The mystery of the red car

One autumn Sunday my grandmother invited mom and me to her house to watch a movie together. A girl's plan. Grandpa and dad were out, they would have gone to watch one of those soccer games that were unthinkable to miss and that had been "pre-warming" them since the previous days. It was raining hard and the few leaves that were left on the trees were doing their last will and dance before becoming part of a wilted and wet carpet on the sidewalks, together with the elongated reflection of the street lamps on the wet asphalt. Mom brought a box of Grandma's favorite éclaires au chocolat and I was glad to have been able to debut my rain boots on the ride from my house to hers. Those were the years we lived in Barcelona and I loved having them so close.

I will never forget how my grandmother opened that majestic modernist entrance door. She was dressed as if for one of her special receptions. Elegant in a floor-length silk dress with exotic flowers, and she had exquisitely styled her silver hair (had my grandmother gone to the hairdresser on a Sunday? Had she called the stylist who came to do her hair for special occasions? On a Sunday? To watch a movie with us? Was I supposed to feel bad about wearing my rain boots?).

Mom, after kissing her, said a phrase that I would understand later, but at that moment it only made me feel even more lost. She said, "Oh, Mother, I didn't know it was a red car today," and disappeared down the corridors.

Red car? Did you say red car? What was clear was that I was missing something.

My grandmother bent down, looked into my eyes, hers were shining much brighter than usual, and after kissing me (she had also perfumed herself for the occasion) she said: -Manuela, honey, leave your boots here at the door.

And I followed her in my socks through the house to the TV room. The silk of her dress fluttered in the corridors and rooms making a slight noise. A very subtle fluttering in time with the walk of her high heels - a low heel, for the occasion - she looked like a movie star!

- Grandma - I asked her on the way - Which is the red car - but she didn't answer me. I made a mental list of our cars: ours, hers and those of acquaintances, but I didn't remember any red one.

Then mom joined us again. Wait a minute... Had she put on make-up? Yes! By all accounts my mother had gone to make herself beautiful and her eyes were also shining in a disturbing way. What the hell was happening to the women in my family?

They brought us the traditional tea in my favorite tea set, in my grandmother's house they knew it: for Manuela, the one with the animals, and the eclaires au chocolat that I attacked the moment the three of us were alone again, but none of them accompanied me in this act so much ours of enjoying the French sweets. They were in another place, in another tune.

- Hurry up, Mom," Mom said to Grandma.

And it was obvious that she was very much in favor of speeding up the act, because she hit "play" and turned off the lights on the side table with a single click. We were left in darkness.

 The answer to my question "What the hell was happening to the women in my family?" came within a few minutes, 7 minutes after the lights went out. We started watching a movie whose first image is a red sunset. A woman is talking, but I can't connect with what she is saying. The first sentence I retain and catches me is: "I had a farm in Africa". At minute 7 a blond actor appears, and my mother and grandmother sigh in chorus. From then on they had the same reaction every time the beautiful blond actor's face came on the screen.

And it must be something genetic because I also began to hold my breath every time he appeared before us. I don't know if it was on that occasion or on other similar ones, when the three of us were alone in front of the handsome actor, that I stopped being a spectator and wanted to be her, the woman who fell into his arms in front of that landscape.

Today I still dream of having poetry recited to me while my hair is being washed at sunset. This is how all passions should be, or perhaps I am too demanding. That afternoon of fine autumn rain, too dark to be so early, gave me the gift of a longing that I shared with the women in my family, and that somehow awakened in me the woman I am. I don't think I confessed it at the time, but on the way home only one sentence was running through my mind, with the landscapes of Africa as a backdrop: "I want to be kissed by Robert Redford".

And this phrase, somewhat vulgar and unconfessable, was the leitmotiv of my first -first of many- trip to Africa. It could be said that that autumn afternoon, and thanks to him, my carnal, visceral, torn and insatiable love for that wild continent was born.

And also that afternoon was my first of many trips in a "red car", as mother and grandmother called it as a password. The red car is nothing more than an internal code between mother and daughter (and now also granddaughter) to treat themselves (and us) to an afternoon with Robert Redford (red, red. Ford, car). So simple. So feminine. So familiar.

This is how the most important stories of our lives begin.