Page 26 of The Night We Became Strangers

Marisa

“F unny running into you here,” Agustín said, as we left Alicia’s house.

I’d also been stunned by the coincidence of seeing him at Alicia’s dad’s event, especially seeing him dancing and flirting with my friend all night.

At least I’d learned his name—Agustín—not that it did me any good.

Alicia would probably claim him already—even though I’d met him first a few days before at the radio station.

It didn’t matter, though, men always preferred her. She was so beautiful.

“So, what do you do at the newspaper?” I asked.

Agustín led me to his black Chevrolet sedan and opened the passenger door for me. I’d been impressed to see that he owned a car—and such an elegant one! Not many people I knew did. Only Alicia’s dad, really, and he had an older model.

“My family owns it,” he said, without a hint of arrogance but more in a matter-of-fact way. “My dad founded it almost thirty years ago, and I’m now attempting to learn the business so I can fill his shoes one day.”

I liked his honesty. I sat in the front seat, where minutes before Alicia had been—although I doubted she would remember anything about this evening in the morning. He asked for my address and then started the car.

“Do you have any siblings?” I asked him.

“I have two older sisters, but I might as well be an only child.”

“Do tell.”

“Well, the oldest married years ago and lives in Argentina, and the second one has been practically excommunicated from the family.”

“How so?”

Agustín sighed. “She married a man—how should I put it?” He tapped the steering wheel with his hand. “Below her station in life? My parents warned her not to do it, but she didn’t care because she said she loved him.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a cobbler, but he’s illiterate, which I think bothers my parents more than his profession.”

“But she loves him.”

“Yes. She gave him two kids.”

“Have your parents met them?”

“Once. Briefly.”

“He could get educated,” I said. This would have been a cause my mom would have jumped on.

“I suppose,” he said. “Did you get the job at the station?”

“Yes!” My excitement extinguished the second my house came into view. If my dad saw me arriving in the car of a stranger, I would pay for it. “Stop here!”

“Here?” We were in the middle of the intersection.

“Yes.” I opened the door. “Thank you.”

“Wait!”

I rushed to the curb, making sure no one was around. The last thing I needed was for one of the neighbors to tell my dad.

Agustín unrolled his window. “I’ll see you at the station on Monday!”

Despite my fear of being caught, I got a small thrill at the possibility of seeing Agustín again. I waved back and gave him my most promising smile.

As I tiptoed inside the foyer, the gramophone was blasting Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.

21 in C major, one of my dad’s all-time favorites.

I had been praying that he’d had a late concert tonight or he would’ve already gone to bed so that I could sneak into the house in the dark without being noticed, but here he was, practicing his conductor moves to the tempo of the concerto.

He still had his tuxedo on, but he’d removed his white bow tie.

It was going to be challenging to cross the parlor toward the staircase without being seen.

I bet he had already opened a bottle of whiskey.

The more he drank, the more irritable he became.

He never used to drink before since he was “the responsible parent” and my mom was “the crazy artist,” whom he had to protect us from.

But the day she left “to find herself” (in her words) or “to be with her lover” (in his), he’d bought the first bottle. It never stopped after that.

“Oh, there you are!” he said, coming to me with an open hand. “Late again!”

“Don’t touch her!” my brother Gabo yelled from the top of the staircase.

My father froze while Gabo came rushing down, two steps at a time.

He shoved my dad away from me and stood between us.

He was now taller and stronger than our father, who was short to begin with.

But in spite of his unimpressive stature, my siblings and I had feared him when we were younger.

Now that Gabo was twenty, he’d become defiant.

Things had changed from one day to the next.

One morning Gabo had woken up and he no longer feared my dad.

Looking confused, my father took a step back.

“Come on,” Gabo told me and led me up the stairs.

Ever since our mother left, my brother Gabriel, or Gabo as we called him, had become my protector.

He was only two years older than me, but even when we were little, he looked after me and my sister.

Our parents had always been too busy with their own lives: my dad working most weekends in the evening and rehearsing long hours during the week, my mom spending hours in her studio in the back of the house, which now sat empty, collecting spiderwebs.

Occasionally, if I wanted to feel close to her, I would go in there and look through her stuff.

The gray linoleum floors were stained with multicolor paint drippings.

The center table was still covered with a year-old newspaper that she had taped there to protect the wood.

She’d left many canvases and brushes, and clay that had dried out months ago—all now unusable, but I’d never had the courage to dump it in the trash.

What if she came back and found her things gone?

I was the only one who ever went in there.

I doubted my father had set foot in the damp studio since she left.

He deemed it too dirty, and he complained that it stank of oil paint and turpentine.

My sister acted like everything was fine and we’d never had a mother, so being confronted with her forgotten things might prove too difficult, whereas my brother said the studio made him gloomy, so he would rather not go.

“I met someone,” I told him as soon as we walked into his room. We were so used to my dad’s outbursts, we no longer saw a point in discussing them, though my brother’s hands trembled some.

“At the soda party?” he said, heading toward his desk.

Soda party was not exactly what I would’ve called the cocktail reception where Alicia had gotten drunk.

Gabo sat down and picked up a thin brush. He took a deep breath before dipping the brush in a small jar of black ink. He had inherited my mom’s artistic talent, and he spent most of his free time drawing cartoons of politicians and historical figures, or simply people we knew.

“Sort of. I met him first at La Voz, but he was at the cocktail party tonight.”

Leaning over his shoulder, I recognized the portrait of our former president, José María Velasco Ibarra, on the paper.

With those bony cheeks, perfectly bald head, dark glasses, and abundant mustache, I didn’t need to ask who it was.

The man was the perfect subject for a caricature as he was so tall and skinny, and his facial features so dramatic.

If Don Quijote were a real person, I imagined he would look like Velasco Ibarra.

“And?” Gabo said, tracing his pencil lines with the Chinese ink.

I climbed onto his bed. His desk faced the window, but there were only a few scarce lights outside as not everyone had electricity in our neighborhood.

“There is a problem. Alicia met him, too.”

“So?”

“Boys always like her.”

“Tell her you like this one. She has so many boyfriends anyway.”

He was right. Alicia disposed of men as if they were chicken bones. “All right, I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

I didn’t like going to Alicia’s house. Perhaps it was the fact that, in spite of having lost her mom at a young age, she was always surrounded by the love and attention of her father and grandmother, who’d more or less taken the role of Alicia’s mom since she died.

Our fathers were so different that the comparison always pained me, and now that I didn’t have my mother, either, the disparity of our circumstances was even more obvious.

Alicia’s dad looked as if he were made out of brick instead of flesh, whereas my dad was compact and plump.

In addition to the physical differences, their attitudes and demeanors also diverged.

Alicia’s dad was engaging, and his laughter echoed in every corner of their opulent home, while my dad was prone to periods of moroseness, and minor inconveniences incensed him.

We couldn’t touch his things—that much we knew since we were small—thus his gramophone was forbidden.

However, Gabo and I had figured out ways to use it when he was at work by leaving everything in pristine order after we were done—the same with his radio and his piano.

If I was sufficiently motivated, I would even convince Tatiana, who had a penchant for sweets, to help me get a piece of the Spanish turrón he kept in his night-table drawer.

Alicia met me downstairs. Not a trace of her sorry state from the previous night.

She was one of the few girls I knew who wore pants.

She’d found a seamstress to sew her a white pair of sailor trousers—wide on the hips and bottoms—and paired it with a fitted powder blue short-sleeve shirt.

Her wavy bob—held on the side with a single barrette—came to the edge of her chin, and she had just applied a smidge of peachy lip balm. She had so much style!

She snapped her fingers at me. “Marisa?”

“Oh, hi, sorry I was admiring your outfit.”

She winked at me. “This old thing?”

“How are you feeling this morning?”

“Splendid!” she said, holding my hands and bringing me to the living room, where a soft tawny couch awaited. She folded one of her legs and sat on top of it. “I think I’m in love.”

For a second, I worried she was going to mention Agustín, but there were many men at the cocktail party so she may be talking about someone else. At least, I hoped so.

“With whom?” I said, hesitantly.

“Who do you think, tontita ? The newspaper man!”