What Happened with My Mother-in-Law the Night We Were Left Alone

Ferreiro’s tavern was small, but on Fridays it filled to bursting. That night there was a table of six playing brisca and another of four at tute, with onlookers around them, each with a glass of red wine. The cigarette smoke didn’t bother anyone because everyone smoked. In a corner, under a television nobody was watching, I was playing escoba with Ramón, a painter ten years older than me who bragged about having slept with half the district.

—I’ve got such a grudge against that woman that if I could, I’d bury her alive —he said, dealing the cards.

—I’ve got a mind to my mother-in-law too —I blurted out—. But it’s a different kind of mind.

Ramón looked up slowly. The wine had already loosened his tongue, not mine.

—Don’t tell me you want to take her to bed.

—Her and my sister-in-law.

He drained his glass in one swallow and set it down carefully on the table, as if he were thinking.

—Fantasies are fantasies —he said.

—You, who’ve slept with everything that moved, give me an idea for getting close to them.

—I’m not getting involved in your obsessions. Odds are you’ll lose your wife, end up frustrated, and blame me.

—I wouldn’t blame you. If you were in my place, what would you do?

Ramón stayed staring at the cards for a good while. He was sharp when he put his mind to something, and I knew curiosity got the better of him.

—If I were you, I’d wait until each one had a fight with her man. I’d go in very subtly. I’d praise them and criticize the men. Nothing opens a door more than a woman angry with her husband.

—And what would I say to them?

—That can’t be predicted. Every case is different. But the trick is always the same: making them feel desired just when they feel invisible.

I liked Ramón’s words. I kept them like someone keeping a key.

—Could work —I said.

***

The opportunity with Amparo, my mother-in-law, came sooner than I expected. She was a woman a little over fifty, dark-haired, her hair pulled back in a tight bun, thin, and with a very bad temper. Her husband, a lanky, taciturn man, had spent weeks obsessed with crossing the border to see one of those films they didn’t show here. That afternoon they argued in their bedroom, and I heard everything from mine.

—Neither are you going to France to see some filthy film, nor am I letting you! —she yelled.

—I’m going, no matter what face you make.

—If you go, don’t come back. For all you’re worth to me... you fuck little and badly.

The following Friday everything lined up. My wife, Noelia, went to her grandparents’ because her grandmother had twisted her ankle, and my father-in-law, stubborn as a mule, grabbed the car and drove over the border. Amparo and I were left alone in that stone house, with night slowly closing in over the village.

She made two omelets for dinner. We sat at the kitchen table, one across from the other, and between the oil and the wine the conversation started to bend on its own.

—Imagine driving all night just to see a naked woman —she said, pouring herself a cup of red wine.

—That film has more to it than a naked woman —I replied.

—And how do you know that?

—Someone told me. It’s about two strangers who meet in an empty apartment and end up going at it as if they’d known each other all their lives. They say the best scene is the butter one.

—And what happens in that scene?

—He smears butter on her and takes her from behind.

Amparo choked and sprayed half a mouthful of wine out through her nose. She wiped herself with a dishcloth, her eyes watery with laughter and shock.

—If your father-in-law ever comes at me with that, I’ll bite him —she said.

—That means he still hasn’t dared.

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, with a troubled expression.

—And you do those things... to my daughter?

—Only when she asks me to.

—My God. Who knows what else you do to her.

—The usual. Kiss her mouth, her neck, everything else.

She was silent for a moment, rolling the cup between her hands. I knew that was the crack I had to slip through, slowly, without frightening her.

—This conversation has gone too far already —she murmured, but she didn’t get up from the table.

—Are you afraid it might go a little farther still?

—Don’t disrespect me, I know you barely know me.

—I’m not disrespecting you. I thought maybe you’d like someone to look at you the way no one has for a long time.

She went serious. So serious that I thought she’d throw me out of the house. But then she poured herself another cup of wine, drank it down in one go, and set the cup down with a dull thud.

—Your father-in-law fucks me little and badly? —she repeated, as if speaking to herself—. You heard that this afternoon.

—I heard it. And I thought what a shame that is. Because I could spend the whole night doing it well.

Amparo closed her eyes. When she opened them, there was no anger left in them, just something more tired and hungrier at the same time.

—You’re a devil —she said softly.

—And you’ve been my obsession since the first day I saw you.

—I had a feeling.

***

I stood up and went around the table. She didn’t move away. I untied her bun and her black hair fell down her back, suddenly taking ten years off her. I kissed her slowly, tasting her first, and when she kissed me back I knew there was no turning back.

I slipped the straps of her dress down. Her skin was white and warm, her breasts heavy with dark areolas that hardened the moment I brushed them with my lips. Amparo breathed deeply, gripping the edge of the table, biting her lip to keep from making a sound out of habit, even though there was no one left in the house to hide from.

—I don’t know what that fool is going all the way across the border to look for —she murmured— when he’s got this at home.

—Is it really that good? —I asked.

—You tell me.

I sat her on the table, spread her knees, and knelt in front of her. I kissed the inside of her thighs, moving upward slowly, feeling her legs tremble. When I finally tasted her, she threw her head back and grabbed my hair with both hands, no longer pretending she didn’t like it.

—Stop —she said, but she was pressing herself against me—. Stop, devil.

I didn’t stop. I kept going with my tongue, slow and steady, until her whole body tightened, her thighs closing around my ears, and she came with a long moan that slipped between her teeth. When I let her go, her eyes were wet.

—I feel like a tramp —she said.

—You’re not. You’re just a woman who’d spent a long time waiting for someone to notice her.

She got down from the table, took my hand, and led me down the hallway to her bedroom.

—The kitchen is too hard for what’s left of the night —she said with half a smile—. And you know where the butter is.

No more needed to be said. It was a long night, the kind remembered in silence for years. At dawn, while she pretended to sleep, I promised myself that this wouldn’t end there.

***

The other half of my obsession was named Carmen, my wife’s sister. One Sunday afternoon I was coming back from football in my old, rattling Renault when I found her walking alone along the roadside, crying. I stopped and opened the door for her.

—What’s wrong, Carmen?

—Víctor sent me home —she said through tears—. He wanted to see a western and I wanted a love story. We argued and he stayed with his ex-girlfriend, who was in the same screening as him.

—Then you left him a clear path, woman.

—You think so?

—Of course I do. By now they’re not in any cinema.

Carmen burst into tears again. She was dark-haired, thin, wearing a blue dress that fell below her knees and her hair tied back in a ponytail. I turned off onto a forestry track and stopped the car under the pines, where not a soul passed on a Sunday.

—A real woman doesn’t let herself be walked over —I told her, putting a hand on her knee.

She squeezed her legs together and blushed.

—What are you doing? I’m an honorable woman.

—I know. But you’re also the most beautiful woman in this village, and no one ever tells you that.

Carmen turned her face away, but not my hand. I took an old blanket from the car, spread it on the grass, and sat down.

—I just want to talk —I lied halfway—. Didn’t you once tell your friend that you’d like to do with another man everything you don’t dare do with Víctor?

—Who told you that?

—A bird. Is it a lie?

She sat down beside me on the blanket, hugging her knees. It took her a while to speak.

—It’s not a lie —she finally admitted—. But you’re my sister’s husband.

—Today I’m nobody’s husband. Today I’m just a man who’s spent years looking at you without daring to.

I kissed her. Carmen didn’t kiss me back at first, rigid, her eyes closed. Then, very slowly, her lips gave way. I untied her ponytail and her hair fell over her shoulders. I pulled down the zipper of her dress and let it drop to her waist.

—This is wrong —she whispered.

—Then tell me to stop.

She didn’t say it.

I kissed her breasts, small and firm, the pink areolas hardening under my tongue. Carmen lay back on the blanket, her elbows dug into the earth, and when I lifted her dress and slid her underwear aside, she was already wet. I tasted her slowly, unhurriedly, and she bit the back of her hand so she wouldn’t scream among the pines. She came trembling, her heels sinking into the grass.

—We shouldn’t —she panted, but she was reaching for me with her hands.

She got on top of me. She started slowly, not wanting to look at me, as if that made it count less. But her body betrayed her: her hips found a rhythm, she sought my mouth, kissed me with a rage and a desire that didn’t belong to an honorable woman. She was no longer trying to get back at Víctor. She was after herself, after what she had spent years denying.

When she came, she shook all over me, clutching my shoulders as if afraid of falling. I held her by the waist and let myself go with her, both of us panting under the pines, far from the village and everything else.

Afterward she stayed lying on her back, looking up at the treetops, smoking a cigarette I lit for her.

—Why am I not ashamed to be naked in front of you? —she asked.

—Because I’m naked too. And because you’ve wanted to do it for a long time.

—You’re a shameless man.

—I know. But I’ve been your shameless man for one afternoon.

Carmen stubbed the cigarette out in the damp earth and turned toward me.

—This can’t happen again —she said.

—Of course not —I answered.

We both knew we were lying. And as I drove her back to the village, the engine rattling along the forestry track, I thought of Amparo waiting for me in her kitchen, of Carmen looking at me differently now, and of how easy it had been to turn an obsession into a habit. Some men spend their whole lives dreaming of what’s forbidden. I had learned to sit at the table with it.