Antonia

Antonia

Antonia was my lover’s wife. My first encounter with Antonia was at a fiesta at Hacienda Pinilla, her ancestral home. I recall, with some embarrassment, the audacity of my arrival since Antonia knew that I was having an affair with Hugo.

While I was young and defiant of social rules, the feeling of apprehension lay beneath the surface of my nonchalant demeanour. I knew Antonia wouldn’t make a scene since she was a Tica,  inclined to confrontation. Not only was she confident in her position as the wife of Hugo Guiterez Pinilla, a wealthy landowner; she also knew the value of her status as mother to five children.

When I entered her house, Antonia didn’t take notice of me, but I had the keen sense that she felt my presence. It was some time before she glanced in my direction, as if to say that she didn’t consider me to be a serious threat. When she did, I could see calm determination flashing in her eyes. She took another half hour before she broke free of her admiring guests to welcome me.

If I was unsure of my presence there, I was equally determined not to show it. The casa overflowed with people and the French doors opened to the softly lit verandas that surrounded the house. A mariachi band played poolside, and I recognized other foreigners gathered beside the barbecue pit. As I casually walked in their direction, I felt the hand of Lucia Pinilla on my arm.

“It would be best if you left now,” she said in perfectly clipped English.

Lucia was the oldest daughter of the family and obviously protective of her mother. She was at university in San Jose and only ten years my junior. Hugo introduced us when we accidentally met at a local restaurant. She had been polite but icy, which was understandable. Hugo kidded her about her unfriendly manner, saying he hoped she was mature enough to accept the situation gracefully. While I understood the cultural differences, I didn’t feel the need to be accepted by his haughty daughter.

“Lucia, nice to see you again. I think you’ll find that I’m on the guest list. Your father invited me,” I said, in my sweetest, most annoying voice. “Where is he, by the way?”

Without answering, Lucia turned on her stylish heels and disappeared into the house. It wasn’t that I was insensitive to her feelings, or at least not completely. It was simply that I was a self centered, young woman looking for love in all the wrong places. It didn’t seem that way then, and the problem as I saw it, was Hugo, not me. It was also a time in my life when it was easy to blame others.

Hugo was an amusing combination of old school ways and a deliberate vision to the future. Culturally, he was raised to believe it was his right to have as many women as he wanted. As far as Antonia was concerned, she was his wife for life. He told me that from the beginning. He had every intention of treating her with the utmost respect. He loved the mother of his children and gave her anything she wanted as a measure of his affection. Antonia was a Costa Rican; she was aware that her own father was accorded the same male privileges, by her mother, as she gave Hugo. She understood, even if she didn’t like the presence of Hugo’s other women, that men had different needs. (Personally, I thought that was bullshit.)

Hugo had never fallen in love with any of his girlfriends no matter how beautiful or young they were. He understood the necessity of keeping lust separate from love. He was respected for how he ran his life whether it was within his immediate family, or his business. People loved his sense of humour and fairness. Always reliable, he extended help when someone needed it. He was humble when he could have been a pompous ass. Charming, and highly intelligent, he had just the right combination of power, money, and sensuality to attract most women, including me.
I was scanning the party scenery looking for him when I heard her soft melodious voice.

“Yes, Señora Cameron, you are definitely as beautiful as my husband said. Welcome to Hacienda Pinilla,” said Antonia.

“Señora, thank-you. Please call me Marni,” I answered, trying valiantly to keep from staring at Antonia’s face. At fifty, she didn’t appear the least bit dowdy in the way I had hoped. Immediately, I wished I had dressed better and put on nail polish.

“Marni, do you think we could have a private conversation? It won’t take long,” she whispered, steering me toward the library.

I followed like an errant child, for what I imagined to be a scolding, but instead she smiled kindly, putting her arm around my shoulder. She was in control.

“Marni, we needn’t be unpleasant to one another. I love my husband, and I understand how young women, like you, are attracted to him. In your affair with Hugo, please be discreet. I, in turn, will always be polite to you. I do not feel threatened by you because Hugo promised me, long ago, that he would never leave me. He keeps his promises. I am concerned that you, my dear, will be hurt. As long as you know that you are only a passing fancy, you can enjoy your time with him, and leave gracefully when it is over.”

“Let’s get one thing straight, Señora. I’m not ‘only’ a passing fancy. I’m an independent woman. I’m not looking to be anyone’s wife. I like my freedom. I don’t need Hugo’s money or power, and he can be the one to leave whenever he wants. I’ve never believed in holding someone who doesn’t want to be with me.”

“Then we understand each other perfectly. Let’s join the others.”

Hugo never left Antonia. She remained in the hacienda and in his heart to the day she died. I know because I held Hugo in my arms while he cried for his lost Antonia. It was perhaps, an odd arrangement that we had with one another over the years, but in its strangeness, there grew something indefinable and rare. That night in her library, I would never have imagined what Antonia would require of me. Nor did Antonia have any idea what I was capable of giving.

In the beginning of my life with Hugo, I was his diversion. He never had a foreigner as a girlfriend, and I amused him from that point of view. I was unlike anyone he had ever known, and not always in a positive way. For the first time in his life, he had a woman who rode horseback with him on the finca, matched his beers in the bars, and didn’t stand for any macho shit. I swore like most liberated 33 year olds, mostly for effect, and he found it humorous. What captivated him most was that I didn’t need him. I had my own income and friends.

“I don’t want you to go to the beach, partying with those people,” Hugo said one day, when I was on my way to Samara.

“Well, I don’t want you to spend Christmas with your family!” I shouted back.

After the first 6 months, the relationship took a different path. We wanted more of each other. I believe that Hugo never intended to fall in love with me, and he certainly fought it, just as I resisted falling in love with him. By the time Christmas arrived, I was a whining bitch demanding that he be with me. All he would promise was a quick visit Christmas Eve to bring me my present.

“What do you think of her?” he asked, as he unloaded a spectacular Andalusia mare.

I was all over him, laughing and crying at the same time, and kissing his relieved face. Always generous, Hugo was a master of the psyche. He knew how much I loved animals and the horse was a thoughtful gift in more ways than one.

“We will keep her at the finca and you can visit her anytime you want,” he said, with a wink.

I didn’t encroach on Antonia’s Christmas by visiting the mare. I was sad and lonely that holiday, but I felt I needed to respect her feelings. She must have known by such an extravagant gift, that I had grown more important to Hugo.

After the holidays, I went to Hacienda Pinilla to ride the horse and see Hugo. Sometimes he was there, and sometimes he was not, but regardless, Antonia always had a cool drink for me when I finished riding. In the beginning, it was her sense of hospitality that offered me a chair on the veranda. We hid behind polite conversations. As the months passed, we grew more comfortable with each other. Our talks began to take on meaning.

“Marni, you American women are always so open and straight forward. I think that is one of the things Hugo loves about you. You say what you think. I was shocked the other day when you told him to fuck off. I don’t think anyone has dared to ever say such a thing to Hugo. I could see that he was thinking about how to respond. He might have been offended, as I was for him, but he saw you were putting him in his place with a bit of staunch humour. It made me aware of how very different we are culturally.”

We were different, Antonia and I, but rather than insist that our individual ways were the right ones, we began to acknowledge the other’s point of view. It was never my intention to liberate Antonia from her antiquated rules of etiquette. Who was I to say they were ridiculous? If they sustained her and kept a tranquil calm in a difficult situation, then she should keep her ways. We all have crutches. What Antonia taught me was to be more accepting. I considered myself broadminded, but only as far as it didn’t affect me. It is so easy in hindsight, to laugh at one's short sightedness.

I had to accept that Hugo placed his family first, and if I came up against that essentially beautiful value, I would lose. I didn’t like playing second fiddle, but I came late to the orchestra. Antonia, on the other hand, realized that Hugo loved me too. We both had the good sense not to ask whom he loved best. It wasn’t going to be a competition between us because neither of us wanted to lose.

“Do you think love is ever wrong?” I asked Antonia.

“The emotion itself, no. We can’t ever apologize for our feelings. Feelings are truth. Perhaps we can be wrong with what we do with those feelings,” she answered.

“You mean it wasn’t wrong for me to fall in love with Hugo, but it was wrong of me to act on it?” I asked, not facetiously, but with interest.

“I can’t answer that for you, Marni. I can’t even answer if it was wrong of Hugo to act on his love for you,” she replied honestly.

It was obvious to me that Antonia hadn’t wronged anyone. She was the innocent victim, and it was up to me to be gracious when Hugo deferred to her needs before mine. It was a monstrously wrenching idea to absorb, but it was necessary if I was to continue to be Hugo’s lover. I wasn’t good at it in the beginning. Over the years it became easier, especially as I grew to admire and like Antonia.

“Do you think it odd for your lover’s wife to invite you for Christmas?” asked Antonia with a smile.

“Yes, but thank-you. I would love to come,” I said, tears welling in my eyes.

There was never a more gracious woman than Antonia. She included me in the other family gatherings over the years. I was Godmother to their oldest son’s daughter, and I sat with Antonia, in the hospital, when her youngest grandchild was dying.

It would be wrong to suggest that our lives were unaffected by loving the same man. We both suffered; we did it silently. If the pueblo talked, they did it quietly. Antonia and I put up a consolidated front. We shopped together; we cried together; we laughed together. We took solace in each other, discovering a sisterhood that surpassed anything we had with our own siblings.
***
“Merry Christmas, mi amor,” said Antonia on the ninth year. “Do you think we could have a private conversation in the library?”

We walked together arm in arm to the quiet room away from the celebration. Antonia seemed tired; she always put so much into preparing for the family. It was her greatest pleasure to have  everyone sit down together at her table. Her role as matriarch was her identity, and there wasn’t a person at the table who didn’t love her. In the library, she turned to me with some hesitation and spoke in Spanish.

“Estoy enferma,” she blurted out. “I have inoperable cancer, Marni.”

I stared with disbelief into her tear heavy eyes before I hugged her to me. It was dark and cool in the library, and for a moment, time stood still. Neither of us dared to speak, both of us afraid to ask the question in our heart. Each of us wanted a promise.

“Promise me that you will you let me look after you?” I asked, “I’m a good nurse,” I added, smiling through my tears.

“Yes, I would like that,” she answered. “Now you must promise me something too. When I am gone, I want you to look after Hugo. I want you to be the Señora of Hacienda Pinilla.”

“Antonia, I promise if Hugo wants that too,” I answered.

It took Antonia 8 months to die. She did it as gracefully as she lived life. Only Hugo and I were allowed to see her pain and fear. We talked about all the things we were never able to discuss when she was healthy. Death is a great revealer.

“Hugo told me you never asked him to leave me. Why Marni?” she asked, one night close to the end.

“Oh, Antonia, how do I answer that? You are the most remarkable person I have ever met. You taught me to be gentler. I’ve loved you like a sister and a best friend. I couldn’t hurt you more than I already have. Why did you never ask Hugo to quit seeing me?”

“It is important to live for something rather than against something. I have lived for my family and not against you. If I had fought you, I might have lost Hugo and that would have meant losing the family as we knew it,” she said. “You came into the family and I accepted you for who you were. That had to include who you were to Hugo.”

The night that Antonia died, I slept in the bed she had shared with Hugo. I held him in my arms as he cried for his lost Antonia. I knew she would have wanted it that way.

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