The Sea Grape Tree (9 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

M
istah Eric, the phone want you, suh!” Solomon called, his tone indicating that answering the phone wasn't part of subbing for Shad on his day off.

“Take the message and tell them I'll call back,” Eric yelled. He was sweating like a pig, the round stain made by his paunch now connecting with the stain on his back. With only ten more conch shells to fit in place along the new path to the road, he didn't want to stop. The plan to create the path had waited long enough—months, in fact—while the salmon-colored conch shells turned paler and paler in a heap behind the building. On the other side of the bar, Carmichael, his sometime gardener, was bent low, swiping at the grass on the cliff with a machete.

Solomon slouched over to Eric with the phone. “Is a lady.”

“Okay, give it to me.” Eric sat down on the edge of the concrete floor. The bank manager again.

“Yes?” he said, pulling the bandanna off his forehead and wiping his face with it.

“Eric?”

“Simone?”

“I'm sorry I rushed you off the phone last week. When you called I was going out and—you didn't sound like yourself.”

“I've been meaning to call you back, but it's been kind of crazy.”

“I understand.” She paused long enough for him to realize this was a big step for her, calling him after his drunken call, trying to get back to normal. “I've been worried about you.”

“About me?”

“You sounded—you told me you'd been drinking when you called last time. I've never seen you drink more than a glass of wine.”

He could feel a blush creep across his cheeks. “I'm sorry—I shouldn't have called—you know, in that condition.”

“It was kind of early in the day.”

“I was—stressed out, I guess, about the whole hotel business.”

“Is the investor still there?”

“Yes, but I'm not sure for how long. Everything has gone sort of weird. He and Horace—the lawyer—they're like oil and water, you know. Our first meeting didn't go well, and the second was even worse.”

He told her about the problem with the utilities on the island. “And when we went back to see him yesterday to discuss the partnership arrangement—he's drawing up the papers—Horace suddenly says we shouldn't make Shad a partner, and he and Danny argued about it. It got pretty heated. I didn't want to get into it, because things were chaotic enough as it was.”

“Why doesn't he want Shad to be a partner?”

“He says Shad doesn't have enough education and that having Shad in the mix could cause a lot of problems, misunderstandings, you know. Another thing he didn't like was the share split, with Shad having ten percent, Danny sixty, and me thirty. He said Danny would always have the power, and that I was on the ground here running things, and if I'm going to throw in the land, the island, and the bar, I need more shares. Danny fought him, I'm telling you, and I had to back him, because I don't want all the responsibility again. Heck, it's the man's money putting up this hotel, not mine. But Horace kept saying we need to change the share split and we need a local person who's educated—I don't know if he was talking about himself. Danny just got up and walked out of the meeting.”

Simone sucked in her breath through her teeth. “Oh dear, doesn't sound good.”

Fanning his face with the bandanna, Eric sighed. “Horace even said we need
a better class of person
. I couldn't believe my ears. You'd never think he was from Largo.”

“What about Miss Mac?” Her voice softened with the name of the landlady who'd nursed her back to health after she left the island. “Horace is her son. She should be able to handle him, especially if she wants to sell her house and land. Plus, she knows Shad is a good guy.”

Eric ran the toe of one lime-green Croc across the pebbles. “I don't know—I wouldn't want to bring her into it.”

It was easier to talk to Simone about the hotel than about the things that really nagged at him. The ugly words
erectile dysfunction,
for example, had been mocking him recently from magazine ads, labeling him as over-the-hill. But his deeper, darker secret was that he was now the owner of a sleek, new laptop that was sitting in his apartment, barely touched. Simone wouldn't understand that a man two decades older than her—who'd left American civilization before the digital age had taken hold—might never have used a computer. She wouldn't understand how humiliating it was to have Shad's eleven-year-old daughter giving him lessons, starting with how to turn on the thing.

Standing over him, the child had clicked a couple keys and a blank page had opened up on the screen.

“How did you learn this stuff?” Eric had asked, looking at his dwarf teacher.

“We have two computers at school,” Rickia had said, straightening her glasses. “See, you can type a letter now.”

“Why would I need to write a letter,” Eric had countered, “if I can just write it with paper and pen?”

“This way you don't go to the post office. You just send it in an email.”

“But I don't have the Internet.”

“You only need a phone, teacher says, and they will give you the Internet. You have a phone, right?”

Already behind on his telephone payments, Eric had promised her he would type letters to practice. She'd gone off to the kitchen and he'd heard her boasting to her father that she'd taught Mistah Eric how to use the computer.

“The good thing,” Simone was saying in an unusually maternal voice, “is that if the hotel falls through, you still have your bar.”

“Yes, but just barely.”

“What do you mean?”

“I've been running the bar on my overdraft.”

“It's got to work, then.”

“From your lips to God's ears.” After hanging up, Eric scraped the area beside the path clear, pulling up the weeds and flattening the spot with his trowel. He placed the next conch shell close to the pebbles.

Simone knew he'd been drunk last time, heard him slurring like an idiot, and she'd still called because she was worried about him. And he'd confided in her, told her about his financial problems. It might turn her off, his being broke, but she needed to know. If she had any sense, she wouldn't be in a relationship with him, anyway. She certainly didn't need him as a lover. Gorgeous, with those almond-shaped eyes and caramel skin, she was every man's dream.

For a minute he allowed himself to feel older and poorer and sorrier than ever, until he remembered that she'd been worried about him and called. It almost made up for Danny not inviting him to go rafting.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
he time of day, the location of sun and shade, the amount of exposure to passersby, the placement of the kitchen stool away from ant nests had all become part of Sarah's decisions about where to paint. In the previous week, she'd sat deep in the shade of the coconut trees and out of the sun, and out of sight of anyone walking on the beach. With the easel set up so she was looking straight out at the ocean, she'd been sketching the waves as they rolled toward her.

On Valentine's Day, a Tuesday, she made a decision, a small one, that changed her life forever. It was prompted by the still-fresh memory of Penny calling her hollow. She'd had time in the two years since to mull the fact that she did in fact
feel
hollow inside, that she'd felt it as long as she could remember. The word had come back to her the day after meeting Danny Caines, the man she'd seen running on the beach, the man she'd feared, the successful businessman that everyone spoke so highly of, and she'd upbraided herself for being a spineless coward because of her negative assumptions.

It wasn't that her family was racist, but the parties given by their neighbors, a friendly Indian engineer and his wife who celebrated Diwali and every birthday, or news of a crime committed by a West Indian youth, had usually resulted in the wordless raising of her father's eyebrows and a tsk-tsk from her mother. And despite the multitude of races in London, despite her awareness that times had changed, Sarah had never thought of countering the parental message. Until meeting Sonja and Roper and Ford, that is. Her new friends had opened an unfamiliar world, and she, a captive audience, was finding herself outside her comfort zone. Yet something was telling her to push into this unknown area—if she was to release the dark, empty space inside herself.

In light of that, she'd decided to throw caution to the winds and get to know Danny Caines as she had Ford. She felt differently about Danny, nothing romantic, of course, since he had a girlfriend already. If anything, she was curious. She wanted to see what color his eyes were in daylight, what he painted and if it was any good. Was he a collector, she wondered, a man who'd appreciate a miniature series of eggs in dirt?

Being open to friendships, especially male friendships, was unusual for Sarah. She routinely shut out male customers in the restaurant even before they gave her a compliment. She didn't know when it started, but she'd always experienced some level of anxiety around men. Roper made her tense, even raised her hackles. Ford, on the other hand, left her with only slight unease, their talk about birds and music making friendship possible. When it came to Danny Caines, she felt both cautious and intrigued, but, satisfied now that he offered no threat, she was ready for the challenge.

Even before she got out of bed that morning, another Valentine's Day with no card or flowers, she'd known she was going to place her easel a little closer to the water's edge, in full view of passersby. Her decision had come after seeing Danny jogging on the beach the morning before. She'd been too deep in the shadows for him to see her and she'd watched his muscular arms and legs pumping like a machine—and been a little disappointed that he hadn't seen her.

The morning sun was streaking long shadows from the eastern hills when Sarah set up her easel, the coconut leaves making their shushing sound above. While taping her paper to the board, she saw Danny flashing by on his way to the eastern end of the beach. She continued her preparations to paint, telling herself that if he wanted to stop, he would. On his return trip, he saw her, the sun catching the frame of his sunglasses. He waved but didn't smile. In response, she waved and smiled with her lips clamped shut.

That evening, while the discussion around the dinner table raged—Roper declaring that Barack Obama didn't communicate well and Ford and Sonja defending him—she asked herself why she was interested in Caines or his eyes or what he painted. During dessert she decided that it was the life force he exuded, a force that nothing could hold back. He gave one the feeling of unlimited growth and expansiveness. She was fascinated by people like that, people like Penny and Naomi with the power to motivate others. Only this time it happened to be a black man.

The next day, a Wednesday, she placed her easel in the same exposed position but faced it east, allowing someone running from the west to see that she was painting. She was still settling the easel into the sand when Danny ran by too fast for her to wave. She taped her paper to the easel board and sat down, opening her watercolors and jar of water, deciding to give a bigger smile when he passed. But on his return he stopped running and walked across the dried seaweed on the sand between them. He was still wearing sunglasses, with a T-shirt this time.

“You're the artist, the one from England.” He stopped a few yards away and wiped his forehead with two fingers.

“We met on Friday night,” she said, taking off her hat.

“I'll never forget that hair.” He had a wavy smile on his lips. “Sorry, I have a terrible memory for names.”

“Sarah.”

“And I'm Danny.” He glanced behind him at the ocean. “Great place to paint, eh?”

“I hope I can do it justice.”

“I was wondering—would you mind—can I join you ­tomorrow—painting, I mean? Ever since I saw you out here, I've been thinking about it.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Tomorrow then.” He dipped his sweaty scalp and ran on.

On Thursday, Sarah slathered more sunblock on her now-pink legs and put on shorts, the green ones without holes, because her legs weren't too bad when she was sitting down. She placed an extra jar of water, a few more paintbrushes, and some snacks in her backpack.

“You leaving early these days,” Carthena commented after she'd supplied her with bottled water.

“It's cooler in the morning,” Sarah replied.

On the beach she prepared her spot, closer to the trees where there was more shade and privacy. Just when she was settled and already glancing down the beach, there was a tap on her shoulder. She jumped and looked around. The big man was standing behind her.

“I didn't mean to frighten you,” Danny said. He was carrying a small case and a folding chair.

“You came from the road?”

“I drove, too much stuff to carry.” There was an island lilt to the way he said it.

After placing the chair a few feet away from her, he sat down and took off his sunglasses. He opened a bag with his paints and paper, everything still in their original packages, all brand-new.

“You have everything, do you?” she said.

“I think I forgot water.”

“Don't worry, I've got some.”

They started painting, not talking much, leaving space for the noise of the waves and the calling of gulls. She became aware of his breathing, going from heavy to light to silent, then of his smell: the crispness of soap and a man's deodorant. Sometimes he moved his feet around in their leather sandals, and beneath his shorts the muscles on his thighs shifted. Once she glanced at the side of his face while she rinsed out her brush, saw his lips working as he concentrated. Every now and again she would look over at the pad on his lap, watching his painting of the sand and the sea progressing from a pencil sketch to a swirling watercolor in blues and yellows, filling the letter-size page. Although his work was raw and untrained, he had some talent with color.

“When do you find time to paint?” she asked, dabbing lemon yellow on her clouds.

“This is the first time I've painted in—in at least five years.”

“You're quite good.”

“It help me to relax,” he said, and she pictured him in a Manhattan apartment painting the skyline. He left after a couple hours, after they'd taken a break eating peanuts, throwing the shells on the ground.

The next day dawned cloudy but not rainy, and she wondered if he was a fair-weather painter, but he came back like he'd said and they continued painting, changing their positions to face west and the island in the distance. He asked a few questions about her use of colors, but most of the time they talked as if they were in art class at neighboring easels, sticking to banal topics.

Throughout a quiet Saturday and a Sunday drive to Ocho Rios with her housemates, Sarah waited, the hours creeping by, recalling how he'd wiped his scalp with a handkerchief, how his sentences went up at the end, how he chuckled when something he said tickled him. Her chest tightened when she thought of him, and she tried not to think of him.

On Monday morning, she asked him why he'd started painting. “I was married to this woman,” he said. “Lots of drama, every evening more drama. You know the kind, eh?” His gray eyes with their thin spokes of black laughed with her. “I had to find a reason to stay out of the house and I always loved to draw and paint, from when I was a child, so I decided that instead of killing her I'd go to an art class after work, and—that's it—that's how I started. The marriage didn't last long, but it got me painting. I can thank her for that.”

He had left St. Croix (explaining where it was, because she'd never heard of it), when he was fourteen. His mother had been offered a job as a maid by a man who'd been visiting the island on vacation, a widower with three small children. She'd moved to San Francisco to take the live-in job.

“I stayed with my grandparents for a year after she left, until she sent for me and I flew over—my first airplane trip. I thought San Francisco would be wonderful, you know, Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars and everything. But I arrived in July, and the place was so damn—so freezing cold that I had to wear a winter coat!” He laughed at the memory. “We lived in the man's house in the Presidio. You ever hear of it? It's an old military base near the Golden Gate Bridge, and the fog just comes sweeping up the hill off the water. But you couldn't swim or nothing, it was so cold.” He looked over the long stretch of beach he was painting. “I really missed the islands, man.”

During a water break, he talked of his mother and how she'd studied to be a hairstylist in San Francisco, going to classes on Saturdays. She was an ambitious woman, he said, and he admired her for that. Two years after he arrived in California, she'd graduated as a hairdresser and announced they were moving to New York.

“I was glad, because the kids in the school in Frisco were kind of snobbish. They didn't mean to be, but there was no other black kids in the place, you know, and they treated me like I was a mascot. They kept saying my accent was cute. The girls wouldn't go out with me or nothing, but they liked how I spoke.”

He didn't speak perfect English, his language and accent a mixture of St. Croix and America, but they were full of life and harmonized with the landscape. He seemed to make the setting more complete and she was glad he'd come back.

On Tuesday he asked her about her family, and she told him about growing up as an only child in ­Maidstone, having a father, now deceased, who was a physician and a mother who was still alive and still in Kent. She never mentioned that she'd loved her father, even if he'd ­lectured her, but she didn't know how she felt about her mother. She kept short her descriptions of their ­comfortable, ­sedate family life in three separate bedrooms, not wanting to sound like she'd had advantages that he hadn't.

When she finished, Danny stood up and pulled off his sandals. “You ever swim in the Caribbean Sea?”

“Not yet.”

“But if you're going to paint it, you must know how it feels.” He peeled off his T-shirt. “I'm sweating like crazy, aren't you . . . ? Let's go for a swim.”

“I don't have a suit.”

“We swim in—whatever.” He laughed and took off his shorts. He ran toward the water in his briefs, a boy again. Biting her bottom lip, she slid off her shorts, pulling down her T-shirt to cover her panties, and hurried across the hot sand. Danny had already plunged in and was underwater by the time she stood with the water crashing around her hips. He came to the surface farther out.

“You have to pass the waves,” he called, wiping his eyes. “It's calmer out here.”

“I don't swim very well.”

He swam and then waded up to her. She kept her eyes on his to avoid looking at his underwear.

“I walk you out,” he said. Holding her hand, he pulled her one step at a time past the breakers—while she shut her eyes and turned her head against the slapping waves—into calmer water where her toes barely touched the sandy bottom.

“Don't leave me,” she said, holding on tight to his shoulder.

“I'm not leaving you.” They bobbed around, her feet lifting off the bottom sometimes. He told her to duck her head under the water and she quickly followed his instructions.

“Keep paddling,” he said, and she paddled with one hand, knowing she looked like a wet, red rat.

“I told you you'd love it.” He was totally at home in the water, showing her how to ride the waves, his eyelashes covered with droplets, telling her about swimming as a boy. Every few minutes, he'd dip his head under a wave, and when he pulled up the water would stream off his scalp like it was rolling off a rock.

Seawater was about healing, he told her, that's what his grandfather always said. And she believed him, because he looked healed and whole, happier than ever. She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun, felt its heat penetrating her pores, felt her heart swelling in the midst of its fear—even while she held on to his shoulder and made sure she never got completely out of her depth.