54
LUCA BELLANDI
Cris invited me for a beer.
I read the message twice. He suggested a bar near the pier after the children were asleep. We were leaving for S?o Paulo at the end of the week, and we hadn’t spoken alone since my return.
When I arrived, he was already at a table in the back. Two bottles stood between us. A brown folder lay on the empty chair.
“Gabriela knows I brought the album,” he said as I sat down.
Cris put the folder on the table and opened it between us.
There were photographs of the three children in the hospital and at home, kept in envelopes marked with dates. Noah with a tube beside his face. Heitor wrapped in a blanket. Camila, tiny amid the wires. I picked up the first one, not knowing how long I could bear to look.
“Why are you showing me these?”
“Gabi said I could bring these ones. You know the numbers in the reports. I thought you’d want to see the rest.”
I looked at Heitor’s photograph again. I recognized the same frown between his eyebrows that appeared when he faced a plate of vegetables.
“Was this before he came home?”
“Two days before. Gabi’s mother sent the blanket.”
I nodded. Cris moved to the next photograph and took a moment before continuing.
“I took a lot of pictures for her to take home. The boys were discharged, but Camila stayed. Gabi wanted to know everything that happened while she wasn’t there.”
I touched the edge of the photograph. The paper wasn’t trembling. My fingers were.
“She told me about the cribs. Two occupied and the third one empty.”
Cris nodded, looking at the edge of the album.
“We took turns. Her mother stayed with the boys, I drove, then we switched. I couldn’t always be in Brazil; I had to go back to Lisbon. When I left, I made sure everything was arranged, and I still called to ask whether they’d slept.”
He turned to another photograph. Three baby bottles stood on a counter, a sheet of feeding times pinned to the wall.
“Once I changed one of them and forgot to put a diaper on. I fastened his sleeper, picked Heitor up, and couldn’t work out where all the water was coming from.”
I looked at him. Cris smiled for the first time that night.
“Gabi laughed until she cried. Then she checked the other two.”
“How did you get any sleep?”
“Badly. In shifts. And sometimes nobody did. It wasn’t all sadness, Luca. You need to know that too.”
I ran a finger along the margin of a picture taken in the NICU.
“The day they were born, I couldn’t even take a decent picture,” Cris said.
“She’d been in the hospital since the contractions started, at twenty-eight weeks and five days. Two days later, they had to do a C-section. Her mother and I waited, not knowing whose news we’d get first.”
He didn’t repeat the birth weights I’d already read. He told me how long it had taken him to understand that Noah had been born and needed help breathing. Then came news of Heitor and Camila. He wrote it all down on his phone so he wouldn’t mix anything up when he spoke to Gabriela.
“I promised I’d keep her informed about all three. When I was allowed to see them, I took the pictures.”
“And the complication after the C-section?”
“They told us it was being brought under control. Until I could see her, I kept walking from the chair to the door. I didn’t know what to say to her mother. She was scared too, and she still kept asking whether I’d eaten.”
Cris moved his beer aside to rest the album on the table.
“As soon as she could speak, Gabi asked about all three. I had to show her the notes and repeat everything. She wanted to be sure I hadn’t forgotten anyone.”
In the next photograph, the babies were home. The date was after Camila’s discharge.
“That was the first night with all three together,” he said. “Her mother fell asleep sitting up, with her hand inside one of the cribs.”
“Did you stay that night?”
“Yes.”
“And plenty of others.”
“Whenever I could.”
Thank you seemed inadequate. I looked at the man who had learned to tell my children apart while I was still refusing to find out whether they’d been born.
“Thank you.”
He gave a humorless laugh.
“I wanted to be with them. I didn’t do it for you.”
“I know. But I needed to thank you.”
Cris moved on to photographs from their first year. Heitor with food smeared over his face, Noah trying to sit up, Camila on her grandmother’s lap. Toys scattered everywhere, clothes drying behind the cribs—a life I could barely imagine when I read the reports.
“You love her,” I said.
It wasn’t a question. He took a sip.
“I do.”
“And you hate me.”
“Sometimes. Other times, I see you with Camila and think she deserves that relationship. Straightforward hatred would be simpler.”
“You don’t have to like me for us both to stay in their lives.”
“Neither do you.”
“I don’t like everything I feel when I see you with them. But I respect what you’ve done.”
“Are you in love with Gabriela, or do you love her as family?” I asked.
“I fell in love with her. I’ve also been her friend since we were children. I won’t pretend any of it was simple.”
“Does she know?”
“We’ve talked about it.”
“Have you two…”
“That part isn’t your business.”
“You’re right.”
He studied me, perhaps waiting for a fight that didn’t come.
“I don’t want her having to choose who’s allowed near the children to spare your jealousy.”
I lowered my eyes to the photograph in my hands. I wished I didn’t feel what I felt on hearing that.
“And you won’t try to push me out?”
“I’m not going to ask you to disappear.”
Cris leaned back and pointed to the folder.
“I want us to get organized before Camila’s admitted. I can stay with the boys while you two are with her.”
“I’ll work out the times with Gabriela.”
“And bring food. She forgets to eat at times like this.”
“I will.”
Cris gave a lopsided smile.
“Something for yourself too. You’ll need it.”
He gathered the pictures and slipped them into their envelopes. I kept looking at the first photograph with all three cribs occupied.
“Can I borrow the album for a night?”
“Yes. Gabi asked for it back tomorrow.”
“I’ll bring it to the guesthouse in the morning.”
Outside, we stopped on the sidewalk facing the pier.
“I’m still angry with you,” Cris said.
“I can imagine.”
He put his hands in his pockets and looked toward the pier.
“But Heitor spent the whole of dinner talking about the bandage. I’m not going to ruin that for him.”
I didn’t know what to say. I tucked the folder under my arm.
Cris took two steps and turned.
“I’m going to be around, Luca.”
“I know. We’ll sort out the trip tomorrow.”
He nodded. I walked back to the rental house with the folder. In the kitchen, I spread the photographs across the table. For the first time, I could look at some of them without searching only for what my absence had destroyed.
In the last picture, the triplets were blowing out four candles. Gabriela stood behind Camila, and Cris held Heitor’s sleeve away from the cake. Noah already had frosting on one finger. I laughed to myself when I noticed.
The next morning, the man sent by the property manager arrived to adjust the veranda door.
I showed him where it scraped the floor and left him to work while I took a call in the bedroom.
When I came back to the kitchen, he was packing his tools.
I closed the album on the table and took it back to the guesthouse.
I’d written down a few questions: where Noah’s toy had come from, when Heitor had stopped being afraid of the pool, who had chosen the cake with stars.
“The cake was Camila’s idea,” Cris said, seeing the open page. “You can ask them the rest.”
He took a photograph of the triplets covered in flour from the folder. There were two copies.
“Gabi showed this to all three of them yesterday. They chose to give it to you.”
I took it by the edges. On the back, Cris had written their names and the date. Noah had added a lopsided dinosaur, with an arrow pointing at the cake.
I put the photograph in my wallet. Flour hid half of Heitor’s face, but I already recognized his smile.