All Is Beauty Now

by Sarah Faber

  ‘I don’t want to see anyone, Maricota. Please tell him to go away.’

  ‘He says it’s important. It’s Mr. Carmichael.’

  Maricota has made strong coffee, which Dora drinks silently as Carmichael sits across from her, gripping his hat. He appears bewildered in some way she can’t identify, stooped in the shoulders, hair a bit too long. His boundaries seem blurred. He was never good at small talk. This was one reason his adolescent crush on her had remained unrequited even though he was charming. When they were young, his quiet adoration had unnerved her. Later, when she was older and alone and it seemed like Hugo might be lost to her, for a time his devotion had seemed vital. She’s felt ashamed ever since, but he saved her once.

  Now she needs to move him along—the girls, the maids, they’re all nearby. She used to fear he might do something like this, reach out in some awkward, dangerous way, but it’s been almost fourteen years since their affair. He wasn’t happy when she ended things, despite the blatant impracticality of it all. His wife, Alice, they could fool forever, but once Hugo came home from the hospital, there could be no more secrets. No complications. She told him she hadn’t meant to hurt him, but it was all a mistake, a terrible mistake—all the worst clichés she could think of. He always saw through insincerity, and she hoped it might diminish her in his eyes, repel him. It was the rainy season when she ended things (of course it had to rain!), and she made him stand outside on the veranda with her behind the house as a torrent of water poured out the gutters that ran the length of the roof. This was where she always waited for him, watching as he came through the backyard after dark, once Luiza was asleep upstairs and the maids were in their bedrooms, in their separate annex of the house. She would leave the back gate unlocked, then wait for him outside so that he wouldn’t have to knock, torqued with anxiety until he emerged from under the bougainvillea, occasionally cursing as he swept their hanging branches aside. Whatever feeling existed between them was deepened, she was sure, by the dim evening light that made him more lovely, and the hot, briny wind coming off the sea, the air charged with coming thunderstorms.

  Those particular details, the manner in which they met—she sometimes wondered if the affair would have gone on so long if she didn’t always encounter him in the dark, in a tangle of heady flowers and shrubs. She should have found them a seedy hotel room—it would have been over in a week. Instead it went on for nearly two months, during Hugo’s second hospitalization. Sometimes they stayed downstairs all evening, just talking, laughing, dancing. On other nights, she led him to one of the guest rooms in the back of the house, far from the other bedrooms. In the early mornings, her beige underpants were a spoiled heap on the floor.

  That last night, they had stood outside as just beyond them the rain fell off the veranda roof. He listened quietly, and as she spoke, she watched over his shoulder as the distant lightning jumped from peak to peak around the harbour.

  ‘He has left you again and again,’ he said at last, after she fell silent. ‘One of these days, he won’t come back.’

  ‘He’s sick. I promised—’

  ‘You never promised to be alone.’

  ‘I still love him.’

  ‘You love me too. And I’ve loved you since we were children.’

  ‘I don’t. I’m so sorry. This has all been like a lovely little dream, but I need—’

  He’d kissed her then the way he always did, with both hands placed on the sides of her face, which that night made her chest strangle. Finally, she pleaded with him, begged him not to be one more thing that shocked her awake in the night, that caused her knees to give as she descended the stairs. That had been the right approach after all. He’d always said he couldn’t bear to see a woman cry. She can still picture him, slouching away under the scraping boughs, tearing off a handful of leaves as he went. Ever since, he has remained in their orbit just as he’d always been—work parties, cocktail parties, the casinos, even the occasional dinner at their house when it would have been awkward not to invite him. Still, he’d kept his promise never to speak of their affair, never to seek her out. Until today.

  She places her coffee cup on the table carefully, as though trying not to startle a wounded animal, and says slowly, ‘I think it would be best if—’

  It all comes rushing out of him—the Dawseys’ man, the one who looks after their gardens, the one who is simple?

  ‘Yes,’ Dora says cautiously. ‘I know who you mean.’

  ‘The Dawseys’ man has been telling people that he saw a girl. He says he was at the beach that day, his day off, and he saw a girl.’

  ‘Which day?’

  ‘You know which day. The day she—’

  ‘Yes.’ Dora means to state it as a question—Yes? Please go on—but some part of her wants him to stop, wants to push him out of the house.

  ‘He was at the far end of your beach, on the other side. He saw a beautiful girl, clothing drenched, hair drenched. He said she came out of the water like an angel with nothing but the dress she wore and a face like a secret, or something odd like that.’

  ‘No.’ Dora stands. She wants him out, needs him out before she runs into a corner and screams.

  Carmichael stands too, moving closer to her. ‘And she walked up the beach and away and never stopped once, never hesitated. He says she was like Sophia Loren in that film about the dolphin, soaking wet but even more beautiful.’

  Dora tries to push him away, but Carmichael grabs her by the wrists, pulls her toward him, and speaks in a low, deliberate voice. ‘I believe him. I wouldn’t do this to you if I didn’t believe him.’

  ‘He said all that? Those were his words?’ Her hands are still foolishly splayed, snared and useless in his.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Those are ridiculous things for a gardener to say.’ She wrenches her hands away harder than she needs to and hits him in the jaw.

  Rubbing his face and smiling gently, Carmichael answers, ‘Even local halfwits go to the cinema sometimes.’

  He was always able to make her laugh, and in spite of herself she aches for that now, for the simplicity of his company, the ease of it. For lightness where the swelling lump in her gut sits now.

  ‘You don’t believe me,’ he says.

  ‘She was at the beach, for Christ’s sake. She wasn’t wearing a dress. People like stories about beautiful dead girls. How dare you come into my house, use this of all things as an excuse to—’

  ‘This fellow, the Dawseys’ man,’ he says, speaking over her, ‘he’s been telling the story to other maids, cooks, and anyone who will listen. Alice heard it from our weekend girl,’ he says, finally drawing a breath.

  ‘Why are you only telling me now?’

  ‘I only just heard it myself. I couldn’t stand it if you left without … ’

  Dora holds his gaze, but he breaks away and adjusts his shirt, which became untucked in their struggle.

  ‘It just doesn’t seem right somehow,’ he says quietly. ‘Her walking out into the water like that, vanishing without a trace. It seems impossible. And now all these rumours. What if she didn’t drown?’

  Hope claws inside her, because someone else has finally said it. Could it be true? Could Luiza still be alive? Would he lie so viciously just to be close to her again? He used to look at her sometimes, when they were alone, as though he were startled to find her in his presence, as though he couldn’t quite trust in his own happiness. His forehead would crease with worry, then relax as a broad, warm smile spread across his face, altogether different from the brooding, slightly dissatisfied expression he wore at parties. It would sound old-fashioned if spoken out loud, but she believes he still desires her good opinion. No, he wouldn’t lie. And the more he tells her, the less she hears, blood buzzing through her ears. Don’t hope. These inchoate thoughts pulse through her mind, while another, louder word beats out the new rhythm of her heart. Go. Go. Go.

  Her knees give way beneath her, just like those women in the movies. But when he tries t
o grab hold of her, she wraps her arms tightly around herself and falls to the floor in an awkward, half-seated heap. This man kneeling beside her, she thinks—so much like Hugo, but not Hugo. He’s just articulated the thought she’s struggled to push away for months. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

  She waits until her breath has regulated, until the wave of nausea has passed, before she pushes herself back up to standing. Then, still ignoring Carmichael’s outstretched hands, she grips her elbows and says, ‘Take me to him.’

  EVIE

  ‘Parem de atormentar o gatinho!’

  ‘We’re not tormenting him!’ Evie shouts back to Odete. ‘He likes it!’

  All afternoon Evie and Magda have been dressing Luiza’s cat in their old doll clothes: little white cotton bonnets and pinafores now coated in fur and pierced with claw-sized punctures. Evie likes to trap him under her shirt so that he’s pinned against her as he tries to push his head out her sleeve, which doesn’t hurt him. But Magda swings him up in the air fast, then pulls him in close to her body, terrifying him so that he’ll grip her around the neck with his paws.

  ‘Look, he’s giving me a hug.’

  ‘Pra fora, anda! Out!’ Odete shoos them outside with a broom that tickles the backs of their legs.

  Poor cat. And poor Odete, thinks Evie. They’ve driven even her crazy and she’s never shouted at them a day in their lives. Evie knows the maids are terribly sad because they’re leaving, and so is she. But it’s more than sad—ever since Carnival she’s wanted to cut up all her clothes and drag Cat’s claws deeply across her thighs. A feeling she can’t put into words. It seems like they’ve been getting ready to leave for years, talking about leaving, then packing to leave, but never actually going. The maids are always packing, the house becoming more and more bare. All the decorations, all the little knickknacks that she used to play with—the apple dolls with primitive clothes and the painting of dancing, silhouetted baianas with big bums and knotted headscarves—are gone. She pleaded with Maricota and Odete to leave a few things on the walls in the sitting room because it feels too strange to live in such an empty house, but they told her only what was absolutely needed could remain.

  It’s been almost a full year since she last saw Luiza, one week since the party, and there are still two more weeks before they leave. Evie measures everything this way, triangulating between when Luiza disappeared, when the last good thing happened, and how long until they sail away, spending three long weeks trapped on the ship. She tries to remember their old life, to imagine what is coming next, but ‘now’ is a horrible limbo, her heart always straining and itchy. She picks up a book to read to Cat but then puts it back down, worried that Magda will say it is childish (never mind that it was Magda’s idea to dress up Cat). The truth is that Evie always feels pressed upon and hushed, but by no one or nothing she can see—by shifting currents in the air. By the faces of the dead at Carnival, secreted into this world. Now that they’ve seen her, they know where she is. So she goes along with Magda’s games, hoping if she does, she won’t feel quite so cold.

  They are playing jacks on the front steps when a voice calls from the other side of the gate.

  ‘Hey. You girls wouldn’t want to entertain a lonely American girl lost in the jungle, would you?’

  Brigitta, tall and wild, her hair gathered loosely on top of her head with a paintbrush. Dark red, almost auburn like Luiza’s. Not pretty exactly, but almost better than pretty, with a long, lightly freckled nose and a broad, slightly upturned mouth; a permanent little smirk. Brigitta, who told Evie at the party that she’s part Jewish and listens to jazz. Brigitta, pale and unhurried as she crosses the street toward their now-opened gate. (I am not afraid!) Brigitta, who saved her.

  ‘Why look—your hero,’ says Magda, scanning Brigitta up and down.

  Evie rushes to speak before her sister can drive Brigitta, with all her gold dust, away. ‘Thank you! For the other night. That guy was such a bastard.’ The word feels thick in her mouth—she’s never said it before. Magda’s mouth drops open a little, but she says nothing.

  Brigitta curtsies. ‘Always happy to help a maiden in distress.’

  ‘Let’s do something,’ Magda says, throwing her head back and fake-snoring. Evie goes pink. If Papa were here, he’d tell her to forgive her sister. She has a Protestant heart.

  But Brigitta claps her hands together as though encouraging a small child. ‘Yes, yes!’ she cries. ‘Show me what the people do here. I’m so eager to spend time with real Brazilians. My aunt and uncle are so sedated.’

  Magda sneers. ‘We’re American too, you know. We have passports. We’re the same as Mr. and Mrs. Cavanagh.’

  But Brigitta just drapes an arm over Magda’s shoulders and trills. How delighted she is to see them again! They decide they’ll do sprints in the clearing at the centre of their property. Evie tries to protest that it will be getting dark soon, but the older girls ignore her.

  ‘We have to run so we don’t get fat,’ says Brigitta, smiling back at her. By the time they find a spot they agree on, it’s almost dusk. ‘You be the marker, lovely girl,’ Brigitta says to Evie. ‘You go back to the edge of the trees and hold your arms out and whoever touches you first wins.’

  Evie jogs to the tree line, then stands facing the other girls, the skin on the back of her arms tightening wherever it’s brushed by some pale purple flowers that hang low on the shrub.

  ‘We can still see you—go back farther!’

  ‘No, you can’t!’ Her voice is like a little kid’s, high and cracked. ‘I can’t see you.’

  ‘Well, we can see you. Go back!’

  She steps farther back until she trips over some tree roots, her ankles scraped and burning. ‘Can you see me now?’ No answer, so she inches slightly to the side, trying to make it look like she’s going back. ‘Can you see me now?’

  Something brushes her calf. She wipes frantically at her legs, tries to pull off her shoes and loses her balance, stumbling backwards over a fallen branch. If they were in Canada right now, she thinks, lying out on bare ground, she would probably die from exposure. But it’s too warm here so maybe something poisonous will come along instead and inject her, turn her insides to soup, and then not even bother to eat her. Or that rustling behind her will leap: a giant cat, disoriented and starving. Blows against the nape of her neck, skin in loose red ribbons. They’ll find her here on the ground, her entrails unwound and spread out, reflected stars twinkling in her pooling blood. Magda’s eyes will widen, her mouth will twist with regret. Brigitta will weep gently. Evie pulls her knees up to her chest to conserve the last of her body heat. It’s coming now—what she’s been waiting for all these months, just beyond unlit corners, just out of view. A kind of hoped-for emptiness. The end of her.

  ‘You idiot, oh my god, we were looking for you, puta!’

  She’s pulled up by her wrist, wrenched and sore, and dragged along faster than she can walk. Magda pulling. Magda dragging. Magda ahead, always ahead.

  They stop in the middle of the clearing and pull Evie’s arms out to her sides, barking over and over, ‘Straight. Straighter!’ Even Brigitta is rough now, commanding.

  ‘No, you know what? It’s too dark here,’ Brigitta says gravely. ‘Let’s go closer to the light.’

  Evie lets herself be pulled from the clearing to the stone patio beyond the veranda, then be rearranged into a scarecrow. Then Brigitta and Magda both jog backwards about a hundred feet. Evie’s arms sag a little, but she straightens up and shoots them out as far as she can when she sees them both sprinting toward her. Nobody even said Go. Magda’s hand collides with hers first and sets her spinning. After Magda does this eight more times, Brigitta finally gives up. It’s her smoker’s lungs, she says, panting comically, head bent forward, tongue hanging out, her hands on her thighs. But Magda keeps running, keeps coming at her, a flame against Evie’s hand. She rips up the dark.

  With her hand numb and tingling, Evie speaks for the first time since t
hey found her in the bushes. ‘I want a turn.’

  Magda spits. ‘A turn to what?’

  ‘To race. You’ve had about a hundred turns. It’s my turn.’

  Brigitta starts her little girl hand-clapping, foot-hopping again, then high-kicks like a cheerleader in an American movie. ‘Sister against sister. I love it! I can rally for this. I can be your marker-thingummy. Just don’t slap me silly when you come at me.’

  As Magda jogs backwards beside her to the starting point, Evie watches only her new friend, and wonders if it could be her. Brigitta. Could she fill in all those empty spaces Luiza left behind? The places Magda’s too sharp for. Maybe then, Evie could stop peering into corners, hoping to find someone who fits. Who stays.

  Brigitta shouts ‘Go,’ and Evie explodes toward her, running so fast she worries one of her legs might break beneath her like a racehorse’s. She doesn’t dare look back, but she knows she’s a fraction of a second ahead of Magda, and before her is Brigitta, her arms held out at her sides, one eye theatrically squeezed shut, the other staring right at Evie. A smile, urging her on. Even Magda wants this bright flare that is Brigitta, her beauty ruddy and slantwise. They are about to touch her outstretched arms when Evie drives her shoulder into Magda’s body and leaves her crumpled at Brigitta’s feet. As she keeps running past her house and through the gate they left unlocked, she knows she has saved herself from disappearing for one more day.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ Magda screams behind her. ‘You can’t be outside the gates after dark!’

  Under the dim pools of the streetlights, Evie runs faster now. Past every house on her street and for two more blocks until her lungs close up inside her, and she collapses on a stranger’s lawn. When a car pulls up across the street, she’s so busy tucking herself behind a bush that she almost misses seeing her mother climb out and Mr. Carmichael drive away.

  DORA

  They sat parked in front of the Dawseys’ house for twenty minutes before Carmichael finally coaxed Dora out of the car. She hadn’t asked him any further questions about what he told her earlier and he hadn’t said anything more. It seemed so strange to sit beside him, this man whom she had loved, and feel nothing. Scraped out. Eventually, she supposed, she would fill back up with some normal feeling, something like anger, or fear. But for now she was a casing of skin animated by invisible wire.