The Provost sent us a driver, a man with a dark, glassy face that reflected like a puddle in the sun. He drove us to the neighborhood of Morumbi, where the Provost and his wife lived in a high-rise building with a revolving gold door. The driver found a spot just outside the building and told us he’d wait for us there until we were done. You thanked him and asked me if I thought we should tip him. I said I didn’t know, and so we decided that we would tip him on the way home. We approached the doormen and told them we were there to see Dr. and Mrs. Miranda.
“I work with the doctor,” you said.
The Provost had forgotten to give the front desk our names, so they asked for identification. I had left my wallet at home—desculpa, desculpa, I apologized. One of the doormen held on to your card while he rang the Provost’s apartment. The other inspected us with a tight mouth. In an attempt at humor, I can only assume, you passed a five note across the marble counter. The doorman looked at the money and then back down at his computer screen. You returned it to your jacket pocket. One of the Provost’s maids picked up the phone and said to let us up.
In the elevator you laughed.
“The security in this building is stricter than the White House.”
We went up to the thirty-first floor and were let out into a wide and tall marbled hallway.
“Apartment D,” you said. “He said to listen for the barking dogs.”
As promised, we heard dogs yapping behind a gold-plated door, and after one knock the Provost’s wife appeared with two white balls of fur bouncing at her side. Our eyes met, then she looked down at my shoes and back up at you. I pressed my already wrinkled skirt against my legs and watched you absorb the luxury of her appearance, her large emerald earrings and black wrap dress, how effortless it seemed for her to host us.
“Dennis,” she said and greeted you with a kiss. “Oi, Linda.” She turned to me and pressed her cheek to mine. “Come, come in. Let me get you something to drink.”
I handed her the bouquet of lilies, and she smelled them deeply, then passed them to a maid, who put them in a vase and brought them upstairs. When I thought of the Provost’s apartment, I had envisioned an old wooden home filled with books and antique tables, but it was the opposite. Their taste was quite modern. The apartment sparkled like sugar: white curtains draped in a slinky cursive, Lucite chairs and marbled surfaces, several jade Buddhas smiling from side tables. Melinda grabbed the dogs with both arms and handed them to another maid, who locked them in a room upstairs. She took us through the sitting room and into the dining area, where Eduardo sat with an aperitif in a short crystal glass, flipping through a world atlas.
“Dennis!” He stood to shake your hand. “You must see this book that Alfonzo gave me. You know Alfonzo, don’t you? The economist?”
He gave me a long hug and then ushered you to the table. You both leaned over the book, palms pressed against the table like two conquistadors. Just as I was about to come see what you were studying, Melinda appeared by my side.
“There you are,” she said, and I saw the conversational bars clank down around me.
We all milled in the dining room for appetizers, a cheese plate and ham, fresh papaya and croquettes. The Provost made a few jokes about his wife’s shopping habits, and we all laughed. He teased her about her remedial knowledge of soccer, and we laughed again. She dipped the end of her finger in her glass of rum and daintily tasted it, for no other reason, it seemed, than the amusement of sucking on her finger. When it was almost time for dinner, we all sat at one end of the long table, the two couples facing each other. I looked to you for a spot of acknowledgment, but your entire being was turned toward the Provost, engaged in some conversation about university politics.
The Provost’s wife lit a cigarette and offered one to me. I declined. My ability to engage had shrunk low, crouched somewhere next to my tailbone. The conversation had wandered meaninglessly for too long—I was finding it more and more difficult to pay attention. I thought what would happen if I shook things up a bit. How they would react if I bit your arm? Or lit a fire in the kitchen. I was grateful when the two maids brought dinner out to the table: a bowl of pão de queijo, dishes of yucca flour, picanha, and moqueca de camarão, a stew made with coconut milk and shrimp.
“Because you don’t eat beef,” said the Provost’s wife, smiling at me. “And chicken is too boring.”
I thanked her, and as I did, one of the women presented a tray of picanha in front of you and the Provost, the centers pink and puddling in fatty juice. I could practically feel the saliva pool underneath your tongue.
“I’ll eat the camarão with you,” Melinda said and pulled a piece of shrimp off her fork with her teeth.
“Everything looks delicious,” you announced.
“Ana did it all.” Melinda gestured to the kitchen, where a young girl wearing a tan uniform stood.
The Provost clinked his fork against the glass.
“Gente!” he said, sitting upright, then covered his mouth, as if to stop a burp. “Desculpa, Linda. In English. Thank you both for coming. I hope you like the food that my wife very carefully prepared.” He winked at her. “Eat, drink, we’re all friends here.”
He was drunk already. The bottle of rum tilted into your glass, led by your boss’s heavy hand, and I saw your cheeks flower, your teeth blossom. The Provost’s wife lit another cigarette, her plate of food untouched.
“Melinda,” you started, cutting a piece of steak. “Have you been to the United States?”
“Yes, many times,” she said. “We were just in Miami for a conference.”
“And what did you think?”
“Miami is beautiful. I love the ocean there, and the little plants that grow on the sidewalk.” She released the smoke slowly from the corner of her mouth. “But the airport was horrible. They made me take my shoes off at security, grabbed on to my body, checked all of my bags. It was horrible.”
“I agree. It’s a bit extreme,” you said. “But what else can we do? In this day and age.”
I had always known you as politically left, but the terrorist attacks in New York had morphed your opinion of the world. You knew someone who died in the towers. Our nation’s safety was suddenly a priority to you. You apologized to Melinda for her experience at the airport and continued to eat your food.
“Look,” the Provost said and gripped your shoulder hard, shaking it a bit. “The United States is a beautiful country, but it has many problems. Here in Brazil, we elected a president who was a factory worker, who came from nothing, and now he’s president of the country. Is that not what you call the American dream?”
Ana stood next to the table, pouring more water. The Provost’s wife took a puff of her cigarette and waved her hand, as if to dismiss her to the kitchen.
Eduardo explained that he’d met Lula when he came to speak at USP during his campaign, and according to Eduardo (though Melinda refuted this) he and Lula had kept in touch here and there since he took the presidency. Though you and I knew Lula for his championing of the poor, Eduardo seemed to admire Lula for his global impact. As he saw it, Lula had done what the brutal military dictatorships before him could not: he’d made Brazil an economic leader.
“I predict,” he said, holding up his glass, “that by 2010, Brazil will be the superpower of the world.” He chuckled and looked directly at you. “The United States should worry! You have George Bush!”
The comment settled like dust on the conversation. A sense of pride was triggered in you, shown only in a slight tilt of your head.
You leaned back in your chair, smiling, and said, “We’ll see.”
The Provost’s wife dropped her cigarette into her water glass, then called for Ana, who brought a porcelain ashtray with a picture of Marilyn Monroe in the center. Melinda put a cigarette to her mouth, and Ana struck a match for her.
“Obrigada, Ana.”
Once Ana had left, Melinda said to me, quietly, “I love her. She is like family.”
A physical discomfort had begun to grow inside me. It started from below and spread up, a warmth that felt like it was slowly expanding. At first I thought it was the wine washing over me. And then I thought maybe I had been sitting for too long, that I needed to move around. But the more it crept underneath, the more I realized that it wasn’t just the conversation.
“Sorry,” I said. “I need to use the restroom. Where is it?”
Melinda called for Ana to show me to the bathroom. We walked through the living room where we had entered, past their library, and into another hallway, where she brought me to a powder room between two closed doors.
“Aqui,” said Ana.
“Obrigada.”
I closed the door and pulled my underwear down to my knees. A fragrance, like baby powder, wafted from my underwear and in my urine. Was it the food? Had the air in the house infiltrated my bladder? I wiped myself with some toilet paper and noticed a diluted red stain on the tissue. “Fuck,” I said out loud. “Fuck.” I checked my underwear again and saw the brown-red stain that had seeped through and dotted the back of my dress. Panicked, I checked underneath the sink for tampons, but I only found candles and cleaning products, so I wrapped a thick pad of toilet paper around my underwear.
I opened my palms and traced the dark, purple lines where scars had begun to form. I wanted to cry. Between my legs, a drop of blood fell into the toilet water, tumbled and expanded, like a time-lapse flower opening for the sun. The realization burst, a tiny sparkle of a thought, that no matter how steadily I trained my mind, my body reigned over all.
Could it be that I was somehow more animal than you? Animals pee where they want, shit where they want, bleed where they want. It’s true that I had imagined biting your arm in the middle of dinner. Not hard—just enough to rattle your attention. And here I was, dabbing my bloodied underwear, the tears just an itch in my nose but soon to fall to my cheeks. Delicate—is that what you need from your animal wife? She who lives inside a body she cannot control.
I inspected my face in the mirror and begged for an answer, begged my body to contain itself for only another hour. I thought maybe I could just sit on the toilet until all the blood drained out of me. But if I stayed in the bathroom too long, you would come to check on me. I imagined you opening the bathroom door and a wave of blood crashing over you. Or I could leave now, tell them I’d fallen ill and needed to go home. How many times could I cry sick before they started to wonder?
I opened the door and poked my head out. Ana stood in the library dusting the books next to a radio.
“Ana,” I whispered. “Ana.”
She turned and dropped the duster on the floor.
“Tampon,” I said to her. “Tampon. Por favor.”
Her eyes told me that she did not understand, so I pointed in between my legs.
“Blood. I have blood. Tampon.”
She didn’t say anything—she stared at me, studied my face, and then went into the closed room next door. I clenched every muscle in my body and prayed that she’d understood me. Just a few seconds later she returned and revealed a small cotton capsule in her hand.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
I thought about hugging her, and she smiled back, but it was the kind of smile one might offer a sobbing stranger on the street. Pity. She went back to dusting, and I hid back inside the bathroom. The tampon unwrapped from the plastic like an insect out of its shell. I inserted it with my finger and washed my hands, a thin twirl of blood disappearing into the drain. Instantly my body felt plugged, controlled.
When I returned to the dining room, the conversation had turned to Marta.
“We do like her very much,” you said, scraping the last bit of rice and beans from your plate. “She’s professional. It’s helpful that she knows English. Her cooking is delicious. But there was one incident that was a bit…concerning.”
As I made my way to my seat, you followed me with your eyes. By a miracle, the chair was as white as when I’d arrived.
“Linda, we’re talking about Marta. Tell them about the suit.”
I felt the color sink from my face. The bottoms of my feet tingled with hesitation, like I’d approached an open airplane door.
“Do we have to talk about this? It’s nothing.”
The Provost chimed in. “Well, now you’ve piqued my interest.”
“I came home one day and my linen suit was in the laundry room, soaking wet, with a huge blue ink stain on it.”
“Huge might be an exaggeration, Dennis.” I pinched your thigh underneath the table. You looked at me but brushed it off.
“The strange thing is, I’d just had that suit cleaned. I wore it on my first day teaching.”
The Provost’s wife stamped out her cigarette in the Monroe ashtray and poured some more wine.
“Be careful. She might be stealing from you. I had a maid steal a pair of diamond earrings—”
“Querida,” the Provost interrupted. “Those earrings fell down the kitchen drain. We found them.” He spoke with a tired breath, as if this was a conversation they’d had many times before.
“Nonsense. She threw them down there when she suspected I knew!”
The three of you talked in triangles, bouncing from point to point with measured intention. You had transformed before my eyes—I hardly recognized you. You draped your arm across the back of my chair with a blasé self-importance. You talked as if words came in valueless abundance, as if you had plenty to spend. I became self-conscious about how quickly I was blinking and the pace of my breath. These automatic actions had somehow turned manual. Surely, I was blinking too much, breathing unevenly.
“Dennis, it’s just a suit.” This was the wrong thing to say. You looked at me, and I tried to apologize with my eyes.
The Provost’s wife brought her elbows to the edge of the table and leaned forward. “I say confront her. Threaten to fire her if she doesn’t confess.”
“Meu Deus,” said the Provost. “Maybe we should change the subject. My wife’s had too much to drink, I think.”
She rolled her eyes and leaned toward you even farther, her breasts pressed over the table. “He makes jokes when he knows I am right.”
When it seemed like there would be no escape from this conversation, that we were trapped here for the rest of the night, the doorbell rang.
“Who is it?” said the Provost to his wife. “I didn’t hear the front desk call.”
“I don’t know, my darling. Perhaps you should go see?” She lit another cigarette.
The Provost grunted as he stood, like his body had stiffened from sitting too long, and hobbled into the living room. We all sat quietly and listened to the door open, the murmur of two deep voices, and the return of his heavy footsteps.
“Dennis, it’s the driver. His wife just went into labor. He wants to know if you could leave now so he can go to the hospital.”
At first you looked inconvenienced and I thought you might say no. But instead you said, “Yes, yes, of course. Linda, are you ready?”
More than ever, I wanted to say, and nodded. “Maybe we should take a taxi?”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” said the Provost. “Childbirth tends to take a while.”
We left our plates dirty on the table without even a small taste of the brigadeiros that Ana had made. On the way out you asked the driver if he’d rather we call a taxi, but he seemed too panicked to change his mind, so we got into the car and drove silently, with just the occasional deep sigh from the front seat. The car stopped in front of our building, and you reached for my hand.
“That was a nice dinner,” you said.
We exited on opposite sides of the car. As the driver sped off, I realized that we never tipped him, but I didn’t have
the energy to mention it to you.
You waved to him from the street. “Good luck with your wife!”
When we got back into the apartment, you poured us two glasses of mango juice and we sat at our small kitchen table, on two wooden chairs, just for a few minutes until we retired to the bedroom. You fell asleep as soon as your body reached the bed.
I lay awake for hours. The question spun through my thoughts: Why didn’t I confess? I was the one who had ruined the damn suit. And now what? Would you take your suspicions out on Marta? The whole conversation seemed like a performance for the Provost’s wife, a spinning coin that began to wobble, so you fought desperately to keep it in motion. I had to believe you didn’t actually think Marta was at fault. I had to believe it, or else I’d have to believe I was a reckless person, and in that moment, I couldn’t bear the thought.
When I woke the next morning, a pink cloud of a stain had dried underneath me. Marta offered to wash it. I cried in front of her while holding the stained sheet in my hand.
“Why are you crying?” she asked.
I was hormonal and guilty. I told her I missed home. That I missed something familiar.
“What’s something familiar?”
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich was the best solution I could find. I tried to explain to Marta what peanut butter was, but she didn’t understand what I meant, so she asked me to come help her find it. We walked to a store that looked, from the outside, like a car garage, with a big sliding door that opened vertically to the street. I followed Marta around the aisles as she collected our everyday food—sliced cheese and ham for breakfast, jelly and Catupiry, papaya, mango, onions, brown beans, and bread—but I couldn’t find the peanut butter. She suggested we try another store a few blocks up. It was midday so the streets were filled with people out for lunch, restaurants with tables open onto the streets, men in blazers and women in sharp blouses, sipping iced beers in the sun.
Marta’s knees were bothering her; though she never admitted it to me, I could tell by the way she would straighten one leg as we climbed the uphill sidewalk. I began to tell her about something, what it was I can’t remember, and she kept having to turn her head to hear me.
It Is Wood, It Is Stone Page 9