The Sunshine When She's Gone: A Novel (16 page)

She would go out and ask him about the tile grout to forestall the kiss. She cleared her throat for some reason, as if to protest, to say they really
shouldn’t
, and then she took a deep breath. She was grateful for the smoothness of her shaved legs from that morning. Her shower, her bed, her daughter. She couldn’t contemplate too much. How had John been completely silent for all of Saturday, the fattest day of the week, their day together as a family? Maybe they’d be home when she got back, fast asleep in their beds as if nothing had happened. Maybe something had happened to them. Panic made her breath stop. Recovering, she rinsed her mouth thoroughly and left the bathroom.

She sat down beside Damon on the red sofa. It felt very normal, as if no time had passed. She watched as he went to get a large portfolio by the door. He’d opened two more beers and placed hers in front of her on the coffee table. She stared at a color photo of two soldiers with machine guns standing under a huge amber chandelier. The crystals cast dappled shadows on their faces. One had a cruel smile, teeth like tiny knives beneath thin lips; the other stared ahead with a look of mourning at something outside the frame. “Where’s this?” she asked. They were looking at pictures, nothing more.

“Baghdad.” Damon sipped his beer and leaned back next to her. She could smell laundry detergent and smoke on his shoulder.

“It’s remarkable. The tension between those two expressions. What is he looking at there, outside the frame?” She’d imagined some atrocity.

“You don’t want to know,” he said, then smiled. “He was looking at melted chocolate. I’d brought all these packages of M&M’s, and when my assistant was opening one, we realized they’d melted. This soldier
really
liked M&M’s.”

When she looked up, he caught her face in his hands and kissed her warmly, then pulled away and smiled as if to gauge her reaction. Desire had returned. She kissed him back. Then stopped herself. “I have to go,” she said, but when she stood up, he wound his fingers through her belt loops and yanked her back down.

“No you don’t,” he said, kissing the inner crease of her elbow. Warmth spread through her.

“I do. I’m leaving.” But she was compelled by a delicate, burgeoning pull. “I can’t do this.”

“Sure you can,” he said, drawing her onto his lap. She fit perfectly there. She was neither too small nor too big. He rubbed her back in warm circles.

“I cannot even be here right now. This is terrible,” she said, as he nuzzled her chest and neck. She could stop then, after a few sweet short minutes in which her body was integrated, but she hesitated another moment and then another. She was no longer simply reassembled but was uncut.

“No, it’s wonderful,” he answered. And it was. “Stay,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“I’m leaving in two days. I won’t be able to see you again.” He stroked the length of her thigh and looked truly sad. In two days it would be as if he had never been here.

“I’m so drunk,” she told him, hearing her own preemptive excuse as she let him peel off her sweater and her tank top, and then, shivering but quite awake, she stayed. Very fast, they tore off their clothes. A part of her could see the stereotype; the rushed moves that both obfuscated and underlined what they were doing. He looked at her as he theatrically tossed his shirt over his shoulder.

This new energy was fragile, unsustainable, like a heart beating in wax paper. She didn’t dare open her eyes and take account of her surroundings.

The discrete motions—the kiss, the toss of the shirt—all linked together and something became of them. Then it was over. When they rested, she saw the long, unadorned window twinkling with lights and spires, the scarred wood dresser, her own blue bra. She wept a bit for the incontrovertible fact of what she’d done and for the closure. This was closure. Two distinct paths lay ahead of them. He would go back to Afghanistan, and she wouldn’t walk through this door again. She had her answer. In his limited way, he did love her.

He didn’t notice her tears as he breathed into her hair. He’d once admitted that he didn’t like it when women cried, while John, oddly, seemed to welcome crying. John was good at comforting; Damon could not console, though he did ask, perfunctorily, if she was okay.

“I am.” Relief, undeniable but brief, washed over her. Even after, she had always been herself, could still be herself.
Before
and
after
was a false distinction. There had to be a way to do this—to remain herself—and there had to be a way to change. He looked at her when she rolled to face him, understanding that she wanted him to refrain from saying anything at all affectionate.

Back in his bathroom, she rinsed off quickly, using a black soap from Jordan. She knew Damon would not tell anyone; he prided himself on his
discretion.
Their connection did not involve another soul. The event was in a parallel universe, and it was all hers.

As if abetting that dream of a parallel universe, a time out of time, the street was unusually light despite the dark sky above it. Ninety-fifth Street was a painting by Magritte. She touched her mouth, which was slightly abraded, and relished walking with a secret. A shudder ran through her. What had she done? It had felt inevitable. But it was not too late to go to them. It was not too late for everything. She rushed down the block, peering ahead for a cab. People were moving in cheery clumps up and down Columbus Avenue. She looked at her phone and was exasperated and grateful to find it completely drained of power. She would go to him; she could forgive John his startling departure, his absence. It was only eleven-fifteen. There was an eleven forty-five train to Irvington. They could all wake up together.

11

Saturday

John

Bettine was feeding Clara from a jar of pureed banana. A Gerber baby smiled comfortingly from the label. Bunbury had woken John—during the IV hydration he’d drifted off—and said, “Banana is a binding food, good for diarrhea.”

It seemed that all of life was waking up and falling asleep over and over again. With luck, there was a dream in between, but the residue of this one was gone. His headache was muted and his daughter appeared content. She was recovering from an upset stomach in a foreign country, nestled in a strange woman’s arms, and she was fine. Clara wasn’t picky about her affections. What a gift! How had they not seen her resilience all along? They’d been too busy preening over her every move. He couldn’t wait to tell Veronica how they’d been wrong. Clara was fine when they were not with her; she had an easy temperament, unafraid and trusting. He had no idea where this came from genetically.

Tisbury held a handful of blue pills. “I’ve given you a few of these for the pain, and I’ll send you off with some extra.” He poured the pills into a container. “Take them every four hours, precisely,
before
the pain returns.”

He recognized the same painkillers Veronica had been given in the hospital. She’d liked them. “Thank you. Is this it? Can we go?”

“On your way. Your ride is waiting,” Tisbury said, handing John a bill and then the baby. Clara felt solid and springy. She giggled when he kissed her cheek.

Derek was there, behind the curtain; Monika had vanished. “Monika had to go to work,” Derek said, as if reading John’s mind. “She’s a masseuse at Turtle Cove. You going back to your hotel?”

“Lord Harrington’s Castle? God, no. I need to go home. I need a phone. Mine’s been dead all day.”

“Okay, we’ll get to one,” Derek said, as John paid at the front desk.

As they drove out of Speightstown, Clara was happy, focusing intently, as she did after eating, on a shell she’d grabbed off the dash. She examined it from every angle, first with her fingers and then with her gums. John kept fishing it out of her mouth so she didn’t cut herself, and she kept putting it back in. Derek talked about how hard it was to get a license to sell his work and about being an artist in the States; John could barely listen while tending Clara, until Derek said, “Maybe I could come visit you and your wife. In Soho, right?”

“What about Monika and the baby?” he asked, extracting the shell from Clara’s grasp and letting her cry for it.

“You have a big place, don’t you?” Derek asked amiably over her wail.

John laughed. Derek was probably imagining the home of someone who patronized Glittering Sands, and he was momentarily glad he was not that person. “No. I mean, it’s not that big. It’s all relative.” He paused, recalling the glossy treacle spread of Lloyd Miller’s duplex on Park Avenue. Derek had been so generous with him, but he just wanted to go home. He wanted to tell Veronica that he understood. He could forgive her. “Do you mind if I space out for a while?” he asked, to avoid refusing Derek an invitation to New York, and closed his eyes.

On vacation ten years ago, he and Veronica had existed on piña coladas and grilled cheese sandwiches at the golf club. But that wouldn’t work anymore. Maybe it could work, maybe John could take her by the wrist and say,
When in Rome
, and she would get it. She would have to get it. She would have to buy Cheekies diapers and Pringles and regular baby formula. She could not have survived the thirty-hour labor and two surgeries to simply drift away from him, to shape-shift into a person who would eat only a farm-raised duck egg.

*   *   *

He opened his eyes as the car pulled to a stop.

“Clara seems like she’s better,” Derek said, when he noticed that John’s eyes were open.

“I think she is,” he said, sighing audibly with relief. “I need to call Veronica.”

“Her mum?”

The drugs from Tisbury were kicking in and he felt no pain, only a vague panicky sensation, as if he were late for an exam. “Yes—wait, why are we going to Laura’s? Can we go straight to the airport? I’m sure there’s a phone there, and I want to get on the soonest flight possible.”

“You’re leaving today?” Derek clenched his jaw a little bit as he did a U-turn.

“You don’t have to drive me there,” John said, but Derek had already joined the stream of traffic leading to the new freeway. “Thanks for doing this,” John added. They passed flowering trees, sugar cane, and cinder-block shacks on the sides of the road, punctuated by bright swatches of paint on some houses and by children—there seemed to be lots of children—playing in the dirty slits between the houses. Soon the domestic petered out, giving way to car dealerships and a massive grocery store called Rondo. John pictured Veronica picking her way through the aisles of Rondo in search of something fresh, something grown locally. Was this paradise? Hardly. He hadn’t noticed when he’d arrived, but the island had changed radically in ten years. In the middle of a roundabout, a huge statue of a slave breaking free of chains faced the sun with a plaintive grin.

“We’re going back to Mama,” John whispered to Clara, his throat thick with tears. She took her little fat hand, shiny with drool, and batted at his mouth with it.

He wiped his mouth and looked out the window. But Barbados could no longer help him. Cars were everywhere. Fluorescent trash danced in the gutter. Palm trees lined the roads, arching in mockery. Construction noise and dust surrounded them. The air was thick with a new smell that, at first, he couldn’t place: burning garbage.

“She knows where you are?” Derek asked.

John hesitated before answering, fairly stunned by the familiar fear of losing Veronica. “She has an idea,” he said. However erroneous, she did have an
idea
: Irvington. John’s contrition mixed with dread. At this moment, Veronica might be speaking to Muriel, discovering that he and Clara were not there.

“She has an
idea
?” Derek persisted.

“She was sleeping when I left.”

“You left her?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds like we were splitting up or something. It’s not like that. She had a cold and hadn’t been sleeping well lately, so I let her sleep in.”

“You left with her girl, with her baby?” Derek turned and looked at him as he drove.

“Can you look at the road? No. It’s not like that,” John insisted, flattening beneath his own longing. He was in love with her. He would
never
leave her.

“Sorry, man, I don’t mean to pry.”

“No. No, you’re right. Holy crap! I left.” Derek didn’t respond. John saw him play with the radio dial, the station mired in static. “I left her a phone message. She didn’t pick up. But—fuck! I’m in a major rush.”

“Monika would kill me,” Derek said, accelerating, shaking his head as he spoke, then prodding further. “I take it you were in a fight?”

“Sort of. Jesus fuck!” John flicked off the white noise of the radio.

“Sorry, man.”

“No, it’s not you. It’s me.” He gave a guttural moan.

“I’ll get you there, don’t worry,” Derek said, as he shifted gears and passed a large truck on the two-way road.

*   *   *

They stood on the curb amid several sealed white minivans purring with exhaust. In the distance, John heard steel drums jingling, drowned out by the planes overhead. In a blare of noise and that white-hot Caribbean light, Derek put his arms around John’s shoulders and hugged him and the baby. “Wish me luck,” Derek said. “Monika.” And he gestured to form a huge belly on his skinny frame. He reached out and tickled Clara’s chin with a long finger. She grabbed it and playfully hung on. She was fattened and mobile now, curling her spine around John’s arms as if she might dive into Derek’s, irrepressible in her need to explore. John adjusted her in his arms.

“Good luck, man,” John said. “We all need it. And thanks.” He took an old receipt from his wallet and wrote down his Crosby Street address and phone number for Derek. Maybe they would come. Maybe it would be better if they came. Hell, they should come right away.

Derek took the address and tucked it into his pocket. He said, “I don’t mean to be a killjoy, but you can’t go traveling with it.”

“With what?” John asked, oblivious, bouncing Clara as he began to perspire.

“You don’t want to go to a Bajan prison.”

They stepped aside as people got in and out of cabs and John remembered; he fished the dime bag out of his knapsack and gave it to Derek in a handshake. Derek searched his pockets for the cash John had given him, but John refused it. “It’s going to be great, this,” John said, kissing Clara. “Monika, all of it.” His eyes filled as if he might cry.