Guillermo fumes. From a legal point of view, he knows that Rosa Esther is being uncommonly accommodating. He’s well aware of Guatemalan statutes regarding divorce and culpability. He knows when he’s been beaten and also when he has been given a pass, a good settlement. What upsets him is that there is nothing left to negotiate with her, not even her refusal to accept the fact that anything good, other than the children, has come from their marriage.
He cannot say anything in his own defense.
Rosa Esther is through talking. “Could you start the car? I want to go home.”
* * *
So they drive home together like a civilized, uncoupled couple. Rosa Esther moves into Andrea’s bedroom, full of posters and pictures and pink stuffed animals. She stays in Guatemala for two weeks, packing up the kids’ things and saying goodbye to her sister — who promises to visit her within the month — and all her friends before flying off to Mexico.
There are no big blow-ups; there’s no more terrain to contest. In fact, there is no need for lawyers. Rosa Esther has brought her own divorce contract from Mexico and only needs Guillermo to copy the terms on the Guatemalan writ for divorce so that their separation can become official.
Pastor Huggins is more than willing to prepare a legal Unitarian divorce in which both parties are rendered guiltless as subjects who have come to realize that they have irreconcilable differences. Rosa Esther does not want to create a scandal by accusing him formally of infidelity. Since divorce is illegal in Guatemala, she is willing to have their marriage annulled under the proviso that they were never in love, and that their marriage was only contractual in the eyes of man, not sacred in the eyes of God.
Guillermo, naturally, agrees.
Every night, while Rosa Esther is finalizing her affairs, he calls the children on Skype. The phone conversations end up with Andrea in tears, but Ilán is more stoic, as if there has merely been a soccer trade or the aging star of the team has been axed. Guillermo promises frequent visits to Mexico City. He does not want to lose them, or so he says.
chapter twelve. an arabic ballad: habiba, sharmoota
When Guillermo tells Maryam what has happened, she is very much surprised. All along she has assumed that she would have to be the one to take the first step if there was ever a chance for her and Guillermo to be together. Now Rosa Esther has acted and Maryam gives her lover the necessary space to figure things out. It is a difficult period because so much has to be done quickly, and there is no time to get together.
Within a week of Rosa Esther’s return, Guillermo puts their apartment up for sale. Property in Zone 14 is selling like hotcakes because there are armed guards patrolling the residential areas and rich Guatemalans want security above all else.
He lists the apartment at four hundred thousand dollars. Guatemala is flush with drug money, and within two days he finds a buyer who will pay in cash.
Guillermo gives Rosa Esther her half and then signs a lease for a compact two-bedroom apartment in a new nine-floor rental building in Las Cañadas. As the first occupant of the building, Guillermo gets a large discount on his rent for the first year. He likes that it is a rentaclass="underline" it reflects the impermanence that characterizes his new life.
Rosa Esther hires a moving company, which will transport the kids’ belongings and some pieces of furniture to Mexico City by land. On the day of the move, she insists that Guillermo be at work: she doesn’t want him around to interrupt any emotions she might want to express.
When he comes home, he discovers he has been left a bed, a bureau, and a couple of end tables and lamps. The living room has one chair, the dining room is completely empty except for the pole lamp in the back corner and a modern crystal chandelier in the center, both leftovers from his father’s store. The walls have shadows where hangings and paintings once were displayed.
With no family to fill up his nights, Guillermo is lonely. But he is stuck here for another week before he can move into his new, smaller quarters. He is surprised by his feelings of loss, something he hadn’t anticipated.
* * *
One late afternoon, days after Rosa Esther has left for Mexico, Guillermo and Maryam are lying in bed in the apartment in the Plazuela España drinking Chivas on ice and munching almonds after having made love. Their sex is always an unpredictable adventure, with a newness that Guillermo no longer questions, but clearly loves. Maryam swears she has been faithful to Samir all these years, but as she has aged, she has become aware of her increased sexual drive and her desire to have it quenched. Her years of reading Playgirl have helped her realize what she wants in bed.
“What’s next?” he asks, caressing her hair.
Maryam looks at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”
“What are we going to do?”
“That’s a big question. Have you even told my father that Rosa Esther left you?”
Guillermo stops stroking her hair. “I told him that my marriage was ending. I didn’t have the nerve to tell him that Rosa Esther had moved to Mexico.”
“Well, I can’t tell him!”
“Next time we meet I’ll tell him. Though I’m sure it won’t make him happy. Your father likes order.”
“And what am I supposed to do with Samir? Am I to continue happily married?”
“I hope not,” Guillermo says, tipping his drink at her. Maryam is lying with her head on his lap, looking up at him, holding her own glass in one hand. She sits up whenever she wants to have a sip, which is what happens now.
“You don’t love him.”
“I don’t, it’s true. But I am afraid of him,” she says, taking a sip of her drink and stirring the ice with her tongue. “He may seem calm to strangers, but he has a violent temper. I’ve seen how he screams at the workers in his store. At times he isn’t even aware of it. And he sometimes screams at me.”
“Do you think he would ever hit you? If that’s the case, then we should tell him together.”
“That, Guillermo, is a horrible idea. It’s one thing for me to tell him privately, another to have his replacement bearing witness as I tell him. I mean, how would you feel if you were told by Rosa Esther and her new lover that she would be leaving you?”
“I would want to kill them both — on the spot.”
“Exactly. It would be better if I told him. I just need to find the right moment.”
“When?”
“Not now.” She is thinking. “Maybe in a couple of weeks.”
“Maryam!”
“You have to give me a few weeks.”
* * *
Ten days after Rosa Esther has left, Guillermo gives up the furnished flat in the Plazuela España building. Why pay the extra rent when he is now living alone and Maryam can visit him in his apartment at any time? He never thought he would escape his marriage; furthermore, he never thought he would be interested in living together with another woman. If he did ever leave Rosa Ester, he’d always imagined living alone.
But the weeks pass. When he tells Ibrahim that his wife has left him with Ilán and Andrea and is now living in Mexico, Guillermo is surprised at his client’s response: Ibrahim is taken aback, but asks no questions, says nothing other than to offer his condolences. He must suspect that there is more than a friendship between his daughter and his lawyer and is wondering what might happen next.
Maryam says nothing to Samir. Guillermo is incensed by the lack of progress. He trusts Maryam, but wonders why she’s so hesitant to simply tell Samir that she no longer wants to live with him — it’s not as if they have kids together.