All Is Beauty Now

by Sarah Faber

  Now, inside the café that Carmichael has told her is the last place he went to with Luiza, she can hear the strain in her voice as she says, ‘This seems like a strange place to bring her.’

  ‘It was her idea,’ he answers. Too quickly?

  ‘And she didn’t say anything to you? Nothing out of the ordinary?’

  ‘She was… a little unsettled. I think she was anxious about the party. Something about wishing she could be around real people.’

  ‘We weren’t real enough, I suppose, our crowd.’

  ‘All too real, I’d say.’

  Frustration, unexpected but familiar, rises up in her chest, the same exasperation she often felt with Luiza’s heightened emotions, the way she would latch on to some notion, or a sad story she’d heard or read, then be overwrought for days. She remembers now how Luiza kept taking to her bedroom during those days when they were meant to be packing. Her ‘bad spells’ and headaches. It sometimes felt to Dora like everyone else let themselves fall apart around her because they knew she never would. But it isn’t fair, and she mustn’t get upset. It must spread ugly forces out into the atmosphere somehow, to feel anything but love and sadness for her lost daughter, as if anger could repel Luiza farther away. She wouldn’t have run away over a bad memory.

  ‘You know how she could be,’ he continues. ‘Girls at that age get so worked up.’ His voice drops, quieter. ‘And she didn’t know about Hugo being fired, which I let slip. I’m sorry for that.’

  Dora bristles at his hushed, intimate authority—his tone almost paternal—and because Hugo didn’t want any of the girls to know he’d lost his job. But she still needs him. She’s not sure she could keep up this search alone.

  ‘And I suppose she seemed—’ he struggles for the right word, running his fingers through his slick hair in that way that always reminded her of her husband. ‘Well, she seemed a bit lost. A bit unsure of what to do with herself when you got to Canada.’

  ‘She never said anything to me,’ says Dora, almost inaudibly.

  ‘She did say once she felt she couldn’t discuss the move with you, how she felt confined. You would just say how lucky she was. She could have anything.’

  Dora’s skin prickles. There is a faint hint of triumph in his voice, she thinks, at having again exposed a breach between her and Luiza. ‘We had no choice but to move. She knew that.’

  ‘Of course she did. And I did try to tell her that she could do any number of things, what with women being so much more ahead up there. But she just said she couldn’t see it. All Hugo ever told her of Canada was how cold it was—the place, the people. He had made her afraid of the very idea of it.’

  ‘There must have been something more.’

  ‘I don’t even remember what else we talked about. We made conversation. We danced a little.’

  ‘Where did you dance? Show me how. Do everything again.’

  Carmichael sighs and gazes at her, a defeated half-smile stretching out the corners of his mouth. He goes over to the barman to request a song, and then stands in the middle of the room, arms stiff at his sides, waiting for Dora to come to him. Only when she raises her own arms do his slacken a little, mirroring her movements. The space between them closes. As she lets herself embrace him awkwardly, she looks away, over his shoulder, and feels him exhale, his body relaxing, maybe because he no longer has to meet her gaze.

  Yesterday, in the basilica, Dora had been lulled, faintly seduced into feeling for him as she had during their affair. Back then, she’d thought at first that he was a bit like Hugo; he could be charming, often quoting from books. But he soon began to seem muted and indistinct by comparison, and she suspected those little memorized passages had been acquired just for her, entreaties uttered hopefully. And then sometimes that look that belied his smooth charm, an expression of such sudden, unexpected gratitude, as though he wondered how he had come to be there with her. To her, he was an attenuated, uncomplicated version of Hugo—like getting a vaccine instead of contracting the virus; you might be flushed and shaky for a few days, but it wouldn’t last long. She never wanted to be unkind, never told him what he really was to her, even when it became clear that he himself had lost control of his own guise. He loved her.

  She tries to push this thought away, and also the unwelcome realization that he was, for her, some kind of surrogate for Hugo; an anodyne version who wouldn’t suddenly transform or cloud over. All those nights when Hugo was in the hospital, and Carmichael would come, she felt benignly comforted, amused. He always said the same thing, played the same song, kissed her the same way. But now she remembers how he reminded her of the worst parts of herself too, of how she briefly considered staying with him, abandoning her sick husband, and the uncertainty of their future together. And even though she knew he loved her, she never doubted that he would eventually disappoint her, and her disillusionment would embitter them both. Hugo, for all his terrifying, complex mutability, could not pretend; he was the rawest, least concealed person she’d ever known. She knows—has always known—that both she and Carmichael are too easy with deceit to ever be together. They could never trust each other. She doesn’t trust him now.

  So now this song, with its big band trumpets and clarinets, and this man she almost loved holding her in his arms—they feel newly threatening. Where has she heard it before?

  ‘You played her this song?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But this was …’ Dora begins, remembering all the nights they danced on the veranda, out of view from anyone in the house. He had to go inside to choose the record—a small show of masculinity that she’d thought little of at the time. Every time he came over, he chose this same song: that old jazz hit from when they were young, ‘Avalon.’

  ‘But we used to dance to this song.’

  He drops his eyes to the floor. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You lied to me. You weren’t trying to help her. There was something more between you, wasn’t there?’

  He tries to hold her closer now, suddenly dropping his voice, which falters in his throat. ‘Whatever you think of me, I’m grateful the last thing I did was dance with her because now we’re here together.’

  Dora pushes away from him, her arms rigid. ‘Tell me. Did she love you?’

  ‘No, I really don’t think she did. I think she was… entertained by me. Just like you.’

  ‘Maybe you’re the reason she ran away. If she ran away.’

  ‘She didn’t need any more reasons.’

  ‘Did she know about us?’

  His face reddens, a colour filling his cheeks. ‘It was you. Whenever I was with her, I saw only you.’

  Dora takes a few steps back, her arms still straight out in front her as if they might push away what he’s just said, what she now knows for certain, even though he’s still too cowardly to say it. She stumbles, then rights herself, and runs out the door.

  HUGO

  Hugo stands abruptly when he hears Dora crying, ready to burst into the café to rescue her. But it’s not her cries he hears through concrete and glass—of course he cannot hear her.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ he says, crouching before the girls, wiping their tears away with his sleeve. ‘Mr. Carmichael is our good friend. No harm. Sometimes Mama just needs someone to talk to, and I know where to get the best orange ice cream in the city, just a few blocks from here.’

  If Hugo were well, if mania were not once again cutting his moorings, if he could watch this entire scene from above, he would see that it is all unfolding as if in a farce. He would recognize that his daughters—clutching each other and crying—would still follow him anywhere, forgive him almost anything, but not for much longer. Somewhere inside he knows this, some ugly voice is telling him that he’s running out of time, but it’s drowned out by the compulsion to follow, to rout, to win back. He looks at his girls, silently begging them: We are on the verge of learning something crucial to our survival. Don’t abandon me now. I won’t make it. Their contracted brows conv
ey their deep concern, how much they understand, and consent.

  As he leads them away from the window, the breeze on the avenue dries their faces, and he buys Magda and Evie everything they see: ice cream, popcorn, kites, and marionettes that clack against the pavement, their painted heads twitching. There is a man selling papayas, which he’s hung from short lengths of string from a little clothesline between two slender poles attached to his cart. When people pass by, he blows a little bugle and motions toward his fruit.

  ‘All your papayas,’ says Hugo, making a sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘I’ll take all your papayas.’

  The girls clasp their bags, stuffed with food and oddities, but still they snuffle and cringe and something must be done. Some penalty must be exacted. Carmichael has taken everything, sacrificed nothing. Hugo pushes the girls toward the car.

  There is a beat now, and then the stench of rubber tires on asphalt, bleating horns, Magda gripping the upholstery of the Silver Cloud and Evie squealing, delighted. In the car, Hugo flies with the girls along Viera Souto with the top down so they can breathe in the salt air of Ipanema, see the chain-shaped mosaics rippling along the sidewalk. He tries to take deep breaths, move and speak normally, so as not to startle them; he hates that he sometimes frightens them, but when his impulses roar up inside, it feels like a freight train about to burst out of his chest and the only way he can keep from exploding is to say, do, move. Keep moving. But now, having seen Dora with Carmichael, he feels strangely subdued. Their interactions looked so uncomfortable, perfunctory. He has always considered Carmichael half a man. He’s even sensed, at times, that Carmichael was almost impersonating him, as though the cadence of his voice was shifting, adaptive, and that he was adjusting it almost imperceptibly when they were together. And now he knows why. The bastard has been insinuating himself into their lives for years—befriending him at work, helping him with his projects, ‘checking in’ on Dora when Hugo was in the hospital. But hadn’t he asked Carmichael to do this? Why hadn’t he guessed?

  They’re outside the city centre now, back in Confederação. From the back seat, Evie leans toward him. Thinking she means to kiss him, he reaches back with his hand and tousles her hair, too roughly, he realizes, when he sees her wince. But Evie motions for him to lean back, which he does but only barely.

  ‘What is it, pet? Speak up.’

  ‘Is that why Luiza was so angry at Mr. Carmichael, and dropped all my flowers?’ She’s crying again, and beside her Magda squeezes her sister’s thigh, trying to quiet her with a terrible shushing sound. ‘Because he loves Mama too?’

  EVIE

  Papa has stopped the car on the side of the road and told them to both get out. Evie realizes now that her father hadn’t known Luiza’s secret. But maybe now he can scrape away all the mud and flower petals, dig up her body, find out what she could not; what Magda never knew. Understand what happened to Luiza. She doesn’t dare look at Magda, who she can feel is puzzling, who keeps elbowing her in the ribs. Instead she wipes her eyes and just stares straight ahead, sending her sister silent thoughts. I have to, I have to, I have to.

  ‘Tell me what you saw,’ Papa keeps saying. ‘You must tell me.’ Must with his mouth tight around the m. He’s trying to be gentle, but his fingers are digging into her upper arms.

  ‘She didn’t see anything,’ says Magda. ‘She just wants attention.’

  ‘I did see something,’ Evie shouts. ‘It was the evening of the garden party, right before Luiza disappeared.’ Hot, red waves ripple through her. She fights back tears, and wishes she could bite Magda’s knowing smirk right off her face as she tells Papa about how she sat for hours hiding under the cassia tree, with its branches that hung down as low as her knees. The ground was carpeted with pink flowers she had gathered in handfuls, plus a few white ones from the gardenia. She tells him about how their stems were so thin that it took all afternoon to make a crown and she worked very hard on it, even when she heard Magda calling her to come help with the bar. The crown was for Luiza and, though a few of the flowers were a bit bruised at the edges where she’d held them too tight, it looked so pretty. When the party started, Luiza came out to the garden and stood by the cassia tree, and Evie crawled out from under its branches to give her the crown. Luiza said she loved it and promised to wear it all night, even if their mother got cross. But then she kept feeling inside her pocket, where Evie could see the outline of her cigarette packet.

  ‘She said I should go help Magda before she came to find me, so I left. But then I remembered that I’d left my book under the tree, and when I crawled under again to get it, I saw that the school I’d started making wasn’t finished and I just wanted to poke a few more holes in the ground and catch a few beetles and give just one last lesson.’ Here Evie reddens, trying not to see Magda’s sneer, and angry at herself for forgetting to make up something that sounded less childish. ‘I was little then,’ she says, staring at the ground, but Papa gives her shoulders a gentle shake, which brings back the memory with sickening freshness.

  ‘I know,’ he says, rubbing her trembling arms. ‘You’re a young lady now. What happened next?’

  So Evie takes a deep breath, for she’s about to betray the adult she loved the most, the one she still believes loved her the most, and who she now imagines reaching back through space, smelling of cassia flowers and sea water, gripping her arms until they bruise. Don’t tell.

  Evie was still under the tree when a man came to talk to Luiza, who wouldn’t face him. He had his back to Evie.

  ‘I couldn’t see him very well, just his back and his legs,’ she says to her father now, worried she’s mixing things up.

  ‘That’s fine, pet. Go on.’

  ‘Then she said he was disgusting and worth less than a madman.’

  Her voice had sounded strange, high and fake, and she kept turning her chin in a funny way and shutting her eyes.

  ‘Then he said something like he was growling, and he did something—I think he hurt her—but I couldn’t see because he was in front of her.’

  ‘He hit her?’

  ‘No, he barely moved, but she fell down on the ground and she was crying so hard and he just turned around and walked back to the house, and then I saw that it was Mr. Carmichael.’

  Her father says softly, ‘Carmichael?’

  Evie worries that she’s in trouble, and doesn’t say how funny Luiza had looked wearing the crown while she got angry at Mr. Carmichael, and how when she lay on the ground, her face was puckered and ugly. And then the way the crown had come apart in the back after Luiza slid to the ground, covering one eye; how she didn’t take it off or try to move it; how it did look childish, and awful, and sad.

  ‘I wanted to take the flowers back but—’ Evie chokes, noticing that Magda is trembling beside her.

  ‘That’s all you cared about?’ demands Magda. ‘The stupid flowers!’

  Her sister shoots hate from her black eyes after Papa tells her to wait in the car, that he and Evie have more talking to do in private. Magda sulks off and Evie knows she’ll catch hell from her later, but she doesn’t care.

  ‘The flowers were very special,’ says Papa, blinking hard, still rubbing Evie’s unbending arms. ‘And you were right not to waste them. You can keep going.’

  But Evie is too tired to say the rest, to say that she didn’t care about the fucking flowers—she wants to say the forbidden word to help expel some of her frustration and grief, but it won’t come. No words come. She only wanted to take the flowers back so that Luiza wouldn’t look ridiculous as she cried, but it didn’t matter—it was too late.

  Papa lets go of her arms and kisses her on the head. He waits until her shudders have slowed, then says she’s to tell that very same story to Mrs. Carmichael.

  ‘But I think it will make her feel awful.’

  ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘Then what will we do?’

  ‘All these months; has it been a year yet?’ he says, taking Evie’s face in his
hands. ‘I’ve wondered why. Why did she leave us? Now I know.’ He crumples against her.

  Before he stopped the car, Papa had driven faster than ever before, the trees above them a patchy blur. When Evie tipped her head back, she imagined the branches overhead as arms stretching over her, reaching down, about to pluck her from the back seat. This is her father now, the heavy, smothering boughs of his arms, the crushing weight of his trunk as he sobs into her hair, lifting her off the ground. Then he straightens—his body, his tie, her dress. He takes her hand and leads her back toward the car, smiling queerly.

  ‘Your sister loved you, Evelyn. I know she did,’ he says to her now. ‘Everything that happens from this point on is necessary, for her.’

  HUGO

  Hugo stands on Carmichael’s porch, holding Evie’s hand and peering down into her now-smiling face. She is so pale and slight, so receptive to everything, trusting everyone. Her sister is suspicious, but this one can be bent and led. She needs so much. He has pressed the bell and soon there will be chaos. In this moment, however, she keeps hold of his hand and beams up at him, tethering him to earth, imparting the clarity of mind he requires to avenge Carmichael’s violation of Luiza. Grief: later. Sadness: after. Even rage must wait. Pedestrian emotions will subsume him soon enough. But presently, everything is crystalline. The great gift of his ‘disease’ is manifest: a surge of power and meticulous focus as he crests upward, transcending normal human feeling, deferring all weakness. Yet there is a thin voice inside him that he bats away like a fly: I am sorry for you, my little human girl. For what you are about to see, forgive me.

  Carmichael’s wife, Alice, opens the door, glass in hand and almost falling out of her swimsuit, clutching some low celebrity rag. He grips his youngest daughter by the hand. Daddy’s girl. She’s a confection in her smocked blue dress, and Alice is grinning foolishly, enchanted already.