Fragile Beasts (14 page)
Authors: Tawni O'Dell
Stan wouldn’t have been the least bit upset to find out I had slept with a man to get him to sell the mineral rights to his family’s land for far less than they were worth or if I had slept with him to get him to buy me a new refrigerator. This attitude didn’t arise out of any lack of respect or fondness for me. Stan simply did not see sex as an act of love or intimacy and couldn’t for the life of him understand the romantic and sentimental hysteria it inspired. Like hunting, he believed it was done for pleasure or to put food on the table.
I dress and make my way downstairs, stopping by my study to pick up Rafael’s letter.
It’s another lovely, crisp fall day. The sky is a sharp, flawless blue with a few puffs of bright white clouds. I wrap myself in a heavy, buff-colored silk shawl embroidered with flowers of the palest pink and tell Luis I’ll have my breakfast on the porch.
He brings me my coffee, fresh fruit, and one egg with toast, then shows no signs of leaving.
I ignore him and concentrate on slowly spreading his lemon marmalade on my toast. He watches, pretending he’s waiting for me to tell him what I think when he knows perfectly well how much I love his marmalades. He wants to talk about last night.
“I think it’s a shame,” he finally says.
“What is?”
“Those boys. I think it’s a shame what happened to them.”
“I think it’s a shame what happened to my tablecloth.”
He frowns at me from beneath his impressive mustache.
“He didn’t want to talk about it. You can’t blame him. Do you think it’s easy for a boy to hear bad things about his mother?”
“Of course not, but the other boy was able to handle it.”
“Miss Shelby likes them.”
“Miss Shelby likes the older boy too much. She could barely look at him without blushing.”
“The younger boy likes Miss Shelby.”
“And I don’t like any of them.”
I take a bite of the bread and savor the tart sweetness of the jam while Luis belligerently plunges his hands into his pants pockets. Since we’re alone and he has no role to play, he’s wearing jeans and a white corduroy shirt.
“You shouldn’t be mad at Miss Shelby. She’s just trying to help.”
“She’s just trying to get what she wants, and she’s going about it by being sneaky and manipulative. Don’t think for one moment that I didn’t realize what she was up to when she invited her father here. What I want to know is if you were in cahoots with her?”
“Cahoots? I’m afraid I don’t know this word. What is cahoots?”
“Did you conspire with her?”
“Ah, conspire. That word I know. No. I had nothing to do with it.”
I pour steamed milk into my coffee, add two lumps of sugar, and stir it with the air of someone who’s not convinced.
“I’m getting old, you know,” he tries another route.
“I’ve noticed.”
“Jerry, too.”
“Jerry will still be able to chop firewood when he’s a hundred and ten.”
“We could use some help around here. A couple young strong backs.”
“What are you saying? I should think of them as slaves instead of charity cases? You’re even worse at this than Shelby is.”
He pouts. I sip at my coffee and let him suffer for a few more moments.
“It’s all beside the point,” I tell him as I take Rafael’s letter from the envelope, a signal that this conversation is coming to an end. “I spoke to their mother last night.”
“No,” he exclaims, his dark eyes flashing. “You didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
“What did she say?”
“She thinks I’m crazy. More specifically she called me a perv. I think it’s short for pervert.”
He looks absolutely stunned for a moment—a man who’s been shot in the back and has just begun to feel the pain—then his incredulous expression turns into a grin and he bursts into laughter. He laughs until tears stream down his cheeks.
I can’t help but smile a little, too.
He’s still laughing as he turns and goes back into the house with his tray.
I finish taking Rafael’s letter out of its envelope. As usual, he’s enclosed several clippings describing his latest corridas. Manuel disliked the powerful and esteemed bullfight critics and ignored their opinions of him while Rafael claims to not care about the critics yet I know he reads every word written about him.
I settle happily into his words. He writes to me in English. I write to him in Spanish.
Dear Aunt Candy
,
I was happy to get your letter. It came at a frustrating time for me when I needed something to make me feel better
.
The season is coming to an end, and I’m afraid it’s not going to get better for me. A few short months ago the critics were praising me for my exquisite style. Now these same critics are back to saying I only have a career because of my pretty face and the fact that a certain starstruck segment of the public will always pay to see a bullfighter who shares the blood of Manuel Obrador. The crowds have turned irritable and bored. I should be used to the ups and downs by now, but I fear I never will
.
The bulls have been bad these past few weeks, but I won’t blame them for my own failures. My performance has been fine technically. It’s emotion I’m lacking. I’m losing my joy in front of the bull. It’s becoming a chore
.
Part of the problem might be my distraction. I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have agreed to be the consultant on this movie I told you about
.
The actor playing the torero is an American. I don’t know who he is, although everyone working on the film tells me he’s very famous and I must be mistaken. (Americans think the entire world knows all their movie stars and other countries don’t have movie stars of their own.)
When they asked me what I thought of him, I told them he could never
do it. I explained an American could simply not understand what it is to be a torero. They thought I was naive about what acting was all about and also prejudiced. They said it was the job of an actor to be able to portray people unlike himself. I still said it couldn’t be done. I told them even in Spain there are very few movies about toreros. No Spanish actors want this role. The Americans said these actors are afraid. I said no, they are respectful. They persisted and said they’re afraid they will fail. I said, no, they know they will fail. And you will, too
.
I’ve done my best to try and explain toreo to them, but they aren’t open to learning the truth. In the director’s first interview here, he tried to distance himself from the very subject he wants to show. He said, “By making this film, we’re not taking a stance on whether bullfighting is morally right or wrong.” I read these words and wanted to beat him. Morally right or wrong? There are no morals in art
.
These people are cowards and hypocrites. The animals they eat live unnatural lives full of pain and confinement and are killed in terrible, shameful ways. This is okay. Toros have the best lives of any creature. They are left to run wild and do as they please. They spend their last living moments surrounded by people who respect and revere them. They die heroic deaths. But this is not okay?
Is it better to be a man who lives a shabby, wasted, little life until he dies anonymously at the age of eighty or is it better to be a man who lives a large, passionate, meaningful life and dies a glorious death at half that age?
Most men would pick the first choice because they are men, and think like men, and men fear death. Toros think like toros and don’t know what death is. Toreros think like toreros and know death so well, we don’t regard it as an enemy or an end but a simple fact of our existence
.
Try putting that in your film, Mr. Director. They can’t. Still, I’m helping them because I need the money, and the lead actress is very beautiful. She understands nothing about anything but thinks she knows something about everything. A typical American. (You are not typical, Aunt Candy.) I’m having a good time with her. She’s exactly the kind of woman I like. One I could never fall in love with
.
Last week at Valladolid I had three toros in a row with no pride in them. The last one was the weakest. I ran him with some success, but there was no emotion in him, or me, or the crowd. After a few sets of naturales that earned
me a few “Olés,” he came to a stop and stood before me with his sides heaving and his tongue lolling out. I clearly heard an old lady shriek, “Matalo! Matalo!” Kill him. Kill him. For a moment I thought she meant for the bull to kill me! Maybe she did
.
Love
,
Rafi
I fold the letter and tuck it back into its envelope. I have over fifty of them in a box I keep in my bedroom closet beginning with the first one he wrote to me as a ten-year-old boy in an effort to find out as much as possible about his famous great-uncle whom he worshipped and emulated.
He’s the grandson of Manuel’s only sister and an accomplished torero in his own right but one who’s been burdened with a weight his peers don’t have to bear.
His uncle Manuel was a magnificent bullfighter and this would have been the extent of his reputation, but by dying in the ring, he became a legend. Rafael could try to live up to his skill and his grace, but he could never live up to his death.
I smile at Rafi’s transparency and wonder if he knew when he wrote about the choice between an old man dying anonymously and a young man dying gloriously that he was so obviously trying to convince himself that we shouldn’t grieve for Manuel.
I eventually had to come to the same realization myself. I still sometimes wish Manuel could have led a quiet life and lived to be a man of eighty and still be with me, but that would have required him being someone he wasn’t and I wouldn’t have loved that man.
I must have fallen deep into my own thoughts because I don’t notice Luis’s return until he holds a phone under my nose.
“Call for you from a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” I ask.
He shrugs.
I take the phone from him and he strolls away from me, pretending to tend to a potted plant while straining his ears to hear every word of my side of the conversation.
“This is Candace Jack.”
“Hello, Miss Jack. This is Attorney Edgars, here. Chip Edgars.”
An attorney named Chip? A very specific breed of man.
“Hello, Mr. Edgars. Do we know each other? Your name sounds familiar to me.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever met personally, but a lot of people see my ads on TV.”
An attorney named Chip who advertises on TV: an even more specific breed of man.
“Of course. I’ve seen your commercials. You have very catchy slogans. I especially like, ‘However you were hurt, someone, somewhere owes you money.’”
“Hey,” he laughs. “That’s pretty good. A direct quote.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Edgars?”
“I’m calling on behalf of my client, Rhonda Welty.”
“She has a lawyer?”
“As of this morning. We’d like to meet with you to go over what you discussed with her on the phone last night and the sooner, the better. Miss Welty is pressed for time and has to return to Arizona in two days.”
“I see. I’m sure she’s very busy. Can I get back to you, Mr. Edgars?”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
I hang up the phone. Luis turns my way, his palm cupped and full of dead leaves.
“Luis, I may need a ride into Centresburg later.”
“Por qué?”
“I may be going into battle.”
He raises his thick gray eyebrows in mild surprise.
“It’s been a long time,” he says.
“I know.”
“Just don’t expect me to be your Sancho Panza.”
“I’ll expect you to be my Luis Martinez.”
He takes his orders seriously. He tosses the leaves off the side of the porch, squares his shoulders, and walks back inside the house with the cocky strut of El Soltero’s aide-de-camp.
O
ver forty-five years in this country and Luis still drives like a Spaniard. They have no regard for speed limits or respect for the laws of physics, and they view every driver in front of them as a personal affront that should be immediately passed, oncoming traffic be damned.
I’m perfectly capable of driving myself, but I no longer have the desire. My reflexes have dulled over time while awareness of my own mortality has become extremely keen. Death itself doesn’t bother me. I’m weary and frequently in pain. I have no spouse or children or any unfulfilled plans to live for. I’ve had moments when I’ve been sure I’m ready to go, and the thought hasn’t frightened or saddened me but filled me with a satisfied serenity that I can only describe as coming to the end of a long race. It’s the manner of my death that concerns me, and I can say for certain that I don’t wish to die crushed beyond recognition in a heap of mangled metal. The irony in all this is that while I don’t trust my own abilities, I will put my fate in the hands of a man who drives like a panicked chipmunk.
It takes me a few minutes to get my bearings once Luis comes to a stop in the parking lot across the street from Chip Edgars’s office, a squat, yellow brick building with a life-sized cardboard cutout of himself propped up in the lobby.
My attorney, Bert Shulman, is standing next to it. When he sees me come through the door, he strikes the same ridiculous pose, his arms crossed over his chest, his head cocked to one side, his brow furrowed with concern for my litigious needs.
I shake my head at him and smile.
“Candace,” he says, warmly, coming toward me with his hand outstretched. “How are you?”
I give him my hand and he clasps it.
Bert has been a fixture for my entire adult life. My brother hired him when he was only a few years out of law school and already making a name for himself working in the legal department of a large exporting firm in Philadelphia. His father was the owner of the only department store in Centresburg at the time, and they were one of only two Jewish families in the area. Bert was the second son. It was understood his older brother would inherit the family business, which was fine with Bert, who equated the mental complexities of selling retail with those of heating a can of soup.