Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
My heeled foot bounced anxiously under the table as I adjusted the small silver-linked watch adorning my bony wrist, trapping a miserable groan in the back of my throat. It was only a little after seven, and I still had at least three more hours of this shit.
Ma had found a good audience tonight for her animated storytelling, and I had exercised self-restraint to keep my reactions in check when she recounted stories, some more embellished than others.
“He left me with a small child.” I’d been fifteen. Hardly a small child.
“I had no money in the bank.” I knew Dad had taken twenty thousand out before he’d left on the pretense of buying a summer home in Portugal, so she’d sign. How he even got her to agree to that kind of investment at all remained a mystery I’d never solve. I wasn’t sure how much he’d left her with, but I had a hard time believing it was nothing. Then again, I hadn’t thought my dad was capable of being an adulterer, so who was to say?
“I have to do everything by myself with no help.” Right. It wasn’t like I’d spent countless hours at the bakery, too.
Ma once told me she was raising me the way she’d been raised. In her eyes, she’d turned out just fine, failing to recognize she’d merely continued a cycle.
She forgot she hadn’t shed a single tear when her mother died.
I’d spent my time diligently trying to adhere to her stringent set of rules, some known, others assumed, and when I assumed incorrectly, she corrected me how she saw fit.
I had small moments of quiet rebellion. Things I did behind her back with Tina’s help, but those moments were few and far between. As I got older, my fear of Ma grew because I’d realized her love was contingent on how good I was. How I made her look. I understood eggshells existed beneath my feet, and if I wasn’t careful, I’d crush them and seal my fate. To want something for myself was the highest form of betrayal in her eyes, and so I surrendered what dreams I had.
My own money. The Pastry and Baking program at Bristol Community College. A bakery of my own and a silly car to drive around in, too. A boyfriend of my own choosing, someone I wouldn’t see only in secret.
Autonomy.
Love.
Whatever that felt like, because I knew Martin hadn’t loved me. He loved the idea of me and my traditional upbringing. Ma’s love came with an endless list of conditions I could never seem to meet without being reprimanded for my inadequacies, which, in her eyes, were many.
I wasn’t good enough. I was too stupid to think for myself or make decisions that wouldn’t embarrass her.
Which was why I wasn’t free to just casually date, get to know someone, or fall in love. I’d tried to broach the subject with her B.M.—before Martin—but as quickly as the conversation started, she shut it down.
You’ll date who I decide when I decide.
There was one small plus side to this evening. I didn’t have to worry about being the source of her embarrassment. She was doing fine on her own and, as I’d predicted, had taken full advantage of the open bar at the first opportunity, the wine having gone to her head three glasses ago.
“It’s just me and minha Belmira,” she slurred. Her Belmira. As long as things stayed the way she wanted, she was her brand of fucked-up happy.
Who cared if I wasn’t?
Thankfully, dinner had been served shortly after we’d checked our coats in and made our round of hellos and parabéns —congratulations—to my family. Maria and I had exchanged a brief, commiserating look when our mothers forced their way through a polite, public performance before we left their table, and Ma muttered under her breath, “I hate that lady.”
Aunt Connie had taken some level of mercy on me—or a social stab at Ma—by sticking us at a table in a corner with a group of people who wanted to listen to Ma talk, which meant her attention wasn’t on me. The odds of success for me to slip away unseen were high.
I needed air. Or a restroom stall to hide in for as long as possible.
Hell, I’d settle for food poisoning.
Sliding the dressed Chiavari chair back, I rose to my feet, collecting the small clutch I’d brought with me. Just as I tucked in my chair, Ma stopped mid-sentence, peering at me through thinned eyes that didn’t match her saccharine tone. “Where are you going, filha ?” Daughter.
I smiled. “To use the restroom.”
She nodded, but something caught her eye beyond me, and a small smile curled her lips. “Go spend time with your cousin after.” I followed her line of vision, freezing.
Maria? She wanted me to spend time with Maria ? I looked at the empty wine bottles on the table, counting them under my breath. Maybe she’d had more to drink than I’d originally thought.
Ma had all but forbidden me to spend any kind of time with Maria after the bleacher fiasco six years ago, as though I’d get some sort of idea in my head that promiscuity would be tolerated.
I knew better, even if some part of me envied my cousin’s ability to perform a risk assessment for herself. We’d both been raised with the same outdated expectations by parents still set in their own upbringing’s beliefs regardless of the country they now lived in. Maria had decided the consequences of being unapologetically who she was had an ROI.
It had paid off for her. She hadn’t gotten shipped off to a convent in Portugal like my ma had threatened she’d do to me if I dared to do what Maria had done. While there was always a layer of tension between Maria and Aunt Connie, anyone could see she was the apple of her father’s eye. He was paying her way through college—a word I’d only thought of in my head.
Harvard, no less.
I shifted in place, trying to assess if Ma was being genuine or performative, but she made her intentions clear to me. “My Belmira and Maria were so close when they were growing up. Like sisters.” She leaned against the table, held a hand to her heart, and dropped her voice. “It’s a shame what became of that girl.” She tsked, shaking her head. “Belmira couldn’t handle it.” She studied me, waiting patiently for me to agree.
A noise bubbled in the back of my throat at the blatant fucking lie. I hadn’t wanted to stop talking to Maria. I hadn’t cared what Maria did or with who—fifteen or not. If she consented, that was good enough for me. It wasn’t the entirety of Fall River’s Portuguese community to condemn her for it.
For Ma to make this into something shameful, even now, and twist it as though I’d been the one to take issue with my cousin made my blood boil, the suppressed urge to scream growing by the second.
Ma turned in her seat, giving the table her back, her darkening stare tapering.
I did what I always did. I cowered.
It was no use. She was going to say what she wanted, and people were going to gobble it right up, even if most of it was bullshit. She didn’t give a damn about who the hosts of this event were. It was always a latent smear campaign with her.
“Excuse me,” I said instead, offering the other table guests a forced smile.
“Come back here by ten, Belmira,” Ma called, tapping her watch for dramatic effect. “Remember what I said.”
I held up a hand in quiet acknowledgment. I didn’t know what kind of trouble she’d thought I’d cause between now and then, but if I was lucky, in three hours’ time, she’d be too drunk to forge coherent sentences. She’d be snoring in the car on the drive home, and I wouldn’t have to listen to another one of her stupid stories or tolerate her getting on my case for something.
Small wins.
The murmur of excited voices and loud laughter enveloped me as I inched further away from the table, the worn soles of my shoes struggling against the polish on the wood floors. I dodged a duo of waitstaff who were collecting plates from a nearby table, clearing them onto a cart. The velvet dress I wore shifted against my thighs, and I tugged the hemline of the dress down just as I escaped through the double doors. A wintery draft coming from the nearby vestibule in the lobby was a welcomed reprieve against my flushed skin. It was too stuffy in the ornate room with at least two hundred competing voices yelling over loud Portuguese pimba music. People were huddled around tables, recounting stories from their youth, clustered like sardines at the bar, or joining my aunt and uncle on the crowded dance floor.
I wanted to hear myself think for a second.
Hip-checking the restroom door, I exhaled a breath when I realized there was no one else in here but me. The echo of my strappy platformed heels, which were far from winter-friendly, was a calming balm on my racing mind as I approached the marbled stretch of the countertop, droplets peppering the mirror from someone who had flung their hands before they dried them. I didn’t meet my eyes immediately in the mirror. Instead, I checked to see if the fitted long-sleeved dress I’d made myself, using an old McCall’s sewing pattern, was holding up.
I’d altered the sheath pattern, adding in a tailored bodice and hidden zipper with a hook-eye closure, and intentionally went four inches shorter than the pattern advised. Ma had complained the hemline was too short, but I’d played stupid for getting my measurements wrong, hoping on bated breath that would be enough for her to throw me a bone.
Somehow, she’d bought it and let it go. “You’re not pretty enough for it to look sexy. Wear the dress.”
Who better to boost your confidence than your own ma?
Depositing the small, black clutch purse on the counter, I confronted myself. “Three more hours. You can do this,” I coached in a whisper, but my stomach was in a series of unrelenting knots at the prospect of talking to Maria.
I could count on one hand the number of times I’d defied Ma behind her back, but what she didn’t know was I had tried to talk to Maria in the past.
My cousin had mostly kept to herself in high school. She liked it better that way. Most of the time, she was in the school library, drawing looks from other students who couldn’t decide if they hated her, wanted to be her, or wanted her. She was in control of herself, unconcerned about what people thought of her or her sexuality. While she might have been perceived as “fast”, she was also one of the most academically advanced students in the county.
Any moment she wasn’t in a classroom or the library, she could be found slipping out of an alcove in the school, trussing her mussed hair, or climbing out of the back of some guy’s car, adjusting her smeared lipstick with the swipe of her thumb.
She passed her SATs with flying colors and got accepted into Harvard. No small feat for a girl from Fall River, never mind someone who hadn’t spoken a word of English once upon a time. I’d been over the moon when I’d found out, but the olive branch I’d tried to extend to her one final time in the form of an excited congratulations was met with the dramatic slamming of her locker door and her walking away.
She wasn’t interested in a relationship with me. No matter how desperate I was to prove to her I didn’t see her as a stain on our family’s name, all because of something as trivial as her virginity.
Maria didn’t trust me, and I couldn’t blame her.
Flipping the flap on my purse open, I searched the bottom for the tube of lipstick. I wasn’t particularly good at the makeup thing. Most days, I went without since I was awake at the crack of stupid, and no one really cared how you looked when they were buying bread or pastries. When I put in the effort, I thought I looked okay. Average and unassuming. Plain but not pretty.
I had Dad’s mouth, with his heavy lower lip beneath a thinner upper one, and Ma’s heart-shaped face and her pointed chin. The slope of my nose was as long as the rest of the Tavares clan, but the bridge thinner, like Ma’s side of the family. My thick hair was a soft black shade, and I’d spent almost two hours blow-drying the naturally wavy, frizzy strands with a round brush into a sleek sheet that fell over my shoulders.
I was a hodgepodge of my parents’ features. The only thing that truly felt like mine were my deep-set, roasted almond-colored eyes seated under arched, thick brows Ma wouldn’t let me pluck despite the thinner style that was presently in. I’d figured out how to enhance them by creating a cut crease effect with eyeshadow and tight-lined my eyes with black kohl without getting it all over my face. I’d been heavy-handed with the mascara, the lashes clumping together in spots, but I thought it helped offset the liner.
Finding the skinny silver tube of lipstick, I reapplied the Bonne Bell Plum Sparkle shade to my lips and leaned back to appraise my work. Good enough. Blowing a defeated breath up into my wispy bangs, I closed the flip-lid lipstick and tossed it back in the bag. Feeling like my lungs were working at their full capacity again, I hooked the bag over my shoulder and left the safe confines of the restroom, heading back into the noisy din. The familiar harmonic notes twisting with the keys of an accordion summoned people to the dance floor in thick flocks. For the next four minutes of the song, they got to pretend they were still on the island they’d all left.
Ma had found a dance partner—a third cousin on Dad’s side who was a widow as of two years ago. She looked happy. For now, anyway. Ma’s smiles were so rare and fleeting that it made me feel bad for resenting her.
I found my target nursing a wineglass in one delicate, acrylic French-manicured hand, wielding a yellow highlighter with the other, features pinched with concentration. She didn’t spare me a glance when I approached the table, nor did she look my way when I sunk quietly into the empty seat next to her, wanting to appear small and unthreatening.
The wrinkling of her nose like she’d smelled something foul was the only tell she made to acknowledge I was there. Maria leaned into the table, highlighting another sentence in her textbook, her dark, lush lips moving as she recited the information back to herself under her breath.
Tucking my straight hair behind my ears, I scanned the room, spotting Sean and Dougie near the bar. My heart flipped over the latter, the pangs of an old, forgotten crush resurging briefly. I didn’t know he’d be here, too. Dougie’s tie was loose around his neck, the first two buttons on his blue dress shirt popped open, giving me a peek of the shapely triangle at his throat. Sean had an arm slung over his broad shoulders, fighting to remain upright, as they both drunkenly staggered on their feet and approached the bar.
“I’m surprised the bartender is serving them,” I said, breaking the ice with Maria. Not just because they were both clearly wasted but Sean and Dougie were underage.
Not that we were much older, but at least we were in the correct legal year.
Maria shrugged her lissome shoulders, disinterested.
I’d always harbored an unrequited crush on Dougie. It was hard not to, and I didn’t care he was younger than me. Dougie was one of the few genuinely nice guys I knew who didn’t have an ulterior motive for everything. Shorter than Sean by a couple of inches, Dougie made up for it with his linebacker build thanks to playing football all throughout high school. He’d been on track for a scholarship at a D1 school before an injury derailed him. Now, he worked for Uncle John, maintaining that physique through physical labor.
Maria had punched him square in the nose a couple of years ago and deviated his septum. When he smiled—like he was right now at whatever Sean had said to him—it twisted his features. Dougie had always been on my radar in some small way, not that anything would come of it. He’d never noticed me.
He noticed Maria.
I’d made peace with the silly B+D doodles in my homework packets a long time ago. The crush had never been that serious—how could it be when it had always been one-sided? But I’d had points of frustration over the years with my inability to measure up next to her. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for someone to be so utterly consumed by you, with no effort on your part.
I watched intently as my cousin flipped the next page in her textbook. “What are you studying?”
Her jaw tensed at my continued intrusion. Capping her highlighter, she sighed, staring at me with dull eyes. “Contract law.”
“Is it interesting?”
“About as interesting as this conversation, Belmira.” Unfortunately for her, with Matilda as my mother, her prickly attitude wasn’t the deterrent she hoped it was.
I tried another angle because I’d sooner have her insult me all night than go back to my table. “What kind of lawyer do you want to be?”
“The kind that makes a lot of money and doesn’t have to sit through insufferable conversations she’s not interested in having.”
Message heard but not received. “I’ve missed you, too,” I rebutted.
Maria rolled her eyes, twisting in her seat. “What are you doing right now?”
“What do you mean?”
She flicked a finger between us, sneering. “This.”
“Talking to you…?”
“No, you’re talking at me,” she corrected, elbows meeting the table, her fingers steepled together. “In order for us to be conversing with each other, both parties would need to consent, and I’m not consenting.” She inclined back in her chair, shooing me away. “You need to take your Dollar-Tree-Jennifer-Aniston ass back to your own table and leave me alone.”
“Victoria Adams.”
Her pencil-thin brows bent in the middle. “What?”
Leaning back in the chair, I crossed one leg over the other, stacking my knitted hands over one knee. “Dollar-Tree-Victoria-Adams.” Posh Spice had been what I was going for. I looked down at the dress I’d made, peering up at Maria under my lashes and taking her in.
Her little black dress was tight over her heavy chest, the thin straps straining and leaving red welts against her bare, golden shoulders. The spandex material stretched over her full hips, hugging the defined dip of her waist.
“My ma would pop a blood vessel if I wore spaghetti straps, so I went with full sleeves.” Spaghetti straps would have earned me an earful, and she would have made me take the dress apart so as not to waste the fabric. I could feign stupidity with the hemline, owning it as an oversight of my measurements.
Then again, I doubted Maria knew how to wind a bobbin, never mind sewing her own clothes.
She blinked at me, her mouth opening and closing for a beat. “You’re incorrigible,” she muttered, crossing her legs and running her hands along her thighs.
“I don’t know what that word means.”
“It means…” she started, slamming her textbook shut with an exasperated breath. I braced myself for impact but softened when she finished, “That you’re a Tavares.”
I smiled. I was a Tavares. Her cousin. There was no getting away from that, no matter how incorrigible she found me. “Well, you’re still talking to me, so I’d consider that a win.”
“Regretfully.” She drummed her long fingernails against the table, the cloth absorbing the charge. Maria tucked her chin into her neck for a beat, but I caught the faintest hint of a smirk.
She wasn’t that irritated after all. We sat in a rare companionable silence, taking in the room’s revelry.
Sloping back in her seat, Maria adjusted the unbound, tight ringlets spilling over her shoulders from her half updo adorned with butterfly clips. Reaching for her wineglass, she swirled the contents, appraising it. “Does my dad seem off to you?” she asked over the rim, worried dark eyes snagging on mine. “When you came by to say hi earlier, did he seem… odd ?”
I mulled the question over, searching the crowded room for him. I found him on the dance floor with my aunt, two-stepping with her faster than the cadence of the song. Aunt Connie beamed up at him, her feet keeping up with the quick momentum as he led her to the rhythmic clapping of onlookers milling around them.
Uncle John had always had a stockier build. Like my dad, he was tall, broad-shouldered, and a bit soft in the middle, despite his line of work, thanks to his love of red wine and general overindulgence. But when he’d hugged me, he’d been undeniably thinner, the bones pronounced in his back.
His angular cheekbones were sharper than usual, almost hollow, and his russet-brown eyes were a tired contrast to the breadth of his smile. His dress shirt hung off him a little, the shoulders sagging, and his belt fitted on the last notch flailed in the loop on the far-right side of his waist.
Uncle John’s energy had felt the same when we’d gone over to greet them. He’d still launched to his feet when he saw me, pulling me into one of his infamous bear hugs, forcing me onto the tips of my toes, but it was the first time I’d ever been able to get my arms around him completely.
I swallowed hard, anxiety bubbling under my skin. “He’s lost a lot of weight,” I observed. I hadn’t wanted to put too much thought into it earlier, distracted by Ma’s muttered rambles about Aunt Connie, but if Maria was asking me that question, there was something wrong.
“He coughed up blood before Thanksgiving.” That was a month and a half ago. “Had to spend three hours in the ER,” she murmured, her strumming fingernails dinging off the glass. “He said it was just a chest infection from the cold, but…” she shook her head. “Sean and I don’t believe him, and we’re worried.”
“What about your ma?” Aunt Connie would hover and panic if there was something amiss.
Maria’s left brow vaulted, her jaw growing taut. “As delusional as always.” Clearly, their relationship hadn’t improved.
“Do you think he’s hiding something?” Maria had never opened up to me before. I was terrified of saying the wrong thing in fear she’d retreat into herself again and shut me out.
She took a leveling breath, hesitating for a moment. “Yeah,” she admitted, her voice barely a whisper. “We just don’t know what.” She regarded the room, her throat bobbing. “They didn’t even do this for their twentieth wedding anniversary, so it’s strange that at twenty-two years, he’d insist on going to such great lengths to celebrate their marriage.”
The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood upright. “Maybe he’s just happy?” I suggested.
I mean, divorces were rare and virtually unheard of in our community. Your parents either intervened if they thought it was a poor match, or you got out of the relationship before the ring was on your finger. If you discovered you hated each other after the “I dos,” you grinned and bore it no matter how awful things were.
Under no circumstances was divorce permissible. Hell, my parents were still married.
So it wasn’t far-fetched that my uncle wanted to make a show of celebrating twenty-two years of a successful marriage, was it?
Then again…
“Being married isn’t an accomplishment,” Maria said. “They’re another statistic.” She flicked her eyes disdainfully around the room. “Big fucking deal.”
I released an awkward titter. “I guess you’re never getting married?”
Her eyes rounded, horrified. “Fuck no.” She grimaced. “I’m not going through all this trouble to make something of myself to be inferior to a man and push out a bunch of his spawn.”
I played with the links on my watch. “I don’t think marriage makes you inferior.” Or I didn’t think it should. I suspected that was why Dad hadn’t come back. Ma wasn’t nice to him, either. But despite how my parents’ marriage had turned out, I wasn’t cynical the way Maria was.
Even with my limited dating and life experience, I didn’t want to grow jaded. I wanted to believe in happily ever afters. I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to get engaged and plan a wedding, and when the wedding was over, have a marriage I was safe, loved, and happy in. I wanted to have babies. As many as I could, as quickly as I could. I felt innately called to motherhood the way some were called to practice medicine or to teach. Always had. It was one of the few things that made my chest warm with joy rather than the familiar constriction of anxiety. I’d be gentle, kind, loving, and patient, all the things I’d never had, and with the right partner—someone who respected and loved you—I believed that raising a family that way was possible.
…Okay, maybe it was far-fetched, but I needed something to hold on to.
“It does when society expects you to pin your career, defer to his every whim, stroke his ego by shrinking yourself, and become his personal breeding mare,” Maria volleyed back, pretending to gag. “The only thing a man is useful for is what’s between his legs. I’d sooner die than subject myself to some antiquated construct.” She offered me a pointed stare, waiting for me to argue, but I didn’t take the bait.
We had an obvious difference of opinion on the matter, but what else was new? No use in debating it when I didn’t want to change her mind. She was entitled to feel however she wanted, even if we disagreed.
Blowing out a breath, she set the glass down. “I need a cigarette. Wanna come?”
I stirred in my chair, overcome by the thrill of being invited to spend more time with her. “I don’t smoke.”
She collected her purse from the back of her chair. “I didn’t say you had to smoke.”
I paused, searching the room for Ma. Every so often, I sensed her stare boring into me, and my spine stiffened in response. “I’d have to go get my jacket…” And I wasn’t confident she’d let me escape the purgatory of the table again.
Maria’s proud neck craned. “Don’t tell me you’re still letting her push you around.”
Let her? I wouldn’t call it that per se, but… “She’s…” My knitted fingers grew clammy, and I curled my toes in my shoes, seeking comfort. “She’s my ma. What can I do?” I laughed, but it wasn’t funny.
It was sad. Ma had conditioned me to believe that the alternative to her tyranny would be worse, and I didn’t have someone in my corner like Maria did with her dad. Someone who would defend me or, at a minimum, soften the blow.
I was entirely on my own.
Maria rose to her feet gracefully, towering over me in open-toe stilettos. She already pushed five-nine, but in the heels, she was well over six feet. “Belmira, you’re not a kid. You’re almost twenty-one.” I withered at the reminder. My age was irrelevant to Ma. If it were, Maria and I wouldn’t be having this conversation. “If you can shed the hundred-and-eighty-pounds of fucking abusive loser ,” Maria deadpanned, having obviously heard about the Martin fiasco, “you can get out from under your mother’s thumb.”
My molars rocked into each other, heat igniting in the pit of my stomach. “Not all of us get to run off to Harvard,” I said. She had an out. She had a series of outs. Even if her parents disapproved of her lifestyle, they still backed her.
They still loved her. Her dad trusted her to make her own decisions, even if he disagreed with her, and her ma would never turn her out.
I didn’t have that kind of luxury. I was trapped until Ma said otherwise.
Now that Maria had forced me to acknowledge that out loud, the neckline of my dress felt impossibly snug.
I tugged at the collar, my decolletage sweaty under the velvet.
Maria met my mounting panic with the enthusiasm of a spokesperson for apathy, her voice flat. “My education is a convenient excuse, and you know it.” She unhooked her leather jacket from the back of her chair, throwing the admission to one night of freedom my way. “You have options.” I caught the jacket, my fingers curling around the back, studying her. “You always have options, regardless of what she’ll try to make you think. Don’t just roll over and accept whatever shit you’re handed from her or anyone else. Fight for yourself.”
I had with Martin. Didn’t that count for something?
But I knew this went beyond Martin because the origin of the complex series of webs in my life all started and ended with Ma.
How I dressed, where I went, what I ate, who I talked to, and how I behaved… it was all her at the helm. Sure, I’d ended things with Martin, but did I really believe that Ma wouldn’t eventually wear me down? That I wouldn’t go back? Concede defeat and make excuses for his behavior because at least I was kind of free?
Kind of free. How fucked up was that?
The dull edges of my nails curled against the coat, the oxygen in my lungs scarce.
Maria was right, and I didn’t know what to do about it, or how to change it, without losing the only parent I had. The one who, despite her heartbreak, hadn’t left me the way he had.
Maria’s chair scraping against the floor when she tucked it in plucked me from my rumination, and I tracked her as she edged for the heavily draped doors, hips swaying.
She was going to freeze in that dress, but she didn’t seem to care. She’d decided for herself, and the power of choice kept her warm.
I couldn’t imagine what that was like. I remained where I was a little while longer, clutching her jacket to my chest, weighing my decision.
I could return to my table.
Or I could follow my cousin.
I had options. Even if I only allowed myself tonight to exercise them.
Feeding my arms through the sleeves of her jacket, I hurried after Maria before I could talk myself out of it, catching her as she disappeared behind the billowing drapery cloaking the back doors.
My decision to follow her would alter the course of my entire life.