Chapter 13
Natalia
My mother’s been in Seattle only forty-eight hours and I already don’t recognize my own place, thank goodness I barely live in it.
This morning, when I left for practice, the fridge was completely empty.
When I got back, there were jars of rice, cassava flour I have no idea where she got, and something red that smells like Sunday meals in S?o Paulo.
On the windowsill she’s set eight yogurt cups cut in half, green sprouts poking out that someone gave her.
Two days in a city that isn’t hers and she’s already planted something.
My father isn’t home. Since yesterday he’s been in love with a Mexican restaurant three blocks away, run by a family from Michoacán.
I don’t know how they understand each other, but he went out for something to eat and made friends with the owners.
My father has that gift; he lands anywhere and in a day finds a corner where they treat him like he’s been coming through the door for twenty years.
Me, on the other hand, I’ve spent my whole life going from city to city and I still haven’t found mine. I guess some things aren’t inherited.
The hummingbird painting is still leaning against the living room wall, unhung, like in the six apartments before this in six different cities. My mother has moved it a little, just enough for the window light to hit it, but she hasn’t hung it. She hasn’t asked me why it wasn’t on the wall, either.
***
The next day I take them to the field. There’s no real game, just the kids chasing a ball on a Saturday morning and the parents with their coffees.
It’s the ideal moment for them to meet Holland in a neutral setting.
It’s exactly what I wanted them to see, even if it’s the most important thing in my life right now.
My father lasts five minutes in the bleachers; by the sixth he’s in a corner of the field, playing soccer with Lina and half a dozen girls who have the day off, shirt untucked and flushed.
He’s sixty-one with heart trouble, and there he is, letting a pack of kids beat him until he sits down on the grass with a hand on his chest, laughing.
Lina drops down next to him, out of breath, and explains something I can’t make out from here. My father doesn’t understand a word of English, but he nods like he understands everything.
My mother is very quiet, and when I look at her, her eyes are wet.
“M?e.”
“Estou bem,” she says, and waves me off. “Look at your daughter down there.”
I don’t correct her, Lina isn’t my daughter, but I don’t correct her.
When the scrimmage ends, Holland brings us a couple of coffees. She’s been learning basic Portuguese for a while and my mother is thrilled that she tries to talk to her.
“You make her happy,” my mother says out of nowhere, very slow so Holland will understand.
“I try,” Holland grants, looking at me and winking.
***
That night Zoe and Tessa come to dinner with Wesley, and Iris too, who invites herself every time there’s a celebration of any kind because, according to her, team dinners are sacred.
As expected, my father and she don’t take long to click.
They have a very long conversation about Brazilian soccer, mostly through gestures, and then Iris tells him a story I’m sure my father didn’t understand a word of.
Even so, with an “oh man” here and an “oh man” there, he laughs like he’s with a lifelong friend.
Then she asks my mother for her feij?o recipe and swears she’s going to cook it, which is a lie, because Iris can’t even make a fried egg.
Wesley has been very serious all night, and right before dessert, he climbs down from his chair, walks over to Lina, slips a drawing into her pants pocket, and announces, mouth full:
“Lina iz my sistew now.”
Then he goes back to his chair like someone who’s just signed a legal document, while Zoe melts over every single thing her son does.
Later, I help my mother with the dishes while everyone else chats in the living room. The two of us with our backs to the door, her washing and me drying, the same way we’ve done a thousand times in a kitchen over five thousand miles from here.
“You never invited Camille to dinner with me,” she says, apropos of nothing, without looking up from the plate she’s washing. “And here you have a soccer family in less than a year.”
When everyone leaves and Lina’s already asleep, I go out to the porch with Holland for a beer, and my mother’s words come back to me.
“I owe you the Camille story,” I say very quietly.
“You don’t have to,” she assures me.
But I tell her anyway, because I need to get it out.
I do it in pieces. That the three years in Lyon were the longest I ever stayed in one place.
That Camille wanted normal things, an apartment that was ours, not a rental.
That I’d stop signing one-year contracts like someone who won’t commit to anything.
“My mother painted the hummingbird for when I had a permanent home,” I confess. “I never hung it anywhere.”
Then I tell her the offer came from the UK and I took it.
I told Camille we’d talked it over, though we hadn’t really talked about anything.
I told her with the contract already signed, and she didn’t make a scene.
There were no shouts, no suitcase at the door, none of that stuff that shows up in movies.
“She drove me to the airport herself,” I admit.
“At the terminal she told me ‘good luck with your new team.’ Nothing more. Back then it seemed like she’d taken it really well.
It took me years to understand that when someone drives you to the airport without a fight, it’s because they stopped expecting you to stay a long time ago. ”
But I don’t tell her the rest.
That my agent’s been calling me all week with two very good offers, especially the one from France. That I have to take the big contracts before my legs give out. That staying in one place terrifies me.
I don’t tell her any of that, the same way I didn’t tell Camille.
“This,” I sigh, pointing at the porch and then the house. “This is the closest I’ve ever come to staying.”
Holland hugs me and kisses my temple. It would be a good moment to confess the offers from Europe, but I stay quiet.