I was the only person walking on the sidewalk—others had huddled under awnings and gas station canopies waiting for the rain to stop. The safest route was upstream on Avenida Brigadeiro, away from the park. I saw a car attempt to drive up the hill, his tires spinning over the rushing rainwater, then turn around and go the opposite direction. But I kept walking, and walking, my feet squishing in the rubber sandals, until I decided to stop at a corner pub that advertised cold beer and soccer.
* * *
—
I’ve thought many times about how I should explain this part of my story to you. I could let it unfold as it did: that I found a seat in the middle of the bar. The wet linen got pressed between my thighs and a cool trickle slid down my spine. The place was empty, save for a table of four men drinking amber liquor and playing cards, and a woman in the corner sitting by herself.
I could tell you about the bartender, how he watched the soccer game on the television while mindlessly wiping the tiled bar. He was young, couldn’t have been older than twenty, and wore a delicatessen hat that looked like an upside-down paper boat. When he turned to ask my order, I saw a momentary glimmer of confusion. I took off the shower cap and put it on the bar. He smiled.
“O que você quer?”
“Brahma,” I said.
He brought me a large bottle in an ice bucket and a small plastic cup that was cracked with wear.
I could tell you about the men and their matching straw fedoras, or the soft rock music that whispered over the stereo, or the faint mix of fried yucca and damp fur that wafted through the air. Or I could skip all of that, as it’s inconsequential compared to what I saw when I saw the woman, the one who was alone, like me, reading a book on the other side of the bar.
I could trace her features with one pencil stroke: a round face that curved into full lips, a proud nose, and her hair, a dark lioness of curls. She acknowledged me with a subtle glance up from her book and offered a wave. I waved back. It felt as though I had already studied her cheeks and the shape of her eyes. I had sculpted and resculpted her shoulders and the curves of her fingers. But how, if I hadn’t seen her before? I couldn’t explain it then, and I can’t explain it now. I felt I already knew everything about her, as though I had imagined it all before.
I saw my own face reflected in the bar mirror between two liquor bottles: a strand of wet hair curled against my forehead; mascara smudged under my bottom eyelashes. I poured myself a glass of beer and drank it down, then went to the bathroom to clean up. When I returned, the woman had moved to the stool next to me.
“We need to catch up to them,” she said and tilted her head toward the men. I could smell the mix of sharp vodka and sweet orange juice coming from her glass.
“I agree,” I said.
She told me that her name was Celia. She said, “I’m Celia,” and tucked her hair behind her ear as if to give me a better look. She was born in São Paulo, though she explained that this didn’t fully answer my question “Where are you from?” She had lived in the backseats of cars, in hotels, in big houses, and in closets, in countries all over the world. She’d learned English in London, where she’d spent a few years stage acting.
“Where am I from?” she repeated back to me. “Really, my home is the theater.”
The bartender came over to offer her a fresh cocktail napkin and a drink. She perched gently on her elbows, spread her eyes wide, and asked for two drinks: one for her and one for me. He melted away, then rematerialized with everything she’d asked for, plus a bowl of chips. Normally this kind of coquettishness would have made me uncomfortable. Even before you and I got married, I’d struggled to find the competitive femininity that my girlfriends possessed, the kind that got them to the front of a long line or a free drink at the bar. But with Celia, the display, her colorful dance, seemed less for the bartender and more for me.
“Do you live in this neighborhood?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I live in Perdizes.”
She picked up my shower cap and stretched the elastic band over her head so that it looked a jellyfish bulb, iridescent and smooth, and her locks were the drifting tentacles.
“Nice hat. Is this an everyday look?”
“It’s for the rain,” I said without any intended irony. What would I say if she asked why I was wearing an ill-fitting suit?
She didn’t ask. She took the drink the bartender had brought her and pressed the wet glass against her cheeks.
“Is this a regular bar for you?” I asked.
She looked at me, her skin wet with condensation, and forced a laugh.
“I don’t normally drink before noon, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s been a bad day.”
I told her I would listen if she wanted me to.
“Okay,” she said, and poured the vodka orange juice into her mouth, held it in her cheeks, then swallowed in one gulp. “But I have to warn you, it’s not a happy story.”
I told her I didn’t expect her to make me happy.
“I was on my way home from a warehouse that’s far south in the city. Santo André. We may use it for a play. I manage a theater company. Did I mention that?”
She sighed and asked the bartender for a splash more vodka, which she measured with two fingers.
“The bus I was on hit a boy. Actually, no. It wasn’t the bus. He was holding on to the back of the bus while riding his skateboard. He moved out to the side, maybe to let go or change his grip, I don’t know, and a car merged into the lane and drove over him.”
“Shit. Did the driver stop?”
“The car did but the bus didn’t. The driver mustn’t have seen. I banged on the bus door, Para! Para! The other passengers yelled with me until the bus stopped. I got out. A few others left too. Cars had piled up. People were leaning out their windows, they were wailing, blowing their horns. A pool of blood—thick, brown blood—was leaking onto the pavement.”
She dragged her fingers across the bar.
“Then the rain started. I didn’t stay long enough to see the ambulances. I walked until I saw this bar and decided I would have a drink and dry off.”
She examined my face for a reaction, then, perhaps in response to what she saw, eased off from the details.
“Maybe he’s not dead. Maybe he’s just hurt,” she said.
“How old was he?”
“Fifteen? Sixteen? I didn’t get a good look.”
We waited for the bartender to offer another drink before we spoke again. He brought a Brahma that I told her we could share.
Then a thought intruded—an inappropriate thought, an untimely one, a thought that felt more like a memory. I saw Celia standing in our kitchen in Hartford. It was snowing outside and she was mixing batter to make pancakes with star fruit in the middle. Then I saw her in our bathtub, reading from my tattered copy of Leaves of Grass. My fingers dipped into the surface of the water.
Celia twitched with a hiccup.
“Can I give you a hug?” I asked.
Without saying anything, she wrapped her arms around me. I could feel the cold silk jacket lining press against my skin.
“Tell me,” she said, letting go. “Why are you here?”
I looked at the raindrops collecting into shared streams on the window.
“To escape the rain,” I said.
“Oh, no. I meant, why are you here”—she waved her arms in big circles around her—“in São Paulo.”
“So you noticed I’m not from here.”
“I had an idea.”
“What gave it away?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you look a little lost.”
This made me smile. “My husband brought us here. He’s teaching at USP.”
“Ah. A professor.”
I nodded.
“Are you a professor too?”
“No
. I used to be a reporter. Now I’m just me, I suppose. In Brazil, trying to figure out what that means.”
Celia stared into her drink for a moment and bobbed her head with recognition.
“I had always considered myself a writer. But is a writer still a writer if she doesn’t write?” I trailed off, unsure of what I was trying to say. Celia laughed and repeated what I’d said, as though it were a riddle.
“Can I tell you something terrible?” I said.
She glanced at the men gathered in the corner of the bar.
“Claro.”
“The day my husband, Dennis, told me he got this job in São Paulo, I was going to tell him I wanted to leave him.”
“Wow.” She pressed her hand against the bar. “You don’t love him anymore?”
“I love him very much. Sometimes I wish it were that easy.”
“Why isn’t it that easy?”
“Dennis and I are shaped very differently. He has known his whole life what he wants. He is driven and the whole universe opens up to that drive.”
“I see. I think I know Dennis. Not your Dennis. But I know who Dennis is.”
“He’s also loving, and loyal, and witty, and charming. When I met him, I didn’t think it was possible that he could want me. I was working at a mall in Boston. My rent was only three hundred dollars and I could barely keep up.” I took a sip of my drink. “I had never thought about what would make me happy. I thought constantly about how I was going to make money. Then Dennis appeared, and my life changed.”
“Dennis gave you money.”
“Yes. And he gave me love.”
“So you didn’t tell him you wanted to leave him?”
“No, I didn’t. I thought maybe São Paulo would be a cure. A chance to reset.”
She smiled. “Now you’re sitting in a bar in Jardins, wearing a wet suit, drinking with a stranger. I understand the shape you’ve taken.” She clinked her glass on mine. “I understand this shape.”
“Maybe I made a mistake. I think I’m going mad. Like actually mad.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know where to physically put myself here. I don’t know how to best use my time. I don’t even know how to behave around Marta, our maid. It’s like São Paulo is rejecting me, and so I’m rejecting myself.”
“I would say two things to that. Don’t give up on São Paulo. You’ve met me now. I’ll show you the São Paulo you should see—not this sad bar in a rich neighborhood. And two, don’t think madness can’t cure you. I go mad all the time. Sometimes it’s the only way out!”
I glanced over my shoulder and out the window. The rain had stopped.
“So you want to see me again?” I said.
She took out a pen from her purse and wrote her phone number on a cocktail napkin.
“Yes,” she said, and shoved it into my jacket pocket.
I followed her lead, took out a napkin, and gave her my number too.
And then one of the men from the card circle came over and sidled up next to us. He swayed standing against the bar, his teeth yellowed, cheeks sallow, and gave us a wink.
“Gataaaas,” he said. The bartender was off somewhere sweeping the floor.
Celia turned her back to him, but her resistance enticed him even more. He cozied his hip against hers, purring and laughing.
“Tá bom,” she said, firmly, but he mistook her protests for banter.
“Já chega,” she said and, perhaps realizing that words alone weren’t enough, she curled her top lip and hissssssed, baring her teeth at him.
His eyes widened, but he didn’t leave, so she let out another HISSSSS, even louder and sharper, which sent him scurrying away to his friends. I saw that one of the men asked him what had happened, but he shook his head and said they should continue the game. Not to bother with us.
“I’m glad I met you,” I said.
“You too,” she said.
Celia was the one who said it was time for her to go. She worried that she would be too drunk to cook dinner and it was her night to feed her roommates. We walked to the curb and she reached inside my pocket to make sure her number was still there.
“Don’t forget,” she said, and stuffed it in my hand. Then she hopped into a taxi and sped off, her arm waving out the window.
The walk home sobered me up a bit. When I arrived, Marta had already come and gone, and you weren’t back yet from school. I went to the bathroom and removed your suit. It had stiffened with dried rainwater. I brought it into the laundry room and considered how I might wash it without having to explain why it needed a wash. It wasn’t dirty—you had just had it cleaned for your first day of school. In a jar on the windowsill there was a blue pen inscribed with the university insignia. Maybe I could scribble, just a line, and convince you it had happened while you were grading. Had you even been grading in this suit? I drew the line but it seemed too insignificant for a full wash. I drew another line, and then another, until eventually I snapped the pen in half and poured ink across the fabric, from the collar to the breast pocket. I drew a water bath and plunged it inside.
I do feel guilty, Dennis, but the suit had lived its full life that day. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing you wearing it for some meaningless conference.
Once I’d sopped up the ink in the soapy water, I took a warm shower, wrapped myself in a towel, and slept off the alcohol. You arrived a couple hours later. As soon as you walked through the door, I could see the dismay on your face.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It rained halfway through my walk to work. I spent the day soaking wet. A hurricane is coming up the coast. It’s the first hurricane Brazil has ever seen. My students were panicked.” You put your briefcase down on the kitchen table. “Is there anything to eat?”
I handed you a mango and told you I had bad news too.
“The white suit you love. I noticed a big blue stain, right above the breast pocket.”
You pressed your hand to your forehead. This was your favorite suit, your most expensive suit, a gift from your uncle.
“There must have been a pen in the pocket,” I continued. “And it broke. It’s soaking in the back.”
You rushed to the laundry room.
“It’s ruined,” you said, holding a sleeve out of the water bath. “What a shame.”
I rubbed your back.
“Maybe Marta can fix it.”
We agreed that we should ask Marta to try her hand at fixing the stain, so I left it in the sink until the following day. I brought her to the laundry room when she arrived in the morning.
“Dennis’s suit has a little stain on it. Can you remove it?”
Because I’d left the fresh stain sitting in the water, the ink had diluted and absorbed into the rest of the jacket, dying the fabric a powder blue.
“Ai meu Deus,” Marta said and wrung out the excess water. “I will fix it.”
She stayed determined through the day, adding more detergent and scrubbing it against the washboard. But by the end of the afternoon, she had to admit defeat. There was nothing she could do.
“It’s fine,” I told her. “You tried.”
I felt the overwhelming urge to paint. A levee had broken, and my mind filled with Celia. At first I didn’t know it was her; at first she appeared as a burst of inspiration.
“I’m going to start painting,” I declared. It was seven in the morning and you were getting ready for school.
“Oh yeah?” you said without any pants on, combing your wet hair in the mirror.
“Yeah. Do you know where I can buy paint supplies?”
“I don’t. Maybe Marta knows.”
I waited two more hours for Marta to arrive. She brought out an old phone book from a low cabinet and thumbed through the thin pages until she found an art supply store i
n Brooklin Novo. I took the subway and tried not to appear too obvious as I studied the map, memorizing how many stops until I had to get off. Two stops, I thought. Two stops. The young boy next to me listening to a Walkman, the woman across, carrying her daughter in one arm, a basket of groceries in the other, were all tired and quiet, unaware of my presence.
The store Marta had found was meant for children, I soon learned. A bored clown looking for faces to paint greeted me at the door. Speaking in mime, he pulled me into a seat and began to decorate my cheek with a glittering butterfly. I was too confused to understand how to protest, but I liked the pressure he put on my collarbone to steady his painting hand. When he finished, a young store clerk helped me find the oil paint supplies. She filled my cart with everything she said I would need—paints, yes, but also an easel, canvases, linseed oil, large and small natural-hair brushes, sponges, a palette knife and a palette. She even called a taxi for me, since I was now adorned with too many bags to take the subway home, and waved sweetly from the entrance, the clown not far behind her. That’s when I looked at the receipt and saw the price tag, nearly two hundred reais, and felt the twist in my throat that I had committed to more than an afternoon of leisure.
It started with an eleven-by-fourteen-inch canvas and a milky yellow coat. I set up my easel and a stool in the living room near the window. A strip of sunlight fell across my thighs. I waited for the coat to dry. Then I used pencil to sketch the outline of a face, just a face, that filled the frame. I had never painted before, never seriously, but it felt good to let my instincts lead the way. It took forever to get the size of the eyes right, the proportion, echoes of failed ovals enveloped each other, until finally I gave up perfection and dipped my brush. The oil paint pushed like soft clay on a riverbed—one minute it ran in a fluid stream, the next it was an embankment for another color washing in. The brush wasn’t a vessel to transfer color so much as an instrument to contain, to manipulate, to stoke and calm. I finished the eleven-by-fourteen face and painted three more.
It Is Wood, It Is Stone Page 4
