A Manual for Cleaning Women (26 page)

They fed the animals at the same time each day but the rest of the days and nights got turned around. They stayed in bed all day, had breakfast when it got dark, walked in the woods by the light of the moon. They watched
Mr. Lucky
with Cary Grant at three in the morning. Lazy in the hot sun they rocked in the rowboat on the pond, fishing, reading John Donne, William Blake. They lay in the damp grass, watching the chickens, talking about their childhoods, their children. They watched Nolan Ryan shut out the A’s, slept in sleeping bags by a lake hours away through the brush. They made love in the claw-foot tub, in the rowboat, in the woods, but mostly in the shimmering green of the sun porch when it rained.

What was love? Maria asked herself, watching the clean lines of his face as he slept. What’s to keep the two of us from doing it, loving.

They both admitted how rarely they spoke with anyone, laughed at themselves for how much they had to say now, how they interrupted each other, yes, but. It was hard when he talked about his new book or referred to Heidegger and Wittgenstein, Derrida, Chomsky and others whose names she didn’t even recognize.

“I’m sorry. I’m a poet. I deal with the specific. I am lost with the abstract. I simply don’t have the background to discuss this with you.”

Dixon was furious. “How the devil did you translate my other book? I know you did a good job by the response it got. Did you read the damn thing?”

“I did do a good job. I didn’t distort a word. Someone could translate my poems perfectly but still think they were personal and trivial. I didn’t … grasp … the philosophical implications in the book.”

“Then this visit is a farce. My books are everything I am. It is pointless for us to discuss anything at all.”

Maria started to feel hurt and angry and to let him go out the door alone. But she followed him, sat down beside him on the porch step. “It’s not pointless. And I’m learning about who you are.” Dixon held her then, kissed her, gingerly.

While he had been a student he had lived in a cabin a few acres away, in the woods. An old man had lived in this house and Dixon had done errands for him, brought him food and supplies from town. When the old man died he left the house and ten acres to Dixon, the rest of his land to the state for a bird sanctuary. They hiked the next morning to his old cabin. He had even had to carry in his water, he said. It was the best period of his life.

The wooden cabin was in a grove of cottonwood. There had been no path to it, and there seemed to be no landmarks at all in the scrub oak and mesquite. As they got close to it Dixon cried out, as if in pain.

Someone, kids probably, had shot out all the windows of the cabin, hacked up the inside with axes, spray-painted obscenities on the bare pine walls. It was hard to imagine anyone coming so far into the wilderness to do this. It looks like Oakland, Maria said. Dixon glared at her, turned around and started walking back through the trees. She kept him in sight but could not keep up with him. It was eerily quiet. Every once in a while there would be an enormous Brahmin bull in the shade of a tree. Just standing there, unblinking, stolid, silent.

Dixon didn’t speak on the drive home. Green grasshoppers clicked against the windshield. “I’m sorry, about what happened to your house,” she said and when he didn’t answer she said, “I do that too, when I feel pain. Crawl under the house like a sick cat.” He still said nothing. When they pulled up outside his house he reached over and opened her door. The engine was still running. “I’m going to go get my mail. Back in a while. Maybe you could read some of my book.”

She knew that by book he meant the hundreds of cards on the tables. Why had he asked her to do that now? Maybe it was because he couldn’t talk. She did that sometimes. When she wanted to tell someone how she felt it was too hard, so she would show them a poem. Usually they didn’t understand what she had intended.

With a sick feeling she went into the house. It would be fine to live where you didn’t even close your doors. She started into Dixon’s living room to put on some music, but changed her mind, went into the room with the cards. She sat on a stool that she moved from table to table as she read and reread the sentences on the cards.

“You have no idea what they say, do you?” He had come in silently, was standing behind her as she leaned over the table. She had not touched any of the cards.

He began to move them around the table, frantically, like someone playing that game where you line up numbers correctly. Maria left and went out on the porch.

“I asked you not to walk on that floor with shoes on.”

“What floor? What are you talking about?”

“The white floor.”

“I haven’t been near that room. You are crazy.”

“Don’t lie to me. They are your footprints.”

“Oh, sorry. I did start to go in there. I couldn’t have taken more than two steps.”

“Exactly. Two.”

“Thank God I’m going home in the morning. I’m going for a walk right now.”

Maria walked down the path toward the pond, got into the green rowboat and shoved herself away from the bank. She laughed at herself when the dragonflies reminded her of Oakland police helicopters.

Dixon strode down the path to the pond, walked out into the water, and pulled himself into the boat. He kissed her, pinned her down into the watery bed of the boat while he entered her. They clashed wildly into each other and the boat bobbed and spun until it finally moored itself in the reeds. They lay there, rocking in the hot sun. She wondered if so much passion had come from simple rage or from a sense of loss. They made love wordlessly most of the night, in the sun porch to the sound of the rain. Before the rain they had heard the cry of a coyote, the squawk of the chickens as they roosted in the trees.

They rode to the airport in silence, past the miles of bluebonnets and primrose. Just drop me off, she said, not that much time.

Maria took a cab home from the airport to her high-rise apartment in Oakland. Hello to the security guard, check the mail. The elevator was empty, as were the halls during the day. She put down her suitcase inside her door and turned on the air. She took off her shoes, as everyone did when they walked on her carpet. She went into the bedroom and lay down on her own bed.

La Vie en Rose

The two girls lie facedown upon towels that say
GRAN HOTEL PUCÓN
. The sand is black and fine; the water in the lake is green. Deeper sweet green the pines that edge the lake. Villarica volcano towers white above the lake and the trees, the hotel, the village of Pucón. Spumes of smoke rise from the volcano’s cone and vanish into the clear blue of the sky. Blue beach cabanas. Gerda’s cap of red hair, a yellow beach ball, the red sashes of
huasos
cantering among the trees.

Once in a while one of Gerda’s or Claire’s tan legs waves languidly in the air, shaking off sand, a fly. Sometimes their young bodies quiver with the helpless giggle of adolescent girls.

“And the look on Conchi’s face! All she could think of to say was ‘
Ojala
.’ What nerve!”

Gerda’s laugh is a short Germanic bark. Claire’s is high, rippling.

“She won’t admit how silly she was either.”

Claire sits up to put oil on her face. Her blue eyes scan the beach.
Nada.
The two handsome men haven’t reappeared.

“There she is … the Anna Karenina woman…”

On a red-and-white canvas chair beneath the pines.

The melancholy Russian lady in a panama hat, with a white silk parasol.

Gerda groans. “Oh, she’s lovely. Her nose. Gray flannel in summer. And she looks so miserable. She must have a lover.”

“I’m going to cut my hair like hers.”

“On you it would look like you put a bowl on your head. She just has style.”

“She’s the only one here who does. All these tacky Argentines and Americans. There don’t seem to be any Chileans at all, not even on the staff. The whole village was speaking German.”

“When I wake up I think at first that I’m a little girl in Germany or Switzerland. I can hear the maids whispering in the hall, singing from the kitchen.”

“Nobody’s smiling but those Americans, not even those children, so serious with their pails.”

“Only Americans smile all the time. You’re speaking in Spanish but your silly grin gives you away. Your father laughs all the time too. The bottom just dropped out of the copper market, ha-ha.”

“Your father laughs a lot too.”

“Only when something is stupid. Look at him. He must have swum to that raft a hundred times this morning.”

Gerda and Claire always go places with one of their fathers. To movies and horse races with Mr. Thompson, to the symphony or to play golf with Herr von Dessaur. In contrast, their Chilean friends are invariably with mothers and aunts, grandmothers and sisters.

Gerda’s mother was killed in Germany during the war; her stepmother is a physician, rarely at home. Claire’s mother drinks, is in bed or sanatoriums most of the time. After school the two friends go home to tea, to read or study. Their friendship began over books, in their empty houses.

Herr von Dessaur dries himself. He is wet, out of breath. Cool gray eyes. As a child Claire had felt guilty watching war movies. She liked the Nazis … their overcoats, their cars, cool gray eyes.

“
Ja
. Enough. Go swim. Let me see your crawls, how you are diving now.”

“He’s being nice, no?” Claire says on the way to the water.

“He’s nice when he is not with her.”

The girls swim with sure strokes far out into the icy lake, until they hear
Gerdalein!
and see her father waving. They swim to the raft, lie warm against the wood. The white volcano sparkles and smokes high above them. Laughter from a boat far out on the lake, hoofbeats on the dirt road by the shore. No other sound. Lap, lap of the water against the rocking raft.

In the vast high-ceilinged dining room white curtains billow in the breeze from the lake. Palm leaves fan in urns. One waiter in tails ladles the consommé, another breaks eggs, drops one into each pewter bowl. Together the two men bone trout, ignite desserts.

A stooped white-haired gentleman sits down across from the beautiful Anna Karenina.

“Could he be her husband?”

“I hope he isn’t Count Vronsky.”

“Where did you girls get the idea that they were Russians? I heard them speaking German.”

“Really, Papi? What did they say?”

“She said, ‘I shouldn’t have eaten prunes for breakfast.’”

The girls rent a rowboat, set out for an island. The lake is immense. They take turns, laughing, paddling in circles at first but then gliding smooth. Splash and dip of the oars. They beach the boat in a cove, dive from a rock ledge into the green water that tastes of fish and moss. They swim for a long time and then lie spread-eagled in the sun, their faces buried in wild clover. There is a long slow tremor that rolls and shudders the ground beneath their young bodies. They cling to the clumps of lavender blossoms as the earth undulates below them, away from under them. Their eyes are level with the green rippling of the land. Does it grow dark with smoke from the volcano? The odor of sulfur is intense, terrifying. The temblor stops. For a split second there is no sound and then the birds burst into an alarm of hysterical chatter. Cows low and horses whinny from all around the lake. Dogs are barking, barking. Above the girls the birds whirr and whistle in the branches of the trees. High waves slap against the stones. The girls are silent. Neither can speak about what she feels, something different from fear. Gerda laughs, her bark of a laugh.

*   *   *

“We swam for miles, Papi. Look at our hands, blisters from rowing! Did you feel the tremor?”

He had been playing golf when the temblor came, was on the green. A golfer’s nightmare … to see your ball coming away from the hole, toward you!

The young men are in the lobby, talking with the desk clerk. Oh, they are handsome. Strong and tanned with white teeth. They are flashily dressed, in their mid-twenties. Claire’s, the dark one, has a cleft chin. When he looks down his lashes brush high bronzed cheekbones. Be still, my heart! Claire laughs. Herr von Dessaur says the men are far too old, and vulgar, clearly the worst sort. Farmers, probably. He escorts the girls past them, instructs them to read in their room until dinner.

The dining room is festive. Because of the temblor people nod to the other patrons, speak to the waiters, chat with one another. There are musicians, very old men. Violins play tangos, waltzes. “Frenesi.”
La Mer.

The young men stand in the doorway, framed by potted palms and sconces of wine-colored velvet.

“Papi, they’re not farmers. Look!”

They are resplendent in powder-blue uniforms of Chilean aviation cadets. Pale blue trimmed with gold braid. High collars and epaulets, gold buttons. They wear boots with spurs, floor-length woolen capes, swords. They hold their hats and gloves in the crooks of their arms.

“Military! Worse!” Herr von Dessaur laughs. He averts his face, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

“Capes on a summer night. Spurs and swords in an airplane? For God’s sake, just look at the poor fools!”

Claire and Gerda stare at them with awe. The cadets return their looks with soulful gazes, half-smiles. They sit at a little table by the bandstand, drinking brandy from huge snifters. The blond one has a tortoiseshell cigarette holder which he clamps between his teeth.

“Papi, admit it. His eyes are the very same blue as his cape.”

“Yes. Chilean Air Force Blue. The Chilean Air Force does not even have any airplanes!”

It must have been too hot after all. They move to a table by the door to the terrace, drape their capes on their chairs.

The girls plead to be able to stay up longer, to listen to the music, watch the people tango. Sweat curls the hair on the brows of the dancers, whose eyes are locked, hypnotized. Sleepwalking, the dancers twirl and dip to the violins.

The men, Roberto and Andrés, click the heels of their boots. They introduce themselves to Gerda’s father, ask for his kind permission to dance with the two young ladies. Herr von Dessaur starts to refuse but still finds the cadets so amusing he says one dance and then it’s time for the girls to go to bed.