Drink the Sky

by Lesley Krueger

  “We have soccer.”

  “We have soccer, yes. And the beach after?”

  “Hot dogs for dinner,” he bargained warily.

  Holly knew she had to end the affair. Yet she’d simply never felt anything like this before, such a sense of partnership, a feeling of complicity; an openness that breathed health. She and Jay were equals. They said whatever they felt without hedging or apology. She felt he didn’t just listen, he understood what she was saying, which had never been the case with Todd. Holly knew Todd loved her. Of course he did, almost too much. But she’d never been quite certain that he approved of her, or that he would approve if she stopped censoring herself and told him everything she felt. It would be a punishing amount of work to repair their marriage.

  When it was just so much fun to be with Jay. They were always heading out to night clubs, eating at the best restaurants, dancing at the samba halls in the Zona Norte — feral places, with funky couples jiving in the dark. She’d do cat rubs against him, tease him so fiercely they’d make love the rest of the night. Yet it wasn’t just pleasure. On his last trip down, Jay had taken her to a rehearsal of his new performance piece. Holly had sat on a flimsy chair at the back of the baffled industrial space, amused to play the boss’s girlfriend, never introduced, but also proud to be with Jay. He’d swung casually into place behind his keyboard, looking gaunt and commanding. After shuffling some papers, he raised his long hands and set a beat, massaging the air until he pulled the opening notes from his musicians — percussionists, mainly, a fat trumpet-player, the bassist and a pale young guitarist folded over what she’d learned to call his rig. The room was warm, but Holly shivered.

  The piece was jazzy, Brazilian syncopated jazz, although the band soon faded down for Jay. He was speaking more than singing. It wasn’t a rap, more a monologue. Yet the miking was wrong and Holly had to strain forward to hear what he was saying, trying to make sense of the words. A loud crackle made her jump, and Jay’s voice popped louder. Yet as he sang a few ironic bars, Holly felt puzzled. She heard nothing about the great theme of post-modern disintegration Jay had talked about at first. No, the piece focused on Jay himself, his Brazilian adventures, his odyssey through Rio. His voice was bluesy and wry, the beat languid; it undercut him. Holly smiled as she realized he was undercutting himself, satirizing what had happened on the morro. He finessed his way through a cock-eyed version of their story, exaggerating a little, embroidering more. Despite some continuing roughness, Holly saw he’d captured the ravaged tone of the city. Add the indolent Brazilian beat, rehearsals, refinement, and she knew the piece would be a success. Yet Holly was disappointed. She couldn’t see the point, the focus, any edge. Where was the edge he’d come looking for?

  In her, Holly thought, cutting out her heart. She turned from the top of the motel stairs and walked to the table, pillowing her face in her hands.

  “You tired?”

  He’d come up quietly and startled her. Holly heard the maid close the door downstairs.

  “I’m all right.” She put her face up for a kiss, then got up and drifted toward the window, looking at the waves on the rocks below. “Are you here for very long?”

  “That’s up to you,” he replied.

  “I shall exercise my great power responsibly.” Holly turned from the window. “For a change. But tell how the piece is coming. Did you do any revisions up there?”

  “Way up north. Far into the cold country, chilled by arctic blasts.”

  “I’m not looking forward to my next Canadian winter. I’m getting too used to the heat. Though I’ve felt limp and withered lately. It’s almost too hot.”

  Jay was watching her closely. Holly she shook her head and smiled.

  “Somebody tried to blackmail me. How does that sound? Cida is pregnant and wants to go to Canada. She thought she could make me take her there.” When Jay looked confused, Holly added, “The girl who helps me out. The maid.”

  “It doesn’t sound like she’s being much help.”

  “I don’t blame her. She’s lost. She doesn’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”

  “I know,” Jay said gently, walking over and taking her hand. His hands were much larger than hers, capable and manicured. He looked after himself, although she gathered he hadn’t always. In bed sometimes she studied his shadowed face in profile, seeing the way his skin looked both beautifully cared for and needing the care; a little puffy around the eyes at times, the pores relaxing with age. He was older than she’d thought at first, although still in splendid shape; a long, dark, muscled man who could be the walking version of one of Giacometti’s attenuated sculptures. He said he’d been married once to a woman who left him almost immediately for someone powerful in the entertainment industry. He also seemed to have lived with another woman for a long time, but he talked about her so brokenly that Holly could never figure out whether she was before or after the wife. Nor did he say what happened to the woman, although this was apparently his period of greatest fame, with all the parties, drink and drugs. The scars on his wrists came from then, and Holly was left to wonder if he’d cut himself out of a life the woman hadn’t managed to leave.

  She took his cuff between her fingers. “Mostly these days, I just want to lock myself in the studio and paint. The work is going so well. But nothing else is, and I don’t know what to do. What do you think I should do, Jay?”

  “Come with me to New York,” he said. “Bring the maid to look after the kids. Give the girl her chance.”

  “New York? You’ve got another concert?”

  “To live,” he said. “I’m finished with Chicago. Time for the big move.”

  Holly was startled into meeting his eyes, a greyer shade of blue than her own. She got up and walked nervously around the room, understanding that he’d made a remarkably generous offer. He would give Cida a home. And the boys. And her. Holly hugged herself, chilly and breathless, not knowing what to say. “New York is no place to bring up children.”

  “Connecticut.” He was watching her closely. He’d thought this through.

  “I don’t know what to say. I can’t even spell Connecticut.”

  “Three C’s. I know it’s something you have to think about. But haven’t you been thinking about it? Just a little? Something along these lines?”

  She had, of course. She’d also pictured conversing with Charles Darwin, phoning Cida’s mother and shooting Ed Powell. Holly smiled and shook her head. “I don’t seem to have been thinking very clearly lately,” she admitted.

  “Honey, that isn’t flattering.”

  “I hope this isn’t about flattery.”

  “You’re right,” he answered. “Say yes.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Holly could see herself taking flight. White wings at her back, lifting her, flying her over the sea. Tears drenched her inside. Rain falling. Drink the sky, she thought, feeling vertiginous.

  And the boys?

  “I have to think about it. I can’t say anything right now, Jay. How could I?”

  “I know,” he told her, adding, “And I should order some food.”

  “I already did.”

  He thanked her and retreated to the table, his eyes on Holly as she continued to pace.

  “Come here,” he said finally, patting his lap. When she curled up there, breathing on his neck, he quickly had an erection. He said in an amused voice, “Blackmail?”

  Jay seemed to like the idea. He liked a little seediness, was that it? He liked this motel. Cleaned up a little, but not too much. He liked living the disintegration he’d talked about. Did she?

  The waiter knocked on the door. Holly watched Jay eat his dinner from the other end of the long table. Afterwards, he reached for her.

  “It’s been too long,” he said.

  The next morning, Holly sat down at the kitchen table, deciding to work things out with Ci
da, at least. The girl should telephone her mother. It was probably unfair of Holly and officious to try to insert some direction into the girl’s life when her own was so up in the air. Yet with the boys playing happily, they might as well talk.

  “Cida?”

  “Senhora?” the girl answered. She’d spilled a bag of black beans onto the table and was picking through them for pieces of gravel, looking bitter and exhausted. The summer weather was wearing in itself. Although it was early morning, the day was already hot. Holly couldn’t help feeling sorry for Cida as she crossed her hands on the table.

  “It’s time to talk about plans,” she said. “Your real plans, Cida, being realistic.”

  “Going to Canada,” the girl answered, without looking up. “You keep telling me you’ll think about it.”

  “I have, Cida. And in the end, I don’t think it’s a very good idea.”

  “It’s my idea,” the girl answered angrily. She seemed to remember the proprieties and added unctuously, childishly, spitefully, “Senhora.”

  “Cida, let me tell you something about Canada. It’s very far to the north, and cold — so much colder than Brazil in almost every way. It’s hard to imagine winter when you’ve never even seen snow. But maybe you can picture the very formal way people act toward each other. Here, I take the boys to school and their teacher gives me a hug and a kiss, doesn’t she?”

  “The senhora knows.”

  “That doesn’t happen in Canada, Cida. Here I go into my favourite clothing stores and the salesgirls all hug me, too.”

  Cida shrugged.

  “But that just doesn’t happen in Canada.” Holly sighed again. “I think you’d feel repulsed there, and lost. I don’t know how I can go back there myself.”

  Cida looked oddly sympathetic. “It’s Doutor Todd, isn’t it?” she asked. Holly was surprised at her penetration, and wondered if Cida was trying to equalize things. If Holly was going to play a part in her decision, she wanted to talk about Holly’s problems too, especially since they affected her hopes of coming to Canada. Yet Holly wasn’t going to talk about her problems with a nineteen-year-old girl, and Cida must have seen this in her face.

  “Ta bom.” It’s all right, she said, and went back to picking her beans.

  Holly hesitated, unsure how to go on.

  “I won’t press you any more,” she said finally. “But I’ll say one last time that I think you should phone your mother.”

  “Okay. Why not?”

  Holly was even more surprised by the sudden lack of resistance. Cida seemed terribly unsettled this morning, listless and removed. Yet why be surprised? Everything was unsettled. This might be the most important decision the girl would ever make, and there was no obvious answer. Holly ought to be able to sympathize with that.

  “I really think your mother is the best person to help,” she said.

  “She’s my mother.”

  Cida looked closely at the bean in her fingers.

  “Although you’re a grown woman now, Cida. These are your decisions to make.”

  The girl shrugged, but glanced over at the telephone.

  “I guess I should allow you some privacy, if you want to call.”

  Holly was conscious of a little cowardice, and half expected Cida’s contempt as she stood up. But the girl only shrugged again, pursing her lips.

  “And Cida?” Holly said, pausing in the doorway. “I’d like to go out this evening with Tânia and some friends, if you don’t have any plans.”

  “What plans can I have?” Cida asked, pushing the beans aside irritably. Then she rubbed her nose and drew the beans back toward herself, within the circle of her arms. “Have a good time,” she said absently.

  “It’s tonight I’m going out,” Holly said, lingering in the doorway. “I’m not going anywhere yet.”

  “I just meant, have a good time tonight,” Cida said, in a voice that had again turned childish and spiteful. “I think I’ll make my phone call now.”

  “Well, that’s best isn’t?” Holly asked, retreating, puzzled.

  It was all a puzzle. As she drove to Copacabana that night, Holly wasn’t sure how Tânia would react to Cida’s news. Nor did she know what to say to Jay, who would be expecting an answer later that night. She would rather have stayed home, working within earshot of Cida and the boys. Not that she thought Cida needed watching with the boys. She was very good with them; that was never a concern. No, what Holly really wanted was her work. Not as solace, not as distraction, but because it had become an obsession. And wasn’t that a breakthrough, to reach the place where her art was all-consuming and anything but safe? She thought it was, and when she considered her progress, she began to feel happier, more in control.

  Parking the car, Holly also found it was a lovely night, limpid and warm, with a sweet breeze blowing off the water. She got a space on the beach side at the south end of Copacabana. High-rise apartments and hotels lined the curving beachfront road, but a few fishermen still tied their boats near a palm-roofed hut on the beach itself. Nearby, a couple of women were lighting candles in the sand to ask a favour of Iemanja, the goddess of the sea. As she locked the car, Holly felt like joining them. Or had she already been granted her wish, her work, her vindication?

  “There she is,” Tânia said. They were sitting outside at a bar across the street, and Tânia held out a hand to intercept Holly as she arrived. Her whole crowd was there: children, nieces, friends, cousins. Also Jay, looking relieved that Holly had arrived. Tânia had listened to one of Jay’s CDs recently and asked, “So?”

  “We’re celebrating my news,” Tânia told her. “I’m going to have a show.” She added more quietly, “And I want to talk to you later.”

  “Congratulations,” Holly answered, stooping to kiss her. Tânia painted slowly, and often on commission, so she seldom showed her work. But lately she’d been working with one model, an aging transvestite, and was getting a body of paintings together. Holly had seen them and they were massive. Some would say cruel. But Holly found the cruelty fascinating in light of Tânia’s continuing relationship with Antônio, who was a little more than half her age. Her only other friends to have relationships with much younger partners were men. So who was the transvestite in Tânia’s paintings? Taking in the puckered lips, the sinewy arms, Holly wondered whether artists ever truly represented anyone other than themselves.

  Not that she could even hint at the idea. Tânia would quail at the implication, having grown painfully sensitive about anything touching on Antônio. Her family was increasingly uneasy about the affair, afraid she might marry him. At first, they hadn’t thought it would last. But here he was, a year later, sitting happily beside Tânia in the Copacabana bar, cradling the helmet for a new motorcycle she surely must have bought him. Glances were being exchanged, and Holly quickly saw that Tânia’s son Eric was scarcely bothering to be civil. Eric always acted like a child around Antônio, even though he was the older of the two, being the product of Tânia’s early first marriage. But tonight he seemed worse than usual, pouting, lost in the sense of ill-usage that hung about him so prettily: he had the easy good looks of a model, though he was weak and dissipated, debauched, fond of drugs. The one time Todd had met Tânia, Eric had been her date. On the way home, Todd said dryly, “Amazing how much more energy he always had after those trips to the washroom.”

  Yet Tânia never appeared to notice Eric’s behaviour. He was her first born, her darling, her eternal boy. As an evening wore down, she would often lean her head on his shoulder, kissing his ear and saying he was the best son, so thoughtful, so talented, so good at everything he did — even though he never seemed to actually do anything. He was always weighing a number of options; planning to take up architecture, go into the stock market, maybe act. Meanwhile, Antônio made his imperturbable way through a medical residency. His steadiness was a constant reproach to Eric, although Tânia n
ever seemed to see that, either.

  Or did she? As the evening drew on, Holly caught Tânia giving Eric a worried look. Who could understand families? The history. What was owed.

  “Our talk, Holly,” she said finally.

  “We’re always having talks,” Holly replied, supposing this to be about Cida.

  “You have to go home,” she announced instead, so everybody turned. “It came to me today, looking at my work, that I stayed away too long when I moved to New York. My God, seventeen years. It didn’t answer: I learned technique, but lost all my passion. Now you’re making the same mistake, Holly. You’re making it in reverse, but that isn’t what’s important.”

  Tânia shook her finger playfully, as if to take the sting off the words. Holly smiled ruefully and told Jay, “Tânia looked at my latest work and said obsession isn’t art.”

  “Goes a damn long way towards it,” he replied.

  “There’s also a question of the craft,” Tânia told him. “When you’re travelling, things like that can easily be mislaid.”

  “But people move around the world all the time,” Holly said. “It’s human history, we always have. And if that’s what I’m trying to paint, how does it matter where I live, or where I work on my technique? I know I have to do it.”

  “I like this conversation,” Jay said.

  “But Rio isn’t for you, my flower. We’re not for you. If I had my way, you’d pack up your family tomorrow and fly straight home.” Holly was about to answer when Tânia said to no one in particular, “She’s fucking up. I give her a good maid, and the girl ends up pregnant.”

  “Oh, Tânia, that’s not fair. Cida’s responsible for herself. She’s not a child, and I’m not her mother.”

  “You’re a mother,” Tânia said. “Once a mother, always a mother. That’s also the strongest part of your art, you know. You paint from that.”

  Holly couldn’t tell whether this was a description or an order. She’d never heard Tânia speak this way before, although she sounded like the person who had painted the transvestite with such avid cruelty.