Dora and Carmichael walked along the beach in Copacabana for nearly an hour, waiting for the café to open. The light on the water was gentle at that time of the morning, and she gazed out at the same mountains she had seen all her life, trying to imprint them into her mind. She wonders what she will forget, if she’s stamping her memory with the correct images. But it’s not as if she will never come back! This interjection heckles her, suppressing her melancholy mountains. There isn’t time today for such restless longing.
She had to leave her house early again, before anyone else was awake, or she wouldn’t have had the nerve to go through with it, to keep lying to them. She likely won’t see Hugo until just before they leave for the casino tonight, but thinking of it all—him, the goodbye party—makes her vibrate with anxiety. She doesn’t know how she will get from here, a clandestine meeting on the beach, to there, a jumpy, disorienting party she’ll have to pretend to enjoy. Still, as she and Carmichael trailed together along the sand, she kept these thoughts to herself.
Now, inside the café that Carmichael has told her is the last place he went to with Luiza, she can hear the strain in her voice as she says, ‘This seems like a strange place to bring her.’
‘It was her idea,’ he answers. Too quickly?
‘And she didn’t say anything to you? Nothing out of the ordinary?’
‘She was… a little unsettled. I think she was anxious about the party. Something about wishing she could be around real people.’
‘We weren’t real enough, I suppose, our crowd.’
‘All too real, I’d say.’
Frustration, unexpected but familiar, rises up in her chest, the same exasperation she often felt with Luiza’s heightened emotions, the way she would latch on to some notion, or a sad story she’d heard or read, then be overwrought for days. She remembers now how Luiza kept taking to her bedroom during those days when they were meant to be packing. Her ‘bad spells’ and headaches. It sometimes felt to Dora like everyone else let themselves fall apart around her because they knew she never would. But it isn’t fair, and she mustn’t get upset. It must spread ugly forces out into the atmosphere somehow, to feel anything but love and sadness for her lost daughter, as if anger could repel Luiza farther away. She wouldn’t have run away over a bad memory.
‘You know how she could be,’ he continues. ‘Girls at that age get so worked up.’ His voice drops, quieter. ‘And she didn’t know about Hugo being fired, which I let slip. I’m sorry for that.’
Dora bristles at his hushed, intimate authority—his tone almost paternal—and because Hugo didn’t want any of the girls to know he’d lost his job. But she still needs him. She’s not sure she could keep up this search alone.
‘And I suppose she seemed—’ he struggles for the right word, running his fingers through his slick hair in that way that always reminded her of her husband. ‘Well, she seemed a bit lost. A bit unsure of what to do with herself when you got to Canada.’
‘She never said anything to me,’ says Dora, almost inaudibly.
‘She did say once she felt she couldn’t discuss the move with you, how she felt confined. You would just say how lucky she was. She could have anything.’
Dora’s skin prickles. There is a faint hint of triumph in his voice, she thinks, at having again exposed a breach between her and Luiza. ‘We had no choice but to move. She knew that.’
‘Of course she did. And I did try to tell her that she could do any number of things, what with women being so much more ahead up there. But she just said she couldn’t see it. All Hugo ever told her of Canada was how cold it was—the place, the people. He had made her afraid of the very idea of it.’
‘There must have been something more.’
‘I don’t even remember what else we talked about. We made conversation. We danced a little.’
‘Where did you dance? Show me how. Do everything again.’
Carmichael sighs and gazes at her, a defeated half-smile stretching out the corners of his mouth. He goes over to the barman to request a song, and then stands in the middle of the room, arms stiff at his sides, waiting for Dora to come to him. Only when she raises her own arms do his slacken a little, mirroring her movements. The space between them closes. As she lets herself embrace him awkwardly, she looks away, over his shoulder, and feels him exhale, his body relaxing, maybe because he no longer has to meet her gaze.
Yesterday, in the basilica, Dora had been lulled, faintly seduced into feeling for him as she had during their affair. Back then, she’d thought at first that he was a bit like Hugo; he could be charming, often quoting from books. But he soon began to seem muted and indistinct by comparison, and she suspected those little memorized passages had been acquired just for her, entreaties uttered hopefully. And then sometimes that look that belied his smooth charm, an expression of such sudden, unexpected gratitude, as though he wondered how he had come to be there with her. To her, he was an attenuated, uncomplicated version of Hugo—like getting a vaccine instead of contracting the virus; you might be flushed and shaky for a few days, but it wouldn’t last long. She never wanted to be unkind, never told him what he really was to her, even when it became clear that he himself had lost control of his own guise. He loved her.
She tries to push this thought away, and also the unwelcome realization that he was, for her, some kind of surrogate for Hugo; an anodyne version who wouldn’t suddenly transform or cloud over. All those nights when Hugo was in the hospital, and Carmichael would come, she felt benignly comforted, amused. He always said the same thing, played the same song, kissed her the same way. But now she remembers how he reminded her of the worst parts of herself too, of how she briefly considered staying with him, abandoning her sick husband, and the uncertainty of their future together. And even though she knew he loved her, she never doubted that he would eventually disappoint her, and her disillusionment would embitter them both. Hugo, for all his terrifying, complex mutability, could not pretend; he was the rawest, least concealed person she’d ever known. She knows—has always known—that both she and Carmichael are too easy with deceit to ever be together. They could never trust each other. She doesn’t trust him now.
So now this song, with its big band trumpets and clarinets, and this man she almost loved holding her in his arms—they feel newly threatening. Where has she heard it before?
‘You played her this song?’
‘Yes.’
‘But this was …’ Dora begins, remembering all the nights they danced on the veranda, out of view from anyone in the house. He had to go inside to choose the record—a small show of masculinity that she’d thought little of at the time. Every time he came over, he chose this same song: that old jazz hit from when they were young, ‘Avalon.’
‘But we used to dance to this song.’
He drops his eyes to the floor. ‘Yes.’
‘You lied to me. You weren’t trying to help her. There was something more between you, wasn’t there?’
He tries to hold her closer now, suddenly dropping his voice, which falters in his throat. ‘Whatever you think of me, I’m grateful the last thing I did was dance with her because now we’re here together.’
Dora pushes away from him, her arms rigid. ‘Tell me. Did she love you?’
‘No, I really don’t think she did. I think she was… entertained by me. Just like you.’
‘Maybe you’re the reason she ran away. If she ran away.’
‘She didn’t need any more reasons.’
‘Did she know about us?’
His face reddens, a colour filling his cheeks. ‘It was you. Whenever I was with her, I saw only you.’
Dora takes a few steps back, her arms still straight out in front her as if they might push away what he’s just said, what she now knows for certain, even though he’s still too cowardly to say it. She stumbles, then rights herself, and runs out the door.