Bliss (10 page)

Sinclair sat beside her with her gin and tonic in hand.
"Can't say I feel the same, Shell. I'm really looking forward
to being gone from here for a while."

Shelly pouted in mock pique. "And here I thought I was
the new love of your life."

"No, ma'am." Sinclair gave an exaggerated shake of her
head. "I'm through with love. You'll have to settle for my
everlasting friendship."

Shelly smiled and a dimple appeared in the soft oval of her
cheek. "I can do that."

"Would you like anything, miss?" A blue-clad flight attendant appeared at Sinclair's elbow.

"Gin and tonic, please. No ice."

After a slight nod, the woman disappeared. Before Sinclair
could wonder what kind of gin they used, the woman was
back, drink and napkin in hand.

"Thank you." Sinclair watched the twitch of the flight attendant's hips under the navy blue cloth as she walked away.
Something in her stride reminded her of Regina. The liquor
burned its way down her throat before settling with a comforting warmth in her belly. For the rest of the flight, she buried
herself in a novel, ignoring the bitter taste that Regina's brief
memory left on her tongue.

Sinclair stepped off the plane to a dizzying sense of home.
A confusion of voices and accents bombarded her in the busy
airport. She limped through them with her heavy shoulder
bag and two suitcases propped up on a rolling cart with a
mind of its own.

"Can I help you with your bags, miss?" a young man in
jeans and T-shirt asked.

"No, thank you." Sinclair had gotten the offer at least five
times since she got off the plane, but her citybred paranoia
kept her from accepting any of them. Eventually she made it
to the busy curbside where her father said he would meet her.

Sinclair didn't even know that she would recognize him
when the time came. Sure he had sent pictures, but photos
often stole the animation from your face and turned you into
someone else entirely different.

She glanced at every middle-aged man she saw, searching
his face for some similarity to her own or at least to the
photo in her bag.

"Sinclair?"

She turned around. Her rehearsed greeting fell back down
her throat.

A face from her childhood looked back at her. He wore the
same thin mustache. His face, framed by long, neatly trimmed
sideburns, was still narrow and handsome, even with the balding head and sleepy eyes. There wasn't a trace of gray on him
anywhere. Victor Daniels greeted her with Xavier's wide
guileless smile.

"Hi, Papa," she stammered when his faltering smile made
her realize she was staring.

He hugged her, gathered her up through the straps of her
luggage and embraced her with his warmth. He smelled like
shaved wood and of the outdoors. "Sinclair. You look so
much like your mother."

She smiled, not knowing what to say.

"The car is over there," he said, gesturing to a bright yellow Honda Accord, circa 1970, with fuzzy purple dice dangling from the rearview mirror. "I borrowed it from a friend,"
he said with a laughing mock-whisper.

Nikki and Xavier waited near the car for them. The boy
stared at her with naked curiosity, while Nikki said a nervous
hello and hopped into the front seat of the car. She was a
bright-skinned girl with pale gray eyes and short reddish hair
that stood up around her head like a tamed flame.

"The drive is short, only twenty minutes or so. After that,
I'm going to have to leave you at the house for a bit while I
take the car back to my friend in town and pick up my bike."

"Sorry to cause all this trouble."

"What trouble? We're glad to have you. The season's been
boring anyway." He started the car. "Nikki is always saying
that I don't take her anywhere. Well, I'm doing the next best
thing, I brought my sophisticated daughter from America for
her to talk to."

Sinclair laughed. "I'm hardly sophisticated. Sorry, Nikki.
I'm a bit of a disappointment in that regard. All I can do is
show you all the scars I got from living in the city, including the slash above my eye where I got mugged a couple of years
ago."

That got a response out of Nikki; she turned around to
look at Sinclair, trying, the accountant supposed, to reconcile
her elegant appearance with the bruised, battered, and defeated victims of city crime she saw on American television
shows.

"What's `mugged,' Papa?" Xavier chimed from beside
Sinclair, naked curiosity lighting his features.

"That's when bad men beat you up in the street and take
what you have without asking."

"That's stupid," the boy said. "Why don't they just ask for
it?"

"Some people won't give up their stuff."

"Did you give up your stuff, Clair?"

"Oh, yes. I didn't have much with me but they got all I
had."

"That's wrong, isn't it, Papa?" He leaned against the back
of the driver's seat, straining against his seat belt so he could
have a good look at his father.

"Yes, it's wrong, Xavie. But remember when I told you
that there were people doing wrong all over the place and
that it was up to you to do right things so you can balance
them out?"

That was a big job for such a little guy, Sinclair thought
with a smile. Her father caught her look and grinned.

They drove slowly from the airport, navigating through
the surprisingly thick traffic that led them out of town to the
more rural area where her father lived. The streets were alive
with color, food vendors with their carts painted with the
black, green, and gold Jamaican flag; coconut trees rustling
in the light breeze; muscular and handsome boys dashing
about the streets on bare feet, on bicycles, on ratty shoes,
their faces predatory and sweet. On people's faces was a curious mixture of resignation and hope, their eyes darting periodically to the large jumbo jets taking off from the airport and heading for places unknown. High in the hills Sinclair
could see large, looming houses painted island yellows and
hibiscus reds, ocean blues-vacation colors. They looked, curiously, like sentinels, as if they were guarding, or imprisoning, the people down below.

As the car eased out of the city, the landscape changed. It
became more green, twisted jungles of scenery; its sounds
broken occasionally by the honking horns of other vehicles
as they turned particularly narrow corners. Soon they pulled
up to the front gate of the house.

Sinclair's father helped her with her bags while Nikki
looked on, holding Xavier's hand. The girl seemed quiet and
intense. It was only now that she got out of the car that
Sinclair could get a good look at her. Her body was ... eye
catching. Even in a loose T-shirt and knee-length gray shorts,
Sinclair could tell that she had a body that was porn-star
lush-high C-cup breasts, tiny waist, and round, full hips. It
was no great mystery why Sinclair's father was with her.

The gate creaked as Sinclair opened it to allow her father
to pass through with the bags. He glanced at the shoulderhigh wire-and-steel contraption with surprise.

"I need to oil that," he said, sounding like he'd noticed
that creak at least a dozen times before.

The small house looked the same as it did in a long-ago
photo-cozy, but beautiful, with a well-tended front garden
dominated by fat hibiscus bushes sprouting red, pink, and
white blooms. Two tall crape myrtle trees flanked the front
gate, their pods of blossoms curling out like lavendercolored
lace. From everywhere else in the yard, miniature clay women
peeked out at them. They seemed mischievous but friendly.
Nikki walked up to the verandah to open the door, then closed
it behind them, not once letting go of Xavier's hand.

The inside of the house smelled like fresh furniture polish,
a hint of lemon and Murphy's oil. Sinclair left her shoes at
the front door as she'd seen the others do. The tiled floor was
cool under her bare feet, a welcome change from the enfold ing heat outside. Curious about the man she hadn't seen in
over twenty years, Sinclair's eyes darted around the house,
searching for clues to his current identity.

From his letter, she knew he was a builder and that he was
now working on a mansion not far from here. His passion
for woodworking was reflected throughout the house, from
the handmade checker set to the wood trimmings around the
windows and door, and even a low unstained table sitting at
one end of the couch that seemed to have become a receptacle for drinks and the occasional reading material, if the multiple coasters and bookmarks were any indication. Then
there were the beautiful handmade mahogany bookshelves.
They lined the largest wall of the living room and were filled
with neatly stacked books and magazines. In a single glance
Sinclair saw books on astronomy, bookkeeping, cooking,
stamp collecting, and Jamaican history. The bottom shelf had
a few fiction titles that she reminded herself to check out
later. On the walls hung framed likenesses of Marcus Garvey,
Nanny of the Maroons, Paul Bogle, and some other Jamaican
heroes she couldn't name. Light spilled in through two large
windows above the couch. The overall effect was harmonious and comfortable. Sinclair told her father as much.

"Thank you, daughter," he said, aiming a smile her way.

"I'm going to put on some hot chocolate," Nikki said.
"Anybody want some?"

"Me, me, me!" Xavier squeaked from the other end of her
hand.

"Fix some for me and Sinclair too, please, sweetheart."
Sinclair's father looked at Nikki with something more than
fondness in his eye. Sinclair glanced from husband to wife,
thinking suddenly that he was treating Nikki like a skittish
colt, one who could bolt at any moment.

The young woman nodded and disappeared into the
kitchen.

"This is your room for the next month," he said, showing
her to a bedroom that was nearly identical to the one she had as a child. "The bathroom is down the hall and to the right,
just before you get to the kitchen. Tea is going to be in the living room, so come through when you're done." He squeezed
Sinclair's hand once before leaving her alone.

The bedroom door closed her in the quiet time capsule of a
room. A north-facing window, the small dresser with neatly
laid-out comb, toiletries, and a few porcelain figurines. All of
it looked so much like her old room. Even the bed. Sinclair
felt a moment of disorientation. She remembered her own
bed, the one she'd bled on, not knowing what was happening
to her body, not having anyone to tell, when day after day,
month after month, she laid on the mattress, bleeding, imagining the death that would surely come from such massive
loss of blood. Her mother was gone a week by then when, at
thirteen, her stubborn child's body finally decided to change
into a woman's. Her father finally had to throw the old bed
away, although it had been an heirloom, her parents' first bed
together. But it was bloodstained and ripe with the smell of
confused womanhood and sweat. Even the wood had taken
in the scent and color of blood.

Before that, the bed had been the stage for many happy
memories. Her mother used to nudge her awake from it each
morning to get ready for school. At barely seven o'clock,
Beverly Sinclair's skin would still be softly scented with sleep.
Sinclair remembered one morning when her mother had
come, mock-whispering her name before crawling into bed
with her. Sinclair had made a game of trying to wake her and
mother and daughter ended up fighting over the covers, overcome by an attack of the giggles. At least until Victor came in
with his warnings about being late for school and swung her
up in his arms leaving Beverly sprawled in the covers to stare
after them with her fading smile.

Sinclair unpacked her camera and put it on the dresser before digging in her luggage for her bag of toiletries. She didn't
know why, at the last minute, she'd dug out the old thing. It was still heavy, still in good working order just like the day
she and Gram took it home from the pawnshop.

After a quick wash in the bathroom, Sinclair slipped into
the kitchen to see if Nikki needed some help. The younger
woman stood at the stove grating a ball of pure chocolate
into a pan of boiling water.

"
"Hey.

Nikki turned around, startled.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you."

"You didn't ... It's OK." Nikki's pale skin flushed. She
darted a quick look at Sinclair before looking back down
into the pan of water.

Sinclair apologized again. "Need any help?"

"No, it's almost ready. I can just bring it to you in the living room."

"Oh. OK." Sinclair backed away, feeling like an intruder.
As she was leaving the kitchen, Nikki looked up at her and
their eyes met. A smile touched the younger woman's mouth
and she shook her head, a light motion that could have
meant anything. "See you in a minute," she said.

Sinclair returned the smile and went to find her father and
Xavier in the living room. Victor waved her over to sit beside
him.

"So, how was your flight?"

"Not bad. It was quick." Sinclair tucked her bare feet
under her on the couch. "I didn't have the time to worry
about getting airsick or hijacked."

"Hijacked I can understand, especially living in America.
You get travel sickness?"

"Just on planes, though lately I've been getting twinges of
nausea in cars if I'm in one for more than an hour." When
she and Gram had gone on a road trip together in their secondhand Ford Escort, loaded down with all their camping supplies
and food, Sinclair had been fine. No sickness; just stomachfluttering excitement at being on the road and with her grandmother for a whole month.

Gram had been as excited as Sinclair about the trip. She'd
made sandwiches; bought a tent, sleeping bags, and special
camping pots. On the road, she had become talkative, willing
to share stories of her past in Jamaica, about how she fell in
love with a man-not Grandpa-who'd told her about the
fiery mountain sunsets and white sands of New Mexico.
Gifting Sinclair then, as she always had, with beautiful unforgettable moments meant to replace the emptiness that her
mother's death had left behind. She had fun on that trip.
They both did.