13 Crossing a Wasteland
Crossing a Wasteland
Gina received Biel at her penthouse on Carrer de Tuset, without having had time to tidy up the apartment.
He showed up with a medium-sized box of iced truffles, a two-week-old beard, and a justification: “The hair I used to have on my head is now on my face.” Gina laughed.
He was probably still the ugliest guy in their class, but he’d had his eyebrows shaped, and she thought bald men had a charm to them.
She sat him down, served him a raspberry tea, and, unable to wait any longer, handed him the three letters she had recovered from Aunt Júlia’s box after her death.
While Biel read, she took the opportunity to change the sheets and wipe down the kitchen counter with a damp rag.
With all her hours at the university, she had found the perfect excuse to neglect the apartment from Monday to Friday.
Inevitably, on the weekend, she had to put it all back in order.
Biel wasn’t there when she returned to the living room. He had opened the terrace door and gone outside to finish reading the third letter.
“Are you crying?”
“Me? No, no . . .”
“It’s the last one, I’m guessing . . .”
“How emotional, the poor man.” He wiped his tears with the sleeves of his shirt.
“Jean-Pierre, your mother, your cousin. What a triangle. Sending the letters through Aunt Júlia, you can’t tell me that wasn’t weird as hell .
. . This one . . .” Biel checked the envelope of the letter he was holding, to be sure.
“Yes, this is the one Jean-Pierre sends directly to Júlia, after your mother’s death. ”
“Aunt Júlia was the only one who knew everything. That much is clear. And she never said a word to anyone.”
“Not even to her husband?”
“To Alain? No, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so, or you know?”
“I know. Well, let’s say I’m sure.”
“Did you ask Alain?”
“I asked my cousins to do it. I thought that he wouldn’t have dared with me, Paulina’s daughter . . . Assuming he knew anything at all, maybe he wouldn’t have told me anyway. Alain was never interested in gossip.”
“In one of the letters—I think it’s the first one—Jean-Pierre tells your mother that he didn’t want her to have to lie in order to hide their story. That’s intense.”
“Yeah, at the end of the first one.”
“And?”
“Do you want to know?” Gina sat down on the wooden bench on the terrace. “I went to see my father . . .”
“How is he?”
“My father?” She couldn’t hide her disappointment. “I don’t recognize him. I hope I don’t end up like him, with the years . . .”
“What do you mean, you don’t recognize him?” Biel sat down beside her. That way they could talk about nothing, without having to look at each other.
“Nothing, just impressions. The whole thing, I don’t know.
” She noticed Biel wanted more of an explanation.
“He’s in a bad mood, with those two little kids, my brothers, who he had far too late, honestly.
He never really raised them, he’s hardly there for them, they’ve turned the house upside down, he’s let them do whatever they want, and now there’s no way to get them back on track.
They’re two tsunamis. And he’s not a father.
He’s a grandfather. And she, Mire, his wife .
. . what can I say? One pulls this way, the other that way.
I don’t really know whether my father remarried because he didn’t want to be alone and was talked into it .
. . In love? Maybe at the beginning he thought he was.
Not anymore. Now everything is flat. He lives through pure inertia, and it seems it would bore him to even consider anything other than just letting the days pass by.
And that’s despite the fact that, physically, you can look at him, and he’s an impressive man.
Even without the mustache, he looks younger than he is. ”
Gina wasn’t embarrassed by her father. What pained her was that he had settled for an insipid life, like a soft-boiled egg. “Pity”—that was the word. She had never said it out loud, and as she struggled to describe the situation to Biel, it hurt her to speak of her father in those terms.
“Didn’t Manuel play cards?”
“Thank God for poker. It’s still sacred.
A couple of nights a week he goes off to play with the same old friends.
But one of them, one of the regulars, died from a heart attack watching a tennis match on TV.
Now they miss him and had to find a replacement.
But he says it’s not the same. He says they’ve gotten old, you know, and sometimes I think I would have liked to see what my father’s life would have been like with my mother by his side. ”
“Do you think he knows anything about what happened in Paris?”
“That’s the point, Biel.”
One Sunday, like so many others, Gina arrived home, at the place that had once been her home, right at lunchtime.
Her father had fully immersed himself in his new family, but he had made only minor changes to the apartment on Rambla de Catalunya, near Còrsega.
The living room was the same as the day before Paulina was to come home from Paris.
Only a few paintings had changed, along with the upholstery on the sofa and armchairs.
And they would soon have to reupholster everything again, with two children climbing all over everything with their shoes on.
Except for the appliances, the kitchen was also just as it had been, with the light Formica cabinets she had so often opened and closed as a child.
The magnets, with their poles attracting and repelling each other, were one of life’s great mysteries for her.
Her bedroom, on the other hand, was gone.
Even the poster with the black-and-white photograph of people wearing 3D glasses had disappeared.
Gina’s room had become Edu and Nico’s battleground.
Her brothers, eight and six years old, slept in bunk beds, and to keep them from fighting over who got the coveted top mattress, they settled it each week with a PlayStation match that usually ended in tears and punches.
Gina had prudently not gone back into her parents’ bedroom since her father began living with Mireia.
She left her jacket and motorcycle helmet on the sofa, and kissed everyone twice.
They sat down to eat before she could tickle Edu and Nico, who were already waiting eagerly to roughhouse.
All names were shortened since Mire had entered the home.
It probably wasn’t Mireia’s fault. Her name was Georgina, and everyone had always called her Gina.
At least Manuel, her father, was still Manuel, all six letters, around all the women.
Mire’s rice casserole was a relative success.
Edu pushed aside the peppers, Nico the mussels, and Gina swallowed every bite without complaining so as not to appear rude.
With every forkful, she felt how the strong onion sofrito would come back to haunt her all afternoon.
Before dessert was even served, without anyone even forbidding it, the children were playing soccer in the hallway with a foam ball, so they wouldn’t break anything, that is, if there was even anything that still remained intact.
After the decaf coffee, Mire discreetly disappeared like she did every Sunday, so father and daughter could have some time alone.
Manuel and Gina cleared the table, left the dishes soaking, and went into the living room.
Gina sprawled on the sofa without shoes on, and her father turned on the TV once he sat in his armchair.
Absentmindedly, he flipped from channel to channel, looking for a game that might interest him.
Gina, always direct and never one to mince words, for once didn’t quite know how to approach the subject.
Her father still intimidated her. They had never truly understood each other.
She decided to get straight to the point.
“When I was in Paris, for Aunt Júlia’s funeral, I went through photos with Fabienne and Laurence. We looked at her wedding album. Everyone was so young. Did you not go?”
“Where?”
“To Aunt Júlia and Alain’s wedding.”
“Oh. No, no.”
“Only Mama appears in the photo album.”
“That’s true. She went alone, yes.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you go?” Gina picked up the remote and muted the TV. If he wasn’t going to take his eyes off the screen, the least he could do was listen.
“To Júlia’s wedding?” He didn’t want to give the conversation any importance. “Work, I’m guessing.”
“But she was Mama’s cousin. She was like a sister to her.”
“I don’t know, Gina. I must have had work.” He tilted his head. “And you know how I feel about planes. Unless it’s absolutely essential . . .”
Gina thought it was time to move up a notch.
“She looks very happy in the photos . . .”
“The ones from Júlia’s wedding?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I don’t know if I ever saw them.”
“She’s wearing a blue dress, she looks . . .”
“Well, your mother was very beautiful, what do you expect.”
“Don’t you remember the blue dress?”
“No, no . . .”
“She stayed a few days in Paris, I think. Is that true?”
“I don’t remember, dear. Your mother loved Paris. It was her favorite city.”
“She liked to travel, didn’t she?”
“Yes. Very much . . . At first, we didn’t go out much, because I didn’t like to. Her desire to travel came about in her later years. She wanted to go everywhere. With me or without me, it didn’t matter. She just wanted to go. With Júlia, actually, I think they went to Venice.”
“Yes, yes. Venice and Milan.” She gulped and stared at a second-division match. “Do you know if anything happened to her on that trip to Paris?”
“In Paris?”
In the pause before her father answered, Gina crossed a wasteland. An experienced lawyer, her father knew how to play dumb when it suited him.
“In Paris for Júlia’s wedding, you mean? I don’t remember anything special.”
“I don’t know,” Gina insisted. “I just wanted to know if, when she came back, you found her more . . . if she was different.”