State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [13]
In the end neither Marina nor Mr. Fox could face dinner. They finished their drinks, two apiece, and drove back to the parking lot at Vogel, where Marina got in her car to go home. There was no further argument, no plans for the Amazon or the evening ahead. They had both been certain that the answer would be to go to bed together, hold each other through the long night as a means of warding off death, but there in the parking lot they split apart naturally, both of them too tired and too fundamentally alone in their thoughts to stay with the other.
“I’ll call to say good night,” Mr. Fox said.
Marina nodded and she kissed him, and when she was home and in bed after the bath she had so desperately wanted, he did call and said good night, but only good night, with no discussion of the day. When the phone rang again, five minutes or five hours after she had turned out the light, she did not think it would be Mr. Fox. Her first startled thought was that it was Anders. It had something to do with a dream she was having. Anders was calling to say his car had broken down in the snow and he needed her to come and pick him up.
“Marina, I’m sorry, I’m waking you.”
It was a woman’s voice, and then she realized it was Karen’s voice. Marina reached beneath her to try and straighten out the nightgown that had worked its way into twisted rope around her waist. “It’s all right.”
“Dr. Johnson brought some sleeping pills over but they didn’t do anything.”
“Sometimes they don’t,” Marina said. She picked up the little clock on her bedside table whose tiny hands glowed green in the dark, 3:25.
“They worked for everyone else. Everyone in the house is sound asleep.”
“Do you want me to come over?” She could go back now and sit on the kitchen floor with Karen and Pickles. She could lie on Anders’ side of the bed and hold Karen’s hand in the dark until she fell asleep. This time she would be ready, she would know what to do.
“No, it’s okay. I’ve got my family here, even if they’re asleep. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about all this, right? Of course I’m thinking about this.” Her voice was remarkably calm on the other end of the line.
“Sure.”
“And I’ve got all these questions now.”
“Of course,” Marina said, unable to think of a single question she’d be capable of answering.
“Well, why does she say in the letter that she’s keeping his few possessions for his wife? Does she think that I’m going to come by and pick up his watch?” Her voice wavered a bit and just as quickly she regained control. “Don’t you think she’d mail them?”
His camera, wallet, passport, watch, maybe the field guides and maybe some clothing but she doubted that. Dr. Swenson would return the things that she deemed important, which is to say she would set them aside and forget them. “Maybe she just thought she would give them to the next person who came down there. It would be safer. I imagine a lot of things get lost in the mail.” It occurred to her then that this letter could have been lost, or it might have come three days ago, or a month from now. How long would they have waited passively for news of Anders while they went about their lives?
“But what if she isn’t sending the things because he still has them?”
Marina rubbed her thumb and index finger into the corners of her eyes. She was trying to pull herself up from sleep by using the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry. I’m not following you.”
“What if he isn’t dead?”
Marina pressed her head deep into the pillow. “He’s dead, Karen.”
“Why? Because we got a letter from some crazy woman in Brazil who nobody’s allowed to talk to? I need more than that. This is the worst thing that’s ever going to happen to me. It’s the worst thing that’s going to happen to my boys ever in their entire lives, and I’m supposed to take a stranger’s word on it?”
There had to be an equation for probability and proof. At some point probability becomes so great it eclipses the need for proof, although maybe not if it was your husband. “Mr. Fox is going to send someone down there. They’re going to find out what