“Did you check if he’s there now?” Vera wants to know.
“He texted that his shift starts at four,” Rita says.
The dance they perform, Vera asking unnecessary questions and Rita answering without losing patience, is something they often do. Rita never snaps at Vera the way she does at her son back home. Nothing Vera says or does seems to irritate her, which still surprises me. Most of my girlfriends have tensions with their mothers, as did I when my mother was alive, but not Rita. She’s comfortable around her mother, never losing her cool.
“How far is the restaurant?” Vera continues.
“Five minutes from here,” Rita says, looking at her phone.
I guess it’s good news because Vera seems satisfied. She could ask if it’s a big restaurant, how old Simone’s nephew is, or what his name is. But she doesn’t.
The restaurant is larger and far nicer than the smoky dive I escaped last night. An ornate wooden bar faces the entrance, and small tables line the wall across from it. A friendly woman in a shiny green dress approaches us and leads us to a separate dining room that’s still empty. Cloth napkins and water glasses give it a respectable look. She hands us three large, one-page menus printed in English and Portuguese.
“Is Emilio here?” Rita asks before the woman can recite the specials or offer to take our drinks order, or whatever they do in Tomar after seating guests.
“Emilio?” the woman asks with a slight tilt of her head, sounding confused.
“Yes. He said he works here. Can you tell him his friends from America want to see him?” Rita persists. I hope she’s not getting him in trouble if he’s busy in the kitchen. Hopefully, they’re more relaxed here than the places I used to work in. Vera buries her face behind the menu. Maybe she’s uncomfortable, or trying to read, I can’t be sure. I’ve noticed that sometimes she removes herself from a scene as a way to camouflage her discomfort. She doesn’t criticize Rita when she acts pushy; she hides.
The woman pauses, then nods. “Emilio. Yes, he’s here. I’ll go look for him.”
“Obrigada,” Rita says, smiling, and grabs the menu to signal that she’s done.
The woman leaves to look for Emilio. Vera puts down the menu. I decide to stay pleasant and cooperative. This is Rita’s show, and I’m not interfering.
“What are you going to order?” Vera asks, breaking the silence. After the breakfast she had for dinner last night, she probably wants something a little more satisfying and is unsure about what she sees on the menu.
“I don't know. We can ask Emilio,” Rita shrugs and checks the backside of the menu.
After a few minutes, Emilio enters the dining room, dressed in the quintessential black and white waiter’s uniform and a short black apron. He’s in his mid-twenties, tall, and good-looking in a way that doesn’t make you fall off your chair. When he sees Rita, he breaks into a wide smile.
“Oi, Rita, tudo bom? You made it.”
If they were standing up, he would have kissed her on each cheek, but Rita is sitting down, and he can’t reach her. “Tudo bom, Emilio, yes. We made it. How are you?” Rita answers, sending him two air kisses. “Como vai?” she continues.
“Very good,” Emilio says, nodding to Vera and me with “nice to meet you, nice to meet you,” before Rita explains to him who we are.
After a round of questions and answers about our impression of Portugal and the places we’ve been to, Rita asks, “So how’s life in Tomar?”
He likes it, even though not much is happening here compared to Lisbon, especially for people his age. But it’s safe, and people are nice. He’s renting a room not far from the city center and goes to nursing school during the day. While he speaks, he leans on the chair next to Vera, the way tall waiters do when they want to create a casual atmosphere.
“When you decide to go to school? Simone know you going to school?” Rita asks. Her broken English usually bothers me because it feels lazy and performative, but now I’m not letting it bother me.
“There are no good jobs around, and someone suggested I go to school, so I signed up and work here in the evenings,” he explains.
“You like working here?” Vera interjects in a maternal voice.
“It’s a good job. Pays the rent and school,” he answers, like an American that he’s not.
“That’s great,” I add, to avoid looking antisocial.
A group of people enters the dining room and is led to a table by the woman in the green dress. They look local, which reassures me that we are not sitting in a tourist trap.
“Do you know what you want to order?” Emilio asks. His time is running out, and he knows it.
Rita and I know what we want, but Vera is not sure and asks for a recommendation. Rita takes a chance on the bacalhau despite her bad experience with this fish in Lisbon: shredded cod, cooked with onion, fried potatoes, and scrambled eggs, and, of course, a salad. I ask for the alheira de frango com batata frita, to pay homage to the Jews of Belmonte. During my visit to the museum, I learned that Jews stuffed sausages with bread and chicken instead of pork and hung them by the window, just like their neighbors. That’s how chicken sausage entered Portuguese cuisine. Vera is not tempted. After some back and forth with Emilio, she settles for a simpler version of Rita’s meal, skipping the fried sides and going for the boiled version.
Emilio scribbles our order on a small notepad he pulls from his apron pocket and heads toward the group that settled on the other side of the dining room. As he walks away, I watch him and feel a little twinge of envy. I came to Portugal to see if I could retire here, where the sun shines 300 days a year, the language is accessible, and real estate won’t bankrupt me. Instead, watching him wait tables and talk about his new life, I realize that I’d rather be young and starting over than settling into retirement. I’m sure he struggles like any other immigrant, even if for him, this move might be easier because he speaks the language. But Portugal is not Brazil, that much is clear to me.
“He made a good decision,” Vera says once he’s out of earshot. “He’ll be able to work anywhere.”
“I told Simone not to worry about him. I knew he’d be fine,” Rita says.
Their exchange reminds me that Rita took a nursing assistant course at a community college a few years ago, but realized it wasn’t right for her. She decided she could be making more money selling jewelry at street fairs without having to lift bedbound patients and bathe them. And this is how the healthcare profession lost a gifted nurse aide who knew how to cheer up a dying person without ever freaking out. While she was in training, I heard about her ability to sit with people as they drew their last breath and never doubted her, despite her tendency to embellish. I decide to say something nice to practice the new me. Focus on the positive and make her feel good.
“You would have been an excellent nurse,” I say. “I remember when you took the class.”
She raises her eyes from the phone. “I could, but I didn’t want to,” she shrugs and pretends to smile with her mouth, but not her eyes.
Well, you can’t blame me for not trying.
* * *
Emilio brings our food and sets the plates in front of us. Everything looks good, especially my fries, which I’m happy to nibble and not share with anyone. The salad is unimpressive, more decoration than a real salad, but that’s okay. It’s still nice to see something green on the plate. The sausage pops when I take a bite, which I’ve learned is supposedly a sign of good quality.
There is not much conversation at our table. I think we’ve said everything that needed saying in these last few days, and I’m not racking my brain to find something to talk about. Let Rita do it, or Vera, if the silence bothers her.
As I’m silently chewing fries, I bite my tongue. And it hurts terribly, making my eyes water. I’m mad at myself and that stupid fry. How could I do this? What’s wrong with me? I try to hide my pain from Vera and Rita and continue chewing as if nothing happened. I feel too stupid to confess, even though neither will faint at the sight of blood. I’m too embarrassed to cry in pain in front of them. But I can barely endure it. I want to spit out everything and storm out of the restaurant, but I can’t. I have to control myself. Let the pain subside.
It feels like the universe hit me with a ten-pound sledgehammer, demanding I learn to shut up and stop judging others, and even myself. Or maybe I just bit my tongue. It happens to everyone. It could be the bridge the dentist put in recently that caused my mouth to go out of alignment.
But then again, maybe it’s a lesson I have to learn the hard way.
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