State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [51]
“It’s so late,” Marina said. She hadn’t thought about the time until she dialed.
“I never sleep,” Karen said. “And the worst part is nobody calls after eight. They’re afraid of waking up the boys.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“I’m glad. Nothing wakes them up anyway. I called you this morning. Mr. Fox gave me your cell phone number.”
“You’ve heard from him?”
“He checks on us.” Karen yawned. “He’s a better person than I thought he was. Or he’s lonely. I can’t tell. He says you haven’t found her yet.”
“I found the Bovenders.”
“The Bovenders!” Karen said. “My God, how are they?”
“Anders talked about them?”
“And very little else for a while. They drove him out of his mind. He did not love the Bovenders.”
“I could see that.”
“He felt like they were stringing him along, like they were always about to produce Dr. Swenson but they never quite got around to it. He was never really sure whether or not they knew where she was, but he spent a lot of time being nice to them.”
“Well then, I guess I’m right on schedule. How much time was he in Manaus before he found Dr. Swenson?”
Karen thought about it. “A month? I’m not positive. I know it was at least a month.”
Marina closed her eyes. “I don’t think I can spend a month with the Bovenders.”
“What did they say about Anders?”
“They didn’t know he was dead,” Marina said.
There was a long silence on the line after that. Back in Eden Prairie, Marina heard Karen put down the phone and then there was nothing to do but wait. Marina laid back across the bed and stared at the pale water stain on the ceiling that she had contemplated every night since she changed rooms. She wished she could put her hand on Karen’s head, stroke her hair. Such is your bravery. Such is my good fortune. When Karen did come back her breathing had changed.
“I’m sorry,” Marina said.
“It comes on so fast,” Karen said, trying to catch her breath. “They didn’t know he was dead because she didn’t tell them. Why wouldn’t she tell them?”
“She didn’t tell them for the exact reason you just said—they have no means of communication. She only comes to town once every few months. She doesn’t even check her mail.” Marina didn’t know what she was going to do with the letters but she wasn’t going to tell Karen that she had them. That much she could at least be certain of. From thousands of miles away Marina listened to her crying. The boys were asleep in their beds. Pickles was asleep. “Should I call Mr. Fox?” she said. It didn’t seem like a good idea but it was the only one she had.
Karen put down the phone again and blew her nose. She was trying to get a hold of herself, Marina could hear it. She made the sounds of a person who was trying to wrestle an enormous sorrow to the ground. “No,” she said. “Don’t call him. This happens to me now. It’s part of it.”
“I want to tell you something different,” Marina said.
“I know you do.”
“It’s terrible here, Karen. I hate it.”
“I know,” she said.
That night, which was her first night of fever, she dreamed that she and her father were paddling a small boat down a river in the jungle and that the boat turned over. Her father drowned and she was left alone in the water. The boat had gotten away. Marina had forgotten that her father didn’t know how to swim.
“Now I have something you’re going to like,” Barbara said on the phone.
Marina hadn’t heard from the Bovenders since her visit to their apartment several days before and since that time she had not left the hotel and had very seldom left her bed. She wasn’t entirely sure if the preventative medicine that worked against insect borne diseases was making her sick or if she had in fact contracted an insect borne disease in spite of the medication. It also seemed entirely possible that all of her symptoms, which included body aches and a peculiar rash around her trunk, were psychosomatic—she was willing herself into illness in order to bring this all to an end. But then she wondered if Anders hadn