Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [135]
That “nothing” was the most certain reflection of the belief Augusta had been cultivating since their father had disappeared and she suddenly realized that now authority fell to the oldest sister. She felt overwhelmed by the suspicion that the fact of his death made the authority fall to her and was the inheritance that Augusta at one time rejected and longed for in a conflict with no way out that only her sisters, if they understood it, would dare to resolve for her. But Augusta not only did not want to explain to Julia and Genara what she herself could not really understand, she also wanted to admit that she, Augusta, felt uncomfortable with their father’s moral inheritance.
“Do you remember Mama?” Julia interrupted Augusta’s clouded thoughts in a melancholy way.
“Yes and no.”
“What do you mean?”
“That it wasn’t necessary to invent her. She was there. We came out of her and never really stopped living in her belly.”
“How awful. Not even when she died?”
Genara listened with languid patience to this exchange between Augusta and Julia. Rocking back and forth on her heels, she valued being the patient sister, the one who counted up the longest times. She knew her sisters did not recognize that virtue—or any others—in her. They did not offend her, Julia with her goodness, Augusta with her arrogance. They simply ignored her. Julia because she was good, so good she could not admit comparable goodness in another sister. It was enough for Genara to know this to also know that Julia, despite her sweetness, was condemned to the flames of a hell where simulation is not admitted. Julia was good because it suited her, because she wanted to go to heaven, when in reality, good people are the largest population in hell. Being good may deceive God but not the devil.
Did Genara engage in this mental construct in order to acquit Augusta of an unhappy fate? She glanced at the oldest sister, and behind the hard facade, she guessed at a weakness disguised by the abrupt way Augusta had of distancing herself from emotion. Which was why it surprised and moved Genara when her sister emitted the echo of a sob. What do we expect of the unexpected? Are these actions sincere or calculated? Genara reflected: Augusta didn’t allow herself to be carried away because of emotion or love for their father but because of absence of faith. Have faith, have faith. It was the chorus of a single voice. If Julia’s modesty was pure hypocrisy, then Augusta’s bitter will was a weak comedy put on to defy the father and, paradoxically, refuse to assume the authority that was hers as firstborn. An excuse. An evasion. Telling the father that at least one of his daughters was rebellious, obstinate, and wicked. As if the father didn’t know how to see through filial farces and humiliate Augusta with the punishment of pity.
That is why Genara is languid and patient. That is why she persists in dressing in an old-fashioned way, with her hair rolled high like a dark tower and makeup typical of Joan Crawford in the 1940s. Mouth very wide and very red. Eyes very open. Brows somewhat skeptical. And an expression very etcetera, as their father would say. She would say “imposed,” because it was true. Genara felt like a caricature of another time and knew it was because her fiction had become her reality. Joan Crawford in the 1940s. Mildred Pierce. Despite the modesty of its owner, her black silk one-piece dress turned out to be provocative, striking. Genara wanted to provoke only sorrow and consolation.
It’s true: In the annual reunions, there was a latent desire for consolation. Let the three, so different among themselves, remember that in the end, they were sisters. Perhaps they were brought together, with dissimilar masks, by the unconfessed pride of being daughters of a man so original and so involved in their origins, their powerful and eternal father. They were proud. The proof was in their reluctance to offer consolation to one another. That was why Genara was patient. In