Don Lee - The Collective

“It’s not too late,” I said.

“It’s too late.”

“We could drop the complaint.”

“Even if we did, Barboza would never let it go. It’s an election year. He wants a trial. This is the most fun he’s ever had.”

“Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”

“I wish it could all go away,” Jessica said. “I wish it could all just end.”

I knew from news reports that Vivaldo Barboza was forty-seven, and that he still lived with his mother. They had emigrated from the Azores when he was nine. His father had already been in the U.S. for two years, working at a glassworks factory near Lechmere, and once reunited, the three of them had settled in the Portuguese community of East Cambridge.

Vivaldo had arrived knowing no English, but eventually managed to earn a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Suffolk University. Nevertheless, other than getting licensed as a justice of the peace, he never pursued a career outside of the family business. From the time he was seventeen, he and his mother — a widow since the late sixties, when Vivaldo’s father had died of a heart attack — had been running a small corner market near Inman Square.

I took Joshua’s Peugeot and drove down Broadway. I didn’t know the name of the Barbozas’ store, and I couldn’t remember whether it was on Columbia or Windsor Street. I crisscrossed the vicinity known as Area 4, which was largely an African American neighborhood. I stopped at several bodegas and markets, but the merchants were Brazilian, Indian, Syrian. I searched closer to Cambridge Street, and finally spotted Azores Variety on Columbia.

“Hello,” a woman said when I walked in. Friendly, energetic. She was in her early seventies, perhaps — almost certainly Barboza’s mother. The family resemblance was uncanny. A thick body, a wide face with a prominent brow and heavy-lidded eyes, downturned at the corners like the mouth, only Vivaldo’s wavy hair was dark while hers was white, and she was quite short, the counter she stood behind too high for her.

I browsed the aisles, temporizing. The place was dimly lit, rather dismal. I had been expecting Portuguese staples like salted cod, fava beans, and linguica, but there was none of that here, just sundries that could be found in any store, odds and ends, everything dusty, overpriced, the stamps on many of the products past expiration. There wasn’t much of a stock, either, one or two of each item on the sparse shelves, like the one bar of soap or the one package of thumbtacks or the one can of shaving cream. I pulled a gallon of milk from the cooler and set it on the counter.

“Anything else?” the woman asked.

I picked out some gum from the rack of candy bars.

“Bag?”

“Yes, please.” There was a sign on the cash register, written with a Sharpie, that said CASH ONLY. NO CHECK. NO CREDIT CARD.

She slowly counted out my change. She was wearing very thick glasses.

“Is Vivaldo home?” I asked. I had read in the paper that their apartment was above the store.

She brightened. “You friends with Vivaldo?”

“Is he home?”

She pressed a doorbell buzzer screwed to the wall, and I could hear it ringing above us, then the thump of footsteps coming down the stairs a few seconds later.

I was facing the back of the store, assuming he would enter from there, but the stairwell apparently led out to the street. He came in through the front door. “Yes, Mãe?” he said.

“A friend has come to visit you!” his mother told him, as if it were a very rare occurrence.

Hesitantly, he shook my hand, confused. “I’m sorry, could you tell me where we know each other from? I can’t place you.”

“I’m Eric Cho,” I said. When my name didn’t register, I added, “Jessica Tsai’s friend. The 3AC.”

He recoiled. “Let’s go outside.” We stepped out onto the sidewalk. “What do you want?” he asked.

“I was hoping we could talk,” I said. “Maybe calm things down a bit. Everything’s gotten a little out of control, don’t you think?”

“You guys started it. I didn’t do a thing.”

“I think we’ve all said a few things — without really meaning to — to stoke the fire.”

“I’m not going to apologize,” Barboza said. “I’m standing by my principles. I’m just doing what I believe and what’s in the best interests of my constituents.”

“Don’t you think it’d be mutually beneficial,” I asked, “if we could take a step back and, you know, discuss this rationally?”

“I am being rational,” he said. “I ask again: What do you want?”

“We’ll drop our complaint if you’ll drop yours.”

He smirked. “Pressure gotten too much for you and your friends?” he said.

“I admit, we didn’t anticipate this level of hysteria,” I said, willing to bend a little.

“Well, you asked for it,” Barboza said. “I’m not going to drop the complaint.”

“The show will be over in a week. You’ve already made your point.”

“Not going to happen.”

“We listened to bad advice, okay?” I said. “We shouldn’t have brought the courts into it. We see that now. So wouldn’t it be better for the taxpayers if we both pulled back?”

“If I dropped it, it’d look like I caved in to you.”

“What about this, then?” I said, encouraged by the small opening. “Let’s agree to both withdraw the complaints at the end of the month, when the exhibit’s over. That way, it won’t look like anyone compromised. In the meantime, how about we impose a gag order on ourselves and not talk to the media anymore?”

Barboza was wearing a short-sleeved white dress shirt. He tugged on the knot of his tie — it was a clip-on — and removed it. He rolled the tie into a compact spool, stuffed it into his front pocket, and loosened the top button of his shirt. “You see this street?” he said. “Look how brightly lit it is, every streetlight working, the reflectors in the road in front of the crosswalks. Before I took office, this was a pedestrian hazard. Two kids got hit in one summer. One of them died. You think I’m uncultured and stupid. What makes you think you’re so much better than everyone else, just because you’re an artist? What do you contribute to society? At least I’ve made the streets safer, at least I’ve gotten foot patrols increased and put bike paths in and reduced the rodent population. Maybe these are small things to you, things that don’t matter, but they’re not to the people who live here. I’ve worked hard to make their lives a little better. What have you done?”

The street was, in fact, impressively well lit. I could see the crease marks on his neck from his shirt collar, a mole in the notch of his jugular. “We’re trying to improve the lives of Asian Americans,” I said.

“I’m an immigrant just like you. You think I wasn’t made fun of, being Portuguese? You think I didn’t get teased as a kid?”

Briefly, I wondered if Barboza ever experienced saudade . What did he yearn for? I knew he had never been married, did not have children. I doubted very much he had a girlfriend. A part of me wanted to feel sorry for him.

“Why’d you say that thing on TV?” he asked. “Why’d you have to bring race into it?”

He thought I was Joshua. “We didn’t. You did. Remember? ‘Little egg rolls’? ‘Bonsai bush’?”

“One of the hosts on the talk show, Louie, he fed me that line. I regret it. But I ask you, should it have been such a big deal? Now people think I’m a bigot. Yeah, it was colorful language, but that’s talk radio. You get caught up in the hyped-up energy of the show. There wasn’t any harm intended. It was just creative license.”