Their father wakes them at dawn.
‘But it’s so early,’ Magda protests, only able to make out his shape in the dim light, his face a grey smudge. ‘Why do we have to get up now?’
‘Just please do as you’re told,’ Papa answers. Something pleading in his voice quiets her, and she gets herself dressed and then helps Evie—still sitting on the bed yawning, eyes half closed—into her clothes. He brings them a breakfast of hot dogs left over from the night before and pink lemonade from the bottle, then he makes them wait in silence, hunched on their beds in the gloom. After they hear the front door open and close, he ushers them into the hallway, down the stairs, then leaves them in the entranceway while he gets the car. Outside, they hurry down the walkway and into the Silver Cloud, where they wait a few minutes, giving Mama a chance to walk down the street and get into the car that is waiting for her at the end of the block. Papa unlocks the gate and pulls out slowly, hanging back, her mother just a tiny, moving spot turning the corner to the next block, and suddenly Magda knows what they’re about to do.
‘Please, Papa—no!’ For all her barbs, she can’t bear the thought of real fighting, real anger. Thumping Evie from time to time is necessary, but following her own mother feels like trespassing into the muddy, confusing world of adult secrets. ‘Maybe she’s just running errands for the party tonight.’
But he ignores her, and for a moment she admires how carefully he follows, how patient he is and how far back he can stay while still keeping Mr. Carmichael’s car in sight. She knows it must be agony for him to move so slowly and deliberately, especially now.
She tries again: ‘Why don’t you just ask her where she’s going? Why do we have to follow her?’
‘Your mother is a skilled dissembler,’ he answers. ‘She’s doing this in secret for a reason. She won’t cop to it just because I ask. We need proof.’
‘But why do we have to come? It’s just going to make her angry.’
‘I want to come!’ Evie chimes in, as if they’re going to the zoo. Magda pinches her arm, but Evie pinches back—she’ll do anything to hold on to this newfound attention from their father.
‘It’s the element of surprise,’ Papa says, ‘and the element of adorable-yet-sad little girls. A jealous husband can’t pack the same punch as disappointed children. Now hush.’
They follow Carmichael’s car to downtown Rio, which is thrumming, even this early in the morning, and finally to Avenida Atlantica, where they park several car lengths behind and crouch down while her mother and Carmichael cross the street to the beach.
‘The beach?’ cries Papa. ‘We can’t very well start striding along the beach. They’ll see us for sure.’
‘Can’t you just go up to her right now?’ pleads Magda, aware that she’s sounding more like Evie than herself. ‘Isn’t walking on the beach together bad enough? I’ll pretend to cry if you want.’
‘No, this could all be explained away. He’s a friend, after all. She could say they’re just talking.’
‘But they are just talking.’
‘Take off your dresses. Are you wearing those funny little bras your mother gave you? We’ll take off our clothes and if they look back from far away it will seem like we’re wearing bathing suits, like we’re just regular people at the beach.’
‘No!’ Magda and Evie say in unison, more frightened than outraged, though there is also the cut of betrayal—their mother has discussed their breasts with their father.
‘They’re getting too far ahead. Do it NOW.’ The same bass, guttural voice as yesterday, the voice that shocks them all. The girls, pink with shame, pull off their dresses and hand everything to their father, who carries them in a jumbled ball. They then follow him, stripped to his briefs, darting through the swaying palm trees and across the two-lane avenue.
For almost an hour they trail far behind Mama and Carmichael, the only fully dressed people on the beach, one red dot and one grey up ahead. At first Magda and Evie huddle together to try to cover themselves, until they realize it’s true—no one seems to notice they’re in their underclothes and not swimsuits. They begin to relax a little and Evie even pauses to pick up a few seashells, filling the shoes they’ve been carrying. At one point Magda is tempted to call out, alert her mother that she’s being watched, save them all from this humiliation. But then she notes how Mama and Mr. Carmichael sway slightly together, a little closer than they should be, then apart. Her voice smothers in her throat.
Eventually, Papa pauses, holds them back. ‘They’re turning. They’re coming back this way.’
He wraps his long arms around the girls and leads them away from the shoreline, up toward the clumps of bathers under beach umbrellas. But then he spots the lambe-lambe, a travelling photographer with an old-fashioned, upright camera that looks like an accordion. The man is out on the sand taking a picture of a young couple while a woman is positioned several yards back beside a large box on three legs sheltered by a large umbrella. Twine hangs from its spokes, covered in clothespins that hold the drying photographs. Papa squeezes Magda and Evie into the umbrella’s shade, and while he begins to ask all kinds of questions about the development process as a way of stalling, Magda examines a photo of a woman standing alone in a bikini, her arms folded behind her head, one leg bent—a real cheesecake pose. How had she had the nerve to stand in front of that man like that for so long, Magda wonders, wishing she could be half as brave and beautiful. Now Papa is peering over the girls’ heads at Mama and Carmichael, who pass by unaware. After a few minutes, he hands the woman some money and leads Magda and Evie tentatively back toward the water’s edge to have their picture taken, even though they won’t be back to collect it. Even in his frenzied state, Magda admires how he can’t bring himself to take up the woman’s time without paying her something.
When Papa deems it safe to follow Mama and Mr. Carmichael again, he weaves them back through the crowd of sunbathers, splayed and idle. Magda hears a low whistle and feels the painful snap of elastic against her bum. She looks back and sees a man, potbellied and leathery, laughing and eyeing her underwear. Her fists close tightly as her jaw contracts, and inside her ears a high-pitched tone sings up from her teeth. Her father could destroy this old man, but she only glares silently; in the state he’s in, he probably would. Or, too consumed by his strange hunt, he might not do anything, which would be worse.
Eventually, Carmichael leads Mama toward a café—a small empty patio outside with stairs leading to a gloomy room below. With his hand on her back, he gently guides her down the steps. Inside, on such a beautiful day? Not her mother. More secrets. They hang back awkwardly on the pavement, pulling on their clothes, pouring shells and sand from shoes. Evie shoves a few of her best shells into their father’s pants pocket. Now what? Papa finds a window around the side of the building, a tiny, grimy little aperture that allows a partial view of the bar and the open floor in front of it. They wait several minutes, but the pair must be sitting at the edge of the room, somewhere in its margins. Eventually Carmichael crosses the floor, disappears, then returns to its centre, directly in view of the peepers at the window. He waits a moment, faint strains of music begin, and then she goes to him: wife, mother, nucleus, who these past few days has been quietly splitting off. The centre cannot hold. Papa used to say that sometimes when he was getting depressed, and Magda never knew what it meant before. Now, she watches as her mother dances with this man—stiffly, but still she dances.
Magda puts her arm around Evie, her tired old gesture of protection, but it’s too late to hide from any of this. Mama has some other life, doesn’t need them. Papa is unwinding again, can’t care for them. Maricota and Odete are at home working like slaves, not coming for them. Magda feels an unfastening inside, the presentiment of more shifting. Breakage. What now? Now that they’ve been made to see their parents as dishonest, lonely, uncertain; now that they understand. How can they ever go back to who they were before?