My Love Affair with Brazil Continues - #15
My Love Affair with Brazil Continues - #15
In New Orleans, Harlem, Rio de Janeiro, and Pasadena
After a decade of working 60- and 80-hour weeks for the Bank, in early 1994 I suddenly found myself with the gift of spaciousness to explore new possibilities. The gift of an absence of deadlines. The gift of sleeping until my body felt rested and ready to wake. The gift of time for long conversations and for listening to music and looking at art as it was being created by new and old friends.
As first steps towards finding my next professional direction I committed to Carman Moore that I would help produce the Mass for the 21st Century at Lincoln Center that coming August, and followed up on the offered introduction to Alvenia Bridges. Luckily their apartments were within easy walking distance of each other…and with Morgan’s Private Banking Division on 57th Street rather than Wall Street, even my new office would be in the same neighborhood when that assignment began in June.
Theoretically I was now based in New York City again and my boyfriend was just on the other side of town. Still somehow in 1994 I continued to travel a lot.
With the plan for my next job at the Bank agreed, I flew immediately to Colorado to get my wheels. A few months earlier, November 1993, my “Brazilian mother” Amêlia had come to visit and we spent time together in Colorado. First, I introduced her to my parents, and then we drove down to Manitou Springs so she could meet Oh Shinnah. Completely on a whim I wandered into a Nissan dealership and bought a Pathfinder while we were in Denver. Did I really need an SUV in Manhattan? It did not entirely make sense, but the very name “Pathfinder” seemed fitting as the vehicle for a liminal time in my life. When Amêlia and I flew back to NYC, the Pathfinder stayed with my parents, waiting patiently for me to retrieve it. The car was definitely patient. Perhaps it knew, but I was oblivious to the adventures ahead. My parents were simply glad that they could expect another visit from their daughter before long.
Retrieving the Pathfinder meant taking a cross-country road trip in February, and I planned to travel the southern Interstate route in hopes of avoiding snowy weather. Nelsinho could not spare the time to come along, but we decided to rendezvous in New Orleans for a long romantic weekend. Each night after driving I wrote and mailed a letter to him describing the dayʻs journey. The exhilaration of listening to Pavarotti sing an aria through the Pathfinderʻs speakers as I summited Raton Pass, winding slowly down into New Mexico. My childhood memories of Santa Fe. The palpable shift in energy crossing the border into Texas. When I picked up Nelson at the airport in New Orleans, he showed me he had carried the letters tucked in the pocket of his jacket next to his heart.
That night over a dinner of Cajun food, Nel explained that given his success as a music producer, lyricist, author, and journalist, there were two things he would never tell a woman she was if she wasn’t. The first was a singer. The second was a writer. He looked deeply into my eyes, grasping both my hands. “You are a writer,” he said. Then he laughed. “You are a better writer than our friend Paulo,” he added.
It’s one thing to have your teachers at school give A’s on your homework assignments from grade school through university. It’s another thing to have a highly praised writer and critic opine that your writing is better than your bestselling author friend. His assessment lodged in my being, like a puzzle piece of my future fitting into place.
Whether it was Nelson’s discovery of me as a writer rather than as a banker (way more in the mold of his previous romantic choices), or just the natural progression of our relationship, something had shifted. By this point in my thirties I had been married and divorced, and enjoyed the company of many lovers. I knew the rush of pheromones and a ticking biological clock. But that night something shifted in our lovemaking. I marveled. Yes, this is what it felt like to be touched by someone fully present to their intention to convey their love to me.
Even in NYC, where only taxis dare to drive, the Pathfinder stayed busy.
Curious about Harlem and the heritage of black American church music, one Sunday morning Nelson had wandered off the beaten path of guided bus tours and found himself outside Mount Mariah Baptist Church. The choir was sublime; the sound system an embarrassment. The following week, he bought a decent system and showed up at the church office – the beginning of a genuine and fruitful friendship with the Reverend Dr Edward-Earl Johnson. Initially, Sunday in Harlem was only a friends-and-family thing, and the Pathfinder would take us to pick up visitors at their hotel on our way to Harlem to rock out to the gospel service and continue to brunch at Sylvia’s. After Nelson wrote a column about Mount Mariah, hordes of tourists from Brazil began filling the pews and the collection plate. It seemed they were as interested in spotting Nelson and whichever celebrities he might have with him as they were in the music and its spiritual message, but tudo bem.
The Pathfinder did sit in its garage during our trips to Brazil. In April, Nelson’s parents insisted on hosting a birthday party for me in Rio. Several months prior, the first time I’d attended the regular Saturday afternoon gathering at their gracious home, I was warned that anyone in a very extended circle might show up. Like ex-wives and ex-girlfriends who would befriend me, and even up to the Third Generation. I did not recognize what I took to be a colloquial expression in Portuguese. “Third Generation?” I repeated. Nel grinned. “Imagine I bring a girlfriend and she becomes close to my parents but then we break up. She is still welcome and eventually brings her new boyfriend. Then he gets close to my parents before they break up. Eventually he shows up with his new girlfriend – and that’s the Third Generation!”
I never made it to the Third Generation, but I did attend lunch once when I was in Rio after our eventual break up, Nelson’s mother offering unsolicited but welcome advice about the son of a friend of hers she’d heard I might be dating. And Marilia Pêra, the ex-wife whose name had so intimidated me when I read it in the Caras magazine photo caption, also stayed friends with me and coined a new expression in English to describe our relationship. One night in 1995 or 1996 she called to say hi as she was in New York with her then husband. She asked if it were true that Woody Allen played clarinet on Monday nights at Michael’s Pub. I assured her he did, and she invited me to join them for dinner there. At intermission she looked longingly at the crowd lined up for autographs. “Please, go tell him your ex-step-wife is a famous actress in Brazil and would love to be in his next movie.”
Archangel Michael, a birthday gift from Nelson’s father.
I still own and treasure two of the three gifts from that birthday celebration. Nelson gave me an uncut amethyst in a deep purple hue that I later had cut and set into a necklace. His father, a noted lawyer, was also an expert in the literature on angels. He gifted me a statue of Archangel Michael, with instructions to keep the statue at my front door for protection, which I still do today. The present from Nelson’s mother was the smallest bikini I have ever owned. Proudly pointing to the one-inch triangle of fabric on the back, she confided with total sincerity she knew American women preferred a little more coverage and had shopped accordingly. And yes, I made sure to wear it the weekend we spent at their beachside house in Búzios.
My parents came to New York for a visit that May, eager to meet my new friends and reassure themselves I wasn’t throwing my career away. They adored Carman, who walked with them in Central Park and whom they would see on multiple occasions through the rest of their lives. They were nervous about Nelson, and he shocked me by confiding to my mother that he would be happy to have a child with me if I could guarantee it would be another daughter, as he had no idea what to do with boys. We had never discussed the topic, so I assumed it was just a casual remark meant to charm my mother rather than a message to me. I had big creative plans for the next few years, but creative did not include the creative outcome of a pregnancy!
In yet another insane “coincidence,” the year I was dating a Brazilian journalist who every four years travels with the press corps writing humorous social commentary during the World Cup, yes, 1994 was also the year the United States hosted said event. With my newest strategic planning assignment at the Bank finally starting in June just before the competition began, traveling to every game was out of the question. But there was a period of intense preparation in front of the television screen, and once he was sure I would not completely embarrass him with my ignorance about futbol, the invitation was made to join him for a couple of in-person matches, including the final at the Rose Bowl.
A fax came from Paulo with a column written by Nelson on the eve of the Brazil-US match.
Even more ironically, the U.S. team somehow managed to make the Round of 16, playing against Brazil on the Fourth of July. Yep, on American Independence Day. On July 3rd, I received a fax from Paulo; it was a clipping of Nelson’s newspaper column and on the bottom Paulo wrote Isso é que é paixão! This is what passion is. Nelson had not given me advance warning. The title of the piece was Bola dividida – the verb “dividir” meaning both divided and shared, this soccer ball that metaphorically was now in play between us. The first line: Drama conjugal á vista – minha mulher é americana (Conjugal drama in sight – my wife is American). The column is classic Nelsinho, with its literary references, self-deprecating humor, and (put in my voice) his analogies between soccer and the political scene. But it took me by surprise for another reason. This was the first time he had referred to me using the word mulher or “wife” rather than namorada or “girlfriend.” In a nationally syndicated column.
The World Cup final in 1994 was between Brazil and Italy, and if we won, it would be as tetracampeão, the first team ever to win four World Cup competitions. I doubt I ever again will experience in a sports stadium anything like the energy and intensity of sitting in the stands surrounded by Brazilian fans as the game went 0-0 through extra time and was won 3-2 on penalties. Nelsinho was in the press box, but I was hardly alone. No divided loyalties. We were BRASIL TETRACAMPEAO!