Chapter 27 - Sweet Haven

I WILL never understand what it is that draws a woman to the very things that destroy her. There are many things I won’t pretend to understand, or know. I don’t know whose idea it was to take a digital camera into the room with you; who mounted it on the bedside table while you were undressed; why you took the man in your mouth before that watchful eye; why you, with such gusto, threw yourself into a variety of positions that exhibited your superb athleticism yet surely gave no difference in pleasure except for him. Did you do it for him? Did you do it for the camera? Surely that was your hand that positioned it between your thighs while he homed in for a taste. Whatever your reasons, I won’t pretend to understand why your footage was edited, flashing you from one position to the next, changing the music track with each cut. I will never understand what you might have done to warrant such hatred from any man. Up and down you jogged like a puppet on a stick, like a beast scratching fleas: not you, but the pieces of a girl called Naia, pieces that she ceased to own the moment they were taken, pieces she must now disown.

Like your grandmother said to me, you must disappear: change your number, liquidate your social network pages, find something else to call yourself by. Every last photo you ever posted of yourself must vanish from the Internet. The obscene phone calls will peter away; the searches for free footage will lose their appeal. There is little fun in killing someone already dead.

In my fantasy we are looking in the mirror, at our twin faces: you oblivious to my presence, preening, arranging your hair in loose waves to fall over the front of your shirt. Your concentration is so innocent, so full of adoration, that I laugh out loud. You shoot me an offended look that evaporates as soon as you catch sight of yourself again.

This is how I want us to be. We venture into the malls, stop before a pet shop window to gaze mournfully at poodles curled in their cages. We watch movies, surrounded, insensate by the fabulous Dolby sound system. Sink down on benches and gaze bleary-eyed into the fountain. Window shop. Female-bond. The malls are our museum, our leafy park. We walk through the zombie crowd hand in hand.

We tear apart the last Christmas basket that has sat in reserve above the fridge, and investigate the slice of Brie, the roll of pure chocolate tablets from South America, the tub of liver paste—all ensconced like crown jewels on a bed of confetti. You ponder your first taste of red wine. Sit contentedly before the television, watching the endless loop of cable news, forking peach halves into your mouth, tipping the can to your lips to drink.

Our home is a lovely space, on the top floor of the building, small enough to keep clean without hassle, and worth every penny. We fit, like two persons who have grown together over the years, but without the debilitating rivalry of sisters. We are like twins, twenty years apart. This building rears six stories above the asphalt, overlooking a neighborhood of zinc-roofed houses, and nothing blocks the light. In the typhoon season, the wind rattles the glass panes and water streams over the sills, but when the weather is mild, we live in a kind of celestial oyster; we could walk around naked in its whiteness if we dare.

But this is my fantasy, and I am sorry it reads like one of the magazine articles they pay me for. I cannot offer you much more than this. I am sorry that, though your life in Donostia must end, I cannot promise you a viable beginning.

NARITA sat staring at the empty computer screen. The house was silent. She reached for her cup of coffee and drained it.

She had to focus: there was work to be done, an article to hammer out. She had slept—a few sufficient hours; she was a professional. Yet as she began once more to type, using the time-worn phrases of the crime reporter, her mind continued to churn. There was the letter that had to be written, appealing Naia’s expulsion. The second air ticket to be bought. There was the serious matter of money—some arms to be twisted, maybe. In a little while, though, her thoughts spiraled down into the text she was writing, and nothing else mattered.

When she stopped after a span of time to stretch, get more coffee, read critically through her work, she was conscious of a new sound, of someone weeping. Cautiously she found her way to Naia’s bedroom and opened the door a crack. The girl lay atop the blankets, her chest moving in the slow rhythm of sleep. At her parents’ bedroom the door was ajar; she knocked in disquiet, then entered, but there was only her father, sprawled across the bed but snoring peacefully.

The noise, she realized, was coming from the kitchen, a soft and private sound. Luth. Her mother.

She listened in fascination, standing uninvited on the threshold of an alien world. Was it grief or release? This was the person who had blighted her girlhood, for whose approbation she had fought, competing bitterly against Antonia until, in the end, neither sister had flourished, until they were driven apart. But she felt no satisfaction as she stood there listening, just outside the doorway to the kitchen. For a moment she considered going in. The impulse passed: rejection would be certain. Or would it? So much of Luth was a mystery, even more, perhaps, than the cipher that was Naia, and yet both were now implacably in her life—two dark planets, hostile for the most part, and to be reconnoitered with care.

She felt no triumph as her mother wept, only a sense of guilt, as over opportunities tossed away, and the sadness of her own unknowing.