She finished off her cachaça and noticed that Pearl had left hers virtually untouched. The glass was still warm from Pearl’s hand. Elizabeth held it, but she did not raise it to her lips. She was testing her resolve.
Why on earth had she brought up Bob Seaver’s suicide? No doubt her recent break from romantic attachment had refreshed that old well of guilt. So many years ago, and yet how clearly, and alarmingly, Bob still came to mind. A lovely, earnest boy, whom she couldn’t possibly have married. That would not have done him any favors, though at the time she hadn’t been able to explain to him why—she hadn’t understood it clearly herself. Of course, he’d believed his polio to be the reason for her rejection, his own infirmity rather than hers; any normal self-loathing person would have. She’d had to be so firm, but she hadn’t been firm enough to prevent the second proposal, and refusing that was the absolute worst. And then that awful postcard arriving just days after his death, with the one line scrawled across it. Go to hell, Elizabeth. The only request of his she’d been able to comply with. He’d be pleased to know that’s exactly where she had gone.
Gone there on multiple occasions, in fact. A repeat visitor, a regular tourist. She’d tried to have a normal life since then, a life of work, friends, love, but something in her was off. And yet the problem was not as easily identifiable—if, fortified by the cachaça, she could be so blunt with herself—as that she simply preferred intimacy with her own sex. Her experience with women was no less marred by disappointment and misunderstanding. Constant, Marjorie’s refrain: All you give is scraps. She couldn’t deny it. That was all she had to give, little scraps with a few words scribbled on them. Sometimes you found them on the floor where they’d fallen, gathering dust.
Well, well, well. Had things really changed so much? Here she was again, a woman drinking alone at a bar and laughing to herself. Thank God Pearl was crossing the street again, greens and fishtails sticking out of her bag, before she ordered another round.
“I’m cooking dinner tonight,” Pearl said. “You don’t have other plans, do you?”
Even if she had, Elizabeth said, she would cancel them instantly to spend the evening with Pearl and Victor. Then the world took a little slide sideways, as if the public conveyance on which Elizabeth rode had accelerated with a lurch. She said, “I think I’ll go home and have a rest first.”
4
She awoke in an unfamiliar room, disoriented. Her luggage, three pieces, lay open and rummaged through on the floor. It was some moments before Elizabeth recalled where she was, that she’d arrived the previous day in Rio, had passed the night in a smoke-filled samba club with Pearl and Victor. She had been dreaming of her mother. The two of them were both adults, roughly the same age, chatting over tea, just as she’d done with Mary and Pearl. It’s a good thing you didn’t perish in that fire, her mother said, and poured another cup for herself. She was wearing a purple dress.
Even while dreaming, Elizabeth had been appalled at her mother’s nonchalance. Yes, but you were supposed to have saved me! she wanted to shout. Now she rose from the bed and wandered into the bright, empty apartment. It was only a few minutes past eight and already hot as blazes. From the kitchen sink, Elizabeth splashed water on her face and the back of her neck. She opened the sliding glass door to the terrace, thinking a bit of sea breeze might cool things down, but outside it was even hotter.
The radio in the maid’s room behind the kitchen produced a low buzz. Lucinha? Rocinha? Elizabeth couldn’t remember her name, or even if they’d been formally introduced. She knew she ought to put on more clothes rather than drift around the apartment in her slip, in case the maid emerged, but it was simply too hot. Besides, she wouldn’t disturb Lucinha, nor Rocinha, for that matter. Preparing a cup of coffee was not outside her range of competence. It came out just as delicious as the cup she’d had yesterday, though honestly it was hard to screw up anything so inherently good. At last she spread out her papers and notes on the table, determined to finish a draft of the last review she was obliged to write.
She worked in her undergarments. It really was impossible any other way.
Before her journey, this review of Marianne Moore’s most recent poems had proved intractable. How did you write about the work of someone who had been as close to a mentor and poetical guide as you’d ever had? There was so much Elizabeth admired in her poetry, so much she was indebted to, and, frankly, so much that infuriated her. But the review was for the Times, and no one in her right mind said no to the New York Times. She’d spent more hours writing apologies to the editor explaining why the review was so late than she had on the review itself.
But now: two hours of good solid work, then it was time for another coffee.
The apartment was wonderful to write in, full of light, with that spectacular view, spare and modern. Lota’s hand was so evident, it made Elizabeth impatient to see her in person again. In New York, Lota had been fascinated by everything, books and art and fashion and politics and gardens and sewing. There was no end to what captured her interest; she’d wanted to see and do it all. You had to stand in awe of a woman with so much energy. Such a funny couple: Mary, the tortoise to Lota’s hare. The tortoise never won the race, though—that was pure fable.
Sipping her coffee at the window, Elizabeth watched a freighter pass out of the harbor’s mouth, heading toward open ocean. The landscape was too ludicrous, these mountains and islands jutting up everywhere, the ocean, the jungle, all those dark men running around on the beach kicking soccer balls, and the women with lovely caramel skin.
Alone in an exotic city, staring at the world from behind glass.
One night, sitting in the dark with Miss Breen on deck, Elizabeth had said, I lost my way for a while. She’d seemed to exhale the words, as naturally as breath, and then was unsure she’d spoken them at all. Miss Breen had simply murmured, Mmm. This last year or so had been possibly the worst ever, the very worst so far, but she had never contemplated killing herself. Drink, yes, suicide, no. Not as the solution. Even at her lowest, at her most self-despising, she’d been determined to emerge from the wreckage. But she’d gotten a glimpse. She understood now why some people arrived at the decision that all this stupidity, this stupid struggle, must cease.
She returned to the work. Pleased with the draft of the review, Elizabeth began to sketch out the poem she’d been working through in her mind during the train trip. The image of her and Miss Breen standing together on the ship’s deck, looking over Santos harbor. The feeling that had come over her as the tender approached, a hope for a new kind of life for herself—wasn’t that what travel was for? And the fear that she was not up to the task.
LOTA ANSWERED the phone, her voice husky, unexpectedly alluring. “Elizabeth,” she said. Direct, no dancing around with any pleasantries.
“What time tomorrow should I expect you in Rio?” Elizabeth asked, coming straight to the point as well.
“The architect has just arrived. We’re waiting for a delivery of materials this afternoon, for the roof.” There was a note of irritation in Lota’s voice. In the background, the shrieks of children, an adult admonishing them, clatterings and clangings, the life of a household.
“Is this not such a good time to come?” she said brightly, though she felt the collapse of some secret, inner hope.
“You’re welcome to come now. I can tell you how to take the bus. It’s quite simple.”
“I’m happy to postpone until it’s more convenient.”
“Come if you want. It’s up to you.”
Elizabeth wrote down the instructions for the bus, but she already knew she wouldn’t go to Samambaia. At least not today. She recognized something excessive about her desire to see Lota again, as well as in her disappointment when the prospect dimmed.
Pearl set her straight. “That’s a very Brazilian thing to say,” she advised when Elizabeth called. “They can be very loosey-goosey about things like this.”
Loozey-goozey, Lota will say later, rolli
ng the words around on her tongue, yes, we Brazilians can be very loozey-goozey.
“I did want to go, and Lota told me I was welcome.”
“Then you absolutely should,” Pearl said. “They invited you, and they meant it.”
“‘It’s up to you? Come if you want?’ If she really wanted me to come, she’d have said, ‘Darling, you absolutely must get your American behind up here this instant.’ That’s what I would have said.”
“Elizabeth, just go and call me when you get back.”
It was late afternoon by now, too late to depart. Dithering did make one lose opportunities. Action of any sort was the corrective.
Elizabeth left the apartment and began wandering through the streets with no destination in mind, turning here, turning there, whenever something caught her eye, a little park or shop. Shanties ascended the nearly vertical hillside that separated Copacabana from the rest of Rio, so close to the balconies of the apartment buildings that the rich and poor could practically shake hands. It really was a mad sort of place, half jungle—with bromeliads and orchids and tangles of vines in the branches above and ginger and flamboyan trees blooming furiously everywhere, so much green, and native people dancing to drumbeats from their radios—and half twentieth-century megalopolis, with the most modern skyscrapers of glass and steel and buses threatening to run you down every time you stepped off the curb.
That people wore hardly any clothes was beginning to seem sensible. You didn’t have to possess a body like a clothespin. The heat was infernal. It was crazy to be bound by the custom of clothing.
The sky began to spit sporadic raindrops, and just as Elizabeth ducked beneath the awning of a fruit-juice bar on a corner, the heavens opened up. She was instantly pressed against the humanity stranded there by the deluge, a businessman on one side, a twenty-year-old beauty in an extremely tight dress on the other. Elizabeth couldn’t help but notice that the skin around the girl’s eyes was perfectly unlined. It was remarkable. The girl caught Elizabeth staring, and she smiled. The placard over the bar listed the names of mysterious fruits: Abacaxi, Maracuja, Fruta de Conde. When the boy behind the counter spoke to her, she pointed to one and attempted to pronounce it. For a while she sipped the juice—deliciously tart—and watched Copacabana go by. The rain lessened, and her fellow refugees drifted from beneath the awning back into the street. When in doubt, Elizabeth thought happily, take action. That should be written on her hand in indelible ink. There was a moment after you’d arrived in a new place, after you’d lived there for a time—it didn’t matter where, as easily Paris as Mexico City—when the great map of it finally snapped into place in your mind. You no longer remembered the initial period when you hadn’t known precisely where you were, how you might be placed in relation to historical landmarks or the apartments of friends, or when it was really fifty-fifty if right or left would bring you to your destination. But Elizabeth loved that early time before the switch, when the place was still outside her grasp.You wandered in a maze, and every turn brought something new, a constant surprise.You didn’t know where the streets might lead you, you were constantly lost, but you didn’t mind, you had no reason not to feel lost, because of course you were lost, how could you not be?
She’d worried over nothing. In the morning, she’d take a bus to Samambaia. It would be an adventure, and what’s more, she’d bring an offering, something for the children, too. She’d bake a cake.
The rain ceased, and Elizabeth polished off her suco de maracuja. It was time to act like the tourist she was. She dug around in her purse for the Portuguese phrasebook, walked into a pharmacy, and asked, word by mispronounced word, and with many apologies, where was located a seller of dry goods.
It was hell not speaking the language. Later, recounting the episode to Lota, perhaps embellishing a bit to amuse her, Elizabeth will translate what she’d asked the young man at the dry-goods store as something like, Excuse me, sir, do I have a lighthouse? Yet somehow he understood the basics of her request, if not the precise quantities, and she walked home along Gustavo Sampaio street with an enormous bag of flour, at least a pound of sugar, a dozen eggs, baking powder, and coconut shavings. The rest she hoped to find at the apartment, and if not, she’d improvise. In the culinary arts, she had no lack of confidence.
The wind was picking up. Turning the corner of Lota’s building into a little plaza, she was hit by a wet blast square in the face, the force of it so powerful she felt it might pull off her dress. She got inside the apartment just as another storm broke.
To work in the kitchen while it rained had always been an unparalleled pleasure. The maid, whose name turned out to be Lucia, helped Elizabeth demystify the lighting of the oven, then made coffee for them both. Now she remembered what Mary had said: Lucia was from the north of Brazil, a superior human being. Neither could understand a word the other spoke, so they sipped their coffees and communicated through the ingredients. Skeptical at first, Lucia began to hum in approval as she watched Elizabeth mix the batter. The storm over Copacabana grew stronger, and rain lashed at the windows. After they’d set the cake to bake, Elizabeth was drawn back to the glass by flashes of lightning over the sea. The enormity of blackness pulsed white. As she looked down at the beach, a great gale lifted up a handful of the sturdy plastic chairs from one of the kiosks. Five or six of them came sailing upright into Avenida Atlântica, where there was a momentary break in the traffic. Propelled by the wind, the chairs raced up the empty street, several men in bathing trunks chasing after them.
ELIZABETH ROSE EARLY, planning to take the eleven o’clock bus. Her bag was packed, her dress folded across the chair beside her. She worked on the new poem in her slip. Lucia had prepared coffee and a plate of fruit. In an hour or so, she’d put on the dress and hail a cab.
And gingerly now we climb down the ladder backward,
Myself and a fellow passenger named Miss Breen,
Descending into the midst of twenty-six freighters
Waiting to be loaded with green coffee beans.
Miss Breen felt physically close; she seemed to dictate into Elizabeth’s ear. Capturing Santos harbor was more difficult. There was so much on which the eye had caught, on land and in the water.
Around ten, as she was pulling her papers together, the door to the apartment flew open with such force that it banged loudly against the wall. Elizabeth yanked her dress from the chair and held it before her. There was Lota in the entranceway, lugging several canvas bags full of what looked to be electrical cables. “If I wanted you to come to Samambaia,” she said, grinning, “I guess I had to come get you myself.”
5
ELIZABETH HELD ON tight to the cake in her lap. Lota concentrated on the road, taking corners at high speed and yelling after the pedestrians she’d nearly flattened. The car zigged and zagged up the hillside behind Copacabana, Lota accelerating into the cobblestone curves until the tires cried out, while the force of it pressed Elizabeth’s shoulder against the driver’s. Only as they crested the mountain did the car pause, balanced momentarily upon the ridge like an eagle surveying its realm. The convolutions of Rio lay before them, the rise and fall of hills populated by slums and apartment buildings, the modern high-rises at the center, Christ above, the harbor, the far ring of mountains. Then, launching into air, down they swooped in a rush. Lota’s hand, shifting gears, repeatedly brushed Elizabeth’s thigh. The contact happened so many times she could not help but feel there was intention behind it. She tried to rearrange her legs, but there was no room at all to maneuver. The car was hardly more than a capsule. Near the bottom of the slope, Lota came to a stop at a crossing where a streetcar passed before them. Decaying nineteenth-century mansions lined the avenue.
“This neighborhood is Santa Teresa,” Lota said, apparently oblivious to the fact that her knuckles had come to rest against Elizabeth’s skirt. “It was once very rich, as you can see. The aristocrats fled up the mountain to escape yellow fever. Now the buildings are decadent, abandoned to artists and
thieves.”
Before Elizabeth could respond, off they roared, descending further into the steaming, noxious mess of Rio de Janeiro. The fumes, the heat, the traffic, the blaring horns—it was all more than a little disorienting. No doubt the comments Lota was shouting into her ear pertained to this or that aspect of the city, but they were drowned out by the whine of the engine and the noise that came from every quarter. In such close proximity to Lota, Elizabeth felt acutely the fact that they were strangers to one another. Never mind the many afternoons she’d spent with Lota and Mary in New York, or the letters that had passed between them since. She hadn’t set eyes on the woman in at least five years, and even then there’d hardly been a moment shared alone. In fact, she seemed to remember someone altogether different in appearance from this madwoman at the wheel of the convertible. The Rio version of Lota was darker, for one thing, and a bit stouter, her hair was longer and had a vivid streak of white running through it, like a comet. Elizabeth was certain that when they’d first met it had been pure, jet black. One thing she recalled with utter clarity, however, was the voraciousness of Lota’s interest in all things, her constant, alert looking. There’d been one afternoon in particular, searching the city with Lota for linens she would take back with her to Rio. Brazilians just don’t understand the art of stitching, Lota had said, scrutinizing the fabrics. Elizabeth and Mary had followed her from store to store until Lota’s eye was finally satisfied.
It could have been that in New York, Lota simply hadn’t had the chance to exhibit other colorful qualities, such as her reckless driving. There’d really been no opportunity for them to go flying through the city streets in a red convertible Jaguar.
The More I Owe You Page 3