The progress you don't see

Yesterday we went to the paint store to pick out an exterior color. It was raining hard; the three men that stood in the doorway watching the rain and chatting moved aside before we reached the door, leaving us plenty of room to shake and close our umbrellas. I could tell we were in a place where no English was spoken, a situation that would normally get my heart revving before I ever opened my mouth to speak.

But not this time! After a polite interval of allowing us to get our bearings, one of the men returned to the counter and called Boa tarde, and I felt absolutely no fear asking in Portuguese, Can you help us, we are looking for a paint color for the exterior of our house.

Sure, he said. He gave us a booklet. The h pulled up a picture on his phone, a color of green called, aptly enough, Sintra. The man squinted at it, went to his computer, then said That color is an interior color only, sorry. Okay, I understand, I said.

The entire conversation happened in Portuguese without me looking at an app, without me practicing ahead of time what I was going to say, and actually hearing what the man said and understand him *in real time*. When all of this occured to me it was all I could do not to dance a little jig but I maintained by dignity.

Of the eight orchid plants Rosa has given me over the past three seasons, seven are sprouting, and I am not giving up yet on the eighth. I have not solved the mysteries of orchids by any means but I respect them and I think this last one, the eighth, is just playing hard to get. I have named her Octavia in honor of my granddaughter and I talk to her everyday.

It’s been raining in intermittent spurts and bursts. We put some of the new paint up on the wall and walked down the avenida to Casa Mae for a box of pastel de nata to go, looking up at the house as we went, glimpsing the swatch of new green, whose appearance seemed to change with the angle of the light every ten steps are so, so that our commentary down the long narrow sidewalk went like this: It looks good now! Kind of silvery. Ew, too mint. Oh now it’s…teal. Yuck. Why does it look so very GREEN. Oh, that shady sage tone is nice. It looks good now. Not now though. Now it looks good again!

In the end we decided to fetch another can (at $75 Euro a can, this is not a lightly made decision) of a lighter green, with less blue in it. Greens are difficult; not as difficult as yellows, but still difficult.

Inside Casa Mae I bought six pastel de natas and a croissant to take away and with only a little fumbling and needing the woman at the counter (is she the owner? Mae? someday I will ask) to repeat herself. One of the patrons lingering over a bica, a familiar-looking man with a thin build and a baseball hat, glanced at me then craned his neck to look outside, breaking into a smile. When I rejoined the h and Jake, the man was holding Jake’s face in both his hands, Jake woofing with joy in between attempts to kiss him. Jake is a big kisser, if you let him.

I have two dogs at home, the man explained in Portuguese. Eles sou grande, assim? I ask, gesturing at Jake and he nods - a fellow big dog owner.

Tchau, I wave as he takes off. ‘brigado, he says, his eyes on Jake, his smile transforming his young but careworn face. I recently read that people in grief report the most comfort not from spouses or family or loved one or friends but their pets. I remember how Jake accompanied me unquestioningly during a period of recent mourning, a period of many months where I slept very little and walked the night-quiet streets of my city for hours on end, often more than ten miles at a go. With Jake at my side I never felt unsafe, and I always felt less alone.

Alberto stopped by for a coffee and to drop off more bread, and some fresh persimmons, the most beautiful deep orange color. The bread is my favorite - whole wheat seeded rolls. We each had one with our grilled dourada last night. We are both stuffed with bread. Our freezer is stuffed with bread. No one can eat this much bread and not get fat, I faux complain to the h. Perhaps this is what is underlying my latest horror story, Doughboy. Some of you younger readers are like, what? But Gen Xers are like oh yeah I never liked that…that thing. (What is it? It EATS crescent rolls! Think about what that means!) I started wondering what happens to these corporate mascot things. Sometimes they just disappear from sight, but if they were never really alive to begin with then they aren’t really dead so much as…undead. There is definitely a death by bread scene so yeah…I’d say real life is definitely the inspiration for this particular horror short, which I’ll post on Horror Boulevard, only for subscribers¹

don’t be fooled

I’m going home for the day, Alberto told us. His garden is winterized; if the sky wants to water our fall crops, let them, that’s less work for us, he tells us, laughing. He was also anxious to get home, having just brought his wife Rosa home from the hospital, where she had a CAT-SCAN after the sudden onset of a spell of vertigo over the weekend left her weak and unable to keep her balance.

I spent 24 hours sitting at the hospital, he tells us, when I urge him to sit down with his coffee. The h makes a good one; Alberto never turns it down when offered, and it’s become a nice rainy day ritual to have a cafe and chat about the weather and what needed pruning or planting or grafting. Of course this was a perfect opportunity to point out to the h that this was yet another perfect use case for the yellow chair, but I strategically kept quiet.

On our last trip to the store, the chair was not in the window. After we shopped, we noticed a sign only visible to exiting customers. The sign had pictures of furniture that had been featured in the window throughout the past twelve months. FORTY PERCENT OFF, the sign read. It did not say FOR GOD’S SAKE TAKES THIS STUFF OFF OUR HANDS but that vibe was strong. Before you get too excited, the price of the yellow chair was not an *additional* 40% off the most recent low price of 175 euro. it was still 175 euro, which is quite possibly 40% off the original price of $229, I’m too lazy to do the math.

Do they deliver, do you think? I asked the h later on, and he could not hide his sharp intake of breath. The trap is closing.

Conta a Rosa esperamos que ela senta melhora logo, I told Alberto and he nodded and smiled.

You understood me? I asked. Me entende? I said it right?

Sim, Alberto said. I tell her. Bye!

I seem to have had some sort of breakthrough, no more nervousness about speaking and more or less certain I’ve said what I intended to say in certain basic conversations. Imagine how much better I’d be speaking if I studied Portuguese the way I studied Italian, four hours a day four days a week for sixteen weeks, including four hours of Italian-only conversation every week. I study about 25% that much now, but O am learning faster because of the base of Italian acting as a helpful scaffolding, and being fully immersed 100% of the time.

The rain moved from spurty to bursty as we made our way up Lower Olive Tree Lane. The olive trees are liking the rain, the h remarked. I can tell he’s been out with his trimmers again covertly pruning but pretend I don’t. The trees are once again starting to create a screen of privacy for our comings and goings.

The flooring arrived for the cottage and Tiago spent a wet hour and a half carrying it bundle by bundle up the cottage steps, looking in the pouring rain not unlike the antagonist in Vision Quest.²

It’s a ceramic tile with the look of wide walnut planks. The previous flooring was not salvageable, so we used the opportunity to upgrade to something humidity-proof. In the grotto - the indoor/outdoor room at the back of the cottage, with ancient raw stone walls and an acrylic ceiling that will be latticed with wisteria - we are going with indigo-dyed concrete, a look I saw once in an art gallery and never forgot.

I sometimes feel this property is the sum total of everything I’ve ever liked in every place I’ve ever lived, which makes it seem more than a little like a dream, the timelines all mixed up, the era of my Illinois girlhood with my dad’s koi pond merging effortlessly with the era of my young adulthood in Houston that featured a faded pink palaceta with a pool surrounded by fruit trees, merging seamlessly with my middle age era where I lived in the Bay Area, a place where, like Portugal, you’re never far from the mountains or the sea, the palm trees standing sentinel over hot days and cool nights, where somehow the lightning bugs of my long ago midwestern childhood are flashing softly in this, the chosen landscape of my future old age.

1. Mostly because I wouldn’t want anyone thinking it was a new entry to the Under the Jacaranda journal, and instead finds themselves neck deep in a body horror tale bound to make them fear bread for the rest of their lives, especially the kind that comes in those pressurized cans. Press here, it says. Careful, contents under pressure.

2. starring Matthew Modine. Gen X had the best movies and music, fight me.