The Parrot's Perch by Karen Keilt

Author:Karen Keilt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2019-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Rick started traveling a lot. He needed alone time, he said. The more he traveled, the further apart we drifted. And the more desperate I became for something to fill my life.

I needed to find something to do so that I wouldn’t go stircrazy. I couldn’t go see my parents. The pity in my mother’s eyes and her “Little Mary Sunshine” attitude grated on my nerves. I wanted her to scream and lash out at my father. I wanted her to make him see me. He rarely looked at me anymore. When he did, it was with disgust and pity.

Mom had told me that ever since our release, Chris and Dad often hunkered down in Dad’s office for hours at a time. She didn’t know what they talked about in there. I felt amazed that they might have become united by what had happened to Rick and me, but I suspected and feared that their conversations were filled with vitriol and malice. They’d never been close. It scared me to think that what might be uniting them was a mutual need for revenge and violence.

Ms. Mezarobba nodded vigorously when I shared this with her. “I’m sure they would feel that way. And if, as I suspect, your father was tied to the CIA, he would have had the means to seek retaliation. We’ll follow up on this line of inquiry once I return to Brazil.” She grew pensive for a moment, then continued.

“Do you know anything about the coup that removed João Goulart as president in 1964?”

“Only what I’ve read. And enough to know that the Kennedys thought he was a Commie.”

“That’s right. The US government underwrote his ousting. What if your father was involved somehow? Perhaps your father disliked the late Mrs. Sage because she was involved as well? Stealing his thunder, as it were?” Ms. Mezarobba lightly tapped her nails on the table, the slight drumming the only noise in the room. We both pondered the unknown. I knew that supporters had rallied on the streets to overthrow the government. There was total censorship. The government adopted a zero-tolerance attitude toward any infraction. But that had all happened over twelve years earlier. How could it possibly have had anything to do with our abduction?

Ms. Mezarobba spoke again. “It’s common knowledge that our first female president, Dilma Rousseff, was tortured and imprisoned for three months for her involvement in a protest for freedom of the press in the ’60s. Did you know that?”

“Yes. Abducting the US Ambassador to Brazil when she was a college student was really stupid, but he was never harmed, and she didn’t deserve to be tortured and raped for three months. Every day since she was elected I’ve hoped that one of the first things she would do as president would be to overturn the 1979 law that gives immunity to government torturers. She hasn’t done that yet. She’s never even publicly admitted that she was tortured.”

Ms. Mezarobba nodded somberly. “But she did entrust this

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