Rita digs her fork into the pink flesh of the fish and takes a tiny bite. I am surprised to see her usual loud appreciation for food changes into this timid ladylike demeanor, something I have never observed before. It feels as if I am watching her eat for the first time. I wonder if living with Fred, who suffers from obsessive overeating, has anything to do with it. Or has she always been like this and I just never noticed because I was so absorbed in my own little world?
“Is it good?” Vera asks Rita in a voice that signals disdain rather than curiosity. It’s easy to see that she is not enjoying her green soup.
“Hmmm,” Rita nods and takes another tiny bite of the salmon.
In spite of the noisy ambience, I can hear her eating. This is also completely new to me. I’ve never noticed that she makes noises when she eats. It’s not a crunching sound, like when someone chews on an apple or a carrot, but a wet sound, as if she is sucking fruit juice from a plastic bottle or gnawing on something soft that does not require using teeth. Perhaps I can hear these noises because she eats with her mouth slightly open. How did I miss this? How did I not see this before? How am I going to ignore it? Or pretend I don’t hear it?
The waiter arrives with my order. The salad contains chopped lettuce and a few slices of cucumber, an unripe tomato, and an oversized carrot. Nothing too fancy or exotic. The shape of the plate is unusual, but everything on it is mediocre, including the oil and vinegar on the side. I eat the salad anyway because vegetables are good for me and I haven’t had a salad since I arrived in Portugal. The French fries are heavenly, but there are too many of them in the bowl. I decide to share them with the other women, even though, usually, I am quite possessive of my fries. Also, Vera and Anna have already finished their soups and are just sitting there waiting for Rita and me to finish eating. I don’t know if they ordered anything else and I need to see them eating with us. I feel awkward enough that Rita ordered a full meal while these two barely ate anything.
I push the fries to the middle of the table. “Have some fries. This is way too much for one person.”
Luckily, they are not too proud to decline my offer. Even Rita, who is still working on her meal, joins in. Each woman in turn takes a few fries from the bowl and soon only a few unappetizing pieces are left at the bottom.
“We are still waiting for our boiled potatoes,” Anna says out of the blue while munching on a French fry.
“You should call the waiter and remind him,” I suggest.
“It’s OK. I don’t want it anymore,” Anna says, a bit impatient, as if I said something wrong.
“I also didn’t get my salad,” Rita adds.
“You should tell him,” I say.
Now, it’s Vera’s turn. “I’m already full.”
“Are you sure? I can tell him you’re still waiting for your boiled potatoes,” I insist this time. He’s probably giving us the treatment reserved for bad customers. We are four women sitting at the farthest table from the kitchen and he knows that the tip is going to be too small to make an effort. We didn’t even order drinks.
As if to undermine my assessment of the situation, the waiter returns to our table to ask if we want to order dessert.
If Rita orders dessert I’m going to walk out, I think to myself. I am not going to sit here and watch her stuffing her face with more food while Anna counts her euros. Luckily for all, Rita tells him that we want the bill.
“Coffee?” he asks again.
Anna shakes her head without looking at me or the waiter.
“You know, these two women never got their boiled potatoes,” I say to the waiter in Portuguese.
“We don’t want it anymore,” Vera says in Hebrew, moving her hand in a motion that indicates ‘no.’ She puts her napkin on the table and shoves her plate to the middle of the table to further drive her point home.
The waiter points to the two small pieces of French fries that were left at the bottom of the bowl and says, “This was for all of you. You ordered potatoes.”
“They ordered boiled potatoes,” I explain in Portuguese. “I ordered the French fries.”
The waiter shakes his head firmly and points to the bowl. “This was for all of you.” Then he puts the bill on the table, takes the empty plates and bowls, and leaves.
Even though I am floored by the waiter’s rudeness, I am so, so glad I offered some of the fries to Vera and Anna. I was right that the portion was too big for one person. And I am so, so glad I didn’t eat all these fries by myself. I wouldn’t be able to look these women in the face for the rest of the trip had I eaten them all by myself. I feel lucky beyond words. By the grace of the universe, I did something completely out of character and it saved me from embarrassment.
But not completely. Because when the waiter comes back to take our money, offered in a variety of coins and a paper bill, he tells me that the salad plate was also prepared for two people because Rita’s salmon came with a side of salad.
“I knew I was supposed to get a salad,” Rita says, making me squirm in my chair because I ate all the lettuce by myself without offering her any. Vera shrugs off the news and Anna’s face is buried in her backpack.
This misunderstanding makes my inner waitress kick in. I need to understand if this mishap is the result of a cultural gap or the misbehavior of our obnoxious waiter. We have a few more days in Portugal and I’d better learn some Portuguese restaurant etiquette and what to expect when I order something. I decide to ask for clarification.
“You know,” I open in Portuguese, hoping to appease him. “I was a waitress many years in the United States. Over there, when people order food, every person gets a separate plate. So, are you telling me that here if two people order the same thing you bring it on the same plate?”
The waiter looks me with open hostility. He doesn’t answer. Maybe my Portuguese sucks and he doesn’t understand what I’m saying.
“I would like to understand how you do things in Portugal. I’ve never seen this done before,” I try my best at showing him my stupidity to defuse his hostility. I am starting to think that maybe he hates Brazilians, because I certainly don’t sound Israeli or American.
At this point Anna rises from her chair and grabs her backpack and jacket. “I really hate what you’re doing. I’m getting out of here,” she seethes through clenched teeth, in Hebrew. She turns her back to me and storms out of the restaurant, as far as storming out of a small and crowded dining hall allows.
“I’m not arguing about money, I only want to understand how they do thing here,” I apologize, but she is already gone, slamming an invisible door in my face and making me feel like a cheap bully. I feel bad about not letting it go but I have to redeem myself after eating all these fries and Rita’s share of the salad. And I wasn’t even hungry.
“It’s OK,” Vera, the self-designated peacemaker, intervenes. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Anna’s sudden eruption appears so out of character and out of place that it leaves me deeply rattled. She certainly was not going with the flow, as Rita had promised weeks ago when she told me that she invited Anna to join us. I don’t know what Anna thought I was trying to do by seeking clarification from this cold-hearted waiter, but I know that my intentions were pure. I was only trying to repair what my academic side would call ‘an unfortunate language breakdown.’ When I was working on my master’s degree in foreign language teaching, I read several studies and even wrote some academic papers that could have helped explain this incident. But this restaurant is not academia, and trying to repair an authentic communicative breakdown by talking to a waiter is not the best remedy. Apparently.
“Everything’s good, everything’s good,” Rita announces in Hebrew as she rises from her chair and pushes it away to squeeze herself and her big handbag out of a tight spot. It is something she usually says when things are awful. I’ve seen her doing it time and again, especially after long diatribes about Fred’s poor eating and hygiene habits or her ex-husband’s stinginess.
This time I don’t try to argue my point. I follow the two women out of the restaurant and decide that from now on, I will not join this group at any restaurant. I don’t want to risk putting myself in such an adverse situation again. Things are already becoming borderline unbearable.
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