“Can you?”
“Yes, if I concentrate.” She closed her eyes, felt his hands upon her own, and smiled. “Elena.”
He abruptly relinquished Alba’s hands and her arms fell leaden and useless at her side. She opened her eyes and looked at him.
“I’ve guessed right, haven’t I?”
“You have not,” Arturo said gruffly.
“Then Aunt Julia is mistaken, and you have no lady that you love?”
“I don’t wish to discuss this,” he said in a low, dry tone of voice that surprised her.
He stared at something over her shoulders, his eyes hard and unkind. The delight that had reigned in the room had vanished, leaving behind an icy, barren landscape. They were quiet, and then he shook his head and spoke, and his voice was changed, now charged with longing.
“There is a lady I love but cannot live with. Not for now, at least. Perhaps one day I might take her there, to the apartment with the balcony.”
Alba thought of the woman with fancy perfumes and a hat with an ostrich feather whom she’d pictured before. She felt a stab of jealousy imagining that this woman would be able to walk arm in arm with her uncle down the street and attend the opera. But why couldn’t he live with her now? Did she expect him to make a great fortune before she deigned to grant him her heart? Or was she entangled with another man? What if, God forbid, she was a married woman? Perhaps she simply didn’t care about Arturo, even if he was handsome and charming.
“I suppose any romantic impediments will make an eventual union sweeter,” Alba said.
“I would say we must endure the yoke of yearning, no matter if it be heavy,” he replied.
She smiled. “You speak in verses, Uncle.”
“Is that bad, from a poet?”
“I like it, but Tadeo would say it’s silly.”
“I’m sure he would.”
Arturo watched her with careful, sharp eyes. There was an odd light in those eyes, a flicker of emotion she did not recognize.
Silence cocooned them. The stays of Alba’s corset felt rather tight, and she fidgeted, one hand pressing against her stomach. At last Arturo spoke.
“Tadeo might belong here, but you don’t. You’re too pretty and clever, Alba, to be locked in one of the dusty cupboards of this farm.”
She blushed at the compliment and, not knowing how to answer, said only, “Yes.”
To which Arturo smiled, that languid smile of his that was as bright as the electric lights he’d described, dazzling and certain. There was a thumping upstairs and Alba looked at the ceiling, biting her lip and picturing the twins at war again.
“I must go,” she said, and rushed to the second floor.
Indeed, civil war had broken out, and it wasn’t until what felt like an eon had passed that Alba was able to slip back into her room. She tried to picture the city Arturo described, with vast theaters, magnificent shops, sumptuous houses. A place where ladies wouldn’t have to be running to and fro, tending to children and plucking chickens for supper.
With a tired sigh she turned her head to look at her bouquet, seeking the beauty of this gift among her mundane surroundings, and was shocked to discover the flowers had all wilted. They’d dried up in a matter of hours. Confused, she pressed her fingers against a withered rose.
A petal fell onto the floor.
1998: 3
A tall wall shieldedthe Willows from prying eyes. Minerva’s general impression of the property was that this was a world delimited, the trees carefully obscuring the view, a path turning a tad to the right before one reached the front door, as if the house were hiding behind a decorous veil.
The Willows was a three-storied New England house with a flat-roofed columned portico and arch-framed windows, its façade painted a sedate beige color. The prominent, intricately decorated oculus on the third floor added a charming touch to the structure. It gave the impression of a lush grandness that had long gone out of vogue.
Minerva unscrewed the lid of her thermos, took a sip of coffee, gathered her courage, and rang the bell. She was admitted to the house by a confused man who had her wait in the entrance hall, then guided her to a bright and sunny solarium. Two wicker lounge chairs, two dainty end tables—each of them decorated with a white vase filled with carefully arranged dry flowers—a round white table, and matching white chairs served to create an elegant yet relaxing oasis.
An elderly woman with a gold-and-green turban wrapped around her head, the kind Elizabeth Taylor might have worn a couple of decades before, sat at the table. Her overpluckedeyebrows were carefully penciled in and her mouth was painted a deep red. A tray and a pot of tea were set before her and she’d seemingly been nibbling on her toast, interrupted by Minerva’s appearance. The woman now regarded Minerva with an arch, cold look.
