Considering his wife to be in no shape to grasp the situation, Richard accepted the post in New York without consulting her. He was sure he was doing what was best for her, quietly getting rid of almost all their possessions and packing up the rest. He found it impossible to throw away Bibi’s toys or Pablo’s baby clothes. Instead, he put them into three boxes, intending to entrust them to his mother-in-law shortly before leaving. He prepared Anita’s suitcases quite ruthlessly, knowing it was all the same to her. For months now she had only worn her gym clothes and had hacked off her hair with a pair of kitchen scissors.
His plan to find some excuse or other to rescue his wife and leave Rio without any melodrama failed when Anita’s mother and sisters guessed his intentions the moment he turned up with the three boxes. They sniffed out his plans like trained bloodhounds and were determined to prevent the journey. They pointed out how fragile Anita was: How was she going to survive in that dangerous city, with that complicated language, without family or friends? If she was depressed surrounded by her own family, how was she going to feel among American strangers? Richard refused to listen; his mind was made up. To avoid offending them he made sure not to say as much, but he thought it was time for him to consider his own future and not pay so much attention to his unreachable wife. For her part, Anita showed complete indifference toward her fate. It was all the same to her what she did, or where she was.
Armed with a bag containing her various medications, Richard led his wife to the plane. Anita boarded meekly without looking back or making any farewell gesture to her family, who were all standing in tears behind the airport’s glass wall. During the ten-hour flight she stayed awake, refusing to eat anything, and never once asked where they were going. Horacio and his wife were waiting for them at the airport in New York.
Horacio did not recognize his friend’s wife. He remembered her as beautiful and sensual, all curves and smiles, but the person who appeared before him had aged ten years, dragged her feet along the ground, and looked furtively from left to right as though expecting an attack. She did not return their greetings or allow his wife to accompany her to the restroom. God help us, this is much worse than I thought, Horacio murmured to himself. His friend did not look good either. Taking advantage of the free alcohol on board, Richard had been drinking for most of the journey. He had a three-day growth of stubble, his clothes were in tatters, he stank with a drunkard’s sweat, and without Horacio’s aid he would have probably been stranded in the airport with Anita.
The Bowmasters installed themselves in a university apartment that Horacio had arranged, intended for members of the faculty. This was a real find as it was in the center of Greenwich Village, had a low rent, and had a waiting list. After dropping their suitcases in the hallway and handing over the keys, Horacio shut himself in one of the rooms with his friend and gave him some advice. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants for every vacant academic post in the United States, he told him. The chance to teach at New York University did not come up twice, and so he needed to make the most of it. Richard had to control his drinking and create a good impression from the outset. There was no way he could turn up in the filthy, messy state he was in now.
“I recommended you, Richard. Don’t make me look bad.”
“Of course I won’t. I’m half dead from the journey and leaving Rio, or rather, the escape from Rio. I’ll spare you the Farinha family tragedy over our departure. Don’t worry, in a couple of days you’ll see me at the university as good as new.”
“What about Anita?”
“What about her?”
“She’s very frail, I’m not sure she can stay on her own, Richard.”
“She’ll have to get used to it, like everyone else. She doesn’t have her family here to spoil her. I’m all she has.”
“Then make sure you don’t let her down, brother,” said Horacio as he left.
Evelyn
Brooklyn, 2011–2016
Evelyn Ortega began to work for the Leroy family in 2011. The house of statues, as she always called the family residence, had in the 1950s belonged to a Mafia boss and his numerous relatives, including two old spinsters and a Sicilian great-grandmother who refused to come out of her room when naked Greeks were brought into the garden. Frank Leroy was amused by the property’s murky past and the weather-worn statues covered in pigeon droppings. His wife, Cheryl, would have preferred a modern apartment to this pretentious mansion, but her husband was the one who made all the decisions, big and small, and they were never open for discussion. The house of statues had many conveniences the mobster had installed for his family’s comfort. There was wheelchair access, an internal elevator, and a two-car garage. It was also well situated on a quiet street in a neighborhood that had become respectable.
It took Cheryl Leroy no more than five minutes with Evelyn Ortega before she offered her the job. They urgently needed a nanny and could not worry about details. The previous one had left five days earlier and never returned. She must have been deported; that’s what happens when you employ people without documents, Cheryl told herself. Normally it was her husband who dealt with hiring, paying, and firing staff. Through his office he had many contacts and could find Latino and Asian immigrants ready to work for next to nothing, but he made it a rule not to confuse work and family. And anyway, his contacts were hopeless when it came to finding a trustworthy nanny; they had been through several dreadful experiences. This was one of the few things the couple agreed on, and so Cheryl had begun looking for nannies through the Pentecostal Church, which always had a list of reliable women eager to find employment. This young girl from Guatemala probably had no papers either, but for the moment Cheryl preferred to ignore that fact: there would be time for that later. She liked her honest face and respectful manners. She sensed she had found a gem, someone very different from the others who had passed through her house. Her only doubts were about her age, because she seemed barely an adolescent gone through puberty, and her size. Cheryl had read somewhere that the indigenous women of Guatemala were the smallest people on earth, and now she had the proof right before her eyes. She wondered if this tiny scrap of a girl, with a quail’s bones and a bad stammer, would be able to manage her son, Frankie, who must have weighed more than she did and was uncontrollable when he had one of his fits.