Page 15 of An Immaculate Deception

With a (near) proposal.

Leandro doesn’t add anything to Maria das Dores’s explanation of the house rules. He’s so still that he could be a statue. I start to think that his mind has receded somewhere distant, but when I reach for the Jornal do Recife on the coffee table he moves so quickly that I jump. He snatches the newspaper before I can touch it. I stare at him, stunned. He’s like a caiman in a river: perfectly still, but active in its stillness, striking in the blink of an eye.

“Doctor Lobo says you should avoid potentially distressing news,” Leandro explains. “And you know, newspapers nowadays are full of distressing news. Nothing but shock and horror.”

“Of course.”

I’m touched that Leandro is so concerned for my well-being, but still, I’m disappointed. Mother doesn’t allow me to read the newspaper, so this would have been a perfect opportunity to do it. She says if I read too much my facial features will turn masculine and I’ll start to look like a desiccated spinster. I resolve to find where the books are, and I’ll read everything Mother doesn’t allow me to—periodicals, romance, mystery, suspense…I wonder if he has Frankenstein here.

“Any questions, Sinhá Madalena?” Maria das Dores asks, after reciting a series of rules I didn’t pay attention to.

“No questions.”

“Then I can show you the outside of the property next.”

She starts toward the front door.

“One moment,” I say. On the wall above the golden velveteen sofa hangs an oil portrait of Leandro’s parents: Valentina and Ernesto Neves. Leandro’s father, the comendador, has softer features and looks more like Leandro with his honey eyes, a slightly pointed chin, and a delicate nose. The Neves fortune comes from the father’s side of the family, yet it is the mother who has the more dignified air.

Valentina is not, and clearly never was, a very beautiful woman. She strikes me as a strong woman, though, from the way she carries herself, and even her stance in this painting. Though perhaps not as domineering as my own mother.

I must win over his parents. A month into the courtship, when I was crooning about Leandro, Mother reminded me that Leandro’s family would not like the idea of him “marrying down.” At the time it seemed a given that Leandro would fight for me. He would tell them how much he loves me, he would stand up to the whole world for us to be together.

But now, this version of Leandro…this fidgety, silent, gawking man who allowed Doctor Lobo to take charge in his own house, doesn’t seem up to any sort of fight.

Sometimes people change in ways that are permanent.

I truly hope that’s not the case.

“Do you think they’ll like me?” I ask. I try to infuse cheer into my voice, to sound casual. I expect Leandro to respond immediately, without hesitation: Of course they will. They’ll love you. He’s told me so many times that he’s already gushed to his parents about me.

Leandro glances at the painting, then sighs. The sigh is laced with irritation, or something worse, something I can’t quite pinpoint…Dread? Disdain? He doesn’t like me bringing up his parents. Does he think I’m presumptuous to assume that I will meet them? Because underneath it lies the assumption that we will be together and we will marry.

My heart sinks deeper with each passing second of silence. Am I wrong to assume I will meet his parents?

He finally looks up at me. “Anyone who meets you should like you.”

But he says it with the disposition of a mortician in a morgue.

8

Outside, Maria das Dores gives me a brief tour of the property. Leandro doesn’t come along, instead retiring to his study. I try not to take offense at that and fail. I’m still reeling from the way he handled my question about meeting his parents. The look on his face like he ate rotten fruit. The sigh riddled with irritation. The tension in his shoulders. And worst of all is what he said: Anyone who meets me should like me. A nonanswer if I ever heard one.

Feels like it’s about me. He would not have acted that way yesterday. Perhaps he remembers that the accident was partly my fault and resents me for it, after all.

Why couldn’t I have let him go to the cursed driver’s bench when he tried to? So what if I didn’t get the proposal that night; Mother would have been furious but I would have handled that. Leandro wouldn’t have brain fever, feeblemindedness, or whatever it is that he has, and I wouldn’t be left to decode the meaning behind his surliness. I was so careless to risk our lives.

As Maria das Dores and I walk the path outside, I mull over the incongruence in his reactions. As sullen as he was just now, he was sweet in my room earlier. He told me how happy he is that I’m here, and seemed genuine.

But there had also been the strange presence I felt as I awakened, the feeling of something right up against my face. But I think that was just a dream.

Why did his mood sour? His moods keep shifting between nervous and haunted and resentful and sullen. Those who nurse sullen fumes…The hum from the Inferno pops into my mind. The sinners who nurse sullen fumes in life, in death waste away in the putrid fumes of the River Styx.

Maria das Dores pauses before a patio that overlooks the valley and rolling fields beyond. The seats have no cushions, the bird feeder has no feed, and one chair is upturned, as though it got knocked over by a violent wind and no one ever bothered to set it back in its place.

“It doesn’t look like this patio is used much,” I say.

Maria das Dores smiles politely but doesn’t respond.