The Seamstress (78 page)

“Lucky for Dr. Eronildes then,” Degas replied. “You’re right, he wouldn’t compromise you or the boy; he doesn’t want you. He wants her. He will set a false date, and then send you a telegram at the last minute. He’ll give some excuse to call off your trip. He will cancel with you, but not with her. She’ll think she’s going to meet you and instead she’ll meet troops.”

“What do you mean?” Emília said. “What have you heard?”

“Nothing…,” Degas sputtered. “He’s a drunk, Emília, and he’s desperate. That’s why he’s suddenly friendly with Father.”

“He came here to visit me and Expedito; he used Dr. Duarte as an excuse. And he inherited plenty of money. He has no reason to be desperate.”

Degas shook his head. “The government owns the banks, Emília. How will your doctor get his inheritance unless he cooperates, unless he gives them something in return? Everyone knows he’s a coiteiro! Just like everyone knows my…situation…and pretends not to because of Father, but they hope, one day, to use it to their advantage. It’s the same thing, Emília. If Eronildes moves to the coast, he’ll need friends. He has no family anymore. His name means nothing here. If he doesn’t cooperate, his name will be mud. You can’t live in this place without a good name. You know that as well as I.”

Emília stood. Her legs felt heavy and numb; she grabbed the handrail for support.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked. “Why do you want to help me all of a sudden?”

Degas shrugged. “I don’t care about Father’s work anymore. In fact, I hope he never gets his precious heads. I hope he fails.”

Emília gripped the handrail harder. She kicked Degas’ thigh with the toe of her shoe, making him look up at her.

“You hope
I
fail,” she said. “You want me to stay here and feel guilty, so I can suffer like you. You didn’t save Felipe or warn him, and that’s your fault. But I’m going to save—”

Emília’s voice caught. She looked down the stairs; there were always maids lurking in the Coelhos’ hallways and listening behind doors.

“You never liked the doctor because everyone else liked him,” she continued. “People looked past his vice but they didn’t look past yours, so you want to smear him. Dr. Eronildes has always been honorable with me, Degas. You haven’t.”

“So you don’t believe me?” Degas asked.

“No.”

Degas heaved himself up from his place on the stairs.

“You’re right,” he said. “He earned your trust. I didn’t. Why should you listen to me? It was only a guess, anyhow.”

He leaned in tentatively, as if he meant to kiss her cheek. Emília turned away.

“I’m sorry,” Degas said and walked upstairs.

4

That night it rained. Swarms of oversize mosquitoes invaded the Coelho house. Dona Dulce combated them by lighting lemongrass candles, which made the house’s corridors and rooms foggy with smoke. When she slipped into bed, Emília’s sheets were damp and chilly. This kind of weather was odd for early December; Emília hooked a hammock across her room and lay inside it, swaying gently. She watched Expedito sleep. He kicked away the sheets of his tiny bed and lay uncovered beneath the mosquito netting. Emília was restless, her head overcrowded with doubts. Was Degas right about Eronildes? Would she be the lure that trapped the Seamstress? Emília decided to talk to Degas again, calmly, the next morning.

She woke to the sound of the Chrysler’s engine and the groan of the front gate. Emília sat up. The sky was dark and the Coelho house was still; the servants hadn’t started their chores. Outside, the rain continued. Despite the storm, a few birds tentatively announced daylight.

Degas wasn’t at breakfast. He’d left a note saying he’d gone to collect some things from his downtown office in preparation for his upcoming trip. Dr. Duarte was bleary-eyed and grumpy when he read the note. The rains distracted Dona Dulce—they fell hard, splashing into the house and forcing the maids to close all of the courtyard doors. The rooms became stuffy and humid.

At lunchtime, Degas didn’t arrive. Dr. Duarte called the Coelho office; one of the employees said that Degas hadn’t been there.

“Shirking responsibility!” Dr. Duarte said as he sat down for lunch. He got hold of Dona Dulce’s brass bell and ordered the maids to serve the meal.

“Something’s happened,” Dona Dulce said, shaking her head. “He never misses lunch without advising me.”

Dr. Duarte snorted. “I’ve called the police. They’ll keep an eye out for our car. I told them to cross the bridge to the Bairro Recife. He’s probably there.”

Dona Dulce reddened. They ate in silence.

That afternoon, when Expedito grew restless, Emília took him to the backyard. They ducked into the covered patio where the laundry dried. Rows of rope stretched along the patio ceiling. The lines sagged under the weight of soggy bedsheets, Degas’ dress shirts, Dona Dulce’s yellowed undergarments, Emília’s embroidered slips.

Expedito hid. Emília counted to ten. She walked past the walls of sheets. She pulled them apart in search of the boy. With the humidity and rain, nothing had dried. A cold pillowcase slapped her shoulder. Emília gasped. There was the rumble of a car in the drive, and then the honk of a horn.
Degas,
she thought. Expedito giggled. She swooped down on his hiding spot, pulling aside a sheet. The boy squealed. He was warm in her arms and smelled of baby powder. Emília held him close.

Outside, there were quick footsteps.

“Miss Emília!” the maid Raimunda yelled. Her voice was strained. She pushed though the sheets and clothes. “Miss Emília!” she called again.

Expedito placed his tiny hand over Emília’s mouth. She smiled and stayed quiet, but Raimunda soon found them. She looked frustrated and confused.

“You should go to the sitting room right away,” Raimunda said. “They’ve found Mr. Degas.”

Inside, Emília and the Coelhos met a green-uniformed police captain. He spoke in compact sentences.

Degas and the Coelhos’ Chrysler had been found. Witnesses along the road said that the Chrysler Imperial had been moving fast. The rain was impossibly thick. It was just after breakfast time. The car looked as if it was going to squeeze between a trolley and a broom vendor, but it swerved just before the Capunga Bridge. It fell into the Capibaribe. The current was strong. The car bobbed at first. Degas stayed inside. Some said he’d hit his head and that his eyes were closed. Others said that they were open. A trolley operator threw in a rope but it didn’t reach the car. The Chrysler lurched, then went under. No one swam in to save him; the river was too wild.

Dona Dulce slumped into her husband’s arms. Dr. Duarte held his wife, his arms shaking with the effort. The policeman stood uncomfortably in the parlor, waiting for someone to excuse him. He looked pleadingly at Emília but she could not speak.

At the velório, there was a closed casket covered in flowers. So many flowers! Emília felt dizzy from their scent. Dr. Duarte had commissioned an oil portrait of Degas to sit above the casket. In it, his son was thinner, his jaw more defined, his eyes bright and confident. Emília stared at the strange man in the portrait. The police deemed Degas’ death an accident but rumors still persisted. Some said that the car’s turn was too sharp to be accidental, even for a reckless driver like Degas. Emília hadn’t been allowed to see his body, but Dr. Duarte said it was bloated and unrecognizable. Degas’ casket would have to be closed for the velório and later buried in the Coelhos’ mausoleum.

Emília became the Widow Coelho; that’s what the newspapers called her, and how mourners addressed her as they kissed her hand and shuffled inside the mirrored ballroom where, years before, Emília had learned how to walk and speak and act during lessons with Dona Dulce. Without Degas, Emília’s place in the Coelho house was precarious. She would live the rest of her life as the Widow Coelho, dependent on Dr. Duarte’s generosity and subject to Dona Dulce’s watchful eye.

The room’s mirrors were covered for the wake, draped in black cloth like every other pane of glass in the Coelho house. After the police officer’s visit, Dona Dulce pulled her hair back into a painfully tight bun. She put so much starch on her mourning dresses that Emília could hear their skirts swishing through the house. She saw a red ring around Dona Dulce’s neck where the stiff collar had chafed her skin. Emília’s mother-in-law stopped checking each room in the Coelho house for dust and mildew. She stopped demanding extra effort from the maids. In the days after Degas’ death, Dona Dulce had a glassy-eyed and unfocused stare, as if she was making secret trips to the liquor cabinet. Emília recalled her father back in Taquaritinga and how, after her mother died, he’d had the same stare as Dona Dulce—caused not by drunkenness but by irreparable grief.

During the velório, Expedito sat beside Emília and occasionally peeked under her mantilla. She didn’t slap his hand away. She wanted Expedito to see her, to know that she was still there beneath the black lace. His peeking exposed her face, and Emília heard Dona Dulce hiss to one of the guests:

“Do you see? She is like a stone. Not even one tear!”

Emília couldn’t cry. Each time she thought of Degas, she pictured him peaceful in the Chrysler’s front seat as brown water rushed through the windows. Degas had finally escaped the Coelho house and all of its obligations. He’d returned to Felipe. But before leaving, Degas had placed a seed of doubt in Emília’s mind and, in the days after his death, that seed opened and took root. Emília recalled their last conversation, on the stairs. She wasn’t sure if Degas’ warning was an attempt at redemption, or another self-serving lie.

The line of mourners moved slowly forward.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the men said. Some women whispered to Emília: “It’s a shame there are no children to keep the family name. Children are a great comfort.” Other women said: “It’s a blessing there were no children to suffer through this.” Emília nodded serenely after each comment, giving no hint of her emotions. Because the casket was closed there was no body to crowd around and inspect, so the guests observed Emília and the Coelhos instead. They also took the opportunity to study the rarely visited Coelho house. Mourners crowded the parlor, the sitting room, the ballroom, and the dining room with its buffet of cookies and large silver tureens of coffee. Only coffee was served in an effort to keep the mourners awake throughout the night.

Coffee made Emília jittery. She’d drunk too many cups of it and now, as the sky grew dark and the ballroom lights clicked on, Emília could not keep still. She shifted in her chair, smoothed her black dress, arranged her mantilla. Incense smoke seemed to coat her tongue, her throat. The room felt too small. Expedito was already upstairs, safely in bed, with Raimunda watching him. Children didn’t have to stay up all night during a wake, but wives did. Emília sighed.

“Excuse me,” she said to Dona Dulce, Dr. Duarte, and the other mourners who crowded around their chairs. Emília stood and quickly left the room. She needed air. The courtyard was filled with visitors, all dressed in black. They smoked, chatted, admired the fountain, and toyed with the jabotis. Emília bypassed the courtyard and moved toward the front door. She removed her mantilla, balling the small piece of black lace in her hand. She would leave the property—take a walk up and down Rua Real da Torre until the coffee had worn off.
A lady doesn’t walk aimlessly.
She heard Dona Dulce’s rule in her head.
A lady always has a destination, an agenda.

I’ve got one,
Emília thought.

Her bags were still packed, despite the fact that Dr. Duarte had canceled the check he’d written for Emília’s train tickets to Maceió. For a full year after her husband’s death, a widow was required to mourn at home. For the sake of propriety, Emília couldn’t leave her house, she couldn’t appear in the newspaper, she couldn’t work at her atelier, and she certainly couldn’t travel. Emília, however, had stopped caring about propriety. As soon as the mourners dissipated, as soon as Dona Dulce returned to her kitchen and stopped keenly observing Emília’s expressions of grief, she would escape the Coelho house and go to the countryside. She didn’t need Dr. Duarte’s money—she had her escape fund. Even if she had to bribe the gardener and gatekeeper, even if she had to leave in the middle of the night, Emília would leave. She would not miss her meeting at Dr. Eronildes’ ranch.

As if fate were confirming her intentions, Emília saw the doctor himself in the Coelhos’ front hall, hunched over the guest book. Eronildes signed his name slowly. When he reached the “condolences” section, he pondered for a minute, then scribbled a message. His face was oily; his nose and forehead shone in the lamplight. He smiled at the Coelho maid who attended him, but when he saw Emília the smile disappeared.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, motioning the maid away.

“I was already in Recife,” Eronildes said. “I told you in my note that I’d planned to come. I didn’t expect to find you here.”

“Where else would I be?” Emília said.

“No, I meant in the hallway.”

“I needed air.”

Eronildes nodded. “I’m sorry for your loss. A terrible accident,” he said. “You are in luto-fechado now. You can’t leave the house for a year.”

“Yes,” Emília said. She looked around and then lowered her voice. “I’m not going to follow it.”

“No?” Eronildes said, looking more relieved than surprised.

“The Bergmanns are on their way,” Emília whispered. “When is the meeting?”

“I don’t know.”

Emília balled her mantilla tighter in her hands. “Why?”

“She wants proof. I came here to collect it. And to pay my respects, of course.”

“Proof?”

“She won’t commit to a date without proof. Something of yours.”

Emília nodded.

“The more personal, the better—” Dr. Eronildes said.

“Excuse me,” Emília interrupted.

Leaving the foyer, she climbed the front stairs two by two. In Emília’s room, Raimunda dozed beside Expedito’s bed. The boy lay with his face pressed against a pillow. Emília tiptoed inside. A floorboard creaked. Raimunda sat up.