“Stay calm, hon.”
“I can’t . . .” Helena’s voice failed her. She hunched even further over her bare arms, and Teo began to find her pathetic behavior exasperating. He came closer, prepared for any hostility. He had the right to visit his fiancée and couldn’t care less what Helena thought of him.
Clarice looked like a china doll that had fallen to the ground and broken. The doctors were now trying to put the pieces together again as best they could: cardiac monitor, aspirator, drips. Bending over the bed, Teo gazed at the contours of the body he had once found svelte and exciting. The sight of Clarice’s physical deterioration was ruining his mood; he began to think it had been a stupid idea to come here. Helena was weeping silently in her husband’s arms. He started to rehearse an apology but lost track of his thoughts halfway through it.
The scars on Clarice’s body were stigmata on Teo’s back. He could see the fury under her quivering eyelashes, the repudiation on her dry lips, and was afraid, even though she was sedated.
“I want you to leave,” said Helena.
On the mechanical ventilator trolley was a picture of Clarice when she was younger, maybe fifteen. She was at a table set for a birthday party, hugging her parents and wearing a colorful dress. Teo wished he were in the photo. Maybe Helena would let him put a photo of them as a couple on the ventilator trolley too. First he would have to be nice.
“I’m so sorry,” he said very sincerely, as he really did lament that things had come to that.
“This is your fault!”
“It was an accident. There was nothing I could do.”
“An accident? I haven’t spoken to my daughter in months! And now . . .”
Teo trod lightly. The tiredness bearing down on his shoulders hadn’t let up in twenty-four hours. “I’m still confused. I—”
“I want you to explain now.” Helena’s hands shook. “I can’t bear any more of your stalling.”
“Let him speak, hon,” said her husband.
Helena looked pale and haggard. Teo noticed how alike she and Clarice were in their mannerisms: the same primitive fear, the same vigorous attempts to intimidate him. At the moment, Helena’s expression was identical to Clarice’s when she found out Breno was dead.
“I don’t want you to lie to me!” she said.
Teo surmised that he and Helena’s husband played similar roles in their relationships: the rational counterpart to their partners’ emotional melodrama. He didn’t want to come across as insensitive, but he used a pragmatic tone of voice to narrate the moments leading up to the car accident, adding details that sprang to mind as he spoke.
He explained that Clarice had hurt herself on some rocks while swimming off Ilha Grande. He felt more comfortable talking about it now and was able to lie more easily. Helena was very upset and tried to say something.
“I’m so worried that Clarice—” Suddenly, her throat tightened and she couldn’t speak.
“Clarice’s going to be fine,” Teo said, although he didn’t really believe it.
Helena sighed and waved him over. Her smile moved Teo in a way that Patricia hadn’t been able to. Her hand was cold but comforting. He was careful not to stare at her, as he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.
“Sorry to offload on you. It’s just that I feel like the worst mother in the world,” she said. She started crying again.
He wanted to feel empathy, be moved by her pain, but all he could manage was slightly watery eyes. He had an impulse to tell her the whole truth about Breno, and about Clarice’s attempted suicide, but it quickly abated.
“Would you get me a coffee, please?” Helena asked her husband.
As he left, Teo thought they’d share a poignant moment hugging, sharing hopes and crying on each other’s shoulders, but Helena dried her eyes and her expression changed.
“Tell me about Breno.”
“I didn’t see Breno. And Clarice never said much about—”
“Stop lying.” Helena stared at him, anxious but far from hysterical. She had recovered the air of superiority that he feared. “Our family has been going to that hotel for years. I know Breno was there that day. Gulliver told me.”
Teo leaned on Clarice’s bed and lowered his eyes. His head spun, reexamining facts without coming to a conclusion. He thought about punching Helena and nicking her jugular with a scalpel, but they were in a private hospital, and it would be hard to get away with it. He needed to deal with the fact that she knew. She knew a lot more than he had given her credit for, and it was quite possible that she knew everything.
“Right after he stopped by our place, Breno went to Teresópolis,” she said with the same smile as Clarice, the same protruding teeth. “Gulliver said he saw a man arriving at your chalet that night, but thought it was you. Was it?”
“Yes, possibly.”
He felt like he was going to pass out.
“The next morning Gulliver found the padlock on the gate open. Someone had entered on foot.”
“And what does that prove?”
“Breno is dead. And you killed him.”
Teo wanted to leave. It was ridiculous, offensive, vulgar.
“I’ll tell you what I did,” Helena went on. “I’m a lawyer, as you know. That detective has been sniffing around and seems to have a bee in his bonnet about you and Clarice. I don’t want my daughter involved in a scandal. To be honest, I don’t care if Breno is dead. I don’t care that you killed that waste of space.”
“I didn’t—”
“I asked Gulliver to change your departure date on their records to the twenty-ninth of November. Breno disappeared on December 1. I’m on your side, but I want you to tell me the truth.”
Teo sighed, staring at Helena. The conversation felt unreal. He knew that anything he said was of the utmost importance, and he couldn’t say the wrong thing.
“Breno showed up in Teresópolis that night. He was completely unstable and had brought a knife to force Clarice to go back with him. He’d been drinking too. He stank of cachaça. We got into a fight, and before we knew it, he was . . . lying on the ground . . . dead. We didn’t mean to do it. Clarice was desperate. I was too. Neither of us is a murderer.”
An insane feeling of mirth made Teo smile slightly.
“We buried Breno in the forest behind the hotel. It was all very quick. It felt like a dream. But it really got to Clarice. She shut down, didn’t want to talk to anyone. She refused to go back to Rio. She didn’t want to talk to you, as she said you wouldn’t understand.”
Teo noticed that Helena’s shoulders tensed slightly.
“Clarice lost it. She started saying it was my fault. She was sure we were being followed, but she was imagining things. At one point, she even said she hadn’t invited me to Teresópolis and that she wanted me to leave her alone. She’d gone back to smoking and was missing someone by the name of Laura. . . . She was always repeating her name.”
Teo made a point of mentioning Laura’s name, as he presumed Helena didn’t like her either.
“The last few days . . .” He sounded offended. “The last few days she even accused me—she said I was holding her prisoner.”
“Prisoner?”
“Yes, I—I admit I did it twice. It was only twice, Helena. She’d lost it. It was on Ilha Grande. Clarice was really depressed and . . . do you think it was wrong? I needed to set some limits. She didn’t hurt herself by accident on Ilha Grande. She actually threw herself into the sea trying to take her own life.”
Helena raised her bony hand to her mouth.
“I was just trying to take care of her. I stopped the bleeding, stitched her up. But she’d get worked up so easily. She wanted to turn herself in to the police. It’s all so sad. The woman I love. The woman who said she’d marry me.”
Teo pretended to wipe a tear off his cheek.
�
�I tried to spare you all this.”
“What about the car accident?”
“I don’t know.” He was relieved to be able to open up to someone, even if it was only a crack. “I’ve thought a lot about it. Sometimes I’m sure it was an accident. Not long before that, Clarice and I had made up. She seemed healthier, she’d stopped smoking again and had come to accept that Breno’s death had been necessary.”
“Do you think she might have made the car crash on purpose?”
“Clarice had already tried to kill herself once, on Ilha Grande. Even though she was better, I thought she might have had a relapse . . . gone back to thinking about Breno, Laura, cigarettes—all the things that kept her away from a more wholesome life.”
Helena continued to stare at him, and he got ready for a new onslaught of questions. Clarice’s father came back with coffee for everyone. Teo thanked him for his thoughtfulness. Helena had donned her terrified expression again and was clinging to her husband. At that instant, he understood that all mothers were like her: false, self-seeking, and very cunning when protecting their offspring.
Teo said good-bye and left. The conversation would keep him buzzing for the next few hours. He concluded that Helena was on his side and would continue to support him. It was a victory, albeit a provisional one. When Clarice woke up, perhaps he’d be labeled a liar or a coward. He wanted Clarice back, full of life, spontaneity, and sarcasm; but all he had to do was think a little to come to the conclusion that it really would be better if she didn’t wake up.
30
Six days passed. Teo would go to the hospital in the morning and would leave only at night, when visiting hours were over. He sat near Clarice’s bed. Patricia went with him once or twice but gave up when she realized the detective wasn’t coming anymore. Clarice remained in a stable condition, with no improvement.
Teo got closer to Clarice’s father. His name was Gustavo, and he was pretty ugly, very different from his daughter, but very knowledgeable. They talked about his Houston-based employer’s oil platforms, as well as economics, medicine, and politics. Teo liked him a lot; he wished his own father were alive and as good a man as Gustavo.
Helena didn’t talk much to Teo. She was friendly, but he didn’t know what to make of her. Sometimes it seemed that she believed him and even liked him, but the rest of the time Teo had the feeling she didn’t think that highly of him and that her judgment was merely on hold. He felt that the things he’d told Helena were very plausible and fit into his own reading of Clarice’s actions over the last few months. She had gone crazy, attempted suicide, and the episode with Breno had just been bad luck. That was the truth. He tried to present the facts another way but got lost, as there were huge blanks that couldn’t be explained away. It wasn’t possible, for example, that Clarice had thrown herself into the sea merely because of Breno. In his assessment, misguided feelings and a personality weakened by other problems had created the fatal chemistry.
On Friday, Teo took two medical books to read at the hospital, as Gustavo had gone to a meeting in São Paulo and there wouldn’t be anyone to talk to. Besides, Clarice’s silence, punctuated by electronic beeps, created a pleasant rhythm for reading—and he especially liked studying surgical procedures while sitting in an ICU. Shortly after midday, the doctor came to say that Clarice had improved slightly overnight. The news was enough to cheer up Helena.
She invited Teo to lunch at a nearby Arabic restaurant. She seemed to be making an effort to be nice. She mentioned that Gustavo really liked him, and she told him stories from Clarice’s childhood. (Once she’d hit a classmate who’d called her Rabbit.)
Then she started in with the questions. She was particularly interested in her daughter’s psychological state.
“She was living in another reality,” said Teo for the thousandth time. “The shock of what had happened unhinged her. There were days when she didn’t seem to remember Breno, and others when she’d start the day up in arms saying horrible things to me.”
Helena told him that Clarice had seen a psychologist for seven years as a teenager.
Teo put down his bread, wiped his fingers on the napkin, and looked up at her. “I really care for your daughter.”
They ordered rice with lentils and cheese sfihas. She insisted that they share some lamb kaftas, but Teo explained that he was a vegetarian. He felt welcomed by the Manhães family and was already very much at home with them—he said things like “I want to have two or three children,” and “I fully support Clarice’s artistic career, but I think she needs a job that gives her some financial stability,” and “Cigarettes are a deplorable addiction. All addictions are deplorable, for that matter.”
Helena smiled at him. “When did the two of you get engaged?”
“On the twenty-fourth of November. I’ll never forget it. We were sitting on one of those benches by the lake at the hotel. We talked about having children and decided on surnames. Manhães is her maternal surname, isn’t it?” he said, taking a stab in the dark.
“Yes, it’s from my father’s side.”
“Mine is Avelar Guimarães. Manhães Guimarães doesn’t work.” He laughed heartily.
Helena looked at him. “Any relation to Judge Avelar Guimarães?”
“His son,” said Teo, a little ashamed, but it quickly passed. Helena knew who his father was and admired him. She had read some of his books on civil procedure and didn’t seem to care about the scandal in which he’d been involved. Teo noticed that status was important to her and talked about his plans as a doctor.
The conversation came back around to Clarice. Helena asked where they’d left the rug to be washed, and Teo had to make up an excuse: he said they’d forgotten it in the trunk and later used it to carry Breno’s body to the grave in the middle of the forest. He felt like a character in a crime novel.
Teo assumed she didn’t know about the handcuffs and separators in the suitcase. Maybe the detective hadn’t divulged the information. He wasn’t afraid of being suspected of something, as he’d bought it all in a sex shop, but the thought that someone might think he was perverted bothered him.
“Are you going back to the hospital?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Teo glanced at his watch. They’d forgotten their problems for an hour and a half.
Helena said she had something to do that afternoon and insisted on paying the bill. As they were saying good-bye, she said, “I hope this nightmare is over soon. It’ll be great to have an Avelar Guimarães as a son-in-law.”
Teo thought about the pleasant time he’d had and was surprised to find Detective Aquino sitting next to Clarice’s bed. He was flicking through a notepad, but when he saw Teo, he stood and greeted him with a nod. He said he’d stopped by and thought it odd that no one was with Clarice.
“Helena and I went to get lunch,” said Teo. There was something dishonest about the friendliness in the detective’s gaze.
“I managed to find that Gertrude you mentioned.”
For a minute, Teo was confused and thought he was talking about his Gertrude.
“Is this her?” The detective showed him a very bad photograph of the toothless old woman.
Teo looked at it but didn’t touch it. It was offensive that that woman and his friend had the same name. He still hadn’t grown used to the idea.
“Yep, that’s her.”
The detective put the photo back in his pocket and sighed. “Something doesn’t add up. I talked to Gertrude, and—”
“Would you mind not calling her Gertrude?”
“What’s the problem?”
“I’m just asking.” Teo wished he could leave the conversation. Couldn’t he have any peace?
“The woman said there was no one with you on the boat. She said you went to the deserted beach alone.”
“The old woman’s potty,” he said with a smile. “Did you believe
her?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t have any reason to lie.”
The woman might have mentioned that she’d seen someone with him on the beach. Or maybe she hadn’t said anything because that was what he’d asked her to say. She was a complete idiot, and he couldn’t think like an idiot.
“Are you sure this is the woman who took you and Clarice on the boat?”
“Yep, that’s what I said.”
Teo was finding it all very tiresome. It was his word against that of an illiterate old woman.
“She must have been mistaken, then,” said the detective.
“Sorry I can’t be of any more help.”
“There’s something else that I find curious. There was an empty suitcase in your car.”
“Clarice was the one who packed everything. It doesn’t make any sense that she’d leave one empty.”
“Well, that’s what happened.”
“Maybe you should talk to the first responders. They must have taken some stuff.”
“If they were going to take something, they’d have taken your cells, don’t you think?” The detective’s animosity was growing, and Teo was secretly pleased.
“Dunno.”
“I’ve requested authorization to get your and Clarice’s cell phone records. We’re trying to recover the content of her laptop too. It was damaged in the crash, but we’ve got technicians working on it.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with Breno being missing.”
“It’d be great if you could tell me why the suitcase was empty.”
“I agree, it’d be great.”
This conversation didn’t make the slightest bit of sense to him.
“Breno was a nice young man,” said the detective. “He didn’t have any enemies. I wonder who could have done this. What do you think?”
“Maybe he killed himself.”
Perfect Days Page 21