All Is Beauty Now

by Sarah Faber

  Later, two more Caesarean sections, too close together. More infections, scar tissue. When Evie came out, she was faintly blue. A week in an incubator. The doctor said no more; a uterus can only withstand so much. But that news came as no tragedy. Each time, he was more frightened than Dora—what if she left him behind?

  He always believed they could get back to that first, unspoiled time when they loved easily. But has that time passed? No, he won’t lose them both.

  ‘Can we go to the camp now?’ asks Evie while Magda stomps around upstairs.

  ‘Yes, love. We’ll get your sister, then let us rejoice in our Christian souls and jubilate before God! Magda?’ Of course, she won’t come now when he calls. He’s betrayed their recent and burgeoning bond. He puts Evie down gently. ‘Go get your sister. Tell her we’re going to hand in the slips and tomorrow we will go on a great adventure!’

  In the car on the way to the YWCA, Hugo puts the top down, and the girls let their hair tangle in the wind and seem to forget the ugliness just past. They sit back and listen to their father, who is fully charged, rambling, brimming with wind-muffled talk. Telling them how brave they are. Did they know? Did they have any idea how tough their ancestors were? How Dora comes from a line of flint-hearted rebels who would rather desert their homeland than live diminished. They’d travelled by ship, by makeshift steamboats, and, when the river became too narrow, by canoes manned by Indians with a paddle at each end. Imagine how terrifying, in the middle of the Amazon—dark as Egypt! And then the storms came up and lightning brightened the sky and that was worse, because now they could see the expanse of the river and nothing but jungle and water all around them. Great cracks of thunder, too, and rain fell harder than they’d ever felt. They spent nights on a fazenda and slept on heaps of rice. It rained steadily for days, but in most places there wasn’t even room for a tent, so some of the women tied their petticoats from one sapling to another, too sleepy to fear the onças. These same women, only a week earlier, had blushed when some locals had proudly shown the Americans their hand-embroidered nightgowns. Now they slept beneath their own underwear, unafraid even of jaguars.

  ‘These are your people,’ he tells them. ‘These are the women from whence your mother came. You are warriors. You could choke a black jungle cat with your panties in the night.’

  And he thinks to himself how much better Dora’s life should have been.

  DORA

  The sun beats down on Dora’s head from an unclouded sky. The air is humid but there is a breeze off the ocean. Much hotter than last week, agree the two women in front of the basilica when Dora and Carmichael squeeze past them, her thighs rubbing together uncomfortably. She turns her head toward her shoulder and sniffs quickly, afraid she might smell. Even hotter than this time last year! Dora feels a brief pulse of fear that they will tell her she can’t go in, she doesn’t belong. She has always felt this way in churches, as though she’s looking in from a distance and they hold something just at the perimeter of her understanding. She had her transient religious education—two years at a Catholic school because it was considered the best in the country. Then, on weekends home, her hopeful, unformed beliefs were spoiled by her parents’ contempt.

  But here, now, there is stillness when they enter the basilica, cool and dark amid the quiet and blue-hued light of sunrays filtering through Mary’s etched robes in the window. While Carmichael puts some money in a collection box, Dora sinks into a pew, drifting between comfort and unease. Or maybe just an old aching for faith. She hasn’t been in a church for many years, and although she knows she should be repulsed by the gaudy cedar carvings that adorn the chancel, the twist of the ornate staircase toward the organist’s box, the plaster woman kneeling before Christ and a little lamb, its front hoof holding up a crucifix—they soon become narcotic. Her breathing begins to slow despite a nagging reproach: she doesn’t believe and so she shouldn’t be here. Her peace is stolen from better people; those who utter devotions, pray for their families. She can hear her mother, reserved and rational, dismissing them as hypocritical, indoctrinated, naive; but perhaps, unlike Dora, they are also content. She closes her eyes. Maybe they wouldn’t mind if she borrowed this silence for just a moment.

  Eventually, she can feel Carmichael waiting patiently beside her in the dark. ‘Why did you bring her here?’ she asks finally, opening her eyes.

  ‘She said she missed it. Missed God.’

  ‘Missed it?’ Dora forgets herself, then drops her voice back down to a whisper. ‘She never had it! We were never religious.’

  ‘I said that at the time, but she just got angry.’ Then he rests his elbows on his knees and lowers his head, staring at the floor. ‘No, that’s not true. The truth is that I laughed and said that your family had always been agnostic, even her grandparents, so what was there to miss?’

  She remembers now, the subtle intrusions, the insight he sometimes presumed to have. ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She asked how I could speak with such authority about your family, why I thought I knew you all so well.’

  ‘Oh, god—do you think she suspected?’

  ‘I told her I had known you for most of my life and I’d worked with Hugo a long time, that he confided in me. It’s true, you know—he did. And she did as well. You all seem to forget when it’s convenient how much you’ve made use of me over the years.’ As if suddenly aware of his plaintive, bitter tone, Carmichael tries to straighten up, but he is still leaning to one side, aggressively massaging his temples. ‘It cost me, you know. I put in weeks of overtime at work, making sure his projects were finished, nothing left undone. I protected him, and you.’

  Dora keeps her eyes fixed straight ahead, over the pews. ‘I never asked you to.’

  ‘You didn’t need to.’

  She looks at him now. ‘Then why do you keep inserting yourself into our lives, if it’s such a burden?’

  ‘Because you’re all such beautiful people.’ His voice is acid. ‘And because I keep being invited.’

  Dora feels herself flush. ‘There must have been something more?’

  ‘She was curious about religion in general. She was always talking about your help. One of your maids had given her a book of psalms, and she was learning them by heart. I think she just needed an anchor. I mean, look at Hugo, barking mad. Then you’re off to Florida and back, then it’s on to Canada. I tried giving her books, but she needed more. She said she was tired of stories, she wanted to understand real people, find out the truth. Her life was a mess. She wanted a map for how to live a better life.’

  ‘The truth!’ Dora scoffs. ‘That means nothing. It’s just a different set of stories.’

  ‘There was more,’ Carmichael says now, and Dora can hear his throat constricting, that he’s having to force out the words. The books of myths he gave her, she read them all. She said she realized that her father’s life was a tragedy, and that like those fallen heroes, his best feature—his brilliant mind, his expansiveness, his visions—would also destroy him. She needed a different story. Someone else to worship. To love God, she said, would be a perfect, unrequited love of the highest ideal, the object of which could never leave or hurt or disappoint you. Incorruptible. As humans, she said, we want too much, feel too much. Instead of trying to have everything, one could choose nothing, and be content with that.

  Dora is quiet for a long time. Is it just a fatigued sadness she detects in his voice? Or admiration?

  ‘She was right,’ she says at last. ‘You say too much. You think you know us. You don’t.’

  Carmichael falls to his knees then, a supplicant before her. He lays his head in her lap and she permits it, her hand hesitating in the air above his head. When she lets it fall, she feels the familiar warmth of his neck, the soft hollows at the base of his skull. Her joints unlock. How long has it been since she’s touched anyone but the girls? An unexpected relief, which is something like grace.

  But Carmichael, this church—comfort poached in the dark, she
knows, cannot be preserved. In a few minutes, they will go back out into the world, to the midday sun, almost white, and a damp, hot wind. And the hush and feint of this moment will be unprotected.

  — III —

  MAGDA

  Their father wakes them at dawn.

  ‘But it’s so early,’ Magda protests, only able to make out his shape in the dim light, his face a grey smudge. ‘Why do we have to get up now?’

  ‘Just please do as you’re told,’ Papa answers. Something pleading in his voice quiets her, and she gets herself dressed and then helps Evie—still sitting on the bed yawning, eyes half closed—into her clothes. He brings them a breakfast of hot dogs left over from the night before and pink lemonade from the bottle, then he makes them wait in silence, hunched on their beds in the gloom. After they hear the front door open and close, he ushers them into the hallway, down the stairs, then leaves them in the entranceway while he gets the car. Outside, they hurry down the walkway and into the Silver Cloud, where they wait a few minutes, giving Mama a chance to walk down the street and get into the car that is waiting for her at the end of the block. Papa unlocks the gate and pulls out slowly, hanging back, her mother just a tiny, moving spot turning the corner to the next block, and suddenly Magda knows what they’re about to do.

  ‘Please, Papa—no!’ For all her barbs, she can’t bear the thought of real fighting, real anger. Thumping Evie from time to time is necessary, but following her own mother feels like trespassing into the muddy, confusing world of adult secrets. ‘Maybe she’s just running errands for the party tonight.’

  But he ignores her, and for a moment she admires how carefully he follows, how patient he is and how far back he can stay while still keeping Mr. Carmichael’s car in sight. She knows it must be agony for him to move so slowly and deliberately, especially now.

  She tries again: ‘Why don’t you just ask her where she’s going? Why do we have to follow her?’

  ‘Your mother is a skilled dissembler,’ he answers. ‘She’s doing this in secret for a reason. She won’t cop to it just because I ask. We need proof.’

  ‘But why do we have to come? It’s just going to make her angry.’

  ‘I want to come!’ Evie chimes in, as if they’re going to the zoo. Magda pinches her arm, but Evie pinches back—she’ll do anything to hold on to this newfound attention from their father.

  ‘It’s the element of surprise,’ Papa says, ‘and the element of adorable-yet-sad little girls. A jealous husband can’t pack the same punch as disappointed children. Now hush.’

  They follow Carmichael’s car to downtown Rio, which is thrumming, even this early in the morning, and finally to Avenida Atlantica, where they park several car lengths behind and crouch down while her mother and Carmichael cross the street to the beach.

  ‘The beach?’ cries Papa. ‘We can’t very well start striding along the beach. They’ll see us for sure.’

  ‘Can’t you just go up to her right now?’ pleads Magda, aware that she’s sounding more like Evie than herself. ‘Isn’t walking on the beach together bad enough? I’ll pretend to cry if you want.’

  ‘No, this could all be explained away. He’s a friend, after all. She could say they’re just talking.’

  ‘But they are just talking.’

  ‘Take off your dresses. Are you wearing those funny little bras your mother gave you? We’ll take off our clothes and if they look back from far away it will seem like we’re wearing bathing suits, like we’re just regular people at the beach.’

  ‘No!’ Magda and Evie say in unison, more frightened than outraged, though there is also the cut of betrayal—their mother has discussed their breasts with their father.

  ‘They’re getting too far ahead. Do it NOW.’ The same bass, guttural voice as yesterday, the voice that shocks them all. The girls, pink with shame, pull off their dresses and hand everything to their father, who carries them in a jumbled ball. They then follow him, stripped to his briefs, darting through the swaying palm trees and across the two-lane avenue.

  For almost an hour they trail far behind Mama and Carmichael, the only fully dressed people on the beach, one red dot and one grey up ahead. At first Magda and Evie huddle together to try to cover themselves, until they realize it’s true—no one seems to notice they’re in their underclothes and not swimsuits. They begin to relax a little and Evie even pauses to pick up a few seashells, filling the shoes they’ve been carrying. At one point Magda is tempted to call out, alert her mother that she’s being watched, save them all from this humiliation. But then she notes how Mama and Mr. Carmichael sway slightly together, a little closer than they should be, then apart. Her voice smothers in her throat.

  Eventually, Papa pauses, holds them back. ‘They’re turning. They’re coming back this way.’

  He wraps his long arms around the girls and leads them away from the shoreline, up toward the clumps of bathers under beach umbrellas. But then he spots the lambe-lambe, a travelling photographer with an old-fashioned, upright camera that looks like an accordion. The man is out on the sand taking a picture of a young couple while a woman is positioned several yards back beside a large box on three legs sheltered by a large umbrella. Twine hangs from its spokes, covered in clothespins that hold the drying photographs. Papa squeezes Magda and Evie into the umbrella’s shade, and while he begins to ask all kinds of questions about the development process as a way of stalling, Magda examines a photo of a woman standing alone in a bikini, her arms folded behind her head, one leg bent—a real cheesecake pose. How had she had the nerve to stand in front of that man like that for so long, Magda wonders, wishing she could be half as brave and beautiful. Now Papa is peering over the girls’ heads at Mama and Carmichael, who pass by unaware. After a few minutes, he hands the woman some money and leads Magda and Evie tentatively back toward the water’s edge to have their picture taken, even though they won’t be back to collect it. Even in his frenzied state, Magda admires how he can’t bring himself to take up the woman’s time without paying her something.

  When Papa deems it safe to follow Mama and Mr. Carmichael again, he weaves them back through the crowd of sunbathers, splayed and idle. Magda hears a low whistle and feels the painful snap of elastic against her bum. She looks back and sees a man, potbellied and leathery, laughing and eyeing her underwear. Her fists close tightly as her jaw contracts, and inside her ears a high-pitched tone sings up from her teeth. Her father could destroy this old man, but she only glares silently; in the state he’s in, he probably would. Or, too consumed by his strange hunt, he might not do anything, which would be worse.

  Eventually, Carmichael leads Mama toward a café—a small empty patio outside with stairs leading to a gloomy room below. With his hand on her back, he gently guides her down the steps. Inside, on such a beautiful day? Not her mother. More secrets. They hang back awkwardly on the pavement, pulling on their clothes, pouring shells and sand from shoes. Evie shoves a few of her best shells into their father’s pants pocket. Now what? Papa finds a window around the side of the building, a tiny, grimy little aperture that allows a partial view of the bar and the open floor in front of it. They wait several minutes, but the pair must be sitting at the edge of the room, somewhere in its margins. Eventually Carmichael crosses the floor, disappears, then returns to its centre, directly in view of the peepers at the window. He waits a moment, faint strains of music begin, and then she goes to him: wife, mother, nucleus, who these past few days has been quietly splitting off. The centre cannot hold. Papa used to say that sometimes when he was getting depressed, and Magda never knew what it meant before. Now, she watches as her mother dances with this man—stiffly, but still she dances.

  Magda puts her arm around Evie, her tired old gesture of protection, but it’s too late to hide from any of this. Mama has some other life, doesn’t need them. Papa is unwinding again, can’t care for them. Maricota and Odete are at home working like slaves, not coming for them. Magda feels an unfastening inside, the presentiment of
more shifting. Breakage. What now? Now that they’ve been made to see their parents as dishonest, lonely, uncertain; now that they understand. How can they ever go back to who they were before?

  DORA

  Dora and Carmichael walked along the beach in Copacabana for nearly an hour, waiting for the café to open. The light on the water was gentle at that time of the morning, and she gazed out at the same mountains she had seen all her life, trying to imprint them into her mind. She wonders what she will forget, if she’s stamping her memory with the correct images. But it’s not as if she will never come back! This interjection heckles her, suppressing her melancholy mountains. There isn’t time today for such restless longing.

  She had to leave her house early again, before anyone else was awake, or she wouldn’t have had the nerve to go through with it, to keep lying to them. She likely won’t see Hugo until just before they leave for the casino tonight, but thinking of it all—him, the goodbye party—makes her vibrate with anxiety. She doesn’t know how she will get from here, a clandestine meeting on the beach, to there, a jumpy, disorienting party she’ll have to pretend to enjoy. Still, as she and Carmichael trailed together along the sand, she kept these thoughts to herself.