State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [46]
Where in the world was the rain? Those blinding cataracts that she had endured day after day? She needed one now. It didn’t necessarily cool things down but at least for a while it blocked out the sun. “They couldn’t like me.”
“They think you’re very natural. Mrs. Bovender told me that. They see you as a person who is honestly grieving her friend and trying to get information about his death.”
“Well, that’s true,” she said, although that description only covered her obligations to Karen.
“They’re starting to think that Dr. Swenson would like you,” Milton said.
Marina felt the top of her head turning soft as the sun worked into her brain, unloosening its coils. “Dr. Swenson knew me once already. I’m quite certain she had no feelings for me one way or the other.” She mopped at her face with a large red handkerchief Rodrigo had pressed on her that morning. When she declined it once he had made her a gift of it, though probably it went on Vogel’s account all the same. Under her clothes she felt the swimsuit with every inhalation. It wrapped around her body like an endless bandage, growing larger and looser as it soaked her up. She kept pushing the cloth against her face. Her vision was clouded by the sweat in her eyes. She could only make out the most basic elements of the landscape: sand, water, sky.
“What the Bovenders require is diplomacy,” Milton said. “They just need some more of your time. They want to study you and make sure you are what you seem.”
Marina squinted out towards the waving line of the horizon. “I don’t see them anymore.” What she meant to say was that she thought she might faint. At that point she might have said Milton’s name. She didn’t fall, but she was thinking of falling, and with that thought he took her arm and walked her over the remaining expanse of sandy beach to the river. He walked her into the water up to their knees and then up to their waists. It was like a bath, silky and warm. The current was so slight it barely disturbed her clothes. She wanted to lie down in it. Milton dipped his own handkerchief into the water and spread it wet over the top of her head. “It’s better, isn’t it,” he said, though it wasn’t a question.
She nodded. Jackie had been right to make Barbara go in. It was lifesaving. When Marina looked down she saw nothing, just a line where her torso vanished into the water. All around them children kicked their rafts and jumped off one another’s shoulders. “How do you know what’s under there?” she asked him.
“You don’t,” Milton said. “You don’t want to.”
When Marina got back to the hotel room and checked her cell phone she had two messages from Mr. Fox, one from her mother, and one from Karen Eckman, whose number showed up in Anders’ name. She might as well have been home. She was feeling slightly sympathetic towards Dr. Swenson’s refusal to have a phone at all. She took a cold shower, drank a bottle of water, and went to bed, where she had a dream about losing her father in a train station. When Barbara Bovender called on the hotel line at nine that night she woke her up. “We wanted to check on you,” she said. “I’m afraid we nearly killed you this afternoon with our idea of fun.”
“No, no,” Marina said, disoriented by sleep and heat and dreams. “I’m fine. I just haven’t gotten used to all of it yet. I suppose it takes some time.”
“It does!” Barbara said, sounding gleeful for no reason. “I’m so much better at it now than I used to be. The secret is not to let the heat keep you in. Jackie swears the air conditioning weakens your immune system after a while. The more you get out the more you get used to it. You should come over to the apartment and have a drink.”
“Now?” Marina said, as if she might have something else to do.
“A little walk at night would do you good.”
Maybe the Bovenders were the guards at the gate but it was also true that they were lonely. There was