Alice gets her teeth knocked out in front of the Casa Rosada, and it all happens very fast. She’s yelling, dribbling flecks of red, and the cyclist is apologizing, and Alice’s father is gesturing with clawed hands. She sees the three tiny stars on the pavement; white ivory dipped in pink.
“You asshole,” her father says to the cyclist. “You fucking asshole.”
Alice scoops the teeth up and puts them back in her mouth, slipping them into the holes they were ripped from. She is not sure where else they would go. The world shimmies gracefully on its axis.
“Dad,” says Alice, or tries to. “Let’s just go to a hospital.” Her gums throb a painful hello. It’s very easy to forget that you have teeth, and that those teeth have nerves, and it all connects to the part of your brain that registers infinite agony.
“Yes,” the cyclist says, nodding vigorously. “Hospital.”
Alice’s father turns to look towards where she’s weeping blood down onto the pavement. He points at her. “Look what you did to my daughter.” When he’s stressed, his words gum together like candy left in the sun. Miramihija. Ofelia once said his Spanish sounded like he was having a stroke, which is uncharitable but not entirely untrue.
The cyclist apologizes again in English, but the tendons in his calves stretch and convulse, so she’s not surprised when he pushes off and starts pedaling. Her father says a word she’s not allowed to repeat. He reaches up to tug at what is left of his hair, and then pulls out his phone and dials. She pretends not to notice that his hands are shaking.
“Ofelia will know what to do,” he says. Alice is not so sure.
To her left, there is a small child looking at her with piercing horror. These kinds of things never happen to her in New York, she thinks. They happen to other people, and she gets to watch. “Are you dying?” asks the child. Alice gazes at him, and considers the question. She does not provide him with an answer.
-
Alice’s stepmother is twenty-eight. She is attractive through constant reinforcement; the more somebody tells her that she is pretty, the prettier she becomes. Beauty, Ofelia thinks, is not a fact, but a currency. It can be inflated and depreciated — it can be measured against the dollar.
Alice remembers that as she sits in the taxi with her father’s undershirt pressed to her mouth. She wonders what it was like to see Ofelia slip through the doors of a seminar room and sit down with her pink backpack and books. There had been a moment, probably, when father had stopped seeing her as a student and started seeing her as a woman. Alice thinks about that moment all the time. She wonders if she is standing on its precipice.
“We’re going to a very good clinic,” her father tells her. “For emergencies. Daniel works there.”
Daniel is Ofelia’s brother. He is a dentist; a rich sad man in Nordelta who owns more loafers than forks. His mansion is where the family all go for monthly asados and occasional wakes. Alice doesn’t like him, in the same way she dislikes all of Ofelia’s relatives. Stood on Daniel’s mantlepiece, there is a photo of Galtieri with Ofelia’s grandfather that everybody has refused to explain.
“Will they be able to put my teeth back?” Alice tries to ask. Her mouth is a demolition site. Small bombs of pain go off every time she breathes.
“I don’t know,” her father admits. Outside, the Palacio Barolo fades away. “I’ve never had to deal with this before.” Patches of his stubble are now gray, and the corners of his eyes sink in towards each other. There are times, like now, where she remembers that her father is one half of an equation that was at one point solved, and now is not.
Sometimes, in answer to this feeling, when Alice is in the middle of a test or halfway through the eight mile run at cross-country practice, her mother resurrects herself. First a voice, and then the feel of her. Soft arms, because she never goes to the gym, and hair that’s always a little staticky. Cheap eyeliner that rubs off at the touch of a finger. The wool of her brown turtleneck sweater that has seen her through every winter since 2003.
And her mother says: you can do it Alice. I love you Alice. Ignore that boy. Concentrate. Take a breath. Come on, one last push. Your father doesn’t mean it, Alice, he’s only lonely. Your teeth will be put back in your head. Everything will be okay. Finish what’s on your plate.
The brown sweater is in a Ziploc bag at the back of Alice’s closet. There is a smell that has to be rationed out; a strict quota of days that she is allowed to open it and breathe deep. This sweater must last her the rest of her life.
-
Every fixture in Daniel’s surgery seems to be made out of stainless steel, including the receptionist, who looks at the blood smeared across Alice’s face and gasps like she is in a Munch painting. The sound rips the muzak of the waiting room apart.
“We’re here to see Daniel Romero,” her father says. He keeps a hand on the small of Alice’s back like he did when she was five. The receptionist picks up a phone and begins to speak in high-pitched panic.
Daniel is a tall, wet blanket. His eyes quiver with gravity. When he clasps Alice’s hands, she notices his nails are polished and buffed. “You are family,” he says. “Of course we will fix this.” He speaks in English, which they both know is passive-aggression.
Daniel ushers her down one bland hall, and then another one. The lights hum, and she can no longer hear her own shoes against the floor. Money dulls everything, even footsteps.
Inside a large room, there are two silent people in scrubs. Their gaze betrays no sentience. Alice clambers up onto a blue bed and opens her mouth. Dr Romero hisses. Her father is clutching at the remnants of his hair again. The pain pricks tears into Alice’s retinas.
“Does she need to go to the hospital?” he asks. Dr Romero shakes his head. He is poking gloved fingers into her jaw. A scream catches in her throat, down by the scars where her tonsils used to be.
“She was very smart,” he says. “She kept them in place.” He looks at her, and smiles. Whatever the acceptable amount of teeth is, Daniel has more. “I will be able to splint them.”
The robot assistants administer local anesthesia, brandishing silver needles, and the weight that has been flowering inside Alice’s chest suddenly subsides. She gazes up to the ceiling, which must, she thinks, be the same ceiling of dental surgeries everywhere — the one thing that affluence couldn’t fix.
“So,” Dr Romero is saying to Alice’s father. “How is my sister? Are you keeping her in shoes?” Alice tries to laugh, but fails. The idea that her father would be the one buying Ofelia shoes is ridiculous. Ofelia, who has an investment portfolio and monthly scheduled meetings with two different banks. Alice’s father is still paying off the funeral of his dead ex-wife.
Daniel splints her teeth and gives her enough painkillers to disqualify an Olympic athlete. “I’ll see you next Sunday,” he says to her. Alice cannot feel her own fingers, but knows they are there. She nods at him.
“No,” Daniel continues, as her father is trying to pull out his wallet. “Free of charge, for family.” The ceiling fuses into the floor. Alice is swimming and flying at the same time, and her fingers are inky with sweat and viscera.
“You should take her home,” says the receptionist, who is maybe a different woman than before. “Get her some rest.”
“I don’t have a home,” Alice tells her. “Daniel’s sister ate it.”
In her other life, Alice’s small apartment has yellow wallpaper with crayon scratches. The kitchen is cramped and copper, and the linoleum peels up. It is soaked in love, greased in it — love grows in the grout and sprouts tendrils in the fridge. On Sundays her father cooks pancakes and flips them, miraculously, like how a tennis umpire flips a coin. He draws a whipped cream smile even though she’s too old for that anymore, and adds strawberry eyes. Together, in the dusty sun, the three of them eat breakfast.
“Dad, I want pancakes,” she says. Her father blinks at her.
“Well,” he says cautiously. “I’m not sure about eating solids with your teeth.” “Pancakes,” Alice insists. “With the faces.”
The contours of his frown melt. He was very young when she was born. Maybe he is still stuck there. “Yeah, honey,” he says. “You can have them with the faces.”
In the taxi home, Alice falls asleep holding her father’s hand, and dreams of a wedding that is not her own. Everybody looks like her mother except the bride, who looks inexplicably like her fourth-grade science teacher. Her father is holding Mrs Kenton’s arthritic hands, and Leonard Cohen is playing and nobody is wearing any pants and they’re at the altar, and they’re smiling smiling smiling until the smiles drip from their faces and there’s nothing left of them at all.
-
The first word Alice ever learns in Spanish is gorda, because that’s what Ofelia’s cousins call her. She has never been to Argentina before — has, in fact, never been out of the country — and the sight of Ofelia’s family makes her feel afraid and misplaced; a steel-capped boot that has found its way into a Louboutin storefront. She is twelve and a half, and still wants, in her deepest heart of hearts, to be an astronaut.
Gorda and gordita, sometimes playfully, affectionately, sometimes muttered behind somebody’s hand. That first summer is hot and orange. Ofelia’s flat in San Telmo is flooded with light, and you can see the white accusing finger of the Ponte de la Mujer from the windows. Everywhere the smells, the food. Alice eats and eats and eats; alfajores, dulce de leche, medialunas that leave crackles of sugar on her mouth and hands. She becomes acquainted on a first name basis with the men that sell empanadas and panchuker on their street — they begin to make her order before she opens her mouth. She grows too big for her clothes, which for a while can be passed off as a normal teenage growth spurt, and then cannot. She goes walking to Parque Lezama and comes back with half-empty bags of garrapiñada, shreds of peanut lingering in her teeth. Ofelia, in a gesture worthy of the world’s most passive-aggressive Upper East Side mother, begins to buy premade salads for dinner. Politely, she encourages Alice to join her pilates sessions for “increased flexibility.”
Often when Ofelia is in Montserrat or Barrio Norte, shopping with her university friends, Alice and her father go out and watch the tango. To please the tourists, dancers set up in the middle of the street with an empty hat and a stereo. There is a couple who always dances at the edge of Plaza Dorrego that Alice particularly likes. The woman is maybe in her forties, wearing enough makeup to appear, at a distance, twenty years younger. She wears flouncy, plasticky red dresses, with a slicked-back bun that gleams in the sun. The man is around the same age but well-maintained, with a small mustache that Alice sees fall off his face one Saturday. They are dolls for tourists, performing synthetic emotion for tips, but their dancing is real, realer than real, and she believes in the movements. She believes in the lie, even though she knows it is one.
By the end of the summer, Alice’s shirts ride high over her stomach, and her thighs rub together at the top. At the very last asado, Ofelia’s mother Alessia takes her aside and tells her that she really should lose some weight before she goes back to school. When she returns to New York, she stops eating. By the time they next fly to Buenos Aires, Alice is ninety-five pounds and five foot five, and nobody calls her fat anymore. Ofelia sells the apartment in San Telmo; they stay with Alessia in Puerto Madero, in a gleaming penthouse with no dancers, and no medialunas.
-
First the eggs, beaten to a yellow cream, and then the sliced potatoes. Simmered with diced onions, seasoned with salt and pepper. Olive oil, but that goes without saying. You can make it with artichoke hearts, but who wants artichokes when you can have potatoes? In some places they make it with cheese and ham, but the simplest is always the best; the most difficult to perfect. There is nothing to hide behind. And then the miracle — the plate over the pan, and the flip.
Alice sits at the kitchen island at Daniel’s mansion, watching it all happen. Ofelia isn’t cooking; neither is her mother, or her mother’s mother. It is important that they know how to cook, of course, but equally important that they don’t have to. They are out on the terrace, the cousins and the aunts, drinking fernet and discussing things Alice is not privy to. Sofia is the one cooking, Daniel’s maid, although Ofelia’s mother will still beam and say “thank you” when somebody compliments the food. This is one of those absurd lessons of etiquette that seem to be consistent across cultures and cities, shared amongst rich women whose money has rusted their grasp of irony.
The tortilla gleams, perfectly browned, wobbling on a plate. Alice is so hungry she thinks she might disintegrate. There are platters of croquetes and provolone and salads and — for some reason — sushi. Her father and Daniel and the rest of the husbands are grilling meat and making choripán in the garden. She wonders why cooking is a gesture of status for men, in the exact same way that not-cooking is for women.
“You try at home?” Sofia asks, gesturing to the tortilla.
“No,” Alice says. “Zły. No puedo. Can’t flip.” She mimes the motion, making a sad face. Sofia considers this as soberly as she might consider the death of an extended family member. Alice doesn’t speak Polish, and Sofia knows less English than Spanish, but they muddle through. She has taught Alice enough Polish slang to correctly identify whenever she’s calling Daniel a son of a bitch — skurwysyn.
Ofelia’s laughter seeps in through the balcony door. They speak rapidly, so fast that Alice can’t hope to keep up. Her jaw still aches, a week on from Daniel’s surgery. She has been drinking fluids, chewing carefully on soft cottage cheese and melted ice-cream. Every night she dreams of places she has never been.
Alice straightens suddenly at the brittle click of heels on marble — lunch is beginning. The men return, bearing platters of meat and pride. Alice’s father is carrying nothing. She slides off the stool and picks up the tortilla; takes it to the dining table outside. Sofia wipes her hands on her apron. Galtieri winks from the mantle.
When everybody is finally seated, Alessia stands up and beams as best she can with a disconcerting flatness. Her Botox prevents her from conveying any real joy, but sometimes if she’s especially happy, a vein jumps in her forehead.
“My family,” she coos at them, in English. When Alice and her father are there, everybody always speaks in English. “I am a lucky woman.” She kisses Ofelia’s head. “My youngest daughter,” she says. “My baby.” Then she gestures at Alice’s father. “And my newest son.”
Ofelia’s sister Daniela claps her hands together, gold rings rattling. She exists in a permanent state of overexertion. “Let’s tell them,” she says. “Oh, let’s.”
“No,” Ofelia says, and looks straight at Alice. It is impossible not to notice how beautiful she is. She is a car crash — no survivors, lit up on Christmas eve. “Not yet.”
The men all clamor, clinking their beer glasses. “Tell us what,” they say. “You women, with your secrets.” Alice’s father is the only exception, staring straight down towards his steaming plate. The meat is still alive, somehow, oozing blood and sweat, begging not to be eaten. Smoke hangs in the air.
Sofia begins to pour wine, elbow moving down and up, like a clockwork doll. When she gets to Ofelia’s glass, Ofelia raises her arm to stop her, a conductor ceasing an orchestra. “Oh.” She places her hand on her belly, and smiles at Alice’s father. “None for me.”
And Alice understands.
-
On their last night in Buenos Aires, Alice’s father takes her to a tango club. It’s not far away, but Alessia insists they use her usual driver, a man called Eduardo who nearly kills a motorcyclist on the verge of running a red light. Eduardo drops them off at Independencia, because Alice’s father says he wants to walk a little. It’s Friday, and the city is singing.
They wander down Carlos Calvo, her father consulting his phone, until he finds the right doorway. It’s an old-school tourist trap; checkered floor, cloth-covered tables. The lights blink red and purple, and waiters scurry to and fro with wine and empanadas that were almost certainly frozen twenty minutes ago. Alice’s father orders ham and cheese ones, his favorite, and a bottle of red wine. Alice orders the catamarqueña.
The day before this, Alice finds Ofelia lying in a heap on the guest bathroom floor, half-naked. Vomit lines the inside of the toilet. She groans into the tiles.
“I’ll call Dad,” Alice says, on impulse.
“No,” Ofelia says. “No, I don’t want him to see me like this.” Her hair is straggling loose; her forehead glazed with sweat and snot. She clutches at her belly. “He can’t.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nausea.” Ofelia’s arms shake when she raises herself up. “My mother had the same with all of her children.” She pauses. “I didn’t expect it to be this bad.” Horrifically, then, she begins to cry.
Alice takes a step backwards involuntarily, seized with strange pity. Her teeth throb and throb. There is an empty glass on the sink; she takes it and fills it with water. “Here,” she says, and gives it to Ofelia.
“Thank you.”
Ofelia stands. Alice tries not to look at the small cups of her breasts; the way her ribs push at the skin above, as if they have something to say. Is it her imagination, or is there already a swell, a bump? She imagines what’s inside; what Ofelia is making every second of the day, without trying.
“I’m scared,” Ofelia says. She looks at Alice, and without makeup, she seems both older and younger than she really is. There are blotches on her cheeks, and her eyebrows are blonde and barely there. Without shoes, they are nearly the same height. In the mirror, they appear as two shadows of the same body.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to get fat. I don’t know what it is to be a mother.” Ofelia rubs at her eyes. “I tried with you. I wasn’t good at it.”
Has she tried? There have been salon visits and hairdresser appointments and shopping trips — things Alice sits mutely through. The clothes are balled in the bottom drawer in her bedroom. And the bedroom itself, with its too-pink walls, the ensuite with fluffy striped towels. The neverending free samples slipped into Alice’s schoolbag; hand cream and perfume and hair oil. Is that all there is to being a mother?
“The baby was an accident, right?” Alice asks, without meaning to.
They look at each other, not directly, but via their own reflections. Ofelia folds her arms across her chest, appearing to realize for the first time that she isn’t wearing a bra. “You really hate me,” she says wonderingly. It’s a statement, a sheet of paper held up to the light.
Alice doesn’t respond. She leaves Ofelia staring at herself, bits of sick still on her chin. When her father comes looking, Alice tells him his wife is taking a long bubble bath, and not to disturb her.
“Do you want a sip?” Her father inclines his glass at her.
Alice drags her mind back to reality. She shakes her head. All night, she has tried not to make eye contact with him. She’s sickened by the knowledge of what he and Ofelia do together, now that she has this final exhibit of evidence; proof that he is at core a man. She wants to grab him by his shoulders and scream.
“Are you mad at me?”
Alice presses her lips together and stares over her father’s head. You are the worst person I know, she does not say, and I hope Mom haunts you until the day you fucking die.
“Is it because of Ofelia?”
The empanadas arrive, and the waiter has brought an extra wine glass too. He places it in front of Alice and fills it without saying a word. On stage, the cellist is tuning.
Her teeth have almost healed, says Daniel. She still can’t bring herself to bite down on anything; has to mush up the pastry and the meat with a fork. All around them, couples hold hands and rub their shoes up against each other. They look so stupidly happy.
“Alice,” her father says. “Alice, please look at me.”
She doesn’t.
“I need you to understand something,” her father says. “You’re going to get it, when you grow up, but I need to explain it to you now.” He drains the last of his wine.
“Sometimes,” he tells her, “you make a mistake. A very big mistake. And sometimes the mistake is around for so long that you get used to it, and it doesn’t feel like a mistake any longer. You end up living with the mistake, and eating with it, and going to sleep with it. And every morning you wake up next to the mistake, and you feel terrible, but everything is the same as it was yesterday,
so you don’t know why. And then it’s too late, it’s not a mistake anymore. It’s just your life. Do you understand?”
Alice gives in; turns to him. “Yes,” she tells him. “Yes, I understand.”
His face is a landmine blown open. “God,” he says. “Oh my god, you look just like her.”
The music is beginning. People are taking their place. She’s so beautiful, the dancer. The hem of her dress is gently scalloped, and her legs are taut and endless. Everything hushes. The dancer dips her head, the man takes her waist. Something real starts happening. Beside Alice, in the dark, her father stares at her mother’s face; stares and keeps staring and sees something that once was true, a very long time ago, and now is not.
