“When we return to Honolulu, we’ll buy our own house and furnish it with all of these,” Manolo told her.
Dolores played the game, too. “An all-electric kitchen will save me ten thousand steps a year.”
“Really?”
“According to General Electric.”
“Well then, you shall have it all!” He swept his arm wide to encompass all of GE’s Town of Tomorrow.
The best part of the fair, though, was outdoors. Flowers and fountains covered the grounds, surrounding buildings painted in soft colors. Light played over pools and lagoons, and nighttime was magic. That was when it took no imagination at all to picture Treasure Island as a city of light floating on San Francisco Bay.
Every night they returned to Paul’s house tired and full of wonder like small children at a parade. Sofia prepared dinner for them and shot them sour looks, especially if Paul had been with them. Dolores was glad Sofia didn’t come. She acquainted herself with her adult brother in a way she couldn’t in Honolulu surrounded by Hawaiian family. A couple of times, Dolores saw him frown at something Manolo said to her and give her a quizzical look. Dolores wasn’t close enough to her brother yet to confide the status of their marriage to him. She was determined to enjoy this vacation, to build a bridge between herself and Manolo, to heal her family for the future. In that light, she bought a lucky jade plant for Sofia, hoping to dispel the bad luck of the house number.
“Why do you think I need your Chinese luck?” Sofia asked.
“Everyone can use a bit of luck,” Dolores told her. She forced a cheerful smile.
Manolo played like a boy at the Gayway, a forty-acre fun zone with a cyclone coaster, rocket ship, giant crane, and other thrill rides and shows.
“Come on, ku‘uipo,” he said. “One ride on the roller coaster won’t hurt the baby.”
Dolores shook her head, laughed, and said, “Oh, no, we don’t want our little one to be born a daredevil!”
Dolores treasured her first pair of nylon stockings, introduced at the fair. She saw many women wearing them and exchanged secret smiles with them since they were so fashionable. Dolores bought a purse-sized sewing kit for Sofia from the J. P. Coats exhibit, but her sister-in-law turned up her nose at it.
“What’s wrong with her?” Dolores asked her brother later in the kitchen. “She hates the gifts I give her. What have I done?”
“It’s not you,” Paul said. “Sofia comes from a conservative religious family. She thinks you’re wild.” He rubbed his neck and laughed, awkward and self-conscious.
“Wild?” The notion made Dolores laugh, but it also confused her. “Why did you marry such a shriveled up old soul?”
Before Paul could answer, a noise at the doorway made Dolores turn. Sofia stood there, face frozen in fury.
“O meu Deos,” Dolores said. “Sofia, I’m—”
“Do not take the Lord’s name in vain while you are a guest in my home. I have tried to be civil, but you heathens are more than any God-fearing Catholic can be expected to bear!” She left the room with her back ramrod straight.
“Heathens? She knows we’re Catholic, too, right?”
“She does,” Paul said. “I’m sorry, Sis. She really is a good wife, and she’ll be a good mother. She’s a fine God-fearing woman.”
“That’s funny. I’ve never found a need to be afraid of God.” Dolores rejoined Manolo in the front room. She and Sofia would never be friends.
Inevitably, Dolores and Manolo’s step out of reality came to a close. On April 6, they kissed Paul good-bye and wished Sofia well with the baby.
“Write and tell me all about him or her,” Dolores urged her.
“Of course,” she said with a cold little smile. She didn’t return the request.
Paul drove them to the pier where the Lurline waited to return them to Honolulu. This time they traveled in cabin class. It was still a wonderful world, only a step down from the Matsonia and the World’s Fair. This was the ship that Amelia Earhart had taken with her plane when she came to Honolulu four years before for her record-breaking flight to Oakland.
Manolo laughed when Dolores told him this. “We definitely focus too much now on records and wonder,” he said.
“How could it be any different after what we’ve seen?” she asked.
His eyes laughed as they hadn’t in Honolulu for a long time. The wonder that surrounded the World’s Fair cocooned them, together and alone, as they shared favorite memories from the last two months. This time there were no tennis buddies. They spent the days and nights together. Laughter and smiles, and his arm around her shoulders, created warmth more suited to a honeymoon than a vacation.
But vacations, like honeymoons, never kept the magic alive once reality returned. After dinner on the last night of the voyage, many of the passengers went on deck to see if they could spot the far-off lights of Honolulu. Manolo and Dolores remained at the table, their plates already cleared. The soft music of dinner service gave way to the clanking of dishes from the kitchen. Manolo nursed a glass of wine. Dolores thought it was his fifth. His smiling conversation had turned to a sullen quiet she hadn’t seen in months. She’d put off the important discussion of his drinking, but if they didn’t discuss it before they docked, they never would. “Manolo,” she began. He looked up. “This has been a wonderful trip.”
Something in her tone alerted him. He downed the rest of his wine and signaled the waiter to bring another. “Yes, it has,” he said.
A chill touched his eyes. Dolores shivered. This was a bad time. She leapt forward anyway. “You haven’t lost your temper once since we got to California, and Sofia sure tried her best to make you.” She hoped her attempt at levity would lighten the mood. It didn’t.
“And?” His voice was sharp now. The waiter poured his wine, and Manolo took the bottle.
Dolores winced. “Maybe the drinking doesn’t help,” she offered.
“Help what?”
“Come on, you know what I’m trying to say.” Exasperated, she just said it. “This trip was wonderful, but it’s over. How can we keep this happiness when we return home? Is it the children that set you off? Or me? I never know. I do know the drinking makes it worse.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“You’ve only had one or two glasses of wine each night. I may not know much, but I know you only hit me when you’ve been drinking too much.” There. It was said. She didn’t know whether she should be defiant or sweet and pleading. The latter had never been her style.
He stopped in the middle of raising his wine glass to his lips and set it back on the table so hard red droplets splashed onto the white tablecloth. “You know I’m sorry about that, Dolores. I don’t mean to hurt you.”
“Please stop drinking, Manolo. Or at least drink less.” Dolores clasped her hands together in her lap.
“All the Medeiros boys are drinkers,” he said in a voice that almost sounded proud. “Mama always says, ‘Those boys of mine!’ when we drink and raise hell. But she loves us.”
“I’ve also seen her slap João’s face and tell him the whole town knows about him and his drinking, and why does he want to drink that stuff. She never drinks, or smokes, either.”
“My mother, the paragon of virtue.”
“No one’s asking you to be a paragon. Just try a little harder to drink less.”
“Sure, Dolores, all right.” He smiled, but she felt like he agreed just to stop the conversation.
Dolores stood and put her napkin on the table where it stayed in a twisted rope. “I need to finish packing before the steward comes for the bags. Are you done?”
He waved her on. “I’ll come up in a little while.”
Dolores walked away from the table. She paused in the doorway to look back. The dining room was empty except for her husband at their table. The dim lighting, at first romantic, was now just sad. She watched Manolo empty the wine glass and pour another.
By the time she reached their cabin, she could no l
onger wipe away her tears before more fell.
EIGHTEEN
Honolulu 1939–1940
A week after their return from the World’s Fair, after they’d shared stories, distributed souvenirs, and life returned to normal, Dolores woke with a stomachache. She moaned as she got out of bed and doubled over. Struggling to stand, she took a deep breath. Manolo was in the shower. He had to go to work, and she had to fix breakfast. She wrapped herself in her robe and carefully walked into the kitchen. Alberto, his hair tousled from sleeping on the couch, already had the coffee on.
“Good morning,” he said. His smile lit the room, bringing an answering smile from Dolores. He poured her a cup of coffee. When he set it in front of her, his hand brushed hers. He let it linger there. His touch made her entire arm tingle. She wanted to pull away. No, she wanted to clasp his hand. She settled for not pulling her hand away.
“Mahalo,” she told him. The laughter in his eyes changed to something deeper.
Manolo rushed in. “I’ll get coffee at work. Running late.” He pulled up short when he saw Dolores spill her coffee as she yanked her hand away from Alberto’s. He frowned.
“Happy to pour some to take wit’ ya,” Alberto said smoothly.
“I don’t need you to do that,” Manolo snapped.
Another cramp caused Dolores to moan again.
“You aurite?” Alberto asked.
“Go back to bed and rest,” Manolo told her. “I’m off.” He turned his head toward her and kissed toward her face before rushing out the door.
Dolores sank into a kitchen chair, clutching her stomach.
“You aurite?” Alberto repeated. “You look pale.”
“My stomach hurts.”
“Stomach mean baby. Dis normal?”
“I didn’t have pain like this with either of the girls.”
Ruth came upstairs, preceded by her children who swept in like whirlwinds. In the ensuing commotion, Ruth gave all three pao duce they could nibble on the way to school. Meanwhile, Carmen and Betty came out of their bedroom. Alberto handed each of them a roll. The oldest of Ruth’s children, Winona, marshaled William and Rosa out the door with shouted good-byes.
Dolores sat at the table and watched the normal chaos. She tried to breathe deeply instead of gasping with pain. Ruth peered at her and frowned.
“She say stomach hurts,” Alberto said. He used a napkin to wipe up the spilled coffee.
“How bad?” Ruth asked.
“Bad,” Dolores admitted.
“I take Carmen ta school,” Alberto said. “You take Betty ta Grandma Jessie’s, ya? Then take Dolores to the doctor.” He peered at Dolores’s pale face. “Or ta Queen’s.”
“Definitely Queen’s. You’re three months along, right?” Ruth asked.
Dolores nodded. “Almost three months.”
Ruth took Dolores’s coffee cup and bustled her into the bedroom. “Let’s get you dressed.” Dolores wasn’t able to help much as Ruth slipped off the robe. “Dolores? You’re bleeding.” She yanked a dress over Dolores’s head, slipped shoes on her feet, and brushed her hair. “We’d better hurry.”
The pain was so bad now that Dolores couldn’t protest. Betty’s eyes were wide as Ruth rushed her across the street. “Is Mama sick?”
“She’ll be fine, sweetheart. You help Grandma Jessie, and we’ll be back real soon.”
The house was silent for a minute or two, silent except for Dolores’s ragged breaths. Ruth rushed back in and helped Dolores to the car. “I’m worried, Dolores. We’re going straight to the hospital. No arguments.”
Dolores didn’t object.
At Queen’s, the nurse helped Dolores into a wheelchair. “She’s three months pregnant and having stomach pain,” Ruth told her. “She’s bleeding.”
The nurse whisked Dolores away. Chaos of another sort ensued. Instead of the normal morning routine, it was the organized confusion of doctors, nurses, beeping machines, orderlies, tests taken, and over it all the pain that threatened to take her baby. Dolores concentrated on breathing to control pain and panic.
“Where’s my sister-in-law?” Dolores panted between words.
“She’s waiting outside,” the doctor said. “As soon as I finish the pelvic exam, she can come in. Let’s check on baby, all right?”
Dolores nodded. The next wave of cramps brought beads of sweat to her forehead. She concentrated on the doctor’s actions and clamped her teeth.
“There, Mrs. Medeiros. All done. I’ll bring your sister-in-law in.” Dolores just nodded.
Ruth entered. Alberto followed her. They took up positions on either side of Dolores’s bed. Alberto took her hand and wouldn’t let go. His touch warmed her through.
“The doctor said he’d be in to talk to you,” Ruth said. Her smile seemed strained, her eyes worried.
“We here now, ya?” Alberto said.
The doctor returned with a nurse. He nodded at Ruth. Facing Alberto, he asked, “Are you the husband?”
Dolores wanted him to say yes, but Alberto said, “Nephew.”
“I would like to speak to Mrs. Medeiros alone, then. Wait outside, please.”
Alberto’s hand tightened on Dolores’s. “We not going nowhere,” he said.
“Please let them stay,” Dolores asked.
The doctor nodded. “You’ve lost the baby, but I think you suspected that.”
Dolores nodded. Tears trickled down the sides of her face and puddled in her ears. Ruth and Alberto both squeezed her hands. She wasn’t alone.
“I noticed something else,” the doctor continued. “You have quite a few old bruises on your torso.”
“Dose injuries make her lose the baby, Doc?” Alberto said.
“No,” the doctor said. “I’m wondering about the pattern though. Some were fresher than others. Not from a single fall. Either you are very clumsy, Mrs. Medeiros, or someone is hurting you.” He hesitated and looked at Ruth and Alberto. “Is the husband here?”
“He is at work,” Dolores said. “Ruth will call him now that I’m all right. I am all right, Doctor?” A sob swallowed the last few words.
“Yes, you’ll be fine,” the doctor said. “The nurse will help you get settled in your room. I’ll be by later.”
He left the room. The nurse patted Dolores’s leg. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Medeiros. Do you have other children?”
“Two daughters.” Dolores told her all about Carmen and Betty, their ages, Carmen’s blindness and her school.
The nurse chattered away. She asked questions and exclaimed over Dolores’s answers as she drew a curtain around the bed. The curtain excluded Alberto and Ruth with no apology. “Keep telling me about your precious girls,” the nurse said. “I’m going to give you a little sponge bath before moving you to your room.” She wiped Dolores from the waist down and draped her with a clean blanket. An orderly arrived with a gurney and helped the nurse transport Dolores to a new room. Alberto followed. Ruth slipped away to call Manolo.
Settled in a bright room with palm trees outside the window, Dolores assimilated what had happened. She cried in Alberto’s arms and held Ruth’s hand.
A loud voice in the hallway roused her. “What have you done to my wife?”
Alberto’s lips tightened. Ruth wiped the tears off Dolores’s face with a handkerchief. Manolo stormed into the room. “What’s happened? What’s going on?”
“I told you on the phone. She lost the baby,” Ruth said.
“Whose fault is this?” He turned to Alberto. “What are you doing here?”
Dolores recognized the level of belligerence that accompanied several drinks after leaving work early. She lifted her chin and stared at Manolo. “Ruth and Alberto brought me. They’ve been a tremendous comfort.”
“Get your own wife,” Manolo snarled.
“Auntie need help. I there.” Alberto used a calm tone that nonetheless accused Manolo.
“Our baby is gone, Manolo.” Dolores ignored the tears staining her cheeks. She took a de
ep breath. “Our baby is dead. Alberto didn’t do it.”
Before Manolo could respond, the doctor entered the room. “Is this your husband, Mrs. Medeiros?” he asked. Dolores nodded. “You must lower your voice, sir, you are disturbing the other patients.” The doctor stepped in front of Manolo. He stood between Manolo and Dolores’s bed. “And you are disturbing my patient. Mrs. Medeiros, do you want him to leave?”
“Please,” Dolores said.
Two orderlies appeared behind Manolo. They ignored his protests and helped him out of the room. Dolores could hear Manolo’s anger increase as his distance did.
The doctor turned to her. “Is he the cause of those bruises?”
“He’s my husband, Doctor, the father of my daughters. We are family.” Dolores kept her voice strong and looked the doctor in the eye. “He loves us, and we love him.”
“She has a lot of family support,” Ruth said.
“We got dis, ya?” Alberto echoed.
The doctor nodded. “If you ever need it, the hospital can provide help beyond healing bruises.”
Dolores nodded, and the doctor left. “I should have let Manolo stay,” she said.
“No, he was too disruptive,” Ruth protested.
“He not in a mood ta help right now,” Alberto said.
“Thank you so much for being here,” Dolores said. She addressed both of them, but her eyes clung to Alberto’s.
DOLORES returned home sore in body, heart, and mind. Ruth and Alberto stayed close. Manolo didn’t. Ruth told the girls that their mother was sad, and they covered Dolores with hugs and kisses. They hadn’t yet begun to be excited about a baby, so Dolores didn’t tell them of its loss. Ruth and Alberto did their best to help her keep her mind off the tragedy.
A letter arrived from Paul. He was still effusive over their visit to the World’s Fair.
Attendance at the fair has fallen off, but I remember what we saw there. Do you remember the miniature gold mine?
Their trip to California seemed a lifetime ago. Dolores took a deep breath and focused on Paul’s words instead of the memory of laughter.
The Aloha Spirit Page 18