Her exhilaration was at its peak, and she wondered if it could be possible to feel any happier or freer: Perhaps in Heaven, perhaps dancing in Heaven.
In the midst of her euphoria, she realized that her pet name had been called.
"Lindhina."
She stopped short and caused the boy trailing behind her to almost collide with her. The ends of her black hair fell to the small of her back, and they swayed as she turned toward the sound of her mother's voice.
Her mother called again in a tone that suggested it was the third or fourth time she'd had to say it. "Venha me ajudar com o jantar." Come and help me with dinner.
The girl smiled, perfect teeth gleaming. She was famished. She waved and called back, "Vindo." Coming.
Then she added, "May I invite Mateus to dinner?"
"Não esta noite, Lindhina," her mother said. Not tonight, my pretty little one.
She turned round to face the boy and shrugged her shoulders. "Come to my window later?"
"Sure."
She kissed him on the cheek, turned round again, and ran across the stone-covered square with its communal fountain.
Later, whenever Mamãe recalled that day she thought it would have been more apt if her mother had said, Come and help me with dinner...and I will tell you the news that will kill your dreams.
§
Gloucester, Massachusetts
There was a battle taking place in the Raposo kitchen on Portagee Hill. A battle Inacio Raposo knew he had already lost. A passerby might have thought that the argument between mother and son was similar to that in millions of kitchens across America. But in this house, Elvis Presley was merely a convenient surrogate for an angry, frustrated young man who dared not challenge his mother over the true, underlying issue.
Inacio had turned up the radio volume.
SINCE MY BABY LEFT ME...
"Turn off that jungle noise," Angelina Raposo screamed in Portuguese.
Though Inacio could hear her perfectly well, he cupped his hand over his ear and said, "Quê?" What?
"Do you want the whole neighborhood to think a cartload of macacos has moved in here? What is wrong with you?"
"Quê?" Inacio said, louder this time.
The old woman charged at him with a wooden spoon. "Turn it off."
"Okay, okay. I didn't hear you." Inacio turned the radio off and slouched down at the kitchen table.
Angelina Raposo had worn only black since her husband and two older sons were lost at sea thirteen years ago. In her grief, the widow had taken to cooking and eating. Inacio regarded her as she moved back to the kitchen stove in a huff. Short and squat, a study in black with a perpetually stern expression, she reminded him of a photo of Queen Victoria he had seen in his junior high school history book.
She brought the conversation back to the real issue. "It's no use arguing," Angelina said in Portuguese. Wagging her wooden spoon, she added, "I gave you plenty of chances to find a wife on your own. Now, it's too late. Everything is settled. She will arrive in one year and you will marry her."
Inacio Raposo's mother had been hinting that it was time for him to settle down since his twentieth birthday. By then, he had already been working for six years. He paid his mother generous room and board and was in possession of a healthy savings account and a 1950 Oldsmobile Rocket 88.
On days off he always drove to the high school parking lot just as school was letting out. He had learned that nothing was more exhilarating to certain high school girls than a handsome older boy with money in his pocket and his own sports car.
Inacio would deftly sidestep his mother's coaxing with a "Yes, Mama," but as time went by Angelina became more insistent, finally saying, "You've been a playboy long enough. I want grandchildren, and you're my only hope."
By the time Inacio was twenty-four and still unmarried, Angelina Raposo had tired of his excuses and made it her business to find him a wife.
"Well, don't expect us to live here." And by "here," Inacio meant "with you."
"Well, I know that," Angelina said. "You'll stay here only for a little while, until I can find a suitable place for you."
Though little taller than when he had begun the life of a fisherman at age fourteen, Inacio's appearance had been changed by time and weather. The smooth skin of youth had become a little coarser with each passing season. His deep brown eyes had lost the eagerness of adolescence.
Inacio stroked the black stubble on his tanned, angular face, eyed the letter and accompanying black and white photo on the kitchen table, and grunted.
"Besides," Angelina said, "she's healthy as a mule and has a very pleasant disposition."
Inacio picked up the photo and studied it. He could tell by her squint that the sun had been in her eyes when the photo was taken. Her smile appeared forced. Her tits were practically nonexistent. And since the photo was from the waist up, he had no idea what her hips looked like.
A mule with a pleasant disposition—just what every man dreams of.
§
Horta, Azores
The girl sat at the long, wooden kitchen table, peeling potatoes with furious scrapes. "If I must marry, why can't I marry Mateus?" she cried out in Portuguese.
Her mother got very cross, and her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Have you been with that boy?"
She knew what her mother meant. "No."
Her mother looked into her eyes for a long moment, judging whether or not she was telling the truth. Finally, looking relieved, she said, "Good. Now get this silliness out of your head. You are promised to Inacio Raposo. Your father and I have worked very hard for this. Do not be ungrateful, and do not sabotage all we have planned for your own good.
"And no more play. You are a woman now, and you will have to start acting like one. You will learn English, and do all the housework for the next year. I won't have the Raposos think I have sent them a child."
The girl began to weep. Her mother embraced her. "Don't cry, Lindhina. In one year you will leave the Azores for a better life in America.
"Why do you think I kept you in school with the priest for all these years? I want something better for you. You can read, meu coração, something very few children or even adults can do here. Someday, when you have children of your own, you will know what it means to want the best for them, even if they do not see it.
"Look. The Raposos have sent a photo of Inacio. He is very handsome, no?"
Chapter 3
August 1, 1957
THE YEAR HAD PASSED as her mother had promised. The girl had been taken out of school and become an apprentice dona de casa housewife. She had cooked and scrubbed, laundered and mended, all under the supervising eyes of her mother. Thoughts of dance and Mateus seemed the faraway daydreams of a child now, surfacing only in the sad poetry she wrote late at night.
Most evenings, when the housework was done, she walked lackadaisically across town to the home of Senhorita Araújo to study the English language. During these walks she dwelled on her fate and the unfairness of it, the way no one not her family or friends, not even Mateus seemed to care that she would be leaving the island of Faial forever. And why must she leave? To be given like property to a man she had never met. How can they love me if they're allowing this to happen? How can Mateus stand for it after all we have been to each other?
The very idea made her angry and sad, and she contemplated the ways in which she might end her life in the name of love. Perhaps she would plunge a dagger into her heart, as Juliet had done, or make a lover's leap from a cliff, like an American Indian princess. Then they'll be sorry.
She had seen Mateus rarely over the past year. He didn't seem nearly as distraught as she'd thought he would be. She tried to hate him, but she couldn't. That morning she had entrusted a note to her sister, Branca, to give to Mateus at school.
At 11:00 p.m., barefoot and wearing a light cotton nightgown, the girl slipped out of her bedroom window and into the waiting arms of Mateus. Holding hands, they stole through the narrow sto
ne pathways of the town. When they reached the southern end of the village, they left the road and hiked toward their Lugar Secreto Secret Place—the flat top of an enormous boulder that overlooked a tiny cove. They had been coming here since they were ten years old. In daylight, they swam, sunbathed, and daydreamed. At night, they listened to the surf, talked about their dreams for the future, and wished upon the stars.
Their Secret Place could only be reached by climbing down a steep incline through thick brush. To see it, one needed to be directly above it. The flat-topped boulder had a black circle in the middle, the charred remains of their occasional fires. Tonight, the cove water below was black with a shimmering band of moonlight across it, but in sunlight it was as blue as the hydrangea blossoms that gave the island of Faial its nickname—Ilha Azul, Blue Island.
§
Eyeing the place from above caused the girl to remember: It had been a year ago, a carefree summer day. She was supposed to go to a neighboring village for a cousin's birthday party. But the cousin came down with the flu at the last minute, and the party was postponed.
She searched all over town for Mateus, and by early afternoon had decided to look for him at their Secret Place. She climbed down to this very spot and spied him from above. He lay naked atop the boulder, his head resting on his neatly folded clothing. She knew that Mateus was committing a sin and wondered if watching him was sinful too. But while she closed her eyes and turned her head, she found herself peering at him again after a few moments.
§
The girl was jostled from the memory. "Hmm?" she said.
Mateus regarded her with concern. "I said: Are you all right?"
The girl blushed at the realization that her breathing was heavy now. "I'm fine. Let's keep going, we're almost there."
She took his hand. "And I have a gift for you."
§
Inacio Raposo stood before the bathroom mirror, coated his hands with Brylcreem and ran his fingers through his curly black hair. He'd had a sore throat for weeks now, but he wasn't about to let that hold him back. The mule with the pleasant disposition would arrive in Gloucester on August 12th, and on the 16th he would be a married man. He only had two more weeks to sow his wild oats as far and wide as he could.
Tonight it would be with Rowena, a forty-year-old divorcee from New York City who came to her Cape Ann seaside cottage each July and August to escape the city heat. She would make dinner for them and serve it on an open porch that overlooked Good Harbor Beach and the Atlantic.
§
The two lay on their backs on the flat-topped boulder, as they had hundreds of times before, and gazed at the night sky. Mateus put his hands behind his head and interlaced his fingers. The girl's hands rested primly on her stomach. They built no fire tonight. It was too warm for that. Despite the warmth of the still night air, the coolness of the stone beneath the girl penetrated her nightgown, and she shivered. With eyes welling, she whispered, "I'm going to miss you so much."
"Me too," Mateus sighed.
"My heart hurts," she said, her voice breaking.
Mateus unlocked his fingers and stretched his left arm out. The girl instinctively raised her head. When she lowered it again, it came to rest on Mateus's solid bicep. His long, smooth fingers cupped her shoulder, and he drew her closer to him. They stayed that way in silence for a time before she garnered the courage to roll onto her side and place her left hand on his chest. She felt the beating of his heart against her fingers, and she rested her head on his chest so that she could hear it too.
Several times she took a full breath as if she were about to speak, and then sighed when courage deserted her. Finally, Mateus noticed. "O quê?" What is it?
After a moment, she closed her eyes tight and blurted out, "I want you to make love to me."
She felt his body tense.
"But your husband..." he said.
She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. "He's not my husband yet." She raised her head and looked into his eyes. Her face softened. "And I want to give myself to you. I love you."
She kissed him the way she had seen Sophia Loren kiss Marcello Mastroianni, the way she had practiced on her mirror and on her pillow.
But their love-making was not tragically beautiful, as she had imagined it would be. It was awkward, painful, and mercifully brief. Mateus did not gaze longingly into her eyes. He did not kiss her passionately or say, I love you. She winced with every painful thrust until he finished and collapsed atop her, panting.
She held him fast in her arms, stared up at a million stars, and wondered if Inacio Raposo would be able to tell that she was not a virgin.
§
On the porch overlooking the Atlantic, a wicker table held a flickering tea light, two dinner plates of half-eaten food, and two empty wine bottles. The wicker chairs were empty.
Rowena was bent over the porch railing, facing the rolling whitecaps that showed through the darkness. Inacio stood behind her, thrusting into her while balancing his wine glass on the small of her back. A cooling ocean breeze glided over his skin.
Inacio burned with fever. His body glistened with sweat, and his sore throat hurt like hell. For the first time in his life, fucking felt like a chore, and he slowed his pace.
"Don't stop now, baby," Rowena pleaded. She grabbed the porch railing tightly in her hands and rhythmically moved with him, smacking her bottom against his pelvis.
Inacio moved faster, pounding her until she released a sound that was half scream, half laughter.
He withdrew from her slowly. Rowena made a guttural moan, and her upper body sagged limply over the railing.
Inacio hadn't climaxed, and he didn't care. He just wanted to get home and go to bed. He staggered a few feet to where their clothing lay in a crumpled heap. He bent to pick up his pants but was overcome with dizziness.
Rowena giggled. "I just might have to take you back to Manhattan with me."
The Portuguese fisherman tilted his head back and stared at a blur of stars. His body swayed, and then he collapsed.
Chapter 4
August 7, 1957
THE GIRL SAT ON the ferry, tightly clutching her suitcase and travel documents, and looked out the window at the pier. Her mother, father, and younger sister, Branca, stood on the dock. Her mother dabbed at tears with a handkerchief, her father smiled stoically, and ten-year-old Branca pouted down at the water. She looked around in vain for Mateus, and then cursed him.
The boat eased away from its mooring and began its run from Horta to the island of San Jorge, the first leg of the journey that would take her to Inacio Raposo in America. As the ferry gained speed, she finally caught sight of Mateus in the distance, leaning against a cedar tree. He stared at her but did not wave. He's not waving because he's not going to say good-bye. He'll dive in and swim to me, and then together we'll go to Lisbon or maybe Rio de Janeiro.
But Mateus didn't move from the cedar tree. The girl placed the fingertips of her right hand against the window and watched her childhood sweetheart and her hope shrink as the boat moved farther from shore. Eventually it turned, and Mateus and her entire family vanished from sight. She let her forehead fall against the window and wept.
§
Angelina Raposo climbed the stairs carrying a tray with a bowl of Portuguese fish soup, some homemade bread, and a cup of tea. Inacio had taken to bed the week before complaining of a sore throat, fever, and achiness. Mother and son had argued because Inacio would not eat.
"How can you get better if you don't eat?" Angelina had shouted.
"How can I eat when my throat is on fire and everything makes me queasy?" Inacio had rasped back.
But the black-clad widow was determined. Inacio would eat, even if she had to force him. At the top of the stairs she turned to the right, walked the few steps to Inacio's bedroom, and crossed the threshold. "I don't want any argument from ..."
The old woman's eyes grew wide. She dropped the tray and ran for the telephone.
§
Inacio was shivering and soaked with sweat. Angelina explained to the physician in a mix of broken English and Portuguese that she had earlier found her son delirious and violently twitching, as if in the throes of a seizure.
The doctor began his examination, but Angelina's incessant questions were so distracting that he finally escorted her from the room, told her to be quiet, and shut the door in her face. The old lady paced the hallway outside the bedroom and said the rosary in Portuguese until the doctor emerged from the room a few minutes later. Angelina glared at him.
He cleared his throat and delivered his diagnosis.
Chapter 5
August 12, 1957
THE SHIP SAILED from The Azores to Bermuda, and then on to the Port of Boston. The girl followed the other passengers and eventually passed through customs.
A lanky, elderly man in a dark wool suit and red silk tie twirled a fedora in his hands as he approached her. He had a full head of thick, wiry salt-and-pepper hair and a matching mustache. The old man, who clearly recognized her from the photograph her mother had sent to Inacio's family, introduced himself as Pio Alpande, her fiancé's uncle.
She grasped his weathered hand, kissed it, and, speaking Portuguese, asked for his blessing. Pio smiled, gave his blessing, and donned his hat. He took the girl's scruffy suitcase in one hand, her arm in the other, and led her to a black 1950 Oldsmobile.
Uncle Pio smelled of tobacco and bay rum lotion, scents the girl found familiar and comforting. Once they were in the car, she had the opportunity to study his face and hands. They were tanned, creased, and rough. The face and hands of a fisherman, she thought.
During the hour-and-fifteen-minute drive through foggy mist, Pio told her of Inacio's illness: Rheumatic fever brought on by untreated strep throat. The doctor had prescribed antibiotics just in time to save Inacio's life. There was a chance of heart damage, but Inacio was young and strong, and would most likely have a full recovery.
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