The Right Intention Read online

  She thought later, in the hours that followed, that worse than the piercing, almost theatrical apparition of death was the grave silence that followed, the silence in which it no longer even mattered whether or not she forgave Mamá. Life, which had seemed immense, was suddenly miniscule and insignificant, hardly even deserved to be spoken. Although perhaps rather than life, it was death that didn’t deserve to be spoken, the way that in death two people as different as Manuel’s mother and Mamá adopted the same gestures, the same expressions. The reason they’d seemed so moving on one and so grotesque on the other turned out to have nothing to do with the gestures themselves but the way in which she, as spectator, interpreted them, and she saw that now, realized that precisely what repulsed her about Mamá had moved her when it was Manuel’s mother. No, she no longer felt hatred (“We can administer morphine,” the doctor had said), what she felt now was harder to interpret than hate: María Fernanda, perhaps, aged twenty-two, standing up to Mamá, announcing that she was taking a job in Valencia, going to live in Valencia, “Alone,” Mamá had said, and María Fernanda had replied, “No, with Pedro,” back when Pedro was just a student, had just graduated with a degree in medicine; “You’re not going,” Mamá had said, and her sister had replied, “Yes, I am; I’m leaving tomorrow,” “Over my dead body,” “Over your dead body,” which, in fact, was what had made her proud of her sister, her staunch resolution, later expressed in letters detailing how happy she was, with slight condescension toward her dimwit of a sister, toward her failure of a brother. Mamá saying, “I know where she got that grit, and it’s not from her father, that’s for sure,” (“This morning’s attack affected a large part of her nervous system,” the doctor had said) and she’d sat in the dining room, vaguely unwilling to get up, the manly smell of Joaquín’s cologne, his slicked-back hair, his country walk made more pronounced by the tasteful suits Mamá picked out for him. No, it no longer made any difference whether or not she forgave Mamá, and the only reason she called Antonio was because that was what she was supposed to do after what had happened that morning, to tell him that Mamá had asked for a priest—Mamá, a priest (“The morphine will relieve most of her pain, but she might become incredibly sleepy, perhaps delirious,” the doctor had said). If they decided to administer morphine maybe he should come see her first, and the priest was coming that very afternoon so they should probably tell María Fernanda to come back too.

  The priest is young and handsome. So beautiful in fact that it’s almost indecent, almost morbid. He arrives late but approaches Mamá tenderly, and it is his lack of guile that saves him. Each second, when it arrives, is ancient, each feeling experienced. He asks the doctor her name, and before walking out the doctor replies, “María Antonia.”

  “María Antonia Alonso,” Mamá says.

  “María Antonia, are you ready to confess?” the priest asks.

  “I have nothing to confess, I called you here to bless me.”

  “We all have something to confess,” the young priest replies, his perplexity overly apparent. “The Lord says even the just man sins seven times a day.”

  “I have no interest in what the just man does,” Mamá responds. “As that other man said, ‘I fought the good fight and now I want my crown.’”

  “That’s not exactly what Paul says; he says, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness.’”

  The young priest’s exactitude irks Mamá and she thrashes in her bed.

  “Right, I want my crown.”

  “‘In store for me,’ Paul says.”

  “Same thing.”

  There comes a brief silence in which suddenly life is crueler than it is absurd, in which Mamá becomes María Antonia Alonso, back at the factory once more, shouting at Joaquín over the phone, telling him to have them re-do the frames, until they’ve been sanded properly.

  “I have nothing to repent,” Mamá claims again, “I’m only asking for what’s mine, just what’s mine, that’s all I ask,” and then looks at her, the unpardonable traitor, adding, “and love, I’m asking for love.”

  The priest has picked up on her disgust at Mamá’s last words and looks at her longer than necessary. She once again feels the weight of Mamá, the phony way she crosses herself, and thinks, You never loved me; repent. The priest places an altar cloth on the bed, beside Mamá, and a host wafer that he treats with delicate, almost ridiculous tenderness. Then he opens his missal and recites:

  “I commend you, dear sister María Antonia, to almighty God, and entrust you to your Creator. May you return to Him who formed you, from the dust of the earth.”

  Mamá glances over but looks away instantly, disgusted, as though she were a leper, and closes her eyes. Suddenly it was as if Mamá had no hands or feet, as though her faux-religiosity were to blame for their atheism—hers and María Fernanda’s and Antonio’s. She thinks that if Mamá has just one sincere reaction to the priest’s words, it will be enough to save her, to purify her entirely, and then she can forgive her.

  “When your soul shall depart from your body, may the resplendent multitude of angels meet you. May the court of the apostles receive you. May the triumphant army of glorious martyrs come out to welcome you. May the splendid company of confessors clad in their white robes encompass you. May the choir of joyful virgins receive you. And may you meet with a blessed repose in the bosom of the patriarchs.”

  But the light from Mamá’s eyes is still obsessive, accusing, and she suddenly thinks that her mother’s life is not determined by this smile she now contemplates, the smile of a dying woman receiving a tribute she feels is deserved. And she loves her mother, now, the way you love a girl who is stupid and selfish, but has nevertheless received a punishment greater than the one she deserved.

  “Far from you be all the terror of darkness, the hiss of flames, the anguish of torment. Far from you be the accursed Satan and his accomplices. Let him shrink abashed into the vast chaos of everlasting night when you draw near with your escort of angels.”

  “Amen,” Mamá says, and Antonio walks in awkwardly, stopping short in the doorframe at this shocking tableau. The priest pauses, marking his place in the missal with a finger, and looks up at him. Perhaps Antonio is thinking, You never loved me; repent. Life, made more ridiculous by the presence of the hospital window, is the sound of a bus horn.

  “May Christ, Son of the living God, give you a place in the ever verdant gardens of His Paradise and may He, the true shepherd, own you for one of His flock. May you see your Redeemer face to face, and standing ever in His presence gaze with delighted eyes on Truth itself made manifest. There take your place in the ranks of the blessed, and enjoy the blessed vision of your God forever.”

  “Amen,” says Mamá.

  “The body of Christ.”

  “Amen.”

  The simple, round white wafer now dissolving in her mouth.

  “We beg you, O Lord, remember not the sins of her youth, the faults of ignorance, but in your mercy keep her in mind in the brightness of your glory.”

  “What’s going on here?” Antonio asks. “Who’s she trying to fool?”

  “She’s dying,” she replies. “She really is dying, Antonio.”

  The priest takes his leave in silence, and Mamá remains with her eyes closed like a sullied deity.

  Joaquín showed up that night, absurdly, buzzing from downstairs, asking to speak to her when she was already in her pajamas and therefore had to get dressed again to go down. Manuel was more surprised than she was, since, deep down, some part of her subconscious had been expecting this visit for weeks. Time had been unnecessarily cruel to Joaquín’s face, or at least that was her first thought when she saw him standing there in the doorway, smoking the same brand of cigarettes, wearing the same expression he wore when Mamá called him to the office back when the factory still existed. Looking just as you’d picture an old man described as tired—tired hands and eyes, pants
either falling down or else belted too high, shirt showing its age by way of coffee-stained cuffs—Joaquín had taken on the humble vulnerability of old age when it still allows a modicum of self-sufficiency. She suggested they go to a nearby bar but he said he’d rather just sit on a bench on the street.

  For the first few minutes she got the strange feeling one gets on returning to their childhood home after many years of absence: everything struck her as smaller, more endearing; this man, for whom she’d never felt any particular fondness, now, in his old age, moved her, as though he too had been but another of Mamá’s victims.

  “How’s your mother?”

  “She’s dying, Joaquín. She’s dying.” She spoke the words without pity, knowing that Luisa was at the hospital with her and that Mamá might be dying at this very instant, and Joaquín received them, even if he’d already known it deep down, like an unexpected blow and lowered his head.

  “I don’t know whether I should go see her or not,” he said.

  “I think it’s probably not worth it, Joaquín.”

  She knew that this was the ultimate punishment, the worst thing she could subject her mother to, and yet the scene with the priest that afternoon, the feeling she’d given Mamá one last opportunity to be sincere, had left her so disillusioned that she now had the fortitude to show no mercy.

  “I didn’t treat her well.”

  “No one, in my mother’s opinion, has treated her well.”

  “No, it’s not that. . . I mean, I really didn’t treat her well.”

  Suddenly she wanted to console him, to take his hand. Joaquín had abruptly turned serious, solemn, had even stopped looking at her.

  “Oh, come now. What was it you did that was so terrible?”

  “I burned down the factory.”

  “What?”

  “I burned down the factory.”

  He’d said it slowly, deliberately, like a regret long-ago shouldered, and she, having been on the verge of consoling him, now felt betrayed, and looked at him with the old mistrust, seeing him as an ungrateful yokel. But then came other feelings. Her initial surprise gave way to a strangely agreeable feeling of compassion; Joaquín was the first person this week to admit he was guilty of something, and this admission not only saved him but, somehow, saved Mamá as well.

  “But why?”

  “I don’t even know anymore,” he replied. “I know I did it, and I know that at the time it seemed like the only thing I could do.”

  Joaquín spoke of his fear with the tender graciousness of an old man describing a childhood passion, as though slightly ashamed yet also fully aware of how important it had been to his life at the time. A part of her had immediately forgiven him, was forgiving him now, as he tried to better explain himself, detailing the days leading up to the fire, describing his fear and regret in the years following as though it were someone else’s life, a life absurd yet understandable; another part of her despised him for causing Mamá’s unhappiness, and even more than that Antonio’s unhappiness, and wanted to slap him then and there.

  “But why were you afraid?”

  “Five months before the fire I’d asked your mother to marry me. Don’t look shocked. We spent all day together, for so long. The truth is I don’t even know if I really wanted to marry her, I just knew that I wanted to be with her, to belong to her.”

  “And how did she respond?”

  “She told me she needed a manager, not a husband.”

  “Mamá,” she whispered, and suddenly it was absurd to whisper Mamá.

  “I wanted to be hers, I suppose, in the same way that the factory was, or you and your brother and sister were; I thought a lot about it, afterward, because if anyone had asked why I was burning the factory down at the time, I wouldn’t have known what to say. In the months after I asked her to marry me, I couldn’t stand the feeling I had, like I’d been stripped naked. She treated me exactly the same, we’d have lunch and sort out the contractors’ paperwork just like always, but I couldn’t stand belonging to her then, I felt suffocated. And at the time, your brother had started taking over a lot of things, doing a terrible job, most likely because being her son was too much to live up to.”

  Joaquín spoke slowly, calmly, as though his words weren’t even a confession. She felt her heart racing, and she understood, and understanding saved her.

  “What else, Joaquín.”

  “One night we had to travel to Soria for some machinery repairs, and we spent the night in a hotel. I lost my mind. I told her I loved her. I tried to get into her room. The next day she wouldn’t even talk about it. I don’t know anymore if I loved her or not, I suppose I probably didn’t.”

  “You didn’t love her,” she said regretfully.

  “I suppose not.”

  Suddenly it was cold out and the darkness was condensed, as if the night had been cobbled over.

  “Do you remember, when I was a little girl, how much I loved sinking my hands into those big mounds of sawdust?”

  “Yes, I remember,” Joaquín replied, slightly bewildered by the abrupt change of topic. “You really loved that.”

  There came a long, absurd silence. Allowing Joaquín to speak to Mamá wouldn’t solve anything. Allowing Antonio (who could do nothing else) to put her on trial wouldn’t solve anything either. Each sin, through its very commission, contained its own penance; Joaquín’s had lasted nearly ten years and now he brought it here, laying it before her, saving her by giving her the chance to be delivered not of her sorrow from that night but her fearfulness since then.

  “Do you remember when we used to go to Cádiz in the summer? Do you remember the house we always rented?”

  “Of course,” Joaquín replied.

  She was distancing herself. She was distancing herself now from this man’s momentary act of foolishness and from his pain, looking at him with the understandable displeasure of someone contemplating others’ weaknesses, or their sexuality; and at the same time feeling the possibility of forgiving him was a magnanimous gesture held out to her on a tray, a one-sided gesture.

  “I’ll go tomorrow,” Joaquín said. “Tomorrow I’ll go and tell her everything.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She didn’t know how to respond, and didn’t, not right away. The street was empty, as though awaiting an apparition.

  “You won’t go because I forgive you.”

  “Your mother is the one who has to forgive me.”

  “You don’t understand; I forgive you in my mother’s name. This is between you and me. Sleep well, Joaquín,” she said, standing.

  “Thank you.”

  Walking into her building, she turned and saw him still sitting there on the bench, like a criminal, incredulous that no one was even going to sentence him.

  Gone now were resentment, and hatred, and rebellion, and Joaquín, and Alonso Woodworks, and María Fernanda the favorite; now only a woman dying, and dying slowly (“There’s no cause for alarm, this initial reaction is simply the effects of the morphine,” the doctor had said); like a little girl, she suddenly thought that her mother was like a little girl, and the thought made her smile; Antonio had gone down to the hospital café to have a whisky and it struck her that if they suddenly pulled off the sheets and took off her clothes, Mamá would look like a little girl, and though she now stank of sweat and old-lady smell Mamá still seemed like a little girl. She sat down on the edge of the bed, to more fully submerge herself in this thought, which unexpectedly absolved her mother without requiring almost any effort, like a perfect act of compassion, this happiness accompanied by Mamá’s illogical words, “I’m thirsty, give me water,” the two of them looking at each other as though, in the end, this alone were enough to understand one another. She’d thought about Joaquín again, thought about him several times that afternoon, imagined his fear, walking into the factory, burning it down, his remorse afterward, when Mamá had refused to have anything to do with him and banished him like a useless guard dog.
And if she didn’t tell Mamá, it was to avoid the entrance of truth stealing away this woman that Mamá was, perhaps unconsciously, suddenly becoming; “It’s so cold in here,” but spoken so meekly that she had the urge to bathe her, brush her hair, change her clothes, though only because this woman was so unlike Mamá, only because this new iteration of her performance was so kind, so intimate. She had the urge to cry and it was a pleasant, almost warm feeling, had the urge to hold her hand (“She will probably lose most of her bodily feeling,” the doctor had said) and when she did—María Fernanda was probably on the way—she unquestionably felt the proximity of death, like wind on an ice-skater’s face she felt Mamá’s death blowing in: “It’s so cold in here, close the window, María Fernanda.”

  She could have sworn that not even being confused with María Fernanda upset her. In fact, more than actual confusion it seemed like the last act of Mamá’s final performance, a performance that, for the first time, she was enjoying.

  “They’re already closed.”

  “No, close them, close them properly.”

  And she got up, walked to the windows, opened them and them closed them again so that the sounds would accompany her performance, saving her—she thought—from the woman she’d been, with these senseless gestures, this fantasy.

  “There.”

  “I’m still cold.”

  “No, no, you’re fine, you’ll see. I’ll cover you up and you won’t be cold anymore.”

  “You’re the only one who loves me, María Fernanda.”

  “I know.”

  And they remained silent for a moment, Mamá quiet, as though recognizing her, and her with the urge to cry, like a woman sentenced to the gallows, waiting for the call which does not come, or at least not in the way she expected, comes instead in the form of sleep, and a coma (“We can keep her alive,” the doctor had said, two hours later), and then nothing: Mamá sinking into an empty white sleep, a dream that might or might not feature her but would almost certainly feature a bikini-clad twenty-year old María Fernanda bathing in Cádiz, and the factory, and Joaquín or Papá or the outline of any substitutable man. It was as though Mamá were dying in two different times, and less sad than the first death was this other one, eyes closed in a state of peace that was not, in truth, befitting. The very words “keep her alive” were like a retreat within a retreat, and within it the color white, and even further beyond the white was life, absurd, and trivial, and just, and at the same time hard as an almond, but one now shot through with a tiny sliver of comprehension.