by Sarah Faber
As Dora and Carmichael walked up to the house, Jack and Betty Dawsey stood on the porch waving awkwardly, trying to sustain tense smiles. Betty took Dora’s hand and gave her a kiss on the cheek, though they’d only ever seen each other occasionally.
‘I am so sorry again about your girl. What an awful thing.’
Dora remembered then that the Dawseys had been at the beach that day with their son, that they had spoken to her afterwards, told her what they saw and what their boy remembered after Luiza helped him bury his father in sand. (Nothing.) She didn’t ask about him, feeling stifled by the smallness of her world, her public tragedy. More consolations were muttered, damp highball glasses pressed into hands, assurances given of what a lovely surprise it all was! Of course the Dawseys wouldn’t ask the reason for the visit—it would be inelegant to ask questions of a poor, grieving mother—but their faces remained pinched with confusion.
‘You have a man,’ Carmichael said finally, uncharacteristically halting. ‘A man who looks after your gardens?’
‘Antonio?’ Betty said. ‘Yes. He’s out back. Has he done something? It’s not his fault, you know. He’s not—’
‘No, we’d just like to speak with him.’
As they waited in the Dawseys’ sitting room, Carmichael sat on the couch while Dora remained standing beside it. It felt too intimate somehow to sit next to him, different than being in the car. Still, she was grateful for him. The anger, she knew, would eventually come, but for the first time since he’d arrived in her home earlier that day, she allowed herself to look at him, to really take him in. The grey at his temples. The deeper creases across his forehead. But she liked that. Young men seemed half formed to her now, too eager and cheerful and certain. Like Hugo, Carmichael seemed weary, more turned-down at the mouth and eyes—disappointed, she supposed—but still strong. Capable. Or maybe that was just what she needed to believe, because it meant that she, too, could still be beautiful. The grace of living through this.
The grown man Carmichael had summoned for her, while she was drained of both grace and words, limped in wearing only shorts, his face smudged with dirt. The Dawseys made their gardener take off his shoes, so he appeared almost naked amid the fine furnishings, standing with his hands clasped primly in front of him. Once Dora realized he was imitating her stance, she sat next to Carmichael, hoping it might make Antonio more comfortable. Without warning, she retched a little as her leg brushed Carmichael’s, and when everyone turned toward her she said in a strangled voice that it was the drink, which was worse. Maybe it was for the best that Antonio was simple—he didn’t know enough to feel humiliated. Finally, Dora asked if she and Carmichael could speak with him privately. The Dawseys kindly left the room, though she could feel them hovering nearby. Everyone already knew her husband was mad—so what if they thought she was too?
‘You’ve been telling people you saw a girl, Antonio?’ Dora asked in Portuguese, speaking up at last. ‘At the beach, last March. A girl coming out of the water. What did she look like?’
‘Bela. Like you, but beautiful. Younger. Same face. A white bathing suit.’
‘Where did the girl go?’
‘She walked and walked, all down the beach, until she was a spot.’
‘Did she say anything?’
‘Nada. She didn’t see me. She was staring and not talking, like a ghost. Or an angel. She was beautiful as an angel. I wanted to follow her, but I’m stuck in the sand. Like stone. She made me a stone.’
Dora held up the photograph of Luiza.
‘Sim!’ Antonio said, shifting excitedly in his seat. ‘Sim. That girl.’
‘You’re sure you really saw this girl?’ Dora pushed the photograph toward his face. ‘Maybe it was a dream? Maybe you wanted to see an angel.’
‘Yes, it was a dream. I want that angel to come back.’
‘But was she real? Was she a real girl, or a dream?’
‘She was an angel, like the angel in my dreams.’
And he went around in circles like this until finally Carmichael thanked everyone for their time and ushered her out of the house.
Dora presses her fingers to her temples, Antonio’s words repeating like a litany in her mind. A dream, an angel, a ghost. Dora’s no longer sure herself that Luiza was ever anything more than these. After she disappeared, Dora sometimes had to interlace her fingers tightly until they ached to stop herself from going up to strangers on the street, in the shops. She wanted to grab them, shake them, beg them to tell her where Luiza had gone. Not her body, but her. If her body was dead, where was she? And why didn’t they also need to know? How could they continue walking about, doing and saying everyday things? Didn’t they know what had happened? Didn’t they see the hole that had opened beneath them? But that is how grief ejects you from normal life—it tears a black hole in the world where most people still see sky. Her hands lock together now as they did then, praying to nothing.
‘The way he described her,’ Dora said afterwards in the car. ‘He was just repeating what he saw in me.’
‘But he was describing her, also. Why would he want to lie to you?’
‘For attention, for money. I don’t know. He might say anything.’
‘He might not.’
‘And if what he says is true, what will I do?’ she asked. ‘How will I find her? How does one go about chasing after a ghost?’
‘Systematically,’ Carmichael answered. ‘We’ll drive to the fishing villages that line the far side of the beach.’ He was right—each village had only a few dozen houses, so that meant about two hundred people to speak to at most. ‘You’ll bring photographs,’ he continued, ‘and surely these people talk about everything they see, every scrap of news or gossip. A strange girl in a bathing suit—she can’t have gone unnoticed for long.’
Again, she was grateful. Like Hugo, he was offering her a story, a better one than her real life could give. But they shouldn’t be doing this together.
‘I don’t need your help,’ she said finally, officiously. Yet he stood there waiting, saying nothing until at last she collapsed into him, her forehead sweating in the familiar crook of his neck.
Now inside her own house, Dora is met with silence for the second time that day. She sits on the couch, her hands upturned and loosely cupped in her lap. The maids made good progress packing today—there are a few larger items of furniture and some things hanging on the wall in the sitting room, but otherwise very little remains. Dora wonders if they might still be somewhere in this part of the house, cleaning. As she has so many times in the past several years, she waits for a few minutes, hoping someone will appear and tell her what to do. Then she goes into Hugo’s office, which the maids have now been told to leave for last, and begins to look for more pictures of her daughter.
LUIZA
JUNE 1961
Moths, silverfish, mice. The house in Petrópolis was full of them, and even from her bedroom Luiza could hear Dora hectoring the poor local woman she hired to clean, demanding she deal with the mess imediatamente! And yes, she had sent word they were coming that weekend, she certainly had. Despite her mother’s anxiety, Luiza was relieved to be there. Petrópolis was her favourite place, and now she felt calmer than she had in the past three months since they returned from Florida. She sat on her bed and lit a cigarette, balancing a teacup on her unbent knees for an ashtray, feeling brazen. If her mother smelled it, Luiza would put the blame back on her parents—they both smoked, after all. But her mother wouldn’t say anything. Like her, Dora had also been seized lately by a kind of doomsday recklessness, drinking cocktails from coffee mugs in the middle of the day.
The door swung open suddenly and Luiza struggled to put out the cigarette and shove the ashtray under the bed as Evie burst in, slamming the door behind her and throwing herself onto the bed.
‘Don’t let her in. She’s going to kill me!’ Evie cried, burrowing under the blankets.
Luiza could hear the wood floor creaking outside her door as Magda shif
ted her weight, debating whether or not to hunt Evie all the way into their older sister’s bedroom.
‘Stop being a bully, Magda!’ Luiza called out to the closed door. ‘This room is Switzerland.’
The shadows of Magda’s feet retreated, the thin crack of light beneath the door returning unbroken.
Evie, still red-faced, pulled the blanket off her head and looked up at Luiza. ‘I won’t tell that you were smoking, I promise.’
‘I wasn’t. Anyway, what have I told you about letting her ride roughshod over you like that? You can’t let her.’
‘I know, but she—’
‘And remember Frog and Toad from the story. What are you supposed to say when she tries?’
‘I am not afraid.’
‘Louder!’
‘I am not afraid!’
‘Loudest!’
And together they shouted as loud as they could, ‘I am not afraid!’
Evie laughed, then asked, ‘Can I stay in here?’
‘Fine, but you have to be quiet because I’m busy thinking very important thoughts. If you ask me nicely, you can come over here and I’ll braid your hair. But still no talking, okay?’
Evie slid down the bed happily until she was sitting in front of Luiza, then leaned her head back. She remained quiet as Luiza combed through her hair with her fingers, because like her, lately Evie, too, seemed to covet time alone. Ever since the family had come home, everything had felt freighted and hopeless, pressing down on them but never discussed. The doctors later explained that the lithium study suggested the drug had a ‘low therapeutic threshold,’ which meant even a slight overdose could cause serious side effects: liver failure, heart failure, depression, paranoia. But for many subjects the drug was tremendously effective, unlike anything they’d ever seen before.
‘That is, of course, the purpose of the study,’ the doctors assured them in grave, pompous tones. ‘This event could be very helpful in determining the correct dosage for Mr. Maurer. It might also be the case that your husband is one of those patients who simply won’t tolerate the drug well.’ But there would be no adjusting of dosages, no more experimentation. Her father had suffered a minor heart attack, and her mother withdrew him from the study immediately. She decided: they were going home. Across two rivers they had travelled, and a continent. A humid, sawgrass realm. All for a disaster. Maybe, her mother kept saying, some other treatment would come along.
Luiza exhaled loudly as she twisted an elastic around Evie’s first braid. The silver bullet had failed, and she kept catching herself gnawing ferociously at her nails, the ends of her hair, ashamed of having allowed herself to imagine that her father might be ‘cured’; that he would yield, become pliable, and a more manageable portion of himself, for their sakes. He was still recovering, but frail—still a shade, still half himself—and unable to have their usual long conversations, though he didn’t appear angry with her, as she’d feared. Maybe she was even avoiding him, unable to bear his disappointment, and he was too kind to say anything. Hadn’t he always known what she was thinking?
But they were here now for the June festival and she was determined to enjoy it. She had the feeling lately that she had to snatch up pleasure while she still could, before she aged and contracted like her mother and found herself forever making lists, planning what to get next from the shops. Without a true, beating heart. Dora hadn’t wanted to come, but Luiza had pleaded and charmed, knowing that, since Florida, they both felt somehow beholden to each other. Her mother, too, lost something on that trip, and Luiza convinced her this was just what they all needed.
‘It’s festa junina!’ she’d cried, seizing her mother by the arms and pulling her into a mock-quadrilha, like the country people danced at the festival. June meant it was chilly in Petrópolis, much cooler than in Rio, where there would be more spectacular celebrations, but the city parties had become too commercial and she wanted to twirl around smoky bonfires and watch the statues of saints paraded through the town square, hoisted on the shoulders of townspeople. ‘Let us not fester at home and be grey, let us go into this winter filled with light!’
Dora had actually laughed then, and let herself be led like a rag doll around the kitchen, while the girls, excited now, also begged to go. Her father, thinner, hair newly shot through with bands of grey, applauded weakly from the couch where he convalesced wrapped in his old white robe. She wanted to kneel at his feet, to plead, ‘Please don’t leave us.’ But her mother was smiling for once.
Just as Evie smiled now, running her hands over her neat, new braids, before she started at a voice outside.
‘Butchie, Butchie!’
Luiza went to her window and saw Magda frantically calling after a neighbour’s puppy that kept darting out of sight, into the long grass at the edge of their property. Her parents were outside too—Dora commanding the local gardener, Hugo dozing in a chaise longue positioned for him on the stone patio, still under doctor’s orders to rest as much as possible. Evie took an old Nancy Drew book off the shelf at the foot of the bed and began to read, so Luiza reached for another book Carmichael had given her on her bedside table. This one was by Elizabeth Bishop, who, he told her, was American but had lived just a few miles from Petrópolis, and still had a house less than five hours away in Ouro Preto. She had lived for years there with an architect, a woman Carmichael knew of through work, because he’d long admired her designs.
After reading beside her sister for half an hour, Luiza finally stretched and rose from the bed. ‘I have to get up and move around for a bit, pet. I’ll come back in a few minutes.’ She took her book of poems and was relieved when Evie didn’t follow.
Outside, she made her way through the garden, reading as she walked, then sat beneath the jabuticaba tree, running one hand over its dense, dark berries. Berries that, rather than dangling prettily from stems, sprouted directly from the bark, the branches like tumours. Had Bishop written anything about these trees, the sweet jam they made? Her poems were exquisite, Luiza thought, and it seemed impossible that they could be about this very place. Her place. Someone else had seen it through her eyes: the lenten trees during the electrical storms and the hail that followed, wax-white, dead-eye pearls among the petals. Wet, stuck, purple. She repeated these phrases to herself again and again.
And because Carmichael had given her all these books, these beautiful, illuminating, even—yes—life-changing books, she felt sometimes like she could tell him anything. How, for instance, Florida had failed, and now she understood that this was her life, and it was all right, it really was. She would find a way to be content with her family, to be useful. She would be better.
‘Failed how?’ he had asked suddenly. But then he looked around nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘At any rate, we shouldn’t be seen—’
Their conversations always ended this way, cut short by his interruptions, his eyes rapidly scanning the room for his wife, for Dora. She wanted to have the last word this time. ‘I really don’t think I should say too much,’ she broke in airily. ‘It would be a betrayal of his privacy. Besides, we don’t have time—’
Just then, Lucy Baird hooked her arm through Carmichael’s and pulled him onto the dance floor. ‘You two are so dull and serious all the time. Enough talking!’
They had to be hurried, cautious—a few minutes at one of the weekly cocktail parties in Villa Confederação or at the edge of the dance floor in the Copacabana’s Golden Room while everyone spun giddily just a few feet away. These days, she always went along with friends for the nights out, even though her father, and sometimes even her mother, stayed home. At the casinos, she could at least talk to Carmichael, however briefly. It felt lonely now, sitting by herself against the back garden wall.
And secretly she liked that this man who barely knew her was curious about her life. Concerned.
‘What if we met somewhere else sometime?’ she whispered quickly one evening. ‘Just so we can talk more easily. It always feels so rushed like this.’ She
suggested Botafogo Beach, late afternoon the following day. A long tram ride away to an unfashionable neighbourhood, somewhere their friends and families never went. Their secret.
As they’d walked along the beach, he asked her again: What would she do now?
‘Now I have endless things I can do,’ she insisted, for this time she had thought it through, planned her answer. ‘This is such a large, beautiful country, and I’ve barely experienced any of it.’ Now that they were back in Brazil, there were so many places she wanted to see. The Meeting of the Waters, where the Rio Solimões and Rio Negro converge, cream-coloured waters mixed with black, eddying together like galaxies before being subsumed by the milky current of the Amazon; the two rivers were such different temperatures that fish became temporarily stunned at the confluence, easy prey for pink dolphins. Pink dolphins! The swarming Amazon Basin, with its otters and giant water lilies, carnivorous plants and tiny hummingbirds. And the Flooded Forest most of all, where the waters of the Amazon rose until they spilled into the forest, fifty feet high, and piranhas swam among the treetops, fish ate nuts and spread seeds as red-faced monkeys screamed from wet branches. No dry land for miles as people teetered in huts on stilts, their chickens and pigs reared on rafts. An upside-down world. ‘Just because I stay at home with my parents doesn’t mean I can’t go anywhere or do anything.’
‘But why must you stay at home, with them?’
She told him they needed her help, and she wanted to be a better, less selfish person. And she could still find beauty, despite everything—this beautiful place! ‘Maybe without having to worry about going to school or finding a job, I could write. I could still do so much, be more than The Pretty One.’ She told him about a game she and Dora used to play when she was little. They would cut pictures from her mother’s catalogues, each choosing one outfit, one best friend, one husband and three children, then glue them onto paper. Fragments of her perfect, future life, curled and soggy with paste, all over her bedroom wall. ‘It’s always been clear, what’s expected of me. But the truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted that life. I still don’t.’ She tried to smile vaguely, like Carmichael often did, but now he was frowning.