by Sarah Faber
But just a few months later he grabbed her wrist when she reached for one of his cigarettes, thinking he was asleep. ‘You cost enough to clothe,’ he said, his eyes barely open. Amphibious. Then he took away her mother’s chequebook because he said she was giving the maids extra money for food, and Luiza had to steal the cheques back from him. Sometimes it was almost a relief when he sank so low he had to go into the hospital. She missed him, but at least she could breathe again. For a time. As much as she wanted to be absolved of him, she soon regretted it. Because when he’d taken her hand that night in the driveway and they skated away, when he described for her what snow would feel like, and she felt it, that was him too. What if the doctors stripped away his moods, then found there was nothing left?
Beyond the railing where Luiza stood leaning, gulls rose above the water, then dove, and for a moment she thought she saw something awful in the water—a grey, waving hand. Just a fish. Of course it was. And yet she shuddered, turning her back to the sea. Next to her, a couple had appeared, beautifully dressed and murmuring to each other, hushed and inward. The sun was setting and Luiza imagined they must be on their way to dinner, then maybe dancing in the ship’s ballroom. Some part of her longed to join them, to be satisfied with fine meals and parties and conversations as light as soap bubbles. Shimmering, then popping, then nothing. But her mother’s exasperated remark came back to her: she could have a completely different kind of life. Whatever she wanted. The truth was, she couldn’t imagine what that might mean.
For years growing up had meant going downtown to Copacabana, attending parties, dancing at the casinos. But already the whole neighbourhood bored her, its contrasts harsher than she’d pictured, a simulacrum of her parents’ photos from twenty years before, though those images seemed more real to her. Now, downtown was papered over with billboards, colonized by girls in short shorts, boys in rubber flip-flops. Where had she read that? A poem. ‘Ai de Ti, Copacabana’: Be woe to you, Copacabana. Dark fish will swim through your streets and the fetid swell of the tides will cover your face.… Woe to you, Copacabana! The people from your hills will descend hollering over you.
She knew the poem was overblown and humourless, that liking it only confirmed her earnestness. And yet the city felt that way to her sometimes, as though they were all thoughtlessly drinking Coca-Cola and smearing on lip gloss, playing futebol while somewhere—invisible for now but not far at all—a wave was swelling. It wasn’t to her these angry words were written. She shrank from the new Copacabana, its radiant patina and too-bright sherbet hues.
These days, she preferred to stay home and read most nights to remind herself of the world beyond the eight-foot walls that surrounded her family’s property. During the evenings, she often wandered outside and liked to sit against the wall farthest from the house and listen to the tinny sounds of her parents’ parties—her mother’s ukulele, aggressively jovial three-drink laughter, a glass shattering, family friends dancing. The same people she’d always known. Up close it all scraped, rang atonally in her ears, but from out in the garden it sounded almost joyous. Then, one evening Mr. Carmichael appeared from out of the gloom. He was gripping a book in both hands, pale-knuckled, his stance almost like a boy’s. He was a friend of her parents’, though not an especially close one—he and his wife occasionally came to their parties, or met up with them at the casinos, though Luiza had never made more than passing small talk with either of them.
She put her book down, suddenly worried. ‘Is everything all right? Is my father—?’
‘Oh, he’s fine. He’s quite happy, in fact.’
Quite happy. Such euphemistic kindness. And always the sense that others knew more about her, and her family, than they ought. She swallowed, the hairs on the backs of her arms rising into tiny barbs. ‘Then is there something you need?’
‘I just had to get out of there,’ he said, looking beyond her now, smiling vaguely even as his eyes seemed to darken with a forlorn dissatisfaction she found immediately familiar—she’d felt it a thousand times. He stammered for a few minutes about the crowd and the heat, and how he was growing tired of it all—the nights out, the drinking. Was it a kindness? She had the impulse to reach out and touch his brow, smooth its crease, then was grateful he was too far for easy contact.
‘I also wanted to give you this,’ he said, holding out the shabby, leather-bound book. ‘I’ve read it dozens of times, and I always see you out here with your little lamp, reading. I thought you might appreciate it.’
Grand, ancient myths free of irony. Overwrought, self-important, bloody. Beautiful. All these things Mr. Carmichael had given her when, a few weeks before she walked aboard this ship, she’d taken Ovid’s Metamorphoses from his hand.
‘This time in your life won’t last forever,’ he told her, barely smiling. ‘I know it’s hard to imagine now, but you won’t always be here, feeling the way you do.’
‘And where will I go?’ Luiza asked, still trying to hide how startled she was by his attention. Though he seemed as aware as she was how unusual it was for him to be out there, talking to her.
‘You seem like a clever girl. Where would you like to go?’
At the time, she couldn’t answer, but the question kept coming back to her.
After he returned to the house that evening, she sat in the dark for several minutes longer holding the book he’d placed in her hands, warm from the substantial weight of it, and from the heat of his skin. Silly girl, she thought to herself now. She shouldn’t be distracted by a brief conversation with a disaffected, older man. She should be thinking about what to do with herself, her life.
Girdled by the ship’s railings, she climbed now onto the upper deck and scanned the horizon. Maybe she would be a writer—hard, faceted sentences that would arrange her turgid, nagging thoughts into something manageable and serious. Worthwhile. The way stress or fatigue deranged her senses, convinced her the natural world was encroaching on her selfhood, her psyche. How bright sunlight became a snaking shimmer across her vision, temporarily blinding her; how the dissonance of particular words—slice, hiss, place—turned everything red, their reptilian sibilance shooting a current into her neck. Imaginary bodies in the ocean. Couldn’t she turn these into something beautiful?
And the persistent impressions—of places she’s never been, people she’s never met, snatches of conversations she’s never had—writing them down was the only way to stop them repeating in her mind. It was how she kept herself company as a child, how she generated for herself the sense that someone else was always there, listening. She lays out her dress. The light dances in her hair as she smooths the creases of its rustling fabric. She did it almost unconsciously, without thinking it unusual. To remember that this other, the unseen listener, was imagined made her feel lonely. Nothing else was hers alone. Not faith (ruined), or madness (Hugo’s), or beauty (Dora’s).
But still, she couldn’t quite see it, this other life. Surely it was dangerous to hope that her father might be helped by the treatment he’d receive in Florida. Wrong, even. Hope meant she wished for him to change, to be something other than the exceptional, beautifully alien man who never settled, never accepted a half-life. A man who couldn’t hide from the full breadth of human feeling, no matter how agonizing or exalted. Who experienced everything.
But her own longing was a nuisance, turning her body to face south, to look over the open water, and to wonder how far they had travelled since leaving Brazil. A nagging calculation she couldn’t fathom: How many miles between her and Mr. Carmichael? And how many hours, days, weeks before that distance would close?
— II —
DORA
Dora stands outside Luiza’s bedroom, her hand hovering over the door handle. It’s only noon and somehow the maids have nearly finished all the preparations for tonight’s cocktail party, so she feels like she should try to accomplish something before the guests arrive. Will anyone think it’s too soon, she worries, just a little over a week after Luiza’s ceremo
ny? But she and Hugo have held this party to kick off Carnival every year since they were married, and this will be the last one. Of course, with so many things already packed, the house won’t look nearly as lovely as it had for the goodbye party they threw last year, when their house was still a real house with everything in it, and there were flowers everywhere and Luiza was still here.
But the house is tidy, at least. It’s good enough. Except for this one room. Dora closes her hand on the knob now, determined. It’s up to her to sort through all her daughter’s things and decide what to keep. Every little barrette and postcard from a friend, all her books and journals, those pages and pages she used to write. (Unkind thoughts about her mother?) Each thing touched by her, smelling of her. It will take hours, of course—does she really have enough time to make any progress today? But it’s too much to ask of the maids, and Hugo would want to keep everything. It has to be her. Without warning, Dora’s hand falls to her side, her remaining energy smothered by thoughts of everything she still has to do in preparation for the move.
There were once practical reasons for why they had to leave. Rational reasons. Hugo had condemned the way President Kubitschek spent like a madman. New industry, new roads, new city blocks. New city. But soon, her husband predicted, the money would run out, inflation would rise sharply, the Brazilian currency would become worthless. And now, a new president, Goulart—practically a communist! So officially, they are moving to avoid the impending collapse of the Brazilian economy; they want to be closer to Hugo’s family, have the girls get to know their grandparents. Unofficially, they have no choice—they can no longer afford Hugo’s treatment if they stay. Florida was a choice. A terrible one in hindsight—but how could they have known? Officially, there are better facilities in Canada, and talk of free health care. Unofficially, everything in this house is coated with the residue of what little their daughter left behind.
She can’t put it off any longer. She reaches for the handle again, and the door opens now, though not by her. The unseen hand of a ghost? Please, yes—come back to me. No, a real hand. A fat, brown hand. The door creeps open and then Maricota is coming out of Luiza’s room slowly and carefully, her eyes trained on her feet, as though the very act of staring down at them can stifle any noise she might make.
‘O que você está fazendo aqui?’
The maid jumps a little and pats at her pockets without thinking, immediately betraying herself. ‘Nada. Não estou fazendo nada, Dona Dora. I am cleaning because you have to be packed soon.’
‘O que você tem nas mãos?’
‘Nada.’
‘What were you doing in her room? What do you have?’ Dora means to be encouraging, to show that she trusts Maricota to have a good reason for being in her daughter’s room, but she cringes at her ugly tone. She extends her open hand as slowly and calmly as she can manage. ‘Me dá, por favor.’
Maricota places into Dora’s palm a rosary, a bracelet, a pair of kid gloves. Sentimental things—cheap things. There are far more valuable items she could have taken.
‘Por que?’
‘To remember. Something to remember her by when you leave. We are all so sad,’ answers Maricota without meeting Dora’s eye.
‘You know I would have been happy to give you these things,’ she says to this woman who has been with the family since Luiza was a baby. ‘Why are you sneaking around?’ Dora feels almost ashamed to ask her these questions, as though it’s a betrayal of Maricota’s privacy, of her private relationship with Luiza. The daughter who they both know was more the maid’s than the mother’s.
‘My mother has a shrine for her, at home. We put candles and flowers and photographs, and I want to make her spirit peaceful. I need something of hers and I know you don’t believe in these things.’
But Dora wishes she did, wishes she could light some candles and arrange a few objects and believe she could be allowed something like peace. She takes Maricota’s hands in her own. ‘I still would have given them to you. You know that.’
Maricota lowers her head and says nothing, and Dora doesn’t have the patience right now to keep scrutinizing so she changes the subject. ‘Have you heard back from everyone about the party tonight?’
‘Sim, Dona Dora.’
‘Good. Obrigada.’ Dora watches Maricota walk away, back bent with deference. Or is it pity? A kind of regretful disappointment in Dora from this so-called servant who wept openly when she learned the family was moving because, she said, she loves them so much it hurts. Or maybe it’s really because Maricota has another woman’s insufficiencies to atone for.
But enough of remorse, recriminations. Dora shivers as she turns away from Luiza’s bedroom, trying to shake off the draining gravity of everything to come—the parties and the goodbyes. The last transcribed over everything she imagines. She can’t deal with Luiza’s bedroom today when there’s so much else to do.
She knows she should be getting dressed but instead walks downstairs, where she mixes herself a gin and tonic. As she takes a sip of her drink, she’s careful to avoid her reflection in the windows. She dreads looking in the mirror these days, where the once-fine lines have etched themselves deeply around her downturned mouth. The only way to hide them is to smile. Half their things are still missing, just as they have been this past year. Although they were only days away from leaving Brazil last year, she had insisted they keep the house exactly as it had always been right up until the day of the goodbye party, and only afterwards could the packing and dismantling begin. The next day, Luiza took the girls to the beach to get them out of the house while the adults packed and movers came to take the first, non-essential things away. But then Luiza vanished and everything stopped. The house was frozen for weeks in its half-packed state as they searched and held their breath and waited for news. Over the months that followed, some effort was made to put things back as they were; the maids redecorated with what was at hand in nearby boxes. But some things had already been sent ahead to Canada, leaving ghostly spaces throughout the house: the set of lacquered Chinese tables that fit inside one another in descending size like nesting boxes; the brass sculpture of a stern horse that reminded her of Magda; the rosewood sideboard and all the pretty matching teacups and saucers it held. These were all now sitting in a warehouse in Toronto.
She must really get ready for the party, because the guests will be arriving soon. Because it’s been almost a year since Luiza disappeared and everyone says life must go on. Because they want things to seem normal for the girls. Because their friends insisted. Because it’s what they’ve always done and they don’t know what else to do. No one has told them what to do. Tonight they’ll sing songs and try to laugh. Maybe she’ll dance with Williamson (the best-looking of the husbands after Hugo), briefly forget the coming move to Canada, and feel not unhappy for a little while. But the moment will be brief and she won’t be able to retrieve it. And then still more parties to come: tonight they’ll go on to Cassino da Urca, and then on Tuesday, the night before Lent, the ball at the Municipal Theatre. Then, in two weeks, one last night at the Copacabana, the official goodbye. Because they promised. Because she has to.
She takes her drink outside and sits on the veranda, where Hugo is asleep. He hasn’t been sleeping well—she heard him up walking the halls these past few nights. She still can’t shake the sense that she has exposed herself in some irreparable way in front of Maricota, and she’s momentarily glad they are leaving—and leaving the maids behind—so that all her shame, her weaknesses, will be hers alone and unwitnessed by those who are better at love. She hasn’t yet bought Evie and Magda new socks for the trip, or mailed the cheque to the school in Canada. She hasn’t learned how to cook or clean properly, or sew little dresses for the girls’ dolls, which they’re getting too big to play with anyway. She’d meant to. The truth is, she’ll be lost without the maids. Our Help, she once wrote on the back of a picture of them holding Evie and Magda in front of the house. Worth their weight in gold.
; And as though she conjured them, Dora now hears the girls’ shrill, agitated voices bickering away long before she sees them. She watches them clamber up the embankment through the tiny flower-petal holes in the straw hat she has pulled down over her face. They are sunburned and filthy, their small eyes—bent toward her now—are intense and darting like their father’s. Eyes incapable of stillness, always expectant and demanding something of someone—usually her. Evie’s full of longing; Magda’s full of reproach, because she thinks Dora doesn’t notice her own daughters coming in an hour later than they were meant to. But she sees them. Sees them taking out the croquet game, knowing full well there was a time when the threat of mallets or balls near the windows would have sent her shouting, when they were expected to inhabit the margins, to play far enough away from the adults that they could be gazed upon from a distance: a happy, tranquil domestic scene. She often hasn’t had the patience for all their exuberant clatter, the intrusion of their physicality, their bodily needs. But right now Dora finds their energy reassuring, a sign that they are still intact. And insistently, guilelessly alive.
Evie and Magda begin to wrestle for the only green mallet, which Magda argues should be hers, even though green has always been Evie’s colour. Magda is ferocious, unrelenting. With Evie she’ll never give in, and yet with some people she’s the softest among them. She always gives money to beggars asking for alms because she empathizes with the maids and says she’s embarrassed by all that the family has. Once, Magda actually scolded her parents for being spoiled, so Hugo half-heartedly spanked her as punishment. Of course she forgave him but never Dora because the child knew the punishment was at her mother’s urging. There have been no spankings lately, no punishments of any sort. And though Dora still sometimes yells, she apologizes immediately afterwards, implicitly begging their forgiveness. Has it taken Luiza’s death to make her into the kind of mother her other children could like? Maybe they’ll love her better soon, in Canada, unfettered and alone. And there goes Magda screaming after Evie with a mallet. Hugo doesn’t stir. She should really get up and stop them.