Away from Home by Rona Jaffe Page A

and pretty soon I notice the things are beginning to wear out. You know, these people wash your clothes on rocks, just like the Dark Ages. So then I find out that this washerwoman is washing Phil’s shirts and then giving them to her husband to wear for one day, and then washing them again to bring them back to me! These people don’t even own any clothes. That’s how they save money. They wear your clothes, and sleep in your sheets too, and then they wash them and you never know it.”
    “How awful! How did you ever find out?”
    “My neighbor told me,” Mil said.
    “But how did she find out?”
    “Somebody else told her. You discover these things. I tell you,” Mil said, “Brazil isn’t as pretty as it looks.”
    “I guess I’d be furious if it happened to me,” Helen said thoughtfully. “But I can’t help thinking it’s amusing, too. Imagine having so much initiative to think up a scheme like that.”
    “Ha!” said Mil. “Initiative? Initiative is one thing these people do not have. Initiative, my foot. This is mañana land, in case you didn’t know. Did you ever try to have something fixed?”
    The waiter came over with gin and tonic. Mil lifted an ice cube from her glass with her spoon and looked at it closely. Then she waved the waiter away. “It’s all right,” she said, as if conferring an important scientific verdict. “The ice is all right. You can eat and drink practically anything in this place. That’s why I come here. But still, you can’t be too careful anywhere.”
    “You don’t like it here, do you?” Helen said.
    “Don’t like it? I loathe it!”
    “If you hate it so much, you don’t have to stay forever, do you?”
    Mil’s lips formed a thin line of distaste. “My husband adores it here. He wouldn’t leave if you paid him. Oh, I’ve argued with him plenty. He tells me that I have a nice big apartment on the beach and two maids and a baba for the kids, and how happy that should make me. He’s like all the American wives here; they just love it because they can afford a maid. Well, I wasn’t poor as a girl, you know. Back home in Chicago my parents had a maid.”
    “So did mine,” Helen said. “But that isn’t why I like Rio.”
    Mil looked surprised and slightly aggressive. “What could you possibly like? The sticky heat? The bugs? The stupid people?”
    “I don’t know many Brazilians,” Helen said, “but the ones I’ve met aren’t stupid. I liked them.”
    “You liked them?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?” Mil said. But it was not a question, it was a statement, and Helen knew that to answer it would mean a meaningless battle. She wondered why she had entered this discussion at all. She knew how Mil felt about Brazil; Mil let you know often enough. It was almost, Helen thought, as if she were talking with Mil to sharpen the razor edge of irritation and anger she felt in herself today. It was painful, but it was a feeling, and it made her feel alive.
    “You know,” Helen said, “tonight I’d like to do something that would be fun. If you and Phil have nothing to do we could all go out to dinner and then see an American movie.”
    “I haven’t been to a movie in six months,” Mil said unpleasantly.
    “You haven’t?”
    “The last time I went I was bitten by fleas. You can go to the movies and be eaten alive if you want, but I have no intention of putting on hip boots and heavy slacks just to see some old picture that was Grade B back home last year.”
    “We’ll go to a theater that doesn’t have fleas.”
    “No, thank you.”
    “You’re never going to go to a movie again?” Helen asked.
    “Never as long as I’m in Rio.”
    The children came back, their plates piled with an oddly indigestible combination of items from the buffet. Helen was glad to see them. They were so fresh and enthusiastic, they loved whatever happened to then because it was new, and even if it was not new they brought a freshness to it. They loved the beach, the sun, the