Laura van den Berg: The Isle of Youth: Stories

George and Christina nodded, then looked at me. “That’s right,” I said. “He brought me a screwdriver. And then we went out for six months and then he proposed one night, when we were on our way home from a movie. It was raining and he stopped on the sidewalk and asked me right there.” I remembered standing under a streetlamp and looking down at his face, his eyelashes thick with rain, and feeling a tremendous surge of hope.

“It was spontaneous,” my husband said. “Possibly the first spontaneous thing I’ve ever done.”

“And possibly the last.” This time, I was the one trying to make a joke, but no one laughed.

The story we were telling was at once true and not true. The facts were right, but certain details had been omitted. I never brought up my intense dislike for screwdrivers, or said that I drank it only because I had been very lonely that year and didn’t want him to stop talking to me. I never brought up all the time I spent in dark movie theaters or playhouses or classical music halls — the hallmarks of my husband’s carefully planned dates — trying to understand what, exactly, I felt for him. An attachment, certainly, though I was never sure it was love. But what did it mean to be in love? Maybe all the things people said about falling in love, about the initial torrent of joy, were a lie. And then there was the matter of how my days and weeks and months had become so unexceptional, they were nearly indistinguishable from one another — marked only by my job at a second-rate law firm and the occasional date and watching the weather shift through my apartment windows.

In Philadelphia, I was close to my parents in Bala Cynwyd, where I had grown up, where my twin sister, when we were just four weeks old, had died a silent, inexplicable death in the crib next to mine. I was too young to remember anything about her; as an adult I had tried and tried. Whenever I took the train from Philadelphia to Bala Cynwyd on the weekends, the absent look on my parents’ faces — it would appear for only an instant, when I emerged from the crowd outside the station and met their eyes through the car windshield — reminded me of how I had failed to fill my life and my sister’s at the same time, a task that had left me with the feeling of always being half-present and half-absent. As the years passed, it became harder to tell the difference between the two, to understand what exactly my capacities were. My husband was an only child. He had come to Philadelphia from Kansas City and saw his parents once a year. He always seemed resolute and sure.

On our dates, I would sit beside him in the dark and gaze at his profile and think all of this through. I was still thinking it through after I moved into his apartment and after we got married. I was still thinking it through as I stood in this hotel lobby in Patagonia, trying to understand, a sketch artist attempting to construct a face from disparate descriptions of noses and ears. But these were the kinds of details that could not be spoken of without inflicting real damage.

“Oh, I just love these kinds of stories,” Christina said. “Now how are you finding married life?”

“It’s nice,” I said. “A little confusing at times, but mostly nice.” I scratched the side of my nose.

Later that night, when we were back in our room, my husband would tell me how embarrassing it was to hear me describe married life as “confusing.” How it made us seem strange and hurt his feelings too. I would point out that I had also used the word “nice,” but he would be unmoved, taking a shower that lasted over an hour. But when I’d said it in the hotel lobby, he’d just smiled a flat smile and left to refresh his drink.

* * *

Arranging a trip to Iguazú Falls was surprisingly easy. In the morning, a taxi drove us to the airport, where we took a charter plane. During our flight, I never once looked out the window, sitting straight in my seat and trying to ignore the crushing pain in my nose. My husband’s annoyance with me had lingered; he’d snapped at me when I was slow going through airport security, and on the plane he scrutinized the Iguazú section in his guidebook, ignoring me completely.

At Iguazú, the guide, a short man with a carefully groomed mustache, picked us up. On the way to the falls, he told us about the legend of their creation: a god had planned to marry a woman, but she loved a mortal man. When she tried to escape with him in a canoe, the god divided the river. The waterfalls were formed and the couple would never stop drowning. The guide told us this story without enthusiasm, never once raising his eyes to meet ours in the rearview. I wondered if the legend was really a legend or just something for the tourists.

“Actually,” my husband said, “the falls are the result of a massive volcanic eruption that occurred approximately two hundred thousand years ago.”

“Garganta del Diablo,” the guide said in response.

“What does that mean?” I whispered to my husband.

“Devil’s Throat,” he said, pointing to a page in his guidebook.

We entered the falls from the Argentinean town of Puerto Iguazú. The horseshoe-shaped cascades spread across two miles of the Iguazú River, the guide explained as we started our tour on a wood-planked walkway. My husband moved briskly. The guide struggled to keep up, and it wasn’t long before I fell behind them both. As we trekked higher, the treetops blended together, making the canopy so dense it obscured the sky. Small brown monkeys swung across the trees. We passed stands of bamboo, orchids, and ceibos, which, my husband called over his shoulder, were the national flower of Argentina. I imagined George and Christina walking this same trail, identifying birds and primates together, reaching down at the same time to touch the velvety leaves of a plant.

When the falls came into view, they were just as spectacular as the Humbolts had said. Water poured over two massive cliffs and pooled in a huge expanse speckled with mossy rocks, as though a lush island had been overtaken by a flood. And then there was the sound, the deep rushing noise that burned away the confusion and the worry. My fingertips tingled and there was a ringing in my ears, but it was pleasant, like distant bells.

“It’s the sound of the drowned lovers,” the guide said to us. “Time has turned them into something beautiful.”

My husband looked at me and slipped his guidebook into his back pocket. He offered me bug repellent. I let him spray his palms and rub my bare arms and legs. He took his time, making sure the backs of my knees and the insides of my elbows had been covered. His fingertips were cool and I relished the sensation of him touching certain parts of my body — the bones in my ankles — for the very first time. I listened to the falls and wondered if what I was feeling could be called love.

“One of the seven natural wonders of the world,” the guide said after we finished.

“Bug spray?” I said, and this time, my husband laughed.

A cloud of turquoise-and-black butterflies swarmed around one of the rocks, touched down for a moment, and then scattered.

“Garganta del Diablo,” the guide said again. My husband and I followed him to a footbridge, which, after a great deal of hiking, led us to the Devil’s Throat. It was much larger than the others, with jagged rocks jutting through the curtains of water. The sound was deafening.

“The best one,” he shouted. “Out of hundreds of falls, this is the best one.”

“We’re already seeing the best one?” I called out. We’d only been out for a few hours and had many more ahead of us; it seemed a little disappointing to have already seen the best.

“Yes.” The guide struggled to be heard over the roar of the water. “The very best.”