Hearing her talk about those years like I’d failed to do something I owed her son hurt almost as much as seeing him sitting on that sofa next to Valeria.
Almost.
Valeria stood up.
She walked down the hallway. The one that led to the bedrooms. She stopped in front of the third door. My home office.
She pushed the door open and looked inside.
My desk. My filing cabinet. My bookshelves. The little window that got the morning sun.
“This room,” she said, “would be perfect for the nursery.”
Ofelia hurried down the hall after her.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, mija. The light is beautiful in here. The crib can go right there, by the window. And the changing table here. Against this wall. We’ll paint it yellow. Or green. You don’t want to know if it’s a boy or a girl? No? Then yellow. Yellow is good for either one.”
They stood in the doorway of my office, side by side, pointing at things.
Talking about where the crib would go.
I was still standing in the living room doorway.
Sergio was still on the sofa. He hadn’t gotten up.
“Take your clothes,” he said to me. “And your personal papers. Your documents. Whatever you need for work.” He waved his hand vaguely around the living room. “Leave the rest.”
I looked at him.
“The rest?”
“The furniture,” he said. “The appliances. The dishes. All of it. Valeria shouldn’t have to start over buying everything from scratch. Not with a baby coming. It’s not fair to her.” He shrugged. “You’ll be fine. You’ve always been good at landing on your feet.”
For nearly twenty years, I’d paid the mortgage on that apartment.
Every month. On the fifth. Out of my own account.
I’d paid the property taxes. The building maintenance fees. The insurance. When the water heater broke, I paid for it. When we redid the kitchen, I paid for it. When the windows needed to be resealed after the rainy season, I paid for it.
Sergio helped with groceries. Sometimes. When he remembered.
Now he was sitting on my sofa, in my living room, deciding who would live there. And which of my things they’d get to keep.
“Are you signing the divorce papers,” Sergio said, “or are you going to make this difficult?”
He nodded at the coffee table.
There was a folder on it. Thick. Manila. I hadn’t noticed it before.
I walked over to the coffee table.
My legs felt strange. Like I was walking through water.
I picked up the folder. I didn’t open it.
“My attorney,” I said, “will look at them tomorrow.”
Sergio smiled.
Just a little. One corner of his mouth.
I’d known that smile for twenty years. It was the smile he used when a client agreed to a price that was higher than it needed to be. The smile of a man who thinks he’s already won.
He seemed to think that was as much resistance as he was going to get from me.
My attorney will look at them.
That was all. No screaming. No crying. No throwing things.
Poor Elena. Always so reasonable. Always so quiet.
“Sunday,” he said. “I mean it. We’re moving Valeria’s things in on Sunday morning. Mamá’s going to help.”
“Sunday,” I said.
They left about twenty minutes later.
Ofelia hugged Valeria again at the door. Sergio held Valeria’s coat for her while she put it on. He kissed her on the forehead. In my front hallway.
Ofelia looked back at me once from the doorway.
“Don’t take the good dishes,” she said. “The ones from the wedding. Those were from my side of the family.”
Then the door closed.
I stood in the middle of my living room for a long time.
The apartment was very quiet. I could hear the traffic on Avenida Providencia, eight floors below. A car horn. A motorcycle. Someone laughing on the sidewalk.
Then I sat down on the gray sofa. In the exact spot where Valeria had been sitting.
I opened my handbag.
I took out an envelope.
I’d been carrying that envelope for a week.
It was thick. Cream-colored. Heavy paper. With the seal of a notary’s office printed in the corner. Notaría Pública No. 47, Guadalajara, Jalisco.
Inside were the ownership documents for the apartment. The escritura. The deed.
And the deed had one name on it.
Mine.
Elena Morales Ruiz.
I’d bought that apartment in 2004. Two years before I married Sergio.
I was twenty-five. I’d been working at the Hospital San Javier for four years by then, in the accounting department. I’d saved every peso I could. I lived with my parents. I took the bus. I didn’t buy new clothes for three years.
My father helped me with the down payment. He’d been saving for it since I was a little girl, he said. For your first house, mija. So you’ll never have to depend on anybody.
I signed the papers at a notary’s office on a Tuesday afternoon. My father was there. He wore his good suit, the one he only wore to weddings and funerals. When the notary stamped the last page, my father stood up and hugged me so hard he lifted me off the floor.
“Now nobody can ever tell you to leave,” he said.
When Sergio and I got married two years later, my father had one condition.
He made us sign it at the civil registry. Régimen de separación de bienes. A separate-property marriage. What was mine before stayed mine. What was his before stayed his.
Sergio thought it was funny at the time.
“Your father doesn’t trust me,” he said, laughing, in the car afterward.
“He doesn’t trust anybody,” I said. “It’s nothing personal.”
Sergio kissed my hand and said, “Well, he can keep his little apartment. I’m marrying you for your cooking.”
