“Where are you vacationing?”
That was Mama’s favorite question. She asked it at Christmas, when the family was all gathered around a table creaking under the weight of glasses, cutlery, and silver crap as useless as it is old. She asked it during Holy Week too, when we’re obligated to go to her house to eat torrijas made by a rotating cast of cooks, each one inevitably fired.
On the anniversary of Papa’s death, when we traveled to our grandparents’ country house to lay down flowers and hear mass, she would ask us too.
“Where are you going on vacation, girls?”
And the reason she always asked exactly the same thing was mostly because she’s an old-fashioned snob who worried too much about what would happen if high society didn’t see her daughters skiing in Switzerland, lazing on a boat in the Mediterranean, or sunbathing in French Polynesia. That and being skinny enough to see your hip bones through your clothes were the only things that mattered to her. Oh, and “marrying well,” of course. Marrying successfully.
No shit, Sherlock.
The first time I heard her talk about success, I was too little to understand or question the characteristics she valued. The idea calcified in my mind, like the word caterpillar, which I always pronounced “capertillar” until one day I finally understood what it meant, but not quite like that. Success for my family was the baby in a baptism, the bride in a wedding, and the corpse in a grave. The only respectable aspiration, the very purpose of human existence. A pain in the ass. And this concept felt like a school bully: either you were with him or you were a victim of his whims. And that’s where that same tired question came from too.
“Where are you going on vacation, Patricia?”
My sisters and I shot each other looks and smiled stealthily, our eyes glued to our bowls of vichyssoise light, which was more like dirty leek water that smelled like a pond. It was the first sentence my mother had uttered to us since we started the dinner to celebrate my sister Candela coming back to Spain for my wedding.
Yes. My wedding. Welcome to this story that starts where others end happily ever after.
“I’m not asking you. I already know you’re going on your dream honeymoon.” My mother lifted her gaze to mine, seized her glass, and smiled at me.
“Your dream,” I heard Candela whisper, forcing an imitation of my mother’s old-fashioned, aristocratic accent.
“Alberto wants us to spend the first two weeks of August traveling, but with the children…” Patricia, the oldest, shot a warning glance at Candela, trying to stifle a smile.
“I want to go to Greece,” my brother-in-law explained as he glanced at my terrorist nephews, who had already eaten and were playing suspiciously quietly in the drawing room next to the dining room.
“Traveling with them is exhausting,” my sister insisted. “I think we’ll rent a house in Formentera for the month.”
“Formentera?” Mama looked worriedly at Lord Mushroom, as we called her second husband, and then at Patricia and Alberto. “Isn’t that full of—”
“People?” I tried to cut her off before she said something offensive.
“Well, people, yes, but…I’m referring to…people…you know…”
She waved her hand vaguely. This often happened to her, not being able to find the words. She would often…leave things unsaid. Mama is…well, she’s lazy in a way someone can only be when they’ve never understood that “work gives dignity.” She’s the closest anyone in this century has been to those ladies Kate Winslet hung out with in Titanic. Ladies whose only job was regular cosmetic surgeries resulting in majestic, stretched cat faces. As always, she’d just gotten some little “nip,” so she was pumped full of her customary pills, ones that take away her pain and, if she swallowed them with alcohol (which she usually did), even eliminated that pesky sensation of human existence.
“Why not Saint-Tropez?” she asked after a sip of wine.
“Because…” Patricia looked to us for support. “Isn’t Saint-Tropez pretty passé?”
“Ah, you’re right.” She nodded. “But Menorca sounds better than Formentera, don’t you think, darling?”
Her husband, Lord Mushroom, nodded. He had a noble title, but the truth was, he was like a fungus, very regal but with zero pulse. Sometimes we weren’t sure that he had even a hint of life in him, but other people insisted he could form complete sentences. We also suspected he’d been getting lip fillers lately. Every once in a while he had the weirdest pout.
“And you, Candela? Where are you vacationing? You’ll have to find somewhere warm to make up for your life in Iceland—”
“I live in Stockholm, Mother, which is the capital of Sweden, and…I had to take off quite a few days to come here.” She made a face. “So I’m going on vacation in your guest room.”
“Working all day,” my mother sniffed disdainfully. “People will think you don’t have a penny to your name.”
“Well, if I took a few selfies in the room you put me in, I could convince some of my friends I’ve been to Versailles. Rococo is also pretty passé, Mother. So eighteenth century.”
Patricia and I dabbed our mouths with our napkins so they wouldn’t see our smiles. The staff cleared our plates and were serving the second course in less than a minute. A steaming filet mignon was placed in front of each dinner guest…in front of me, a cup of kale.
I looked at my sisters. I looked at my brother-in-law. I looked at my mother.
“Oh, darling.” She smiled at me. “Sautéed kale. Really good. Really healthy. Very low calorie.”
“But…” Candela started to say.
“Just wait until you see how great you look in your dress.”
I took a deep breath, plastered on a fake smile, and cut off my sister.
“Thank you, Mother. Cande, don’t worry about it.”
“With all the beautiful names you all have, I don’t know why you insist on calling each other these ridiculous nicknames. Like you. Margot. Margot? What kind of name is that? Margarita. Ana Margarita Ortega Ortiz de Zarate.”
Present.
Sounds fancy, right? Sounds like a girl who sweats perfume and shits popcorn. An aristocratic grandmother. A mother with a cat face. A mushroom with a noble title for a stepfather. Ana Margarita Ortega Ortiz de Zarate was, in this case, a character, only presented to the other members on the board of the family business, the people interested in society news, and the name that appeared on official documents. For everyone else, that person didn’t exist. And thank God for that because she was a bore.
Me, the real me, was Margot. Along with the diminutives when my sisters wanted something, the affectionate nicknames from the men who loved me, the monikers I had been baptized with behind my back in the office, which were an open secret: the marquess, the automaton, or, my favorite, Madame Overtime.
And believe me, Margot didn’t feel any sympathy for Margarita, the image that she somehow projected outward. The way everyone else judged me was not how I really felt, not even close. People usually constructed an image of me starting with my origins, but…does that really say anything about me? It says more about my potential investment portfolio really. But we are not what we have, for better or worse.
By force of habit, I’d already learned how to fake a polite smile and sneak out of the society parties I couldn’t avoid. Candela, my middle sister, was always allergic to anything my mother might like. Patricia was better behaved…probably because everyone adored her. She’s one of those beautiful women who makes other people feel sympathetic.
There wasn’t much conversation. In front of our mother, we always found ourselves with nothing to say to each other. Speaking trapped inside these characters we performed for Mama was so awkward that we preferred to stay silent at dinners and be ourselves when we got away from her. That’s why we soon retired from that overwrought room where even the oxygen seemed like it was enrobed in velvet.
“Don’t leave me alone here, you assholes,” Candela groaned as she walked us to the door. “That woman scares me.”
“That woman is your mother.” I laughed.
“Take me with you. I’ll share a bed with any of your children. Even the one who pisses himself at night. I don’t care,” she whimpered to Patricia.
“I still don’t know why you wanted to stay here instead of at my house,” I insisted.
“Because you’re getting married!” she said as if it were obvious. “And I’m terrible with all that veil stuff.”
“Go to a hotel,” Patricia proposed, rummaging through her bag. “There’s no room at my house.”
“You live in a mansion. What do you mean there’s no room?”
“Ugh, look, you’re a pig, and in two days my sofa will be buried under a mountain of dirty underwear. Ugly, dirty underwear.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I offered again. “Come to my house. He won’t mind.”
“By the way, why didn’t he come today?”
“He had work to finish up before the honeymoon.”
“Liar,” Patricia added, beckoning to her husband and finally extracting her phone from her Céline bag.
“Bye, Alberto!” Margot said.
“Why do you think that’s a lie?” Candela asked, waving a hand at our brother-in-law.
“He didn’t come because he can’t stand Mama. And look, I get it.”
The three of us smiled conspiratorially and hugged each other.
“Good night.”
“Lock your door. She turns into Catwoman at night,” Patricia joked, pointing up the stairs.
“She wishes. She’s more like…like if she swallowed the wardrobe of the entire cast of Cats, only skinny.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“I’ll come get you at work,” Candela threatened.
“Don’t even think about it. I still want them to respect me.”
“And what does that have to do with me?”
“You dress like Indiana Jones.”
“Indiana Jones? No way. She dresses like a communion photographer.”
Patricia and I burst into laughter, and Candela gave us the middle finger.
“You two are disgusting snobs.”
“Good night, María Candelaria Ortega Ortiz de Zarate.”
As much as they insisted, my sister’s car could not fit her, my brother-in-law, their three children, and me. Plus, I lived about fifteen minutes from my mother’s house, and it was a warm, lovely evening in early June. The streets, the Madrid that I grew up in, were livelier than ever, even at that hour. I adored the city for that, even though the north, my family’s land, was the love of my life.
As I walked, I was thinking of Candela. I wondered if she still harbored some hope that one day Mama would see the light and realize she had three amazing daughters who were more than just work. For a long time now, I had assumed that she would never embrace us or worry about our dreams or apologize for all the things she imposed on us and that we weren’t and would never be. Candela was probably the one it mattered least to: she had lived in Stockholm for years practicing as a doctor, and she had a full life designed purely around her desires. She never let the family yardstick make her doubt herself. She was my hero. I felt for Patricia, but I felt adoration for our middle sister.
For me, not letting the family judgment affect me was more complicated: I had always felt somehow obligated to participate in the family traditions, the business, the social events…even though I felt out of place. In a world where the only important things seemed to be shiny (success, beauty, money), a girl like me, even with all my last names, was nothing more than an impostor.
Run-of-the-mill. Neither pretty enough, like my sister Patricia, nor conveniently intelligent, like Candela. I grew up knowing that I was the bland youngest daughter in a family that always aspired to excellence. My mother believed success was embedded in our DNA…imagine her disappointment when she found out her little progeny didn’t excel at anything. They signed me up for violin classes, but I only managed to produce a lament that sounded like a cat in heat. They made me attend equestrian classes: the horses hated me and had a predilection for chewing my hair and kicking me. That wasn’t going to be the girl’s talent, but they kept trying: not an Olympic yachtswoman nor an “it girl” nor a celebrity shaman. Look, I say this with a lot of respect and a little bit of envy because I’m still terribly mediocre. Invisible.
According to Mama: neither tall nor short, neither fat nor skinny enough, neither pretty nor ugly enough, neither clever nor stupid, neither literary nor scientific. I was in the loop with every group but didn’t belong to any of them. And according to Lady Meow, as Candela called her, it’s better to be criticized than not talked about at all. What was I going to achieve if I didn’t stand out in any way?
Do this. Do that. In the end, the only thing I seemed to excel at was not being contrary. Because I didn’t have a clear vocation, I ended up following family advice to take a position in the business. THE BUSINESS. The family empire: someone had to do it since Patricia and Candela didn’t show even the slightest interest.
I know my mother lamented giving birth to me instead of a little gentleman because she always told us the business world was for brave men with a lot of talent.
It took me five years to figure out that my true vocation was rejuvenating the brand and making it competitive and modern in the digital age. Not everyone has to have it all worked out in preschool. Ever since then, I’ve always been seen as the “daughter of” because in our world, it seems like women are invisible unless they have that prefix or “wife of,” but that was something I had come to terms with. Of course, “the brave men with a lot of talent” weren’t going to be pleased that a thirty-two-year-old woman was on the board and had a voice in serious decisions. Important lesson: never make an effort to eliminate prejudice from someone’s eyes because they probably see what they want to see. It took me a long time to figure that out, and…someone had to come along and show me.
When I got home, silence loomed inside the cavernous flat. The lights of Madrid twinkled through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and followed me as I crossed it barefoot, my shoes in hand, to the bedroom, which I found empty.
Puzzled, I took out my phone. I had a missed call and a message.
I’m going to grab a drink with my friends.
I won’t be back late.
I texted back:
I love you, just got home.
I took off my clothes. I put on a nightgown. I wiped off my makeup. I slathered on my face creams. I sat on the bed and looked out the window.
Two days to go until my wedding. I was going to marry the perfect man. I had a huge apartment in the center of Madrid and a closet full of clothes. I had a giant engagement ring, and I knew that the following night at our rehearsal dinner, my in-laws were going to give me an emerald necklace that had belonged to the family for generations. I had a job and a chauffeur. I had stocks. I had a social life and a bottle of champagne in the fridge.
And even with all that…what mattered most was the overwhelming sensation that I had nothing at all.