The spirit of euphoria lasted all the way home. When they pulled onto 21st Street, though, it evaporated. Manolo’s car sat across the small lawn in front of the house. Lips set in a line, Dolores turned into the alley and parked the car in the driveway.
“Should we wait?” Ruth asked.
“It won’t matter,” Dolores said.
Ruth allowed some distance before she followed Dolores. She kept the kids back, too. Manolo sat at the kitchen table, a beer in his hand. “Where you been?” he asked. Dolores noted his bleary eyes and let the belligerent tone wash over her.
“Picking up your sister at the airport.”
As if on cue, Ruth and the kids came inside. “Aloha, Manolo,” she said.
He got up and folded her in a bear hug. “Hi, Sis. Sorry I didn’t make it to pick you up. Stuff came up. I’m a busy man, providing for my family, you know.”
“I know,” Ruth said. Her eyes raked her brother’s rumpled clothes.
Dolores managed a smile. She was beyond being embarrassed by Manolo. “Come sit and we can catch up.” She grabbed a plate of Oreo cookies off the kitchen counter and led Ruth into the front room. Ruth put her purse on the end table next to the couch. “Can’t put a purse on the floor,” she said, her voice breaking.
Dolores recognized one of Grandma Jessie’s superstitions and completed it. “Bad financial luck.” She wiped her own eyes.
Carmen dragged Rosa into her bedroom. Betty followed. The older teens went outside to sit on the porch. Manolo stayed in the kitchen with his beer. Ruth and Dolores sat on the couch. Ruth took an Oreo before Dolores set the plate on the coffee table. “It’s so nice to have family here. It’s what I’ve missed,” Dolores said.
They talked about Grandma Jessie’s passing, gossiped about Ruth’s brothers and their misadventures, shared stories of their children’s school efforts. They were still talking when Manolo poked his head in.
“Going for beer,” he said.
“Manolo, is that necessary?” Dolores asked. “Dinner will be soon.”
“Don’t give me that. You haven’t started dinner.” Without waiting for a response, he left through the kitchen door. He slammed the screen behind him. Dolores sighed.
“He’s worse,” Ruth said.
Dolores nodded. “I hate to admit it, but when I was away from him for those months, I learned I can do this on my own.”
“I’ve always known you could.”
“But Catholics don’t divorce.” Life had been better without a husband. Divorce was different, though, than having a husband who would return any day. Neighbors, friends, the Catholic Church could all understand a husband being kept away by war. Being sent away was different.
“Catholics can separate.”
“Oh, Ruth, how do I tell Manolo I want him to move out and not come back? He’s gone more than he’s here. When he is here, though, the girls love him, and he loves them. He’s a good father when he remembers them. The most important thing is that families need to stick together. Families need to be together.” Dolores believed that, but doubt stung her.
Ruth just looked at her sister-in-law for a long moment. “Is it a shock when he comes home?” she asked.
“Not quite. Almost.”
Ruth shook her head. Dolores laughed and changed the subject. “Carmen turns fourteen in June.”
“Rosa, my baby, is already fourteen. How is that possible?”
“Carmen will go to high school in the fall,” Dolores said. “There’s a school for the blind in Berkeley.”
Ruth frowned. “You don’t sound convinced.”
“Manolo enrolled her. It’s a boarding school.”
“Boarding school? Oh, Dolores, that will be hard for you.” Ruth placed a hand on Dolores’s arm.
They hadn’t discussed the boarding school. Manolo had made the decision. “It will be best for Carmen,” he said. End of discussion.
The small house bustled with activity over the next two weeks. Eight people instead of the usual four came and went every day. Dolores loved having family nearby.
When Ruth and the kids left for home, the house was too quiet. The Medeiros family in Honolulu was large, and they only had one relative in California. All summer Manolo’s brothers came to visit California, bringing their wives and children. Dolores wasn’t alone with Manolo and the girls until September.
Dolores and Manolo drove Carmen to the school in Berkeley. It was a quiet ride. Dolores wished they’d brought Betty to chatter at Carmen and describe everything they were passing. Dolores would do it, but she didn’t trust herself to keep from crying.
“You’ll learn useful skills here,” Manolo told his daughter. He glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. Carmen said nothing. “Things like piano tuning, broom making, and weaving cane chairs. That’s in addition to music, swimming, and homemaking.”
“She already has homemaking skills,” Dolores said. Carmen said nothing.
Manolo pulled up in front of the Spanish mission style building. “We’re here,” he said cheerfully.
Dolores’s tears welled, but she fought to smile. Taking Carmen’s hand, she led her daughter inside. It was a simple matter to check her in, and then it was time to go. Carmen clung to her mother.
“Mama, don’t leave me here. I want to be with family.” Carmen’s tears wet her mother’s shoulders.
Dolores could no longer hold back. She sobbed and held her daughter. “I will miss you. Study hard.” Behind her daughter’s back she crossed her fingers.
“Stop bawling. Come on.” Manolo pulled at Dolores. “Carmen, be a good girl. I know you’ll do well.” He turned and left his daughter crying as he dragged his wife to the car.
Dolores cried all the way home, pulling herself together only when they got off the freeway in San Jose. She didn’t have long before Betty came home from school. She washed her face and put a cool cloth over her eyes. Manolo shook his head and walked out the door. Dolores tried to tell her younger daughter how lovely the school was, how excited Carmen had been, but Betty didn’t believe her.
“Carmen likes us best,” ten-year-old Betty said. “I already miss her.”
“I miss her too,” Dolores admitted.
They didn’t hear from Carmen that night. The next day classes started, and all day Dolores pictured Carmen and sent her loving prayers. After dinner, the phone rang.
“Mama, can I come home?” The rasp in Carmen’s voice revealed she’d been crying.
Dolores swallowed hard but couldn’t respond without tears in her own voice. “Oh, sweetheart, I miss you, but try, please? For your father?”
The next night, Carmen called again. Dolores made Manolo answer the phone. He didn’t give her the phone at all, just slammed it in the receiver and stormed out the door. Dolores pursed her lips in anger. He never admitted he was wrong, but this time it affected their daughter. Every night, she cried with Carmen and handed the phone to Manolo. Every night he left the house with haunted eyes and a furious slam of the door.
“Manolo, she hates it there,” Dolores said, after getting off the phone with her eldest daughter yet again. She wiped tears from her eyes. “How can she learn anything if she is upset all the time?”
“She’s with other blind students, learning what blind students need to know.”
“And how is that different from what Betty has to know? Carmen will have to cook and clean. She won’t be making brooms! She’ll be much happier at home here with her sister.”
“Carmen doesn’t have to be happy. She only has to learn.”
Eventually Dolores, and his daughter’s tearful pleas, wore him down. Manolo brought Carmen home. She’d been away almost four months, but made it back for Christmas, which delighted Dolores and Betty. Carmen promised to work hard at home. Manolo’s action admitted he’d been wrong, but his words never did. Dolores’s anger burned hotter. He was smart enough to sense that and spent more time away from home.
Dolores baked gingerbread cookies and decorated t
he house with pine boughs. She put electric lights on the tree and let the girls arrange the ornaments. Nat King Cole’s “Christmas Song” played on the radio.
“Who’s Jack Frost?” Betty asked. “Why does he want to bite me?”
Dolores laughed. Carmen answered, “It’s a name for winter. Just saying it’s cold out, silly.”
“They should just say that,” her sister said.
While Betty was at school the last day before Christmas vacation, Dolores and Carmen wrapped presents in gaily printed holiday paper. “I can wrap mine, Mama. I can’t see it anyway,” Carmen offered.
“No, you don’t,” Dolores playfully scolded. “I know you’ll feel it, and then it won’t be a surprise.”
Her smile faded when she heard the kitchen door open and close. Manolo came into the bedroom. He stared at her with clear eyes. She met his eyes and stifled the urge to back against the wall. “Carmen, go in your room, please.” He waited until Carmen left the room. “This isn’t working,” he said.
“Isn’t working? What isn’t working?”
He swung his arm, taking in the bed, presents, herself, the house. “None of it. I can’t do it anymore.”
Dolores thought it sounded like her line. “So why don’t you move out?”
He nodded. “For the best, I guess. I can stay with a buddy in San Francisco. I’ll come by to visit.” He pulled a suitcase out of the closet and stuffed clothes into it.
Dolores sat where she was, stunned. Was she supposed to beg him to stay? Or wait until he left and dance around the house? Then realization dawned. “Did you lose another job?”
“We’re still married,” he told her with an arctic glare. “I expect you to remember that.”
“Why do you care about that?” She couldn’t remain silent any longer. “You haven’t acted like a husband in months. Don’t forget that you’re a father, too. I expect you to remember that.”
“Oh, cute.”
“This is your failure, Manolo, not mine. You have a nice house, a loyal wife to keep it, and two beautiful daughters you don’t even know.”
“You can’t say that. I love my girls.”
“It’s not the same to tell your buddies over a beer that you love your kids. You need to be here to know that Carmen is better off at home. I should never have let you send her to Berkeley.” She waited for him to admit he’d made a mistake.
“You gave in too soon. She would have come to enjoy the school.”
Exasperated, Dolores got up and went to the dresser. She opened the top drawer and scooped up his Jockey underwear and mismatched socks. On her way out the door, she threw the armload of skivvies into his suitcase.
In the kitchen, she seasoned a chicken and put it in the oven.
It was twenty minutes before Manolo appeared with two suitcases. “I’ll be going then.”
“Aloha. Stay in touch with the girls.”
He nodded. She turned back to the sink to wash her hands. The kitchen window faced the alley. She watched her husband walk to a waiting car and get in. His buddy Jack was behind the wheel. They drove off, and her day became normal again—just her alone, waiting for the girls to come home from school.
“Keep aloha in your heart,” she said out loud, not sure whether she meant it for herself or Manolo.
Gradually the tension eased from her shoulders. She leaned against the kitchen counter, weak with relief. Her marriage had failed, but it hadn’t failed today. And what had changed, really? Manolo wouldn’t be there for the girls, but he hadn’t ever been. She was on her own, able to start over and make her own choices. All but one. Manolo would never divorce her. She wasn’t free to marry Alberto.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Alberto 1947
Business was booming at Ross’s Steakhouse. Dolores spent a lot of time in the kitchen stirring big pots of beans. It reminded her of Grandma Jessie’s kitchen and feeding the Medeiros horde. On Dolores’s recommendation, Paul hired Lucia to wait tables. Despite the drive from Sunnyvale, Lucia was delighted to work with Dolores again and to earn more money with tips.
One day Lucia buzzed into the kitchen, spouting rapid Spanish. When Dolores didn’t look up from the pot of beans, Lucia stopped and asked, “Que pasa? Is something bothering you?”
Dolores looked up with a start. She gave her friend a wan smile. “Not as much as you. Have a rough customer?”
“Jerk didn’t leave a tip. Riled my Chicana temper. At least there’s a lull out there now. What’s wrong with you, Dolores?”
“Got a phone call from Hawai‘i last night. Manolo’s sister is coming.”
Lucia waved off the words. “More relatives? Hasn’t all of Honolulu visited you by now?”
“Manolo has a large family.” Dolores’s attention wandered again, back to the phone call she’d received last night. Helen and Antonio were coming to visit, and they would bring their son, Alberto. Her skin tingled as she thought his name.
“You work in a restaurant during the day and a hotel at night,” Lucia teased.
“At least the girls aren’t surprised when their father comes and goes just like the rest of his family,” Dolores said.
“Is he working now?”
Dolores nodded. “His third job since he left us six months ago.”
“Have you told him his sister’s coming?”
“His buddies lie about his whereabouts when I call. Carmen thinks that means he’s hurt or dead, so I’ve stopped trying to call. Next time he stops by, I’ll tell him.”
“So the whole family is coming? Are they staying in California?” Lucia asked.
“Helen sold Grandma Jessie’s house and split the money between her brothers. Maybe she was tired of hearing them complain that her kids get everything.”
Lucia took three full plates in her arms and backed through the swinging kitchen door. She returned after she’d served the table. “So you have three adults coming for a long visit. Do you have room for them?”
“For a short visit we’d make do, but this is an open-ended one. Paul found them a house in Mountain View, near my friend Maria’s house.”
“My big family is all in Mexico,” Lucia said. “I miss them, but I couldn’t host them at my house either. Too much like work, all the cooking and serving food.”
“That’s my life,” Dolores said with a smile.
After a long day, she returned home. She cleaned it every day, but for Alberto’s visit she polished and re-polished it. He wouldn’t notice, but it kept her mind from playing scenes of their reunion over and over.
Antonio rented a car and drove his family from the San Francisco Airport to San Jose. Dolores met them on the porch. She smiled at Helen. Antonio swooped the girls into his arms. Alberto stood in front of Dolores, and she drank him in with her eyes from the rolled-up sleeves of his blue work shirt to the scuffed hems of his tan trousers.
“Dolores.” His voice warmed her like caramel over ice cream.
“Alberto, welcome.” She took his hands in hers. He held them tight. “Come inside.” She looked at everyone and smiled. Alberto held on to one of her hands. The roughness of his calluses felt right.
Dolores freed herself from Alberto’s grip and went to the kitchen. She brought out a tray of Ritz crackers and cheese she’d prepared before the family’s arrival and put it on the coffee table.
Helen started to put her purse on the floor next to the couch but hesitated.
“No,” Dolores said. “Let me take it.”
“Not on the floor,” Carmen said. “You’ll run out of money.”
“My mother used to say that,” Helen said.
Dolores took the purse into her bedroom and put it on the bed. Returning to the kitchen, she fetched a pitcher of cold guava juice. “It’s not as good as at home,” Dolores apologized as she poured.
They chatted about family events and plans. Betty got bored and went to play in her room, but Carmen sat and listened. At fifteen, she was very interested in what the adults had to say.
Later, Dolores stepped outside for a moment of quiet as she often did when the house was full. Clouds drifted across the sky, just enough to ease the heat of the sun and cast shadows on the ground. Above the houses of the neighborhood, she could see palm trees and fir trees and fruit trees—evidence of San Jose’s mixed heritage.
Alberto came to join her. “Nice home you made here, calm like deepest blue ocean of home, ya?”
“It works for us.”
“The house Paul found is near places I can work. Tomorrow I apply to Vanderson. They need concrete finishers.”
“Did your uncles teach you how to do that?”
He grinned. Her heart flipped at the familiar devil in his eyes. “I can get by ’til I learn, ya?”
Alberto always made her smile.
“You ever t’ink ’bout adding on to this place, Dolores?”
“Adding on? It would be nice to have another bedroom. We get a lot of visitors.”
It wasn’t long afterward that the sound of a hammer became the background noise of 1947, punctuated by the shrill whir of lumber being cut. Dolores hated the dust and dirt created by the construction, but Alberto arrived every day, and that thrilled her. He was busy, but she could make him a sandwich, and talk to him, and watch him when he wasn’t looking.
Alberto had decided she needed more than another bedroom. Even though the addition would share a wall with her kitchen, it would also have its own door to the outside, its own bathroom, and a small kitchen. A complete apartment.
ONE day after work, Dolores walked down the alley to the door of the addition. She loved seeing the daily progress. She loved hearing Alberto tell her all about his day. The half-walled room smelled of fresh cut lumber and drywall. The apartment door was open. Manolo stood in the middle of the room. Alberto’s eyes met hers over Manolo’s shoulder.
Dolores plastered on her face the special fake smile she used for her husband. “Aloha, Manolo. Did you come to see what Alberto is working on?”
He turned and gave her a tight smile. His brown scapular peeked out from under his rumpled white shirt. She couldn’t believe he still wore it. Did he still believe the Blessed Virgin would protect him if he wore it? No matter how much he lived like the devil?
The Aloha Spirit Page 27