“When I saw this place the other time I came, I dreamed I’d get married here,” I remark absently as I draw my free hand over the polished wood of the pews.
It’s only after it’s out there that I realize the gravity of that kind of statement to Nico. Super smooth, Layla. Ugh, he’s going to think I’m dropping hints or something crazy like that. I ignore the fact that I do imagine getting married to him sometimes. It’s a daydream that’s way too easy to fall into.
I open my mouth to apologize, but instead find Nico looking at me softly.
“Did you?” he remarks. He lifts my hand to his lips in a motion that’s strangely chivalric, even for him, but fits the ancient setting of the church. His black eyes twinkle, but not just from the sunlight. “It’s not a bad dream. I kind of like it, you know.” He looks around at the simple beauty. “It fits you, this place.”
We watch each other for a minute, tension and some other kind of strange magic building between us. Nico opens his full mouth, like he wants to say something else. My chest constricts—why, I’m not sure. But neither of us looks away; neither of us even blinks. It’s the same feeling I get when I want to kiss him, but even now, it’s something more. Something that goes so much deeper than what my body does with him. From the start, everything with Nico has been on a cellular level. Past the body. When he looks at me like this, he penetrates my soul.
“Layla—” he begins, but is cut off when the heavy doors to the church open, and my father strides in with his customary frown as his footsteps echo off the high ceilings.
I look to Nico and mouth “sorry.” He shrugs and gives me a lopsided smile, as if to say, “What can you do?” Dad immediately zeroes in on our joined hands as he approaches.
“Layla,” he barks, giving Nico a dirty look. “É uma igreja. Respeito!”
I’m annoyed by that enough that I barely even care that he spoke to me in Portuguese for one of the first times in my life. “Dad. We’re just holding hands.”
As if in response, Nico’s fingers tighten their grip instead of pulling away. I know it’s partly just to get under my dad’s skin, but I’m feeling kind of territorial myself. I don’t like the way my dad acts around the love of my life. Especially when he’s interrupting moments that are important.
Dad glowers, and Nico mutters “Oye, tranquiló, viejo” under his breath. I give him a wide-eyed look, and he winks at me so I have to stifle a smile.
“What was that?” Dad demands.
I gulp. I doubt my dad would appreciate being told to calm down. Or being called “old man.”
Nico just blinks innocently. Well, as innocent as he ever really looks. Then, deliberately, he holds up my hand and drops it. “I just said we need to go, Dr. Barros,” he says. “It’s also disrespectful to be late, right?”
With a huff, Dad spins around and leaves, but when Nico follows, I tug him back. He turns around, a shit-eating grin on his handsome face that makes me start laughing.
“Dude,” I chide, though I’m still giggling. “You have got to cut it out. You sound like a troublemaker caught at the principal’s office.”
Nico snorts. “I’ll cut it out when he stops talking to us like we’re high school students. Until then, he’s lucky I haven’t started calling him Principal Skinner. Now, come on. I wasn’t kidding about not wanting to be late. I might like busting your dad’s balls a little since he’s never going to like me that much anyway. But I don’t want to piss off the rest of your family.”
* * *
For all his bravado, though, Nico grows quiet again as we drive with my dad to my aunt and uncle’s house, a big place in a gated community down by the beach. It’s a really quiet neighborhood. Most of the people here only use their houses as vacation homes, places where they come on the weekends after working in the city during the week. But Fabiana—known to me and the more extended branches of my dad’s family as Bibi—and her husband, my uncle Manuel, moved here semi-permanently after their kids left for university, although Manuel still uses their apartment in Vitória a few days a week when he’s working.
The two-story house is big and airy, with the downstairs walls all opening through four different French doors onto a large yard bearing a cashew tree, a small pool, and patio where we’ll eat lunch. When we arrive, all of the doors are open to reveal the Spanish-tiled ground floor, and Bibi’s selection of comfortable, lounge-ready furniture. The barbecue on the side of the house has been started up while their cook and a maid hurry dishes to and from the kitchen to the patio table.
“Damn,” Nico mutters as he takes in the spread already laid out. “That looks…amazing.”
It really does. Bibi’s gone all out, using our presence as an excuse to make real churrasco this afternoon for her family and a bunch of her neighbors. There is a big shank of meat rotating over a rotisserie, and the man at the grill is flipping sausages and smaller pieces of meats and fish. On the table I spot the classics of Brazilian barbecue: feijoada (black beans stewed with pieces of sausages and pork), farofa (a ground yucca dish made with beans, pork rinds, and egg), fried plantains, a massive fruit salad, and pitchers of mango and cashew juice. My aunt, uncle, and cousins are mingling with neighbors, and I recognize a few other faces from church.
“Linda!” Bibi’s high-pitched cry sounds from the other side of the patio, and my father’s magnanimous older sister practically sprints across the yard to greet us, closely followed by Manuel, her husband. “I saw you in the church, but we had to come back here so quickly. Come, let me look at my baby!”
Her exuberance makes me smile despite the fact that I’ve only met my aunt twice. Trips to and from Brazil are expensive, and considering that she and Manuel had three kids, they only managed to visit us in Seattle once when I was little. The other time, of course, was only a few years ago, when Dad, Mom, and I visited for Carnaval.
The memory hurts. It was a whirlwind trip, but I wonder now if it was the start of Dad’s change of heart about his country. He hadn’t been back for so many years. Maybe it was that visit that catalyzed his decision to leave.
Bibi hugs me tightly and kisses both my cheeks before passing me off to my uncle, a sober, smaller man whose personality seems to be the opposite of his vivacious wife. I wonder how she and my dad can possibly be related. They seem to be polar opposites.
“Tudo bem,” Manuel greets me kindly as he kisses my cheeks.
“Tudo boa,” I answer automatically. “Good to see you again, Tio.”
Bibi pats her carefully coiffed black hair, which looks like it’s slightly tinted red in the sun, and winks while Manuel nods at Nico, then ambles away to say hello to other men closer to his age.
“Now, who is this?” Bibi asks, looking Nico up and down. She grins, her red lips tugging slyly and her black eyes sparkling. “Do all the men in New York look like this? Carolina, you might want to visit your cousin in New York. Gua-po!”
Nico leans in to accept her kisses on his cheek. “Brigada, senhora,” he murmurs, and grins when my aunt pretty much trills like a bird in response.
“Oi, my goodness, that voice! He sounds just like…who is that singer? That one with the low voice? Did you hear that voice, Lina?”
“Sim, Mãe,” replies a crabby voice in Portuguese. “I heard it. And it does not sound like Barry White at all. Stop embarrassing yourself.”
Nico and I both turn toward my cousin Carolina, who is the closest to me in age at twenty-four. Tall, willowy, and blonde (a hair color that is definitely not natural, given all of our family’s dark hair), she stands with the slouch that only certain girls affected with wealth and beauty can pull off.
“Oi, tudo bem.” She greets me with another round of kisses on the cheeks while I murmur “tudo boa” in return. She follows the same process with Nico. “Don’t pay her attention. She just likes to make trouble.”
“Stop,” Bibi chides her daughter. “He’s so handsome! And polite! Sergio, você não está feliz que sua filha tenha um homem tão forte e guap
o?”
My father, who is walking around our little party, just strikes up a cigarette and grunts before he walks away to join a few other men sitting around a table by the pool. I watch for a moment, slightly astounded by the sight. My dad never smoked when I was growing up. He obviously knew how terrible it is for you, not to mention how bad it looks for a doctor to be a smoker in the first place. But here, it’s different. Almost everyone smokes. There doesn’t seem to be the same kind of stigma, even for health professionals.
Nico chuckles at Bibi’s remarks, and I just shake my head. We both know my dad is not particularly happy that his daughter has “such a strong and handsome man,” as Bibi said. But I’m glad to know the rest of my family doesn’t necessarily feel the same way.
“Come on,” I say to Nico, taking his hand in mine to guide him through the rest of the party. “We need to say hi to everyone else. And then we’re going to eat.”
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, we’ve been thoroughly welcomed into the fold. Even Dad seems to have forgotten that Nico is with us, since he’s happily entrenched in conversation with my uncle and a bunch of other men from the neighborhood.
I sit at the end of the long table, watching as Nico lets my cousins and some of the other younger men usher him into a game of horseshoes at the other end of the lawn. Bibi takes a seat next to me, carrying a pitcher of water.
“It’s too hot to eat so much without a drink,” she says. “You want wine? I can get wine.”
“No, no, Bibi, I’m fine. Thank you though.”
A burst of laughter erupts from the horseshoe players, where Nico turns triumphant after making his first score. He blows me a kiss before starting another turn, and I finger my straw, enjoying the warm feeling his bright smile puts in my belly.
“I like him,” Bibi says.
I turn to her and smile. “I know. You made that pretty clear earlier, Bibi. I think he still has lipstick on his face.”
She smiles as she lights a cigarette, but shakes her head. “That was…well, yes, he is very handsome. But mostly I just like to, how do you say, tease your father. But I watch. And now, I like him. He is kind, yes?”
I swallow and nod. “Yes. Very kind.”
Her eyes soften, the slight wrinkles around them become a little less pronounced. With all of her glamor, it’s hard to remember sometimes that my aunt is actually in her sixties. She looks and acts like a woman much younger.
“And he is smart?”
Again, I nod. Strangely, I’m a little teary. I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted people besides me to recognize all of Nico’s amazing qualities.
“And he is good to you, yes?”
I use my index finger to swipe away the tears threatening to fall. “Very. He’s the best, Bibi.”
She nods, satisfied as she takes another puff. “Good. Then I like him the best too.”
I sigh. “I just wish Dad felt the same way. He doesn’t like him at all. He treats him like he’s dangerous, or like he’s going to corrupt me.”
In response, Bibi produces a very unladylike snort. “My little brother is a fool some days, Layla. He only act this way because he was the same, you know.”
I raise a skeptical brow. “I don’t remember Dad having any tattoos, Bibi.”
She waves away the thought with her cigarette, causing ash to fly into the air along with the snaking lines of smoke. “He didn’t need them. He was bad enough. Out all the night, chasing the girls. Sergio, he was so handsome, so charming when he was younger. All the girls, they love him. And then, he go to America, and…things, they change. But not so much. That was when he meet your mother.”
I don’t reply, sensing a story coming. Bibi takes a long drag of her cigarette as she watches my dad. Of all the men standing around the table, he has the most presence. Late fifties, yes, but with a full head of hair, olive skin, and dark eyes. He makes a joke, and the other five or six men around him burst into laughter. He might be my dad, but his charisma is obvious, even to me.
“Sergio is hungry,” Bibi says. “He was always hungry. You know, we grow up okay, but not with so much money, not like this. He made our father very angry when he did not want to run the farm. But then he go to university, and after that, to America, to Stanford. And he becomes a big doctor, and he meet your mother…he thought he has everything. But still, it was never home. There, he was foreign, you know? And I think that after a long time, it make him bitter. This man…” She waves her cigarette toward my father, who has resumed his normal scowl. “He is not my brother. My brother is still coming back sometimes.”
We watch them for a bit more while I pick at my food, and Bibi puffs away.
“So, maybe he sees himself in your Nico,” she remarks. “Maybe he worry that in time, you will be with a man who will be bitter too.”
I frown, staring down at my juice while I swirl the straw around meditatively. Is that it? Is that why Dad hates Nico?
From across the yard, Nico catches my eye. He winks, and that familiar warm feeling spreads again.
“Yeah, but Nico doesn’t have to go anywhere to find home, Bibi,” I tell her. “Neither of us will. Because his home is me. And mine is him.”
Bibi is quiet for a moment while she finishes her cigarette, then lights another. She watches Nico with me, and her red mouth quirks when he laughs with her sons as one of them makes another score. He turns to me for another grin. Unaware of my aunt watching him, Nico mouths, “I love you” before he turns back to his game.
“Yes,” my aunt says with an approving nod. “I see it.”
* * *
“Oh, God.”
One slice of steak, two sausages, and countless scoops of feijoada, farofa, and fruit salad later, I am stuffed. Sated.
And losing just about all of it in my aunt’s bathroom on the second story.
“This is what happens when you eat too much, Barros,” I mutter to myself as the nausea dies. I stand up, flush the toilet, then go to the sink to wash my hands, rinse my mouth, and splash water on my flushed face. It was the weirdest thing—fifteen minutes ago I felt fine. Way too full, but fine. And then suddenly I had to make a beeline up the stairs to the bathroom so that no one would hear me puke up all the delicious food that had been so painstakingly prepared for me.
And now that it’s gone…I’m fine again.
“It’s your American stomach,” I tell my reflection, dabbing a damp cloth over my cheeks.
“Is it?”
I flinch, then turn to find Carolina standing in the doorway. She strides in, her long, lithe form about as droll as her features. She reaches around me to a drawer in the sink, pulls a zipper makeup bag from the back, and removes a plastic-covered pouch that looks like a tampon.
“Here,” she says as she flips the package at me.
I frown. “Oh, I’m not—it’s not that time of the month for me, yet.”
“It’s a, how do you say? Pregnant test? Not tampon.”
I stare at the flimsy package for a moment, digesting her words. “What?”
Carolina pulls it back. “We have them from when David and Erica were trying to have a baby last year. But you…oh. You mean you and your man, you don’t…”
“No, um, we do,” I admit, somewhat bashfully. My cheeks redden all over again, but for different reasons.
“Good,” Carolina says. “Because if I had that at home…I know we are supposed to be good Catholics and stay virgins forever, but come on. It’s a new generation.” She shrugs. “What do they expect?”
I shrug too, unsure of what to say. I don’t really know enough about the sexual politics of Brazil to know what I should say and what to keep to myself.
“How long since your last, you know?” Carolina checks her reflection and messes with a few strands of hair.
“My…” I start counting the days back since my last period, and slowly it dawns on me that I’m late. And not just a few days. It’s been…close to two months.
I freeze.
Carolina clicks her tongue and holds out the test expectantly. “Yes. See? Take the test. Better safe than sorry, no?”
With a shaky hand, I take the test and examine it.
“You pee on it,” Carolina says. “Then we wait. Don’t worry, I will wait with you.”
She leans back expectantly on the counter. Through my suddenly addled brain, I remember that it’s one of the differences I noticed last time in Brazil—the way women, especially my cousins, have no shame about their bodies in front of each other. Bathrooms. Changing rooms. Locker rooms. Women here don’t have secrets.
“Ah…okay,” I say as I move awkwardly back to the toilet and proceed to pee on the stick, as directed, while Carolina watches matter-of-factly. When I’m done, she gestures to a few paper napkins she’s laid on the counter.
“Put it there,” she says. “We will wait.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Layla
“You are okay?”
Carolina pauses as she strides back into the bathroom. I’m sitting on the toilet, my hands braced on my knees while I try to breathe properly. This explains so much. The slight weight gain. The tiny changes in my body. The fatigue. The sudden nausea.
Carolina looks alarmed. “Should I go get Tio?”
“No. No. Do not get my dad. I’m fine. I’m just…” I swallow, barely able to believe it myself. I stare at the test where it’s perched on the edge of the bathtub. The two pink lines cross over each other in a terrible parody of chastity. “I am pregnant. You were right.”
Carolina looks at me sympathetically, then sits down on the edge of the tub, careful not to disturb the test. She pats me on the knee.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I won’t say anything. At least you are lucky. In America, you don’t have to keep, no?”
I frown. That is literally the last thing on my mind at the moment.
“Um, no,” I say. “We don’t have to keep.” But obviously what I’m thinking is all over my face. “Not keeping” is not an option. Not for me. Not in this world. Not in any.
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