3 It Was Not a Good Day
It Was Not a Good Day
Isabel had all the answers, but didn’t say anything. Without looking up from the marble kitchen counter, she limited herself to saying “It wasn’t a good day.”
“How long have you worked here? It must be around twenty . . .” Grandma Lourdes wasn’t giving up.
“Not yet. I started a little after the mister and madam got married.”
“You’ve been like a mother to Gina since Paulina’s death. You know it all . . .” She thumped the cap of her elegant cane on the floor. “Tell me what happened.”
Isabel, who had learned through trial and error that the best way to handle conflict in that family was to act as if she were deaf, of course loved Gina.
She had watched her grow into a woman and encounter the fears and emotions of everyday life.
But she didn’t think that washing Gina’s underwear or cleaning her hair out of the drain or wiping down her toilet or making her bed or putting together her countless salads, no onions, every week was enough to make her her mother.
It was honest work. Well paid, depending on how you looked at it.
And it was true that she knew all of Gina’s secrets.
She had turned into her confidante and life adviser.
But it was a job like any other, and she didn’t want to be burned by that fight between father and daughter.
Even though Isabel, with her black mane and wrinkled nose, looked like she had been carved out of stone, she worried that, now that he was alone, Mr. Castro could finally do away with her services or decide that he didn’t need a cleaning lady the whole workday every day of the week, every week of the year.
Maybe he could get by with less. Or he wouldn’t need her to come by for as many hours, with all that would signify for payment at the end of the month.
And Isabel, in her lair in Masquefa, had a good-for-nothing husband on the couch and two sons who could eat enough for four people.
A couple of bums who she was actually the mother of.
“It wasn’t a good day.”
“For Christ’s ache, Isabel.”
“You know how your son gets when he’s mad.” She didn’t know if she should continue, without stopping from julienning celery, but she added, “And your granddaughter is just like you, ma’am. The Bonjoc pride.”
“Gina isn’t a Bonjoc.”
But it’s the damned inheritance you’ve left her in this life, she thought.
Prideful and temperamental, just like her.
Cut from the same cloth, but she didn’t say that part out loud.
Isabel knew how everything had gone down.
At the very least she knew Gina’s version, mad at her father like she’d never seen her before.
Manuel had dragged Biel out from under the bed. He’d thrown his clothes at him and warned him to get the hell out and never even try to see Gina again.
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you, Gina, do you understand me?”
Out of breath and enraged, Gina had managed to put on her underwear and bra and threw the Rubik’s Cube at her father’s belly.
“I told you not to come in.” She locked herself in the bathroom and cried silently.
She didn’t want her father, now in a rage like she’d never seen before, to hear her from the other side of the door.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. I can’t stand to even look at you right now.”
Counsel Castro knew that the case would never get solved in the heat of the moment.
Biel had never gotten dressed so quickly, almost like there had been a fire. He passed by Gina’s father, and in a thin voice, he dared say:
“We are adults.”
“So why were you hiding under the bed?”
“It’s definitely crazy, but . . .”
He shrugged his shoulders without stopping moving.
“Get out!”
The yell was just as sharp as the door slamming behind Biel, who disappeared from Gina’s life for twenty years.
The next day was not a good day.
Isabel, who worked from eight to six with an hour to eat and catch up on her soap opera, had made them breakfast: two grapefruit juices, hand squeezed and strained; a latte; a slice of toast with peach jam for Mr. Manuel and a measly cheese roll for Gina.
Just like every morning, she had set the kitchen table for them with the colorful tablecloth Paulina had bought in Bergen the last time she was in Norway.
Isabel had washed and ironed it so many times that those blue and red drawings and Christmas-like trees had started to look rather faded.
But that was the only tablecloth Manuel and Gina wanted.
They wouldn’t accept anything else for breakfast.
Manuel, showered and sprayed with 1916 cologne, was the first to sit down at the table.
He didn’t open the newspaper, not even to look at the front page.
He didn’t even take off his blazer and hang it on the back of his seat like he did every morning, not even caring if it wrinkled.
He wasn’t vain. He had three dark suits, two blue blazers, and without paying too close attention, combined the outfits with his sizable collection of wide ties.
He didn’t care if the skinnier ones were in style.
He, who always bragged that he had never ever stopped in front of a storefront window, always marched to the beat of his own drum.
That morning Isabel noticed he seemed downcast. Mr. Manuel had only said “Stop” and “Thank you” to let her know his exact measure of milk in his coffee.
Gina, scrawny and bony like her mother, as everyone made sure to tell her, didn’t waste time in coming into the kitchen.
Her hair was still wet, worn loosely. Sometimes, a drop of water would trickle down and die on her blouse.
She felt confident in that shirt. It was new, beige, with yellowish buttons, deliberately frayed at the very tip.
“Good morning,” she said politely.
“Good morning,” he said without much vigor.
They didn’t look at each other. Isabel left them alone. She knew that it was the meal that father and daughter shared. That’s what Mr. Manuel had wanted since Isabel had started working in the house.
“Do you want to say anything about yesterday?”
“Nope.”
“You don’t think we should talk?”
“What do you want me to say?” She sighed so her father could see that she wasn’t in the mood for the conversation, that she would rather act as if nothing had happened. “Pathetic.”
“What is?”
Only silence.
“Tell me. Talk to me calmly. What’s pathetic?”
“No. You talk first.”
“Fine.” Her father finished the grapefruit juice in two gulps. “I don’t want this house to turn into a brothel every time I leave on a trip.”
“Are you calling me . . . a whore?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You called me a whore. You’re starting off strong.”
She backed up her chair in one strong push as if she were about to get up.
“I said, and don’t try to twist my words, that I don’t want my house to turn into a love shack. And I want you to be careful who you hang out with. You can’t just bring any guy you meet on the street home.”
“Biel is not just any guy. He’s my friend from school.”
“I don’t care who he is.” Manuel, who hadn’t been able to sleep, thinking about how the conversation might go, spoke without raising his voice. “In all these years, I’ve never brought anyone home.”
“Just what we’d need.”
“Out of respect for you.”
“Of course.”
“And out of respect for your mother.”
“Ha, we really owe you for that one.”
If the ceiling hadn’t been in the way, Gina, in her offended state, would have been looking up at the heavens. “Mama, if only you knew that Papa hasn’t brought a woman home in all this time. He only plays poker on Thursdays. Let’s thank him.”
“Don’t be dramatic. Lower your voice.”
Gina ignored him. Standing in the doorway, Isabel strained her ears.
She knew it wasn’t the first or even the second time Gina had brought a friend from school up to her room, or a friend from university, or some foreigner she’d met at a museum.
And if it could happen at a museum, who’s to say who she met at the bar or at a party?
Isabel found this out via the traces left on the sheets.
And the hand towel Gina would give them to dry themselves off.
After, she’d throw it into her dirty laundry basket.
“Don’t you see, Mother dearest, you married a saint, and you’re missing out. It’s a shame . . .”
“You’re being unfair.”
Gina ended her comic act and looked away from the ceiling. She decided to glare into her father’s eyes.
“That’s it. The counsel has spoken. What a great lawyer, who forbids me from seeing my friends.”
“Enough, Gina.” With a single boom, Manuel managed to silence her. A couple of seconds later, he restarted the conversation calmly. “Listen up, girl, because I’m talking to you seriously.”
Her father lit a cigarette and breathed in deeply.
“Bring me the ashtray.”
Gina stood up from her chair and reached out behind, toward the drying rack next to the sink. The ashtray, turned upside down, was still damp. Manuel Castro, his breath still hot from his latte, picked up the thread of the conversation.
“I’m just telling you to be careful, know your worth, and realize that in this house there are rules I want you to abide by. This isn’t the first time I’m telling you this.”
“No, it’s not the first time. That’s true. But maybe it’s the last time.”
Precisely because of the seriousness of what she was about to say, Gina knew it wasn’t worth working herself up.
“Look, Dad, don’t take it the wrong way . . . I recognize you’ve been the best father you could be. I’m sure it’s not easy to become a widower when you have a nine-year-old daughter who you’ve never bathed or ever dressed nor ever been home when she goes to sleep because you work late.”
“What’s that have to do with anything now?”
“I’m not calling you out. I’m seriously not . . .”
“Well, it seems like it.”
“I’m really not.” Gina put her hand on her father’s arm, and he didn’t dare pull it away.
“Quite the opposite. Let me finish. I wanted to say how hard it must have been for me to suddenly become the center of your universe for the next decade. Always watching out for me, you’ve taken care of me, you’ve spoiled me, you’ve worried about me, you’ve done my homework, you helped me with my integrals and derivatives, you’ve taken me everywhere: the movies, the circus, Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, and Tibidabo Amusement Park.
You’ve taught me manners, you’ve scolded me when I’ve acted out, you’ve given me all kinds of gifts.
We spent Three Kings Day here, Santa Claus, and hit the Caga Tió at Christmas.
I’ve never wanted for more. You sent me to Canterbury to learn English for two straight summers with my friends from school.
You’ve told me about my mother, how she was.
You’ve shown me pictures of all the travel she loved to do .
You found me the best dermatologist when my face was filled with craters.
You let me study the degree I wanted, and you’ve paid for it all.
I recognize all of that. Hats off to you, Dad.
It’s honorable. I thank you, and I will of course thank you my whole life.
And man, it’s so hard for me to say it, I love you, Dad.
You’re the most important person in my life. I love you, you know that?”
Manuel braced himself. Isabel, with the vacuum in hand, not on so as not to disturb anyone, was on the verge of tears.
“But I can’t take it anymore, Dad. Just as much as I mean all that, I mean this.”
“What can’t you do anymore?”
“All the control. You’re always hovering over me. You’re always watching who I hang out with or stop hanging out with, and for example . . . Every day, every single day, without fail, you comment on how I dress. That’s just an example.”
“It’s a dead woman’s clothes. Sorry to say it.”
“It’s secondhand. I buy them at a shop on Carrer Avinyó, and they don’t belong to a dead woman. It’s secondhand. Clothes previously worn by someone else, I don’t care who. I like it, and I can spend my money how I like. I’m buying it. So what? Don’t you see how you’re . . .”
“What? Say it.”
Only silence.
“Unbearable.”
“Nosy. Prying and prying every day. And I don’t get it, Dad. I can’t handle it anymore.”
“Handle what?”
“You. All the control. I’m sorry, dammit. You raised me to be an independent woman. You’ve taught me to see my self-worth, to be brave. You’ve made absolute sure of that. But you’ve come up with all these rules, like you’re mad that I turned eighteen.”
“We aren’t talking about that.”
“Yes, we are talking about that. I want a dad, a normal dad, not a bodyguard.”
“The fact is that there was a naked man underneath your bed.”
“And so what? And not that long before that he was on top of my bed. And look, he was even on top of me.” She didn’t dare go into the details that her dad could only imagine. Nonetheless, out of her mouth came an even worse challenge.
“And if I feel like it, he’ll be there again.”
“Not in this house, Gina. And don’t speak to me like that, please.”
“See! Please. Please what? You say everything like that, without losing your composure and with your tie all straight. Without ever raising your . . . But you don’t stop.
You keep at it, hammering away, you don’t shut up.
Blah blah blah, and in the end, you can’t anymore.
I can’t anymore. And I feel bad that Mama had to live with you. ”
“Stop while you’re ahead, missy.” He put out the cigarette grumpily.
Gina Homs, who for a couple more days still called herself Georgina Castro, gathered up her courage.
“Look, Dad, I’ve been thinking about it for some time, but last night I turned it over in my head and I realized that it’s better if you and I see each other less. We’d be better off. We might love each other a lot, but it doesn’t mean we have to be together so often.”
“Goodbye.”
“That’s what I wanted to propose.”
“You can get the hell out of here.”
“Don’t think you’re kicking me out of the house . . .”
“I said ‘goodbye.’”
“I’m the one who is leaving.”
That damn Bonjoc pride, Isabel thought with her ears pricked. She decided to turn on the vacuum, and with that racket, the conversation ended. She never thought that the hallway carpet could have accumulated so much dust.