26 And the gazpacho suddenly doesn’t taste as delicious anymore
26
And the gazpacho suddenly doesn’t taste as delicious anymore
Miranda
I wish I could’ve woken up exactly how I fell asleep, with his arms wrapped around me, enveloped by his scent and my hands on him, but I’m alone in bed, and the alarm clock is drilling into my temples like a machine gun. My head hurts like hell, and I don’t know what day it is.
There’s a lot of light streaming in through the window for seven o’clock in the morning, so I deduce that it’s the middle of summer. My phone confirms it: July 5.
I sit on the edge of the bed and feel a heaviness in my head, eyelids, and shoulders. I finally muster enough strength to get up and head to the bathroom, and I barely recognize myself in the mirror. I look terrible. My face looks gaunt, my eyes are puffy, I have deep, dark circles under my eyes, and my hair is pretty dirty. Pretty dirty is a euphemism…it’s filthy. You could fry croquettes in it.
I can’t tell if I’ve lost weight, gained weight, or neither, but my body has changed, and my face looks like death. Is this a consequence of so many time jumps? But wait…what year is it?
An internal alarm makes my heart race, and I put my hand on my chest, like I could squeeze it into not beating so fast, and study my surroundings. My house. A house exactly like last night, except for a few subtle, very subtle, changes.
Tristan’s soap isn’t in the shower. I can’t see his electric razor either or his shaving cream, his toothpaste, or his comb in the medicine cabinet. The wardrobe is much emptier than usual: his clothes are missing. And his shoes. I rush into the living room: his books aren’t there or his records or the record player, and neither are our photos. But…have I gone further back? Have I gone back to before I met him?
“No, no, no, no,” I say over and over with a tinge of rage in my voice.
All this effort is killing me; I’m exhausted. Everything was going so well…
I open the calendar app on my phone and collapse.
July 5, present time.
Tristan dumped me three months ago.
“Fuck!”
I have a delayed reaction. All I want to do is climb back into bed, close the curtains, and sleep until all this is over. I don’t know where I want to wake up tomorrow, but I want to be anywhere but here. The possibility that I could wake up tied to a bed in a mental institution, with a doctor telling me this was all a dream, occurs to me more than once. Or maybe the Matrix exists, and the simulation they’ve put me in is glitching.
The only thing I know for sure is that today is Monday and, as far as I know, I still work for a living. I can call the magazine, tell them I’m sick, and then send a message to Ivan, asking him to come over. Maybe he…I don’t know. Maybe he can somehow explain what’s happening. He’s really smart, he always has been… He probably understands it.
I could also go to work, and… I have this nagging feeling that’s what I should do. But first…I’m going to change the sheets and air out this room. Everything seems to indicate that I’ve spent the whole weekend rotting in bed. It smells like… Let’s just say it smells stuffy.
The fridge is empty. There’s a teetering pile of take-out bags next to the trash. All very healthy, of course… The pimples I noticed on my chin and temples were born to a mother of “burger and onion rings” and a father of “fried chicken combo.” The sink is full of glasses, cups, spoons, and the occasional plate. The washing machine is empty, and the laundry basket is overflowing. The sink is full of hair. A giant dust bunny is staring at me gravely from the corner, judging me. It seems like it’s saying: “You’ve hit rock bottom, bitch.”
When I leave the house, I’ve finally made everything halfway decent…enough so the neighbors don’t feel the need to call the Health Department to shut down my house as a threat to public safety. Yolanda isn’t coming until Thursday, so something had to be done, or I’d be living in filth for the next four days.
I put on the only clean clothes in my closet that weren’t party clothes: a midi, short-sleeved cotton dress. I add a necklace to show I made some effort to “look cute.” I wash my hair, but I put it in a low bun so I don’t have to do much with it. I’m not wearing a scrap of makeup. I can’t be bothered, so my eyes are still puffy; apparently I spent most of Sunday crying. I look like Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter .
I could have finished off the look with heels as a final touch, but I decided to go for some low black Converse instead, opting for comfort. I’m carrying a big bucket bag. As I got dressed, I realized I have slimmed down in certain places… My boobs have shrunk, and maybe my thighs too, although they’re also flabbier. I feel numb and soft in equal parts. But my belly is swollen, and so is my face, like my body is changing its shape piece by piece instead of all together. I know my body, and even though I’m not worried about the aesthetic effect, I know all this is a consequence of months of not taking care of myself at all. Months of neglect. And that’s enough now…
I forget to take off my sunglasses when I get to the newsroom and keep them on until I’m safely ensconced in my office. Well…actually I forgot I was wearing them for a few seconds, and then I thought it was best not to take them off so I wouldn’t scare anyone. A few eyes follow me to “my quarters,” but I don’t meet them. I just throw a generic “good morning” out into the air. No motivational phrases or endearments. I feel the instinct to hide, like a nocturnal rodent in the sun. I watched so many vampire movies I ended up becoming one.
I turn on my computer, open my planner with the intention of getting to work right away, and… God…it’s a disaster. Everything is full of chaotic, scribbled, unreadable Post-its. I can’t understand any of it, but it seems like we have a lot of work to do. I don’t know where to start. I’m plagued by a kind of compulsive thought, one that I recognize and that haunts me whenever I’m not doing well, when I set my sights on goals that are too lofty and then I fall apart when I don’t achieve them. It goes something like “This is a mess, and I feel helpless about doing anything to improve it. I don’t want to do it. I would have to expend a titanic effort, which I’m not prepared to do.” Instead of all that drama, I could just sigh and…just start, little by little, to try. It’s better than nothing. But I can’t see it clearly.
Someone knocks on my office’s glass door, and I beckon them in without looking up to see who it is. It’s Rita.
“Love…how are you doing?” she asks gently.
“Fine…well… I gave up trying to understand my handwriting from last week, so you caught me seriously considering contacting a specialist in cuneiform writing to see if anyone can decipher all these unhinged Post-its.”
I look at her and smile in a way that’s probably disturbing because it’s not genuine. She gives me back a sad smile.
“You smell good,” she declares.
“Um…”
“Showering is a good step, but…you don’t look great, Miri.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
Wait…have I not been showering at all lately?
“I know that’s a shitty thing to say.” She grabs the chair in front of my desk, sits down, leans in, and says in a conciliatory tone, “It’s not like I’m saying it maliciously. ‘Ooh, your face looks terrible’ or ‘Are we packing on a few pounds?’ That’s not it. You know me, and you know I’m not like that.”
“I know, I know.”
“But let me just say: I’m a little worried about you.”
I stare at her, not knowing how to respond.
“Did you just get in?” she asks.
“Yes.” And I say it like it’s the best evidence in the whole history of humanity.
“It’s past eleven. You never get in that late.”
“Well, I wanted to use the flexible hours for once…” And yes, I’m being defensive even though I know that she has good intentions and we trust each other enough for her to be able to say stuff like that.
“Yes. It’s fine, Miri. I’m not saying this as a colleague, I’m saying it as a friend. It’s just not like you, and I’m scared it’s a symptom that things aren’t improving. It’s been three months…”
I want to explain to her that for me, it’s been much less, that yesterday, I buried my nose in his back in bed, that pain doesn’t have official, logical deadlines that we all have to meet, and that I’m time traveling, jumping from one moment of my relationship to another, so I have the right to show up however the coin flips. There’s no one checking our schedules or hoping for better grades. And I’m scared and crestfallen, because I thought I was fixing things. But I don’t say anything.
“Why don’t you take a few days off? Maybe you can go somewhere with Ivan. Maybe even spend a few days in Tarifa like you did before.”
Ivan…what’s he going to look like now? Has all this change made him sprout wings from his back? Maybe he’s decided to dress like a Tibetan monk?
“Tarifa will be packed. Nobody’d be able to book a room right now. Can you imagine El Tumbao? It’ll be like Primark on a Saturday afternoon.” I shrug, pretending it doesn’t matter, that everything’s fine and we’re just chatting about vacations.
More knuckles rap on the door, but the person they belong to doesn’t wait to come in. They just barge in. That gives me a clue who it is before I even see her. It’s Marisol.
“Hi, my girls. Happy Monday.”
“Happy Monday, Marisol.”
“Ooh! It smells good in here, right?”
Okay. I’ve definitely been slacking on my personal hygiene for a while now. I try as discreetly as possible to sniff inside my clothes. Everything is in order…at least today.
“Rita, can you give me a second with Miranda?”
“Of course…”
A lecture is looming.
“Oh, and, love…I hate asking you to do this, but…could you ask someone to bring us some of those really nice teas from the kitchen?”
“Of course, lady. No problem.”
When the door closes and we’re left alone, Marisol looks at me tenderly, so tenderly that I want to do her a favor and break the ice.
“I look terrible, I know.”
“Hmm…” She crosses her legs elegantly. “You showered, brushed your hair, and got dressed to come in to work. That’s all a really good start.”
“Do I not normally do that?” I ask, alarmed.
An image flashes into my head of me sitting in this same chair in pilled leggings, a sweatshirt with a stain that looks suspiciously like mayonnaise, and a bun like a Yorkshire terrier trying to “hide” the grease; a few flies and a green cloud float over me. That last part is a figment of my imagination, I admit.
“We both know the last three months have been hard for you. A loss is a loss, even when it’s not a death, and it needs a mourning period,” she says patiently.
“I know.”
“But you have to take care of yourself.”
“I’m trying.” I have no idea if I actually am.
“You have to try harder. For yourself. Because when you’re better, you’re not going to like looking back at this.”
I don’t agree. Loving someone, respecting them and admiring them, doesn’t always mean that you’re going to have the same opinion. I’ve always advocated that if you need to be bad without punishing yourself for it, that’s part of the healing process. Just like we’d never think of telling someone who’s broken his leg that he should start running with a cast on, we shouldn’t do that when the pain isn’t something physical. I don’t know if the soul takes more or less time to heal itself, but I think it deserves to set its own timeline.
But still…she’s my boss.
“I’ve been letting work slide,” I’m assuming. But it’s pretty clear, even though I haven’t exactly been here.
“Well, yes, but this magazine is a community, a united family, and so we’re here to back you up and make a human chain with the things that are left unfinished, because you’ve led the charge to do the same for us in the past.”
“I don’t like leaving things unfinished in my wake, but I don’t feel very capable right now, Marisol. And I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have let my personal life invade my professional one.”
“And you haven’t. It’s just that it’s very hard to lead a normal life with a broken heart.”
I feel a lump in my throat. But I was doing everything right… How did it not fix what was broken? How is it possible that all the effort of reliving and fixing still left me feeling like this?
One of the interns slips into the office quietly with two tall glasses of ice and tea with lemon. She worked hard on the presentation, dropping a slice of lemon into each and adding a colorful cardboard straw. In the editorial kitchen, we always have nice things to cheer us up. Maybe I should take refuge in the frivolous for the rest of the day.
“You smell so good!” she exclaims when she comes over to put the glasses on the table.
Ay, Saint Christian Dior…
“Thanks so much,” I say. “I swear your whole internship isn’t going to be making tea and coffee.”
“Yes, poor thing, we’re also going to ask you to research prices,” Marisol says, being funny but sheepish at the same time.
The girl smiles.
“Well…the truth is I love researching prices. I find it really soothing.”
“That’s my girl, always finding something positive in everything.” Marisol gives her a pat before she leaves the office.
We’re both aware that this short exchange of words has brightened the girl’s day. But reality barges back to the forefront again.
“Miranda, I need you to do me a favor.” She takes a sip of her tea and invites me to do the same, but I don’t really feel like it.
“Of course.”
“I need you to take the week off. I can’t give you extra days, but I’ve been looking at the quarter, and you haven’t taken any vacation since Christmas. You have plenty.”
“If I don’t need to come in to work, I’ll go crazy at home.”
“I know, my love, but doing things halfway ends up costing double, because that way, you’re not healing your pain, and you’re not conquering it like you should either. I’m sorry to be so harsh.”
“I’ve always liked it when you are. You do it affectionately, and that gets the best out of us.”
“Miri…take the vacation days. Come back next week ready to create a new life. If all that means is taking care of yourself more, that’s fine by me. Because we can only take baby steps down that path.”
I don’t like those kinds of phrases from a self-help book, but I chew it over and nod.
“One day,” I haggle.
“Three.”
“Two.”
She raises a hand. She knows I’m stubborn, and…it’s not like under other circumstances, days off wouldn’t seem like ambrosia to me, but right now, I feel, more than ever, like I need my work.
“Rules for my return to the grindstone: shower every day.”
We both laugh.
“Darling…” She reaches out her hand and takes mine. “It’s shitty losing a love, especially when it is something as special as you and Tristan had, but life is long, and we have a lot to give. Right now, you might think it’s impossible, but one day, you’ll love again. And when that day comes, you’ll love yourself, which is wonderful.”
When people say the word “time” to someone with a broken heart, that word becomes a rosary burning your throat. Because when its fresh, time is relative. Rest is fleeting, nights are too long, memories too deep. Time is what you feel you don’t have, what you’ve lost. You’re in a hurry, yes, because the pain squeezes so tightly, but you have no idea what this “time” really means. And as painful as it might be, it couldn’t be more real.
I turn off my computer, close my planner, and smile at her.
“Well, I’m going home then. Who’s in charge? Tell them to call me if there are any questions or fires to put out…”
“I’m in charge, sweetie. I think I can handle it.”
I find my father sitting in the wingback chair in his little shop, reading a book that looks older than him. Next to him, on a small round table, like a Parisian coffee table with wrought-iron legs, sits a Victorian-style teacup full of herbal tea.
“Dad…I know I always ask you this, but…is it normal that you’re always using the stuff you should be selling?”
“I sold that Castilian chest you’ve always hated today.”
“You didn’t answer my question, but I’m glad to hear it. It’s looked like a vampire sarcophagus from the thirteenth century.”
“Four thousand euros.” He raises his eyebrows and leaves them really high while he smiles at me. “And…I sell old things. What does it matter if I use them in the meantime? It’s just so they don’t get sad.”
We both smile. He still tells me stories even though I’m grown up.
“They sent me home from school. Two days off,” I announce.
“Vacation or unpaid?”
“Vacation. I’m scatterbrained, but I’m a good person. I’m not on the path to being a delinquent yet.”
“A drunk but not a punk.”
We both laugh.
“Well…” He puts his book down next to the cup of tea and stands up to give me a kiss. “I think you’re looking a little better. Mmm! And you showered! You smell great.”
“Clear something up for me… From one to ten, how have I been these last few months?”
“The first two months, you were fine. This last one, we were thinking about staging an intervention. The thing is, it was like this really sour smell.”
I’m horrified.
“Dad!”
“Ay, sweetheart, don’t ask if you don’t want the truth.”
My father offers to order some food, Korean or maybe Thai, and eat it in the shop while we talk, but I’m worried about my nutrition.
“I think everything I’ve eaten in the last few months has come from a package or been delivered in a paper bag.”
So he resolutely pulls the curtain closed on the store and takes me to his favorite bar, the bar where he’s had coffee every workday since he opened his business and where he’s built up a friendship with the owner over the years. Even though it’s a bar that feeds many people, the food is still homemade and good. Today, they’re serving gazpacho and roast chicken. It tastes so good I could cry.
Dad struggles to broach what he’s worried about; I see him watching me out of the corner of his eye, gauging how and when would be best to tackle it. I could give him a hand and bring it up myself, but I find it amusing watching him work out his plan. A plan that could be summed up as “trying to rob the Bank of Spain without being noticed and end up smashing the car into the window of a Mercería Lola and taking twenty euros worth of stockings.”
“Look, I think it’s great that you’re back to showering.”
I’m glad I swallowed my spoonful of gazpacho before he started talking.
“Go on…” I laugh.
“You had us worried.”
“You and who else? You know the memory of Mama doesn’t count as a physical presence, right?”
“You’re really silly when you want to be,” he replies seriously. “For me, she’s much more than a memory, but it’s complicated, which you understand.” He sighs. “I’m talking about Ivan.”
“I’ll call him later.”
“Call him, and go do something fun. Go to a spa or get a massage. Something.”
I nod and keep eating.
“You were really little and you won’t remember, of course, but when your mother lost your grandmother… Ay, your grandmother was the best. Super fun and very sweet…but as I was saying…when your grandmother died, Mama was destroyed. At first, she resisted the pain. She told me we had to take care of you and the store and she couldn’t collapse, she didn’t have time. I remember her face when I asked her if it would work for us to send her grief on vacation so it wouldn’t disturb her. She had a temper… I guess you do know that because you inherited all of it. The thing is, she resisted, but pain is like an avalanche. You might think it’ll be quick, but it can bury you under layers and layers of snow. It’s not predictable at all.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I don’t look at him when I ask.
“Because I’m proud of you, and I’m sure Mama would be too. You let a few important things fall by the wayside, yes, but you’ve embraced your grief, and that…”
“Wait, wait…you’re congratulating me because I’ve embraced the shit and I don’t know how to get out of it?”
“No.” He laughs. “You’re so full of quips, sweetheart. I’m telling you I’m very proud that you’re self-aware enough to put yourself first.”
Ay…
“Dad, I haven’t been neglecting work and my hygiene to prioritize myself. It’s just that…I didn’t know how to do any better. I’ve been under the avalanche, thinking I was warm.”
“But look at you. You smell good now.”
Mother of God.
“This is like when your mama was going through it,” he goes on. “The first month, she was absent, but because she needed to accept everything first before she could…”
I stop him. I don’t need more sad stories.
“Papi…let me ask you something. It’s something nice, eh. It’s not a dig.”
“Of course, sweetie.”
He strokes my hair. Sometimes I think we express love in my house like we’re dogs.
“Don’t you get tired of remembering Mama?”
I don’t think he was expecting that question, because he stays silent for what seems like a long time, looking at me. Little by little, he gets his smile back and shakes his head.
“No. I don’t. But it has its stages and…its choices.”
“What do you mean by ‘choices’?”
“You’re not asking me about the stages…”
“No. I’m guessing you’re talking about the stages of grief.”
“Yes. And that has to do with the choices I’m talking about. And the thing is…when you’re overcome by grief, it’s normal to revisit the past all the time. I found it pretty overwhelming, but I wasn’t always aware of it, because I had my grief and I had you, and you were demanding a lot of attention at the time. You were only four, and being left without a mother, it makes sense you needed your father.”
“Yeah.” I nod.
“I was really angry at first because I thought that maybe, if we had been more attentive, we could’ve done more for her. When I understood we couldn’t…I started revisiting all the happy moments, bargaining a little with memory, building frozen rooms, like…like in that movie I liked so much, you know the one I mean? Where people get stuck in other people’s dreams.”
“ Inception .”
“Yes, exactly. I built a mountain of memories that I made a huge effort to furnish to the very last detail, and I went back to…well, I go back to. It’s a way of having a part of her with me. And you know what? One time, in the shop, a woman came in to see if I was interested in her father’s book collection, and she told me she had read somewhere that our memory finds a way to reinterpret and rewrite our memories over time so that what happened and what we wish happened coexist in peace. And that’s when the choices come in.”
“How so? Say more.”
“I decided to lead two parallel lives: one with you, in the present, and another with her, in the past.”
“But, Dad…” I clutch his forearm and fiddle with his old watch. “That’s sad because…you didn’t give yourself the chance to experience anything else in the future. You could have remade your life and…who would’ve blamed you? There’s not just one love of your life. You can’t just love…”
He stops me, putting his time-mottled hand over mine. His smile is tinged with sadness, and it breaks my heart.
“I decided to stay in those rooms built out of memories, Miranda. I chose to split my life between what you’re describing and what you and I are living and what I’m telling you about Mama and what I lived with her. But that was the choice I made, and…I don’t want the same for you.”
“But…”
“I’m proud you took a good shower…”
“Dad…” I complain, tired.
“You smell amazing, you’re well dressed, and you’re embracing your grief so you can see how big it is and learn how to manage it. I just want to tell you…don’t stay and live in the past. You have time to get your life back. But…you have to choose yourself. And now…let’s eat. Here and now.”
“Dad, wait, how do you know that?”
“Time’s up.”
“No, Dad. I need… Listen, this thing that’s happening to me… Did it happen to you too? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“Miranda, sweetheart, let me return to the present now, please. I need to.”
I don’t think it’s crazy to think that my father knows exactly what he’s saying to me, but when I try to keep insisting, he refuses to budge. The only thing I can get out of him is…
“Everyone rewrites their memories however they want. That doesn’t mean it solves what happened in the past.”
And the gazpacho suddenly doesn’t taste as delicious anymore.