Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
‘Where are your parents’ clothes?’ asks Marga.
She crosses her arms and waits for my answer. She knows I don’t know, and that I need her to ask a different question. On the other side of the picture window, my parents are running naked in the back yard.
‘It’s almost six o’clock, Javier,’ Marga tells me. ‘What’s going to happen when Charly comes back from the store with the kids and they see their grandparents chasing each other around?’
‘Who’s Charly?’ I ask.
I think I know who Charly is, he’s the great-new-man my ex-wife is dating, but I’d like her to explain that to me at some point.
‘They’re going to die of shame when they see their grandparents, that’s what’s going to happen.’
‘They’re sick, Marga.’
She sighs. I count sheep to avoid turning bitter, to have patience, to give Marga the time she needs. I say:
‘You wanted the kids to see their grandparents. You wanted me to bring my parents here, because you thought it would be a good idea to spend a vacation here, three hundred kilometers from home.’
‘You said they were better.’
Behind Marga, my father sprays my mother with the hose. When he sprays her tits, my mother holds her tits. When he sprays her ass, my mother holds her ass.
‘You know how they get if you take them out of their environment,’ I say. ‘And outdoors…’
Is it my mother who holds what my father sprays, or is it my father who sprays what my mother holds?
‘Uh-huh. So if I’m going to invite you to spend a few days with your children, whom, I might add, you haven’t seen in three months, I have to anticipate the level of your parents’ excitement.’
My mother picks up Marga’s poodle and holds it over her head, spinning around. I try to keep my eyes trained on Marga to prevent her, at all costs, from turning toward them.
‘I want to leave all this madness behind, Javier.’
This madness, I think.
‘If that means you see the kids less…I can’t keep exposing them to this.’
‘They’re just naked, Marga.’
She walks forward, I follow. Behind us, the poodle goes on spinning in the air. Before opening the front door Marga checks her hair in the window pane and adjusts her dress. Charly is tall, strong and brutish. He looks like the guy from the twelve o’clock news after his body has been swollen with exercise. My four-year-old daughter and my six-year-old son hang from his arms like two swim floaties. Charly helps them fall delicately, lowering his immense gorilla torso to the ground and freeing himself to give Marga a kiss. Then he comes toward me, and for a moment I’m afraid he won’t be friendly. But he holds out his hand and he smiles.
‘Javier, this is Charly,’ says Marga.
I feel the kids crash into my legs and hug me. I forcefully squeeze Charly’s hand, which shakes my whole body. The kids pull away and run off.
‘What do you think of the house, Javi?’ asks Charly, his eyes looking up behind me, as if they’d rented a real and true castle.
Javi, I think. This madness, I think.
The poodle appears whimpering softly with its tail between its legs. Marga picks it up, and while the dog licks her, she wrinkles her nose and croons: ‘my-sweetbaby-my-sweetbaby’. Charly looks at her with his head cocked to one side, maybe just trying to understand. Then Marga turns abruptly toward him, alarmed, and says:
‘Where are the kids?’
‘They must be around back,’ says Charly, ‘in the yard.’
‘I don’t want them to see their grandparents like that.’
All three of us turn from one side to the other, but we don’t see them.
‘See, Javier, this is precisely the kind of thing I want to avoid,’ says Marga, taking a few steps away. ‘Kids!’
She heads around the house toward the back yard. Charly and I follow.
‘How was the road?’ asks Charly.
He mimes the movement of turning a steering wheel with one hand, simulates changing gears to accelerate with the other. There is stupidity and eagerness in each one of his movements.
‘I don’t drive.’
He bends down to pick up some toys on the path and sets them aside; now his brow is furrowed. I’m afraid of reaching the yard and finding my kids and my parents together. No, what I’m afraid of is that Marga will be the one to find them together, and the great scene of recrimination to follow. But Marga is alone in the middle of the yard, waiting for us with her fists on her hips. We go into the house behind her. We are her most humble followers, and this means I have something in common with Charly, some kind of relationship. Could he really have enjoyed the highway on his drive?
‘Kids!’ Marga shouts up the stairs. She’s furious but she contains herself, maybe because Charly still doesn’t know her very well. She comes back and sits on a stool in the kitchen. ‘We need something to drink, don’t we?’
Charly takes a bottle of soda from the refrigerator and pours it into three glasses. Marga takes a couple of sips and sits looking into the yard for a moment.
‘This is really bad.’ She stands up again. ‘This is really bad. I mean, they could be doing anything.’ And now she does look at me.
‘Let’s check again,’ I say, but by then she’s already headed out to the back yard.
She comes back a few seconds later.
‘They’re not there,’ she says. ‘My god, Javier, they’re not there.’
‘They are there, Marga, they have to be somewhere.’
Charly goes out the front door, crosses the front yard and follows the dirt tracks that lead to the road. Marga goes up the stairs and calls to the kids from the second floor. I go outside and circle the house. I pass the open garage full of toys, buckets and plastic shovels. I look up into the trees and see that the kids’ inflatable dolphin has been hung, strangled, from one of the branches. The rope is made of my parents’ jogging suits. Marga peers out from one of the windows and our eyes meet for a second. Is she looking for my parents, too, or just for the kids? I go into the house through the kitchen door. Charly is coming in just then through the front door, and he tells me from the living room:
‘They’re not in front.’
His face is no longer friendly. Now he has two lines between his eyebrows and he’s overdoing his movements as if Marga were controlling him: he goes quickly from stillness to action, he crouches down under the table, looks behind the china cabinet, peeks under the stairs, as if he would only be able to find the kids if he took them by surprise. I find myself unable to look away from his movements and I can’t focus on my own search.
‘They’re not outside,’ says Marga. ‘Could they have gone back to the car? The car, Charly, the car.’
I wait, but there are no instructions for me. Charly goes back outside and Marga climbs the stairs again to the bedrooms. I follow her. She enters the one that’s apparently Simon’s, so I check in Lina’s. We change rooms and look again. When I’m looking under Simon’s bed, I hear her curse.
‘Motherfuckers,’ she says, so I assume it’s not because she’s found the kids. Could she have found my parents?
We check the bathroom together, then the attic and the master bedroom. Marga opens the closets, pushes aside some clothes on hangers. There aren’t many things and they’re all very organised. It’s a summer house, I tell myself, but then I think about the real house where my wife and kids live, the house that used to be mine as well, and I realise it was always that way in this family—few things, well-organised—and that it never did any good to push aside the clothes in search of something else. We hear Charly come back inside, and we meet him in the living room.
‘They’re not in the car,’ he tells my wife.
‘This is your parents’ fault,’ says Marga.
She pushes me backward, hitting my shoulder.
‘It’s your fault. Where the hell are my kids?’ she shouts, and she goes running back out into the yard.
She calls to them from one side of the house and the other.
‘What’s on the other side of the bushes?’ I ask Charly.
He looks at me and looks back at my wife, who is still shouting.
‘Simon! Lina!’
‘Are there neighbours past these bushes?’ I ask.
‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. There are estates. Parcels. The houses are really big.’
He might be right to hesitate, but he seems like the stupidest man I’ve met in my life. Marga comes back.
‘I’m going first,’ she says, and she pushes between us. ‘Simon!’
‘Dad!’ I shout, walking behind Marga. ‘Mom!’
Marga is a few metres ahead of me when she stops and picks something up from the ground. It’s something blue, and she holds it with her fingertips, as if it were a dead animal. It’s Lina’s sweatshirt. She turns around to look at me. She’s going to say something, curse me up and down again, but she sees that further on there’s another piece of clothing and she goes toward it. I feel the looming shadow of Charly behind me. Marga picks up Lina’s fuchsia shirt, and further on one of her sneakers, and further still, Simon’s t-shirt.
There’s more on the road, but Marga stops short and turns back to us.
‘Call the police, Charly. Call the police now.’
‘Sweetie, there’s no need for that…’ says Charly.
Sweetie, I think.
‘Call the police, Charly.’
Charly turns around and hurries back toward the house. Marga picks up more clothing. I follow her. She picks up another article and stops before the last one. It’s Simon’s little shorts. They’re yellow and a bit twisted up. Marga does nothing. Maybe she can’t bend down for the shorts, maybe she doesn’t have the strength. She has her back to me and her body seems to start to shake. I approach slowly, trying not to startle her. The shorts are tiny. They could fit on my hands, four fingers in one hole, my thumb in the other.
‘They’ll be here in a minute,’ says Charly, coming out of the house. ‘They’re sending a patrol car.’
‘You and your family, I’m going to…’ says Marga, coming toward me.
‘Marga…’
I pick up the trunks and then Marga lunges at me. I try to stand firm but I lose my balance. I shield my face from her slaps. Charly is already here and trying to separate us. The patrol car pulls up and sounds its siren once. Two policemen get quickly out and rush to help Charly.
‘My kids aren’t here,’ says Marga, ‘My kids aren’t here,’ and she points to the shorts dangling from my hand.
‘Who is this man?’ asks the cop. ‘Are you the husband?’ they ask Charly.
We try to explain ourselves. Contrary to my first impression, neither Marga nor Charly seem to blame me. They just clamour about the kids.
‘My children are lost and they’re with two crazy people,’ says Marga.
But the cops only want to know why we were fighting. Charly’s chest starts to swell and for a moment I’m afraid he’s going to go after the cops. I let my hands fall in resignation the way Marga had done with me a moment ago, and all I get in return is the second cop’s eyes following the movement of the shorts in alarm.
‘What are you looking at?’ asks Charly.
‘What?’ says the cop.
‘You’ve been staring at those shorts since you got out of the car. You want to let someone know there are two missing kids?’
‘My kids,’ repeats Marga. She stands firmly in front of one of the cops and repeats it many times; she wants the cop to focus on what’s important: ‘my kids, my kids, my kids’.
‘When did you see them last?’ the other cop finally asks.
‘They’re not in the house,’ says Marga. ‘They took them.’
‘Who took them, ma’am?’
I shake my head and try to interrupt, but the cops beat me to it.
‘Are you talking about a kidnapping?’
‘They could be with their grandparents,’ I say.
‘They’re with two naked old people,’ says Marga.
‘And whose clothing is that, ma’am?’
‘It’s my kids’.’
‘Are you telling me that there are children and adults naked and together?’
‘Please,’ says Marga’s now broken voice.
For the first time I wonder how dangerous it really is for your kids to be going around naked with your parents.
‘They could be hiding,’ I say, ‘we can’t rule that out yet.’
‘And who are you?’ asks one cop, while the other is already radioing the station.
‘I’m her husband,’ I say.
So the cop looks at Charly now. Marga faces him down again, and I’m afraid she’s going to refute my words, but she says:
‘Please: my children, my children.’
The first cop leaves the radio and comes over:
‘Parents in the car, and the gentleman,’ indicating Charly, ‘stays here in case the kids come back to the house.’
We stand looking at him.
‘Get in, let’s go, we have to move fast.’
‘No way,’ says Marga.
‘Ma’am, please, we have to be sure they’re not headed toward the highway.’
Charly pushes Marga toward the patrol car and I follow her. We get in and I close my door with the car already moving. Charly is standing, looking at us, and I wonder if those three hundred kilometres of exciting driving had been done with my kids in the backseat. The patrol car backs up a little and we pull away and head toward the highway, fast. Just then I turn back toward the house. I see them, all four of them: behind Charly, past the front yard, my parents and my children, naked and drenched in the living room’s picture window. My mother is rubbing her tits against the glass, and Lina imitates her in fascination. They’re shouting with joy, but no one hears. Simon mimics the two of them with his ass cheeks. Someone yanks the shorts from my hand and I hear Marga curse the cops. The radio makes noise. They’re shouting to the station, and they say the words ‘adults and minors’ twice, ‘kidnapping’ once, and ‘naked’ three times, while my ex-wife punches her fists into the back of the driver’s seat. So I tell myself ‘don’t open your mouth’, ‘not a peep’, because I see my father look at me: his old torso tanned by the sun, his soft sex between his legs. He’s smiling triumphantly and he seems to recognise me. He’s hugging my mother and my children, slowly, warmly, without pulling anyone away from the glass.