Becoming Marta Read online

  Sunlight streamed through the window, illuminating the silk curtains before resting on the Persian rug. A maid walked in, balancing a silver tray with a French coffee press, whole grain toast, fresh-squeezed mandarin juice, and the newspaper.

  “Would you like coffee?” asked her mom.

  “Yes.”

  “Milk?”

  “Yes.”

  Marti was sitting on the bed in a silk lace robe. She had thin, nearly transparent skin, violet eyes, and impossibly black eyelashes. Hers was a kind face that inspired respect and admiration. It was a face worthy of contemplation.

  “How did it go yesterday?” Marti asked.

  “Fine. I don’t know, okay?” Marta said.

  “You’re very lucky. At your age I’d already been with your father for many years.”

  “But you loved him.”

  “Yes, I think I did. I don’t believe I asked myself that very often.”

  “For me, sometimes the only thing that matters is that they love me. I want to see how many love me, and I don’t ask myself if I like them or not.”

  “But you only need one,” her mother said, turning to her with an affectionate look.

  “I know,” Marta said somewhat desperately. “There’s no one who . . . You don’t understand. You think it’s great that we go out and that I can meet a lot of men, because they wouldn’t let you do those things, and you have always been with Daddy. But it’s not like I really get to know people. The music is deafening, everyone gets smashed.”

  “Marta!”

  “Sorry, they get tipsy. Then Luis monopolized me all night. He was so plastered that he could barely speak. I didn’t know how to get away.”

  “Next time, honey, just tell him that you have to go, and voilà. That’s why you have a chauffeur. Wasn’t he waiting for you outside? Or you go off to chat with your girlfriends, and that’s that.”

  Marta didn’t want to tell her mother that all the other girls had to get home by two thirty, the hour that separated the decent girls from the others. She didn’t want to tell her mother that she had stayed behind to see Juan. Her mother lived on a different planet. She couldn’t imagine that people drank until they fell on their faces, or that they took drugs, or that they only noticed her because she was blond and from a good family. Marta couldn’t recall the last conversation she’d had with someone. Juan had kissed her, but he was Begoña’s boyfriend. She’d already smoked a joint. Her cousin Raúl had offered her cocaine. The high school kids snorted Ritalin, and then there were the pills.

  “Mommy, do you know what Ritalin is?”

  “No, honey,” said a distracted Marti, reading the newspaper.

  Why couldn’t she talk to her daughter? Really talk to her. Advise her to appreciate her freedom. Tell her that she should allow herself time to grow. Tell her not to take things so seriously before it was all gone. If she hadn’t feared being socially ostracized, she would have told her daughter, Enjoy your sexuality while you can, before there are consequences. But Marti couldn’t be certain just how much times had changed; she didn’t want her daughter to develop a reputation. Better to remain quiet.

  This bed, from which she had ejected her husband years ago, was testimony to all that she had not lived. Marti knew it and she lamented it. Not for a second did Marti fail to perceive everything she’d missed.

  32

  The Art Show

  Little by little the gallery filled up with people. Larry made an effort to introduce Adriana to the important collectors. The more serious ones had visited the gallery beforehand to examine the works they would buy. Adriana did her best to seem calm and collected, but she felt a chasm between her inside and her outside. Inside, she was a nuclear atom ready to explode. On the outside, she spoke eloquently, answered unexpected questions, and hid her feelings.

  “Is that your friend?” Larry asked Adriana.

  Marta was everything Larry desired, a tender lamb for the hungry wolf. His mouth watered as he headed toward her. Adriana knew the routine: lavish praise on her; figure out what she wanted. He would offer her dinner, make her feel important, and then try to sell her not just one piece but two hundred. That was how art dealers dealt with clients. They were the ultimate predators among modern fauna. The wealthy were the gazelles of the savanna—first the government took a bite, then lawyers, followed by bankers, decorators, architects, and real estate agents, but no one got as big a chunk as art dealers. Who else could get away with selling a painted canvas for millions of dollars? Who else could have created this market from which she made her living?

  Larry introduced himself to Marta and Mau, kissing her on the cheek and shaking his hand. Adriana greeted them as well. She wanted to thank Marta, compliment her on how good she looked, protect her from Larry, and get her out of there. But Larry leapt on Marta, and Adriana had to turn away. She couldn’t protect Marta, and she preferred not to witness the bloodbath.

  “So, you are Adriana’s patron?” he said. “I was very pleased when she mentioned that you were backing her project.”

  Patron? Marta had never seen herself in that light. Her mother had been a collector, and she had daydreamed about it as well. Marta looked around. The canvases on the walls seemed immense. People gathered like ants, drinking and chatting.

  Marta had modeled in charity events a few times. She liked the attention she got on the runway, walking with purpose, pushing her hips forward and her hair back while balancing on ridiculously high heels. She’d felt beautiful, yes, but not admired or respected the way people looked at Adriana. Marta wanted what Adriana had, and she wanted it now.

  “I’m going to buy the most expensive piece Larry has,” she told Mau when Larry went to greet another guest.

  “What’s that about?”

  “I want him to know that I have worth, too.”

  “You’re wrong,” was all he managed to get out, noticing that Adriana was alone. “C’mon, let’s go say hi to her. Maybe she can suggest a piece for you to buy.”

  Mau headed toward Adriana. Marta stood alone in the middle of the room. She was not going to let Adriana tell her what to buy. She would buy what she chose to buy. She felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Larry.

  “Marta, I’d like to introduce you to Arthur Kauffman. He’s a great friend of mine and an important collector.”

  “Arthur”—Larry turned to a tall, bald man—“this is Marta, a friend of our artist.”

  “No, no,” Marta said, trying to correct him. She didn’t want to be introduced as Adriana’s friend. But the gallery was noisy, and it was hard to make yourself heard. “Do you want a drink?” was all she managed to blurt out. As she’d expected, Arthur rushed to get her a drink.

  At long last they all left the gallery. Arthur was by Marta’s side, talking about tequila. They ducked into a nearby dive. Marta felt more comfortable in familiar territory. Now everyone turned to look at her. She realized that her dress had crept up, and she didn’t yank it down.

  Larry had reserved a large table that dominated the back of the bar. Adriana, exhausted, sat on the banquette next to Mau. Marta started to turn toward them but then decided to ignore them. Fuck ’em, she thought, thinking her friends had abandoned her. Larry and Arthur sandwiched her on either side. They had ordered tequila shots for everyone.

  “What’s the matter with Marta?” Adriana asked Mau.

  “What?” The music made it hard to hear.

  “Why is she acting like that?”

  “She’s always been like that.”

  “What do you say we get some dinner? I’m starving.”

  Adriana took Mau’s hand and led him out of the bar. He took one last look back at Marta, who seemed to be giving the old guy a lap dance. They walked a few blocks without knowing where they were heading and soon came upon a quiet restaurant. They ordered pasta.

  “God, I haven’t eaten well in three days. Thank you so much. I couldn’t stand another second of that.”

  “It was a bit much.”


  “Has Marta really always been like this?”

  “Yes, always.”

  “I thought—I don’t know, I barely know her—but I thought, I don’t know, I imagined her a different way.”

  “I think she did as well. I think we all did. But something came over her this afternoon. Hey, let’s not talk about her. It’s your opening, right? How do you feel?”

  “Good. I’m tired but content. I think the show sold well, and I’m excited about the new project.”

  They finished their pasta and walked across town to Adriana’s apartment. The evening was brisk.

  They got to the building’s entrance, and Adriana asked Mau if he wanted to come up.

  “No, thanks. I’d better get back to the hotel and see what Marta is up to.”

  33

  Death

  Blood. Once again blood. Memories, ideas, feelings—she wasn’t really sure what they were. Maybe air. Some nameless force, something abstract that came over her suddenly. Ghosts.

  Had her feelings been fruit, Marti would’ve been able to classify every one of them—orange, banana, pineapple; frustration, anguish, sadness—but the moment she felt something it was as though she’d drunk a smoothie containing all of them. All her feelings mixed and mashed together. Surely a laboratory could identify the chemical changes in her blood. She was capable of feeling it all in an instant, even if it took hours to explain.

  But now she didn’t feel anything; she could only evoke the memory of the feeling, like a scar evokes the memory of pain. Bleeding no longer caused her anger or sadness, no longer made her run to bed crying. On the contrary, she knew perfectly well how to manage.

  Even so the totality of her condition as a woman—centuries of collective history, the long path of the Y chromosome, and the years of her own personal history—could overtake her in an instant. She would think about ancient times, when they quarantined menstruating women. She recalled the cramps she suffered as an adolescent, the paralyzing pain and the fear. Then came the impotence of not being able to bear children: years obsessively anticipating the blood’s arrival, counting the days, gauging her vaginal temperature, examining the stains on her underwear, and the devastating feeling of failure. It was nature’s cruel joke, making the symptoms of menstruation and pregnancy so similar: the swollen breasts, the nauseated stomach, the lethargy. Even worse, she now believed she wouldn’t make it to menopause, which she had looked forward to as liberating, when after a final cycle of hot flashes and ailments her hormones would cease to rule her life.

  No, nature had another ace up her sleeve: cancer, her body’s ability to obliterate itself. They were going back to Houston tomorrow. Marti knew she would never return from there. It didn’t matter; she had put her affairs in order. She had protected and prepared Marta as much as possible. She could do no more.

  It was not that she wanted to die. She didn’t wish to die. The uncertainty, the not knowing, the nothingness—death frightened her; it frightened her deeply. But she was so tired of living. She felt constantly exhausted, her eyes closing of their own volition. She had pain in her joints and her throat. Her tongue was always dry, even after drinking, as though it were waterproof and rough, like a cat’s. The loss of her beauty also caused her pain: her mutilated body, the scars. She feared death, but she did not want a life that she lacked the strength to enjoy or appreciate.

  Inexplicably, or perhaps consequently, a part of her emerged and revealed itself in the face of her indifference toward life. At night she had the most vivid dreams she’d ever experienced. Perhaps it was for that reason that she didn’t get much rest. Decades of insomnia seemed to unleash in deep dreams. When she woke, she had flown or been raped by multicolored dragons or eaten at banquets with Romans and solved the riddle of a scent labyrinth. She would wake with the sweet nectar of having nursed on the breast of a sphinx. Her clitoris pulsed recalling the erect, iridescent penis of the alebrije, that brightly colored wood animal figure from Oaxaca. From where did these dreams come? She’d never had them before. It was as though a tiny ember inside her grew into a bonfire every night and said, “There is life. This is life. Don’t stop living.” But that was not life; it was not the life she’d had. She decided that the ember had spoken to her from the other side, that she would live among dragons and fairies, indulging all that this life had not permitted.

  34

  Las Mañanitas

  It took no time at all for Pedro and Marisol to get out of Mexico City. The metropolis, which seemed to go on forever, turned into pleasant green woods of Montezuma pines. They passed Tres Marías without stopping, and Pedro only had to slow down once, at La Pera, the infamous curve that took the lives of those who did not take it seriously.

  Both of them were nervous. Despite knowing each other for four years, they’d never been so alone or so close. Four days stretched out in front of them like a distant star on the horizon. They’d always been on borrowed time. It was as though they had only crossed the river from one bank to the other, and now its entire length lay stretched out in front of them. They had stuck to a routine. Every Monday and Wednesday they would make love, go out to eat, take a stroll, maybe go to the movies, and then say their good-byes. Tonight they’d be able to sleep together the entire night. How many times had Pedro dreamed of this? Spending the night together and making love not once, but many, many times and then again in the morning.

  They arrived at Cuernavaca, and Pedro drove to the hotel Las Mañanitas, where they would sleep the first night. Inside the sixteenth-century walls of red volcanic rock lay a harmonious and meticulously landscaped garden: bougainvillea and birds of paradise burst like fireworks. There were real birds, too—peacocks, macaws, flamingos, and cranes—walking about the grounds without trepidation.

  “It’s so pretty!” said Marisol, running up to a wall covered in Monstera deliciosa, enormous and exuberant leaves with holes and indentations. “They call these Adam’s Ribs. I’m not really sure why; maybe because of the holes. They’re one of my favorite leaves. Diego Rivera painted them frequently.”

  “Right,” Pedro said, recalling a painting he’d seen in Marti’s house. “And what’s the name of those other flowers he painted?”

  “Alcatraces, and these are royal palms. They’re magnificent. See how the trunks are so smooth that they look like cement? And these, in the shape of fans that open so beautifully, are called traveler’s palms. I don’t know why they’re called that. I’ve learned some of the names in Latin. Not that it’s useful information, since no one else uses the Latin terms. You go to the plant nursery in Xochimilco, and it’s like talking to them in Chinese. Pedro, thank you! What a pretty place.”

  They sat on cushioned chairs in the middle of the garden, taking in all the beauty. They ordered beer from the waiter, who left peanuts and potato chips on a small table of glass and steel. It got chilly once the sun went down, and they returned to their room. The fireplace was lit. It smelled of the local pine resin, an intense and pleasant odor that for Marisol triggered distant memories of starlit nights. It was a comforting and exciting aroma. She had on a wool sweater over a white cotton blouse and jeans. She pulled off her tan leather boots and put her feet by the fireplace. Pedro removed her socks and sweater. She shivered a little; he could discern the outline of her nipples. They kissed as if for the very first time. He grasped the nape of her neck with his hands, trying to contain her, to hold on to her entirety.

  They undressed with casualness. She had to wiggle her hips to squeeze out of her jeans. He kept his underpants on, and they remained that way for a while, looking at the fire. Pedro was aroused looking at her. He loved her dark, smooth skin. She had large nipples, almost black, and her breasts were as juicy as mandarins. What he most liked about her was her ass: big and round like two papayas, and she had thighs like a pack mule.

  “Lie on your belly,” he said.

  Marisol flipped over, leaned her elbows on the floor, and put her hands on her cheeks, gazing at the fireplace
. Pedro started caressing her back. He went behind her and groped her like an animal in heat. He was an animal in heat, and he relished the friction it generated. He got hard in no time. He flipped her over and started touching her the way she had taught him. He kissed her breasts. He licked her earlobes, stroked her vagina with his fingers to warm her up, and when he felt that she was ready, when she was wet and panting, he flipped her on her belly and entered her from behind. He pounded her until she came, and when he finished he let himself drop on top of her.

  “How I love you, condenada,” he whispered as he kissed her neck.

  After a bit he got up and sat by her side. Marisol lay on the wool rug, one hand supporting her chin, her gaze lost in the flames.

  “What are we doing tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow? I don’t know. We can have breakfast in the garden, swim a little, and do more of the same,” said Pedro with a wink.

  “You know I can’t swim. I thought we could visit the nurseries at the Borda Gardens and Xochicalco. We should also go to Palacio de Cortés for the Diego murals.”

  “I’ll take you wherever you like tomorrow, I swear. But today come to bed, because I’m exhausted.”

  Pedro brushed his teeth and put on his pressed white cotton pajamas. He slipped on his navy-blue leather slippers so as not to make direct contact with the floor. Marisol stayed up, watching the fire, until sleep overcame her on the rug. She got up a few hours later. The fire had gone out, and it was cold. Pedro was sleeping faceup, stretched out over the entire bed. She found a small spot and fell asleep snuggled in the corner.

  They had breakfast in the garden. Marisol was impatient. She had gotten up early and gone for a walk. She enjoyed watching Cuernavaca come alive, the cobblestone streets and small-town pace so different from the city. When she got back, he was still sleeping. She had three cups of coffee on the terrace while waiting for him.