“No, no, please, I—”
“You should not be forgotten! When you were singing, you were the best! You were the only one in a class with Elis Regina!”
One of the major superstars of Brazil, before she killed herself. “Oh, no,” Maria Elena protested, feeling herself blush, “I was never, I could never have been—”
“Ah, you admit who you are! Maria Elena, may I come see you?”
How could she refuse? And so he’d come to see her, a darkly handsome man in his mid-thirties, who had flirted with her (but had not overstepped the bounds) and painted glowing pictures of her career reborn in this cold dry northern world. He had given her his card, and she had given him the two cartons that made up all that was left of her career.
Promising to phone soon, and to forward a contract, Andras had gone away, and for the next few weeks Maria Elena had moved in a happy daze, fantasizing her new career. Could it happen? Could she actually sing again? She was sorry she hadn’t kept just one album, so she could hear afresh what she used to sound like. Could she do it now? Would the cold North Americans accept her?
But Andras didn’t phone, and no contract came in the mail. Maria Elena fretted, she grew sleepless. She shouldn’t call him, she should wait, businesses had delays.
But finally, yesterday, she had taken out his business card and called the number on it, in New York, and a recorded voice had told her that number was not in service. New York City information then told her there was no business in the city known as Hemispheric Records.
Oh, Andras. What have you done, and why? Were you just a fan, a cruel fan? Was that all you wanted, to steal my souvenirs for yourself?
One can get used to living without hope. But to have hope suddenly offered, to be tantalized with hope till one begins to believe in that bright specter once more, and then to have hope snatched away, that is unbearable. Maria Elena ground her teeth that night, alone and awake in her bed, thinking the darkest thoughts of her life.
And this morning, to hammer it home, there was the stakeout, the woman in the gray car.
Not yet eleven in the morning, and there was nothing more to do in this house, no other way to distract herself from her thoughts. This hateful place took care of itself with all of its “labor-saving devices.” There was still labor, of course, it was actually time that was saved, but time for what?
Going downstairs, Maria Elena firmly turned her back on the living room and its television set. The daytime soap operas were too seductive, with their open-ended stories, in which great passion and great absurdity were at every instant inextricably mingled. The characters cared deeply, vitally, as Maria Elena had once cared and had always wanted to care and could no longer care, but what the characters in those daily stories cared so vividly about was invariably trash. Nothing that could possibly really matter to anybody ever arose in their invented lives, and that was why they were so seductive; become a regular watcher, a daily observer of these brightly colored puppets, let them experience your passion for you. All gain, no pain. A legal drug, as efficient as the illegal ones.
Maria Elena’s pride would not let her give in to the release of drugs. Of any kind.
Turning her back on the living room, Maria Elena drifted purposelessly into the dining room. This elaborate neat house contained a separate dining room, perfectly waxed and preserved, never used for anything at all. When she and Jack took dinner together, which wasn’t often, they ate at the breakfast table in the kitchen.
Maria Elena stopped in the dining room, not knowing where to go or what to do with herself. Her fingertips brushed the polished surface of the mahogany table. Seats twelve. What would she do with the rest of her day?
She thought of Grigor Basmyonov, but she’d been to see him again only the day before yesterday. And she’d told him — with such hope! — about Andras Herrmuil and Hemispheric Records and the sudden new career opening up before her. He’d been so happy and encouraging for her; how could she go to him with today’s news?
But there was another reason to stay away. She was afraid of using Grigor, of turning him into a kind of flesh-and-blood soap opera of her very own, over whose dramatic problems she could wail without risk to herself, releasing her emotions in a safely ineffectual way.
But on the days when she didn’t drive across western Massachusetts and into New York State to see Grigor, what was there to do? What purpose in life? She looked toward the plate-glass dining room window, with its view of Wilton Road, and saw the first slanted lines of rain sweep diagonally down it, as though God had shaken out his just-washed beard. Rain. So driving would be more difficult, staying at home even more claustrophobic.
Maria Elena stepped forward to look at the sky, to find out just how much of a storm this was going to be, and was astonished to see that gray Plymouth turning into the driveway of this house. Pulling up beside the house. Stopping.
Arrest! thought Maria Elena, and couldn’t hide from herself the thrilled feeling, the sense that something of interest, something worthwhile, might at last be about to happen. Light-footed, suddenly lighthearted, she turned toward the front door.
The bell didn’t ring for a long time, while Maria Elena stood in the front hall, one pace from the door, trying not to look eager, trying not to know just how eager she was. What was the woman in the Plymouth doing? What was the delay?
Ding-dong. Very loud, because the bell was set to be heard everywhere in this large house, and Maria Elena was standing directly beneath it. She started, even though she’d expected the sound, then stepped forward and opened the door. She would be calm, dignified, rigid, and silent.
At first she thought it was rain on the woman’s face, but the rain was only a sprinkle, and the woman’s cheeks were very wet, her makeup running, her expression twisted with emotion. Tears! Expecting arrest, Maria Elena was completely lost. Did the woman so hate her work for the government that it made her weep?
“Mrs. Auston?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Kate Monroe, I have to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“About John.”
The name meant nothing to her. Someone in the anti-nuclear group? “John?”
“Your husband!” the woman cried. “Don’t you even remember you have a husband?”
“Oh, my God,” Maria Elena said, and stepped back. “Come in, come in.”
They sat in the living room, Maria Elena on the soft sofa, Kate Monroe on the uncomfortable wooden-armed decorative chair; her choice. She was about thirty, somewhat overweight, dressed in a distracted manner in bright colors in several layers of cloth, as though she were a fairy in a hippie production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her hair was ash blond, cut fairly short, at the moment tangled and unkempt. Her round face would be pretty if it weren’t puffy red from emotion. Tears periodically poured down those round cheeks.
Kate Monroe, while they talked, used and shredded any number of tissues from the box Maria Elena had given her. “I love him, and he loves me! You can’t hold a man who doesn’t love you!”
“I know that.”
“You have to let him go!”
Maria Elena spread her hands, at a loss. “Yes, if he wants. That is the American law.”
“It’s a mockery,” Kate Monroe went on in her shrill voice, obviously not listening to a word Maria Elena said, “to hold on to him if he doesn’t love you any more! We deserve our chance at happiness!”
Maria Elena lifted her head at that, suddenly incensed at this slobby ignorant person in her house. “Deserve? Why do you deserve happiness? What did you do that you deserve happiness?”