer and warmer. Oh yes, and leaving me to push up daisies, the old bitch.

  Next time order cognac.

  That night I reproached Cristóbal for his infidelity. He laughed at me. My conclusions were false, he said. Priscila was the wife of our friend José Miguel Barradas. She simply came over to give him a message from José Miguel. And why didn’t the vulgar cow come back to say goodbye to me? Cristóbal laughed, as usual. To provoke you, he said, to make you jealous. Yes, I said, you have to have friends who are very married who don’t want to trade their husband for yours. This amused Cristóbal very much. He made passionate love to me again, and again he disarmed me.

  And your friend Priscila? Surely you saw each other again.

  She’s a fat, cynical pig. When I mentioned it to her at a cocktail party, she said, “I think being the only woman who can love your husband is a supreme act of egotism.”

  What did you say?

  One husband’s as good as another, as far as you’re concerned. Be happy with what you already have, fatso.

  And then?

  We pulled each other’s hair. It happens in the best circles.

  And Cristóbal?

  I’m telling you, he made passionate love to me and disarmed me. I’m a poor dumb cow.

  As the song says, the one you like so much, “Let’s fall in love, why shouldn’t we fall in love?”

  It was at first sight, Leo. Do you have to wait for second sight to take the first step?

  “Let our hearts discover—”

  Little by little. Condemned to discover the truth a little at a time. What we should have known from the beginning, before we set sail. At least find out if there are lifeboats. Is love fated to be the Titanic of one’s life?

  Did you see the movie? The only surprise is that the ship sinks. I mean, if you had known then what you know now, would you have given up on love?

  Forget it. Okay, novelty is not only exciting, it also blinds. Hah, as if I didn’t know, a publicity executive.

  “We were not made for each other.” A variation on the lyric. Cristóbal was exceptional. He’s become familiar.

  I tell you, his successes bore me. I’d like to see what face he’ll put on if he fails. Of course, he’ll never admit defeat. Other people fail. He never does. Oh well. I observe him and tell myself I prefer doing something and making a mistake than not doing anything and having passive successes, like an oyster on the ocean floor until it’s pulled up for someone to eat. Perhaps this is what happened to him, and naturally, he would never admit it. He counted on me, on my complicity or passivity or erotic need, who knows. The fact is he acts, knowing he can count on me. Imagine the shame of it. He talks and lets me know I’m the force that sustains him.

  Mother Earth, let’s say.

  A damn domestic Coatlicué, the mama goddess with her skirt of snakes waiting for the macho Mexican adventurer. Bah, this whole game of statues wears me out, Leo, we’re always turning into stone idols, household idols, with no adventure, no illusion, not even danger, not even . . . I don’t know. I feel imprisoned by the mistaken loyalty of continuing a failed relationship. I’m bored with this.

  No, Lavinia. Please go on. Just think that with any man, love is like inspiration. Nothing but hard work.

  You talk the way they do in one of your soap operas.

  That’s what I live on, Lavinia.

  And the inheritance from your aunt Lucila Casares.

  That’s true. My aunt in heaven peeks out to watch me enjoy myself.

  What was the lady like, your aunt Lucila?

  Watch my soap The Sweethearts. She’s the protagonist.

  That vulgar old woman sighing for her adolescent loves?

  The same. All I did was transcribe what she said in her diary.

  And the little boyfriend from Acapulco, who was he?

  I don’t know. She calls him Manuel, that’s all.

  A reject. A guy without will.

  Do you even watch my soaps?

  I don’t. My maids tell me about them. This Manolo is vulgar, he’s cursi.

  Well, our Spanish word cursi comes from “courtesy” and from “curtsy.” Being well bred.

  Then I prefer being a savage, Leo.

  Just go outside. But never forget that love is hard work.

  With any man?

  Yes. With him. With Cristóbal.

  Or with you?

  With me, too.

  Even though the days go by, one after the other, always the same, an endless procession until one day your life is only a little sand at the bottom of a bottle tossed into the sea?

  Yes.

  Isn’t there anything to do?

  Yes. Change the game all the time. It’s the only way to hold on to a man.

  Is that why I have you?

  Yes. Do the same with Cristóbal. Constantly change the game. You’ve let yourself fall into the very routine you reproach him for. You’re too faithful, too passive, pining for the first moment of love. You have to realize it won’t come back. Invent some new first moments.

  Ah, are you saying that for yourself?

  You have me forever. With me, you don’t need any tricks of love or fate. You’ll never be able to leave me.

  Are you, beside everything else, my best friend?

  I think so, Lavinia. As long as you remember this: There’s nothing more seductive than a friend. You know all his secrets, what he likes, what he dislikes. That’s why you shouldn’t tell your friends everything.

  What does friendship have to do with happiness? In any case, what does love have to do with happiness?

  Don’t look for a definitive answer to anything. Don’t keep asking yourself where we’re going. Let yourself go, Lavinia. We’ve spent five years loving each other.

  It never should have happened.

  Our love?

  Never.

  Your marriage?

  Yes. It was inevitable.

  Believe that, Lavinia. Continue with Cristóbal. I swear that our being the lovers we are depends on it. Be faithful to your husband.

  Faithful?

  In the deepest sense. Continue with him faithfully so you and I can always love each other in secret, with the excitement of the first hour.

  Poor Cristóbal . . . I don’t know. I don’t know if . . .

  Don’t finish the sentence, Lavinia. You and I don’t need to finish sentences.

  It was a mistake for us to meet.

  Suspension points . . .

  Forget it . . .

  Chorus of the Daughter Who Killed Herself

  The girl went to the cemetery with the pistol that belonged to her papa who

  abused her the pistol was blacker and harder than her father’s cock

  I hope he understood that after the

  girl put a bullet through her head and then

  (just like in the movies)

  stood up revived

  (just like daffy duck road runner the crazy
bird and tom the cat who falls from a skyscraper smashes into a mountain is folded into an accordion is flattened into a tortilla is shit on and always revives resumes his usual form pursues pursues pursues the mouse jerry)

  just like in the movies

  to tell him what’s up you old prick you thought I wasn’t capable of

  killing myself killing myself

  look at me dead and learn your lesson daddy and don’t punish your

  little girl because she broke the vase and hung from the towel rack

  and don’t fight anymore papa and mama because then papa comes in

  with smoke coming from his nostrils and drool from his mouth to take his revenge

  on me for his argument with mama

  don’t fight anymore because I swear I’ll throw myself off the roof

  don’t make me desperate anymore daddymommy do you think I’m made of wood?

  I touch my skin I pinch myself I feel don’t you know that I feel?

  there are four hundred of us kids who kill ourselves every year in the Rep Mex

  Wanna bet you didn’t know that?

  The Star’s Son

  1. You stand at the mirror in your bathroom. You look at yourself in the mirror. You look for D’Artagnan leaping from the balcony to the back of the horse waiting for him in the lane. You hope to see the Black Corsair swinging from the mast of the Folgore at the attack on Maracaibo. You imagine, in your mirror, the Count of Monte Cristo—you yourself, young, with those motionless gray hairs daubed at your temples like a sea of stone—and you see in your mirror Alejandro Sevilla, yourself, filming The Seven Boys from Ecija, and you are all seven of them, you alone are all you need to incarnate the seven generous Spanish bandits of the eighteenth century. You are the hunchback Enrique de Lagardere, the gentleman in disguise to deceive the court of Louis XIII and save the honor of Blanche de Nevers . . . except that now, Alejandro, you can’t shake off the imaginary hump, it’s stuck to your body, the deformity isn’t made of rubber anymore, it’s made of bone, and then you shake your head so the mirror will give back to you the dashing figure of the masked Zorro, ready to defend violated justice in Old California.