The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende Page A

“stay in my trench” and not interfere in the problems with Willie’s children, who in truth were the principal cause of our fights. So Willie gives a new car to his son, who has recently been expelled from school and is floating around in a cloud of LSD and marijuana? Not my problem. And he crashes it against a tree two weeks later? I stay in my trench. Willie buys him a second car, which he also destroys? I bite my tongue. Then his father rewards him with a van and explains to me that it is a safer, stronger vehicle. “Of course. That way when he runs over someone, at least he won’t leave him wounded, he’ll kill him outright,” I reply with glacial calm. I lock myself in the bathroom, take an icy shower, and recite all the curse words in my Spanish repertoire, then spend a few hours making necklaces in Tabra’s workshop.
    The therapy was very helpful. Thanks to it and my writing, I survived an assortment of trials, though I did not always come out the winner, and my love for Willie was saved. Fortunately, though, the family melodrama continued, because if not, what the devil would I write about?

A Girl with Three Mothers
    J ENNIFER WAS ALLOWED TO SEE S ABRINA in supervised visits every two weeks, and with every one I could see how Willie’s daughter’s health was deteriorating. She looked worse every time I saw her, as I wrote my mother and my friend Pía. In Chile they both had made donations to Padre Hurtado’s foundation; he is the only Chilean saint that even Communists venerate because he can work miracles, and they were praying for Jennifer to be cured of her addictions. In truth, only divine intervention could help her.
    And here I want to pause briefly to introduce Pía, my forever friend, the woman who is like my Chilean sister, whose loyalty has never wavered, not even when we were separated by my exile. Pía comes from a very conservative Catholic family that celebrated the military coup of 1973 with champagne, but I know that on at least two occasions she hid victims of the dictatorship in her house. It is rare that we speak about politics, for we don’t want anything to come between us. After I took my small family to Venezuela, we kept in touch by letter, and now we visit each other in Chile and in California, where she likes to come for vacations, and so we have kept alive a friendship that by now has a diamantine clarity. We love each other unconditionally and when we’re together we create four-handed paintings and giggle like schoolgirls. Do you remember that Pía and I used to joke about how one day we would be two merry widows and would live together in a garret, gossiping and making our crafts? Well, Paula, we don’t talk about that anymore because Gerardo, her husband, the kindest and most guileless man in this world, died one morning like any other when he was supervising work in one of his fields. He sighed, bowed his head, and went to the other world without a good-bye. Pía can’t be consoled even though she is surrounded by her clan: four children, five grandchildren, and scores of relatives and friends with whom she is constantly in touch, as is the custom in Chile. She devotes herself to charities of every sort, takes care of her family, and works with her oils and brushes in her free time. In moments of sadness, when she can’t stop crying over Gerardo, she closes her door and creates small works of art with scraps of cloth, including icons embroidered with beads and precious stones that look as if they’d come from the treasure troves of ancient Constantinople. This Pía who loved you so much had a tiny chapel built in her garden and planted a rose in your memory. There beside that luxuriant rosebush she talks with Gerardo and you, and often prays for Willie’s children and for his granddaughter.
    Rebecca, the social worker, organized the routine for Sabrina’s visits with her mother. It wasn’t