Chapter 2
Success. Appropriate and Anodyne.
“Where are you vacationing?”
That was Mama’s favorite question. She asked it at Christmas, when the family was all gathered around a table creaking under the weight of glasses, cutlery, and silver crap as useless as it is old.
She asked it during Holy Week too, when we’re obligated to go to her house to eat torrijas made by a rotating cast of cooks, each one inevitably fired.
On the anniversary of Papa’s death, when we traveled to our grandparents’ country house to lay down flowers and hear mass, she would ask us too.
“Where are you going on vacation, girls?”
And the reason she always asked exactly the same thing was mostly because she’s an old-fashioned snob who worried too much about what would happen if high society didn’t see her daughters skiing in Switzerland, lazing on a boat in the Mediterranean, or sunbathing in French Polynesia.
That and being skinny enough to see your hip bones through your clothes were the only things that mattered to her.
Oh, and “marrying well,” of course. Marrying successfully.
No shit, Sherlock.
The first time I heard her talk about success, I was too little to understand or question the characteristics she valued.
The idea calcified in my mind, like the word caterpillar, which I always pronounced “capertillar” until one day I finally understood what it meant, but not quite like that.
Success for my family was the baby in a baptism, the bride in a wedding, and the corpse in a grave.
The only respectable aspiration, the very purpose of human existence.
A pain in the ass. And this concept felt like a school bully: Either you were with him or you were a victim of his whims. And that’s where that same tired question came from too.
“Where are you going on vacation, Patricia?”
My sisters and I shot each other looks and smiled stealthily, our eyes glued to our bowls of vichyssoise light, which was more like dirty leek water that smelled like a pond.
It was the first sentence my mother had uttered to us since we started the dinner to celebrate my sister Candela coming back to Spain for my wedding.
Yes. My wedding. Welcome to this story that starts where others end happily ever after.
“I’m not asking you. I already know you’re going on your dream honeymoon.” My mother lifted her gaze to mine, seized her glass, and smiled at me.
“Your dream,” I heard Candela whisper, forcing an imitation of my mother’s old-fashioned, aristocratic accent.
“Alberto wants us to spend the first two weeks of August traveling, but with the children…” Patricia, the oldest, shot a warning glance at Candela, trying to stifle a smile.
“I want to go to Greece,” my brother-in-law explained as he glanced at my terrorist nephews, who had already eaten and were playing suspiciously quietly in the drawing room next to the dining room.
“Traveling with them is exhausting,” my sister insisted. “I think we’ll rent a house in Formentera for the month.”
“Formentera?” Mama looked worriedly at Lord Mushroom, as we called her second husband, and then at Patricia and Alberto. “Isn’t that full of—”
“People?” I tried to cut her off before she said something offensive.
“Well, people, yes, but I’m referring to…people…you know…”
She waved her hand vaguely. This often happened to her, not being able to find the words.
She would often…leave things unsaid. Mama is…
Well, she’s lazy in a way someone can only be when they’ve never understood that “work gives dignity.” She’s the closest anyone in this century has been to those ladies Kate Winslet hung out with in Titanic.
Ladies whose only job was regular cosmetic surgeries resulting in majestic, stretched cat faces.
As always, she’d just gotten some little “nip,” so she was pumped full of her customary pills, ones that take away her pain and, if she swallowed them with alcohol (which she usually did), even eliminated that pesky sensation of human existence.
“Why not Saint-Tropez?” she asked after a sip of wine.
“Because…” Patricia looked to us for support. “Isn’t Saint-Tropez pretty passé?”
“Ah, you’re right.” She nodded. “But Menorca sounds better than Formentera, don’t you think, darling?”
Her husband, Lord Mushroom, nodded. He had a noble title, but the truth was, he was like a fungus, very regal but with zero pulse.
Sometimes we weren’t sure that he had even a hint of life in him, but other people insisted he could form complete sentences.
We also suspected he’d been getting lip fillers lately.
Every once in a while he had the weirdest pout.
“And you, Candela? Where are you vacationing? You’ll have to find somewhere warm to make up for your life in Iceland—”
“I live in Stockholm, Mother, which is the capital of Sweden, and…I had to take off quite a few days to come here.” She made a face. “So I’m going on vacation in your guest room.”
“Working all day.” My mother sniffed disdainfully. “People will think you don’t have a penny to your name.”
“Well, if I took a few selfies in the room you put me in, I could convince some of my friends I’ve been to Versailles. Rococo is also pretty passé, Mother. So eighteenth century.”
Patricia and I dabbed our mouths with our napkins so they wouldn’t see our smiles. The staff cleared our plates and were serving the second course in less than a minute. A steaming filet mignon was placed in front of each dinner guest. In front of me, a cup of kale.
I looked at my sisters. I looked at my brother-in-law. I looked at my mother.
“Oh, darling.” She smiled at me. “Sautéed kale. Really good. Really healthy. Very low calorie.”
“But…” Candela started to say.
“Just wait until you see how great you look in your dress.”
I took a deep breath, plastered on a fake smile, and cut off my sister.
“Thank you, Mother. Cande, don’t worry about it.”
“With all the beautiful names you all have, I don’t know why you insist on calling each other these ridiculous nicknames. Like you. Margot. Margot? What kind of name is that? Margarita. Ana Margarita Ortega Ortiz de Zarate.”
Present.