NIGHT IN THE DESERT has the unfathomable mystery of the bottom of the sea. An infinite embroidery of stars filled a black, moonless sky, and as the earth cooled, it emitted dense vapors like the breath of a wild beast. We lit three thick candles that spread their ceremonial light across the water of the Jacuzzi. Little by little the silence was relieving us of stress accumulated through so many scrapes and scraps. At my side there is always an invisible and implacable overseer, whip in hand, criticizing me and giving me orders: Up, woman! Out of bed! It’s six o’clock and you have to wash your hair and walk the dog. Don’t eat that bread! Do you think you’re going to lose weight by magic? You surely remember that your father was fat. You have to write your speech over, it’s filled with clichés, and your novel is a disaster; you’ve been writing for a quarter of a century and haven’t learned a thing. And on and on with the same tune. You used to tell me to learn to love myself a little, Paula, that I wouldn’t treat my worst enemy the way I treat myself. “What would you do, Mamá, if someone came into your house and insulted you that way?” she would ask. I would tell him to go to hell and run him out with a broom, of course. I try to remember your advice, daughter, but it doesn’t always work for me to use that tactic with the overseer because he’s sly and he catches me off-guard. Luckily, on that occasion he had lagged behind in the little Toulouse-Lautrec hotel and wasn’t there in our cabaña to bug me.
An hour went by, maybe two, in silence. I don’t know what was going through Willie’s mind and heart, but I was imagining there in the hammock that piece by piece I was shedding my rusted helmet, my heavy iron armor, my coat of mail, my leather breastplate, my studded boots, and all the pathetic weapons I’d used to defend myself and my family from the whims of fate. Ever since your death, Paula, I have often lost myself in your forest, taking tranquil walks on which you accompany me and invite me to search into my soul. In all these years it seems to me that the sealed caves inside me have been opening, and with your help light is falling in. Sometimes in that forest I sink into nostalgia and am invaded by a dull pain, but it doesn’t last; soon I feel you walking beside me, and the rustling of the redwoods and the scent of rosemary and bay console me. I imagine how good it would be to die in this enchanted forest with Willie, old, but in full control of our lives and our deaths. Side by side, holding hands, here on this fragrant earth, we would abandon our bodies and join with the spirits. Maybe Jennifer and you will be waiting for us. If you looked for Abuela Hilda, I hope you won’t forget to do the same for me. Those walks are very good for me, and at the end I feel invincible and grateful for the overwhelming abundance of my life: love, family, work, health—a great contentment. The experience of that night in the desert was different: I didn’t feel the energy you give me in the forest but a letting go. Layers and layers of hard scales were sloughing off, and I was left with a vulnerable heart and weak bones.
About midnight, when the candles had nearly burned down, we took off our clothes and sank into the warm water of the Jacuzzi. Willie is no longer the same man who years before had attracted me at first sight. He still radiates strength, and his smile hasn’t changed, but he is a man who has suffered; his skin is too white, his head shaved to disguise baldness, his eyes a paler blue. And on my face I carry the marks of past duels and losses. I had shrunk an inch and the body lolling in the water was that of a mature woman who had never been a beauty. But neither of us judged or compared; we didn’t even look back to how we’d been in our youth. We have reached that stage of perfect invisibility that living together accords. We have slept together for so long that we no longer can see each other. Like two blind people, we touch, smell, sense the other’s presence, the way you sense air.
Willie told me that I was his soul, that he had waited for me and looked for me the first fifty years of his life, sure that before he died he would find me. Willie is not a man to toss around pretty speeches; in fact he can be a little brusque, and he abhors sentimentality, and for that reason every one of his measured, carefully considered words fell over me like drops of rain. I realized that he, too, had entered that mysterious zone of the most secret surrender; he, too, had divested himself of his armor and, like me, opened his heart. I told him, in a thin voice, because he had taken my breath away, that without knowing it, I, too, had been feeling my way toward him. I have described romantic love in my novels, the love that gives everything, holding nothing back, because I always knew such love existed, though maybe it wasn’t meant for me. The only taste I’d had of that total giving of self, that unconditional love, had been for you and your brother when you were very young. Only with you had I felt that we were a single spirit in barely separated bodies. Now I feel that with Willie. I have loved other men, as you know, but even in the most irrational passion I had guarded my back. From the time I was a little girl, I had looked after myself. In those games in the cellar of my grandparents’ house where I grew up, I had never been the maiden rescued by the prince, only the Amazon who battled the dragon to save the town. But now, I told Willie, all I wanted was to lay my head on his shoulder and beg him to take care of me, as it seems men do with women when they love them.
“You don’t think I take care of you?” Willie asked, startled.
“You do, Willie. You take care of all the practical things, but I’m talking about something more romantic. I don’t even know exactly what. I guess I want to be the damsel in the fairy tale, and you to be the prince who saves me. I’m tired of slaying dragons.”
“I’ve been your prince for almost twenty years, but you, my damsel, haven’t noticed.”
“That wasn’t our agreement when we met; our deal was that I would look after myself.”
“Did we say that?”
“Not in those words, but it was understood; we’d be comrades. But now the word comrade makes me think of guerrillas. I’d like to see how it feels to be your fragile wife for a change.”
“Aha! Our Scandinavian instructor at the ballroom was right.” He laughed. “The man leads.”
My answer was to try to duck him; he pushed me and we both ended up under water. Willie knows me better than I know myself, and even so he loves me. We have each other, and that’s something to celebrate.
“My God!” he exclaimed as he came up. “I was waiting in my corner, impatient because you didn’t come, and you were waiting for me to invite you to dance! Is this why we had all that therapy?”
“Without the therapy I never would have admitted wanting you to look after me and protect me, my wanting to belong to you. How tacky! Think of it, Willie, this goes against a lifetime of feminism.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with feminism. We need more private time, calm, time for just us. There’s too much squabbling in our lives. Come with me to some quiet place,” Willie murmured, pulling me to him.
“Some quiet place . . . I like that.”
With my nose in his neck, I gave thanks for the good fortune of accidentally having found a love that so many years later has not lost its luster. Arms around each other, floating in the hot tub, bathed in the amber light of the candles, I felt that I was melting into this man with whom I had traveled a long, steep road, tripping, falling, getting up again, through fights and reconciliations, but never betraying each other. The sum of our days, our shared pains and joys, was now our destiny.