The street was a cacophony of languages going around the world, electronic salsa and tourists coloring the bars, residents rollerskating by the curb, models posing on the beach for the next summer catalog. The street was heat. Marisa sighed with pleasure at the caress of the sun on her face. After one year and a half living in Toronto, she was grateful to be here and couldn't wait to go back to Brazil with Marco.
Sometimes she felt guilty for their return, but she had never demanded that Marco left Canada. He was the one opting to relinquish a career in Toronto in favor of opening his own school in São Paulo. For years he had this wish of forming students in a deeper sense rather than merely indoctrinating them for the job market machinery. Marco was a visionary and would fulfill his dream. Then why did she feel this pang of guilt?
Her departure to Toronto was encompassed by ambivalence. On one side stood Marco and the adventure. On the other, the longing for stability after a succession of turbulences in her life—the sudden loss of her father and the estrangement of her mother, the uncertainty of her professional vocation and the breakup with Marco. Now the return to her hometown was also encompassed by ambivalence, a mix of joy, disquiet and defeat.
Marisa had envisioned a far different scenario in Toronto: building a solid relationship with Marco, studying to pursuit a career, embracing the future. Everything collapsed. She arrived in January in high spirits, enrolled in English classes and explored the city. Her euphoria, however, slowly waned into wait. Marisa waited for Marco to come back from long working hours, waited for time to pass to restart her studies.
In September she resumed the journalism course at the University of Toronto. In that hiatus of wait, however, Marisa had changed. The first class didn't interest her nor the second and the third. With dismay, she became aware of having chosen the wrong course and dropped out of college. All her wait then tumbled into a void. She reprimanded herself for being dependent on Marco, grew frustrated, and the occasional arguments with him thickened...
Marisa found distraction from those melancholic memories in the extensive costume collection of a party supply store on Washington Avenue while daydreaming about the ball at sea. She left shop in better spirits, armed with two bags, and proceeded to the al fresco mall on Lincoln Road, zigzagging along the wide street bisected by fountains and flower beds in search of a gift for Marco.
Their dating anniversary would be on the last day of the cruise. Two years together, cotton anniversary—such a fragile material. Research showed after two years a couple would stop investing in the relationship and became accommodated. But she refused to accept that her bond with Marco could be reduced to paltry statistics. Without thinking, Marisa entered a vintage store and began gathering an armful of clothes to relieve her increasing anxiety. In the fitting room, she remained undecided.
When Marisa opened the door, she found a woman waiting for her turn to use the fitting room. Short, with a robust physique, the girl appeared to be in the same situation as Marisa, almost disappearing behind the pile of clothes she carried. Above the pile emerged a pair of brown eyes and a perfectly oval forehead framed by brown-greyish hair tied in the tiniest ponytail. Marisa asked for her help to select a dress. The girl smiled. They spent the next hour amid changes of clothes and interjections.
"I can't believe I'm leaving with half a dozen dresses," Marisa exclaimed as they approached the register.
"If you find a piece that fits well, you have to seize the opportunity." The girl moistened her lips. "I'm thirsty like hell. Wanna drink something?"
The happy hour was close, and they sauntered along Lincoln Road until deciding for a bar that displayed works by local painters and offered outdoor tables. Marisa mentioned she'd attended wine tasting classes the previous year, suggesting they ordered a glass of Cinsault like the one she had tried at the course. It didn't take long for the wine to arrive at the table—a fragrant rosé that captured the hues of dusk—and the two introduced themselves at last.
The girl, Zoe Evans, was a physical education teacher from New York. She was spending the week in Miami after breaking up with her boyfriend. During her absence, he would move out of the apartment they shared.
"It will be weird going back to an empty home," Marisa observed.
"He wasn't the right man for me. I'm used to getting by on my own. Besides, there are plenty of fish in the sea." Zoe shrugged. "Now that I'm here, I want to make the most of it. What about you, do you have a boyfriend?"
Marisa told her about Marco. It felt like she had known Zoe forever and the two chatted like old friends. They ordered a full bottle of Cinsault, their glasses emptied and filled up again. Marisa played with hers, moving it around and contemplating the tears that formed on the glass.
"I've never had such an affinity with anyone like I do with Marco. But lately our relationship grew cold."
She had the feeling they lived miles apart under the same roof. At each fight the air between them thickened with a sticky patina that reconciliations no longer managed to clear. The fight one month prior to their departure from Toronto, which led her to seek Madame Lefèvre, had been the worst in a series. Marco exhausted himself organizing work before his leave from school and came home even later than usual, while Marisa took care of the move by herself. She understood the circumstances. What she couldn't understand was why everything needed to be perfect at work but not in his personal life, not in their relationship.
That day Marco told her he would be home early. She was happy, prepared his favorite dish and waited. And waited. She waited three hours with the table all set and the food growing cold. Marco showed up at last. Marisa tried to restrain herself. And, restraining herself, she asked why he didn't warn her he'd be late. She had called him several times and only got voicemail. An apology linked to an impatient explanation ensued: an emergency that Marco was unable to solve, the dead battery of the cell phone, and every minute he would think he was going home and papers piling up on his desk and requests coming his way without a truce. He claimed it was a question of ethics to settle certain pending issues before moving back to Brazil. Marisa inquired where his ethics were in regard to her. Marco replied if she wasn't so self-centered she wouldn't ask that.
Self-centered, her? And what about him?
Marisa only realized the extent of her resentment when, announced by the first bubble from a slow boiling, all surfaced at once. All that was stifled inside her chest in the name of understanding, repressed by her insecurities, fermented by frustration. The evening she had gone alone to the theater because Marco was held in a meeting. How often his dinner consisted of a plate of food kept in the oven. The countless DVDs she watched with no one to exchange impressions. Marco's unavailability to accompany her to places with her college friends and everybody mocking her for having an imaginary boyfriend. The damn work that, besides consuming weekdays, sometimes devoured Saturdays or even Sunday evenings in the form of late reports. And the distractions and the forgetfulness and the absence that now not only possessed the body but also the mind, heart, soul.
All of that surfaced. When he sat in the armchair and said he wasn't hungry, the bubble burst. Marisa threw the platter of rice on the floor, the grains sprinkling the laminate boards and the dark stain of Madeira sauce and the shards of plates and the broken glasses and the utensils clinking as they crashed against the wall, against the baseboard, against Marco. That night they exchanged insults like they'd never done before and Marco slept on the couch. Marisa hated him. The next day, she hated herself. She fell ill for the first time since her arrival to the city. A fever provoking hallucinations and debilitating her in such a way that it left her bedridden for days. Her body, which until then stood strong, which until then wouldn't allow itself to fail like the rest did, finally succumbed to an implacable internal pressure, breaking apart like the shattered glass the previous evening, ready to be discarded along with the shards in the trash.
She remembered a dream she had on those feverish days. She was with Marco in his silver Lexus, he at the wheel and she, for some reason, in the back seat. All of a sudden he jumped out the window, leaving her by herself in the drifting car. Marisa grabbed the steering wheel as she fought to move to the driver seat. The car gained speed on a steep downhill toward a stone wall. It was a metaphor of her situation, of course: she had abandoned everything for Marco, whereas he retreated and left her to smash against the concrete.
"I've lost my brakes on a slope, Zoe. I can't stop the car."
Zoe addressed her an ambiguous look while recollecting her own experience with her ex-boyfriend—declarations of love, disappearances, the eternal returns and promises reiterated. She couldn't muster words to comfort Marisa. Instead, Zoe asked if she had admiration for Marco. 0:05 / 4:03
Marisa described how intelligent, ethical and resolute he was. And Marco had a sense of humor that made her crack up. He delivered sophisticated banter but also pulled pranks like a boy. Inside the cultured and brilliant man he presented to the world, lived a brat with a naughty smile and hands covered in dirt that endeared Marisa.
"I get it. You do admire Marco and everything is fine. You can tell the relationship has reached the breaking point when you no longer admire your partner."
"The question is if he admires me too. I'm twenty and Marco is thirty-two. Soon I'll turn twenty-one, but I think he wanted a more mature and experienced woman."
"Eventually the age gap will close. What's important is he chose you, or he wouldn't even suggest that you two lived together."
The day Marco proposed the move to Toronto, they were under an awning battered by a storm. The downpour resounded on the glass canopy and formed furious swirls in the drains. Marco's voice merged with thunders and the howl of the wind, his feverish eloquence rivaling the storm. To the pounding of the rain, words gushed that he had never uttered to her. He repeated how adorable she was and tried to explain it because, he said, adorable was the last refuge of language for describing one's beloved. Adorable meant everything—and she meant everything to him.
At that memory, Marisa blinked to restrain the ardor in her eyes. She hadn't found much to admire in herself lately. Taking a deep breath, she drank the wine and sighed. She missed how it was in the beginning. In the beginning, for instance, the two of them enjoyed cooking together: music, concentration, relaxation, tasting. They tasted the act, the moment, the complicity. With time they forgot how to taste even the food, which no longer was connection but simply a practical necessity. Time has spoiled their palate—the nasty time that devoured beginnings and relations.
"I miss how it was in the beginning," she repeated out loud.
"The beginning doesn't last forever," Zoe countered. "The euphoria, the tingling all over and the sensation that your heart will burst with happiness have an expiration date. Otherwise, no one would survive passion as it robs us of sleep, appetite, focus. Later the relationship matures and becomes rewarding in other ways."
"Then my relationship with Marco has matured backward and only worsened." Here, Marisa became exasperated. "And, on a second thought, what's the logical result of maturing? Decay.
"What if your relationship hasn't really matured? Hmmm... Sex is a surefire thermometer. If instead of going to bed you'd rather clean the kitchen or watch a rerun of Seinfeld, we have a problem."
"Sex is still good. Very good. I don't get as aroused, though."
"Why?"
"I don't know... Sometimes I think he wants me only for decompressing or for the sake of his hormones. Then I get annoyed and turned off."
Zoe recovered her joviality. It was easier dealing with a solid body governed by the punctuality of biology—bones, muscles, autonomic nervous system, reptilian brain—than with the intangible entanglement of emotions. The body was objective. Emotions always caused trouble.
"Do you know which is the biggest erogenous zone of all, Marisa?"
"The skin?"
"The brain. If you keep stuffing your head with nonsense, not even a sexual athlete will fix this. Let's get some new lingerie for you to wear tonight. Do something different with Marco, free your imagination and forget the past. Yesterday is dead letters, today is still a page with blank lines. Write something nice on it." Zoe raised her glass: "Cheers to the present!"
The bottle dried out while Marisa told her about the Aquamarine and the music festival. In the heat of the conversation, the evening caught them by surprise and the two hurried to pay the check. Marisa still needed to take care of Marco's gift—and the new lingerie.
There was an underwear store a couple of doors away, and off they went. Encouraged by the wine and Zoe, Marisa purchased a red-lace set that uncovered much more than it covered. Zoe said goodbye and Marisa continued her explorations, gathering additional ingredients for the night: bubble bath, aromatic oil, scented candles. She didn't find, however, the gift for Marco. Marisa wanted something special to erase the friction between them and mark a new phase in their relationship.
It was already past seven when she returned to the hotel. Marco hated waiting and Marisa found strange that he hadn't called, but she tried to reassure herself by making plans for the evening. Wine and strawberries coated with chocolate, new lingerie, massage, bubble bath, the game with the die... She laughed at herself and her romantic clichés. Upon turning the corner and seeing the hotel's façade with its neon friezes lit up, Marisa was seized by an inexplicable urgency. She hastened to catch the elevator already closing its doors and, on the third floor, dashed past this door and the other and the next. Breathlessly, she entered the suite. It was empty.
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Yep, my darlings... Where is he, what is he doing...? We'll see!
So, are you going to vote for this chapter for consoling a poor unconsoled writer??? You're so cruel!
Kisses :) xoxo