It Is Wood, It Is Stone

by Gabriella Burnham

  “It’s okay,” Marta said. “I’ll stay awhile longer.”

  She rested her elbows on the table and cradled her chin in her palms. You shoveled the chicken into your mouth, not even bothering to taste it. I tried to make eye contact with Marta to show that I didn’t mean to trap her, but she kept her gaze on a grain of rice that she pushed around with her fork.

  Your mood was sporadic and intense. You began to mutter on about how you never thought, growing up in Brookline, that you’d one day be in South America, married, with a doctorate, teaching at a university. You’d never thought of yourself as an intelligent person; your mother often told you, in her pin-striped aprons, that you were persistent but not an academic, and that school had been for you a miserable, taunting experience until the seventh grade, when you grew taller and leaner, joined a pickup basketball team at a court in Allston, and discovered Cervantes; that you learned to love history and literature from your grandfather, who immigrated to New Bedford from Portugal and worked in an oil refinery; he wasn’t intelligent but he was cunning, and he knew a lot about the whaling industry. Which reminded you, you interrupted yourself abruptly, that you had more research to do. You left the kitchen and shut yourself in the bedroom.

  Marta and I looked at each other. We cleared the dishes, then I went to find you.

  You, cross-legged on the bed with your glasses on, papers strewn as though you’d tossed them into the air. When I entered you immediately barked, “I’m concentrating, Linda. Can you stay in the living room?”

  We still slept in the same bed, but there was no touching. I could feel the firmness of your body from a foot away, turned toward the wall, the covers wrapped tight around you. It made it difficult to fall asleep. I would roll to my side and the sheets would straighten with tension. You weren’t going to let me have an inch of slack. What did you think of me during these weeks? Did you pity my boring life, or did you envy the fact that I had no obligations? You spent most of your time facedown in books, glancing up occasionally to observe me walking from one room to the next, feigning activity.

  On the worst days I thought about divorce. Maybe I should wait out our time in São Paulo, patiently, I thought, and then find a lawyer as soon as we returned to the United States. In my mind I divided our belongings: I’d keep my mother’s mirror and the bed frame we got as a wedding gift, my art supplies, and the bread maker. You could have everything else.

  A phone call from Melinda finally broke the spell. She specifically asked for me when you answered, and so you had to ask me what she wanted after we hung up. Their friend Hugo was having a Christmas party at an art gallery in her neighborhood and we were invited. You told me that I needed to act presentable, that we couldn’t bicker like this in front of them, so even though you weren’t actually happy with me, pretending was better than nothing.

  Hugo owned the gallery. He was an Australian whom Melinda and Eduardo had met twenty years ago, she told us, when he was still trying to break new ground as a painter, before he realized that the money wasn’t in painting, it was in dealing. Hugo was no longer a starving artist—his belly strained the opal buttons on his collared shirt. I couldn’t help but watch it, like a soft-boiled egg being pressed with the side of a fork. He gave us a tour of the gallery the night of the party, one hand stretched out to a canvas, the other reaching for a skewered piece of filet mignon on a serving tray.

  His assistants had decorated the gallery ceiling in white lights and miniature disco balls that glimmered reflections off the paintings and sculptures. The servers wore red velvet dresses and passed effervescent cocktails with curly lemon peels snaked up the inside. The guests were a mixed group—some ragtag academics huddled in circles discussing the merit of modern art, while others were polished financiers contemplating pricing and size. What brought everyone together to the event, though, and what made this particular party special, Hugo explained, was a red balloon bunny statue, about the size of a jug of milk, propped on a pedestal in the center of the room. It was being auctioned off for two million dollars.

  “It’s on loan to us,” Hugo explained. “I have a friend who knows the artist. He has a vested interest in promoting the gallery”—he winked—“so we’re able to have it for the week.”

  You listened but you didn’t react. Usually this was the kind of conversation that you thrived on, even if you thought it was ridiculous. Instead you held on to my hand or elbow or waist, asking me several times, to the side, if you had any food in your teeth. Our quartet bobbed through the crowd together—occasionally a friend of Eduardo’s would come over to say hi, but mostly Eduardo and Melinda were glued to us, wanting to know our opinions of the art, asking us to guess prices, pointing to guests and whispering everything they knew about them.

  Eventually Melinda pulled me away to go with her to the bathroom. I wondered if she was going to ask me about my disappearance, but she didn’t. While we were washing our hands she told me that she and Eduardo had had a quarrel earlier in the evening over her mother’s heirloom rug. He had sold it without telling her. She paused to adjust the brooch that she had fastened to her bun and I could see her eyes turn glossy with tears. I rubbed the top of her back to console her, but she patted her cheeks and said she was fine. She turned away, swung open the bathroom door to return to the party, and another couple quickly snatched her attention. I wandered off to find more champagne.

  I noticed the long, thin reach of a server as she picked up an empty glass from a viewing bench. She glided between the backs of partygoers engaged in conversation, a bottle of Perrier-Jouët in hand, looking for a flute to fill. Her thin hair shook behind her, hips leading the rest of her body, legs crossed one slightly in front of the other. If it weren’t for the red velvet uniform, I would have assumed she was a guest who knew Hugo well enough that he had given her her own champagne bottle.

  I held out my empty glass. She came by and tipped the bottle without looking at my face. Instantly I recognized her. It was Simone, Celia’s friend from the theater.

  “You know me?” I said in my best Portuguese. “I know you?”

  “Pardon?” She topped off the bubbles so that they floated slightly above the rim, then settled back down.

  “My name is Linda. The friend of Celia.”

  Her face expanded.

  “Ah! Yes. Linda.” She nodded. “Of course.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m well. How are you?”

  “I’m well.”

  We paused, looking vacantly in opposite directions. I didn’t have enough words to continue politely, so I went ahead and asked her.

  “How is Celia?”

  “Celia?” Her eyes searched behind me, as if Celia might be at the party. “You don’t know? She left São Paulo. She ran away with Rafael.”

  “Rafael?”

  Though I sounded surprised, this suspicion had been living inside me for weeks. Where else would she go? She had loved him. She told me she loved him.

  “Rafael and Celia,” I said and clutched my hands together to express their closeness, as lovers, as paramours.

  “Yes,” she said. “They left together as lovers.” She leaned in closer to my ear. “I heard they fled in the middle of the night without telling Karina. Rafael packed two suitcases and paid their neighbor to keep them in his apartment. Karina was asleep in their bed when they snuck away.”

  “And what happened to her?”

  Simone smiled. Karina was devastated, of course. She had lost her partner, her love, the man who hoisted her in the iron cage. “But Karina is a survivor. She knows how to create in the midst of devastation. Her art is more reflective than ever.”

  Years later I learned what Celia and Rafael had run off to do, because the film they made together came to the independent film center in Hartford. When I saw the billing, it felt like a tornado had seized my brain and continued its path down my bod
y, collecting and dizzying each organ, then spitting them out again. I found the side of a brick building to steady myself. If it had just been Celia’s and Rafael’s names, I might have second-guessed the odds. It was the film’s title, Os Bandidos da Noite, that cemented the truth. They had stolen everything from Karina, even her name, capitalized on it, and made their betrayal known to the world.

  I did go to the next screening. I bought a small bag of popcorn and a cream soda. I sat in the back corner and surveyed the audience, counted their ages, the number of couples, how many women had attended, watched their reactions, and then waited until they all left the theater before I cried.

  The film was about a renegade, played by Rafael, who lives in the mountains outside of Lima. He captures a local Peruvian woman from her home and forces her to live as his accomplice, robbing homes for food and supplies, hiking south on the Andes to reach Bolivia, where he promised her he owned an alpaca farm where they would live. They seemingly become lovers, and even make love on the trail, until one day the woman kills him. A sharp rock to the neck. She had been secretly plotting his death the entire film, but her biggest obstacle was a moral one: she was a pacifist.

  I hated the film, but I saw it several times. Celia was the director, and so I thought maybe I could study Rafael through her eyes. I wanted to see what she saw; I wanted to understand what made her love him. But I could only see the person at her apartment, eager to impress me with his Americanness, his tattooed symbols of regret, and poor Karina latched on to him, trying to keep him within her reach. Each time I left feeling more unsatisfied than when I walked in. After a few weeks they stopped showing Os Bandidos da Noite, and I never saw it again.

  Simone didn’t mention the movie when she told me about Rafael and Celia. The only other news she had was that Celia had left their theater company without warning and the owner, who was an alcoholic and relied on Celia to handle the logistics, almost closed its doors.

  “It was a very sad time, but we were able to organize, all the actors, the writers.”

  She adjusted a strap on her dress that had fallen down her shoulder and, in doing so, noticed that Hugo, who was staggering across the room, had seen her talking. She told me she had to keep circling.

  “That’s my job.” She laughed. “Circle, circle, circle.” And she turned in to the crowd.

  I had imagined many times how I might see Celia again. One vision I had was that she’d be waiting at the airport gate as we boarded the plane for the U.S. Sometimes while sitting in the apartment I’d have an uncanny feeling that she was about to walk through the door. I saw the backs of women whom I’d mistaken for Celia and I’d be hit with excitement, anxiety, and then disappointment. I once thought I saw Rafael and Celia in Ibirapuera park by a tree, a guitar leaned against his leg. But it was never her. I’d been floating inside my head, inventing scenarios for months. It was over. I filed through the crowd, past Baroque paintings and Grecian statues. I went to go find you.

  You were standing near the rabbit statue, tipping the last of a champagne flute into your mouth. Before I had even approached you, I could tell you were angry—the way your shoulders curved back and your chest extended forward, like you were about to drum on it with two fists.

  “Dennis,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

  You tilted your eyes at me.

  “We should go,” you said.

  “Where are Eduardo and Melinda? Have you seen them?”

  You yelled a loud “Ha!” and several people glanced over at you. “I’ve seen Eduardo. The Provost.” You said “the Provost” with four fingers wagging through the air in quotes.

  “What happened?” I tried to put my hand on your shoulder, but you shook it away.

  “That fucker.”

  “Which fucker? Eduardo?”

  “I don’t even want to hear his name!” You curved and flexed your hands and began to pace within a contained radius. “He made me work day and night to write that goddamn article. Weekends, nights, vacations. All time I could have saved. All time I could have had back. All time I could have spent with y—” Your voice broke before you could finish the sentence.

  “He’s not publishing the article,” I said, almost to myself.

  “You know what— Fuck Eduardo. Fuck this job. Fuck being somebody’s lackey!”

  As you said this, your arm swept around and, with the force of countless minutes spent suppressing, hoarding, fending off your rage, you struck the bunny rabbit off its pedestal and propelled it onto the floor.

  It smashed. Its small red head rolled to the feet of a growing crowd of bystanders. They fell silent and then gasped. I even saw one man collapse onto his hands and knees.

  I stood frozen, but you had thawed. You took my hand and we hurried as fast as possible toward the exit.

  Hugo was leaving the bathroom, so when he saw the frantic crowd around his rabbit, he charged through, his belly plowing the path. Someone must have pointed at you as the culprit, so he pivoted and ran, caught up to us, and grabbed your jacket. He began yelling obscenities at you, words that I have blocked from my memory but that caused several people to cover their ears.

  “Do you realize what you’ve done?” he said. “You will pay for this for the rest of your life!”

  You looked like you were going to scream back, your mouth slackened, your eyes zeroed in, the way you do when you’re about to serve an intellectual walloping. But you didn’t say anything. Instead, you hardened your fist, wound your shoulder, and punched him across his jaw.

  The Provost and Melinda didn’t see you hit him, but they did see us leave. In many ways that rabbit saved us. After steadying from the blow, Hugo was too distraught by the broken bunny to try to find you again. I saw Simone near the coatroom on our way out and tried to grab her attention, but she noticeably avoided me, staying clear from the commotion.

  On the bus home your knuckles looked pale, drained of blood.

  “It’s nothing,” you said, cradling one hand in the other. I could see the tears mounting.

  “I know Hugo instigated it,” I said. “And I don’t blame you. But did you really have to hit him?”

  You turned and stared out at the passing streetlights.

  “I’m more worried about the rabbit. How are we going to pay for that?”

  I paused.

  “Should I start looking at flights?”

  When we arrived home, we already had four missed calls from the Provost and a voicemail asking you to call him.

  “Do you feel like talking?” I said. “Maybe you should wait until the morning.”

  You didn’t answer me; you went to the kitchen and dialed. I left for the bedroom and tried not to listen to the hum of your voice from the other side of the door.

  The receiver clicked; the refrigerator opened and shut. You walked into the bedroom with your shirt undone, drinking a glass of mango juice. The edges formed a pink smile around your mouth.

  I made a cold compress in the bathroom and placed it on your knuckles.

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  “He called to see if I was all right. Someone told him that Hugo had lunged at me.” You took another gulp. “Linda, the rabbit wasn’t even real. It was a replica. It’s barely worth anything. I explained that it was an accident, a misunderstanding…” You trailed off. “Eduardo said he would cover the costs, he’s so embarrassed by how Hugo reacted.”

  You lay down on top of the sheets and closed your eyes. I could see the night’s events replaying in your thoughts. I curled up next to you, hugging your shoulder. Maybe it was the equal but opposite force—my action against your action—that began to level the tension. Or maybe we had exhausted each other so much that we had no choice but to let go.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my mouth close to your ear. I could see the deep blue impressions under your eyelids, the pink flush that
had sucked up the life in your cheeks, the numbness, like a slab of black licorice, that had become your stare.

  You shook your head then looked at me, pressed your forehead against mine.

  “I’m sorry I left you,” I said again.

  You whispered, Let’s stay like this for a while, and I whispered back, I’ll stay here for as long as you want. You had a just-woken tenderness tucked in the crook of your neck, and I wondered how I could expand this tender place, the small cradle where you stored your limitlessness, your empathy, your capacity to learn and not just teach. Had you given up or given in? I was too afraid to ask. I wanted to rest into this place, find a way to stretch my arms and legs there, to make the uncomfortable a little more comfortable. Maybe we could do it together.

  We stayed like this until the morning, two birds folded into each other, savoring the growing warmth between us, no noise except for the blow of your exhale against my shoulder. We were beginning to dissolve; we had turned stone into liquid; we were shaping our broken branch into a boat that, eventually, would float us down the river, toward forgiveness.

  We spent a summer in winter, but spring is always a rebirth, even when it’s autumn in Brazil. Celia had been in Peru for four months already, probably living out of Rafael’s car, searching for camera shops that developed 35-millimeter film. We had lived through the turn of the New Year, which we spent with a carton of raspberry sorbet at our apartment, watching fireworks burst above the park. We survived Carnaval and the green feathers and glitter floating through our living room window. We managed the start of a new semester, you returning to teach, and I reassimilated to an apartment with just me and Marta.

  I picked up painting again, here and there, but mostly I spent my time writing again. I was becoming reacquainted with putting my thoughts down on the page. I wrote early in the morning and before we went to bed in a sage green notebook that my father gave me on my thirtieth birthday. I tore out the pages where I had scribbled down lists and scheduling plans, and began to record the things I didn’t want to forget, the memories that would eventually evolve into this story to you.