Except the technician hasn’t shown.
Our desktop address book contains every detail about our Time Warner account except their stupid phone number, so I dig through Alberto’s mail to find a hard-copy bill. As I’m dialing, I notice the Movies & Events section on the statement:
03/14/09: Che Part One: Start 8:10pm
03/14/09: Che Part Two: Start 10:22pm
03/14/2009 is the Night Before He Died.
I hang up the phone and stare at the two last movies he ever watched. I remember the look and light of our apartment that night, when I fell asleep at the wrong end of our bed, watching “Che Part Two.” That movie is the last thing I remember about the lazy Saturday that became his last Saturday.
It began at 8:30am with him sleeping and me tiptoeing around our apartment, looking for clean socks and an iPod charger before my 9am cardio class. When I returned from the gym with coffees, he was still in bed, playing naked Scrabble on the laptop. I’d slipped out of my Nikes and slid under the covers and joined him.
Is there breakfast? he had asked.
There is, I’d said. Whatcha in the mood for?
Two waffles with snausages please!
Over breakfast in bed, we watched last week’s “CBS Sunday Morning” on the DVR. When it ended, he said I’ll be here! and pulled the duvet around him for a nap. I’d curled up with Warren Buffett’s biography for a few hours.
When Alberto awoke, he apologized for being such a sleepyhead.
Stop, I said, it’s grumpy out and it’s a perfect book-reading day.
I love you, he said.
Me too, I said, borrowing his favorite response.
We watched Silence of the Lambs—somehow he’d never seen it before—and ordered sandwiches from the deli downstairs. Another nap for him and a few more chapters for me, and the sky began darkening. He’d woken just before the laundry was delivered and helped me haul it inside, hanging everything on the back of the front door.
What should we have for dinner, he asked.
We flipped through our three-ring binder of menus in plastic sheets and decided on Greek. I still have the notepad with our dinner order: scallops and salad for me; an order of saganaki and a gyro platter with an extra side of gyro meat for him. I still turn away when I pass the Greek restaurant that delivered his last meal. I still wonder, if he’d ordered something less artery-clogging for dinner, would he have lived another day?
* * *
We need to talk, says my agency’s CFO, clearing his throat. About how much commitment you’ll be able to give the agency in 2010.
Of course, I say, glancing at the HR woman and back to the CFO.
Tré, you’ve exhausted all of your vacation and leave, he says, and after the New Year, we won’t be able to grant you any more unpaid time off.
The subtext of this conversation?
No one at this PR firm appreciates you taking two weeks off for the holidays.
Also, don’t even think about going to Cuba in March.
Do you feel, the HR woman asks, that your upcoming vacation in Brazil will enable you to turn over a new leaf in the New Year?
My upcoming . . . what?
Vacation?
This will be my first Christmas as a widow.
Brazil isn’t a vacation. It’s self-preservation. It’s Prozac.
But how do I explain this to people who are spending the holidays with their fiancés or pregnant wives?
I don’t speak their language anymore and they don’t understand mine, but I summon what I think they want to hear: that I appreciate the candor of this conversation and that yes, I’m hoping my Brazil trip will be restorative and that when I return, I’ll be able to bring the noise.
Everyone smiles and nods.
We’d like you to think about benchmarks in which to measure your performance in the upcoming year, says the CFO. So when you return, we can all sit down with your director and discuss these goals.
Wow, I think, that sounds brilliant. When I’m trying to not hurl myself over the cliffs of Iguazu on Christmas, I’ll just focus on media benchmarks. Super helpful, guys.
I give them my best brave face and head home to pack.
* * *
Despite my 4am pick-up for the airport, Mariana and I decide to attend a girlfriend’s birthday party on the roof of Gramercy Park Hotel. A thirty-something guy in a newsboy hat catches my eye from across the party. He looks at me, lingers, and leaves the room.
I’m intrigued, so I follow and find him checking his phone near the elevators.
Hi Hat.
He looks up.
Hi there.
I’m Tré, and you’re wearing the hat I would be wearing if I didn’t get my silly hair cut tonight and wasn’t trying to make it last ’til Christmas.
And what are you doing for Christmas?
Brazil.
Really? First time?
Yep.
Why Brazil?
It’s the furthest I could get from the holidays in America.
Why are you fleeing the holidays in America?
Long story. Let’s talk about you. And how you know the birthday girl.
My friend, who I came with, is her dermatologist.
Wow, that’s sexy, I say. Wanna try again?
The Hat laughs, disarmingly. Throws it back to me. How do you know the birthday girl?
We worked together at a California art gallery before she went off to Harvard and I went off to Berkeley. Ten years later, our moms became Facebook friends, realized both their daughters were in New York, put us in touch, and now they live vicariously through us.
That’s a pretty good story.
I have hundreds of these.
I have all night.
Unfortunately, I do not, I say, with a mock check to my watchless wrist. Airport in four hours.
Better make those four hours count.
I plan to. What are you and the derm up to? My friend and I have a car downstairs.
We have a party at a Westside bar.
The four of us relocate to Galway Hooker, elbowing our way past Quentin Tarantino—much taller than anyone figures him for—and this guy with the hat?
I cannot believe how much I want to be alone with him.
I keep ducking away from Mariana because she’s never seen me hold hands with anyone besides Alberto and it seems a little soon for me to play the merry widow.
Around 1am, the logistics fall into place. Mariana and the derm realize they both live on the Upper West and Hat and I remind everyone that we both live in Chelsea.
You guys take the car, I say.
We’ll grab a cab, Hat echoes.
We shut the taxi door and devour each other’s mouths and necks. I climb out of the cab on 23rd Street, adjusting my hiked-up dress like a high-schooler in heat.
Lost & Found
in Brazil
Do I send off 2009 with good riddance?
Cherish it like a memory in an album?
Or split the difference?
(December 31, 12:32pm via Facebook)
* * *
Thousands of miles away from New York on the island of Florianópolis, the only “benchmark” I care about is my conversational Portuguese. Well, that and my base tan.
I’m working on both at the beach across from my hotel, when a shadow falls across my dictionary.
Excuse me, a man says, kneeling down. I am a reporter with the Diário and I am making some stories on how people are spending December 21st. Today is the first day of summer in Brazil.
Yes, it is, I say, sitting up.
Can I interview you and take a few pictures, just as you are?
I’m wearing a bikini.
He’s wearing a press pass, which I examine before agreeing.
His Eng
lish is marginally better than my Portuguese so we trade my dictionary back and forth, stringing together questions in English and answers in Portuguese: Where are you from? First time in Brazil? For how long here in Floripa?
The mutual humility of needing a book to communicate gives me the gumption to ask him for a word that isn’t in my dictionary. It’s a word that I may need to use while I’m here.
Do you know the word for a woman whose husband is dead?
Your husband? Dead?
Yes.
Viúva.
Viúva?
I hand him my Moleskine so he can write it.
I look at the word.
Accent on the “u,” he says, flicking his hand as though writing on air.
Accent on the “me,” indeed, I say.
He begins asking me about being a viúva and I don’t know how to say that was off the record in Portuguese so I wave my hand in a strike that gesture, but it’s too late: his pen is already flying and my mouth is already moving.
I feel completely stripped when the reporter turns the lens on me. My mind flashes to a movie scene of Aaron Eckhart as a widower being drilled by a photographer about his wife’s accident. He struggles to maintain poise for the camera while recounting the most emotionally vulnerable moment of his life. How awful, I’d thought. Where was his publicist during that shoot?
Where is my publicist during this shoot?
* * *
I’m in his story.
So is my picture.
But mercifully, the word viúva is not.
* * *
One of my PR accounts is an açaí company founded by two brothers who go to Brazil a few times a year. When they heard about my trip, they gave me some tips and introduced me via Facebook to their buddy who owns a sushi restaurant in Floripa.
Tonight, I meet their buddy, an alpha male who looks like Ryan Reynolds and has enough nervous energy to power a small city. I was not expecting to meet someone I might want to impress and sadly, I left that lip gloss at home. Halfway through appetizers, I realize I left my conversation skills at home too. I want to explain why I’m such an awkward dinner companion, but this fellow is tight with my clients and as per my CFO, I haven’t told them I’m widowed.
Thankfully, he’s so busy reading patrons’ body language and directing his staff that it’s easy to deflect any questions that may lead toward The Conversation. There are several moments—he asks why my camera still has photos from last Christmas and why I moved to New York from L.A.—when I could’ve explained why I don’t seem to know how to dine with a man and not act, as he puts it, pensive.
Before we part, he makes me promise I’ll go to Gravatá, his favorite beach, while I’m here.
It’s the best hike on the island and the trail is only a half-mile from your hotel, he said. Look, I’ll draw you a map.
I have no clue if this hike is for amateurs or pros, so today I place survivor-type things into my backpack and stop at the front desk.
I’m going to Gravatá, I explain. So if I’m not back by dark, please send a search party.
They laugh, wish me a good caminar, and I head down the road. I find the trail without incident, take a picture of the posted map in case I get lost, and head up the steep hill. The payday for my straining muscles comes a few hundred yards later, in the form of a 360-degree view of both the lagoon and the beach. It’s been a while since I hiked—Alberto wasn’t the outdoors type unless it involved ski-in-ski-out or beach service—and I feel high on endorphins and my “Dance Like No One’s Looking” playlist.
I shoot flora, mountains, boulders with succulents growing out of them—partly because they’re scenic and partly to sear these landmarks into my memory card so I know I’m on the right path when I hike out of here. I sprint down the last stretch of trail but halt at a shack that’s reminiscent of California’s Topanga Canyon: the front door is painted yellow, and nailed above it, there’s an orange highway marker with the number 1.
Beside the door is a panel spray-painted with the word BETO, one of Alberto’s nicknames. Seeing this word on the final landmark of my hike seems like a story no one will believe, so I shoot it before stripping down to my bikini and diving into the sea.
As I navigate back to the hotel, I’m aware of how far outside my comfort zone I am down here. I can feel myself shifting toward the girl I was pre-husband: scribbling in a Moleskine, getting around on more Spanish than I ever knew I had, enjoying the rush of endorphins on a hike, peeing behind a bush when there’s no restroom.
I’ve been out of touch with who I was before I moved to New York as a thirty-year-old bride. Marriage and Alberto and New York demanded a different version of me—much of it good, but some of it pretentious and Type A. Traveling alone seems to give me permission to shed what I don’t like, try on for size what I do, and figure the rest out as I go.
* * *
In Iguazu, I do something Alberto (and his acrophobia) would never do: take a helicopter ride. The South American jungle looks like a million broccoli florets and as we approach the huge moisture mass above the world’s largest cluster of waterfalls, I use the video-camera feature on Alberto’s camera. When I review the footage, I realize this is the first time I’ve filmed anything since last Christmas when I shot frozen waterfalls from our rental car in Quebec.
A year later, I’m as far from Canada as a girl can get and yet I am shooting waterfalls on Christmas Eve? Again? Does everything I do—consciously or un—return to him?
Back at the hotel, Christmas in Brazil is starting to feel like the worst idea ever. I’ve missed two calls from my parents, the wireless in my room isn’t working, and I’m so hungry, I’m hangry. I call downstairs for room service, but they can’t understand my Portuguese so they send someone up to take my order.
When I give the man my order, he shakes his head and finger and says no-no-no as if I were a toddler.
Por que no-no-no? I ask.
Porque it’s Noche Buena and they are only serving “special buffet” tonight. And only in the restaurant downstairs.
Besides, he says, we don’t deliver anything to rooms except what’s on the pool menu.
Of course not, I say, why would you serve the room menu in the room?
I shut the door in his face.
I’m at the wrong hotel, I say aloud.
In fact, I seem to be in the wrong country on the wrong day of the year and—
My voice is on the verge of a Christmas Eve meltdown, so I head to the bathroom to talk myself down from the ledge.
You’re tired, emotional, and hungry, Tré. But if you fix one of those things, you can get through tonight. So pull your hair back, put on some lipstick, and get some dinner already.
Downstairs, the Christmas buffet is crowded with cheery families celebrating Noche Buena. I take a deep breath and a small plate, working my way down the line of chafing dishes. Surprisingly, the salmon, rice, and julienne carrots don’t look half-bad. Or maybe I’m just that hungry.
Despite stares from my fellow guests and the confusion of staff trying to seat me, I carry my plate out of the restaurant and upstairs to my room, where I watch back-to-back episodes of Friends dubbed in Portuguese and fall asleep.
* * *
The edges of three Amazon countries converge in Iguazu, the world’s largest cluster of waterfalls. It is here that I’ve decided to spread Alberto’s ashes on Christmas Day, and it’s a body of water on a scale I’ve never seen, heard, or felt before.
Iguazu is louder than my grief, thicker than my loneliness, and its magnitude does exactly what it needs to do on December 25th: jolt me out of my pity party and into my rightful context in the world.
Or maybe the vodka I added to my morning coffee just took the edge off.
* * *
Six hours into my layover, even my noise-cancelling headphones, iPod,
laptop, and phone can’t distract me from all the jolly couples everywhere. I’ve changed seats at least ten times, trying to distance myself from the intertwined hands and rounds of embraces. But I’m outnumbered. And tired of hauling my gadgets and luggage around in a lone game of musical chairs.
I give up.
The Christmas couples win.
* * *
Back in Florianópolis, I decide to explore Praia Galheta.
This is where the gays go, the locals tell me.
The gays will not mind a topless girl, so I follow the map to a sandy trail that winds down through shrub, cacti, and rock. My first glimpse of the beach is framed through an opening in the brush and it’s a woman alone wearing only black bikini bottoms.
I’ve found my spot.
As it turns out, my spot is not just a gay beach: it’s a nude beach.
Everyone is so shamelessly naked that I immediately do two things I’ve never done before: go topless swimming in public and stroll down the beach afterward to buy a beer.
Going topless in public was something Alberto had often asked me to do.
I shrugged him off—sorry, I’m not that girl—every time.
Somewhere between the beer shack and my beach chair, I realize I feel more confident half-naked on this beach than I ever have in a bikini.
Today’s revelation is bittersweet, but two summers from now, I’ll barely recognize the girl who hiked into this beach. Two summers from now, my only tan lines will be below the belt.
* * *
If Hawaii and Mexico had a three-way with the Hollywood Hills, the Río neighborhood of Santa Teresa would be their lovechild. I follow my guidebook’s advice to take a bonde ride and then wander the area, shooting graffiti walls and architectural details. At sunset, I greet my cousin Brent and his gorgeous girlfriend with hugs at an outdoor restaurant on Ipanema Beach.
All around us, samba street bands are performing.
Splitting the Difference Page 19