Idra Novey - Ways to Disappear

Raquel wondered which of her mother’s friends would know if the story about the shadow and the alley was true. Maybe none of them would know, or maybe her mother had confided in some unreliable writer friend during one of her slumps, and that friend had told all the others. Maybe the disdain Raquel had sensed that her mother’s friends felt about her lack of interest in literature wasn’t disdain at all, but unease with what they knew about her and she didn’t. Maybe it was pity — a possibility that made her despise them even more.

But this mess of unfinished sentences on her mother’s computer wasn’t a book for other readers, or it wasn’t yet. If the scene in the alley was true, it belonged to her as much as it did to her mother. And to no one else.

Rocha pulled out his most trusted saucepan and a bottle of his favorite Chilean Carmenere, the unparalleled Veramonte, which he’d chilled overnight. Out past the kitchen, Alessandro had turned up the Salieri aria playing on their gramophone, Prima la musica, poi le parole, and had stretched out on the couch with the newspaper.

Ave Maria, Alessandro said. Did you see this? He held up the cover of the gossip section for Rocha to read. It was another photo of Beatriz’s son and her American translator on the Ilha Grande ferry, only this time the young woman appeared to be vomiting over the railing.

Ai, que vulgar. Rocha took the page from Alessandro to study it more closely. It was the third paper this week with a feature on Beatriz and her continuing absence. He’d always thought there was nothing better for a writer’s reputation than dying. But even more promising than dying, it seemed, was to magnificently disappear.

Which gave him an idea.

The idea, at least in the elevator, was to have sex just once before letting Raquel know they were back in Rio. Only once, Emma said twice, just to get it out of our systems. Then we can really focus on finding your mother without distracting each other. Sex just once in his mother’s sweltering apartment and that would be it.

When they opened the door, however, the apartment wasn’t sweltering at all. It was cool, the air-conditioning humming in every room, though Emma was certain she had turned it off before leaving for Ilha Grande.

Raquel must have come by and forgotten to turn it off, Marcus said. Come here. He pulled at her hips until she tilted toward him. If they’d been standing anywhere but in front of her author’s bookshelves, the titles she’d run her fingers over for years like sacred scrolls, Emma was sure she would have had more restraint, would not be lifting her own dress this way over her head.

When Marcus slid her polka-dot underwear down over her knees, she murmured something about thinking about this a little more. But she didn’t want to think. She wanted to fling her underwear down the hall with her toe.

So she did, and the motion was divine.

Now there was nothing in the way.

On the balcony, Raquel was well into her third bowl of Sucrilhos. There hadn’t been anything else that had appealed to her in her mother’s fridge, and nothing that could satisfy like bingeing on a box of frosted flakes.

And so it was with a constellation of soggy Sucrilhos floating across the milk in her bowl that she stepped back into the apartment and heard panting. A distinct knocking coming from the hallway as the rhythm got faster, the panting more pronounced. Raquel clenched her spoon as she raged into the living room, milk swishing over the lip of her bowl.

Meu Deus, Marcus! she shouted, and began to sob. Someone had just pressed a knife to her neck. It was possible her father was a hideous stranger in an alley. And now here was her brother, thrusting himself into their mother’s translator, knocking their mother’s beloved books to the floor.

We’re all going to be killed, you idiots. Don’t you get it?

His eyes wide, Marcus extracted himself from Emma and turned, leaving Raquel to stare at her brother fully erect in a textured condom the purplish pink of bubble gum.

Caralho, Marcus, she said, put your pau away. Beside him, Emma was already yanking her dress over her head so frantically that she knocked down several large books that had been sitting on top of the shelf behind her. As they crashed to the floor, an envelope fluttered out and slid across the hallway, disappearing under the opposite shelf. Any other week, Raquel would have dismissed the envelope as more of her mother’s endless clutter and left it there.

But everything was filled with portent now, could be the distance between seeing her mother again and not.

Move the shelf, Marcus, hurry up, she ordered. What are you waiting for?

Bare as he’d arrived twenty-nine years ago at Hospital Geral de Bonsucesso, Marcus tugged and pulled at the shelf, but the books were tightly packed and shelved three deep. Even with Raquel’s help, it was too heavy to budge.

Emma got on her knees and began pulling out handfuls of books to lighten the shelf. Raquel had never felt less inclined to join forces with her mother’s translator, but she did it, making a point of pulling out the books faster and harder, knocking Emma’s stacks out of her way.

When they’d finally extracted enough books to move the shelf, Raquel made sure she was the one who got to the letter first. It was postmarked a year ago and from Rio. She couldn’t think of who in the same city would bother to send her mother a letter until she pulled out the engraved card inside. Of course. It was from her mother’s pretentious first editor, Roberto. The card contained nothing but fussy details about a dinner party and what would be served.

It’s nothing, Raquel said. Just a frivolous card from a friend about a party. She tossed it in the tin trash can by the TV. She knew that Emma was going to retrieve it but wouldn’t dare reach into the garbage until Raquel had left the room. How could she, with her polka-dot underwear hanging from the handle of an umbrella by the door?

Raquel crossed her arms and stared out at the persimmon trees on the balcony. She couldn’t make Emma leave. But she could make her wait.

To: eneufeld@pitt.edu

Subject: Re: alive?

Emma, vanishing like this is crazy. Your parents said they haven’t heard from you either. Julia from your department has left a hundred messages on the landline saying you need to confirm your office hours ASAP for the spring semester. I’m sorry I flipped out on the way to the airport but what you’re doing now is cruel. You need to answer. I’m sure everyone in Beatriz’s family is grateful you’re there and you’ve been a tremendous help. Just tell me where you are.

Hidden in the guest room, Emma enjoyed her findings quietly. It had been excruciating to wait for Raquel to leave the room but it had been worth it. She was so jittery from reading Rocha’s card that she’d stopped trying to hear what Raquel was telling Marcus in the kitchen. It was too hard to make out what they were saying from two rooms away. All she could gather was that Raquel was going to leave in the morning and Marcus wanted to go as well, but Raquel kept saying no, that he had become too much of a liability after getting his picture in all the gossip columns. Neither of them had mentioned Emma’s appearance in the photos as well, which was a relief, though also insulting and dismissive — a conflict of emotions that was standard fare for a translator. Emma had come to find the unease this conflict produced in her curiously alluring. She couldn’t help winding herself tighter and tighter around it like a thread around a spool.