Hugo stands abruptly when he hears Dora crying, ready to burst into the café to rescue her. But it’s not her cries he hears through concrete and glass—of course he cannot hear her.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ he says, crouching before the girls, wiping their tears away with his sleeve. ‘Mr. Carmichael is our good friend. No harm. Sometimes Mama just needs someone to talk to, and I know where to get the best orange ice cream in the city, just a few blocks from here.’
If Hugo were well, if mania were not once again cutting his moorings, if he could watch this entire scene from above, he would see that it is all unfolding as if in a farce. He would recognize that his daughters—clutching each other and crying—would still follow him anywhere, forgive him almost anything, but not for much longer. Somewhere inside he knows this, some ugly voice is telling him that he’s running out of time, but it’s drowned out by the compulsion to follow, to rout, to win back. He looks at his girls, silently begging them: We are on the verge of learning something crucial to our survival. Don’t abandon me now. I won’t make it. Their contracted brows convey their deep concern, how much they understand, and consent.
As he leads them away from the window, the breeze on the avenue dries their faces, and he buys Magda and Evie everything they see: ice cream, popcorn, kites, and marionettes that clack against the pavement, their painted heads twitching. There is a man selling papayas, which he’s hung from short lengths of string from a little clothesline between two slender poles attached to his cart. When people pass by, he blows a little bugle and motions toward his fruit.
‘All your papayas,’ says Hugo, making a sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘I’ll take all your papayas.’
The girls clasp their bags, stuffed with food and oddities, but still they snuffle and cringe and something must be done. Some penalty must be exacted. Carmichael has taken everything, sacrificed nothing. Hugo pushes the girls toward the car.
There is a beat now, and then the stench of rubber tires on asphalt, bleating horns, Magda gripping the upholstery of the Silver Cloud and Evie squealing, delighted. In the car, Hugo flies with the girls along Viera Souto with the top down so they can breathe in the salt air of Ipanema, see the chain-shaped mosaics rippling along the sidewalk. He tries to take deep breaths, move and speak normally, so as not to startle them; he hates that he sometimes frightens them, but when his impulses roar up inside, it feels like a freight train about to burst out of his chest and the only way he can keep from exploding is to say, do, move. Keep moving. But now, having seen Dora with Carmichael, he feels strangely subdued. Their interactions looked so uncomfortable, perfunctory. He has always considered Carmichael half a man. He’s even sensed, at times, that Carmichael was almost impersonating him, as though the cadence of his voice was shifting, adaptive, and that he was adjusting it almost imperceptibly when they were together. And now he knows why. The bastard has been insinuating himself into their lives for years—befriending him at work, helping him with his projects, ‘checking in’ on Dora when Hugo was in the hospital. But hadn’t he asked Carmichael to do this? Why hadn’t he guessed?
They’re outside the city centre now, back in Confederação. From the back seat, Evie leans toward him. Thinking she means to kiss him, he reaches back with his hand and tousles her hair, too roughly, he realizes, when he sees her wince. But Evie motions for him to lean back, which he does but only barely.
‘What is it, pet? Speak up.’
‘Is that why Luiza was so angry at Mr. Carmichael, and dropped all my flowers?’ She’s crying again, and beside her Magda squeezes her sister’s thigh, trying to quiet her with a terrible shushing sound. ‘Because he loves Mama too?’