“‘It will work out for the best?’ That is a ridiculous thing to say. You have no idea, Elizabeth, of the stress I am under. Why are you standing over me like that? Everyone wants something from me, even you. What is it you want from me?”
Lota spoke with such spitefulness that it was a relief to snap as well. “I want you not to attack or mock me at every opportunity,” Elizabeth cried. “I am not your enemy. And, Lota, it’s just—” She stopped herself in time.
“Yes, say it, it’s just a park! I know that’s what you think. Just because you have no idea what it means to be committed to anything. You’re not even a poet anymore, you’re just a drunk. You had to leave me for six months so you could go drink without anyone telling you to stop. And now you drink here, right in front of my face.”
“You make it impossible not to drink. It’s the only way I can bear living with this insanity.”
“When was the last time you took your pills?”
“I’m not going to take the Antabuse anymore. It makes me very despondent. It is not good for me.”
“Well, that is too bad. So we are both despondent. You will take it.”
“No, Lota, I won’t. Don’t ask me to.”
“The time has passed for asking.”
Lota stomped out of the room. For such a small person, her footfalls made an inordinate amount of noise. As did her opening and closing of cabinets, her slamming of doors. The peace of a room Lota had recently left was exquisite, almost musical—like the ringing deafness a soldier must experience on the battlefield after a nearby detonation. Elizabeth made a motion toward the veranda, but she saw the bird still perched on the railing and didn’t want to disturb it. It was one of those compact little terns she loved, the ones that traveled hemispheres. Still, it took fright and lifted off, its wings outstretched in perfect strong arcs. Then, gracefully, it set itself back down in precisely the same place.
Lota returned, a clenched fist held before her. “Open your mouth.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I said open your mouth!” Lota was shouting.
Elizabeth looked to the maid’s room, willing Lucia to emerge. She was truly afraid now. She thought to call out, then decided it best to leave the room altogether. Lota grabbed her arm and held her back.
“You let go of me this instant,” Elizabeth cried.
“You will not drink anymore.”
“You’re hurting my arm.”
Elizabeth tried to pull away, but Lota yanked her toward the couch and forced her to sit down. With one hand she seized Elizabeth’s jaw and dug her fingers into the sides of her face. Elizabeth tried to speak but could not. All the will drained out of her.
“Open your mouth!”
Elizabeth’s body did as it was told.
Lota pushed her head back and dropped the pill at the back of her throat, as she would have done to a dog. “Now swallow it.”
Elizabeth’s mouth was completely dry. Water leaked from her eyes but she was not crying. She looked up at Lota’s determined, heartless face.
“Swallow it!” Lota screamed.
“Give me some water,” she said.
Lota filled a drinking glass and watched as Elizabeth drained it. Once she was satisfied Elizabeth had swallowed the pill, she left the house. Elizabeth remained on the couch for she did not know how long. Lucia’s soap opera went on. The bird was still perched on the veranda.
FLIGHT BEGAN TO present itself as the only option. Elizabeth went back and forth in her mind: It must be either her own flight, away from Lota, to Seattle or somewhere new, to a new life, or even a very long trip—that might be enough, back down the Amazon, or any river for that matter. Or else, no, she would not leave Lota—she was in it to the end, they would go away together. Her mind snatched and grasped at anything like hope. To Europe! They’d had good luck there before. Yes, to Europe. To Holland, somewhere cold, with taciturn society. Some reliable Dutch stolidity could be precisely the thing to counter this plague of Latin hysteria.
27
THEY NEVER SHOULD have gone to Europe, in Mary’s opinion. It was obvious Lota was in no shape to travel, and that Elizabeth was desperate, clutching at straws. Hardly a surprise when Mary heard they were cutting their trip short and rushing Lota home, to the hospital. Why Lota’s psychiatrist had ever approved the trip in the first place was beyond her, as if a mere change of scenery could cure the gangrene infecting Lota’s soul. But no one had asked for Mary’s opinion.
Now she and Elizabeth stood on either side of Dr. de Souza in the doorway of Lota’s hospital room, speaking in hushed voices, as if the numb lump of Lota might actually overhear them.
“We are keeping her sedated for the time being,” the psychiatrist was saying. “She is extremely agitated.”
“Her state is very grave, isn’t it?” Mary pressed, rigid with anger.
“Decio, do you think it might simply be her inner ear?” Elizabeth asked, with her mouth twisted into a weird grimace. “We were at an exhibition in London, and Lota was so dizzy, she was teetering like a drunk. She fell down, and then she was furious and impossible. Her doctor says it’s all psychological, as if it’s my fault, but maybe it’s an infection in her ear. I told him to check that, and he never did.”
Lota and Elizabeth called the psychiatrist by his first name; they both thought he was so wonderful because he’d studied with the famous Melanie Klein. Mary judged him, but she couldn’t afford to judge him too severely. When Dr. de Souza met her eye, she gave him a look as if to say, See! This is what I’ve had to deal with for years. They’re both crazy.
He turned back to Elizabeth as she continued to ramble.
“I know it was probably a bad idea to take her to Europe, but I’ve always believed in the good old-fashioned notion of change. I thought a change might be good for her. We had good luck there before, when we went to Italy. We rode bicycles. But she hated London. Nothing was good enough for her. I finally realized she was in ghastly shape. Maybe it was my fault for taking her away.”
“It’s not your fault,” the doctor said gently. “She’s been under intense strain for five years, and it is finally taking its toll.”
“Yes, you’re right. She’s been under such strain. She would never listen to me, never take a break. All she does is criticize me. Everything I do or say is wrong. She doesn’t believe that I’m on her side. She’s more violent and rude every day. She’s been just intolerable.” And then Elizabeth began to cry into her hands.
Dr. de Souza observed her, then turned to Mary. In a tone so soft it belied the severity of his prescription, he said, “My feeling is that the two of them should be separated.”
“Separated?” Mary kept her voice even, surprised at her own sadness.
“For at least several months. Miss Bishop’s presence is not beneficial. It triggers Lota’s paranoia. Two women, living together in close quarters . . .” He shrugged, as if this result confirmed a common hypothesis. “It compounds the hysteria.”
It wasn’t that Mary blamed Elizabeth, not exactly; she’d known Lota too well and for too long. But nor did she hold Elizabeth faultless. Mary could see that the woman was suffering, and she felt for her, truly. But it wasn’t by mere chance that Elizabeth and Lota could no longer be in the same room for any length of time without acrimony, nor that in the immediate crisis it was Mary who could provide what Lota needed most.
Dr. de Souza took hold of Elizabeth’s frail-looking shoulders, to offer comfort, it seemed, but also to communicate that she must pull herself together. “What are you doing for your own health?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“There is nothing you can do now for Dona Lota.You must take care of yourself however you can.”
He said good day. Elizabeth did not move. Her eyes were wide, liquid. Mary had never seen anyone look so bereft, like a child informed she’d just been made an orphan.
MARY WAS RELIEVED when Elizabeth called Lilli and left on a bus for
Ouro Preto. Knowing she had friends to go to, Mary didn’t have to worry about taking care of her on top of everything else. Yet she also wished Elizabeth had not left her alone; in its sly fashion, fate had made Elizabeth the only person with whom Mary could now commiserate. And though it might not speak well of her, Mary couldn’t help but resent the woman for leaving everything in her hands. Of course, there was no question that Mary would move down from Samambaia to attend to Lota, leaving her daughters in the care of their nanny, to perform whatever duty was required for as long as necessary. But in the following weeks she could not prevent the bitter thoughts that crossed her mind. In Ouro Preto, Elizabeth did not have to rush back and forth between the apartment in Copacabana and the clinic in Botafogo, bringing the meals Mary and Lucia had to cook, since Lota could not stomach hospital food. Nor did Elizabeth have to wash sheets every day, since Lota refused to sleep, even under sedation, on inferior hospital bedding. Elizabeth did not have to provide the company Lota required without respite, as she could not bear to be left alone for any longer than was necessary to fetch her food and linens. Nor did Elizabeth have to sleep on a pad on the floor, Lota’s hand gripping hers throughout the night, holding the arm elevated with drug-induced strength until the blood drained out and left her right shoulder numb for much of the morning. Elizabeth had to do none of those things, and those were the easy things.
Unlike Mary, Elizabeth did not have to accompany Lota daily down into the hell she had come to inhabit.
The insulin treatments were the most gruesome torture Mary had ever seen inflicted upon another human being. Dr. de Souza warned that the therapy might subject Dona Lota to severe shock, that was a danger they must risk, but Mary felt it was she instead who was receiving the shock. In the States, they never would have allowed her to be at Lota’s side during the procedure, but here everything was excessively casual; they did not take into account the danger to the witness.
The first time she watched Lota go into convulsions brought on by the injection of insulin, tears began streaming down Mary’s face. She had to force herself to remain still, not to run out of the room. A nurse told her the seizures were normal, but they were anything but—they were criminal. Mary prayed for the fit to end, but when it finally did, what followed was hardly better. Lota fell into a coma. Her face was bloodless, deathly white, and her hands were laid over her chest; she remained utterly still, as if truly deceased. Dr. de Souza told Mary that none of this diverged from the expected sequence of events, that the treatment would help Lota get better, yet as she sat beside Lota in this state, Mary felt she was being introduced to the eventuality of losing Lota completely.
And then, when the doctors brought her out of the coma, for a too-brief, miraculous hour or so, it was as if the Lota of old had woken from a long hibernation. Not just coherent but playful, naughty, even vigorous. She joked with the doctors, bossed the nurses around in that charming way of hers that made you rush to do her bidding, talked of the future—there was life in her eyes. But always, after a while, the fire began to fade and Lota descended back into the blackness.
Elizabeth never saw any of this. Once a day, she checked in by phone from Ouro Preto and talked about the renovations to her new house, for God’s sake! She wasn’t there to see Lota’s eagerness for these calls, her hunger. Lota was usually in that state of grace following the coma, when she could banter and laugh. “The park is lost,” Mary heard her say one afternoon in an almost jovial tone. “Negrão has won. He’s given it to SURSAN. It is time to look forward, Elizabeth.” Elizabeth wasn’t there when Lota set down the phone—the look on her face was enough to shatter you.
This went on for a month. Mary delivered the meals and the laundry, endured the seizures and comas. In her few private moments, she wrote notes to her daughters, promising she’d see them soon. Lota’s periods of lucidity grew longer, and one day she decided it was time to attempt a normal life again. She was much better, certainly. Dr. de Souza agreed to release her from the hospital for a trial period. Elizabeth returned from Ouro Preto, and the three of them drove up to Samambaia just in time for Christmas. As if the last few months had not even happened, Lota and Elizabeth were easy and affectionate with each other. Mary asked to be let out at her own house at the base of the hill. She did not wait for the car to pull away before she rushed inside. Her daughters came running in from the garden and she gripped them both, pressing their bodies to hers, breathing in their green smell like salvation. “Oh, how I missed you,” she said, again and again and again.
All remained stable for nearly a week. Until the morning Mary knocked on their door and could hear the shouts and sobs inside. The dread for which she had braced herself now returned. The door opened. Lota’s face, rageful, grief-stricken. Elizabeth’s, completely broken down. Her own, no doubt resolute.
RATHER THAN READMIT her to the hospital, Dr. de Souza kept Lota at the apartment under his daily supervision, with two nurses and Mary in constant attendance. Elizabeth could not stay there. That was imperative. Neither Lota’s health nor her own permitted it, and this time the doctor was adamant about the separation. Mary now had full confidence in his judgment.
Elizabeth packed a battered suitcase while Mary stood in the doorway. Between her hands she held a hot cup of tea she’d made for Elizabeth. The heat felt good on her arthritic joints. None of them were young any longer, of course, but the years seemed to have treated Elizabeth particularly unkindly. She looked like a shrunken crone, white and hunched, like a character from a children’s fable who would promise you a treat, then trap you and eat you.
Had Elizabeth really believed Lota would not find out about her dalliance in Seattle? Though Mary did not feel much outrage on Lota’s behalf. She herself knew only too well the keen despair of losing Lota’s gaze, what depths it could drive you to. It had been awful to watch the two of them grow more and more estranged, more disregarding and suspicious. And now this—no options left but rupture. So very sad, though of course much sadder for Lota.
Elizabeth filled her suitcase, inattentive to the items she placed there, then thread the leather tongues through the buckles and cinched it closed. She looked in the mirror as she put on a hat and gloves. She might have been preparing for a journey to another continent, rather than to the hotel down the street where she planned to stay a few days, only, she’d said, until a place opened up for her at the clinic. Elizabeth checked in for rest cures the way other people went to the beauty parlor; she had a standing appointment, going in haggard and emerging redone.
Elizabeth sat heavily on the bed and pulled the suitcase into her lap. “Here I am again,” she said wryly, almost with a sense of humor. “Off to a hotel alone after fifteen years.”
“It won’t be forever,” Mary said helpfully, though, to be honest, no one really knew.
“I feel completely at the end of my rope. I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“I’m truly sorry, Elizabeth. Let’s just hope that Lota gets better.”
“Yes, I have to believe she will. I suppose I should be off.” She made no motion to leave. Her eyes had become pleading. “Help me, Mary, I feel so lost.” Elizabeth began to cry, bitter jagged tears. You could not help but be moved, even if you disapproved of her choices.
Mary set down the tea and knelt before Elizabeth, clasping her hand. “The way out is to keep loving. I know it’s not easy. We always want love to give us something back, something we need deeply, but I don’t think that’s the way it works. Love is like faith. We have to keep reaching into ourselves to find it, even when we think there is nothing left inside us and nothing returned. It can be terribly painful. But when you are lost, that’s the way to find yourself again.”
Elizabeth looked down at her. Mary smiled, thinking perhaps she’d gotten through her misery and helped in some small way. Elizabeth was not her rival after all, but her colleague; they both loved Lota.
“Well, I’m not a nun like you.” Elizabeth’s voice was low and hateful. “I have nee
ds, too. I can’t just serve.”
Then she carried her suitcase out the door.
Mary remained crouched beside the bed, stung beyond comprehension. How unjust! As if she were some dried-up old maid who had no need for love. Did Elizabeth have any idea how excruciating and lonely it had been on occasions too numerous to count to spend the day or evening with the two of them, then return alone to her own house or room? To be evicted from the very house she had helped plan and build? Of course not. She thought of no one but herself. Elizabeth had no idea what love might truly be, other than the gratification of her own selfishness.
Lota was awake when Mary went to check on her. The afternoon light coming through the window washed across Lota’s gaunt face, still so beautiful even in this wasted state. Finally she might have a chance to improve, with Elizabeth out of the picture.
“How are you, dear?”
Lota did not answer.
“Would you like something to eat?”
“Has Elizabeth gone?”
“It was Dr. de Souza’s recommendation. She took some of her things.”
“Where will she go? Did she tell you?”
Mary said nothing. Truthfully, she did not care where Elizabeth went. Let her go to hell.
Lota turned away from Mary, craning her neck to look out the window, as if she might spot Elizabeth on the street below. “My poor, sweet Cookie,” she said.
28
IN MARCH, LOTA appeared at the door of Elizabeth’s room in the Botafogo clinic. “What are you doing here?” she asked gently. “I thought I was the sick one.”
Elizabeth did not want to believe what she saw, she did not dare allow herself to hope. “My asthma came back,” she finally said.
“Well, let’s get you out of this dump,” Lota told her. “I’m taking you straight to Samambaia.”
ELIZABETH WROTE throughout the day. The words came in a flood, in surprising forms she’d never before thought to attempt. She could not remember when she’d last felt such energy or inclination, as if the enormous tension she had been holding inside herself for months or even years had now burst forth and taken shape in writing.
The More I Owe You Page 30