State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [60]
“It’s nice to meet you,” Marina said. The child’s enormous eyes fixed themselves to her and did not look away. “You could have brought him to the opera,” she said to Dr. Swenson. Had he come with her? “There were plenty of seats.”
“Easter’s deaf,” Dr. Swenson said. “The opera would have been more tedious for him than it was for us.”
“It wasn’t such a bad opera,” Barbara said to the boy.
“He likes to wander when he has the chance,” Dr. Swenson said for him. “He likes to take a look around town.” Easter, perched in Jackie’s arms, his attention rightfully returned to Barbara’s hair, did not turn his head. Even with good hearing he would have seemed too small to be walking the streets of Manaus alone in the dark.
“I would have gone with you if I’d known you were out here,” Jackie said to the boy. “We could have cut out together.”
“He could have come. I think he would have liked seeing all the people,” Barbara said. “There’s a lot to look at in the opera house even if you can’t hear the music.”
Dr. Swenson looked at her watch. “I think this is enough of a reunion for now. Dr. Singh and I should have a talk. I assume you don’t mind the late hour, Dr. Singh. Milton tells me you’ve been waiting.”
Marina said that she would be glad to talk.
“Good. So the rest of you go on. I’ll see you in the morning. Milton, tell Rodrigo I’ll be at the store by seven.”
“May I drive you somewhere?” Milton asked.
Dr. Swenson shook her head. “It’s a perfectly good night. I’m sure we can manage a walk. Can you manage, Dr. Singh?”
Marina, in her column of gray silk and her high heels, was not entirely sure she could manage, but she said that a walk would be good after sitting so long.
“We’ll take Easter back to the apartment,” Barbara said. The child had begun to braid the section of her hair that he was holding on to.
Dr. Swenson shook her head. “He hasn’t eaten. He’ll come with us. Put him down, Jackie, he isn’t a monkey.”
Jackie set Easter on the ground and the boy looked from one party to the other. In spite of not having heard he seemed to be in tacit agreement with the plans. “We’ll see you later then,” Jackie said, finding the part in the boy’s hair with his fingers and smoothing it down. Then, remembering what in fact was new, he held out his hand and Easter shook it goodbye. “Brilliant,” Jackie said.
The streets around the opera house were made of flat stones fitted together into an uneven jigsaw and Marina found herself wishing that Milton had come with them, if not to drive then at least to keep his hand under her arm. Marina was a very tall doctor who worked in a lab in Minnesota and those three things: the height, the work, and the state, precluded the wearing of heels, giving her little experience to draw from now that she needed it. She shifted her weight forward onto her toes and hoped not to wedge the heel of Barbara’s shoes into a crevice. Even as Marina slowed, Dr. Swenson kept to her own unwavering pace, a trudge of metronomic regularity that Marina remembered. In her khaki pants and rubber-soled shoes, she was quickly a block ahead without seeming to notice that she was alone. Easter stayed behind them both, perhaps to alert Dr. Swenson in the event that Marina went down. The crowd from the opera had dispersed and all that remained were the city’s regulars who stood on the street corners in the dark trying to decide whether or not to cross. They watched Marina as she pulled her borrowed shawl up over her shoulders.
“Are you coming, Dr. Singh?” Dr. Swenson called out. She had gone around a corner or stepped into a building. Her voice was part of the night. It came from nowhere.
Are you coming, Dr. Singh? She would dip so quickly into a patient’s room that suddenly the residents would lose their bearings. Had she gone to the right or the left? Marina squinted down the street, the darkness broken apart by streetlights and headlights and bits of broken glass that showered the curb and reflected the light up. “I’m