She stood resolute in front of him and extended her hand. “I thank you for your candor, and I’ll consider your words,” she said. Then she turned her head away with quick and firm disdain.
Baffled, Cándido clutched his hat between his hands. More than once, he must have laughed, doing the math in his head and figuring the cash he could obtain by marrying her. More than once, he must have also considered her age, the wrinkles at the sides of her eyes, and figured a woman such as Perla could not afford to be choosy. Not at this point in her life.
At last, Cándido mumbled a soft goodbye and stepped out of the room. Perla stared at a still life showing oranges and grapes against a dark background.
How stupid could Cándido be! To think she’d be moved by that speech, to consider that an adequate marriage proposal. What woman would react with any joy to his words?
And Ulises. Ulises had also erred. He was handsome, but his idea of love seemed to be one of bland phrases and courtly gestures. Perla wanted to burn bright, to feel beyond the limits of anything that she had experienced. To erase in one violent stroke the memory of the one manshe’d ever loved and whom her sister had taken from her: Norberto Bustillo.
She also desired admiration, adulation, not only from her lover but from the entire town. That they be amazed at her choice of a man, awed, even envious.
She trembled; an awful, bone-crunching loneliness swept over her. She had a terrible urge to weep and run upstairs to sip one of the bottles of tequila she hid in the armoire.
Perla clutched the flowers and hurried out of the room. “I need a vase!” she yelled, but no one came.
Perla stomped into the kitchen. By the stove, Estrella tended a large pot. In a corner, Inés was giggling and playing with the dog, offering it a piece of meat, trying to make it do a trick. Fito sat in a chair, legs outstretched, observing the spectacle.
As soon as she entered the kitchen Fito stood up and bowed his head. Inés took her time rising. She gave the dog the meat and wiped her hands with a rag.
“You needed something, aunt?” she asked.
“Yes. I shouldn’t have to holler and run around the house looking for you. Fetch me a vase and water for these flowers,” Perla said.
“Cándido brought them?”
“Who else?”
Inés found a vase and filled it with water. Fito had crept to the other side of the kitchen and began quietly scrubbing a pot. What a lazy lad! He was not worth the money she spent on him, although, truth be told, his wages were a pittance. Then again, back when Perla had been a child, any person in town would have been happy to work for the Incláns, low wages or not. It was a reputable family, any association with them was desirable.
Inés was insolent too. It was not that she did not complete whatever chores she was assigned, it was the quietly rebellious way she behaved. Sometimes she slammed doors or rattled cutlery in an expression ofdispleasure, and her sullen face could curdle milk. But when Perla might have rid herself of her niece, when she might have sent her off with Salvador, she had not, although she had humbled the girl, as was her right.
In the end, Inés belonged to her as much as the old paintings in the house and the moth-eaten rugs.
“Bring the vase to the sitting room,” Perla said.
Inés carried the flowers into the sitting room, carefully arranged them, before turning to her. “Is that all you need, aunt?”
“I think I’ll do my embroidering. Fetch a book and read to me,” she said, feeling calmer, the idea of the bottle of tequila now fading from her mind.
“I was hoping to take a nap. I haven’t been sleeping well. Bad dreams again.”
“Dr. Carrel has told you a million times that if you go to bed late you’ll have an uneasy sleep, and you’re always sketching and reading and doing God knows what late into the night,” Perla reproached her.
“No, it’s not that.”
“Pull a chair and fetch a book,” Perla said as she sat on the sofa.
“Aunt Perla, I really am tired.”
In the old days, when her family had employed a governess, the woman had read to Perla and her siblings. They’d had happy evenings when they were young, with a full, experienced staff instead of shiftless boys like Fito or disrespectful girls like Inés. Back then, when she was a young woman, Perla would have never dared to respond the way Inés responded to her elders. It was a sad epoch they lived in, sad and hard.
“You will read to me,” Perla said.
She remembered how the previous summer Inés had asked if they might buy a radio for the sitting room, new curtains, and another rug. What a silly child, wishing to waste Perla’s money on frivolities, but most irritating, wishing to change the house. That house that was Perla’s pride and joy, with its stateliness and its illustrious history.
Inés would love it if they had a radio. Then she might turn it on andleave Perla alone, listening to the music. No need for company with such a machine. That was what Inés wanted, wasn’t it? To leave her. To abandon their traditions; to abandon Perla. She sensed this. Inés was like that annoying dog that was constantly trying to steal food from the table. Always sniffing and wishing to run around barking.
“Did you hear me?” Perla asked.
