The Sea Grape Tree (19 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

J
ust a couple hours to Montego Bay now,” Shad said, shifting down and glancing at his passenger. Danny was staring out the window, his big hand on the side mirror. He was somewhere else, Shad could tell—back in New York, perhaps—not seeing the inverted canoes and rocky beach passing the vehicle. “Your mother going to be glad to see you, man.”

“Yeah.”

“You really want to go home, though?” It was worth pushing the American a little before depositing him at the airport.

Danny looked straight ahead. “Back to reality, you know.”

“But Jamaica sweet, man. Every tourist who come here say they don't want to go home. You going to see for yourself when we open the hotel. Two drinks at the bar and they start planning how they going to move down here. And when they leave, they always say they coming back.”

“I don't even know if I'm coming back, man.”

Shad opened his eyes wide, wanting the man to see, if not feel, his disappointment. “What you saying, that you not going to build the hotel again?”

The man shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“But you like Largo, though?”

“What's not to like?”

“So is what?”

Shaking his head, Danny sighed and hit the mirror. “Things just seem so—kind of crazy. I don't like to do business when things don't go smoothly, and nothing has gone right with this hotel. Horace has been like a mule from the get-go. Then the government red tape is never ending. The cost of everything seem to go up every time we discuss any changes. And even if we get through all of that, Lambert was telling me that strikes during construction happen sometimes. That's more money. I'm superstitious. If things don't happen like that,” he said, sweeping a flat hand above the dashboard, “then they're going to be sticky all the way.”

“But that's how it always happen in Jamaica, star. If you want to succeed here, you have to hang on until everything go like that.” He imitated Danny's sweeping hand.

“I don't know, man. I'm not feeling it.”

“I think you hurt because your painting teacher gone, too.”

His passenger turned away, gave his distraction to Port Maria's parish church, the stone walls holding two hundred years of secrets. “I—yeah, I don't know. It was kind of weird, how she just left and didn't say nothing.”

Shad shook his head. “She was so polite, she don't seem like a person who would just disappear.” He shifted to a lower gear. “If you like her, you should call her when you get to America.”

“Like I told you, I don't have—”

“Can't you just look her up on the computer? I hear you can look up everybody on the computer, so my daughter says.”

“I guess I could.”

“Yeah, man, every woman like a man to go after her—if she like him. And I think she like you. She used to follow you with her eyes, and when you talking she would nod her head, like everything you say was important to her.”

Danny tucked his chin in. “You think so?”

“I'm telling you, the woman like you.” Ahead of them, a donkey cart full of breadfruit slowed them down. After two cars rushed by, Shad overtook the cart, waving to the old man sitting up front with a switch.

“You see that man?” Shad tilted his head back at the cart as he sped up. “He always riding up and down this road. He don't have no Jeep to take his breadfruit to town, but all these years he using that cart and that donkey. And sometimes the donkey get sick, and sometimes the cart wheel come off, but all these years he making his little money and feeding his family. And now his youngest son getting ready to go to school in Kingston to be an accountant, so he tell me in the market. That is how everything in life go. You don't think so? Slow and steady. You do what you have to do to keep going, work through the hard times.”

The small man's voice rose a notch. “You understand what I saying, Danny? You can't just give up. Whether it a love thing or a business thing, success don't come quick, it take time and effort. Then you get little
experience
under your belt and you gone clear, that what I tell my children. Sometimes you don't succeed right away, but you have to keep trying, man.”

It felt odd giving this strapping man advice, a man older than him who owned malls in New York, but Danny's eyes were swiveling between the passing scenery and the speaker as if he was listening. Shad kept coming back to the subject for the rest of the journey. This was his last shot, he knew, his last opportunity to let Danny know he held the village's dreams in his hands. Better that he do his preaching, like he used to do in Kingston Pen after he'd gotten so riddled with guilt that he couldn't help it—preaching to the other young men who couldn't wait to get back on the streets—than do nothing and regret it for years to come. The worst that could happen was that Danny wouldn't come back and then it wouldn't matter if he agreed or not.

Turning into the road to the airport, Shad glanced at Danny. “Think about it, star, just hoping that the hotel coming is keeping a whole lot of people alive.”

“I'll think about it, bro, but don't hold your breath.”

Shad screeched to a halt at the check-in, off-loaded Danny's suitcase, fist-bumped and hugged him, praying for his return.

“He going to think about it,” he assured Miss Mac later.

“That's good,” she said, examining a book he'd picked up for her in Port Antonio. “I have to sell this house, man. I getting tired of fixing this and fixing that.”

“What you need to fix now?” Shad pulled out a chair and sat down.

Miss Mac pointed upward. “The roof leaking in the bathroom and I always have to put a bucket in there. A guest shouldn't have to use a toilet next to a bucket, you know? It not civilized.”

“Good thing Danny didn't come in rainy season.” Shad laughed.

“But rainy season coming next month, and I need a new roof. Is plenty money to do it, but I don't have it. I trying to hold out until I can sell the place.”

Shad promised to come back with his friend Frank to take a look.

“You always take care of me, eh?” The old lady nodded. She cut into the coconut cake on the counter and placed a slice in front of her visitor. “I hope all the reading and signing not in vain and that the hotel going to get built, because if it don't, I going to have to move to Horace's house and leave this house empty. Next thing, some squatter going to come and live in it. They did that with the Franklins' house in Manchioneal and squatters burn down the house. My father would roll over in his grave if that happen to my house.”

“You know what I thinking, Miss Mac?” Shad mumbled through cake. “I thinking that if Danny don't want to invest in a hotel here, there must be other people with money who interested. We have a beautiful beach, nice scenery, good people. What you think?”

Miss Mac sat down with her own slice of cake. “Maybe Danny was not the person. You could be right.”

“Why you say so?”

“I don't know.” The old lady sighed. “I not supposed to talk my guests' business.”

“Whatever you thinking, you should speak it now, before it too late. Beth always say it not good for a woman to keep something on her chest. I don't know what would happen if she keep it on her chest, because every woman I know speak they mind.”

Miss Mac munched on her cake. “I didn't like the kind of people Danny was dealing with, you know? He bring that
facety
woman here, Janet, and she act like she better than me. I mean to say, she come in my house and ask me if I don't have anything to drink. You ever hear anything like that? I tell her if she want to buy a drink she can go next door to the bar. Then she look at me with her eye kind of funny, and since that day she walk straight past me in my own house and don't even say a good evening. She walking into
my
house, making noise in
my
bed in Danny's room, acting like she own the house. You ever hear such a thing?” The home owner dabbed at her mouth with a napkin in disbelief.

Shad scraped the last crumb of grated coconut off the plate and licked the fork. There was nothing to be said about Janet. Everybody knew she was a woman with no shame at all.

Meredith MacKenzie looked up to the ceiling. “And then there was those two men who came to see him couple weeks back. Remember, the big man with the cross and his brother? They didn't talk much and they say they prefer to wait outside on the verandah for Danny. What business they have with him? I don't know, even though I want to sell the property, maybe is a good thing he gone, yes.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

E
ric plodded up the steep driveway, his breath getting short, perspiration breaking out on his upper lip. There'd been a time eight years ago when he'd fought winds of 180 miles an hour to climb this hill, with no thought about whether he would make it or not. But he felt like he'd aged thirty years in the last decade. Running up mountains was for men like Joseph and Danny now, men who didn't have paunches and didn't smoke pipes.

“You look like you need a lemonade,” Jennifer called from the verandah as he approached. She was holding a frosty glass in her hand, the white shorts a perfect contrast to her tan.

“And you look like a nurse to the dying,” Eric answered, climbing the steps. He'd always liked Jennifer and he'd always been envious of Lambert for having a shapely, young wife from Florida who'd taken to upper-class life in Jamaica like she'd been born to it.

She pulled a rocking chair forward. “You better cool down a few minutes, boy. I don't want you having a heart attack on my porch.”

Eric threw himself into the chair. “God, every time I climb this hill it gets steeper.”

“I've been telling you, if you'd go to the gym in Port Antonio . . .”

Eric took a slurp of lemonade. “And I've been telling you, it'll be a cold day in hell before I do.” They smiled at each other, two refugees from the north.

Jennifer's blond hair blew across her face in the light breeze and she shook it back into place. There was a confident elegance to the simplest thing she did, a clear understanding of what was right at a particular moment in time. She lowered to a chair beside him, her thigh muscles getting taut.

“Roast beef sandwiches and salad—that good enough for you?”

“Of course.” Eric glanced over his shoulder toward the living room, needing to look away. “Where's Lambert?”

“He'll be home soon. He called from the site to say you were coming and I was to have lunch ready for you. Miss Bertha's getting it ready.”

“I heard your mother wasn't doing so well. Sorry about that.”

“She's stabilized now, so I thought I'd come back for a couple weeks,” Jennifer said, her voice softening. “Keep the home fires burning, you know?”

“Good idea, although I'd make sure that Lambert—”

“Uncle Eric!” A small boy barreled out of the house and threw himself at Eric's knees.

“Little Wayne, my man!” Eric hugged the child's head and shoulders. “You're getting so tall, we're going to have to ship you off to school soon.”

“School, school!” The boy looked up at him, nodding hard, his face shining.

Jennifer reached over and rubbed her son's wavy black hair. “He keeps asking if he can go to boarding school with Casey. Isn't that right, son? You want to go to school with your big sister?” She straightened Wayne's shirt. “You're going to school in Port Antonio this fall, sweetie. Remember the one we visited, the school with all the kids?”

Lambert's Range Rover roared up the driveway, a trail of brown smoke in its rear. After parking in front of the steps, the contractor climbed out.

“When are you going to stop polluting the place?” Eric yelled, fanning the air.

“When you find me something cheaper than diesel fuel,” Lambert replied. He mounted the steps and kissed his wife's upturned mouth. Little Wayne raised his arms and his father scooped him up and held him above his head so the child could touch the sloping ceiling.

“A few more of those lifts and you'll be flying up to the States for a rotator cuff operation, boy.” Eric chuckled. “Don't you know that old men shouldn't be—”

“The only old man around here is you, my man,” Lambert said, swinging his son to the ground.

“Okay, you two, time for lunch.” Jennifer stood up and led the way inside. “And you, Mr. Wayne, are going to have lunch with Miss Bertha in the kitchen. Daddy and Mommy are going to eat with Uncle Eric in the dining room.”

Throughout lunch, the conversation stayed local. Jennifer mentioned the unannounced departure of Roper's guest, the Englishwoman. She seemed upset about something, Sonja had said. Lambert talked about the impact of the new government on the village, only the main road paved before the elections.

This felt like home to Eric: the easy chatter with people who cared about him, the well-decorated rooms with their soft chairs and tasteful paintings, the leisurely lunch served on good china. It was almost as if his daily existence among bare walls and cheap furniture was a temporary one, and this was his reality. While Lambert was talking about the plans for a new open-air market in the square, Eric realized that he could never have made it in the years since the hurricane without these two people, even if that help brought with it Jennifer's ongoing curiosity about his personal life.

“How's Joseph?” she inquired after they'd sat down in the living room for coffee. She lifted the silver coffeepot, biting her lip with the weight of it.

“Just got a big consulting contract, he tells me.” His son was back on track, he wanted to say, and he was in touch with him now, like any good parent.

“And Simone?” she ventured, her eyes fixed on the coffeepot in her hand. “Is she coming back soon?”

Vintage Jennifer, Eric thought, watching the woman's elaborate Indian-style earrings splicing through the strands of her hair as she passed a cup to her husband. There were times, usually late at night when he sat alone on his verandah, when he thought of Lambert's winter-spring marriage and wondered if he could do the same. But a man had to think ten times before he launched into the Big M, he'd often mused, because commitment came with a price. A woman in a man's life was both a blessing and a curse. A man focused on the blessings first, realizing too late that there were unpleasant little habits that came with the package, like nosiness and unpredictability.

Eric had decided years ago that he'd never understand women, largely because they were totally irrational. The decision had come after his ex-wife, Joseph's mother, had announced one night, just when he arrived home from work, that she was leaving him. She'd said it in a matter-of-fact way, stated that she, a devout Catholic, had no interest in holding it together because of the pope, and it had struck him like a bolt of lightning as he stood in the hall, still holding his briefcase, that Claire, all women, in fact, were unfathomable. He'd refused to try to understand them ever since. Enjoy them, yes, understand them, never. And just yesterday, in one of his rare moments of giving Shad advice, when the bartender had told him that Roper's guest, the English artist, had suddenly disappeared, he'd advised him not to get involved.

“I think she left of her own free will, man. Something was bothering her. She found Jamaica hard to—she had a lot going on in that head of hers. Artists are like that, anyway, deep thinking, but you can never tell with women. They give us only these little glimpses into their minds and, to tell you the truth, it looks like twisted, tortured stuff to me. They agonize endlessly over things that men would just forget about. The woman left, just accept it.”

Jennifer was no different from other women—a prettier package, maybe, but just as nosy and scheming, asking about Simone, no doubt wanting to know if they still had a relationship.

“She might come for the groundbreaking,” Eric replied. Lambert raised one bushy eyebrow at his friend, signaling that he wanted to talk more about the hotel, and Eric launched in with updates about the quantity surveyors' reports, relieved to move from the quicksand of his love life to the solid ground of facts.

After Miss Bertha had waddled away with the coffee tray, Jennifer disappeared inside. It was only then that Eric confided his fears to Lambert.

“The whole thing is looking shaky,” he ended. “Nobody but Shad seems enthusiastic at this point.”

“What about Horace?”

“We took him over to the island, Danny and I. He asked a lot of questions but he didn't say much. I think it's gotten too complicated for him with the solar panels and cisterns.”

Lambert patted the sofa's cushion next to him, its tulips cringing under his burly hand. “These things are always touch and go at the beginning. That's normal.”

“I don't think we have a prayer now that Danny's taken off.”

“The important thing,” Lambert said, stroking his mustache down one side and then the other, “is whether you've lost interest. Do you really want this thing to happen?”

Eric sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “There was a time when I just wasn't interested, but the bar is losing money like water through a sieve.” He leaned forward and put his cup on the coffee table. “I don't want to close down, because people need it, you know. It's the only place in town where they can have their wedding receptions and parties, you know, Lam. It's kind of the community center or something. I don't care for the place that much myself, but it's part of Largo now.” He'd disappointed the villagers once before, reminded every day by the ruins of the inn that had thrown dozens out of work when it closed—and he wasn't going to do it again. “And I couldn't do that to Shad and Solomon—they have families, you know.”

“I thought you were going to live on your Social Security at Miss Mac's,” Lambert said with a curling lip.

“Who am I fooling, Lam? The woman is older than me. One way or the other, she's going to sell up and leave town; then where would I live? At least I have my apartment now, even if the bank could close us down any day.”

“What's your option then, if Danny loses interest?”

The bar owner leaned back. “If he doesn't want to go through with it, maybe we can find another investor.” It was Shad's idea, a shot in the dark.

Lambert frowned. He seemed to be digesting the idea, telling from the way he was staring at the view through the open front doors. “Where are you going to find him?”

“Or her,” Eric said, and shrugged.