He chuckled. (Richard could laugh at himself.) So I’ll call them Voh voh and Voh voh?
He held the baby out to her but she was still laughing.
Just call them Cecília and Felipe. And Ana Paula.
Really?
Really. She handed him the paper and took the baby back.
It’s not very formal.
I know. But it’s intimate.
Right.
And that’s what we’re going for.
Intimate.
Yes.
Yes.
There was a pause. Isadora could tell that Richard was nervous. As the baby breastfed she leant forward and restarted eating her breakfast. She looked at Richard.
Husband—
Yes?
Go.
And there he was. At one o’clock. Englishman Richard from the photos! And there was Richard, tall narrow nosed blue eyed corduroy Richard, safeguarding two trolleys with his limbful body by the metal barrier at the arrivals section of Heathrow Terminal 3.
Richard! Re-shar-de, whose name they imagined in italics.
The three greeted him with over-formal over-pronounced English, two sets of kisses and a handshake.
He was so glad to meet them!
Kiss kiss!
They were so glad to meet him!
Kiss kiss!
Isadora was at home with the baby—
The baby!
Had they had a good flight?
The car was in the carpark—
Welcome!
How was their flight?
We’re so glad you’ve come for Christmas, yes!
And the plane food was alright?
Yes it is quite chilly here!
There’s lunch for us at home
No no let me take that Cecília you must be exhausted
Richard led them through the glass doors onto the airport street in the direction of the carpark.
Vovó Cecília walked into the skin-pricking greyness with her hand resting on her husband’s arm. She had brought gloves. She took them out of her handbag and pulled them over her hands and fingers. She was wearing kitten heels and face powder with maroon lipstick and a light blue two-piece with shoulder pads. Her husband was wearing a thick brown tweed suit and matching hat. Despite their curiosity, Vovó Cecília and Vovô Felipe walked a few paces behind their son-in-law.
Ana Paula walked a few paces behind them.
She was concluding that Heathrow Terminal 3 was ugly. It had low ceilings and too narrow corridors and long queues at passport control. But it smelt clean, and cold, like the English word “crisp.” (Which she knew could also mean “potato chip.”)
Ana Paula felt the cold quiet under her feet and against her face.
Much like the building, Richard was underdressed. But Ana Paula, who had seen one photograph of her brother-in-law, already knew that she liked Richard. And Ana Paula liked Heathrow Terminal 3.
As they approached the car, Vovô Felipe began—The timing is good, the timing of this visit is very fortunate. We want our daughter Ana Paula to see Europe before she begins university.
And so the great reconciliation happened like this (it had in fact begun six months before with a letter or a transatlantic phone call and the news of a difficult pregnancy) after ten years on different sides, and five years on different continents, this tall pale greyblue eyed probably a socialist English man, who their daughter had married at a wedding to which they had not been invited, would drive Vovô and Vovó Amado in his cold brown Volvo down the dirty A4 and then through Fulham and across the river to their eldest daughter.
He also drove Ana Paula.
That evening was quiet. Vovó Cecília and Vovô Felipe were tired but they kept their shoes on. They thought the flat, which was up a set of stairs on the top two floors of a terraced house around the corner from Tooting Broadway station, was shabby, but they said nothing. It was not an apartment but a part of a house. There was only one bathroom.
Richard made his bay leaf and mustard and secret ingredient spaghetti bolognese and they ate together in the sitting room as the baby slept on a blanket on the floor. Vovó Cecília could see the baby, hear the baby, hold the baby.
The baby
The baby who, wrapped in blankets and socks and coats, became starfish shaped
The baby who Richard wore like a backpack when he went to Sainsbury’s
The baby who Isadora had spent thirty-six hours in labour for
The baby who was breastfed constantly
The baby who people said looked like Richard narrow nose round eared Richard
The baby who had been born small, a little on the small side
The baby who
The baby who was wriggle wriggle moving and entirely alive.
The miracle baby who didn’t cry
Baby pink, baby green, baby yellow
The first baby in the Amado family since Ana Paula
Baby
After eating, as Isadora loaded the dishwasher, Vovó Cecília, who remembered the two miscarriages and one stillbirth between her first and second daughter, looked at the glowing wriggling baby in awe.
Richard was also looking at the baby.
She said to Richard—She is beautiful.
I know
She has light eyes like you
Yes, yes she does
Beautiful
Yes
And look at her delicate nose
Before bed, at the end of the evening, Vovó Cecília held the baby on her lap (the baby against her face, the baby rocking in her arms).
The flat was warm and quiet and full of the orange yellow of indoor lamps. Vovó Cecília was in the bedroom with the baby. Richard was on the phone in the kitchen to a colleague at the hospital and Vovô Felipe had gone to sleep.
Ana Paula sat in the living room. Isadora held up a sheet and pillow and duvet to go on the sofa.
Ana Paula, this will have to be your bed.
Yes.
I hope that it’s comfortable.
It will be.
Ana Paula made her bed. Isadora watched her.
Isadora leant on the side of the sofa. The living room was covered in small blankets and wipes. She began to clear it for Ana Paula.
Mumãe is so good with the baby, no?
Ana Paula nodded. Mmn. She is very happy.
Isadora looked away.
It is a relief—
Richard looks just like the photo.
Ah
Isadora looked at her sister.
He likes to cook?
Yes. Yes he is very good at cooking.
Ana Paula nodded. She had finished making the bed.
Ana Paula sat over the sheet on the sofa. She moved her bare feet under the duvet. Isadora sat down opposite her, sliding her feet under the other side of the duvet. It was not cold but outside of the bay windows was dark.
Isadora waited for her sister to speak.
I hope I can say, but you look so grown up and like a woman.
Ana Paula wrinkled her nose and mouth and didn’t look at Isadora.
Under the duvet, Isadora moved her feet.
I am happy you are here.
Ana Paula looked at her sister but didn’t speak.
There was a silence.
You were gone a long time—
You look so grown up—
Ana Paula said to her sister—Do you remember the year that you left home, running around the supermarket listening for the sound of the price labelling machine? Remember it was because the price was increasing by the hour and we were trying to get to the food before it got relabelled. We used to go with Dona Antônia.
For a few seconds Isadora didn’t respond. Then she put her hands around her sister’s toes. Because Isadora could remember being nineteen and seeing her big toothed pre-pubescent sister running through the supermarket aisles in blue shorts and lace up shoes.
Que saudade de você.
Ana Paula opened her mouth but didn’t say wha
t she was thinking.
Once she heard the two bedroom doors close, Ana Paula changed into her pyjamas. She folded herself into the foreignness of the duvet, its muted smell. Like a small animal, she poked her head and fingertips out of the duvet. She turned the television on without the sound.
She stared behind the television through the first floor bay windows of the flat. Ana Paula was thinking that her sister had changed in the years since she had last seen her. Isadora wore her wavy hair short like a boy and had a new rounder mother shape. Her face was whiter and her glasses had thinner frames. She had been wearing a loose floral dress and woolly socks that unrolled over her calves. Ana Paula would say she looked more English, except Isadora didn’t look English at all.
Outside, Ana Paula heard the sound of heavy suitcase wheels bump bump thump across the pavement slabs.
By the moving light of the ten o’clock news, Ana Paula surveyed the two whole walls of bookshelves from under the duvet.
Emily Brontë
George Eliot
A. S. Byatt
Margaret Atwood
Toni Morrison
James Baldwin
Emily Dickinson
Salman Rushdie
Clarice Lispector
Camões
Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen
One Portuguese grammar book
A wide photo book of Picasso paintings
A Winston Churchill biography
Marx
Lenin
Engels
Dostoyevsky
Tolstoy
Shakespeare
Shakespeare
Shakespeare
a complete shelf of ripping Agatha Christies.
Ana Paula knew about half of the names and had read perhaps five of the books she saw. She read in big white letters “Zola,” and she imagined it was another one of those stories about an aristocratic woman, like Anna Karenina next to it. It was unlike their living room at home, from which she also watched the news broadcast from the BBC red desk. The Amados had one bookcase, featuring most prominently big brown dictionaries and encyclopaedias. Ezra Pound, she thought, would be a good name for a female boxer.
Ana Paula had not been naive enough to expect snow; but the cold wet outside viewed from the dark dry inside, the conical sheets of yellow rain under the streetlights, the precipitation that brought no rising smells and that bit your fingers, the vast smallness of everything—the little square hedges with little privet leaves, the hip-height walls, the patterned windows under corniced arches, the narrow brick houses, the curved streets, the understated use of concrete—was almost overwhelming to her.
For hours that night Ana Paula basked in the rightness of this cold Christmas.
Outside, she heard the sound of heavy suitcase wheels bump bump thump across the pavement slabs.
On their first day all together Vovó Cecília and Isadora had breakfast late in the kitchen with the baby. There was fresh bread—real pão francês—and scrambled eggs with cheese and ham and oranges and cloudy apple juice.
Vovô Felipe read the English newspaper in the armchair by the window in the living room. Richard sat next to him on a kitchen stool and read a different section of the paper.
Richard, what does your sister do?
Richard looked up from his paper—My sister? She’s a biology teacher.
In a public school?
Yes, in a state-run school. She was recently made head of the biology department.
So you are a scientific family.
Richard paused. Yes. Yes, I suppose we are.
Ana Paula will study law at the University of São Paulo, the best university in Latin America.
Oh! Fantastic! Yes, Isadora mentioned it to me.
Yes, and law is one of the most competitive degrees. Apart from medicine.
So in the university where Isadora studied?
Yes, it is. And it is where I studied, and my brother Henrique, and my father, who was one of the first dentists in the state of São Paulo.
Richard nodded.
One time Richard, I will tell you the story of my father.
Richard looked briefly at the newspaper.
Richard, Isadora has told me that you are from Yorkshire, in the north of England.
Yes. I grew up just outside Halifax, and my parents still live there.
And are they also doctors?
No. My dad was a school teacher and my mum stayed at home.
Isadora has told me that you studied for your medical degree in Manchester.
Yes, I lived there for seven years.
It was the great centre of the industrial revolution.
Yes, indeed.
Vovô Felipe folded his paper.
I have always liked England, it is an illustrious country with ancient, respectable institutions and noble statesmen and writers.
Oh?
Vovô Felipe was nodding. I have always said that Brazil would have been better off if it had been discovered by the British. The Portuguese, they did not do a good job in terms of infrastructure and culture—we are not so sophisticated, you know—
Vovô Felipe leant forwards and looked at Richard.
Have you ever visited Australia? No? Ah but Australia is a very advanced country, although it is just as hot and tropical as Brazil, comparable in terms of ecology and climate and indeed coastline. We would have been like Australia, a tropical country also, but colonised by the British.
Richard’s hands were on his thighs, but he stayed sitting. Oh.
Vovô Felipe continued, pointing at the paper—Richard, it says here that the Queen will make a speech on Christmas Day.
Oh. Yes. She gives a speech every year.
It will be played on television.
Yes.
And will you watch it?
Richard paused. I don’t usually watch it.
Vovô Felipe nodded.
And it is true that many English families do watch it. But—Richard paused—But I thought we might go for a walk instead. A Christmas Day walk is also traditional in England.
Vovô Felipe nodded.
We’re in the city of course, but we could go to the common.
Richard looked at his father-in-law.
Ana Paula stood up and left the room.
Later that day, when Isadora was dressed and the baby was asleep and with Vovó Cecília, Isadora asked her husband a question—Richard, do you need vegetables? Are there vegetables that need to be bought?
Yes! Yes, there are indeed vegetables to be bought—all the shops will be shut early tomorrow on Christmas Eve, and even then, even before then, the best ingredients might run out.
Richard opened the fridge door.
And as well as potatoes and parsnips and brussels sprouts, we need tin foil and cloves.
Isadora leant in to kiss her husband on the cheek.
She looked at her sister. She said—Richard, make a list and I will go with Ana Paula. The baby is asleep.
She put her shoes and coat on and looked at her sister.
Late much later in the day, when it was dark, the two returned with full bags.
That took a while, did you have trouble finding everything?
You are so late! It is so cold outside!
Isadora looked at Richard and then at her mother—But it has been ten years.
She looked at Ana Paula.
But it has been ten years.
And so, the great reconciliation happened like this, with presents and a ceia the Brazilian way on the 24th on Christmas Eve—
White baby dress
Pink slippers in pink wrapping paper
Green flowered hair clips even though the baby had no hair
Roast turkey, of course
Richard wearing oven mitts
A pair of matching maroon gloves and scarf
A book on the origin of English proverbs
Goiabada, doce de leite, bis chocolates, more pão de qu
eijo mix
A too wide pair of blue swimming shorts
A thin green cashmere jumper (I tried to get one that would be thin enough to wear in São Paulo in the winter)
Goose-fat crispy roast potatoes
Peas in mint and butter
Roast carrots and parsnips
Gravy
Richard wearing oven mitts
Chopped cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes chopped slowly by Vovó Cecília who didn’t know how to negotiate a manicure with a chopping board and knife and vegetable juice.
Brussels sprouts and a little garlic
Stuffing
Gravy
Gravy is? Gravy is, like a meat juice or a sauce, how would you say gravy
A pair of flower earrings for each of the daughters
A woolly jumper for Richard
Brazilian rice with raisins in it
A chocolate cake with the doce de leite icing from a special recipe that Isadora had asked Ana Paula to ask Dona Antônia to write down.
Christmas pudding
Brandy butter
Pão de queijo (why not?!)
A stuffed animal called a tamanduá
(the baby asleep and wrapped like a starfish)
Crackers
which Richard showed them how to use.
On Christmas Day Richard took his mother- and father-in-law on a walk. Yes my parents always go for a walk on Christmas Day. It is a traditional thing to do. We are in a city but
Richard took Vovô Felipe and Vovó Cecília to Tooting Common, strapping the starfish baby onto his front.
The long tall terraced house streets were very quiet.
Richard took them down the path by the frosted grass and showed them the woods cut in half by the train track and the rising mist.
Inside the flat, the sisters turned the heating up.
On Boxing Day Richard went to the common with Vovô Felipe again.
But Vovó Cecília stayed in with the baby because, really! The baby shouldn’t be out in the cold again.
Que frio terrível
Querida netinha
O ano que vem o natal será na praia, no Brasil, que tal?
Isadora said—I’m going to take Ana Paula shopping.
We’re meeting my friend Kalpana, we’re going to Oxford Street, Boxing Day sales—Isadora said.
Not to be missed.
In some ways, the first time Ana Paula came to England, the timing was very good.
On Boxing Day, when Richard took Vovô Felipe out to the common again and Vovó Cecília had stayed in with the baby, the sisters had gone out. They put on innumerable layers of pants, long johns, vests, blouses, jeans, woolly jumpers, trackies, woolly hats, scarves and fleeces, raincoats, gloves and many socks. Isadora filled two bottles with milk and left them in the fridge.
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