Page 54 of After the Fire
“My grandfather was a thief. I don’t know his reasons, and honestly, I don’t care. Actually, you know what? I do care. I think it was because of you. Because you were so demanding of more and more and more that he had no other option but to take what didn’t belong to him. So to cover it all up, he ran away from you and your family in 1988 because he was most likely going to get charged with embezzlement. He had been doing it for years under everyone’s noses. I’m guessing you never knew. Tell me if I’m getting close to the truth or if this is a lie.”
I waited for her response, but all I could hear was her uneven breathing.
“He showed up at a small town in Córdoba and begged a friend of his for a job, making a comfortable and respectable life for himself there. Didn’t bother anyone, kept his head down. In the meantime, you told everyone that would even look at you that your husband had been kidnapped, the ransom paid, but he was never released. Am I getting closer now?”
Silence. I paced my room, walking from the door to the window and back, trying to get my thoughts in order. Presenting my case.
“For decades, you’ve let your family, your friends, believe that your husband had been killed. You’ve victimized yourself for what? Honor? Respect? Control? Of what? Of the illusion of being superi—”
“Shut up!” She was screaming now. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.Mocosa insolente, ¿quién te da el derecho de hablarme así?”
“Oh, so you’re going to tell me that you had absolutely no idea that your husband walked out of your life, never to be seen again?” I said a little mockingly. “I doubt that’s true, Susana. You are a smart, smart woman. You pay attention. I’ll bet my inheritance that you knew exactly what you were doing.”
I swallowed, hoping that stroking her ego would get me the results I was looking for. If nothing else, Susana loved the attention, the compliments. She never fished for them, of course not, but she not-so-secretly reveled when she was on the receiving end of one.
I sat down on the bed, still looking out the window, hoping that my silence would get her talking. The sun was slowly inching up from behind the mountains. The sky was clear and a deep blue that I could hardly remember ever seeing in the city.
“So what? So what if I did that?” My eyes went wide, my mouth completely dry. “I made a choice, and I lived with it for decades. I had to do what was best to protect myself and my family.”
“Protect us from what, exactly? Who was going to hurt you?”
“Ay, Victoria,no seas ilusa.Don’t be so naïve. Use your brain a little. What did you expect me to do? Sulk and let everyone call your grandfather a thief? I had a reputation to protect, a name to stand for. You have to understand, I…”
My skin started itching, like my body was getting too big for it. I was dumbfounded. Completely at a loss for words. I was suddenly furious, my blood boiling inside my body.
Furious at Susana for lying to us, her family, for lying to her friends, for keeping up with this narrative that my grandfather was a larger-than-life man who was taken from us too soon for unknown reasons. Furious at my father for never looking into this and accepting Susana’s version as the absolute truth. Furious at Manuel for just existing. And furious at myself for taking everything at face value.
“The decisions that we make have an impact on much more than the immediate future, Susana,” I said, thinking back on how this narrative had shaped my life, my career, my being.
“Oh, don’t fucking defend him, he was a thief!”
“I’m not defending himat all, but what you did was wrong, Susana, on so many counts. You let yourchildrenbelieve their father was dead! You built your whole existence on lies. You are no innocent bystander either, Susana, and stop playing the fucking victim.”
“Language.” That was all she had to say to me. We were possibly having the most honest conversation of ourlives, and this woman only cared about what I was saying that could hinder my impeccable (or maybe not so much anymore) reputation.
“I don’t fucking care anymore, Susana. You are a liar, and what you did was wrong. You broke a family. You made us believe— madeyour children—believe that their father was dead?” Did she not know that he was, in fact, dead? Or was she playing me like a fiddle?
“Heisdead!” she screamed, her voice broken. Ah, there it was. “He’s been dead for years! Why do you care anyways? You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. Your life never changed because of this.No te metas que no tiene nada que ver con vos.”
This has nothing to do with you,she said. She was pacing now. I could hear her shuffling her feet on the marble floors of her house.
“Susana,” I said, matching her tone. I knew he was dead, but the sudden confession surprised me nonetheless. I opened my mouth to say more, but she spoke first.
“No,escuchame bien.” Her tone was firm, and her voice was deeper than normal. “Te lo voy a decir una sola vez,so you better pay close attention, Victoria.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, expecting the worst. Because anything could come out of Susana’s mouth at this point, or at any point. She wasn’t known for having a filter. She was blatantly and brutally honest unless she wanted something, and in that case, she was as fake as a mannequin.
“I’m not the one on trial here,” she said. She was seething. I could almost hear her jaw clenching while she spoke. “This has nothing to do with me, and you know it.”
“Do I know it, Susana? Because the only story that has ever been told to me—by you, by the way—is how he was an honorable man. You made him sound like a hero, and that left you as a victim. Is that what you wanted? Because that’s not respect, Susana. That is pity. People felt—feel—sorry for you.”
She scoffed into the phone. “I did my best,” she whispered.
“Did you do your best? Because your best would have been to stand next to your husband and support him while he was being prosecuted. That’s what a person who loves someone does. For better or for worse and all that bullshit, right?”
“Victoria, be careful what you say. Don’t say anything you’ll regret because you are going to come crawling back to me eventually, and then what? Huh? Who is going to give you back the life you had?”
I shrugged, aware that she couldn’t see me. I wasn’t interested in going back, in having the life I had before. But what did I want?
