The More I Owe You

by Michael Sledge

  Cal had swiveled around on his seat, the paddle held across his lap, watching her with a smile and those brilliant, penetrating eyes. The canoe rocked softly in the breeze. Elizabeth had seen this expression on countless occasions, but now, for no good reason, it made her shy, and she nattered on.

  “Anyway, you have to come. Brazil overwhelms you with sights and smells and sounds. You become a voluptuary by necessity. The density of experience has to be embraced. Everything in the States is so sanitized in comparison. I don’t think there’s ever been a country so filthy rich and so hideously uncomfortable at the same time. Though of course in Brazil there’s the total anarchy and political instability. Every time we have a little revolution, Lota has a nervous breakdown and some of our friends have to flee the country.”

  “You have a special opportunity to use what you are living through,” Cal said reverently.

  “If you mean the politics, I’m not that kind of poet. Brazilian politics are like a school playground. One boy’s a bully, one’s a bookworm, one’s a miner’s son, one’s an aristocrat’s, all fighting over a game of marbles and thinking they’re deciding the fate of the world. I’m not like you—I can’t turn everything into poetry.”

  She spoke with bitterness, thinking of the politicians responsible for so much of the country’s, and Lota’s, anguish. Yet when Cal turned abruptly and resumed paddling, she worried she might have offended him.

  “I am trying to write about Brazil,” she went on, “but I also don’t want to become the American poet who writes about Brazil, about exotica. They always try to pigeonhole you. I can’t stand it when they say I’m one of the best living women poets.” The words were hardly out of her mouth before she remembered that it was in fact Cal who’d written precisely that about her first book, before they’d really known each other.

  “If you want to talk pigeonholing, you’re in a canoe with one of the best living crazy poets.”

  “Who cares what labels they give us? Lota says it’s not others who categorize us. We categorize ourselves.”

  “Yes, I imagine she would.” He laughed in a way that was not terribly kind. “I’ve missed our conversations, too, Elizabeth. I always feel they transform my work. Lately, I’ve wanted to change everything, to push my poetry to a much more personal place.”

  “Please don’t. You know I detest that sort of thing. It’s unhealthy.”

  “You think so?”

  “Absolutely. Best saved for your journal.”

  He turned again to face her directly and spoke with great gentleness. “Yet every time you hint at the personal, as rare as it is, I feel almost unbearably moved. Reticence is your virtue, but it’s also your limitation. You might risk more yourself, go out on a limb.”

  “That limb will snap,” she said.

  “I don’t think so. But even if it did, would that be so terrible?”

  For some minutes, the canoe drifted. Elizabeth broke from his look to gaze across the water, remembering the August day years earlier when the two of them had spent a magical afternoon on the Maine shore not far from here. She’d gone there for the summer, like an ascetic in retreat from worldly attachment. Cal and his girlfriend had come to visit; then Elizabeth had heard the two of them fighting in their room, and the girlfriend had left early. To Elizabeth’s great pleasure, Cal had stayed. They’d waded into the cold water, skipped stones, talked and talked and talked. They were twin souls, she had thought that day, perfectly aligned. Cal had stood against a tree and posed as Saint Sebastian, a stick tucked beneath his arm like an arrow piercing his breast. He’d hoped to make her laugh and to charm her, and she’d drunk up every moment.

  Now she turned her gaze to his. “Since I’ve been so far away, Cal, I’ve come to rely on you more than ever. There have been so many times I’ve wished you were there. You’ve no idea how much I count on you and admire you, how lucky I feel to know you. I think of you every day of my life.”

  AND YET HE’D been unspeakably rude to Lota. At the beginning of the summer, Cal and Lizzie were in New York and invited Elizabeth and Lota to dinner. Elizabeth was in a high mood. She’d spent the previous weeks at the publisher’s making final revisions to Helena. Under most circumstances, she’d rather have walked on live coals than deal with a single soul in the publishing world, but her editor was so conscientious and respectful that she had truly begun looking forward to their exchanges. The moment they entered the supper club, however, Lota’s hackles were raised. One look at the Cuban band’s bongo drums and the colorful ruffles on their arms, and she said, “Do we expect Carmen Miranda to perform next with bananas on her head?” To Elizabeth, she added disparagingly, “You people,” lumping her in with all the rest who would put exotic foreigners on display along with the parrots and the big cats.

  Part of it was show meant for Cal, Elizabeth knew, by whom Lota had been immediately starstruck. Coquettishly, she attempted to engage him a number of times across their table, but he kept pointing to his ear and shaking his head to indicate that the music was too loud to allow conversation. Then he returned his attention to Elizabeth beside him, an arm across the back of her chair lightly touching the skin at the nape of her neck. She would have been embarrassed by his behavior if she hadn’t been so concerned about his drinking. He repeatedly ordered a new highball before he’d finished half of the one in his hand, and he spoke so rapidly, on such a variety of topics, that she caught only a smattering of words. It was like trying to keep up with a conversation in Portuguese.

  After the meal, Lota came around the table and invited him to dance, at her most charming and playful, and he surprised them both by brushing her hand roughly off his shoulder. Then he pulled Elizabeth from her seat and onto the dance floor, where he gripped her shoulders and drew her against his chest, shockingly planting a gin-flavored kiss on her mouth. He had drunk far too much, of course, and didn’t have any idea what he was doing. Fortunately, Lizzie was on the phone with the babysitter and saw none of this. Lota became understandably furious, and the final half hour of the evening was exceedingly disagreeable.

  IN THE EVENING, after they’d brought in the canoe, Cal suggested a driving tour along the coast. In the car, Lota appeared bent on making him pay.

  “All the trees look as though they are planted in rows,” she said.

  “It’s not tropical here,” Elizabeth said. “Maine has a different type of forest.”

  “An artificial forest?”

  “That’s the turn to Stonington,” Cal remarked. Stonington was where they’d passed that long-ago day together.

  “And you call this a beach? It’s only rocks. Where’s the sand?”

  “It’s not really a beach, Lota. This is a rugged coastline.”

  “In Brazil, a beach has miles of white sand.”

  “Parts of Nova Scotia are like this,” Elizabeth said wistfully. “Even the air feels the same. We’re very close, you know.”

  Lota at last relinquished a smile. “I would like to go there, minha pombinha. Can we drive there now?”

  “We’re not quite that close. But one day I would like to take you there.”

  Night had fallen by the time they returned to the house. Not the swift, deep, black curtain of Samambaia, but a pale, soft firmament in which only the brightest stars were suspended. As Lota went ahead, Elizabeth reached for Cal’s arm to have a private word with him on the porch. He turned back upon her with that startling intensity.

  “Cal, can you please apologize to Lota? She’s still very upset by what happened in New York.”

  “Anything you want, dearest. I was awful, I know.” Such a large man, he continued staring down at her, standing too near, crowding her so that Elizabeth thought she would be forced back down the steps. Then a noise at the side of the house drew Cal’s attention, and he moved to the railing to investigate. He remained there, very still, until at last Elizabeth went to his side. In the darkness, she began to make out an animal rooting around in the trash bin. A bushy tail, held str
aight upward. A raccoon or, no, a skunk!

  At her laugh, the animal raised its striped head and stared back at them, unafraid. “A skunk in the trash,” Elizabeth said. “Who cares about politics or confessions when all you need is right there? Why don’t you do something with that skunk?”

  “Yes, you’re right.” Cal was amused, but she could see she’d piqued his interest. “Why don’t I?”

  “He is a pain in the ass,” Lota said, when Elizabeth joined her in their bed. She was filing her nails, peering through black eyeglasses on the tip of her nose.

  “Please, Lota, they can hear you.” She nestled against her lover’s solid warmth, laying her head in Lota’s lap. “Something is different about him.”

  “Yes, he is brilliant, there’s no doubt, and he’s handsome, and that’s why all you women put up with his merde.”

  “That’s exactly what I think about Carlos!” Lota gave her a slap on the rump. “But that’s not what I mean. A few things he’s said today, and a way he’s looked at me, they worry me. Or maybe I’m imagining it. I used to have this same feeling with my mother, this instinct, when she was growing unwell, and I always wanted to run in the other direction.”

  “Then perhaps you should run.”

  “But I love him, Lota.”

  Lota caressed Elizabeth’s face. “I know you do. You are not heartless like me.You are kind, and that is why I will not give him a kick in the tail.”

  As Lota slept, Elizabeth’s concern for Cal kept her awake. She had not mentioned her true suspicion, that somehow she was to blame. It was beyond coincidence; on a number of occasions, seeing her had seemed to trigger the onset of Cal’s illness.Yet she would not stay away from him. That summer in Stonington, she’d been bereft. The day with Cal had sustained her for months afterward.

  A soft fluttering noise came from the shadows of the room, and two dark shapes emerged, moving back and forth across the wall. She thought she must be imagining them, or dreaming, they were almost too rapid to be real. Yet there they were again, two little bats or two strange nocturnal lizards, pursuing one another from one side of the room to the other. She reached to turn on the light. Electricity at her fingertips—what wonderful science.

  Lota groaned and covered her eyes. “Elizabeth, what is the emergency?”

  Standing on the mattress, Elizabeth gazed at the ceiling. Motionless, each dark shape was larger than her hand, flat and nearly invisible against the wooden planks. Two giant, sooty moths, with a delicate mottled pattern.

  Lota saw them and cried, “Get those out of here!”

  “It’s only moths. They’re beautiful.”

  “A black moth in the house is not good,” Lota said fearfully. “It means someone will die.”

  “Please, Lota, save that for Brazil. We’re in the good old US of A now.”

  “Yes, I forgot, where even the wild trees are planted in rows.”

  “MARY McCARTHY WAS telling me that you are simply transformed,” Lizzie said. “And she’s right! Look at you. You’re so thin and radiant.”

  “I’m down to 115 pounds,” Elizabeth admitted. “It’s paradise there. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it.”

  “You have to stop saying that,” Cal said, passing through the room with Harriet in his arms. “You deserve everything you have.”

  During dinner, they’d been unable to pursue any line of conversation for long. Lizzie and Cal had taken turns with the crying child while the other sat at the table. Cal was drinking prodigious amounts, though possibly, when you yourself were off the sauce, any amount appeared prodigious. Now he’d taken little Harriet and was making laps around the house. It was the first moment Elizabeth had seen Lizzie, an intelligent woman frazzled by motherhood, relax and speak her mind.

  “On the subject of Mary McCarthy,” Elizabeth said, “do you find her as much a puzzle as I do? She is of such penetrating intellect, every time I see her I find myself drawn in and opening up. But even as I’m doing it, I have the feeling she’s looking for ways to exploit me. Still, I can’t help but admire her accomplishments. Do you think that’s what women with any brains have to do to succeed?”

  “Maybe that’s our only recourse,” Lizzie said, “to eat our own.”

  “In my opinion,” Lota said, “you must refuse to be eaten. By men or women, it doesn’t matter. They will all try. Put up your spines so they choke on you. Every time I have wanted to do anything, others have tried to stop me. The resistance I encountered while building my house was unbelievable.”

  “Lizzie, you have to see Lota’s house. I was telling Cal today that you both must come visit. It’s really quite fantastic.”

  “We are almost finished,” Lota said proudly. “We are finally building the front entrance, and we are putting glass in all the holes. The master architect Neutra himself is coming to visit. Even he has heard of my house.”

  “Right before we left, Lota sat like a queen in a big armchair, directing an army of workers to build a stone fireplace,” Elizabeth said. How lucky she was to be witness to such creativity and passion; what a privilege to live alongside a force of nature. Of the two of them, Lota was the true creator—why wasn’t there a prize for that? “Every weekend, at least thirty people come up the hill in a bus, most of them unannounced. There are dogs and cats everywhere, and the number of children seems to multiply by the month. Several families all dump their children on us for the summer. I feel like a mother to twenty orphans. And I’ve never been so happy.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you for visiting us,” Lizzie said. “You have no idea what a pleasure it is to have a conversation with adults.”

  Cal continued his revolutions through the room, looking increasingly unhappy and excluded. The next time he passed through, Elizabeth held out her arms for the child. Cal complied, and within moments, Harriet stopped wailing. Elizabeth put her nose to the baby’s forehead and inhaled; she felt she could hold the warm weight of her until dawn.

  “You’re a natural,” Lizzie said.

  “As I said, I get a lot of practice at Samambaia. The cook even named her little girl after me, though I have to say the child looks more like the handyman than like her husband. She had a terrible crush on the handyman for a while.”

  All three of Elizabeth’s companions watched her with the child, each with a different variety of admiration. After a time, Harriet fell asleep.

  “It’s a miracle,” Cal said. “Let’s get her to bed, Lizzie.”

  “Please let me keep her for a while. It’s no trouble.”

  “If we wake her later, we’ll all pay the price,” Lizzie said.

  Once Lizzie had taken Harriet upstairs, Elizabeth’s arms remained cradling the absent child. Cal came out of the kitchen with a pot of coffee and made a show of serving Lota.

  “How do you drink this pool of coffee?” Lota complained, looking deeply into her coffee cup as though she were reading the future there. “It has no flavor, no charge.”

  “Lota,” said Elizabeth, “I beg of you.”

  “In Brazil, we get more in a thimble of coffee than you get in this pool of coffee. I’ll show you real coffee.” She stood and passed into the kitchen, as if through the gates of Rome.

  Cal instantly leapt up and took Elizabeth’s hand to draw her out of the house. He whispered, “There’s something I want to show you.” She did not resist. They went down the grassy slope and to the end of a pier, where the water lay twinkling romantically in the moonlight. Before them, Elizabeth could hear gentle laps and splashes, while behind, Lizzie was again singing to Harriet. Cal breathed audibly through his nose.

  But he did not speak. He looked away, across the lake, and Elizabeth followed his gaze, attempting to guess what he’d intended to show her. Her eye could find nothing extraordinary.

  At last she said, “Cal, shall we go back in?”

  Abruptly he turned, and Elizabeth made a little cry of surprise. “I’m going to come to Brazil, just as you said. Not with Lizzie and Ha
rriet. I’ll come alone. What you told me today, the sounds and textures, I have to see it for myself. It sounds fantastic.”

  “Cal, you know I want you to come visit, but Brazil is not the sort of place to be alone. I feel very strongly about that. People like you and I, we need someone to help us keep our feet on the ground. You must bring Lizzie and Harriet. There’s room for all of you at Samambaia.”

  His gaze was deeply admiring; at the same time, he didn’t see or hear her at all. That was the curse alongside the gift of his intimacy. At times, she felt like no more than a character moved here and there in the brilliant diorama of his making. Yet when he spoke again, it was with extreme tenderness.

  “You remember our day in Stonington?”

  “Yes, of course I remember it. I remember every minute.”

  “You told me then you were the loneliest person ever to have lived. You told me that should be written as your epitaph.”

  “I suppose it felt true at the time. It’s fortunate that things can change so greatly. I don’t feel at all lonely now. But it took a very long time. It isn’t easy to allow yourself to feel loved. We both are, Cal. We are both very fortunate.”

  “And that winter, there was the poetry reading at Bard,” he went on. “We were riding together in a taxi afterwards, and I was so drunk my hands turned cold, like ice. I couldn’t get them warm.You took my hands in yours. You were my anchor, you kept my feet on the ground, you—” He broke off.

  “Cal, I think you may have had very much to drink tonight. Why don’t we go inside?” She attempted lightheartedness. “I have to tell you sometime about the wonders of sobriety.”

  “I’ve been carrying your armadillo around in my pocket.”

  “Yes, so you said.”