Black Cake: A Novel (32 page)

B
y the time he reached
retirement age, Johnny “Lin” Lyncook was a wealthy man. He had moved to a suburb of Miami where he knew folks from the island, earned a chunk of cash on the black market, invested his profits in stocks and bonds, and liquidated his gains before the 2008 crisis. He learned to stay away from everything else. No casinos, no poker, no cockfights, no sports. The betting had already cost him too much. Two wives and his only daughter, his one true regret.

Lin’s newfound wealth proved very useful. He acquired a third wife and her two young children, produced with other men but welcomed into his home. He sent the boys to pricey universities and watched with satisfaction as his investment paid off. The boys have their own homes and families now, and their children call him Papa Lin, to distinguish him from Papa Shaw, their mother’s dad.

Lin was also in the position to pay a private investigator to locate his daughter Covey, who was reported to have been killed in a train accident in England years before but who, Lin learned, was actually alive and living in California. There was a photograph. It showed Lin’s daughter with Gilbert Grant who, like Covey, had changed his name and left his past behind.

The idea to search for his daughter after so many years had come to Lin after he’d watched a video online with some kind of food expert, a white woman who looked so much like his daughter that he nearly slid right off the couch. Then Lin sat down with the investigator and told
him everything he could think of about Covey, including Gibbs and his own departure from the island.

Lin hadn’t tried to contact his daughter. If she’d wanted to get in touch, he was certain she could have found a way. It wouldn’t have been hard to find him. As it was, half the island was now living up in Miami. But Covey has never sent word. Whenever it has hurt Lin to think about such things, he’s reasoned that Covey had little choice. It was likely best for Coventina Lyncook to remain dead to everyone who once knew her, even fifty years after her disappearance. True, any young woman in her situation might have fled the day of Little Man’s murder, guilty or not. But, still.

So much time has passed since then and Lin is getting up there in years. Not long ago, he was thinking he should just go ahead and get in touch with Covey after all, forget his pride, when an email arrived from Bunny Pringle. Bunny was writing to say that she had important news and would be calling him. On the telephone, she told Lin that she was calling about their
mutual acquaintance, Miss C.
Bunny confirmed that Covey had been alive all these years but that now she really was gone, she’d gotten sick.

Coventina. That fool-headed child.

Bunny says Covey was survived by three children.
Three
children? The investigator only mentioned two. At any rate, Bunny tells Lin they want to meet him, which surprises Lin, considering what happened to their mother. But here he is, now, sitting in his sunroom, waiting for them to arrive.

Lin hasn’t seen Bunny in years, except in the news. She’s famous now, for all that swimming of hers. She was always
different,
that Pringle girl, but she was a good child at heart and she was a loyal friend to his daughter. Bunny always defended Covey’s name. She never, ever cast doubt on his daughter’s innocence, not even when Lin himself did.

Perhaps it is this last thought that finally does it, that lifts the fog in his mind surrounding the day of Covey’s disappearance. The thought of Bunny and Covey, as close as twins, cheek-to-cheek in their shiny dresses. Lin was already fairly drunk when it happened, when Little
Man dropped dead in front of him. Still, he was close enough to have seen something, that’s what he realizes now. Had he really forgotten, boozed up as he was that day? Or had he, like most men at critical moments in their lives, merely refused to accept something because he did not want to?

The doorbell rings. When Covey’s children finally walk into Lin’s house, the shock of seeing that woman in person, the one who looks just like his daughter, eclipses all other thoughts. Only later, when Bunny stumbles over a coffee table,
Still clumsy, that girl,
will Lin take a good, long look at his daughter’s best friend and think back, once again, to that day in 1965.

T
hey are rounding the corner
past a house with a burst of yellow-and-orange crotons and a lanai enclosed with mosquito screening. As they park the car in the driveway and walk to the nearest door, Byron sees a small swimming pool under the lanai. The border of the pool is tiled with a dolphin motif. The door to the house has a dolphin-shaped wind chime and a dolphin-shaped
Welcome
sign.
Very Florida,
Byron thinks, as he wipes the sweat from his temples, as he pulls his shirt away from his damp torso, as he longs for the cool morning air of the Pacific coast.

A small, fleshy woman answers the door. She has toothpaste-ad teeth and a Cuban accent.

“Come in, Mister Lin is in the back,” she says, leading them across a broad room with cream-colored flooring.

Byron shakes his head as he walks.
Why are they even here?
Do they really have to meet this man? The nervousness he’s been feeling on the ride over from the hotel is morphing into a kind of irritation, compounded by Marble’s presence. Sure, Johnny Lyncook is her grandfather, too, but it’s different for her. Her whole relationship with their mother and this family is different.

By the time he gets to the next room he’s decided he’s going to have it out with this man. This man, who is supposed to be his grandfather. This man, whose irresponsible behavior and betrayal drove Byron’s mother away, nearly killed her, caused her to lose everything and
everyone she knew. And sent her, ultimately, into circumstances that no young woman should have to face.

Byron sees an old Chinese guy with hair as black as coal, sitting on a wicker sofa. Next to him is a cane and a glass-topped table packed with photo frames. He bows his head as he uses the cane to push himself up from the seat. He’s a tall man, this Johnny Lyncook. But he’s a wispy-looking character, except for the hair, monochromatic and thick as a wig. The side table has photos of children. This man probably has other grandchildren. This man, who does not deserve to be called
grandfather.

Always respect your elders,
Byron’s mother used to say. What his ma really meant was, always be polite, always be considerate. But no, Byron thinks. If we really mean to respect people in their maturity, then we must acknowledge them as fully formed individuals with long histories; we must be prepared to see them as they are, to recognize that a shit is a shit, young or old. Like this man, who ruined his mother’s life. This man does not deserve Byron’s courtesy.

Johnny Lyncook does not say hello, does not shake their hands, does not invite them to sit. He merely opens his mouth and stares at Marble. Then he pokes Benny on the arm and wags a finger back and forth between her and Byron.

“You two. Just like your father,” Johnny Lyncook says, nodding. “Just like Gilbert Grant.” Now he’s back to staring at Marble. He turns to the side table full of photo frames, leans down to pull one out of the bunch, and presses it into Marble’s hands. Byron sees that it’s a black-and-white photo of a teenaged girl in a school uniform, a plaid tunic over a white shirt. There is no mistaking who that girl is. She looks just like Marble, only much darker. Benny takes the frame from Marble.

“Our ma!” Benny says. Byron feels his throat go tight.

Byron looks at this old guy. Who does he think he is, keeping a photograph of Ma in his living room? Byron doesn’t even feel connected to this man. But then Johnny Lyncook smiles a lopsided grin. It’s his ma’s smile.
Jeez,
it’s Byron’s own smile. Which makes Byron want to grab hold of the man and shake him until he crumples to the floor.

Johnny Lyncook turns back to the sofa and eases himself onto the seat. Etta Pringle trips over something as she maneuvers around the coffee table between them.

“Bunny Pringle,” he says, in a tone that Byron can’t decipher. Almost like an adult who’s fixing to reproach a child. No, it’s something else. Something sharper. It’s because she knew, isn’t it? She knew that Covey had survived that plunge into the sea, all those years ago, and she never told him.

“Mister Lin,” she says, sitting down at the other end of the sofa, without looking at Johnny Lyncook.

Byron, Benny, and Marble follow Etta’s lead. They each sit in a chair facing the sofa.

“Marisol!” Johnny Lyncook calls. The woman who opened the front door earlier comes into the room, wheeling a serving cart of drinks and peanuts. “Lime water,” he says, and waves a hand toward the cart. There are slices of lime and a maraschino cherry floating in each drink. Marisol places a glass in front of each of them.

“You remember lime water, don’t you, Bunny?” he says to Etta. “You and Covey used to love this stuff. You loved all the same things, didn’t you? Always did everything together, just like sisters.”

Etta shifts in her seat. “Sure, I’ll try one of these,” she says, reaching for her drink without looking up at him. Byron watches Etta over the rim of his glass. The charismatic woman who threw her arms around Byron when she first met him is turning into something still and cold, right before his eyes. A person capable of keeping lifelong secrets. A person harboring a well of anger. She hasn’t gotten over her resentment of Johnny Lyncook, has she? Well, that makes two of them.

Etta Pringle is here because their mother asked her to take them to meet their grandfather. So here they are. But Etta is looking tight-mouthed and Byron is beginning to feel ill to his stomach. Benny and Marble, on the other hand, seem fascinated by this encounter with their mother’s father. They are leaning forward as Johnny Lyncook explains who the people in the other photos are.

As if they should care.

And now, Johnny Lyncook is saying something about the olden days but Byron isn’t really focusing on that. Byron has come to a decision. He’s going to get up and walk out of this room. He knows he shouldn’t punch out a ninety-year-old guy but he’s thinking that if he stays in this room, that’s exactly what he’s going to do.

“You want the bathroom?” Lyncook says, when Byron stands up. “Marisol, show Byron where the bathroom is.” Byron nods. He might as well make a pit stop before leaving. As he follows Marisol back across the broad marbled floor, he hears Lyncook saying, “I was big into the gambling, you know?”

Byron stops and looks back. His mother’s father is leaning forward on his cane, leaning toward Benny and Marble.

“I liked to gamble and I liked to drink. That’s how I lost my daughter.”

Byron turns back. “Lost your daughter?” He is aware that he is raising his voice as he crosses the floor. “Did you say you lost your daughter?” He is standing over Lyncook now. “You didn’t
lose
her, you threw her away. You
sold
her to a criminal.”

“That is not true. It wasn’t that simple,” Johnny Lyncook says. “I had no choice.”

“No choice!”

Byron grabs the cane from the old man’s hand and flings it to the ground.

“Byron!” Benny says.

“Do you have any idea what you put your daughter through?” Byron says. “Do you know how our mother had to struggle to survive?” He turns to point at Marble. “This woman,” he says, “was your daughter’s first child. Do you know how your daughter ended up pregnant with her?”

“Enough, Byron,” Benny says.

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“By-RON!” Benny says, raising her voice, using a tone that she has never used toward her big brother. Byron looks at Benny now, and then at Marble, who is looking at him with her brows pulled together,
her lips twisted apart. He wipes the perspiration from his nose. He shouldn’t have said that, not that way. Not in front of Marble. He wants to take back what he said. He wants to take back the whole day but he can’t do that, so he walks out of the room, heads straight for the front door.

Fifteen minutes later, Byron is halfway across the causeway when it occurs to him that Etta, Benny, and Marble have no car and he has all their luggage.

Shit.

Byron turns back at the end of the crossing. When he gets back to Johnny Lyncook’s house, the three women are standing at the edge of the driveway like travelers waiting at the end of a dock for a ferry boat. Benny and Etta each have an arm wrapped around Marble’s waist. Marisol stands at the door, watching, until they get into the car and slam the doors shut.

B
ecause some things are unthinkable,
Lin’s brain will do what it must. It will fire a signal to block the flow of oxygen that carries unthinkable thoughts. It will flood its own backyard with blood and short-circuit the idea that is trying to push its way across Lin’s cortex. It will leave Lin with only this: the memory of Covey at age ten, scrambling out of the back of his station wagon with Bunny and the neighbor kids, squealing as she rushes toward the waterfall, whooping as she crashes through the curtain of water, the sound of her laughter, and
Look at me, Pa!
mixing with the boom of the cascade and echoing off the grotto behind her.

Look at me, Pa!

When Marisol walks back into the house where she has been employed for the past ten years, she will find Lin’s head tilted at a forty-five-degree angle against the hibiscus-patterned cushion on the wicker couch, one side of his face in a droop. She will check his pulse then pick up the phone and dial 911 and, as she speaks to the dispatcher on the other end of the line, she will sit down next to Lin and pat his arm.

“Hang on, Mister Lin,” she will say, “they’re coming to help.” Then she’ll lift her hands to his head, shift his hairpiece back into place, and smooth it behind his ears.

L
in had paid a private
investigator. He had learned almost everything about his daughter’s life over the years. But until Byron’s outburst in his living room, Lin did not know what had happened to Covey in Britain. He still didn’t know, exactly, but he could make a fairly good guess.

The beauty of a thing justified its plunder.

And nothing was more beautiful than a girl who was fearless.