The Aguero Sisters Read Online Free Page A

medieval courtyard, it momentarily defeats her.
    Still, she enjoys the view from the hill high above the Hudson River, the hodgepodge of European monasteries that make up the Cloisters’ main structure. There are frescoes and tapestries and, in the formal gardens, dozens ofplants commonly found during the Middle Ages. Constancia frequently spots crows and jays in the foliage, occasionally a chipping sparrow trilling its long monotone.
    She and her husband head west on Fifty-third Street until they reach their apartment building on the edge of the river, iridescent with ribbons of oil. Constancia has grown accustomed to the river’s lethargy, to the pustular smokestacks on its far banks.
    In Cuba, she’d worked near the water, as a receptionist for the Cruz family’s shipping line. The foyer, decorated with an oversized compass and vintage nautical gear, overlooked Havana harbor and its comforting pattern of ships. Without checking her watch or consulting her calendar, Constancia could tell the time of day and the day of the month by the particulars of the flotilla outside.
    She was still in the habit of walking home along the Malecón then, humming in time with the aimless waves on the other side. She and her father had walked this stretch so often in 1949, the year after her mother died, that Constancia knew the wall’s indentations inch by inch. Her father rarely spoke during their walks, but something in the shiver of his stride made Constancia fear he would jump over the wall without saying good-bye.
    There is leftover carne asada
for dinner, the remains of a pineapple crumb cake. Constancia serves Heberto in the kitchen, pours him a glass of milk. She cooks up a fresh batch of rice for herself and steams two zucchini until she can mash them to a pulp with her fork. Heberto studies pamphlets for a motorboat and fishing gear he plans to buy once they settle in Key Biscayne. This from a man, Constancia thinks, who doesn’t even take his socks off at the beach. During their vacation in Rio de Janeiro, Heberto sat amidstall the fleshly splendors of Ipanema reading the latest issue of
Cigar Connoisseur
.
    Constancia turns on the radio to her favorite show,
La Hora de los Milagros
, and ponders the latest news: a rash of Virgin sightings in and around the tourist hotels of Cozumel; a Chilean pig rancher with unmistakable stigmata on his palms; a long-barren woman who finally conceived a boy at Lake George.
    During the call-in portion of the program, a man from the Bronx reports in with another miracle. He says his son had a pet chicken named Wifredo that flew backward into a pot of boiling water to save the boy’s life. “You see,” the man explained, “my son was dying of pneumonia, and Wifredo made the ultimate sacrifice in turning himself to soup. That broth is a miracle! We still have some in the freezer! Come and see for yourself!”
    Heberto is impatient with Constancia’s obsessions, characterizes the
milagros
as nothing more than freakish incidents grounded in perfectly logical explanations. He refutes statistics showing that New Jersey, hazily visible through their living room window, has the highest number of reported miracles of any state in the nation. That doesn’t count Puerto Rico, of course, but Constancia knows it’s just a territory.
    Constancia dismisses her husband’s skepticism. She knows in her heart that miracles arrive every day from the succulent edge of disaster, defying nature, impossible to resist. When Constancia was only five months old, her mother disappeared without a word and didn’t return for two and a half years. Her father hired a nanny for Constancia, a mulatta from Regla, who carefully hid her disregard for science. Beatriz Ureña inducted little Constancia into the worthier mysteries of life.
    â€¢ • •
    After dinner
, Constancia retreats to her high-watt vanity mirror, sniffing the ruin that lies waiting for her