Chapter 3
3
On the steps of the Spanish colonial cathedral, Hector’s swarthy skin is lit by the building’s yellow facade, intensifying his morning-after pallor. From all around him, people are shouting offers of congratulations, cheer and suerte. Taxi drivers, the men who drop Hector home in their green and white Beetles when he can barely speak at the end of a night out, beep their horns in solidarity. The women who work in the old department store, where they worked alongside Hector’s mother thirty-five years ago and who still clutch him to their hearts sympathetically when he pops in, walk past and blow Hector a kiss. Volunteers who work at the Villa Infantil De Nuestra Senora orphanage hurry along with a wave as they head back to tidy up, while the nuns who run it, and all of the children who live there, are in the cathedral awaiting Hector’s arrival. Barmen pass on scooters on their way to open up cantinas Hector frequents for the start of a new day’s trade, although they don’t expect to see Hector in there later. Most people in the town of Xalapa know Hector Herrera, and if they’re not filing into the cathedral right now to support their compadre , they’re tooting their horns or raising their hands to wish him well.
A more austere party approaches as Hector’s soon-to-be mother-in-law, Mari-Carmen, and her other three daughters, Federica, Beatriz and Julieta, walk around the corner and up the steps of the cathedral. Hector greets them with a single kiss each to the left cheek. The youngest two girls, still teenagers, give each other a sideways look. Only last night, in their hotel bedroom, Beatriz and Julieta were wondering how on earth Pilar snagged such a hot husband, so they wrote their names next to Hector’s to work out what percentage the strength of their love with him would be in a little letters-and-numbers experiment that wasn’t entirely scientific (Beatriz was 72per cent, Julieta 98per cent, but she cheated). Hector’s grandfather, Alejandro, stands at his shoulder and nods sedately to Mari-Carmen and the young women.
‘Mari-Carmen, you look wonderful! The New World air suits you,’ says Hector, with a vivacity that attempts to disguise his hangover.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Hector.’ She scowls with thin, immaculately made-up jowls. ‘We’re all still jet-lagged, we look awful. Poor Federica’s eyes are still puffy.’
Sullen Federica, the eldest of the four Cabrera sisters, rolls swollen eyes in embarrassment; Beatriz and Julieta stifle a giggle.
Alejandro nods; he can’t help agreeing.
‘I don’t know why we couldn’t do it in Spain,’ Mari-Carmen says gruffly. ‘It’s tradition to marry in the bride’s family home; and there are only two of you in your entire family. Eighteen of us have travelled all this way and there are hundreds of friends and family back home who are upset to miss this. She’s the first Cabrera to get married.’ Mari-Carmen, hat to toe in oyster, shoots Federica an exasperated look, and her puffy eyes shrink even further back. Much to Mari-Carmen’s indignation, Federica has never had a suitor, which makes it even more inconvenient that their unruly second daughter found one first, all this way away, in the Third World . Her small, eagle-like eyes measure the men standing in ill-fitting suits before her. Hector is taller and broader than his grandfather, who has sunken into his suit through years of labour in the gardens of the Museum of Anthropology on the outskirts of the town.
Only two of you.
Seeing the lines around his mother-in-law’s acerbic mouth makes Hector realise, for the first time in his life, that being ‘only two of you’ might not be such a bad thing. He didn’t want the travelling circus from Spain. The Gallegos and their ridiculous lisps. This all seemed completely unnecessary to him.
When Pilar told Hector at Christmas that she wanted to get married, and that she would hurt herself if they didn’t marry soon, it was the first Hector had heard of it. They had never once discussed marriage in the six years they had been together. So he assumed she wanted a quick and quiet wedding; perhaps on a beach on the Mayan Riviera. Maybe she was ready to consider children, although Hector knew they’d need to make some life changes first. But the eighteen-strong Spanish armada? No, gracias . At least Beatriz and Julieta looked happy to be there.
‘Well, this is what Pilar wanted, Mami, and I’m sure you and I only want the same thing – for your daughter to be happy.’ Hector nods his most charming smile and Pilar’s three sisters try not to slide down the steps of the cathedral on the crest of their sighs.
Mari-Carmen frowns at Hector, as if she can’t understand his slow and well-meant diction, then turns her head in a look of relief to see her sister approaching.
She almost smiled .
‘Ah, there’s Teresa. Go help her up the steps, Hector, and show her to her seat. This is all too much for her.’
Hector dashes down the cathedral stairs, his head thumping with each double step he jumps, to help the stately woman with a puff of white hair combed into a cloud behind her. Elephantine ankles are squeezed so tightly into beige court shoes, she can barely lift her feet to shuffle up each stone notch.
‘Dona Teresa, encantado …’ says Hector, not in the least bit charmed, but the half bottle of Freixenet followed by the three shots of tequila he and Pilar did before they went their separate ways to the cathedral are helping him see the funny side.
Pilar made no ceremony of putting on her dress in secret. She had no qualms about Hector seeing her on the morning of their wedding or that it might bring bad luck. When her father Leonel came to the apartment door to collect her, broken glass was still shattered on the bedroom floor, but she knew he wouldn’t see it. He didn’t want to acknowledge that his daughter lived with ‘The Mexican’, let alone enter their bedroom and see the well-worn sheets.
‘ Papi , come!’ Pilar shouted, as if she was an excited teenager, dressed up and ready for prom or her quinceanera , not her own wedding. Only the white satin dress and the plastic calla lily in her backcombed black hair were telltale signs.
Leonel Cabrera, an unexpressive man, silenced by a life surrounded by women, didn’t know what to say to his daughter. This was a new experience for the both of them.
‘You look beautiful, carina ,’ he said stiltedly, as if he were reading it from the back of his hand.
Pilar and Hector rushed around, trying not to bump into each other but sneaking tequila shots from the kitchen counter behind Leonel’s back as he sat on the sofa staring into space. Then, Pilar, in her white dress and red lipstick, said she was ready.
Leonel looked away uncomfortably as Pilar jumped up and locked her legs around Hector’s waist and slipped her tongue in his mouth, her palms pressing into the back of his head. He held her easily but self-consciously, under her father’s gaze.
‘Don’t make me blue,’ Pilar whispered romantically. ‘Or I’ll slit my veins so deep that every last drop of my blood pours down the cathedral steps.’ She gave him a loving smile.
‘I’ll be there,’ Hector assured her. Then he unwrapped Pilar’s arms and legs from their grip around his neck and waist, kissed his bride goodbye and went to the bathroom to throw up.