They ate healthy products, which Lola chose attentively from what she saw on TV. Everything they ate for breakfast, lunch, or dinner had at some point appeared in an advertisement announcing vitamins, low calories, or the absence of genetically modified ingredients. In the rare instances when she added a new product to his list, she would search the grocery bags for it and then study it beside the window, in natural light. She was well versed in what a healthy product should or should not contain. There were good doctors and nutritionists advising people all about it on TV, like Dr. Petterson on the eleven o’clock show. If Lola found something suspicious or contradictory to the advertisements, she called the customer service number and asked to speak with someone in charge. Once, even though her complaints did not persuade the company to return her money, the next day she received a box with twenty-four peaches-and-cream yogurts. They had already bought their yogurts for that week, and the expiration dates seemed too close together. She would open the refrigerator and see the yogurts there, and the amount of space they took up made her anxious. They wouldn’t be eaten in time, they would go bad, and she didn’t know what to do with them. She mentioned it several times to him. She explained the complications, expecting him to understand that something had to be done about it, something that was no longer within her capabilities. One afternoon, the problem got the best of her. Nothing in particular happened, she just knew that she couldn’t keep opening the fridge and seeing the yogurts still there. Her afternoon snack consisted only of coffee, and although later on she was secretly ashamed of her anger, she still felt indignant at having no prospects for any type of solution, no resources of her own with which to fight. When he finally took the yogurts away, she didn’t ask any questions. She moved the stool to the fridge, where she propped the door open, and, sitting down, whistling slightly at abrupt movements to hide her gasping breath, she took the opportunity to clean the shelves and reorganize the things that remained.

  * * *

  It wasn’t just what was on the news; she could learn a lot about the world from her kitchen window. The neighborhood had turned dangerous. It was poorer, dirtier. There were at least three empty houses on her street, with overgrown grass and mail piled up in the front yards. At night, only the streetlights on the corners worked, and with all the trees blocking them they weren’t good for much. There was a group of young kids, surely drug addicts, who almost always sat on the curb just meters away from her house, and they stayed there until early morning. Sometimes they yelled or threw bottles, and a few days earlier they’d played a game where they ran from one end of her fence to the other, hitting the metal bars like a xylophone, and this was at night, when she was trying to sleep. From her bed, she hissed at him several times to get him to do something. He woke up and leaned against his headboard, but didn’t go out and say anything to the kids. They sat in silence, listening.

  “They’re going to scratch the fence,” she said.

  “They’re just kids.”

  “Kids scratching up our fence.”

  But he didn’t move from his bed.

  The matter of the fence was clearly related to the arrival of the new neighbors. They had taken over the house next door to hers a week ago. They pulled up in a decrepit truck that sat in front of the house with its engine running for almost fifteen minutes before anything happened. Lola stopped what she was doing and waited at the window the whole time. She told herself she had to take precautions: the looks of this new family gave her no reason to think they had bought or rented the house. Finally, one of the truck doors opened. Lola let out a long wheeze and felt a bitter misgiving, as if, after a long hesitation over whether to ruin her day or not, they had finally chosen to do it. A thin woman got out. Seeing her from behind, Lola thought she might be a teenager, because her hair was long and loose and she was dressed very casually, but when the woman closed the door, Lola saw that she must be around forty. The engine turned off, and the same door opened again. A boy of around twelve, thirteen years old got out. And from the other side, a burly man dressed in blue overalls. They didn’t have many belongings; maybe the house was already furnished. Lola caught sight of two single mattresses, a table, five chairs—none matching—and a dozen bags and suitcases. The boy took care of the loose items. The woman and man moved the rest, occasionally conferring about the best way to unload and move the things, until the truck was empty and the man left without a goodbye, just a wave of a hand before rolling up the window.

  That night, Lola tried to talk to him, to make him understand the new problem that this move meant. They fought.

  “Why do you have to be so prejudiced?”

  “Because someone has to wear the pants in this house.”

  * * *

  Behind Lola’s house, the land sloped upward toward the back. He had divided up those final meters of land and planted two plum trees, two orange trees, a lemon tree, and a small kitchen garden with spice plants and tomatoes. He spent a few hours in the afternoons back there. When she looked out the kitchen window to call him, she saw him crouched down beside the wooden fence that separated their land from the neighbors’. He was talking to a boy who was listening from the other side of the fence. It could be the new neighbor boy, but she wasn’t sure; it was hard to tell from her lookout. That night, over dinner, she waited for him to spontaneously clarify the situation. This was something new, and everything new should be mentioned. It was his responsibility to do it, and dinner was the appropriate time; that’s why at night the TV was turned off and Lola asked, How was your day? So Lola waited. She listened to the familiar story about the friend from poker he often ran into at the bank. She listened to a comment about the supermarket, even though he knew very well that after her incident the last time she ever set foot there, she never wanted to hear a word about that hell again. She listened to the problem of the streets blocked off downtown because of the sewage system, and his predictable opinions about almost everything. But he didn’t say anything about the boy, and she considered the possibility that this wasn’t their first meeting in the backyard, and the thought alarmed her.

  She kept watch for a few days and saw that it was the boy who ran toward him as soon as he went out to the garden, and not vice versa. Seeing them together made her uncomfortable, as if something wasn’t right, just like the twenty-four peaches-and-cream yogurts taking up space in the fridge.

  One afternoon the boy came over to their side of the fence and sat on a stool—their stool—while her husband went on working in the garden. The boy said something and the two of them laughed. Once, when she was there beside the window, behind the curtain, she thought about the cocoa powder and gave a start. She thought something could be escaping her, something she hadn’t thought about until then. She went to the kitchen, opened the cabinet, moved the salt and the spices aside. The cocoa box was open, and there wasn’t much left in it. She thought about taking it out, and then realized it wasn’t such a simple action. The kitchen was her territory. Everything in the kitchen was organized according to her directives, and it was the area of the house where she had total control. But the cocoa powder was different. She touched the drawing on the package and looked out at the backyard. She couldn’t do much more than that, and she didn’t very well understand the meaning of what she was doing. She closed the cabinet door, then the kitchen door behind her. She went into the living room and sat in her armchair. Everything happened slowly, but as fast as her body would allow each movement. With her hands in her pockets, she caressed the list. It was good to know it was still there.

  * * *

  Sometimes, if the weather was dry and mild enough, she went out to the front yard to check on the impatiens, the Chinese lanterns, and the azaleas. He took care of most of the house’s watering needs, but the flowerbeds in front were what could best be seen from the street, and they needed special care. So she made an effort and monitored the flowers and the dampness of the soil. That morning, the woman and the boy passed by on the sidewalk. The woman nodded in greeting, but Lola couldn’t bring herself to respond. She stood there and watched them go by, weighted down by coats and backpacks. She needed to evaluate this new situation, the problem it would now pose to go out and check on the plants at that hour, the constant possibility of interruption. She needed more air, and she took a deep breath and let it out with a wheeze, controlling the speed just as the doctor had taught her. She went back inside the house, bolted the door, and dropped into her armchair. She knew it was a dangerous situation. She concentrated on the rhythm of her breathing, on slowing it down. A moment later she fumbled under her body for the remote control and turned on the TV. On top of everything, she thought, she had to move forward with her list, she had to go on classifying and wrapping, and she didn’t have much time left. She knew she was going to die, and she’d implied as much to the lady from the rotisserie when she called to place her order on nights when she didn’t have the energy to cook. She had also talked about it with the soda man when he brought the replacement five liters of mineral water for the dispenser in the kitchen. She explained to them why she breathed like that, the matter of pulmonary oxygenation, and the risks and consequences it entailed. Once, she showed the soda man her list, and he’d seemed impressed.

  But something wasn’t working: everything kept going. Why, when her intentions were so clear, did her body wake up again every day? It was a cruel and unusual thing, and Lola was starting to fear the worst: that death required an effort she could no longer make.

  * * *

  A few years earlier, when she was still the one who went to the supermarket, she’d found a hand cream in the skincare aisle that left almost no residue. It really did have aloe vera in it; she could smell it every time she uncapped the tube. She’d spent a fair amount of time—and money—trying out brands before she found it. These days, she had him buy a different cream, one that cost less than half as much and was very bad. She could have asked him to buy the other one without offering any explanation, but then he would know she had once spent that kind of money on lotion. That was the sort of thing she sometimes missed. Because she would never go back to the supermarket, no matter how much he insisted on talking about it at dinner, knowing perfectly well that she hated listening. Never, not after the incident, not after that disastrous day at the grocery store. It was one of the few things she remembered clearly, and it filled her with shame. Did he remember it, too? Did he know only what he’d seen when he arrived? Or had the witnesses eventually told him everything?

  * * *

  She looked at the clock and saw it was three in the morning. He was breathing in the other bed. Not snoring, but his breaths were deep and distracting, and she knew right away she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. She lay awake and waited until she felt strong enough. She put on her robe, went to the bathroom, and sat on the toilet a good while. She thought about some of the things she could do, like wash her face or brush her teeth or hair, but she understood it wasn’t about any of those things. She left the bathroom and went to the kitchen, walking down the hall without turning on the lights, sensing the shelf with his National Geographics, and the dresser with the sheets and towels. She went to the front door, then wondered why she might have gone there. In the kitchen, she picked up the matches and lit one of the burners. Then she turned it off. She turned on the fluorescent light under the upper cabinets and opened some to be sure the provisions were up-to-date. She moved the spices, and there was the new box of cocoa powder, unopened. She felt her breathing change slightly and she felt, stronger than ever, the need to do something, but she couldn’t understand exactly what. She leaned against the counter and breathed calmly. Outside, the front yard was in darkness; one of the two streetlights had burned out. She saw the car, and at the neighbors’ house across from her the lights were out. A shadow moved in the street, and then a few seconds later, in her yard, behind the tree outside the kitchen. Lola held her breath. She took a quick step backward, reached her hand to the wall, and turned out the light. Her body responded to this emergency with agility and without pain, but she chose not to dwell on that. She stood still in the dark, staring at the tree. She waited like that for a while, gradually letting her breath out until the wheeze returned and she was convinced no one was out there. Then she saw, against the black tree trunk, in silhouette, someone who was trying to stay hidden. Someone was there, no doubt about it. And she was alone in the kitchen, struggling with her body and her breathing, while he was off sleeping peacefully. She stood thinking about that for a moment, so close to the cocoa powder that she could have reached it without moving her feet. So it occurred to her that it could be the boy from next door. She opened the window a crack. The dog from across the street barked behind the fence. The black trunk was motionless for several seconds. She took five steps back to the kitchen door, from where she could still see the tree, then picked up the receiver for the intercom and pressed the talk button. Her own hoarse whistle reached her from the yard, wafting in through the open window. She hung the receiver up and stood with her hand trembling on the device, until, a while later, the dog stopped barking.

  * * *

  It was hot out on the day of the supermarket incident. There are things Lola no longer remembers, but she knows that for sure. She fainted because of the heat, not because of what happened. The doctor, the ambulance, it all seemed excessive, a humiliation that could have been avoided. She would have expected the cashier and the security guard, both women who had known her for years and who waved to her at least twice a week, to have more solidarity, but they looked on in silence, rapt and stupid as if they’d never seen such a thing. Other customers—some she knew by sight, some of them neighbors—saw her on the floor and then on the stretcher. Lola wasn’t a chatty person, she didn’t have a real friendship with any of those people, and she wouldn’t really have wanted one. That’s why it was all so embarrassing, because she would never get the chance to explain herself. She grew bitter if she thought about that, and more bitter still when she remembered the details, like how she closed her eyes while they loaded her into the ambulance so she wouldn’t see how the two men in the delivery truck parked outside the store were staring. Her husband and the doctors made her spend two days in the hospital for routine tests. They subjected her to analyses and exams and never once asked her opinion. They came with their forms and their explanations, falsely solicitous, imposing on her time and her patience, efficiently invoicing for as many medical procedures as possible. She knew how those things worked, but she didn’t get a voice or a vote; it was all up to him, and he was so naive and obsequious. It’s true there are things that Lola doesn’t remember, but she remembers that perfectly.

  * * *

  Someone had been in the front yard the night before. She told him as soon as he woke her up: she’d fallen asleep in front of the muted TV, and now two women were cooking a chicken in a bright, spacious kitchen. Her armchair usually seemed quite comfortable, but that time it hadn’t worked. Her body hurt and it was hard to move. He didn’t ask if she’d spent the night there or what had happened, but he did want to know if she’d taken her pills. She didn’t answer. He went for the pill case and brought it to her with a glass of water. He stood looking at her until she’d finished swallowing them. After the last sip, she said:

  “I’m telling you that someone was in the front yard last night. You should check to be sure everything is okay.”

  He looked toward the yard.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I saw him, behind the tree.”

  He put on his jacket and went outside. She watched him from the window, saw him walk down the log path that led to the gate, stop even with the tree, and look out toward the street from there. It seemed to her that he was consciously not checking what she had told him to. He didn’t do anything right, and she thought how this man had been that way his whole life, and now she depended on this very same man. She picked up the intercom handset, the one in the living room beside the door, and she heard her own voice coming from the speaker outside:

  “The tree, the tree.”

  She saw him take a few steps toward the tree, but he didn’t get close enough. He glanced around and came back.

  “You should look again,” she said when he came inside. “I’m sure I saw someone.”

  “There’s no one now.”

  “But there was last night,” she said, and she let her lungs whistle lengthily in resignation.

  * * *

  She’d spent part of the morning labeling the five visible sides of the boxes that were already sealed. He stuck his head into the guest room, looked at the pile of boxes, and offered to take them to the garage. He said that way the room would still be usable, and plus, when the time came, it would be much easier to load out the boxes from the garage.

  “Load them out?” she said. “And take them where? I’m the only one who’s going to decide which boxes go.”

  He could take them to the garage if that made him so happy, but she would let him take only the expendable boxes. The important things would always stay inside the house.

 

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