Mars

JOANNA MARIA BRUMADO

At the age of sixteen Joanna took her first lover and learned that her mother was dying.

An only child, she had spent all her life at home under the gentle, loving hand of a mother who never raised her voice yet ruled her household absolutely. When she was younger Joanna had adored her father, who traveled the world over and was enormously respected and admired. As she began to understand the urges flowing within her own body, though, she started to see her father with new eyes. She realized that women—even her mother’s friends and students her own age—looked at Alberto Brumado with more than respect and admiration in their glances.

“Your father is handsome and very romantic,” Joanna’s mother told her. “Why shouldn’t other women yearn for him?” And she smiled to show that she was not concerned about her husband’s faithfulness.

“He loves us too much to care about anyone else,” Joanna’s mother assured her. Then she added, “His obsession is the planet Mars, not some student young enough to be his daughter.”

Joanna had been born in Sao Paulo; her father had taught at the university there. But his quest for Mars eventually dictated that the family move to the capital, Brasilia, although they spent the hottest months of each year in Rio de Janeiro, like the politicians and their advisors.

Wherever they lived, Joanna did so well at the convent schools that her parents decided to send her to a prestigious preparatory school in the United States. She had pleased her father by showing an aptitude for science. She had pleased her mother by obeying her one unbendable rule: “Do not do anything that you can’t tell me about afterward.”

Joanna had intended to tell her mother about the tall fair-haired instructor who had taken her to bed. She was madly in love and bursting to tell her mother all about it. She waited a week and then could wait no more. She telephoned her mother.

To learn that her mother had been stricken with a serious heart seizure that very morning and taken to the hospital. Joanna forgot school and her lover; she hastily packed a bag and flew to Brasilia.

She could tell from her father’s face that there was no hope for her mother. The doctors at first did not even want to allow her to see the stricken woman, fearing an emotional outburst that would hasten the end. With the same iron self-control that she now realized had been her mother’s main strength, Joanna assured them that she would not upset her dying mother. They looked from her utterly determined face to her father, who nodded. “Let her see her mama,” said Alberto Brumado in a broken, tear-strangled voice. “She may not have another chance.”

Her mother looked very pale, very tired. Tubes ran from her slim arms to strange machines that chugged and beeped behind the bed. Another tube ran up her right nostril. Joanna thought they were sucking the life out of her mother.

She did not cry. She stood by the edge of the high bed and stroked her mother’s hair, realizing for the first time how thin and gray it had become. Her mother opened her eyes and smiled up at her.

“Mama…”

“My lovely daughter,” the woman whispered. “How beautiful you have become.”

“Mama, I love you so much!”

“Don’t worry about me, dear.” Her voice was so weak that Joanna had to bend down to hear the words.

“I don’t want you to die.”

Blinking her dry eyes slowly, Joanna’s mother whispered, “It is your father you must care for now. I can’t protect him any longer. You must do it for me.”

“Protect him?”

“His work. It is very important. To him and the whole world. Don’t let him be distracted. Don’t let anything stand between him and his work. Protect him. Help him.”

“I will, Mama. I will.”

“You’ve always been a good girl, Joanna. I love you very much.”

“I love you, Mama.”

“Protect your father. Remember.”

“I promise, Mama.”

Those were her mother’s last words. Joanna kept her promise. She became her father’s shield against any distraction that might interfere with his great, consuming goal. Especially any female distraction. Joanna attended college where her father taught. She traveled with him around the world. She kept house for him. She never took another lover.