“Now you’re both dead,” his father said flatly, “you and your nonexistent friend.”
That’s the best he can do: an afternoon more than two decades back when his father hadn’t actually flown into a rage, had instead been only casually cruel, but had cared enough to pluck him from the river. Though he wasn’t sure about the caring part-saving him might simply have been easier than explaining his absence to Carr’s mother.
Carr takes another pull on his beer and empties the bottle-his third somehow. Blue light is rippling through the sky, and a red light is blinking on his phone in the corner of his sofa. Mrs. Calvin has left another message. He opens a fourth beer, takes a long swallow, and hears his father’s voice again: You can’t just sit there and watch .
But watching is what he’s best at-what he’s always been best at, from when he was very smalclass="underline" the comings and goings of neighbors; the shopkeepers in their storefronts, sweeping, chatting with customers, hectoring clerks; the deliverymen; the embassy drivers; the maids and cooks and gardeners; and his parents most closely of all. His father didn’t like it-it made him edgy, he said-but his mother didn’t mind. In fact, she encouraged it, nurtured it, made a virtue of it, and a game.
He remembers sitting on her lap, in the tall windows of one of their houses, looking out on a tree-lined avenue. Was he even five years old? She would place a pale finger on the glass and point, and he would follow her gaze. Then she would put her hand over his eyes. ?Que ves, mijo? What do you see?
And he would tell her. A man with a dog. A lady in a hat. A blue truck. A green taxi. A grandpa at a cafe table. He remembers the softness of her palm across his brow, the smell of her hand-gardenias and tobacco. And what is the old man doing? Reading a newspaper. Smoking. Drinking from a cup. What kind of cup? What color hat? How large a dog? They would go on and on, in English, in Spanish, as afternoon went down to dusk. He would lean against her, sleepy, her voice warm and husky in his ear.?Que color es el coche, mijo? And how many men are in it?
When his father returned from work-always furrowed and simmering, his tie askew-the game would stop, and it was as if his mother had left the room. As if she’d left the house altogether. She took him from her lap, and her arms were stiff and cool. Her hazel eyes were narrow. She spoke quietly, and only in English, and she said very little. Mostly she listened to Arthur Carr’s litany of irritations and slights, nodding without ever conveying agreement.
Carr remembers his father’s voice-droning at first, and growing louder as the cocktails took hold. He remembers his father’s rumpled shirts, damp spots under the arms, and his father’s broad, sloppy gestures. He remembers his mother’s rigid shoulders, a vein thrumming in her neck, her stillness otherwise. He would try to catch her eye sometimes-offer up a grimace or a conspiratorial smirk-but it was as if he wasn’t there. Or she wasn’t. Other times, he would perch in the window and continue their game on his own, but inevitably his father grew irritated.
“It’s like living with a goddamn cat,” Arthur Carr would mutter, pulling him from the sill. “Nobody likes a cat.”
More lightning, another beer, and Carr thinks about his father’s anger and his mother’s distance, and he remembers the maps.
His mother was a great one for them. Maps and guidebooks and histories and almanacs-but especially maps. When word of a new posting would come, despite Arthur Carr’s grumblings-or perhaps because of them-she would smile, haul out the maps, and study them.
“Should we just stumble around like tourists?” she would say to Carr. “Get lost on our way to buy ice cream? No-we must know something about this place. We can’t have people think you are un hombre inculto. ”
Carr remembers her at the dining table, half-glasses balanced on her nose, a cigarette burning in an ashtray, a cord of smoke twisting to the ceiling. The books were open in an arc in front of her, and the maps were unfurled. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a black ribbon.
“Here’s where we will live, mijo,” she said, pointing with a sharp red pencil. “And here is Daddy’s office, and the new school.” She made neat red check marks as she spoke. “Here is the museum, and the futbol stadium, and the port, right here, and three train stations, and the main post office. Here is the airport, and the television studio, and the radio station, and the power plant. And see-here is the park, mijo, and the carousel.”
And he remembers wandering the cities with her, remembers the narrow streets and the squares-cobbled, noisy, sometimes with a fountain, a dark arcade, or a looming church. His mother would hold his hand through the crowds, and buy him a lemon ice, a slice of melon, or a skewer off the grill. Then she would find a bench or little table and smoke and watch the people while Carr ate. They would sit for what seemed like hours to Carr, but he didn’t mind. She would run her fingers through his hair, and sometimes, after he’d eaten, he would lean against her and doze.
Often, he recalls, she would meet someone she knew. Or they would meet her. And why not: the whole world seemed to stroll through those squares. Carr recognized some of the men and women, from embassy parties he thought, but most of them were strangers to him. They spoke mainly in Spanish to his mother, though some spoke in English and some in Portuguese. They would stop long enough to say hello, to talk about the weather, to shake hands and offer a cigarette or a book of matches. They all stared at him.
He remembers the heat of the stones, the smells of rotting fruit and grilling meat, the cool damp of the arcades, the drone of many footsteps on the cobbles, the feel of her dress as he leaned against her. Gardenias and tobacco.
And then there is a voice behind him, and a cool hand on the back of his neck.
“I thought you’d know better than to sit with your back to the door.”
12
He jumps, and his beer goes flying, and Tina smiles.
“At ease, soldier,” she says.
It’s the first time he’s seen her away from a golf course, the first time he’s seen her without Mr. Boyce, and the change in context is disorienting. For an instant Carr wonders if she’s come to kill him, but decides probably not. If she had, he would probably be dead by now. Probably, too, she would’ve worn something else.
She’s dressed in black shorts-very short-a black tank top, and black flip-flops. Her black sunglasses are pushed into her white-blond hair. Her arms and legs are ghostly, and her hands, long-fingered and elegant, are raised. Her gray eyes are steady.
“The door was locked,” Carr says.
“Guy like you should get better locks,” Tina says, lowering her hands. “Sorry for the surprise.”
“You could’ve called first.”
“Don’t like phones,” she says. “Besides, I like to keep in practice.”
Carr wipes his hands on his pants. “It doesn’t seem like you need much. And somehow I don’t think that’s the only reason you’re here.”
She smiles thinly. “Mr. Boyce didn’t want to pull you away, but he does want to know how things are going.”
“And he doesn’t like the phone either?” Tina nods. “So you’re here to check up?”
“More like checking in.”
“I don’t remember a lot of checking in with Declan.”
She shrugs. “Does it need explaining?”
“I’m not Declan-I get it.”
Tina sits on the sofa, slips off her shoes, and folds her legs beneath her. “No need to pout,” she says. “So how about we open a couple more beers, and you tell me what’s what, and I do the same?”
Carr looks at her more closely, and his disorientation becomes bewilderment. Tina out of school is less guarded-relaxed, almost funny. Her voice is soft and liquid-intimate in the confines of a room. And her pale, oval face, always smooth and empty at those golf course meetings, has an appealing touch of irony at the corners of her eyes and mouth.