State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [14]
“But say he’s not dead. I know you don’t believe it but just say. Say that he’s sick and he needs me to come and find him. In that case there isn’t any time to wait for Mr. Fox to reassemble his committee to find someone else to send to Brazil who has no idea what he’s doing.”
Slowly Marina’s sight adjusted to the darkness. She could make out the shapes in her bedroom, the dresser, the lamp. “I’ll talk to him. I promise. I’ll make sure he gets this done right.”
“I’m going to go down there,” Karen said.
“No, you’re not.” It was all a form of shock, Marina understood that. Maybe tomorrow Karen wouldn’t remember this conversation at all.
The phone was quiet for a long time. “I would,” she said. “I swear to God if it wasn’t for the boys.”
“Look,” Marina said, “this isn’t something that any of us can figure out now. You’ve got to get some rest. We have to give Mr. Fox a chance to find out what he can.”
“I gave Mr. Fox everything I’ve got,” she said.
That afternoon Marina had thought that Karen would never speak to her again, that she would always blame her for bearing the news. The fact that she was the person Karen Eckman called in the middle of the night felt something like forgiveness, and for that forgiveness she was deeply grateful. “What time did you take the sleeping pill?”
Marina waited. She watched the glowing second hand pass the three, the six, the nine.
“Karen?”
“You could go.”
So now Marina understood what this conversation was about. When Karen said it, a picture of Anders came very clearly into Marina’s mind: his back was against an impenetrable bank of leaves, his feet in the water. He was holding a letter. He was looking down river for the boy in the dugout log. He was dead. Marina might not have a great deal of faith in Dr. Swenson but Dr. Swenson wasn’t the sort to announce a death where no death had occurred, that would constitute a frivolous waste of time. “You’re the second person to tell me that tonight.”
“Anders said you knew her. He said she was a teacher of yours.”
“She was,” Marina said, not wanting to explain. Marina was from Minnesota. No one ever believed that. At the point when she could have taken a job anywhere she came back because she loved it here. This landscape was the one she understood, all prairie and sky. She and Anders had that in common.
“I know how much I’m asking,” Karen said. “And I know how terrible you feel about Anders and about me and the boys. I know that I’m using all of it against you and how unfair it is and I still want you to go.”
“I understand.”
“I know you understand,” Karen said. “But will you go?”
Two
First things first. Marina made an appointment with an epidemiologist in St. Paul and got a ten-year vaccine for yellow fever and a tetanus shot. She got a prescription for an antimalarial, Lariam, and was told to take the first pill immediately. After that she would take one pill a week for the duration of her trip, and then one a week for four weeks after her return home. “Watch this stuff,” the doctor told her. “It can make you feel like jumping off a roof.”
Marina wasn’t worried about jumping off a roof. Her worries were centered around plane tickets, packing, English-Portuguese dictionaries, how much Pepto-Bismol would be enough. From time to time she thought about the upper quadrant of her left arm, which, since those two shots, felt like both needles had broken off their respective hypodermics and were now lodged in her humerus like a pair of hot spears. She allowed these more practical concerns to stand temporarily in place for her thoughts of Anders and Karen and Dr. Swenson, none of whom she could manage at the moment. It wasn’t until the third night after she took the first tablet of Lariam that Marina’s thoughts swung sharply in the direction of India and her father. In the process of leaving for the Amazon, she had inadvertently solved a mystery that at present was the farthest thing from her mind: What had been wrong with her childhood?
And then the unexpected answer: these pills.
It came to her in the night when she