Away from Home Read online

  Neil Davidow was looking at his watch. He came over to the sofa and smiled at Margie, reaching out to pull her to her feet. “Come on,” he said. “We have to go. We’ll be late.”

  “We’ll all take our car,” Margie said. “All right?”

  Helen looked at both of them, Margie encircled lightly by her husband’s arm, looking up at him with an expression that could only be honest affection, warmth and pleasure, Neil with his before-party look that showed he knew he was going to have a good time no matter what happened. In many ways, except for being childless, they were the most conventional couple Helen knew. And yet there was sorrow there, and suffering, and something worse, she suddenly realized, some kind of secret that one held away from the other. “Come and say goodnight to your brats,” Helen said, taking Bert by the hand. “I promised them.”

  Margie and Neil came too, and as she watched Margie kissing Roger and Julie, Helen wondered briefly if she herself were the kind of unpleasant mother who showed off the delights of motherhood to her less fortunate friends. She hoped it wouldn’t look that way to Margie. She felt a kind of wariness for a moment in the presence of her friend who was dear to her and could be hurt by something completely unwitting and innocent. But Margie seemed perfectly happy, and when they all went down in the elevator she was already fussing with the back of her hair to be sure the humidity had not spoiled her set and you would not think she had another thought in her head. God, Helen thought, I’m glad I have a happy marriage. I’m glad I can know that it’s always going to be there, that it’s always going to be the same.

  The party they went to was given by an American couple named Mildred and Phil Burns, who were both in their mid-thirties and came from Chicago. They were known to their friends as Mil and Phil. Mil was the sort of woman, as Margie Davidow had once put it, who always walked into a room where there were strangers and said, “I’m Mil Burns and this is my husband.” When she was eighteen years old she had been Corn Queen at Iowa State College, and she had been allowed to sit on a float surrounded by her handmaidens in white dresses. Her husband sometimes mentioned this when talking about old times back in the States, but Mil never talked about it. She had gained twenty pounds and a husband and three children, and the past was rather silly, but when she walked she held her head up stiffly, partly to show her handsome profile, partly to minimize her double chin, and partly so that her invisible crown would not slide off.

  Phil Burns had arrived in Rio six months before his wife, and had rented their apartment, arranged for the necessities, set up his business, and then sent for his family. Mil had arrived protestingly, hating the apartment, hating the climate, hating the cockroaches, hating the telephone system, hating the tan bath water. They had been in Brazil now for more than a year, and Phil loved it as much as Mil did not. He was one of those enthusiastically overassimilated Americans who say things like “I know a wonderful little bar where you can go if you don’t want to meet anyone you know—because only American tourists go there.” He always carried a copy of the South American edition of Time magazine, and he said, “No?” at the end of questions that he asked in English.

  Mildred met them at the door. The living room was already filled with people, talking and smoking, and a white-coated butler walked about with a tray of highballs. “You don’t mind if you have to introduce yourselves?” Mil said. “I’m hoarse. I’ve been yelling at the maids all day. They’re so stupid. I tried to tell them how to make a decent-looking hors d’oeuvre, but they can’t learn.”

  “I think they look beautiful,” Helen said, taking an infinitesimal pie filled with hot-flavored shrimps from a tray on the coffee table.

  “You’re crazy, Mil,” Margie said. “You always worry too much.”

  “Heleninha!” Phil Burns said, putting an arm around Helen’s waist. He pronounced it Eleneenya. He was a little shorter than his wife, and he had a boyish, Ivy League look, a crewcut graying at the temples, and earnest, sad eyes. Helen liked him. “There are some people here you don’t know,” Phil said. “There’s a Brazilian—see—over by the window talking to the woman in the flowered dress. His name is Nestor and he’s extremely interesting, you ought to talk to him. And there’s Trainer Wilkes, from the Embassy. He’s not really with the Embassy; he’s just here on a temporary exchange mission to bring Little League Baseball to Brazil. The gal in the flowered dress is his wife.” Phil had his other arm around Bert’s shoulders, Brazilian style, and he patted Bert’s upper arm as he spoke.

  “I’d like a drink,” Bert said. “Do you want one, Helen?”

  “Yes, please, darling.”

  Phil waved at the butler, who came over immediately with his tray of drinks. “Here. Scotch, gin, or rye. I didn’t want to make martinis; it’s too hot. But if you want one, I’ll sneak you one in the kitchen.”

  “No, no,” said Bert. “Scotch is fine, thank you.”

  “I found the first Carnival records for fifty-nine,” Phil said happily. “I’ll play them later and we can dance. Maybe things will get wild.”

  “Somebody will drop dead of a heat stroke,” Mil said. “That’s the wild thing that will happen.”

  “I’ve got all the windows open,” Phil said, beginning to look less happy. “It will get cooler later. Do you want me to bring the fan in from our room?”

  “It doesn’t do any good in our room,” Mil said, “so what makes you think it will help with this mob in here?” She walked to the front door to greet other arriving guests, holding her head high, her emerald pendant earrings swinging against her tanned neck.

  “She hates the heat,” Phil murmured apologetically.

  “Don’t we all,” said Helen. “The front of our apartment is unbearable during the day. I have to stay in the back when I’m home. But at night it’s cool.”

  “It’s only the crowd,” said Phil. “This is a very cool apartment. Listen, this is Trainer Wilkes. Trainer, Helen and Bert Sinclair.”

  Trainer Wilkes was a tall, good-looking man in his late thirties. He had curly brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses and a suntan. When he shook hands with Helen he took her hand gently, almost gingerly, as if for years his forceful handshake had made ladies wince and he had finally learned. He was wearing a black silk suit and he looked hot. “How do you do,” he said.

  “I’m glad to meet you,” Helen said. Phil Burns had pulled Bert away to meet someone else, and she found herself alone with Trainer Wilkes. They looked at each other for a minute, trying to think of something to say, and Helen smiled. “Have you been in Brazil long?”

  “Few weeks.”

  “How long are you staying?”

  “A year.”

  “Do you like it? I guess everybody asks you that and you must be sick of hearing it.”

  “Oh, I like it,” Trainer Wilkes said, not too enthusiastically. “Getting to like it. It’s interesting. Wouldn’t like to live here, but it’s all right.”

  “Where are you from in the States?”

  “Garnerville College in Pennsylvania. It’s a small school; you’ve probably never heard of it. But we have one of the best baseball teams in the country.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know much about baseball,” Helen admitted. “My son was too young to play when we left the States. Is that what you do there, teach baseball?” She smiled at him. “I guess that’s why they call you ‘Trainer.’”

  “I teach English history,” he said. “English history and baseball.”

  “And Phil said you’re here for the government.”

  “More or less. I’m with the Cultural Division. We bring our ideas, our culture, over here, and it makes friends. I’m here to teach Little League Baseball. That’s my job. And I’ll tell you something.” He raised his glass and drank thirstily, as if the effort of such a long speech were too much. But his eyes were sparkling and for the first time he looked animated. “It was the best idea they ever had, to bring me over for the Cultural Division. The Brazilians want to know America; let them know baseball
. Baseball is really America. I don’t care about books, music, theater, art, all that junk. I’m going to give ’em baseball, and they’re going to love me.”

  “I hope so,” Helen said.

  Trainer Wilkes took a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face and neck thoroughly, as if it were a hand towel. He looked at it and put it back into his pocket. “You bring your boy over when we get started, and we’ll let him join a team,” he said. “How old is he?”

  “Six. That’s a little too young, I think.”

  “All right. We’re going to have a team for five-year-olds. Can’t start too young. It must be pretty tough for the American parents here, so far away, trying to keep all the things we have at home.”

  “But there are certain compensations to travel,” Helen said mildly.

  Trainer Wilkes looked down into her face seriously. “You be careful,” he said. “Just don’t get into trouble. You don’t know these people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll know when you get into trouble,” Trainer said. “You’ll remember I told you.”

  Someone had put a record of American Christmas carols on the phonograph, and it sounded strange to hear them, almost as if it were really summer and someone were trying to be Bohemian. It was terribly hot. The men were beginning to wipe their foreheads and move closer to the opened windows, and the waiter walked about quickly with ice-filled drinks. The alcohol was only making everyone hotter. “God rest ye merry, gentlemen,” the chorus sang in wondrously muted harmony. “Let nothing ye dismay.” It brought memories of Westport in winter, of wreaths hung at windows with sloppily tied red bows attached by Julie, and of the smell of a fir tree and the crackle and heat of a hot fire when you sat too close to it in order to roast apples on long pointed sticks. Lately, more and more often, Helen had been dreaming at night of snow, of wide white fields turning blue at twilight, of window sills piled high with the powdery fresh snowfall and herself safe inside the room looking out at the white stillness and beauty. All the inconvenience of a Connecticut winter—the icy roads that made driving the children to nursery school a hazard, the biting wind that made you feel you never would get warm again, the ache of wet feet and the beautiful white snow that turned so quickly into brown mud and gray slush—all these things seemed to recede. She remembered winter in Connecticut as if it were a Christmas card.

  In the corner of the room on a table was a small Christmas tree, with gold balls and tinsel, and packages underneath it for the Burns’s children. Somehow Mil Burns had managed to get real American gift-wrapping paper. Helen recognized it immediately. She had probably sent to the States for the presents, too. There were no other Christmas decorations in the room. Trainer Wilkes had been taken elsewhere by one of the guests, and Helen found herself standing alone. She was relieved. She looked at the other guests idly, noticing their clothes, listening to the Christmas carols with an ache in her throat. She wondered what her friends were doing right now in Westport. It was two hours earlier in the States. They were probably having dinner, or perhaps they were through with dinner and were wrapping last-minute presents furtively, trying to hide them from the excited children. I won’t be home again for six Christmases, she thought. Julie will be a teen-ager. She’ll be going to Christmas dances with boys and hanging mistletoe from the top door sill. And I’ll be so much older, so much darker skinned, so much blonder, so much a stranger, that all my friends will have to learn to know me all over again, and I them.

  She caught sight of Margie standing in a corner talking with two of the American women whom she herself did not know. Margie in her brown and white checked mousseline shirtwaist dress, the skirt propped out by a huge crinoline, looked like a Brazilian wife next to them—chic, pampered, wearing the latest Dior style. The other two women were wearing sunback cotton dresses, the kind Margie wore when she went to the grocery store. They were tanned and contented looking, and they wore a great deal of real gold jewelry set with Brazilian stones. Helen wandered over to them.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” one was saying in a midwestern accent. “I’m buying a lot of jewelry here. Diamonds especially. Real jewelry is so cheap in Brazil, and it’s an investment. Believe me, people treat you better when you have real jewelry. You attract a nicer class of people back home when you have nice jewelry.” She held out her hand and looked at her two glittering rings.

  Helen tried not to laugh. “That’s a lovely aquamarine,” she said.

  “Isn’t it!”

  “I’d like you to meet Helen Sinclair,” Margie said. “This is—”

  “First names,” said the woman with the rings. “Ernestine. And this is Linda.”

  “How do you do,” said Linda. She was in her late forties, a small woman, very thin, and she looked shy. Her hair was cut short and curled against her head in tight little snails, as if it had been over-permanented, over-set, and dried too much by the tropical sun. She wore rimless glasses and she had a huge red rubylite hanging around her neck on a gold chain.

  “That’s a lovely rubylite,” Helen said.

  “How did you know?” Linda said, smiling happily. “I love it, too; it’s my birthstone. My husband gave it to me for my birthday.”

  “Helen’s husband is a gemologist,” Margie said. “She knows so much about stones it’s terrifying.”

  “I told her not to stop there,” Ernestine said sternly. She gestured at Linda’s rubylite pendant. “That’s all right, but she should buy real stones. Expensive ones. Diamonds.”

  “I like this one,” Linda said.

  “You listen to me,” said Ernestine. “When you go back to the States you’ll be sorry if you haven’t bought a few really good pieces.” She was a big woman, mostly bosom, and she had naturally blond hair which she wore in a pony tail. She looked about thirty-five.

  “I’m sure Linda would rather have something her husband gave her for her birthday,” Helen said. “I know I would. And this rubylite is a beauty.” She smiled at the older woman, feeling sorry for her, and wondering which one of these men was married to Ernestine.

  “My birthstone is really garnet,” Linda said, in a breathy, rather apologetic voice. “But this is red, so we thought it would count for the same thing.”

  “Why not?” Margie said.

  “Where are you from?” Ernestine asked Helen.

  “We lived in Westport, Connecticut, before we came here.”

  “We’ve lived all over,” Ernestine said. “We lived in California for a while, and in Kansas, and we even lived in Seattle, Washington. Have you ever been there?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “I like Brazil,” Ernestine said. She tossed her head, and the heavy blond pony tail flicked back and forth, rather like the tail of a percheron. When she spoke she showed large, white, even teeth, and she looked like the kind of person who would bite into something to see if it were real. “My husband’s going to go into business here. He’s thinking of buying land in the jungle and then selling it back in a couple of years when values go up. There’s going to be a land boom in the Interior when they finish the new capital. It’s going to be like the American West, only bigger. Bigger! When they finish the Belem-Brazilia Road, land values out there in the jungle are going to double and redouble.”

  The butler came by with his tray of highballs and they each took one. “How long have you lived in Brazil?” Helen asked.

  “Seven years,” Ernestine said. “Let’s sit down; my feet hurt.” She took hold of Helen’s arm and led her to two unoccupied chairs against the wall. “Ahh … what a relief. You can’t get a decent pair of shoes here, especially if you wear an eight and a half triple A. All the Brazilians have little square feet. Did you ever notice?”

  “I’d never noticed,” Helen said.

  “Well, they do. Which one is your husband?”

  “That tall man over there,” Helen said. “Speaking to the Brazilian.”

  “Ah, how attractive he is! I love dark men. You
’re very lucky.”

  “I think so too,” Helen said.

  “That handsome one over there on the couch is my little boy.” Ernestine pointed at a small, balding, rotund man in his early fifties. “He’s cute, isn’t he?”

  Helen would hardly have thought of the word cute to describe Ernestine’s husband, but she nodded and smiled. “Yes, he is.”

  Ernestine put her empty highball glass on the floor beside her chair and turned to Helen intimately, her face set in a determined expression of loyalty. She looked like someone about to pledge allegiance to the flag. She twined her fingers around Helen’s arm. “Don’t sell these people short,” Ernestine said. “These are all wonderful people in this room. Of course, there are a few that are corny—two couples here whose names I won’t mention because they won’t be here very long. One or two parties and then they’ll never be asked back.”

  “What’s corny?”

  “Wives who flirt too much with other women’s husbands. Too much drinking. Acting unrefined. You’ll see. Watch any one of the women at this party for half an hour and you’ll see that she never does anything out of line. Oh, five, six years ago it was another story. There was lots of carrying on, lots of divorces. But now everyone who comes to Brazil to live has to be screened first by the State Department and they’ve gotten rid of all that. All these people here always tread the straight and narrow.”

  Helen had never actually heard anyone use the expression straight and narrow before. She looked at Ernestine, but Ernestine wore a look of staunch, almost sentimental virtue and not a trace of a smile.

  “Let’s go over and talk to the men,” Ernestine said. She stood up and went over to Bert and the Brazilian, who had been joined by Trainer Wilkes and a tall, thin man Helen did not know.

  The men were involved in an excited discussion, and Helen and Ernestine drifted over to the edge of their group without a word, listening politely as people do who are group-hopping at a cocktail party, not sure whether they want to stay or whether they are going to interrupt something highly emotional for the formality of introductions. Helen wanted to reach out and take Bert’s hand, or put her arm around his waist. It would make too much of an interruption; she would look like a possessive wife, she was afraid. She always tried to leave him alone at cocktail parties so he would feel free to talk with other people and would not feel that she was his Siamese twin just because she was his wife. After all, they were chained together for good, so they might as well pretend they were free. But she was longing to touch him. She looked at his face, at his lips as he spoke, and she remembered the moment they had had together that evening before all the household things had interrupted. “I’m thinking of something I’m going to do to you tonight.” She could hear his voice inside her head now, saying that again, and she repeated it to herself. The conversation of the men rose and receded around her and she hardly heard it. She was watching her husband, pretending to be interested in the discussion, and she was thinking of the smoothness of his skin under that blue shirt. I can’t help it, Helen thought; I want to go home and make love to my husband. I’m bored here and I can’t think about anything else except that I want him to make love to me. She wondered if it were the time of the month when she could get pregnant, and if that was why she felt so alive and full of desire. But she felt that way more and more all the time living in Brazil. Perhaps it was the climate. Or perhaps the leisure, or perhaps because the sun and air on the beach made her healthy. I wish it were late and we could go home.