“I was waiting for you to tell me when you wanted it!”
“I’m not blaming you, Elizabeth. Though perhaps you might have suggested a menu. I would have liked to see my father one more time. He was a famous man, did you know that? For years he fought against the dictatorship. He was imprisoned by Vargas, and exiled. That’s why we lived in Belgium. Did I ever show you the hat he was wearing when Vargas tried to have him killed, with the bullet hole through the brim?”
“Yes, Lota, you did. He was brave. Just as you are.”
“Don’t lie to me, Elizabeth. I’m nothing. There were many people at the funeral. All the men who knew and admired him. Carlos was there, and Burle Marx. Even Negrão came. They offered their sympathy, but it was strange how they all wore his face. They looked at me as though I were someone he could not be proud of. Not a valuable person, not beautiful. Just a woman who would never accomplish anything, who failed at everything she tried to do.”
DECIO WAS NO help at all. He came to see Lota daily, but he deflected Elizabeth’s questions. In the past he had been entirely forthcoming about Lota’s condition; now he became secretive. Elizabeth lost her patience with him on more than one occasion, while Decio merely observed her with his cold analytical eye. Then there came the horrible night he requested that Elizabeth come to his house, where he told her firmly that for Lota’s sake she must leave the country. Ouro Preto was not far enough, he insisted. Her presence was too damaging to Lota’s health, she must go very far away for it not to be disruptive. Despair prevented Elizabeth from mounting any sort of defense. But it wasn’t her fault, she wanted to say. Would no one be their champion? Would no one advise her to not give up fighting, after all these years? But no, the entire peanut gallery seemed to think she and Lota were better off apart—Decio, Mary, Lota’s friends, even Cal.
Decio urged her not to delay but to leave Brazil at the earliest opportunity, tomorrow, if possible. Lota’s very existence hung in the balance. He stood too close, bearing down on her. Elizabeth tried to back away, and the edge of the coffee table caught her behind the knee. Her leg buckled. She collapsed like a rag doll, hitting her head on the table edge. Then the comically perverse attentions of Decio as the doctor, the rush to get ice, the attempt to stop her nosebleed.
Elizabeth accepted banishment. She left the next day.
BUT OF COURSE the break wasn’t clean. It never was. Lota’s letters followed as soon as she arrived in New York, plea after plea to allow her to join Elizabeth there. Some were reasonable, written in good spirits, others obviously not composed in a coherent state of mind. Sick with worry, Elizabeth did not know what to believe or do. If she could only get through to someone objective, but there was no such person, everyone had their own agenda. Decio did not return her calls. Contacting Mary was of course out of the question. Six weeks after Elizabeth left, Lota sent a string of cables, increasingly urgent. Decio had given his blessing for the trip, she said; now she only needed Elizabeth’s.
Three times, Elizabeth tried to confirm with the psychiatrist, but again she received no response. She couldn’t bear the pitiful tone of Lota’s begging. She wanted to be with Lota again. She wanted the chance to show Lota that she was valuable, that she was beautiful, that she was someone to be proud of. Yes, Elizabeth cabled back, come to NewYork. Come live with me and be my love.
THE FLIGHT WAS three hours late. The instant she saw Lota, so feeble that a stewardess had to help her down the stairs from the aircraft, Elizabeth knew that her judgment had been poor, the latest instance in a long history of poor judgments dating back to the dawn of her consciousness. She would call Decio again in the morning. How dare he have allowed Lota to leave Brazil in such a state? And Mary, couldn’t she have dissuaded her somehow? Then Lota was coming through the gate, and Elizabeth stepped forward to greet her.
Lota was confused about where she’d actually arrived. “Will we stay with Lilli,” she asked once they’d retrieved her luggage, “or is your new house ready?”
“No, dear, we’re not in Ouro Preto, we’re in New York,” Elizabeth said gently. She refused to succumb to hopelessness; no doubt it was the long flight that had momentarily disoriented Lota. “We’re staying at my friend Loren’s apartment on Perry Street.”
“Of course,” Lota snapped. “I knew that.”
As exhausted as she appeared, once they got to the apartment Lota insisted on unpacking. She hauled a heavy duffel up the stairs to the kitchen and removed twelve kilo bags of coffee, setting them in a row on the counter. “It helps me to wake up,” she said when she saw Elizabeth’s surprise.
Then Lota removed her clothes from the suitcase and meticulously refolded them, putting them away in the dresser while Elizabeth observed from the doorway.
“There is no need to follow me into every room like a puppy dog,” Lota said as she brushed past Elizabeth on her way to the bathroom.
THEIR LAST HOURS together, Elizabeth will write to friends, were peaceful and affectionate. They had no quarrel.
“Would you like to go on a walk?” she suggested after Lota had settled in.
Lota turned an impassive face to her. She said neither yes nor no.
“I thought that after such a long trip, some air and some life might brighten you up.”
At last, a smile. “Yes, we could both use some brightening.”
On the street, however, Lota was very weak. She shuffled along, and Elizabeth took her arm, helping her into a chair at the first café.
“Would you like something to eat?”
“Not particularly.”
Elizabeth ordered her a salad. Lota gazed at the passersby as Elizabeth reported on her New York summer. She shied from asking any question about Brazil. Lota’s job, Decio, Mary, Carlos—each and every topic felt equally perilous. “I had lunch with Susan Sontag the other day,” she said. “Her brain is way too big for me, that’s certain. But I’ve hardly seen anyone while I’ve been here. I can’t say I’m crazy about being back. I don’t really feel American anymore. This isn’t home. I thought perhaps next summer you and I might go somewhere else, together. What would you think of getting an apartment in Venice for a month or two?”
Lota picked at the food on her plate. “That’s a beautiful idea, Cookie.”
“The salad’s not very good, is it? I’m sorry to have brought you here. Tomorrow I promise to cook something very special. Would you like to see Wheaton and Harold? I’ve invited them over. They’ve been such a godsend to me.”
“They’re nice,” Lota said. “They’re nice, and I’m glad they’re your friends.”
Elizabeth’s mind began to grasp at any little thing to say, any bright, shiny thing. “Yesterday we actually saw a chicken run over in the road!”
Lota looked up. Her eyes regained their focus. “A chicken?”
“None of us could believe it. What would a chicken be doing in the city?”
“Hen or cock?” Lota demanded.
“It was a hen. Why do you ask?”
“It reminds me of something I recently read.” Lota was smiling at her. “‘The hen is a being. It’s true, she couldn’t be counted on for anything. She herself couldn’t count on herself—the way a rooster believes in his comb.’”
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s from one of Clarice Lispector’s stories you translated.”
“I know what it is, but how on earth do you remember that?”
“You do know Portuguese after all, Elizabeth.”
“Or course I know Portuguese. I’m just embarrassed to speak it. My accent is so terrible.”
“You ask how I remember. I remember everything you’ve written, every single poem. I was reading them again on the plane.” Lota began to recite another. “You helpless, foolish man, I love you all I can, I think. Or do I? That was supposed to be me speaking, wasn’t it? You were happy when you wrote that. I think you were very happy.”
“Please stop quoting my poems, Lota. It makes me self-conscious.”
&n
bsp; “But were you very happy, once, with me?”
“I was very happy for a very long time. You know I was. And I will be again.”
“Elizabeth, I’ve watched you struggle for so many years, working so hard to create beautiful things. I’ve admired how you never give up. You are not a dilettante like me. Promise me you will doubt yourself no longer. You are a wonderful poet. A great poet.”
“You’ve admired me?” Elizabeth said.
Lota nodded.
“And you don’t doubt me?”
Lota placed her hand over Elizabeth’s. “I don’t doubt you.”
“Thank you, Lota. That is very kind of you to say.”
“It is not kind, merely a fact.” Lota seemed to be studying every detail of Elizabeth’s face. Then she signaled to the waitress. “I think I will have an espresso. It will brighten me up.”
WHEN ELIZABETH CAME to bed, she found Lota gripping a pillow in both arms. She was not asleep. Her eyes were open wide, her thoughts turned inward.
Elizabeth lay beside her and tugged on the pillow.
“I need to hold on to something,” Lota said, hugging the pillow more tightly.
“You can hold on to me.”
She watched Lota deliberating before she let loose of the pillow and scooted close. Instead of the grudging embrace Elizabeth expected, Lota pressed tightly against her, kissing the back of her neck with an intensity that might have been mistaken for passion. It was lovely to be held again, to be touched. And a surprise, in the midst of all this, to feel the light gathering of desire. Elizabeth imagined turning and pressing her lips to Lota’s, but instead she remained still. She would make no demands.
She felt safe in the circle of Lota’s arms as sleep overtook her. Elizabeth began to sink into a dream—no, it was something else, very vivid, half dream, half memory. Years ago, after the New Year’s party they’d thrown in Copacabana, Lota’s arms were around her. They stood in the ocean, at midnight.
As the fireworks exploded over the beach, Lota rounded up all the guests in the apartment, insisting they join the celebrants below. In their excitement, they did not wait for the elevator but rushed down the stairwell in a stream, down all eleven stories, and burst out into the night. Elizabeth slipped off her shoes and left them by the door.
Across the expanse of sand, thousands of candles illuminated many more thousands of people dressed in white. They were singing and drinking, and some were dancing to drumbeats, growing frenzied and falling to the ground in convulsions, as if possessed by spirits. Others waded into the ocean to set adrift their offerings to Yemanja, little blue sailboats full of fruit and bread, their luminous white skirts billowing and swirling in the water. Lota pulled Elizabeth into the waves and wrapped her arms around her. On the surface of the sea all around them floated white roses, gladioli, lilies, gardenias, a vast white carpet of flowers.
Elizabeth woke at early light. Lota was no longer beside her.
Where am I? Lota thought.
She had started from sleep in a strange bed. She was embracing Elizabeth, but she did not know where she lay. Then she remembered. She’d taken a plane, a very long flight. Mary had driven her to the airport, her mouth so tight with barely contained sadness that she’d hardly spoken. I hope you have a good trip, she’d said in farewell as she dropped Lota off at the curb, refusing to come inside to send her off properly. Lota, too, was saddened that she could not tell Mary why she had to come to New York. That she had to be with Elizabeth, as selfish as that might be, to let Elizabeth know that she did not blame her.
That she loved her.
That she regretted how things had come to be between them.
She watched Elizabeth sleeping.
After her father died, there had been a flare of rage that she thought would incinerate her, but the rage burned off and then there was nothing and Lota could not prevent herself from sinking further and further into this cold nothingness. Decio talked with her almost every day, urging her to fight her way back to feeling. But Lota did not want to fight any longer. All the fight had gone out of her.
She left the bedroom and wandered into the apartment. It was a nice apartment, but very dusty! Maybe Elizabeth would be happy here after it got a good cleaning.
There’d been the hope, of course, that once she saw Elizabeth again she’d change her mind. A distant hope.
In the bathroom, Lota unzipped her toiletries bag, her fingers searching out the vial.
She was in the kitchen, staring at the row of coffee bags—how odd that she’d brought so much—when she heard Elizabeth calling her name. Dawn light seeped through the curtains. Lota stood at the top of a short staircase, hardly a staircase at all, only three stairs, which struck her as an odd architectural gesture. The pills had begun to take effect. Her hand, she discovered, still gripped the vial. Elizabeth appeared on the landing below, but at first she didn’t see Lota in the shadows. Her voice was muffled, as if it traveled through water. Then she turned and looked up at Lota, watching her for some moments before her face began to crease with worry. Elizabeth came quickly up the stairs. Lota smiled at her as she fell forward.
She felt her body slipping, slippery, through Elizabeth’s embrace, and then she went under the surface. It was quiet now. Weightless, Lota was free to drift. Elizabeth was above, in the air, and Lota could feel the pressure of Elizabeth’s hand holding her own.
We’re swimming, my love, you and I. I see you up there, in the shimmering blue. You’re reaching down to me, but you won’t reach me. This time you won’t reach me.
Elizabeth was shouting, but Lota could hardly hear her through the water. What was in the vial? That’s what she wanted to know.
It doesn’t matter, Elizabeth. It’s all right. I don’t have to struggle anymore. I have come to the end. But I had to be with you. That’s why I came here, to be with you.
Elizabeth wanted to pull her back up, she was trying to pull her into the air.
Let me go, Elizabeth. My love for you kept me fighting this long. But I don’t want to fight any longer. Especially not with you, though, yes, we had our battles. You are very stubborn, and you drink too much. Do not deny it. You know it’s true.
I’m swimming, and you’re there! My love! You’re holding my hand. Don’t try to draw me up. But it’s all right. You’re there. I see you. Now you have to let me go. You have to let me go.
She tried to wrest her hand free, but Elizabeth’s grip was fierce.
We loved the best we could, and that is more than most people ever have.
Now let me go.
30
There is beginning, middle, and end, that is a fact.
The end of things is not a moral act.
THE NOTES WERE in her own hand, but Elizabeth had no recollection of having put them to paper. They were strange to her. She will experience the same feeling in another handful of years when she discovers letters she’d once written in Portuguese that she can no longer read.
Unpacking her things in the new apartment, she’d come across these scraps of writing among the loose papers she must have swept off her desk in Samambaia. She’d returned there briefly a month after shipping Lota’s body back for the funeral. To meet with the lawyers who would settle her affairs, and to say goodbye to what friends remained. They were even fewer than she’d imagined. Nearly everyone blamed her, including those who knew better. They had to explain Lota’s self-destruction somehow, she supposed, even if it meant sacrificing Elizabeth to their confused anger and grief. Her last visit to Samambaia had been disastrous, ending in a screaming match with Mary, who had already rifled through everything in the house, even private things, taken paintings that did not belong to her, and, worse, the absolute worst, burned Elizabeth’s letters to Lota, for God’s sake. Dumb to the world, Elizabeth had thrown what had not been ravaged into boxes and fled as quickly as possible.
A week ago, she’d caught a cab to the airport. Only the maid accompanied her. Lucia was from the north of Brazil, a superi
or human being. She held Elizabeth’s hand as they passed through the Copacabana tunnel, sped along Lota’s park. There was the puppet theatre, the gardens, the model airplane field, the playgrounds, the beach, the soccer fields, the modern art museum, all of them full of people.
“She worked so hard,” Elizabeth said softly. Lucia squeezed her hand.
Elizabeth crossed back into her own hemisphere, in a plane high above the continents, north and south. She lived in San Francisco now. It was New Year’s Day, 1968.
THE YOUNG WOMAN had found the apartment. She was very good at practical things like finding an apartment and organizing the kitchen shelves and leaving her husband. The flat was pretty in a Victorian, frosted-cake sort of way. Lota would have loathed it. Cold blue light filtered through every window, and though the sun was constantly shining, there was a chill in the rooms that penetrated to Elizabeth’s bones, forcing her to wear wool sweaters indoors and even to sleep in them. That was, if she slept at all. Living with a child again was certainly something to get used to. The child was delightful, as children were, but its skin was so pale Elizabeth sometimes wondered if it were not malnourished. That morning the young woman had gone to the Haight-Ashbury to show off her baby to some friends who, if Elizabeth had heard correctly, were living in the park under a tree. Who was she to judge? She’d watched from the window until the young woman disappeared over a hill, then she’d changed her clothes and left the apartment as well.
No one paid her any mind on the tram. It was a city of youth, a tide of youth pushing the country into a social revolution, and she was merely an elderly lady who’d already had her day. Dressed all in white, her arms full of white flowers—even so, she attracted little notice. San Francisco was the capitol of flower power, after all. As the tram traveled away from the city center, past all the quaint gingerbread houses, up and down the hills, the other passengers, singly or in groups, disembarked. She was alone in the car when the train crested a last hill and there lay the Pacific Ocean spread before her, dark and glittering like mica. In the distance, two little peaked islands punctured the horizon.
The More I Owe You Page 32