Away from Home Read online

  She loved the look Bert had when he was listening to something that interested him. His face came alight as if he had made a discovery in his relationship with the other person. All his relationships with other people were discoveries for him; she had never seen anyone so interested in talking with other people. And the others always seemed to respond to it, so that a person who was usually quite ordinary became a conversationalist with Bert, became self-revelatory, even if what the person had to show was, after all, something quite dreadful. People, even at their worst, were always amusing to Bert, and usually much more than amusing.

  Helen reached out and took his hand. He returned the pressure, but absently. He doesn’t know what I’m thinking, she thought. He’s not thinking about making love, and he isn’t even dreaming that I’m thinking of it. He’s put me on a shelf somewhere for a few hours and he hardly even knows I’m alive. Oh, I wish it were time to go home! Maybe I’m frivolous and silly not to be listening to all this cocktail-party talk where I could be learning something, too, but I need, I need, I need to be made love to.…

  Reluctantly Helen forced herself to listen to the conversation around her. She let go of Bert’s hand and fixed an expression of alertness on her face, and concentrated. The tall, thin man, whose name she did not know, was speaking.

  “I haven’t been here long,” he said, “but I’ve been watching the Brazilians and I know. The same kind of hate that was shown to Nixon on his Pan-American tour is here too. They hate Americans because we have money and we drive our children to school every day in cars.” He had a pinched face, lean and long and dark, and when he spoke he moved his hands nervously. He was wearing a Balinese printed sport shirt with short sleeves, open at the neck, but instead of making him look relaxed and festive it somehow only made him look more foreign and ill at ease. “You don’t believe they hate us?” he asked. “You want to know something? The other day someone came by and spit on my front lawn, just because my car was parked in front and he knew it had American diplomatic license plates.”

  The Brazilian named Nestor held his hand up in a gesture of peace. He was small and neat, with silky dark skin, and he wore a seersucker suit. “But all diplomatic license plates are the same,” he said, in almost unaccented English. “They all have a red background, and none of them indicate what country they’re from.”

  “Someone spit on my front lawn,” said the man in the Balinese shirt. “My wife saw him.”

  Nestor smiled. “That’s because Rio is full of Portuguese,” he said. “Portuguese love to spit. They spit anywhere. You might say it’s a national habit. They just go along the street and spit. Do you know, they keep chamber pots under their beds, and when the chamber pots are full they just toss the contents out the window. Whoosh—out it goes on the street, on someone’s head. Why, spitting is nothing. Sometimes people spit on my lawn too. It must have been a Portuguese. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Trainer Wilkes leaned over and whispered in Helen’s ear. “Never mind.” He gestured at the man in the Balinese printed shirt. “You listen to him. He’s one of the brightest minds here.”

  Helen looked at the man whose lawn had been spat upon. He was evidently a diplomat of some kind, a member of the Embassy. She realized how little she knew about politics and like or dislike, or even that frightening word Hate. She had been here for almost a year and she had never seen any sign that anyone hated her because she was an American. Am I dense? she thought. There must be all sorts of dangerous undercurrents that I’ve never even dreamed of, and that even now I can’t bring myself to believe exist. Somehow, she didn’t like the man in the gay shirt. He frightened her a little; he was so intense, so sure that other people’s motives had to be bad. It was the exact opposite of the way she had always greeted life, and whenever she met someone who felt the way he did she was torn with a combination of resentment and inferiority feelings. He might be right after all, and she didn’t want him to be. I must be an ostrich, Helen thought; and yet, he’s so—what is the Brazilian word?—so antipatico.

  “I spent ten years in the States, off and on,” Nestor was saying to Bert. “There’s a restaurant in New York I used to love, El Morocco. And the Stork Club. Do you know the St. Regis Hotel?”

  “Of course,” Bert said.

  “I always used to stay there when I was in New York. Except one year when I stayed at the Plaza. I love your hansom cabs that go around the park.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bert said.

  “You know, it’s a funny thing,” Nestor said, smiling ingratiatingly. “The Plaza Hotel is the only one I ever found in New York that had adopted the civilized custom of bidets, and they don’t work!”

  “They don’t work?”

  “Never. They’ve been turned off, deliberately.” Nestor smiled again, and made a little gesture of depreciation. “I’m sure they had good reasons. Here in Brazil everyone has a bidet, but unfortunately we often don’t have enough water for even the simpler pieces of plumbing to function!” He laughed, and Bert laughed too. “It’s true, isn’t it? This is a country of paradoxes.”

  “Dinner,” Mil Burns said, interrupting with a hand on Bert’s shoulder. “Come on, don’t you all be polite and let it get cold. Come on, everybody.”

  Helen turned to take Bert’s arm, but Ernestine had already fastened on to him, smiling a great white smile. “I’ve been dying to talk to you,” she heard Ernestine say.

  Nestor turned to her. “May I help you get a plate?” he asked. “It’s buffet.”

  “Thank you.”

  He was a nice little man, scarcely an inch taller than she was in her high heels, and he had a charming way of looking at her, as if he appreciated her but would not dream of making a pass unless she hinted at it first. It was that verge-of-a-pass look she had seen on other Brazilian men at American parties. They kissed your hand when they were introduced and when they said goodbye. They actually kissed your hand; they didn’t just lift it a bare two inches and make a token gesture. But they never held your hand too long at their lips, and if they squeezed it before they released it, it was such a slight squeeze that it was more flattering than forward.

  They found seats next to Margie and Neil on the sofa. “Are you having a good time?” Margie murmured.

  “Sort of,” she murmured back.

  “Let’s not stay too late,” Margie said.

  It was obvious that Mil had planned the menu with a great deal more nostalgia than practicality. There was ham and potato salad and Boston baked beans and brown bread and cold fried chicken and great buttermilk biscuits dripping with salt butter. The dessert sat on the sideboard: a large sticky-looking lemon pie, a chocolate pie covered with whipped cream, and a platter of brownies. The white-coated butler came around with a tray full of glasses of cold beer. It must have been a hundred degrees in the room, and the first bite of biscuit stuck in Helen’s throat. She put her piled-up plate on the coffee table in front of her and took a cigarette.

  Nestor leaned forward to light it for her. “You don’t eat?”

  “It’s very hot tonight.”

  “This is a terrible summer,” he said. “It isn’t usually so hot in Rio.”

  She smiled. “Is that true?”

  “I swear it. I hate the heat too. In the summer here I nearly die of it.”

  “My lord,” Margie said, “look at my husband eat, God bless him.”

  Neil had devoured everything on his plate; he seemed oblivious to the heat. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  Margie laughed. “Nothing, darling.”

  Neil stood up. “I’m going to get more. This is very good. Real kosher ham.” He grinned at his wife. “Does anyone want anything? More beer? Nestor?”

  “No, no thank you,” Nestor said, looking slightly queasy. “I always eat a large lunch and then I eat very lightly at night. It’s much better in hot weather.”

  Bert came over, with Ernestine following him. “Hi,” he said. “Is there room?”

  Helen and Margie
moved over on the sofa, and Ernestine sat down. Bert sat on the arm of the sofa next to Helen, even though there was still room where Neil had been. “Your husband certainly worries about you,” Ernestine exclaimed. “He insisted we come over to see if everything was all right.”

  Nestor stood up. “I think I had better look for my wife,” he said. “I want to see if she’s all right.” He bowed slightly and left.

  Ernestine got up from the couch and took Nestor’s empty chair, next to Bert. “You can just tell he’s a mining engineer,” she said, taking hold of Bert’s hand. “Just feel his hands! They’re wonderful. So hard! You can tell he’s been digging in those mines for jewels.” She rubbed her fingers against Bert’s palm. “Isn’t it exciting to be married to a mineralogist?”

  “He’s a gemologist,” Helen said.

  Bert extracted his hand from Ernestine’s grip. “That’s slightly different,” he said. “And my hand is this way from years of playing tennis. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Oh, you’d never disappoint me!” Ernestine cried. Her face was flushed from the heat and the highballs, and her nose and cheeks were shiny.

  Helen felt Margie kick her lightly on the ankle. She turned to smile at her friend, and Margie winked at her almost imperceptibly. She could see that Margie was trying not to giggle, and looking at Margie’s elaborately restrained face almost made Helen laugh with her. They looked away from each other then. But the moment she was not in contact with the contagion of Margie’s amusement Helen began to wonder what was so funny after all. When Ernestine had said, “Your husband certainly worries about you. He insisted we come over,” Helen had felt a soft happiness—the reassurance of love. No matter how many years she lived with Bert she knew she would never stop needing to have him show her he loved her. But, of course, he had not come over to see if she were all right; he had come here to escape Ernestine. It was a completely different thing. For a moment Helen almost felt like getting up with some excuse and leaving him here to suffer Ernestine’s coy passes and tentaclelike fingers.

  There is always the moment at a not quite successful party when you feel as though you have been dropped from a height of gaiety and suddenly everyone is unpleasantly revealed; and you are totally alone watching them, wondering what you are doing there anyway. These are the same people who were so entertaining a few minutes ago, you think, but now they just look tired, their chatter is forced and endless, and your face is weary from smiling at them. It is the moment to leave, but of course you never can leave just then, so the rest of the evening turns into a black abyss in which you wait and wait and wait, despising yourself for being so conventional and polite instead of inventing a headache or an urgent late appointment. It was that moment now for Helen. She looked at the large blonde flirting with Bert, at Mil Burns, at Linda in her tight little curls, and at all the other expatriate wives who were huddled together for protection and warmth in a strange land, guarding their old customs and keeping away the intruders. Mil and Phil had invited a Brazilian, it was true, but he was a tame Brazilian. He spoke perfect English, he had spent years in the States, he had money, he acted chivalrous but not wolfish, he never expressed violent or controversial ideas. He was almost wearing a Brooks Brothers’ suit. It seemed, Helen thought, as if they had invited the tame Brazilian as a sort of inoculation. They figured if they could survive him they would be immune, and eventually when they had to go out into the city and meet real Brazilians, then they would be safe.

  What do they think they’re going to catch, Helen wondered, mumps? And there are Embassy people here too, and Phil Burns the Brazilophile is so happy that he’s snared a tame Brazilian and all these other international types. But except for a few topazes and amethysts and aquamarines and one or two foreign clichés in their conversation, these people might as well still be at home. Maybe I’m exactly the same; who is to tell? How can I be different, when this is all I know?

  Margie tapped her arm. “We’re leaving. It’s twelve o’clock. Do you want to go?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  There was a confusion of goodbyes at the door; Mil telling them not to go, Phil arranging a luncheon date with Neil, a woman Helen had never seen before who happened to be standing near the doorway and who smiled at her slightly and said, “Goodbye. It was very nice meeting you.” Ernestine trailed Helen and Bert to the door.

  “This is the way the Brazilians say goodbye,” Ernestine said, and flung her arms around Bert’s neck, kissing him soundly on first one cheek and then the other. It was her own variation on the formal, airy little kisses Brazilian women always exchanged, and when she headed for Helen, Helen tried to avoid her, but it was too late.

  Ernestine put her arm around Helen’s neck and kissed her cheek, and drew her slightly away from the others who were congregated at the doorway. “Watch out for your Bert,” Ernestine whispered intensely. She looked almost tearful. “Keep him on the straight and narrow!”

  “Good night,” Helen said. “Good night. Thank you. Good night, Mil dear. Thank you again. Good night.” And they had escaped.

  When she and Bert were safely inside their apartment, where the maids had left lamps lighted softly in the living room and the night breeze blew the curtains inward like children playing ghosts, Helen sighed happily. She dropped her shoes and purse on the floor and sank into an armchair. “Ah, how wonderful. Merry Christmas, darling.”

  Bert smiled. “Merry Christmas. Let’s have a brandy.”

  “All right.”

  He brought two glasses of brandy and gave her one, and then sat in the other armchair. “Do you know what that woman was doing to me?” he said in a tone of delighted amusement. “I was watching to see if you noticed. She had me against the wall and she kept punctuating her conversation by bumping me with her pelvis. I swear it! ‘Tell me all about mining,’ bump, bump. ‘It must be so interesting,’ bump, bump.” He laughed.

  “Oh, no!” Helen said. “And she kept telling me about these nice virtuous people and how no one was so corny as to have affairs any more!”

  “She had hands like an octopus,” Bert said. “I had to remove each finger separately when she was talking to me.”

  “I’m delighted you’re so irresistible, dear.”

  “Oh, so am I.” They both laughed.

  “After we put out the presents, let’s open ours now,” Helen said. “I want you to see what I found for you.”

  They went to the closet and took out the gifts for the children, all wrapped, and piled them under the tree until they reached the lowest branches. Then they found the ones each had bought for the other. “You first,” Helen said.

  She watched his face as he unwrapped the small, heavy parcel. She wanted him to like it, to feel the way she had when she found it for him; and as always when she gave a present, she was a little afraid that it would not mean what she had meant it to, that it would be only another gift.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said. He held it on his palm—a round crystal paperweight, glittering with colors from the lamplight, smooth and solid and heavy, with an inscription engraved on it.

  “Read it,” Helen whispered.

  “‘Chance cannot change my love nor time impair …’”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know. Thank you, darling.” He handed her a narrow, small box wrapped in white paper. “This is for you.”

  She could tell by the feel of the box that it was a piece of jewelry, and when she lifted the lid she saw that it was a gold bracelet. “Oh, it’s marvelous! Thank you.” She held out her wrist for him to attach the clasp.

  “It looks very nice on you,” he said. “I was afraid it might be too heavy.”

  “No, I love it.”

  He looked at the bracelet with his head cocked slightly, appraising the look of it. “Yes. I like it.”

  The living-room clock chimed softly. “I don’t want to look,” Bert said. “What time is it? No, don’t tell me.”

  “It’s only one-thirty.”


  “And the kids will come thundering in at six.”

  “It’s not so late,” Helen said softly.

  He put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s go to bed,” he murmured.

  He always went into the bathroom ahead of her because she took so much longer than he did, and Helen walked out onto the balcony that led off their bedroom overlooking the sea. The stars seemed very low and big in the cloudless black sky, and the beach was white with moonlight. Here and there on the sand she could see a tiny figure that sometimes briefly moved apart so she could see it was really two. None of the lovers below on the beach seemed ashamed that they were loving each other in public. Even if the night had been a disguise, fifty feet away on the sand there was always another couple as oblivious and occupied as the first. They were the poor from the crowded mountaintop favellas, and the not quite so poor from the Copacabana slums, taking the only real pleasure they had; and they were the young romantics who liked to make love on a moonlit beach, and some of them were wealthy drunks who had wandered from a party and were not quite sure how they had arrived on the beach at all. It was a night for love. But every night in Rio was a night for love.