Page 72 of An Immaculate Deception

Nothing. There is no response. Of course there isn’t, but a small part of me had imagined Joaquina was still down here. Waiting for me.

I open the door and find the small room empty. Her little cot is made up. Her favorite clay coffee cup sits on the nightstand, with caked bits of dry coffee on the bottom. Her butterfly metal hair clip sits next to it.

Gone without a trace.

The next morning at breakfast, Strange Madalena quizzes me about the fazenda’s former owners. I have no idea about them since that was way before I was born. When I tell her I don’t know, she seems incredulous and antagonistic, then announces she’s leaving early. My anxiety spikes, and I beg her to reconsider. I can see her softening as I sit beside her and hold her hand. This time I am not foolish enough to think she’s seeing me. It’s Strange Madalena and she’s seeing my father, with love in her eyes.

I feel like an impostor, like I’m impersonating my father, but I can’t let her leave. She has nowhere to go.

I must speak with Lobo urgently. What will we do if she asks to go home again, if her memories do not return?

I sit in the drawing room, on my third glass of cognac, tapping the cigarette ash into the tray. Joaquina once played the broken piano for me. She does not know how to play, and was only pressing keys at random, and most of the keys made no sound at all because the piano is broken, like the mill, like everything else in this house. But I enjoyed it when she pretend-played. She was delightful, amusing. Wearing a dress far too lovely for her, like a lady in a novel. I even took some photos of her playing the piano in this very drawing room.

If Lobo paid her to leave, perhaps I can still prevail upon her to return.

Just then, as though by divine will, Mother hovers beside me. She has that gravity about her, a sharpness to her gaze that makes me think that although it’s Strange Madalena, Mother is not far off.

I ask her how she’s feeling. I stand, then, not knowing why I stood, I kiss her hand. She glances meaningfully at the bottle of cognac and asks me how my afternoon was.

I want to pry her lids open so she sees me in front of her.

I scour my brain for something that will remind her without shocking her. Some detail about the past, specific and meaningful, yet subtle.

“I added a new lie to the box of lies,” I tell her.

The little box of lies. Yesterday, when she asked me whether someone has been sleeping in her room recently, I could not think of a way to avoid lying. But afterward, I wrote the lie on a little piece of paper and slipped it into the wooden box.

Her expression is blank and uncomprehending. “Is that some sort of riddle?” she asks, voice taut and foreign.

It crushes me. Even the little box of lies doesn’t mean anything to this person who stands before me…Mother is buried so deep, I don’t know how to bring her out. What will it take to pull Mother out of Strange Madalena?

I go to the window, reeling. I know I can no longer scheme, because I can no longer think clearly. The alcohol has dulled my thoughts too much.

“Leandro, is everything all right?” Strange Madalena stands beside me. Her polite aura is suffocating.

“I’m invisible,” I say, watching my own reflection in the window.

It doesn’t matter what I say or do, she is not seeing me. I am this glass window. She sees through me to something else, someone more interesting. Someone her mind didn’t see fit to erase.

Is she like this because of how close to death she came? All because of my neglect?

“It’s my fault,” I mutter.

“What is?”

“Everything.”

“Leandro,” Strange Madalena says. Her voice sounds firm, but it’s still Strange Madalena. “Did a woman use to live here with you? Did she die here?”

I look at her. It’s almost as if Strange Madalena is becoming aware of Mother. Can she sense Mother’s presence in the house, even as she can’t consciously comprehend it? The thought makes my head spin and suddenly the whole room is spinning. I drink more to steady my nerves, and it works.

“I just want to be seen…” I start. I want a glimmer of recognition, if only for a moment. “…Just once before the end.”

“What end?” Strange Madalena says.

I ignore her. In the distance, a carriage crosses the gates. A cloud of red dust swirls around it as the horse’s canter slows to a trot. The sound of it faraway.

I slip away from Strange Madalena and go outside. I intercept Doctor Lobo on the front steps. I want to speak with him alone.