Read Online Perla by Carolina de Robertis - Free Book Online

worries, that’s all.” She said it soothingly, almost in a purr, and I could see him at the other end of the room, pouring them drinks. “So you don’t need anything?”
    “No.”
    “Good. We miss you. I wish you’d come.”
    But Mamá, then who would stay home to water the ghost? “I couldn’t miss the start of classes.”
    “Right. Well, maybe next time.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Call if you need anything, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    “Take care of yourself, Perlita.”
    I hung up. The sun hovered at the window, reticent to fill the room. I thought of my parents in Punta del Este, enjoying the sun and the food, forgetting their troubles. That’s what my mother always said about it: Punta del Este is where we go to forget our troubles. There was a time when I was very small, long before Romina, when I had no idea what she could be referring to, what troubles my Mamá and Papá might face. All I knew was that when we took the ferry to Uruguay, troubles remained miraculously bound to the shores of Argentina, unable to cross the waters, waiting for our return. Whatever we might be escaping from, I’d feel relieved to be doing so, our family taking refuge in a high-rise apartment that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean.
    For me, the best of Punta del Este was not the boutiques, the brazen yachts in the harbor, the waves crowded with people, or thebustling restaurants to which Mamá wore her most elegant summer dresses every night. It was that hour when twilight began to run its lightest fingertips over the beach, whispering of the impending dark, I know, you don’t believe it, or don’t want to believe it, but it’s coming . At that hour, my father would usually suggest we go for a walk. I’d always say yes, and my mother occasionally did, but more often she’d say, No, you two go on. I always preferred it when we two went on. We’d walk along the damp sand near the water, not talking, I rooting for sea-shells and then jogging to keep up. Around us, other families would splash and play or start to fold their towels and umbrellas. Not every group had children in it, but the ones that did usually had several, and you could see them running through the foam together or bickering over plastic spades. Not everybody built their sand castles alone, like I did. We were a small family, just the three of us, no brothers or sisters, no aunts or uncles living nearby, but at that age I never thought to see us as incomplete. It was just the way we were. A constellation of three stars, and I the faint one, like the pinprick at the tip of Orion’s sword. What shape we might have made among the heavens, who can say.
    On our walks, I thought about how it would be if we kept walking, beyond the little peninsula of Punta del Este, along the edge of Uruguay, all the way to the country’s end. A perfect place to start from, since the town sat right at the formal border between the Río de la Plata and the Atlantic Ocean, like a guard watching their bodies mix. If we walked with the water on our left, we would trace the shore of the wide river and eventually wind our way back to Argentina. With the water on our right, it would not be river but ocean, and we’d end up in Brazil. I always asked to walk with the water on our right. Of course, to reach another country the walk would have to be extremely long. It would take days, or maybe months, which was almost the same thing as forever. I liked the idea of perpetuating the walk forever, or at least until the last of my father’s sadness had been shaken out by our steps. You are my light, he’d sometimes say when I ran upto him with a particularly beautiful seashell. I had to time this at the right moment, so it wasn’t a bother to him, but a welcome interruption of his mood. When I succeeded, he would hold my palm in his as he admired the shell, paused on the beach, commenting on its pattern, its color, its size. Look at that swirl along the edge, how lovely. And such a nice pink, so deep,