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waiters was into her or if, on the other hand, his being twenty-something was an insurmountable gap. The gap between what one desires and what one can get, between what one is and what one wants to be. Just like when she invited Dani to her birthday party even though there was no birthday party.
    That Friday she had walked home peeling apart the cardboard corner of her school folder. She arrived convinced she should call him to cancel the invitation she had made just minutes before. But she found a note from her father next to some toast crumbs. Grandma Aurora was in the hospital. She went there right away and so avoided the temptation of regret.
    Don’t be frightened, was the first thing her grandmother told her. In two hours, they were going to put in a corrective prosthesis, a plastic solution to the aging of her bones, but she seemed calm and in good spirits. Some women put in plastic lips or breasts, well, I’m getting a hip.
    It’s routine, the operation is just routine, repeated her grandfather. Right, Lorenzo? Isn’t that what the doctor told us? ButSylvia’s father didn’t answer; he was pacing around the room, as if in a cage. Lorenzo was sweating and complained about the heat. I found out late this morning, because I’ve been on job interviews and had my cell phone turned off, he justified.
    The doctor was tall and had a face lined with red veins. He spoke to himself, as if he were going over his to-do list instead of discussing her condition with the family. Sylvia noticed a reddish stain on his white coat, but it wasn’t blood; it looked more like chorizo. After the operation, when they brought her back up to the room, Grandma looked weak as a wounded bird. Grandpa insisted that Sylvia and Lorenzo leave, go home. She’s still under the anesthesia, there’s no point in you being here, he told them.
    Sylvia and her father went home. She made some dinner. Lorenzo combed through the news, channel after channel. Call your mother and tell her about it, he said to Sylvia. She called her later, on her cell. She could hear the sound of conversations in the background; she was in a restaurant. Pilar asked for the number of the hospital room and then they talked about spending a weekend together soon. They said good-bye affectionately. Are you okay? her mother asked her. Sylvia said she was.
    Her mother had left her father five months earlier. Sylvia never imagined that would happen. For her, her parents were a unit, two pieces fitted forever. When it all fell apart, she understood that they had shared the remnants, just the remnants, of a marriage, that they only spoke about insignificant day-to-day stuff, that they were barely intimate even though they shared a home. Pilar made the decision one day in March. It was raining in gusts and she confided in her daughter before telling her husband. I’m going to leave your father, Sylvia. They hugged and talked for a long time. Love fades without you even realizingit’s happening, Pilar told her. She explained that she had been able to tolerate the slow desolation, she had gotten used to surviving among the ruins of what was once love, but it became an unbearable weight the day she discovered passion again, for another person. Life becomes unlivable and the lie starts to hurt. I’m forty-two years old, don’t you think I deserve another chance?
    Sylvia didn’t have to struggle to understand her mother, in spite of the unexpectedness of the situation. But instead of conveying that to her mother, without really knowing why, the first thing she said was, poor Papá. Pilar started crying, very slowly, with her lips clenched. She had fallen in love with the head of her office in Madrid, Santiago. She said his name the way you only say the name of someone you love. Her mother worked in a company devoted to the planning of trade fairs and cultural and social events. In the last couple of months, Pilar’s traveling and after-hours work obligations had increased; now