Drink the Sky

by Lesley Krueger

  The wind was already rising, and as the first raindrops fell, there was a sickening crack of fractured metal inside the hot casing. By the time they reached a small, sandy beach, the forest had darkened under the weird yellow-brown light of an electrical storm. Trees tossed, and licks of water rose in crests, corrugating the river. They were relieved to be on dry land, but also realized they were stranded there. They needed a mechanic, or at least a settler with enough baling wire to get the motor running, and no one would be coming out on an open river like this until the weather calmed.

  Todd had no intention of telling Holly they’d been stranded there for three days. A succession of storms blew through, and the region’s few settlers stayed close to home, knowing the unpredictable winds were likely to capsize anyone foolish enough to venture far. Todd lost his taste of bunking down in open air, and would gladly have traded the clouds of stinging, biting piumes for the comparatively benign attentions of fleas. But their food lasted, and the settler who finally saw their waving shirts was friendly, towing them all the way to town. He’d been on his way there; some things turned out better than expected.

  Todd told her about Powell.

  “I know,” Holly said. “I saw him get off a plane with Doutor Eduardo and his sidekick. What’s his name? Seu José?”

  Todd blinked. Another piece of a maddeningly intricate puzzle. He seemed to see it lying in his blistered palm, its edges nicked like the course of a river, yet also worn smooth. The doutor was so frighteningly smooth.

  “You might have phoned, Todd,” Holly said. “You promised you’d be gone just a couple of days. Instead you disappear for a week, and I haven’t got a clue where you are. Not a clue. Meanwhile, I’m fielding all these phone calls. They’ve phoned half a dozen times from head office wanting to know what on earth you’re up to.”

  Her voice was so urban, so jittery. Todd felt as if he’d been back in the bush for a long time. “What did you end up telling them?” he asked.

  “I covered up. Dissimulation, isn’t that a good word? Covering up the process of covering up.”

  “Are you all right, love?”

  “The boys seem to be all right, which is the main thing. They fight a little more than usual, and sometimes I catch them staring into space, but usually they’re fine. I was planning to keep them home from school all week, but after a couple of days, they wanted to go back. I’ve scarcely left them for a moment otherwise, aside from Tânia’s party last night.”

  Her voice sounded strangled. She had a dry cough.

  “Meanwhile, you’re supposed to have been in Porto Velho yesterday to meet the agronomist. Honestly, Todd, you just can’t disappear like that. Too many people are depending on you.” Was she coughing, laughing or crying? “And none of it’s going very well, is it? Except my work, I have to say. I had brainwave last night. About Darwin? Living in Botafogo with an 11-year-old girl. I see that somewhat differently at the moment, as you might imagine.”

  Todd passed his hand over his face, feeling shaken. Holly sounded as if she was having some sort of breakdown. He should have taken them home, got them settled, looked after them better. Todd realized that he’d miscalculated; that he’d made a number of miscalculations lately. She was right. He was slipping.

  “I know what people say, of course,” she went on. “It’s easy to misinterpret history by screening it through modern ideas. On the other hand, what else can you do? How could you interpret history from a contemporary point of view without being a contemporary? In which case the history wouldn’t be historic yet, would it? So you have to ask, is art supposed to merge the contemporary with the historic? Or to screen them out? Which I’ll have to put to Tânia, by the way. We didn’t have a chance to talk last night. At least, not about this.”

  “Holly, listen,” Todd began.

  “At her party, you know. And when I got home, I just had a shower and went straight to work. Of course, as soon as the boys woke up, I went downstairs. I was with them all morning. Although I have to confess, this afternoon I got Cida to take them to a play date. They’re not here right now, I’m afraid. And it’s supposed to be Cida’s day off, but I told her she could have tomorrow off instead. I think it’s fine to send them with her. They’ll be fine.”

  “Holly, I’m worried. How long has it been since you’ve had any sleep?”

  “So Powell’s plane was heading to Manaus, was it?” she asked. “Which doesn’t mean he can’t come here later. I got his bird book, but Doutor Eduardo must know where we live. I mean, Tânia is Doutor Eduardo’s niece, did you know that? Oh — she had a message. You’re supposed to stay clear of him. Friendly advice. ‘He dislikes giving up control.’”

  “My God, Holly. I’m coming home.” He had to speed up, readjust, prepare to deal with this. From what she said, it was all connected, anyway. “Listen. I’m going to be on the first plane out of here.”

  “But what about your agronomist, Todd? We had quite a pleasant chat. He really needs you in Porto Velho.”

  He put the earphone of the receiver to his forehead and drew in a long breath.

  “Go to Porto Velho,” Holly said. “You really want to.”

  Todd brought the receiver back down. “I don’t want to, love. I want to be there with you.”

  For once she paused, seeming to consider what to say.

  “But there’s another thing, isn’t there? Whether I want you here.” Again Holly paused. “I’m afraid not, Todd. You pushed me past my limit, you really did. It’s probably best if you stay away for a while. I don’t want you here right now.”

  “No, Holly.”

  “I haven’t known quite what to say when you finally called. But I just don’t want you here. I’m completely fed up. And the boys — the sad fact is, they’re so used to you being away, it seems normal to them. I half think if you came home right now, it would be counter-productive. Over-excite them. They’re fine with you being gone. It’s too bad, but it’s true.”

  Todd squeezed his eyes shut, not knowing what to say.

  “I’ve given you so many chances, Todd. I don’t seem to have any more in me. Not right now.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “Oh, a sorry figure,” she said, teasing him. He felt like rolling over and wagging his tail, wriggling at the faintest hint of warmth.

  “I’ll be on the next plane,” he told her.

  “Better not,” she said. “If you just show up, I’m afraid you’ll find the locks all changed. I was terrified Powell might have got his hands on a key. So they’re changed, and I think you’d better respect that. Let’s try to be dignified about this, please.”

  Todd pictured himself climbing the wall around their house. He’d never worried about dignity before. But he could also picture the look on Holly’s face if he tried it. Todd had often asked himself whether imagination was necessary to the husband of a beautiful woman. Extraneous? A disadvantage?

  It was hellish.

  “Just the week?” he asked, licking his lips.

  “Longer,” she said.

  “What’s the matter, Holly?”

  “I know you probably find this a shock,” she said. “But maybe that’s what we need. Shock therapy.” She coughed or laughed or cried. “We won’t call it a separation.”

  “Please don’t, Holly. I don’t want this. I don’t want any part of it.”

  “I’m not asking,” she replied.

  Todd simply didn’t know how to answer. He listened hopelessly as Holly said it was useless for them to keep covering the same ground; they’d done that far too often. They’d talk again when he’d thought about what she’d said. In the meantime, she was sorry, but she’d better go. Aside from anything else, she wanted to do a bit more work before the boys got home. If he would excuse her.

  “Darwin,” she said, hanging up.

  This was ridiculous. Holdi
ng the receiver to his forehead, exhausted, his eyelids fallen weakly closed, Todd had trouble believing what had just happened. He’d been told not to come home, and found himself resenting a man who had been dead for more than a hundred years. Did Tânia have her doing a portrait of Darwin? Todd had an idea Tânia was mixed up in this somehow. He liked Tânia, yet he’d always suspected her of being a bad influence on Holly. She was too sophisticated, equivocal, even decadent. And now she was Doutor Eduardo’s niece, as well? Todd wondered what was he supposed to make of that. What he was supposed to make of any of this? He no longer had any idea how other people managed their lives. How did they make up their minds, order their priorities, know how to act?

  He’d been away from ordinary life for so long he no longer knew what it looked like. And once you’d lost sight of something, how did you find your way back?

  Please God, say he wasn’t going to lose his wife and children.

  Someone rapped on the door to his booth. Looking up, Todd saw lipstick, mascara, a frown. The operator wanted him to leave his booth; another caller was waiting.

  Todd opened the folding door and asked her to connect him with the agronomist in Porto Velho.

  “A mess,” he told the waiting caller, who shrugged companionably and retreated. Messes were common in the Amazon. Solutions, no.

  Part Four

  17

  The January heat muffled Rio like fog, leaving the sky white and the air heavy with humidity. Walking was like swimming: take too deep a breath and you risked drowning. In the crowded favelas you could drown in neighbours, drown in noise. The heat muted the noise, but it never ended. The growl of traffic, howls of babies, shrieking anger and surprise — it all dripped like condensation from the humid air, wearing people down. You wore the heat there, and only escaped it in the suburbs, in the condominiums towering over the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema and Leblon, where air conditioners dripped, flinging droplets of water like diamonds onto the sizzling sidewalks below. Here, you felt a lightness, a vacancy, a floating-above. Balconies and penthouse patios yawned empty. Curtains were closed, the buildings slept. Stray dogs panted in the paltry shade.

  Holly was in her kitchen, moving slowly between the counter and the table. Her second southern summer was hotter than the first, but the heat had grown so gradually she’d adjusted by degrees, and wasn’t even conscious of it any more. She walked barefoot across the tile floor wearing a loose dress that swung against her legs. The air felt like another layer of fabric; layers of gauzy fabric that brushed her like curtains she parted as she walked — a luminous feeling that made even the simplest chore seem like a piece of theatre. Padding across the smooth tiles, she took the cold plate of butter from the refrigerator and set it perfectly on the table. Performing, she thought. She was performing her duties.

  She was also watching her maid, Cida, who was walking as if she were pregnant. That loose-hipped waddling, toes turned out. This was new. Was it too new to mention? Holly tried to see Cida’s shape, but she wore her T-shirt tucked into the waistband of her shorts in back and billowing free in front. In any case, she’d put on weight in their house. Poor girl, she’d needed to; her last employers hadn’t given her much to eat. Tânia had proposed Holly hire her away almost as soon as they’d met — Cida being the daughter of Tânia’s housekeeper.

  “She’s good with children, and her mother taught her to cook,” Tânia had said. “The only problem is that she’s such a very pretty girl, most people won’t hire her.”

  “While I was always accused of hiring girls because they were pretty,” Holly said. “Decorative, for the gallery. But I’m tough, you know. Boyfriends stay outside office hours.”

  Tânia paused, then said, “Apparently your husband only wanders geographically.”

  So he did. Watching Cida pad around the kitchen, Holly couldn’t recall Todd ever once treating the girl with anything other than distracted courtesy. Even these past six months, he’d shown no signs of noticing her — or any other woman, for that matter — although Holly had been conscious of giving him an excuse last June when she’d asked him to stay away. Not permission, but an excuse. And he couldn’t have lacked for opportunities, living most of the time on the road.

  But Todd was the opposite of other men. In opposition now, her opposition — although she also hoped they hadn’t become opponents. Poor, faithful Todd. He was almost maddeningly faithful. When he came home to visit the boys, he couldn’t seem to stop following her around, at least with his eyes, and while he managed to stifle his sighs, he so clearly stifled them that Holly was soon beside herself with exasperation. Or perhaps the word was pity. Lately, they’d had a couple of good long talks on the telephone, even though Holly wasn’t sure Todd quite grasped what she was saying, or even what she was really trying to tell him. This had drifted on far longer than she’d intended, and she no longer had any idea how it would end.

  Yet something was going to have to give, with Larkin due back soon for another visit. It was probably time to tell him their affair had to end, yet even the thought made Holly shudder. Jay Larkin. J. Larkin. John, Jack, Jackie as a boy. She’d heard of cultures where people believed a man lost power when his real name was revealed. If they were right, Jay was a man with many weak spots. Which was to say, he was more susceptible than most. Kinder, more even-tempered, a much more casual man than she was accustomed to. Although he was remarkably persistent about coming back.

  Five weeks after Tânia’s party, just as Holly was telling herself she’d forgotten all about him; as she was pottering, humming, hanging a canvas in the living room, Cida had answered the bell at the gate and led someone inside. Holly thought it was probably the boy from the butcher shop delivering their weekly order, and only turned at the last moment to see it was Jay, eyes bright, arms spread, coming to embrace her. Cida must have seen the heat in her face, although Holly was able to control herself and gave him only the most conventional kiss on each cheek.

  She usually kept Jay away from the house after that, and had him phone before his subsequent trips to Rio. She didn’t think Cida suspected anything, and Todd certainly didn’t, although she knew she deserved contempt, recriminations, disgrace. There would be no easy way out of this. How could she get out of this? She had to — what?

  Holly took a share of cutlery from Cida, helping set the table for the boys’ bedtime snack. It was the wrong time to worry about herself. She had to think about the girl. If Cida were pregnant, she’d need help. Holly would have to get on the phone, line up a doctor, work a few angles.

  That seemed to be Cida’s plan.

  The girl was exaggerating her waddle to make sure Holly noticed. A moment before, going for the bread, she’d walked swiftly across the room. Then she checked herself, slowed down, and waddled. She wanted Holly to notice, wanted her to bring it up, wanted to escape the risk of bringing it up herself and making awkward demands upon Madame. Poor girl. Is that what she was thinking?

  Sighing, straightening, Holly asked, “Are you pregnant, Cida?”

  The girl slumped against the fridge. “I need money for an abortion. My friend knows where.”

  Holly felt relieved. This might actually be quite simple.

  “Well,” she said, “let’s talk about it. Have you seen a doctor yet? How far along are you, do you know?”

  “Six months. Well, maybe a little more. Maybe seven.”

  “Seven months!”

  Holly remembered Cida’s sudden craze for exercise three or four months before. Once she’d even come near to fainting, having walked all the way up the hill on a hot day carrying two heavy bags of groceries. “There’s no point to this,” Holly had scolded, laying cool cloths on her face and wrists. “When it’s this hot, you’re only losing water.”

  Seven months. Holly sat down, and gestured toward another chair. But Cida remained standing, her arms crossed, and before Holly could press her, the boys rush
ed into the kitchen.

  “We’re hungry and the video’s over,” Evan said, planting himself in front of her.

  “We’re not quite ready,” Holly replied, standing up again. “Can I get you guys to wait a little? Just another little bit downstairs.”

  “But we’re hungry,” Evan insisted, and she stroked his hair. Such thick wiry hair, threads between her fingers, copper-coloured and gleaming. Too often lately she’d had to put them off, leave them with Cida. She tried to schedule, tiring herself out by working at night — sometimes all night — but there were always errands to do during the day. After bringing the boys home from a couple of hours swimming, feeling pleasantly sleepy, still sensing their rubbery little bodies in her arms, she’d have to call, Cida, can you take them while I — go shopping, track down the carpenter, take the car into the shop? Stroking Evan’s wiry hair, Holly wished she didn’t have to put them off again.

  “You can watch another video. Just a short one.”

  They raced back downstairs. When Holly looked back at Cida, she knew from the expression on the girl’s face that she had been watching Holly stroke Evan’s hair. Evan was Cida’s favourite. Poor child, poor children.

  “Seven months,” Holly said, shaking her head. “Cida, when babies are born at seven months these days, they can sometimes keep them alive. One of my friend’s children was born at seven months. You can’t get an abortion now; it’s too late. But adoption. If you want me to find out how to arrange an adoption, of course we can do that.”