“Stop right there.”
“We gotta talk, Stella. Loretta Johnson’s lawyers already know you’re no longer defending us. She’s gaining ground. You, leaving us? It makes her case stronger. She’ll win this. I can’t emphasize enough how much it will hurt us.”
“I don’t care. Stop calling.”
“You b—”
“Goodbye, Michael.”
Stella hung up and glimpsed the disappointment on Fernanda’s face as she closed the door behind her. If she only knew. The truth was, Stella not only didn’t care about The Nature Dweller anymore, but she’d also lost interest in her entire clientele of do-gooders. Her appetite for helping noble causes around the world had ceased. Their model was no longer satisfying to her, though she hated to generalize. There were plenty of good people and genuine NGOs that deserved respect.
Regardless of how she felt, Stella was well aware that a storm was coming: Charles Dulles was a heavyweight in the political world. Weeks before, he’d made a veiled threat to expose her father. How and when it would happen was a matter of waiting. The only certainty Stella had was that she didn’t want to be part of that battle, or any other confrontation concerning powerful people or institutions. There was no point. They were all, to some degree, corrupt.
She’d considered her professional aspirations and her ideals and realized they were all dead. With her savings, her house, and the office, she’d accumulated a wealth of nearly four million dollars, which was impressive considering she was just thirty-five and she’d done it all by herself. Stella was more than OK. She had enough to do and go wherever she wanted.
There was a different light in her eyes that afternoon. She was flirting with the idea of simply closing her office, saying goodbye to her other five big clients, and going on a sabbatical. It would be an opportunity to rethink her priorities. The decision came to her surprisingly quickly. By the time she got up and picked up her purse, Stella felt like a weight had magically lifted from her shoulders. She had nothing to prove to anybody. She felt at peace as she opened the door of her office and walked up to Fernanda’s desk.
“Would you like to go for a drink?” she said.
Fernanda’s jaw dropped. Stella had never asked her to be part of anything not related to office work. Now her boss was inviting her for a drink?
“Uh, now?” She checked the clock; it was a quarter to five.
“C’mon.”
Two blocks away on Ninth Street, they ordered wine at the Villas Boas, a bar filled with a mature clientele. Fernanda didn’t mind. The only public she really cared about was seated right in front of her, on a comfortable leather couch, listening to all she had to say—which was, indeed, a lot. Fernanda was sharing all that she felt about the world, boyfriends, and even the video game addiction she was battling. Stella was listening, nodding, and smiling. Another first for Fernanda.
On the second glass—fourth for Fernanda—Stella waited for a break in the conversation, put her glass down on the table, and stared at the young lady before her who was having the time of her life.
“I’m closing the office.”
“What? You mean, like—”
“I mean just that.”
“Why? A-Am I fired?”
“I’m afraid so.” Though Fernanda fell into a dead silence, Stella kept the smile. She admired her young apprentice, and had good news for her. “I’ll be paying your college fees until you graduate. And I’m writing you a check for ten thousand dollars to help you with your expenses until you find a new job.”
Fernanda nodded, looking stunned. “Thank you, I guess. No, I’m sure I’m thankful. I just don’t understand why.”
“Me neither. I need some time for myself, that’s all.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll be in touch, Fernanda.”
“I’d like that.”
They left the bar and walked back to the office, where hugs were exchanged. Fernanda left, crying, on her mountain bike. Stella watched her go, and then got in her car. She’d made a life-changing decision that day, but she felt with conviction that she was following the right path. And since she was already on it, she decided to make another move and deal with a situation she would have to handle sooner or later.
Stella took her phone from her purse and made a call.
“Hello,” Mohe answered.
“Hi, Mohe.”
“Something happened?” he said, worried.
“Why, only you can call me when something happens? And, no. Nothing happened.”
“Oh. OK.”
“I just wanted to remind you that our conversation was for real. I’m ready to see my father if he wants to do it. All I need is one phone call.”
“Good to hear it. I’m happy for you.”
“I’ll be waiting,” she said and hung up.
Another weight easing off her shoulders. Stella smiled. She was proud of herself for knowing what she needed to do to make her life better, and doing it. Now was the right time to take those steps. She started her Tesla and drove back home.
18
GLASGOW, MONTANA
Vicky was standing by the front door with two cups of steaming coffee. She turned to me and asked, for the third time that day, “Are you sure about this?”
I opened the door. A cold breeze invaded the house and almost made me rush back to my bedroom. “Just go,” I said.
She went outside and crossed the street, heading directly toward the blue sedan. They were getting closer each day, and I was getting irresponsibly used to their presence. I thought I might as well pretend to be nice and fearless. I was betting with Vicky that they would leave before she got close to the car, cowards that they were. But it seemed, watching her approach them, I was about to lose that bet.
The passenger window opened. Unbelievable! They were accepting the coffee. Vicky was returning now. Why was she smiling?
She came inside the house and I closed the door. I didn’t have to ask.
She said, “You wouldn’t believe their faces.”
“What about them?”
“They looked like children who’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar!” She burst out laughing and bustled off down the hallway.
“Make sure they return the cups.”
“Don’t be cheap, Tony,” she yelled from the kitchen.
I went to my office wondering if the proximity with my stalkers meant anything. Time was an issue. I could feel it. I needed to move forward with my memoirs.
“You. Stay here,” Marshall ordered me.
So while all the other slaves left the senzala for work, I stayed. It was a first. Something was going on, and I feared some sort of a punishment, though I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Minutes later, Marshall returned, opened the cage that he kept his slaves in after punishment, and came inside the small space lit by the first sunrays squeezing between the bars at the window.
“Isaac,” he said, “you have two choices. You can stay here forever and wait until Brazil puts an end to slavery, or you can come with me around the world and serve me.”
I looked lost. Marshall saw it and explained: “I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”
“And…Master Alberto?”
“I told him you’re my son.”
I couldn’t believe it. Was this despicable and brutal man really standing here as my father, and looking at me with emotion?
“I can’t leave my mother behind.”
“She wants you to go. It’s the closest thing to freedom.”
That was a blow. My mother, the only person in the world I truly trusted and loved, was sending me away.
“You have until tonight to decide,” Marshall said and walked out of the cage.
I was lost. “Should I join the others?”
“It’s your decision.”
After Marshall left to manage the work in the fields, I went straight to my mother. I found her harvesting mangos near the casa grande. No one was watching. I ran toward her. She
noticed me, but didn’t look up.
“Mamãe,” I said, breathless.
I walked around her and saw why she didn’t want to look at me. She was crying. Another first for me. She was a strong woman, and I had never seen her as vulnerable as that day.
“What’s going on? Marshall talked to me. Is it true? Is he my father?”
“Yes.”
“And you want me to go with him?”
“Yes.”
“What about you?”
She laid down her basket then, stood, and placed both hands on my shoulders. “Things are changing, but slowly. You go now. I’ll meet you in the future.”
I was about to protest, but my mother grabbed my face and fixed me with a stare that silenced me. “Be strong. Be a man. Marshall is not a bad person.”
I was twenty-three years old and had never spent a day away from my mother.
“When will I see you again?”
“God knows.”
19
ARCATA, CALIFORNIA
It was a chilly night, but Stella felt warm, having drunk almost an entire bottle of her favorite sparkling wine, the crémant. Champagne, she used to say, was for suckers. Crémant, from Alsace, was a much better deal, and would easily fool connoisseurs in a blind tasting with champagne. She was celebrating whatever was ahead of her after the decision to quit.
The Redwood Park forest surrounding her backyard terrace was dark and mysterious, and clouds were covering the waning crescent moon. Regardless, she enjoyed listening to whatever sounds came out of the woods, even if they were mostly limited to the rustling of leaves. She felt good about herself, and blessed for being so close to nature.
Stella recalled her last meeting with Mohe, right there on the terrace.
She smiled as she thought of him. He was a true American, genuinely connected to the sacred earth. It would be nice to spend more time with him, to get to know the former vice president. He was a man who was ignored by the so-called quality press and exploited by the tabloids. He couldn’t do much. Not a single law proposed by him was ever passed in Congress. His people’s rights were violated, their treaties were wrecked, and the centuries of massacres and abuses to which they’d been subjected weren’t taken into account. Mohe had his fair share of frustrations, but he always managed to go on with dignity.
Stella wanted to talk to him about other things, not her father or politics. She felt a desire to know who the man really was, in all his depth. When the idea formed that she and Mohe were more alike than she’d ever considered, it amused her. She was a mature woman, but Mohe was a good twenty years older than her.
A thud above startled her. Probably a bird hitting a window of the house. After a moment, she was thankful for the distraction. Thinking of Mohe while she was alone and swimming in crémant was a bit odd. All the men she’d dated were her own age. Half of them, she regretted, were technically apes. It would be nice to find someone with a little more complexity.
She felt an insect bite on her neck.
Maybe it was time to go to bed. The quiet forest environment was beginning to feel a little busy. First the bird hitting a window, and now she heard something inside the house, bumping into furniture, she thought. Stella turned to glance inside her living room. The motion made her dizzy. Could it be that a mountain lion had gotten inside the house somehow? Or was it a coyote?
When she went to get up, she felt too tired. I should’ve eaten something, she reckoned. And now her neck was aching. She touched it and felt something there. She pulled it out and looked at it.
It was a syringe dart.
Something was obviously out of place, but Stella wasn’t bothered about it, just curious.
“Hello, Stella.”
The commanding voice came from inside the house. She recognized it but didn’t bother to turn. For some reason, Charles Dulles was in her house. Did I invite him over? When?
All she could do was lie back on her couch and tilt her head up to see the former senator walking onto her terrace. He stood in front of her with his hands in his pockets. She thought there might be two other people behind him. Stella’s eyesight was too blurred and her head too confused to make sense of what was going on.
“Charles,” she said calmly. Stella wasn’t scared. There was a numbness in her whole body and she felt relaxed.
“May I sit?” Charles said.
Stella nodded. The Nature Dweller’s board member sat on the same chair that Mohe had occupied days before. For a bit, she forgot Charles’s presence and stared at the syringe in her hand. Charles reached out and took it from her.
“Sorry about that. We need to talk.”
“Yes.”
“Are you in pain?”
“No.”
“I don’t want you to feel any pain.”
“Me neither,” Stella said with great difficulty, sounding way drunker than she really was. By now, she knew she’d been injected with some drug and that she could do nothing about it.
“I need to ask you something, and I want you to be completely sincere.”
“I’ll try.”
“Please, be sincere.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think you can return to TND and carry on your duties as our lawyer?”
“No,” she said. “I can’t.”
Charles nodded slowly. “I’m sorry to hear that. You’re leaving us in a very dire situation. You get that, don’t you?”
Stella was fighting to keep her eyes open. “We’ve…been through this.”
“All right. We’re going to have to make you disappear for some time. I hate doing it, but maybe we’ll stall the litigation for a while. And you’ll get some more time to think it over.”
“You’re not serious. Are you?” said Stella. At least that’s what she tried to say; her words came out all garbled.
“You know, Stella, I’ve seen you grow. I’ve been a friend of your father’s for a long time. It pains me to do this, and it’s not my intention to hurt you. This is a desperate act, I have no doubt about it, but one that is absolutely necessary.”
Charles Dulles stood up and signaled to his men. Stella felt them gently lift her. When she was on her feet, Charles moved a step closer. She felt his sickly sweet breath on her face as he said, “You’re leaving me with very few options.”
20
GLASGOW, MONTANA
I only had one picture of what I used to define as my family.
It sat in a scarcely used corner of my living room, next to a ceramic Chinese table lamp that rarely got lit. There we were: my dear Anya, Stella, and me. It was a picture from a friend’s wedding, if I wasn’t mistaken. The smiles were genuine; we were happy then. My daughter was six or seven. We were the best of friends until she turned ten. From then on, all hell broke loose. Stella started to think with her own head, and as a consequence, she started to see through me. When home became a theater of war, Anya took on a new life mission: to mend the relationship between a rebel daughter and an ever-more-absent father.
Anya failed. She was dead, but I was still here.
There was a chocolate box filled with old photographs in the house. I’d unearthed it and brought it to my home office. I was staring at a picture of Stella when she was almost one year old. God, what a beautiful child. I remembered how it felt to play with her, and our first communication attempts. How victorious I felt when she responded to my questions in the purest form there was, not understanding a word, but clearly knowing that when another person addressed you, you answered. It was a basic human thing to do. Her cute lips moving, her adorable forehead frowning, her whole body and soul desperately trying to reach out. Toward me, her father.
She made me feel alive and powerful then. Without exaggeration, being a father helped drive my energy to fix the world; it fueled my ambition to reach for the skies and protect her by any means necessary. Whatever I did from that point on, Stella was the anchor for my achievements.
Jesus. I loved her.
The pictu
re went back into the chocolate box. The paradox was that, though I remembered that sweet feeling of love for her, I just didn’t have it in me anymore. And I wondered, how could a father lose such a feeling? What really happened between us that triggered the emotional distance, the indifference for one another? I had no answer to that. I was tempted to ask Mohe’s father, but I didn’t have the courage. That shaman was dangerous. He saw things. He knew the truth. But why couldn’t I fix it by myself?
I cleared my throat. The typewriter was fed with paper. I was staring at it, so keenly aware of the irony of these memoirs. Just like back then, I was doing this for Stella. I knew that with the broken promises and the lack of—what would be the term?—fatherly vision, I had long since passed the turning point. All I could do now was protect my daughter from my mistakes. I would have loved to believe I was doing it for paternal reasons, but that would have been nothing more than an attempt to pave over the cracks in an already damaged consciousness.
I had to do it. If something ever happened to Stella, I would never be able to live with myself. Which, again, brought me to this petty little place called me. What I felt. What I feared. And how I could avoid my own suffering.
Back to work now. The clock was ticking. There was a growing rush to finish. Why, I couldn’t say.
“Isaac!” Marshall called to me as we approached the port in Panama.
Just two days after I agreed to leave the plantation with Marshall, we boarded a ship, and the thirty days since had been overwhelming. My father had promised to show me the world, and the vastness of the Brazilian coast and the infinite horizon across the ocean were proof that he wasn’t lying. Not only had I left my mother behind, but I’d said goodbye to the only piece of land I’d ever known. And there was more. I was wearing white people’s clothes—including shoes; eating food that was otherworldly; meeting people of all colors, some friendlier than others; and learning about all kinds of new customs. I was in the grip of anguish, anxiety, and excitement.
“We’re in Panama City,” Marshall announced at the stern of the ship.
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