All Is Beauty Now

by Sarah Faber

  Ow! Watch it with that fucking thing. Needles now. Pills too pedestrian. She whispers, Sleep now, Papa.

  — IV —

  EVIE

  As they stand side by side brushing their teeth in the bathroom, Evie is aware of Magda watching her in the mirror. Her sister spits out a mouthful of toothpaste and holds her toothbrush aloft as she says, ‘It’s your fault Papa had to go back into the hospital, you know.’

  Evie tries to protest through a mouthful of foamy saliva, but it drips down her chin as she answers. ‘It’s not—’

  ‘And now he’s going to be there for weeks, and we’ll have to unpack and then pack everything up again. You should have just kept quiet about what you think you saw. You don’t even know what you saw.’

  Evie wipes her mouth with a face cloth. ‘I do know. I just didn’t understand it before.’

  ‘You know he can’t handle stuff like this. You had to wait until the worst possible moment, when he was high as a kite.’

  High as a kite. This was something Mama sometimes said, always under her breath, to the maids or over the phone to her sister in Santa Bárbara. Magda goes back to brushing her teeth, as though whatever Evie says next is of no consequence to her. Then suddenly, a spray of white over Evie’s face in the mirror, a wet glob of white marbled spit over her reflected eye, two rabid Magdas, one beside and one in front of her.

  ‘But what if Mr. Carmichael did something? Shouldn’t Mama and Papa know?’

  ‘Did what? Did he force her into the water? Did he make her swim out too far? He wasn’t even there. She did that herself but no one ever wants to say it!’

  Evie won’t allow herself to think about what Magda has said. Magda, the Angry One. Angry even at the dead. No, instead she’ll think about how Papa’s golf club flashed in the morning sun, all that glass coming down like rain, gleaming in the grass. And how, even though Magda cried in the car on the way home, Evie was not afraid.

  ‘You’re just jealous because Papa made you go wait in the car.’

  Magda places her toothbrush back in its cup, wipes her mouth delicately on a hand towel, then wheels around and lunges forward. Suddenly Evie is on her back, Magda’s full weight holding her down, Magda’s whole hand against her face, pressing the flat of her head into the hallway floor. She can feel the rough carpet fibres against her neck, fingertips gripping her cheeks and forehead, a palm painfully squashing her nose. Evie lies pinned for a moment, listening to their uneven breaths. When she feels her sister’s body relax, she wriggles out from under her and sprints toward the stairs, bracing herself on the banisters and jumping down three steps at a time.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Magda shouts, coming down the stairs after her.

  If she doesn’t get out of this house, Evie knows Magda is going to kill her. And with Papa in hospital and Mama ‘away’ for a few days (supposedly to visit a sick aunt) and the maids always busy packing, unpacking, repacking, cleaning, her body probably wouldn’t be found for days.

  As she runs out the front door, she remembers Luiza telling her a story once of a woman who came over to Brazil with their ancestors nearly a hundred years ago, when people were expected to die. The woman’s husband broke off from the larger group and led some people south to Juqiã, where he named the colony Lizzieland, after her. It says in their family letters that Lizzie’s death caused the colony to fail but it doesn’t say why. Losing her simply broke him, Luiza said. When Evie heard the story as a child, she thought nothing of the man’s sadness—who had feelings that long ago? But she’d loved the idea of a place named after oneself. She imagined a fairground, like the kind she knew they had in America, and all the games would be just for the girls, and they’d all be named Lizzie for the day. Dozens of little girls running around calling out, ‘Hello, Lizzie!’ ‘Hello, Lizzie!’ And always the uncanny sense that the real Lizzie was there, a ghost or a giant, her pale face gazing down from above, all-knowing. Evie can still see the scene so clearly in her mind’s eye that she thinks she must be trapped in a place like that now: a dreamscape of mirrors and tent flaps and wide, grassy avenues. She wants to call out, ‘Luiza! Hello, Luiza!’ She wants to see her sister’s face in the sky. There are moments when a presence grazes past her, something cold with hummingbird wings, but when she looks up, Luiza is never there. Luiza, who would have told her, once, what was right or wrong. Which secrets to keep.

  But now Evie is outside and everything inside her is strung too tightly. She runs down the path from the house toward the gate and jumps, hurtling herself forward. She hits the ground, breath knocked free, and lies unmoving. For now, she is lighter.

  Later, in the car, after they pick up Brigitta on the way to the old, stone YWCA building for their second week of camp, Evie chews the dead skin on her lips and wonders if it really is her fault that Papa is back in the hospital. The last time he’d been admitted was two years ago, in Florida, when men in white uniforms had come to the house and he fought so hard they had to stick him with a needle. Seconds later he went still, collapsing in on himself, like a puppet with its strings cut. Then Luiza pushed her and Magda back inside the house.

  Evie’s almost sick from it, the idea that she’s the reason her father has to go away again, and she lingers now in the car as Magda and Brigitta hop out. As Magda sprints through the doors of the Y, Evie leans forward from the back seat and whispers in Bechelli’s ear, asking him to wait. She can’t stay here.

  ‘Brigitta!’ Evie calls out the car window. ‘I need your help!’

  As they drive away from the YWCA, Evie knows that trusting her sister not to rat on her for skipping camp is risky, but maybe Magda will forgive her later? After all, they both know now: parents lie. They love you, but they lie. They leave in the middle of the night without explanation, without even saying goodbye. They keep secrets. Children should have their own secrets, too, and their own world with its particular, unspoken children’s code. But for now Evie has to save her father, who sometimes crosses over into their world, because he sometimes forgets how to lie.

  When they arrive at the hospital, Brigitta nods her head toward Bechelli, humming in the front seat. ‘Tell him just to wait here,’ she says, suddenly taking control.

  They sign in at the front desk and a nurse points them toward the elevators. ‘Room 322, third floor,’ she says in Portuguese.

  But when they get to the third floor, Brigitta ignores the floor map and pulls Evie down the hallway. ‘I’ve never been in an insane asylum,’ she says in a stage whisper.

  ‘It’s not an asylum, it’s a recovery centre.’ But Evie’s voice sounds small and far away, even to her. Brigitta is walking two paces ahead, her neck craning forward, stopping only to peer through the small round windows set in each of the doors, Evie following behind her like a puppy. ‘Anyway, what are you looking at? We should find my dad.’

  ‘I just want to see… there! See? This is exactly what I expected to find.’ Brigitta stands on tiptoe squinting through a window, even though she’s tall enough to see in. ‘That poor man, left in an institution and forgotten. Doesn’t it just look like he’s imprisoned in his own flesh, fighting to get out?’

  ‘No!’ Evie squeaks, seeing Brigitta’s hand close over the doorknob. But the door is opening and she is being pushed inside the room and the young man in the chair by the window turns his head toward them, these twin intruders. Evie feels shrunken and prickly, her ears straining to detect footsteps coming down the hall.

  ‘Hello,’ Brigitta says, sitting on the bed opposite the man, her knees touching his lightly. He flinches when she takes his hand.

  ‘Brigitta, you shouldn’t—’

  ‘The problem with these people,’ Brigitta interrupts, sounding sharp and imperious, ‘is that they drug them to the point where they can’t feel anything. If they could just experience normal, human feeling again, they would be okay. Not vegetables.’

  ‘My father says it can be awful when you feel too much, feel all the time.’

  But
Brigitta ignores her and rubs the man’s hand, turning it over in her own, slowly tracing his punctured, blue veins. ‘What did they do to you?’

  ‘You don’t even know why he’s here. Let’s just leave him.’

  Brigitta places the man’s hand on her thigh, stroking just above her knee and below the hem of her skirt. Evie shivers, suddenly cold, immobilized by Brigitta’s cool curiosity, the pushy way she leans toward this man, peers at him as though he’s an insect she’s trapped. He moans softly, but it sounds more like pain than pleasure, and his mouth is contorting into a livid, red-blue smear. The sound builds in Evie’s ears: a siren, escalating rapidly, filling the room, the hallways. And any minute, she knows, the room will be full of people—nurses, security guards, outraged visitors. But as she pulls wordlessly on Brigitta’s shirt, fear rippling through her, she realizes no one is coming, because what she hears is only the memory of a sound—the one Luiza made in the garden after her fight with Carmichael. Evie covers her ears reflexively just as she did then. After a moment, she yanks as hard as she can on Brigitta’s sleeve.

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘All right! Get off already.’ Brigitta pulls her arm away and they are out the door.

  Evie walks as quickly as she can to her father’s room without drawing attention to herself while Brigitta, languid behind her, hums Bechelli’s little tune. When they arrive at room 322, Evie pushes the door open slowly so as not to startle her father, then fixes a smile on her face. But the bed is empty, and there are no shoes paired neatly beneath it, no jacket hanging from the hook.

  ‘Come on,’ she says again. She wants to find her father but is certain they’ll be in trouble if they linger too long. ‘We have to get out of here now.’

  In a mirror on the wall, Evie sees her own red hair, her ghost-white skin stutter past. She pushes through a set of doors marked EMERGENCY, only realizing as it swings open what she’s done. An alarm sounds, real this time. But then Brigitta is right behind her and they soar, leaping over half-flights of stairs. For the second time today, she is flying. Hello, Luiza! Then there is sky, and trees, and Bechelli with a newspaper. She begs him to start the car and go, and when he asks what’s wrong, she says she’s crying because her father was so upset to see her leave.

  MAGDA

  Thwack! Magda stands in the backyard, knees apart like a batter, holding her croquet mallet, which she just found, forlorn and leaning against the garden shed. They’re not allowed to bring the croquet set with them when they go. (‘We can get new things in Canada,’ Mother said, ‘better things.’) She strikes the jacaranda tree and trembles with a fierce and perfect sorrow as purple blossoms carpet the ground. It was Luiza’s favourite tree. Next she walks over to the pink cassia tree, covered in the flowers Evie most loves to hoard away, to weave into her silly crowns. It’s not normal—a twelve-year-old girl who still believes in ghosts and fairies. She should mention it to their mother, she thinks, if she ever returns from her mystery trip. They woke up on Monday morning to find her gone again, only this time the maids said she’d be away for four or five days. (A sick aunt. More lies!) The real goodbye party at the Copacabana was last Friday, and they were supposed to leave at the end of this week, yet here they all are, still stuck, possibly for a few more weeks. Waiting. Thwack! A heap of pink flowers. Magda raises the mallet overhead and pounds the petals into a sweet-smelling mass, imagining Evie when she finds them. Will she cry? Will she officiate another melancholy little funeral? Here lie some flower petals that would have died in a few days regardless. Evie doesn’t care about anything important. She skipped camp the other day and Brigitta forged a note for them like it was nothing. Magda was tempted to tell on them, but to whom? Her parents both absent and now the maids—betrayers. Magda has devoted herself to the Y, to sport, to excellence, but no one ever asks about the gymnastics exhibition she’s been rehearsing for the end-of-camp showcase in two weeks—which she can now attend because Mother has delayed their departure yet again—or about the special synchronized swimming routine that only she and a handful of other girls were selected for. The best, most athletic girls.

  She moves on to the flame tree, beloved by Odete, its boughs outstretched horizontally as though reaching away, covered in bright orange blossoms. Showy, thinks Magda. Tasteless. This time, pound the trunk and the branches. The blossoms drift like many-pointed embers against the darkening sky, the petals a soft explosion of red spikes. Carnage.

  At last, the frangipani. This will hurt. Its crown has been pruned into a perfect arc that casts, in late afternoon, the perfect circle of shade. Here they sat, she and Maricota, for endless afternoons, as Magda read out loud, digging her bare feet into the grass. When she grew tired, she would lay her head in the woman’s lap and close her eyes. Maricota liked to cluck her tongue, tell her not to be lazy, to read all she could, because she could. Magda would stick frangipani blossoms between her toes, yellow centres fading into white, and try to walk on her heels. Maricota always laughed, and Magda read until her mother arrived home, looking out anxiously from the veranda door, wondering wordlessly why no one had started dinner.

  She steadies herself, perfects her stance, lifts her mallet. Hasn’t Maricota’s betrayal been the greatest of all?

  That morning, Magda had stood in the kitchen with her hands outstretched, the three ivory chess pieces she’d stolen growing heavy and sticky with her sweat, as Maricota and Odete, her lovely ones, indulged her, exchanging glances in that way of adults who are deciding the best way to lie to a child. Or break their hearts. Finally, Maricota took the pieces and placed them in her pocket and, for a moment, Magda felt hopeful.

  ‘I’ll put them back,’ Maricota said in Portuguese, addressing Odete. ‘I know where the box is.’ Adults conferring, making their own plans. Children an afterthought. When they turned their attention back to Magda, even their amazement, she thought, was phony.

  Odete, always the softer of two, teared up, while Maricota took Magda’s hands in her own. ‘Querida,’ she said, frowning. ‘We can’t come with you. Those little things aren’t worth enough to get us to Canada, though that’s not the reason.’

  ‘But they’re ivory! And if these aren’t enough, I can get more. Mama has so much jewellery, and Papa leaves money lying around all the time.’

  Their mouths compressed, their eyes moist with pity. All her newly toughened muscles unwound. She tried to retract her hands from Maricota’s, but not very hard.

  ‘We have families, other people who we love very much. We belong here.’

  They live here. They have families of their own. Of course they do. Families who live in houses with dirt floors. Families with eighteen children and a mother who never cuts her hair. A mother who prays to God and has her prayers answered. Magda has jumped over brooms with them and placed lipstick in their little boats, an offering to their goddess Yemenjá. And yet she hadn’t even thought of them. Hadn’t imagined they might be more important to Maricota than her.

  ‘Please?’ she added, as though she could extract what she wanted by asking nicely. These most patient, substitute mothers—they loved her, she knew they did. Yet there were others, near strangers to Magda, who they loved better.

  Now, with her knees still locked before the frangipani tree, mallet hanging limply from her hands, Magda doesn’t want to feel sorry, doesn’t want to understand. She wants to be angry. She wants to feel, again, the appalling, satisfying thud of wood against tree. She wants to see the blossoms rain down, gasping uselessly as they fall, begging for mercy. Mercy she will not grant. She lifts the mallet for the third time, determined. Now: vengeance. But shame simmers inside her. She’s no better than Evie, with all her childish wants.

  Soon, there will be another life in Canada, with only her parents to show her how to be—she can’t grasp it. She reaches out and touches nothing. Maybe there’s nothing there? Canada, where her parents imagine all their cobwebby sadness over Luiza can be swept away—Luiza, who hadn’t expected enough of herself. Who left th
em all behind. Magda, too, wishes sometimes that she could be with Luiza, could swim away from all the adults charged with caring for them—distracted, impotent—who don’t understand they’re still needed. But she doesn’t know how to give up.

  In Canada, she and Evie will be sent away to Aubrey Ladies College, with its colour photo brochure scenes: a pool, horseback riding, tennis. Soon, there would be starched uniforms and the day punctuated by bells. The medicinal smell of chlorine lingering on her skin long after she breached the water and showered. The earthy scent of a horse’s flanks as she soars on its back over rails. Sanctioned grunts of rage as her racket slams down, thrusting back balls. A chance for her to be distinct. There, she could be their family’s envoy, the one who thrives, plunged out into the world to prove they aren’t broken. She will display the same excellence that led to her being singled out earlier this week for the swim routine. Evie and Brigitta would probably laugh if she described the program planned, when in fact it’s punishing and very physically demanding, her skin now scaly from so many hours in the YWCA pool.

  The mallet seems to fall from her hands and Magda stumbles backwards, loose-legged, gasping. Reflexively, her knees lock and she rights herself, her shoulder blades squeezing together, her arms shooting out like wings, as if poised for flight. Her heart begins to slow. She takes three deep breaths, then tumbles forward, completing a perfect somersault before landing in a lunge. Next, a series of somersaults, ending with a round-off, which is a little wobbly but still well executed. It’s getting darker all around her but she fights the impulse to go inside. Has anyone ever actually told her she shouldn’t go into the garden at night? Maybe that was just an unspoken warning she absorbed. Maybe the maids instilled fear in her to keep her safe and now she has to stamp it out. Or maybe she just imagined it. Luiza always said their house was a fortress. Who could get over those walls? Her body feels flexible, small yet strong, meant for something more than anger and fear. She split leaps, then punches the ground as she lands. She leaps again, her limbs extended, points on a star in the fading light.