She handed me the letter and showed me out the door. I walked up the steep hill to the Madalena stop on the metro. As soon as I got inside the subway car I peeled open the envelope. Inside was a single piece of paper with a small, handwritten note:
Come to the beach with me?
At the end of the semester, the university gave you three weeks off before the start of the next term, in August. With you home all the time I told Celia that I wouldn’t be able to talk on the phone. I didn’t explain it like it was a secret, just that you and I would be spending more time out in the world. I was actually looking forward to it—we could go to museums, walk the park, take a trip to the coast. But you informed me that it wasn’t a vacation. You would be doing research for an article the Provost wanted you to publish before you left USP.
Stacks of papers appeared on the kitchen table, like sedimentary rocks that had formed with the push of your hands. There was no room for me to eat lunch with you. I began to take my plate to the living room or the bedroom. You barely spoke. I tried to convince you to stop for a crossword or to walk with me to the grocery, but you buried yourself in your work. It was as though I was a ghost to you, someone who drifted by without so much as a shadow.
I soon learned it was a mistake to have created distance between me and Celia for the sake of your arrival. Your empty presence made me ache for Celia, an ache that metabolized behind my ribs. Involuntary functions—beat, breathe, beat, breathe—shuddered to a crawl, as if a claw was grabbing at my tongue from the inside of my throat, dragging me to the floor. I’m alone, I thought. I’m alone, I thought again.
Meanwhile, Marta reacted to your every need. She tended to your water glass and coffee mug, picked up your socks and shoes, swept the floor around you. I had not seen you and Marta interact for such sustained periods of time. The way you so easily connected with each other, so effortlessly interacted and abated each other’s intensity, made me cower.
When she brought you a coffee or water you thanked her and grinned with delight. She cooked you lunch, and you remarked on how her vegetables were the perfect firmness, or how she always picked the sweetest mangoes, or how you loved the way she made rice with yellow onions and salt.
“Can you show Linda how to make this rice, Marta?” you said, rice stuck between your teeth, rice covering the kitchen table. “It’s delicious.”
I tried to return to painting, but it was impossible for me to concentrate knowing you and Marta were in the other room together. This feeling swept through me, a wind of doubt, that you appreciated her more than you did me. I wondered if you two spoke in whispers while I ate lunch in the other room. I imagined opening the bathroom door to find you behind her, pants at your ankles, Marta’s stomach pressed against the sink. Maybe she tells you that I’m a recluse while you go to work. Maybe she tells you I want to be left alone. Why don’t you see me? I thought. I’m standing right here, a pain growing inside my heart. Why don’t you see me? And yet you didn’t hear—your head remained bowed over the paperwork, your attention only open when Marta offered a café com leite.
Then, one day, I went to the kitchen to pour a glass of iced tea, and noticed a long, curly hair spread across the counter. I picked it up and realized that the hair was not mine, it was not Marta’s, it certainly wasn’t yours. It was Celia’s. Marta had just cleaned the kitchen, so how was it possible that she had missed the hair beside the sink? Of course, I didn’t think all that much of it at the time (though it did feel peculiar—how did Celia’s hair get into the apartment anyhow? Had it been on my blouse? Had I brushed it out of my own hair?). And then, a few days later, I found a balled-up note in the trash. It was Celia’s phone number. I had kept that small scrap of paper tucked into the corner of my purse. How had it ended up there? But what perturbed me most was the can of palmitos. I opened up the cabinet and the labels stared back at me: Celialana. Really? Out of nowhere Marta chose a new brand. Celia-lana. These events alone wouldn’t amount to anything, but for the addition of one after another.
Old habits returned. Instincts that did not rise above but sank deep down into petty retribution. I played a game. When you would get up to go to the bathroom, I would sneak into the kitchen and take a piece of paper from the top of one of your stacks and slip it into the middle. It would only be a few minutes before you began to flounder, searching for the paper, flipping over notepads and textbooks.
“Linda!” you’d shout. “Did I leave a piece of paper in the bathroom?”
I’d return, “No, dear!”
A few more minutes would pass and I’d come to your rescue, help you sort through the stacks, until I found the exact page you were looking for.
“Thank you,” you’d say and give me a kiss on the top of my hand.
How helpful I was!
I couldn’t do it too frequently or else it would seem obvious. But I did different combinations a few times a day. Put a piece of paper on the floor under the table. Rearranged the order of documents. Took your good pen into the bedroom. One day I decided to have a cafezinho and a pão de queijo for lunch downstairs, so I took a reference list with me. I placed my purse on the café table and realized the tip of the list had dipped into my coffee. I wiped it with a napkin from the canister, but they were flimsy wax sheets; the coffee soaked easily into the paper. I was sure the jig was up. Of course you’d notice the stain. You’d smell the fried bolinho. I hurried upstairs expecting to see you flummoxed, in need of the document, but you were on the sofa taking a nap. I carefully returned it to the folder.
Marta saw everything. She watched me every time I tiptoed into the kitchen, and I watched her watch me, knowing she couldn’t say anything. Should I have confronted her about the messages or shouldn’t I? The question plagued me. The more I considered it, the more I began to worry that these weren’t harmless hints at all, but a plan she’d concocted to sabotage my relationship with Celia. The messages could have been part of a scheme to expose us. But what could I say to Marta? Are you trying to ruin a relationship I won’t admit to having? I was growing restless. I tried to call Celia, but she didn’t answer. I tried again—still no answer. I woke up one morning and had a terrible idea.
I can say now, in my defense, that growth is a process of progression and regression. Many phrases come to mind that don’t describe my particular version of victory and sabotage, especially when it came to Marta. Two steps forward, one step back. Shed leaves to grow new ones. What I mean to say is, all my insecurities had scattered to hidden recesses, like ants without a colony, but once they found one another again, my hive brain pointed toward Marta. I had hidden the gold key to Marta’s room behind my jewelry box. It was so small and light, I barely felt it in the palm of my hand.
As soon as I hitched the door open, I could smell the sweet-bitter incense she had stubbed against the wooden shelf, the ash smudged in blue-gray streaks. Her closet was big enough to fit shelves on one wall, a crate with a small television and a radio, and a small children’s bed. On the shelves she kept a pressed gardenia propped between her St. Christopher the Divine candle and a troll doll with a wisp of green hair and an emerald belly button. The objects were nestled, hugged in place, as though they’d been there for decades. There were two books: a softcover Bible and a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the pages yellowed with age. Her bedsheets were bubblegum pink with cartoon cats all over. I lay down, my legs stretched out the door. In the corner of the ceiling she had tacked a poster of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross, head slung, in the same spot I had kept a magazine clipping of George Michael as a teenager.
What was I hoping to find? A doll with pins stuck in the eyes, as Melinda had suggested? A wall covered in photographs of me and Celia? I felt the soft indent in the center of her mattress, the rough texture from the line-dried linen. She had nothing to hide. I was the one who was hiding. I locked the door behind me without evidence of anything, except, perhaps, my own delus
ions, which disturbed me even more. I didn’t want to go down this dark path again. I didn’t want my healing to come at Marta’s expense.
“Don’t hate me,” you said. It wasn’t the best way to start the day. I was standing in front of our bathroom mirror, observing the red creases that ran across my face from where I had slept on the pillow.
“I don’t hate you. What is it?”
“I told Eduardo that you would go shopping with Melinda today.”
“Okay, maybe I do hate you. Why on earth would you do that?”
Apparently Melinda had been asking her husband since our dinner when they were going to see us again. She said she felt a kinship with me. I pressed one of the lines on my face to try to rub it away.
“Couldn’t she have called me?” I said. “Why did she ask the Provost to ask you?”
You shrugged.
“I know why. She knows that if she asked me directly, I would find an excuse not to go.”
“Maybe.” You paused. “So will you go?”
“I honestly do hate that you’re asking me this.”
I could see through the mirror your big, helpless smile. Maybe I was feeling guilty for how I had been acting, but it was too difficult to say no.
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not buying anything.”
I met Melinda on Rua Oscar Freire, a sumptuous display of healthy trees and women in athletic pants strolling with their small dogs. Melinda toted me around as she tried on gowns for her upcoming charity benefit.
“It’s to raise money for the Amazon,” she explained, half unzipped in a white satin dress. Her back was thin and had many scars where moles had been removed. “Did you know that slavery still exists in the cane fields up north? It’s horrendous. We are fortunate to live in São Paulo.”
“We are,” I said and looked at the glittering gown hugging her body. “Some more fortunate than others.”
She wrapped her arm around her back and pulled the zipper up halfway. The dress was too small. She wiggled to pull down the hem and eyed the mirror with a pout.
“What do you think?” she asked and turned to me. I sat on a leather sofa with a Persian cat curled up on my lap.
“It’s beautiful,” I told her, though I could tell she was holding her breath to cinch in her stomach. She called in the direction of two young store clerks, who stood to the side at a discreet distance, waiting for her decision.
“The hem is too long,” she said, and they dashed over, dropped to their knees, and began to pin as she admired her waistline.
When they were done, they unzipped her, and she allowed the dress to fall to her ankles. It was odd to see her so bare, wearing nothing but a pair of large beige undergarments.
“They’re going to hem the dress by this evening,” she said. “In the meantime, can I take you to lunch?”
I was starving—I could taste the hunger on my breath—and so I agreed. We found a restaurant on the same block. On the way, Melinda noticed a woman walking her dog and said, “That’s an ugly dog,” loud enough that I’m sure the woman heard.
“Melinda!” I said. “Don’t say that.”
I startled myself with how stern I sounded. Melinda looked startled too.
“It’s just—don’t you see how that could hurt the woman’s feelings?”
“What does it matter?” she said, clearly offended. “I’m never going to see her or that dog again anyway.”
I decided that I was going to drink wine at lunch. As much wine as they would bring me. We sat at a table next to a large, second-floor window that overlooked the expensive shops below. The windows reflected harshly against the afternoon sun, so Melinda asked the hostess if we could close the blinds. As the hostess walked away, I tried to mouth to her “Desculpa,” but she didn’t see me.
“I’m so glad we have this quality time together,” Melinda said. “Our husbands always see each other, and I thought, Why not us? Why shouldn’t we have this luxury?”
I picked up the menu. “Do you want to drink wine? Or is it too early?”
She pretended to look at an imaginary watch on her wrist.
“It’s just the time.”
The waiter came by, and she ordered a bottle of white wine and barely enough food. I ordered a cod sandwich. When he returned with our lunch, in an attempt at small talk, I asked Melinda how long she and Eduardo had been married.
“Almost thirty years. Thirty years at the end of September.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “How did you meet?”
“I was his student.” She laughed to herself. “He was married when I met him. Not many people know that. His wife had a miscarriage and was suffering from psychiatric problems. She would wake up in the middle of the night and hit him, tell him he was evil and that she hated him.” She ashed her cigarette underneath the table. “At the time I was young and so madly in love. What did I know? I thought his wife was horrible. I begged him to leave her. I would do anything for him, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, whatever he wanted. In exchange he taught me literature and poetry and history. So he left her. I was thrilled. I kissed the divorce papers.”
She stopped speaking for a moment, seemingly to calibrate how much to say next. I kept drinking my wine.
“I love Eduardo. People change, people make mistakes. He and his ex-wife would have divorced if I was in the picture or not.” She pushed a piece of lettuce to the edge of her plate and continued. “When my daughter was a baby, Eduardo worked all the time. I was terribly bored. There was a man who came by to water our orchids. Eduardo was very specific about these orchids. He thought that if I watered them they would die. So we had a man who specialized in orchids come to spray them twice a week. He was young—maybe my age at the time, or younger. He watched the same telenovela that I watched, so we talked about the episodes every week. He would tell me about the other gardens he tended, about his own orchids, about the physiology of trees. We developed a close bond. At least, I thought so. Now I think maybe it was part of his job to keep lonely housewives company.”
She dabbed the corner of her mouth as she said this, as if the thought left a bad taste in her mouth.
“I fantasized about what our relationship would be like. How he and I would have a small house in the country with our own garden. I even thought about the carrots, how he’d bring them in and leave them by the sink, and I would rinse off the dirt and chop them into a salad. I thought about what kind of father he would be. It was all so unlikely, but I prayed that it would happen. I really believed that it might.” She paused. “Do you think I am silly?”
I didn’t think it was silly. In fact, I wished I could meet this version of Melinda.
“No, I don’t think you’re silly,” I said. “Imagination is a gift.”
She grinned and asked the waiter for another bottle of wine.
I assumed that Melinda told me this story because she wanted me to know that she had a tender side, that she wasn’t built entirely from vinegar. At moments in her life, I could find drops of honey, if only I cared to look.
But it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to concentrate. The alcohol had buoyed my confidence, making my impulses steam with urgency. I wanted to ask her about something specific, something that had been plaguing me since the day I met her. I didn’t care if she would take out her aggression on me, and I knew that, by this point, your relationship with the Provost was strong enough that he wouldn’t take his aggression out on you.
“Melinda, can I say something?”
“Of course. I would love it if you did.”
“Those things you said about Marta, you know they aren’t true, right?”
She cocked her head to the side, as if she didn’t remember what I was talking about.
I continued. “You told me, or at least insinuated, that Marta had been scheming against people she worked
for. You told me that she had caused illness in that French professor.”
“I don’t think those were my exact words.”
“They were. And the worst part is, I believed you. Not outright, but the stories clung to my memory, and I realized I was associating Marta with them, whether I knew it or not.”
She took a sip of wine. “I think you’re reading too much into it. I was merely repeating what I had heard as a warning to you.”
“I want you to promise you won’t say those things about Marta again.”
She shifted in her seat and let out a laugh. I could feel the wine buzzing on my tongue.
“I mean it.” I picked up my fork and pointed it at her. “Don’t tell those stories about Marta again. Don’t talk about her at all.”
“Okay,” she said. “You’re upset, I can tell.”
“Just say it, so I know. You won’t talk about Marta again.”
“Fine,” she said. “I won’t tell those stories again.”
I knew I wasn’t going to get any more out of her. “I appreciate it,” I said and took a last bite of my sandwich. We finished the bottle of wine and she left her food virtually untouched. Melinda paid for my taxi home and told me she would let me know how the charity event went.
I had only been gone for two, maybe three hours, but when I returned the apartment was empty. Only a stack of books and papers remained on the kitchen table. Something else was missing too. I didn’t identify it at first—I only felt the shift in energy, the lingering feeling that something was out of place. Then I saw it: my painting, the one that Marta had hung above the kitchen table. It had been taken down. It was propped against the bottom cabinets, its back facing out, so that all I could see was my inscription: LINDA, 2004.
For a moment I thought, believed, that a robber had broken into the apartment and he was stockpiling his loot. I held my breath, frozen. The latch on the door opened.
It Is Wood, It Is Stone Page 11
