by Rona Jaffe
“Is that your little boy?” Helen asked. She gestured at the fat, petulant-faced little boy perched on the edge of the pool, wearing blue bathing trunks and a rubber tube shaped like a swan.
“Yes. That’s Timmy.”
“He’s sweet. How old is he?”
“Going on four. Even with his tube on I worry about him.”
“Those two are mine.” Helen noticed that Julie had found two little girls her age whom she seemed to know, and that Roger was playing with a boy who seemed at least a year older than he was and who didn’t seem to notice the age and size difference at all. “I should introduce myself. My name is Helen Sinclair.”
“I’m Ann. You have two children?”
“Yes.” There was a silence. Ann waved and blew a kiss at Timmy. “How many do you have?” Helen asked finally.
“Just this one so far. I’m expecting another one in six months.”
“How nice.”
“I think it’s nice.”
“Have you lived in Brazil long?”
“A year.”
“So have we! Isn’t that a coincidence. Do you like it?”
“Oh, yes. Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
The child named Timmy had noticed that his mother was talking with someone and he came over and buried his head in his mother’s skirt. “I want gum,” he whined.
“All right,” Ann said, searching in her beach bag. “Say hello to Mother’s friend.”
Timmy’s head gave an imitation of a pile driver and he seemed to be trying to disappear back into his mother. “Oh, he’s impossible,” Ann said.
“It’s all right.”
“Here’s the gum, Timmy.” The child looked up, his sunburned little face redder than usual. “Here, sugar-plum.” He snatched the gum and retreated behind his mother’s beach chair, still holding on to her with one hand, the other hand grasping the stick of gum. He put the end of the stick of gum into his mouth with the silver foil still on it and looked at Helen with round, resentful eyes.
“Don’t eat the paper, Timmy,” Helen said.
“Oh, he won’t,” said Ann.
“Do you come here often?”
“Nearly every day. My child likes it.”
“It’s nice for children.”
Long silence. Now, Helen thought in sudden irritation, we’ve discussed the children, so it’s time to begin talking about our maids. Isn’t that always next?
“This is a very good book,” Helen said, holding up the book she had brought to the pool. “Have you read it?”
“I think my husband has,” Ann said vaguely. “Timmy, don’t you want to wear your sun hat?”
“Mmmm!” Timmy squealed, in an unidentifiable monosyllabic sound that seemed to be one of protest. His sunburned face became more petulant than ever and he tugged wordlessly at his mother’s arm.
“He wants to go into the water,” Ann said. She stood up. “Excuse me, I have to attend to my child.” She sounded much more righteous and proud than apologetic, and she leaned down to take Timmy’s hand in her own and took him over to the pool without a backward glance. Helen watched her climb into the pool and hold her arms out for the little boy to jump into them. “Come on, Timmy! Jump, darling!”
Well, Helen thought, that’s that. She looked again for Roger and Julie and saw that they were perfectly happy with their friends in the water and did not look cold. She looked at her watch. Nearly twelve. It was too early for lunch, but at least eating lunch would give them something to do. What’s happened to me, have I lost touch? She thought guiltily. I couldn’t even talk to that woman. Or she couldn’t talk to me. Why can’t I be so involved in my children that I don’t care about anything else? But she thought she knew the answer. Roger had never, even when he was a baby, hidden his face in her skirt and clung and scowled at the world, and she was grateful for it. Perhaps it was more difficult to keep an affectionate distance and feel lonely than to have a child who was so jealous that he could not even allow you to converse with a stranger.
She had some difficulty persuading Roger and Julie to come out of the water, but at last they were dried and dressed and she took them to the clubhouse. They found a table on the gallery that bordered the second floor and had a view of the green golf course and the mountains. Helen liked having lunch with her children. Their conversation always amused and surprised her. So when she saw Mil Burns coming toward her with her own two younger children in tow, Helen was not altogether glad.
“Hi,” Mil called. She always sounded a little wry, even when she was saying hello. “Have you got room there for me and my brood?”
“Of course,” Helen said. “We’ll get another chair. Here.” She moved a chair from a neighboring empty table.
“Whew!” Mil exclaimed, sinking into a chair and fanning her face with a paper fan printed with the advertisement of a local jewelry store. “Governess’s day off. You too?”
“Not exactly,” Helen said. “I needed her to do some things in town.”
Mil’s two younger children were boys, one the same age as Julie, the other a little older. Confronted by two boys, besides her brother, Julie immediately became very quiet and ladylike and self-conscious, folding her hands on the table in front of her and staring at her water glass. “Why don’t you children go to the buffet and find something you like?” Helen said.
“Go on,” Mil said, not unaffectionately. “Beat it.”
The boys were up immediately, and Julie followed behind, looking rather like a terrified girl going to her first dance. “Aren’t you coming, Mom?”
“In a very short while,” Helen said. “We’re going to have a drink first. Please see that you little brother doesn’t take only dessert.”
Mil waved for the waiter. “Last night the lights went out,” she said. “As usual. They were out for forty minutes. Naturally, everything in the freezer started to thaw. Those stupid girls didn’t know what to do with the food. They started to put it back. I had to tell them to cook it. Now we have enough roast beef for a siege.”
“You could always give another dinner party,” Helen said. “I’m sure your friends would be delighted.”
Mil fanned her face and neck. “No, thank you. I nearly had a nervous breakdown from that one. You know why everyone has two maids in Brazil? Because one is too stupid to do the work of one, that’s why. It takes two to do the work of one, and then only if you’re lucky.”
“Mine are wonderful,” Helen said mildly.
“Oh, sure. Like laundry. I told Phil if he didn’t get me a washing machine from somewhere I was going to leave this stinking place. You think I’m joking? But you can’t get them. Did you ever hear of anything so primitive as doing all the wash for a family of five by hand?”
“The maids do it,” Helen said. “You don’t. Back home hand laundry is considered very fancy.” She didn’t mean to enter into an argument, but somehow today she felt as though the world was full of stupid, limited people, leading their own little lives oblivious of anyone else. She didn’t know why she was so irritable. Perhaps it was the heat.
“I tried sending Phil’s shirts out to a washerwoman,” Mil said. “My next-door neighbor had one she said was wonderful. So this Negro woman arrives, and she takes the laundry up to her house in the favellas somewhere, and four days later it comes back all nice and clean. I keep sending it, and pretty soon I notice the things are beginning to wear out. You know, these people wash your clothes on rocks, just like the Dark Ages. So then I find out that this washerwoman is washing Phil’s shirts and then giving them to her husband to wear for one day, and then washing them again to bring them back to me! These people don’t even own any clothes. That’s how they save money. They wear your clothes, and sleep in your sheets too, and then they wash them and you never know it.”
“How awful! How did you ever find out?”
“My neighbor told me,” Mil said.
“But how did she find out?”
“Somebody else told her. You discover these t
hings. I tell you,” Mil said, “Brazil isn’t as pretty as it looks.”
“I guess I’d be furious if it happened to me,” Helen said thoughtfully. “But I can’t help thinking it’s amusing, too. Imagine having so much initiative to think up a scheme like that.”
“Ha!” said Mil. “Initiative? Initiative is one thing these people do not have. Initiative, my foot. This is mañana land, in case you didn’t know. Did you ever try to have something fixed?”
The waiter came over with gin and tonic. Mil lifted an ice cube from her glass with her spoon and looked at it closely. Then she waved the waiter away. “It’s all right,” she said, as if conferring an important scientific verdict. “The ice is all right. You can eat and drink practically anything in this place. That’s why I come here. But still, you can’t be too careful anywhere.”
“You don’t like it here, do you?” Helen said.
“Don’t like it? I loathe it!”
“If you hate it so much, you don’t have to stay forever, do you?”
Mil’s lips formed a thin line of distaste. “My husband adores it here. He wouldn’t leave if you paid him. Oh, I’ve argued with him plenty. He tells me that I have a nice big apartment on the beach and two maids and a baba for the kids, and how happy that should make me. He’s like all the American wives here; they just love it because they can afford a maid. Well, I wasn’t poor as a girl, you know. Back home in Chicago my parents had a maid.”
“So did mine,” Helen said. “But that isn’t why I like Rio.”
Mil looked surprised and slightly aggressive. “What could you possibly like? The sticky heat? The bugs? The stupid people?”
“I don’t know many Brazilians,” Helen said, “but the ones I’ve met aren’t stupid. I liked them.”
“You liked them?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Mil said. But it was not a question, it was a statement, and Helen knew that to answer it would mean a meaningless battle. She wondered why she had entered this discussion at all. She knew how Mil felt about Brazil; Mil let you know often enough. It was almost, Helen thought, as if she were talking with Mil to sharpen the razor edge of irritation and anger she felt in herself today. It was painful, but it was a feeling, and it made her feel alive.
“You know,” Helen said, “tonight I’d like to do something that would be fun. If you and Phil have nothing to do we could all go out to dinner and then see an American movie.”
“I haven’t been to a movie in six months,” Mil said unpleasantly.
“You haven’t?”
“The last time I went I was bitten by fleas. You can go to the movies and be eaten alive if you want, but I have no intention of putting on hip boots and heavy slacks just to see some old picture that was Grade B back home last year.”
“We’ll go to a theater that doesn’t have fleas.”
“No, thank you.”
“You’re never going to go to a movie again?” Helen asked.
“Never as long as I’m in Rio.”
The children came back, their plates piled with an oddly indigestible combination of items from the buffet. Helen was glad to see them. They were so fresh and enthusiastic, they loved whatever happened to then because it was new, and even if it was not new they brought a freshness to it. They loved the beach, the sun, the air, the freedom of wearing almost no clothing; they were learning to speak Portuguese with a facility that amazed her. Already, Julie had become friendly again with Mil’s boys, and both of them wanted to sit next to her.
“What in God’s name are you eating?” Mil said to Roger. “Feijoada?” She turned to Helen. “You’re going to let him poison himself?”
“I like it,” Roger said, looking at Mil sympathetically, as if she were depraved and ignorant.
“It isn’t going to hurt him,” Helen said.
“All right,” said Mil. “They put pigs’ ears in it.”
“You eat scrapple, don’t you?” Helen said.
“Go ahead and eat pigs’ ears,” Mil said disdainfully.
“Haw!” Mil’s elder son shouted. “You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear!”
“But you can make feijoada!” Julie shrieked. They both began to laugh and push each other, and Mil’s younger son, not to be left out, began to laugh too, wildly, although he was not quite sure what was so funny, and he gave Roger a shove.
“Pig’s ear!” the little boy shouted. “Pig’s ear!”
Roger turned to him calmly. “You’re a pig’s ear,” he said.
“And you’re a pig.”
Helen felt fury rising in her like new, warm blood. “Stop it! All of you. I don’t want to hear any more screaming. If anyone here doesn’t care for what anyone else is eating, he can just shut up.”
“Well, who do you think you are?” Mil asked. “Your Julie started it.”
“You started it, if you want to know,” Helen said coldly. For no reason at all she felt as if she were going to cry, and she shut her eyes and turned her head, pretending to be looking out at the vista beyond the gallery railing. There was silence, punctuated by a nervous giggle from Julie. With an effort, Helen composed herself. “It’s nobody’s fault,” she said, trying to smile. “Let’s all try and be quiet, children. There are other people eating here too, and they don’t want to have to listen to children guffawing.”
“What’s guffawing?” Roger asked.
“Laughing,” Helen said. She ruffled his hair, smiling down at him, and she wanted to kiss him. My strength, she thought, is the people I love. That’s the only thing that keeps me alive. And then she was surprised at herself for this entire outburst out here on the harmless gallery in the bright sunshine, and she wondered what was happening to her.
Although the children continued to eat as though nothing had happened, there was a noticeable coldness from Mil. Helen tried not to care. Mil was a bigot, and if she had not come here and plunked herself down with her children nothing would have happened. And yet, what had happened? Nothing, really; a children’s scuffle, that was all. Something that could, and did, happen every day. But Helen suddenly could not finish her drink, and she did not want anything to eat. When the waiter came over to their table with menus she ordered only coffee. Mil glanced at her with upraised eyebrows, as if to say, Well, look who’s sulking! The meal seemed endless. She heard the children’s chatter, like the chirping of tame birds, and after a while she listened to it, and it soothed her. Their faces, even Roger’s, partly smeared with the brown sauce of the feijoada, seemed beautifuly formed and clean.
The woman called Ann, whom Helen had spoken to at the pool, passed by their table, holding her child by the hand. She waved distractedly. “How’s your sewing coming?” she called to Mil, not waiting for an answer.
“Pretty good,” Mil called.
“Are you still sewing for the hospital bazaar?” Helen asked Mil.
“Yes. Might as well do something. You ought to try it.”
“I never could sew anything well,” Helen said apologetically. “I’m just about at the putting-on-a-button stage.”
“It’s just something to do,” Mil said. Now that she could criticize someone else she seemed warmer and friendlier. “Most of those women have nothing else to do,” she said. “This is a big deal in their lives.”
“I know,” Helen said. She sipped at her coffee. She wondered what Bert was doing at the office, and thinking of him she felt a stab of longing that hit her with an actual physical pain. The sunshine seemed very hot. She imagined him in the city, having lunch with some men in a crowded restaurant, the Jockey Club perhaps, or the American Club. Maybe he would let me come into town and have lunch with him one day, she thought. He probably wouldn’t like it; he’s so busy.…
But she knew, even as she wondered, that Bert would not like it at all; he would consider her presence an inconvenience, even a nuisance. Perhaps it was. She didn’t know any more; she didn’t know anything. She realized suddenly that whatever had happened between her an
d Bert this past year had made her lose the ability to judge.
CHAPTER 4
A few minutes after noon, which was too early for Brazilians to think of lunch, Leila Silva e Costa drove through the mountain resort town of Cidade d’Ouro on her ascent from Rio to the town of Cidade d’Azul high above. It was a four-hour drive from Rio to Cidade d’Azul, and because she knew she would have to return that same afternoon she was already nervous with anticipated fatigue. She was driving an American car, a four-year-old Pontiac that had cost her five thousand dollars this year. By the standards of the ancient and disintegrating automobiles that crept down Avenida Atlantica every evening from five to seven in the daily traffic jam, Leila’s car was a good one. At least it worked.
She had opened all the windows to the cool mountain air, and as she passed through Cidade d’Ouro she looked at the yellow stucco, sun-splashed homes that had given the town its name—City of Gold—and seemed never to have changed. She had spent all her summers in Cidade d’Ouro when she was a child, when the family was all together—her father, her mother, her three older sisters, her older brother. She had been the youngest, the baby. Now her father was dead, her brother was dead, her oldest sister lived in São Paulo and never invited Leila to visit her, and her two other sisters lived in Rio but hardly spoke to her at all. The sight of the narrow, winding cobblestoned streets, the little river trickling under the bridge, the yellow houses, the splashes of red geraniums, the old-fashioned pastry shops, filled Leila with saudade. It seemed so long ago that she had been the prim, fat little girl walking along those streets with her French governess; it seemed a hundred years ago. And yet she was only twenty-nine, and she looked younger. When people saw her with her enormous twin sons of eleven, nearly as tall as she was, and her two beautiful daughters of ten and eight, they could not believe it. Or at least they said they could not believe it. Women married and bore children very early in Brazil.
It had been hot and cloudless when she left Rio in the morning, but the mountains here were like a cup for the sky, so as she drove up the winding mountain road she could see fog ahead. Below her, as if she were in an airplane, were clouds. It was a private world. On one side of her was the mountain, green with vegetation and red with the fertile soil where the mountain had been cut to make the road. On the other side was a low white metal fence, bent and twisted in many places where cars and trucks had careened into the abyss during nights of rain and fog. And below that was the vast green valley, beginning to disappear into mist, and the wide, fecund, rolling land. Brazil was so big you could never get to the end of it. Even driving eight hours in one day, as she was going to do, was not so unusual. People drove to Cidade d’Ouro to visit friends for lunch, and that was a three-hour drive if you went fast. You could drive for five days and nights across the country and still be in Brazil. You set your mind for distance when you lived in Brazil, as if it were a slow-moving clock, and you thought in terms of great spaces and great mysteries of closed jungle.