“Let’s not start.”
Then Paula clenched her teeth so hard she bit her tongue and started to cry harder. He was giving her that look again, and she knew how this was going to go. First he’d get impatient and then overly understanding, soothing; then, in a little while, Miguel would do what she hated most: he would treat her like she was crazy. Let him die, then, she thought. If there’s an armed gang trying to get in, if he’s such a dumbass he’s going to open the door because he doesn’t believe me, let him die. I’ll enjoy the house on my own, I’m sick of him. But Paula got up, ran behind Miguel, and asked him to please not open the door. He saw something in her eyes; he believed her.
“Let’s take a look from the terrace. You have to be able to see the street from there.”
“The terrace has wire mesh around it.”
“I saw, but it’s loose, it’ll come off easy.”
Miguel effortlessly pulled off the wire, which was practically unattached. He leaned boldly out over the roof’s edge. There was no one on the sidewalk. The light from the street illuminated the front door of the house and there was no room for doubt. The whole block was well lit. Across the street were two parked cars, but through the windows you could see they were empty. Unless someone was lying down in the backseat to hide, but…who would want to stalk them like that?
“Let’s go to bed,” said Miguel.
Paula followed him, still crying, still furious, but also relieved. She was even happy at having had a too-vivid dream, if that was what it had been. Miguel went back to bed without saying a word. He didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to argue, and she was grateful.
In the morning the pounding seemed very distant, and Paula resigned herself and accepted that it must have happened in a nightmare. It helped that Miguel had already left for work by the time she got up, so she didn’t have to face him or talk about what she had heard. She didn’t have to endure his sad expression. It was so unfair. Just because she’d been depressed, like so many people were, and because she took medication—in very low doses—Miguel thought she was sick. She’d been surprised to find out that her husband was so prejudiced, but over the past year it had become clear. At the start of her depression, he’d insisted on getting her out of bed; he told her to go running, or to the gym, or to open the windows, visit her girlfriends. When Paula decided to consult a psychiatrist, Miguel flew into a rage and told her not to even think of going to one of those charlatans. Why did she have to talk to someone else, he asked. Didn’t she trust him? He’d even said they probably needed to have a baby. He started talking about her biological clock and a bunch of other weird ideas that at the time hadn’t mattered to her, but that when she started to recover had bothered her to the point where she started wondering if she even wanted to stay with Miguel. He had never shown any other kind of prejudice; it was directed exclusively toward psychiatrists, mental problems, madness. They’d talked about it not long ago: Miguel had admitted to her that in his opinion, except for serious illnesses, all emotional problems could be solved by force of will.
“That’s some real bullshit,” she’d told him. “You really think an obsessive-compulsive person can just stop, I don’t know, washing his hands over and over?”
It turned out that Miguel did think so. That an alcoholic could just stop drinking and an anorexic could start eating again if they really wanted to. He was making a huge effort—and he told her so while staring at the floor—to accept her going to a psychiatrist and taking pills, because he thought it was useless and the problem would pass on its own, that it was normal to be sad after the problems she’d had at work.
“But I’m not just sad, Miguel,” she’d answered, cold and ashamed. Ashamed of his ignorance, and little disposed to tolerate it.
“I know, I know,” he said.
Paula knew that her mother-in-law, who was wonderful and who loved her, had talked to Miguel. More accurately, she’d given him a piece of her mind.
“I don’t know, Paula dear, how my son turned out to be such an idiot,” she’d said over coffee. “In my house no one thinks like that. If none of us goes to therapy, it’s only because, thank God, we don’t need it. Although maybe that numbskull son of mine does. I’m truly sorry, dear.”
Now she was waiting for her mother-in-law, Monica, who was supposed to come over and drop off Elly, the cat. They’d decided to bring her the day after the move so she wouldn’t bother them or get too nervous. Cat and mother-in-law arrived as Paula was finishing arranging pots, plates, and pans in the kitchen. She made coffee for Monica while the cat inspected the new house, sniffing everything, frightened, her tail between her legs.
“It’s a beautiful house,” said Monica. “So big! And there’s so much light, you two really got lucky! It’s impossible to rent in Buenos Aires.”
She wanted to see the courtyard. She said she’d bring some plants over next time, and she just loved the terrace; she promised meat for a barbecue as soon as they were settled. She left after kissing Paula and the cat, and she left a small bouquet of freesia as a gift. Paula loved her mother-in-law for things like that: for how she didn’t stay too long when she visited, how she never criticized except when asked for her opinion, how she knew how to help without overacting.
Since she had first seen the terrace she’d been worried about Elly, because even though the cat was fixed and surely wouldn’t wander far, she would probably decide to investigate the rooftops for the first time in her life—she had only ever lived in apartments before. There was nothing Paula could do; it was an unsolvable problem. Not even the mesh would stop a cat—it would only help her climb. It was hot, and Paula went up to the terrace. She didn’t feel like studying. Sitting on the wall, she saw an enormous cat, gray with short hair, walk across the neighbor’s courtyard. Elly’s boyfriend, she thought, and she was happy to have a neighbor with a cat. He could recommend the best veterinarian in the neighborhood and help her look for Elly if she ran away.